The Impass
Posted on 27 Aug 2023 @ 8:38pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Edited on on 06 Feb 2024 @ 10:32pm
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Obsidian Command, Promenade, The Grotto
Timeline: Immediately Following "Three Tests"
1936 words - 3.9 OF Standard Post Measure
Still deep in thought, Calliope said little while she worked through her appetizer. Lance had polished off his tuna, with only one comment about it still being too spicy. When she suggested he send it back to have it remade, he said he should just have to grin and bear it.
As their dinner plates arrived, he began to feel that on occasions such as this, there should be more conversation. And knowing Calliope preferred lively conversation, he reached back for something worthy of recounting and began to regale her with a story about the time his lab partner, some years prior, had mistakenly selected the wrong replacement part.
"—you see, Anticans are color blind, and in the old system we were using a single color denotation for the stabilizer test coils in the micro-accelerator. So he installed a green in place of a red, and when we ran the tests, everything came out on an entirely different scale! We thought we had discovered a new subatomic particle. Of course we sent our process and results out for independent verification, and it came back as false. To employ a metaphor, it was like the loss of a beloved child."
At his choice of metaphor, her eyes narrowed, but she maintained her neutral tone. "You felt that strongly?"
"We had been running an increasing number of tests on the same equipment and drafting our findings. We had endowed the particle with a name, the Halinquist, a sandwiching of various letters shared among the names of our team. We had prepared the celebration and the missives to go out. So you can imagine when the results returned in the negative, just how stricken we were."
"You must have been very disappointed."
"That hardly begins to cover it." Lance leaned over the table. "We shut down the lab for two weeks and reassessed our entire research agenda. Upon our return, we disassembled every component of the equipment involved, until a month later having accounted for nearly every particularity, we discovered the coil and its small green stripe."
Calliope finished chewing and looked at Lance, considering. "You never told me about this."
"I didn't think you would care. And besides, it was embarrassing. We were young researchers and we should have known better than to have gotten our hopes up prematurely."
"But it mattered to you. And I'm sure I had called. Or you could have told me on one of our trips?"
Lance cut into one of the medallions and examined it dubiously. It appeared too dry for his taste. "Being honest, It hadn't crossed my mind in your enchanting presence." He put the bite in his mouth. Indeed, it was dry. He tried to chase it with a little wine, but found he would still have to try to chew quite carefully in order to prevent a gag reflex. How embarrassing might that be whilst dining out?
Meanwhile Calliope was still continuing the discussion. So despite chewing what to him seemed like grist, he made his most valient effort to remain focused on his wife.
"Are you going to restart work on the Quinn-Navine drive?"
Motioning side to side with his fork and knife, crosswise to one another, Lance frowned, finally swallowing. "It is of no consequence," he rejoined. It was only a potential new method of faster than light propulsion, after all. "You mustn't trouble yourself over it. Let us simply focus on us."
Calliope quietly stirred the couscous. It seemed he didn't want to discuss things that mattered to her, and he didn't want to discuss things that mattered to him, or at least not anything within the last decade. "What about us Lance?"
"Hm? How do you mean?"
"You said let's focus on us. What about us?"
Lance adjusted his collar. Something told him this was another test. His wife looked intense, and a little bit dangerous. He floundered for something. "Well, about our next plans. Have you thought of what it is you would like to do next?"
"The Paracelsus still has an open post for first officer. She's under a new commanding officer."
"Dave, was it?"
"Doctor Daniel Ryder. He was our CMO for seven years. I've told you about Doctor Dan. We ran all kinds of missions. He's one of my closest friends."
"Ah, right."
"He sent me the post listing today, to see what I thought about taking it."
"That is a marvelous opportunity for you. You can return right to where you left off on your ship. I remember you felt quite at home there. Have they any need of a Chief Engineer?"
"No. They haven't that particular need."
"Perhaps Chief of Science, or.... an advisory specialist?" Calliope was still giving him that look. Although it seemed to be happening by gradation, not unlike the formation of dark clouds, she didn't appear to him to be emotionally stable. He set down his cutlery. "Well," He said with a sigh of resignation. "I shall accompany you in any event. You may rely upon it."
Calliope tucked her chin downward and eyed him. There was something like pain in her voice. "Lance. You wouldn't be happy like that."
"I have only your happiness in mind."
She inhaled and seemed to tremble with some sort of feeling. "This isn't working."
"What?"
"This!" she practically shouted.
Lance held out his hands in a gentle shushing pantomime. But that only seemed to worsen whatever her escalating condition was, as she seemed to have no more container for her feelings.
"If you're quietly suffering in order to be with me," she explained, "I can't enjoy that at all! Can't you understand? I'll feel guilty about it all the time. You're giving up everything without giving up anything."
Desperate to control the situation, Lance reached for her hand across the table and she let him grasp her fingers. Calliope saw something like fear in his eyes as he forced a whisper.
"Tell me," He said, "What is it you want? Shall we stay here, in jobs that for us are both a purgatory? Would you rather accompany me to the Sol system? I have received an open offer. It seems they find it exceedingly difficult to fill my position at Daystrom."
Her shoulders fell. "What on Earth would I do, on Earth?"
"There must be some kind of management or teaching. You could excel at any number of things, Calli. You're a wonderful woman. Talented, determined, creative. Willful." Captivating, complicated.... and confusing, he thought to himself.
Her lip quivering, and her temperature seeming to raise and flush her face, Calliope looked away, back through the window at the bay, likely a hologram of some earth location of which she could visit in person. Every week, or every day if she pleased. She had very much enjoyed her school holidays when she'd been at the Academy. Earth was a beautiful world. But it was also well settled and well ordered and didn't need her. Not in the same way that she could make herself useful on the border reaches. What would she do? Attend tea? Learn to paint? Wait for him to come home?
He would begin new projects in his own laboratory world and work long hours as discoveries presented themselves. And when he was with her, he would be committed to something else, given to complete preoccupation, and disinterested in sharing his triumphs and failures of his project-children which he shared names with his lab partners. And she would grow old and stale. Nominally married. Virtually alone.
And if he followed her, it would be no different. He would wilt away and she would bear the guilt of his fading and of denying the Federation of his uniquely brilliant contributions. She was holding him back.
"I think... I think we're better apart, Lance." She said quietly, still gazing across the false horizon, her eyes squeezing closed and tears escaping.
"This whole ordeal of the past few months has been quite sobering in many ways." Lance agreed. "It is settled then. We shall return things to rights. We shall recover our careers individually and book our next vacation plans at the destination of your choosing."
"No Lance, I can't... I can't continue like that. I mean apart."
Lance felt his heart beating against his ribcage. "Calliope. Please." There was only one other thing she could mean by her saying. The only option he was unwilling to consider. He swallowed. "I know that you desire companionship. Should we return to our proper career trajectories, I'm not opposed to an open marriage."
At that she looked at him, mouth agape at the very suggestion.
"It is an unwritten tradition of the Quinns that affairs must be found under some cover or another. And a viable solution for many cultures besides. In truth... you'll forgive me, I always assumed you had been engaged in some extramarital arrangement or another of which I would have been uninterested in knowing the details, it being better left discrete."
Calliope looked cut through. Had he truly known so little of her? "I would never. I vowed, Lance. I never wanted anyone else."
"Yes well, I know that now. But you also vowed til death do us part, and now, if I'm not mistaken, you're suggesting—"
The tears were flowing down her face freely now. "I don't want to live a lie, Lance. We can't work together, or share a social life. I can't share your passions in the sciences in any appreciable way for you. At best I've been a happy distraction for you. There's only one thing we share in common. You can barely stand my company otherwise. And even that you hold lightly enough to think I would cheat! And to decide it didn't matter to you if I did!"
"Calli, for heavens sake, what do you want from me? Name it!"
"I want to be more than a distraction! I wanted to share our life. Together. But it's not going to happen, is it?"
"You mustn't become so emotional. What's required is the proper application of thought. There must be some solution which has yet to occur to us." Lance looked down at the pork medallions, his appetite soured.
What remained of Calliope's voice came out cracked and broken between desperate sobs. "Not everything can be fixed, Lance. Sometimes the sacrifices we have to make aren't out here," She motioned to the stuff around her. "Sometimes they're in here." She held her napkin over her heart and beat her breast bone.
When he hesitated while trying to tailor a response that could possibly salvage this disaster, she gathered herself and rose from her chair, barely containing a full rush of sobs. Dizzy from the noise of her expression and uncertain as to what was expected of him exactly, Lance also stood but she shook her head and threw the napkin over her plate. He gathered that she preferred not to be followed.
When she was out of sight, Lance still remained, dumbfounded as to what had just happened. His head swiveling, he realized everyone was looking at him, the other patrons in in the surroundings left quieted by the cloud of verbalized emotion that Calliope had created the wake of her storm.
"Sir," Henri said, the Maitre d standing behind him, looking sternly over his curled mustache. "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to pay for your meal and vacate the premises."
"Pardon me?"
"You're no longer welcome in this establishment."
