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edenfallingSpock compares his timeline to its original. Thoroughly gen, depressingly philosophical. (Look, I can't help it; I do my best meta thinking in story form. Sometimes I disguise the meta better than others. It's not very disguised here.)
I dislike the title of this story. Unfortunately, I can't think of any other options that do any better at summing up and highlighting the theme. If you think of one, please tell me!
(The slightly revised ff.net version is now up. And here on AO3 as well.)
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And in the Bottom of the Box
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This world is an error: a slow-motion catastrophe, building inevitably from an initial tragedy.
One hundred twenty-nine years from now, in a different reality, Romulus and Remus -- ch'Rihan and ch'Havran -- were destroyed. They perished because of the brute indifference of unnamed nature, the shortsighted political delaying of the Senate, the stubbornness of the Vulcan Science Academy. The shock of that tragedy spilled over, back in time, where reality acted to heal the infection by sealing it off in a new stem of spacetime. Everything after that initial incursion was wrong.
Spock had theorized as much. Now he knows.
He spoke with Jim Kirk, twelve days into their shakedown cruise. Once enlightened about the truth behind the inference Spock's counterpart had led him to draw -- "Cheating again," Kirk muttered, incomprehensibly -- he allowed Spock to initiate a light meld and learn the details of the catastrophe that had propelled Nero back in time and driven him to pursue revenge worse than death.
Spock came away with more than that bleak narrative. He felt the echoes of his counterpart's emotions, and he carefully organized the fragments of memory -- both his counterpart's, and faded glimpses that must have originally belonged to Kirk's counterpart -- so they would not trouble this Kirk's sleep. Doing so gave him a cursory overview of major events in that other world -- the original world, toward which their own is attempting, slowly and often unsuccessfully, to correct itself.
In that other world, Vulcan still circles Nevasa, shining red and gold with reflected light. In that other world, his mother lives -- and will live to peaceful old age. In that other world, conflict with the Klingon and Romulan Empires simmers at lower heat, broken only by occasional skirmishes rather than the outright battles that have exploded with deadly regularity all through Spock's life. In that other world, Starfleet's internal scales tilt more toward exploration and science rather than military defense.
Spock compares the original world and its damaged offshoot and knows, without a shadow of doubt, that his world is flawed, perhaps fatally.
And yet. In that other world, he is currently still estranged from his father. In that other world, he never dares to love Nyota. In that other world, Romulus and Remus will suffer Vulcan's fate, with no chance of reprieve. And in both worlds, Spock has the Enterprise and her crew, whom he thinks -- he hopes -- are becoming his friends.
Weighing one life against another is monstrous. This, if nothing else, Spock has seen in his counterpart's memories: that while according to logic, the many outweigh the few or the one, logic is useless at judging the worth of friendship and love. You are the Other; the Other is you; how, then, can one assign relative value to life? No one can. All life -- all love -- is the same and worth the same.
This world is an error: a broken mirror held up to truth, its fault lines fracturing the chain of events into ever-ramifying splinters. But this world is all he has. He loves it -- loves what he has all the more because of what he has lost and what he will now never have.
This world is an error. But the universe does not stop for grief. Life continues despite death, and in time even the greatest tragedy is transmuted into truth, into art, into a light that reminds the future not to repeat the past.
This world and its people have known tragedy their originals never felt.
Spock wonders what glory may be born in overcoming it.
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Inspired by the 6/1/09![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15_minute_fic word #112: reflection
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I stole a few things from TOS book fanon -- the Vulcans' name for their sun (which I suppose will soon be sucked into the new black hole? or is red matter so special that the black holes it creates just pop right out of existence after a few minutes? because otherwise the black hole Spock created to destroy the Narada is going to be one hell of a navigation hazard, you know), the Romulans' names for their homeworlds, a mangled paraphrase of one of Surak's more memorable quotes -- but that's basically just for color.
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In other news, I have new shoes. I have broken with over twenty years of personal tradition and bought black sneakers instead of white ones. I am hoping they will look less ratty as they age.
I dislike the title of this story. Unfortunately, I can't think of any other options that do any better at summing up and highlighting the theme. If you think of one, please tell me!
(The slightly revised ff.net version is now up. And here on AO3 as well.)
---------------------------------------------
And in the Bottom of the Box
---------------------------------------------
This world is an error: a slow-motion catastrophe, building inevitably from an initial tragedy.
One hundred twenty-nine years from now, in a different reality, Romulus and Remus -- ch'Rihan and ch'Havran -- were destroyed. They perished because of the brute indifference of unnamed nature, the shortsighted political delaying of the Senate, the stubbornness of the Vulcan Science Academy. The shock of that tragedy spilled over, back in time, where reality acted to heal the infection by sealing it off in a new stem of spacetime. Everything after that initial incursion was wrong.
Spock had theorized as much. Now he knows.
He spoke with Jim Kirk, twelve days into their shakedown cruise. Once enlightened about the truth behind the inference Spock's counterpart had led him to draw -- "Cheating again," Kirk muttered, incomprehensibly -- he allowed Spock to initiate a light meld and learn the details of the catastrophe that had propelled Nero back in time and driven him to pursue revenge worse than death.
Spock came away with more than that bleak narrative. He felt the echoes of his counterpart's emotions, and he carefully organized the fragments of memory -- both his counterpart's, and faded glimpses that must have originally belonged to Kirk's counterpart -- so they would not trouble this Kirk's sleep. Doing so gave him a cursory overview of major events in that other world -- the original world, toward which their own is attempting, slowly and often unsuccessfully, to correct itself.
In that other world, Vulcan still circles Nevasa, shining red and gold with reflected light. In that other world, his mother lives -- and will live to peaceful old age. In that other world, conflict with the Klingon and Romulan Empires simmers at lower heat, broken only by occasional skirmishes rather than the outright battles that have exploded with deadly regularity all through Spock's life. In that other world, Starfleet's internal scales tilt more toward exploration and science rather than military defense.
Spock compares the original world and its damaged offshoot and knows, without a shadow of doubt, that his world is flawed, perhaps fatally.
And yet. In that other world, he is currently still estranged from his father. In that other world, he never dares to love Nyota. In that other world, Romulus and Remus will suffer Vulcan's fate, with no chance of reprieve. And in both worlds, Spock has the Enterprise and her crew, whom he thinks -- he hopes -- are becoming his friends.
Weighing one life against another is monstrous. This, if nothing else, Spock has seen in his counterpart's memories: that while according to logic, the many outweigh the few or the one, logic is useless at judging the worth of friendship and love. You are the Other; the Other is you; how, then, can one assign relative value to life? No one can. All life -- all love -- is the same and worth the same.
This world is an error: a broken mirror held up to truth, its fault lines fracturing the chain of events into ever-ramifying splinters. But this world is all he has. He loves it -- loves what he has all the more because of what he has lost and what he will now never have.
This world is an error. But the universe does not stop for grief. Life continues despite death, and in time even the greatest tragedy is transmuted into truth, into art, into a light that reminds the future not to repeat the past.
This world and its people have known tragedy their originals never felt.
Spock wonders what glory may be born in overcoming it.
---------------------------------------------
Inspired by the 6/1/09
15_minute_fic word #112: reflection---------------------------------------------
I stole a few things from TOS book fanon -- the Vulcans' name for their sun (which I suppose will soon be sucked into the new black hole? or is red matter so special that the black holes it creates just pop right out of existence after a few minutes? because otherwise the black hole Spock created to destroy the Narada is going to be one hell of a navigation hazard, you know), the Romulans' names for their homeworlds, a mangled paraphrase of one of Surak's more memorable quotes -- but that's basically just for color.
---------------
In other news, I have new shoes. I have broken with over twenty years of personal tradition and bought black sneakers instead of white ones. I am hoping they will look less ratty as they age.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 08:08 am (UTC)Small black holes eventually dissipate, but Vulcan's sun shouldn't be in any danger anyway - because we see the Enterprise achieve escape velocity rather quickly. So long as Vulcan's sun is in a far enough orbit to not enter the black hole's gravity well, it should be perfectly fine.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 10:59 pm (UTC)(Also, black holes can dissipate? I did not know that, but I find it deeply cool.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-05 12:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 02:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 03:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-05 06:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-05 11:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-06 08:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-06 09:48 pm (UTC)My reason for thinking TOS Spock's reasons for joining Starfleet were slightly different is that I did not get a sense, from the new movie, that Sarek had stopped speaking to him altogether -- possibly their relationship was strained (but it always had been), but I don't think it was cut off entirely. I am inclined to pick up some other people's meta and say that the destruction of the Kelvin and the decades-early revelation that Romulans and Vulcans are the same species, made the Vulcans more xenophobic than before. (Vulcans are kind of weird about cultural and racial purity. On the one hand, they honor diversity and respect all life. On the other hand, they really do think they're better than everyone else, and if you're Vulcan, you had damn well better be Vulcan, no dilutions allowed.)
So I suspect Spock's childhood was, if not vastly more difficult than in the original timeline, then difficult with a much uglier tone and motivations behind the insults and ostracism. (For example, I do not recall TOS Sarek ever being called a traitor for marrying a non-Vulcan woman. Peculiar and misguided, probably yes. Traitor, no.) And therefore, I think this new version of Sarek was probably more predisposed to understand just how insulting the Academy's reference to Spock's "disadvantage" was, and to understand (if not approve) Spock's choice to get out of such a poisonous environment.
Does that make sense?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-07 01:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-07 02:19 am (UTC)You are in good company! Vulcans have been written about the most out of all the alien species in Star Trek. They have been in every series (whether as regulars -- TOS, Voyager, Enterprise -- or as guests -- TNG and DS9), and this means you have over forty years of world-building to discover. A lot of it is contradictory, in which case screen canon -- the shows and the movies -- takes precedence over book canon. And even within book pseudo-canon, some books are more canon than others, if only because more fans accept them. Spock's World by Diane Duane is probably the one most people agree on as being "the" definitive picture of Vulcan history and culture.
For all that you would think the Romulans, being an offshoot of the Vulcans, would be equally well explored, they are not. Instead, Klingons are probably the second most developed species. For example, Klingon is a fully realized constructed language, or conlang. It has dictionaries, and people have even translated Hamlet into Klingon. Someone invented a Vulcan conlang as well, back in, I think, the mid-to-late seventies, but I don't think it's as thorough a job as Klingon. And there are fragments of Romulan out there, but that's even less thorough -- probably a few hundred words at best.
After Vulcans, Klingons, and arguably Romulans (who are all multi-series presences), the best alien development is on DS9. The key species there are the Bajorans, the Cardassians, the Ferengi, and the various Dominion species, with the Klingons and the Trill also showcased. (And there are always the Borg, in TNG and Voyager, but by their nature they don't have much culture, so they're noticeably less developed.)
*removes hat*
Sorry to blather at you at such length. I am just finding it difficult to contain my current overflowing enthusiasm for Star Trek. :-D
I LOVE YOU
Date: 2009-06-07 07:42 am (UTC)This world is an error. But the universe does not stop for grief. Life continues despite death, and in time even the greatest tragedy is transmuted into truth, into art, into a light that reminds the future not to repeat the past.
Simply,elegantly wonderful. I mean, I simply cannot comment more.
I lie.
Truth, art, light, birth: This is Spock,who is bave enough to love and Kirk,who just wants a place and a family, and Chekov, who is far, far too young to witness a holocaust,And Sulu, who likes big knives, and Uhura, who is strong and brave enough to reach out to a loving friend,and Scotty, who should really work on getting that dog back and McCoy, who, in the end, is scared of Andorian shingles.
Did I tell you I love you :)
Re: I LOVE YOU
Date: 2009-06-07 08:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-07 07:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-07 08:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-08 05:26 am (UTC)This world is an error. But the universe does not stop for grief. [...]
This world and its people have known tragedy their originals never felt.
Spock wonders what glory may be born in overcoming it.
I love the whole thing, but that ending just kills me. Absolutely gorgeous, hun. <3
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-08 06:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-08 07:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-08 03:39 pm (UTC)