Spaces and Volumes
Posted on 07 Oct 2020 @ 6:31pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: Quinn and Zahn's Quarters-to-be
Timeline: MD 04 evening
1091 words - 2.2 OF Standard Post Measure
A stack of crates and packing materials on a hover sled trailed along behind Calliope as she made her way to the senior officers quarters on the decks above. A few other officers must have already begun the work on their own prospective and respective quarters, seeing as there were here and there in the broad corridors already a few sealed and labeled shipping crates awaiting facilities collection. Absentmindedly, she hummed a tune that had caught in her ear from a Risan musical talent show which she'd caught a few episodes of the previous week.
Calliope took in a deep breath as she keyed into their future quarters. Inside, she didn't bother asking the computer for lights, instead trying the control panel by the door manually. She got emergency lighting, which was more than junior quarters had been supplying.
Looking around by the dim emergency light, she felt as if she were breaking and entering.
Calliope had her choice of any of the senior quarters for the most part, and she'd picked this one based on the floor plan. While Calliope could live more or less in any old box with a decent bed and shower, Lance, growing up as he had, possessed standards about his accommodations and she wanted something roomy that could be changed around to suit. This was one of the largest quarters on the station, barring some of the large family quarters, special civilian builds, and diplomatic suites. The bulkheads here would support new structures she had in mind: breaking through this ceiling to the loft floor, so as to create a spacious living and reception area. A sizable study along the back, complete with holo display panels the breadth of the wall for all of the complex formulae to be written on, and then translated from his home to his office in engineering seamlessly. She knew just the unit to acquire. She'd seen one at a university once and if she could get them installed in both offices, there was a chance she could see more of Lance, even if it would just mean being in the same room together while he was off in his own world. Calliope would need very little of the space; maybe just a little desk and a lounger. Still— moving in together? She liked the idea ever so much. Upstairs the bedrooms could be restructured into one grand master bedroom. They had no children, and guests could be put up elsewhere on the station anyway. The modest master bathroom could be expanded into something of a personal spa. Maybe, Calliope admitted to herself, that last renovation was particular to her own wish list. She was feeling fairly greasy after a couple of days work end-to-end.
She switched on the lantern she'd brought along, turning the illumination up to chase away the dark, but instead, only elongating the shadows in a wheel of spokes around herself. Calliope grew a little more reflective as she took in the actualities as opposed to the potentiality. From the personnel records, Calliope knew this space had belonged to the late Commander John Morrison, Commanding Officer of the USS Typhoon, who had died in the line of duty while trying to preserve the lives of others in the escape from the pull of the Void . He'd been assigned these quarters on the station, and seemed to have found interests to fill the space with. Sizable personal fitness equipment stood out immediately, for one. After that the most notable thing was his wrap around desk with lots of study material. Anthropology, Psychology. Literature of Vulcan, Betazed, and Selay. Klingon warrior poet ballad collections. She drew her fingertips along the spines of a collector's set of bound books on Comparative Xeno religions and philosophies. A small flag of paper stood out of one. A bookmark? She pulled the book from between the rest and opened to the page. Here, she imagined, was where Commander Morrison had last left off reading in the series.
—not wholly unlike the ebb and flow of smoke, water, or nebulae dust, they are but patterns which we presume to call life, this sensory experience in which we are simultaneously receptor and perceptible among other receptors, where patterns calling ourselves material sense other patterns and what's more, develop patterns that are wholly non-material, transferable innumerable times, weightless and perhaps even timeless, forming patterns of being perhaps imperceptible but no less actual. To these patterns of thought and divination and imagination we rightly assign an awe and ascribe language formerly reserved for religious observation, for we sense that though our present condition may cease, the pattern may yet be called upon and in this sense be both resurrected and immortal.
She turned the bookmark in her fingers and found it to be a torn off end of paper with a note on it. The handwriting, while informally jotted, was none-the-less elegantly looped. "Space keeps us apart, but Truth overcomes the distances and binds us together. I look forward to more of your elucidations and fine company. ~Your Edilyn"
Your? Had he a budding romance? New or long past? Who would know? Did this Edilyn find out about John's sacrifice? Was the note even for John, or some artifact left behind by a stranger in a used set he'd bought? Calliope put the marker back in the page where she had found it and started to replace the book onto the shelf, as if that was where it belonged. But no. She paused. It no longer belonged here at all. That was why she had come. To pack these things. She instead moved to the crate. Reaching in, Calliope set the volume in the bottom. It felt wrong. Still, she went back to the shelf and collected its sister volumes from the set and stacked them in order together, numerically. The first time she packed them, the last volume ended up on top. So she took that apart and stacked it the other way round, so the leading volume would front the lot of them. It still wasn't right, but it wasn't as wrong... She packed the crate's remaining open space with more of John's books, feeling all the while like she was stowing away not so much a stack of wood pulp, glue, and ink as much as she was a man.
And when she had closed the flaps on the crate, Calliope folded her arms on the lid, rested her face in her hands, and cried for John.
