Quantum Uncertainty
Posted on 06 Jul 2023 @ 11:07pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Edited on on 12 Jul 2023 @ 8:26pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Pathfinder, XO's office
Timeline: M3 D13 Late Morning
2942 words - 5.9 OF Standard Post Measure
This was the final leg of the trip, Calliope thought to herself as she checked off the last items surrounding the hull plate release on their brief stop-over out of warp. Nothing in the system marked out anything out of the ordinary. Officially speaking, it had just taken on damage between the fight and the atmospheric shear and to spare repair time they had approved Ensign Tilmer's plan to shed the damaged plates and rely on force field shielding once within comms range of the Station.
As Calliope closed off the report on that activity, she made a new system entry. A memo for Corvus, where she detailed Ensign Tilmer's excellent work on the away team— the advanced skill he'd plied on the transporter, while keeping collected under great stress had been a key part of the rescue of Chief Petty Officer Xeri and the two children. Combined with his readiness to handle leadership in Engineering during Commander Quinn's medical recovery, Calliope advised Ensign Tilmer be promoted to lieutenant junior grade, awarded for his actions, and would recommend him for other leadership opportunities in his field.
She did think Tilmer might look a little more professional if he shaved that half grown-in mustache off his upper lip, but it didn't seem relevant to the report and she closed and sent it without additional comment.
Leaning back, Calliope watched the perpetual motion sculpture doing its kinetic thing. Becoming curious she stood and unwound the clamp holding the base of the sculpture. There was an inscription under the plate "To my son, Torvyn. In all things, keep balance and return ever to the center path. " That was right. Torvyn often assisted with Pathfinder patrols. Although a Science officer, with his length and breadth of skill and patience, he'd been easy to assign as a pinch hitter almost anywhere, and she'd still somehow forgotten this had been his office before the Pathfinder had been dispatched on this mission. She reattached the kinetic sculpture and checked it was secure.
Keeping balance.
Calliope considered the advice on the inscription. Balance required running, sometimes, in order to stay center. Momentum seemed to be a part of that feeling— you could wildly sway one way or another not only with a little push, but also if you just misjudged your pace ahead. Calliope had regained her sense of balance only last week and it had made a tremendous difference, even in just keeping her lunch in. Now she felt sick and in knots again. All the other matters of dire importance aside, in the middle of her knot was what would have to be addressed between her and Lance.
Giving the sculpture a twirl on each pass, she paced the five steps between the replicator and the desk over and over while turning her rings around her finger.
The engagement ring was an heirloom, many centuries old, and one she'd once inadvertently overheard should have gone to someone who would give the family another son, or at least make an attempt. She’d caught the comment during their engagement, on a visit to the estate. Freezing for a moment to try to understand, Calliope shook her head and pretended not to hear a murmur over tea taken in the conservatory. But the first had barely stopped echoing before it was followed on with a response.
“It’s better Lancelot and his Orion—
“Calliope,” A gentle voice of another attendee reminded. "It was the name on the invitation?"
“Calliope? They will be wasting good names on just anyone, won’t they? To be sure, it’s better that Lancelot would refrain from having progeny by her. Oh, it’s well and good that they should live happily, Lancelot deserves that much. Though why he has to marry her for that is some other matter.”
“Perhaps it will be called off when he’s had his fun and come to his senses.”
“Quite possible. They haven’t set a date.”
“Should I return the gift now?”
“What did you buy her? A cutlass?”
“She’d get some use of that! Though if someone would buy her some fashion sense that didn’t come out of a replicator, I’d consider it a fair mercy.”
“Anyway, I can tolerate the Orion for his sake, but the Quinn titles shouldn't be handed down to muddled non human bloodlines, Lady Quinn. Without an heir from your son, you can rely upon your daughter’s line, just the same. Much better in fact if there isn’t a space pirate’s mongrel to make a claim over it, sullying the name with who knows what atrocious connections from her side.”
She'd wanted to throw the ring at his mother and her guests then, but she'd pretended to hear nothing, internally reminding herself that her love for Lance superseded titles and wealth and even idle chatter looking for a sensational outlet.
That’s where she had been standing, trying to collect herself to prevent an outburst, when a solicitor had taken her by the elbow to say something pressing about a prenuptial agreement, one that was only a boilerplate, matter-of-course.
Lance had made a beeline to avoid the hostile female company and instead ducked into the den with his father and a few other men eager to circumvent the gaggling and frippery, leaving her to be pulled aside by the family lawyer. She'd never wanted his money or his titles. It was hard enough to fit in, let alone imagine making all of that her way of life. She skimmed and signed quickly so the discomfort of it would be over, and she could return to the event, ostensibly where she was the guest of honor, and she could at least try to enjoy the food and the gifts and make an effort at fitting into the family. Maybe if they came to know her, she had reasoned, they could change their minds about her. Maybe knowing that she had signed away any claim to their precious estate would change their minds about her, and slow down the mean rumors, even just a little.
She looked up from the last line on which she had inscribed her name and the solicitor was offering her a glass of some wine he'd just poured, content that he'd procured the signatures without any trouble, but sorry for the girl.
"You'll want a little sherry before you attend, Miss Zahn." It had proved wise advice.
She hadn’t been on Sol long enough to make any significant impression with the family circles. And every time she did visit, she’d come more and more to accept that it was a world she would never fit into. Lance loved his mother, who had truly done everything in her power to make sure Lance lived to his full potential, discouraging him from wasting his genius on sod all like the rest of his lackadaisical peers. She insisted that her son would amount to so much more than the sons of her society friends.
Like so many things Calliope had learned of Lance, the fact that he was a mamma’s boy was something that she’d found kind of sweet. It only stung when she sat between them or made any kind of demand on him that she disapproved of. Lance favored satisfying his mother’s wishes over anything she felt. And always just when it would become nearly unbearable to be the woman’s daughter in law, Lance's mother would say something kind and disarming. Calliope suspected it was a kind of craft people living in mansions had, to be chilly and judgemental for the most part, but to give a glimpse of a heart now and then as a means of throwing people off their guard.
She’d not only learned to accept Lance’s world, she’d taught herself to love it, in a way. She learned to reframe her offense and disappointment into funny tales in her mind as if she could watch the awkward things that unfolded like a period comedy. And if it became unbearable, she would slip away to the kitchen and have a laugh with the staff. Or take herself out for walks on the truly magnificent grounds and remind herself that the Quinns were defensive of it for a reason. While most of Earth had been redistributed supposedly fairly, they had been graciously granted their legacy to maintain for posterity, so long as both lasted— the gracious permission and the posterity to pass it to.
“It’s a preservation, a responsibility to keep, this noble title,” Lance’s father had explained to her on her first visit to the family home, smoking a cigar as he had shuffled along a hall filled end to end, floor to ceiling, with framed portraits. Like so many others had, when the title ceased to find an heir, the estate would be broken up or redistributed, and the family history lost to time to become a shaded memory, the house a museum and the rest on holofile for reference. In her heels and dinner gown, stepping uncertainly through the strange corridor of ancestors, Calliope wondered if she’d missed which portrait was Lord Quinn’s, and where they planned to hang the rest of the patriarchs’ painted likenesses. He was born into the marble pillars, velvet curtains, and diamond cufflinks… and he would die in it too.
”You’ve enchanted my son,” he’d observed, breaking her from her thoughts.
“Oh, no, I’m not—” Calliope had wanted to explain. She was on a prescription and she wasn’t like the Orions in the holodeck adventure series. But all that was too personal to discuss with a man in a proper dinner jacket. Instead she’d blushed. “Not a pirate or anything. My mother has roots here on Earth.”
“Has she? Where abouts?”
“The Caribbean Isles.”
“Pirates on both sides of your tree...” Her future father in law had chuckled. “Nevermind that. I’m just pleased to know he does anything aside from shut himself up in a lab, my dear.” He drew on the stump of the cigar once more, before putting it out by way of a crystal dish on a marble pedestal just for that purpose, then steeled himself for the affair that was dinner with company once more, brushing and straightening his lapels. “Well, make him a happy man. At least he’ll have that.”
That she had to admit, had probably been the most reliable part of the relationship. Although Calliope had ceased entertaining the idea since she’d been trying to manage her outrage with him. Lance seemed to take the cold shoulder with a kind of acceptance and dignity that she hadn’t anticipated. It made sense when she reflected on his parents now, however. Not talking was one of their primary modes of communication.
Up until a few days ago, she would have tried to fix everything with lengthy discussion, and he would have endured it as he always had. Their quirks, their differences. To Calliope she’d always found those things evoked something in her akin to the crooked sunflower she had once chosen in the field: endearing, unique, a bit odd, but notable for being odd. Calliope suspected deep down, Lance had found their differences uncomfortable, the sort of thing that had to be endured for the greater good of the relationship. He hadn’t made any fuss at all when his mother had removed the crooked sunflower Calliope had selected and featured in the gift bouquet she and Lance had handpicked and brought back with them from that outing in the English countryside.
She sent it away saying, “Unsightly thing. Perhaps a little color for the kitchen. Display it or disintegrate it, I shan’t care so long as I don’t have to see it.”
“I had my misgivings about that selection as well.” Lance had admitted. As far as Calliope knew he’d not even thought about that moment since. Lance had always recalled Sunflowers were a favorite of hers, and she had considered that enough of a gesture to let the rest go.
First Officer of the Pathfinder for one more day yet, Calliope sat back down at her desk. She pulled her rings off and set them on the glossy top. It wasn’t that she never took off her rings. There were plenty of times when she needed to protect them, or set them aside for some reason pertaining to her work. But she’d never just set them out to examine like she was doing now. To question.
“I know he loves me,” she said to no one but her reflection. “And I know I love him.”
She searched her own eyes in the dark glass. There had been a plan there, only a week ago, in her own head. A plan to stay together, no matter how choppy the waters got. But she saw everything differently since the moment of clarity opened by the subspace rift. Now her eyes didn’t smile when she thought of forever with Lance. They were pained for what she was demanding from him. Hurt for the situations working with her had led him to. Regret for the near disaster it had precipitated. Guilt for everything she took from him by being his wife.
She picked up the rings and started to put them back on, but only turned them around the end of her finger, thinking.
Still forming her thoughts, she tapped the comms channels and searched through her own contacts list, pulling up names from Lance’s old research division at Daystrom. She had a mind to see who had been given his seat.
But Lance’s profile was still there. And still live, only the contact information was rerouted to the division’s office comm line. Calliope placed a question to the auto assistant in the division.
Daystrom Research and Development, Theoretical Propulsion, enter query.
“Voice request, assistant, please tell me, the Assistant Head of Engineering Design & Development, is the position available?”
No, there is no opening for Assistant Head of Engineering Design & Development.
“Who is currently in the role?”
Undefined. Contacts are to be forwarded to the Managing Officer.
“Not to Commander Quinn?”
Lieutenant Commander Lancelot Edward Alcott Quinn is currently unavailable.
“He’s currently assigned to Obsidian Command,” Calliope clarified for the bot.
Unverifiable. Information outside of Daystrom Research and Development office protocol is not available to the automated assistant.
“Can I speak to a person?”
Certainly. To whom may I address your request?
“I don’t kn— the managing officer.”
There was a confirmation chirp and the Daystrom icon glowed as she waited for the call to process.
“Lieutenant Maris,” Said a woman with a very restrictive looking braid and a pair of augmented reality lab glasses. Calliope had the distinct feeling her call was interrupting something. “Can I help you with something?”
“Ah, yes, I just needed to clarify a personnel listing. The Assistant Head of your department is listed as a Commander Quinn, but he’s not reachable through your office.”
“He took a different assignment.”
“But he’s still listed there?”
“When you work at our level, people are difficult to replace in their fields. It’s unwritten office policy in our branch to have a six month grace period before we rehaul any senior member’s labs and offices and take them out of the publishing, speaking, and lecture circuit officially.”
“You have a lot of take backsies?”
The woman with the braid smiled. “You have no idea.”
“So all of Commander Quinn’s Office and Lab spaces are there still?”
“The way he left them when he shut out the lights.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Sorry to have bothered you.”
“Not at all, Commander Zahn. Tell him we miss him here.” Calliope looked a little unsure as to what she meant until Lieutenant Maris reached over the lab divider and held up a paper copy of a string of goofy poses that Calliope had replicated into a print out strip, her green freckled face making finger-goggle eyes, fish lips, and derp face. She’d likewise made Lance pose for a roll and kept those for herself. The variation between his poses were... a lot more subtle. “That’s you, right?”
“Yeah…”Calliope admitted, wondering at the revelation that he’d kept any images of her out in a shared lab space. “That’s me.”
“Well, it hasn’t been the same, trying to cover the gap he’s left in our projects. We’ll need twelve minds to make up for what he was able to produce just in quantity, to say nothing of his mental acuity, and his tenacity in attacking complex quantum evaluation matrices.”
In other words, Calliope knew Lance was irreplaceable. “It will be hard to fit all twelve of his replacements into the contact badge-in image.”
Maris smirked at her former co-worker's funny wife, who he'd left the division for. “I hope he’s enjoying drying out his eyelids staring at stardock power grid outputs and cycle rates. Thank you for calling the Office of Engineering Design & Development, Theoretical Propulsion Design Division. Lieutenant Maris out.”
Considering Lance’s old department contact card, Calliope slid the rings on and off.
On and off.
