Not This Time

Posted on 20 Sep 2023 @ 7:08pm by Lieutenant Commander Maurice Rubens & Moon-Young Chung
Edited on on 20 Sep 2023 @ 7:56pm

Mission: M4 - Falling Out
Location: Diplomats Offices, Environmental Ring, Executive Office Complex
Timeline: MD1: 2305 HR
2100 words - 4.2 OF Standard Post Measure

Dae-Jung dragged Rice to his first production of Shakespeare. His only experience with theater had been going to painful high school productions one of the other kids in the home had insisted on being part of. Their foster parents had dragged all of twelve kids and Rice swore never to go to another as long as he lived. But his mentor had insisted (it was Moon’s first job as a costume designer) and he dutifully went with the proud father.

It was a “modern retelling” of Hamlet, though Rice was confident it was just idle marketing speak: how many new takes people could do on a nearly 800-year-old play? They’d crowded into a small playhouse in Pittsburgh with five hundred other people. He was plunked down next a jovial Bolian who spent the twenty minutes before the play jabbering about how many times he’d seen it and on how many different planets (he preferred a production he’d seen on Qo’noS). This conversation did nothing to improve Rice’s sullen mood.

Then the lights dimmed, the curtains opened, and he was whisked away to Denmark. The whole performance was enrapturing, he’d never thought anything outside a hologram could feel so real, could transport someone so readily. He’d rushed to a bookstore that evening, bought a copy of the play, and reread it that evening.

Now, eleven years later, he sat twirling a PADD in his hands, deep in thought. His office had single desk lamp on, his door stood wide open. The space was still bare – he’d barely moved anything in besides a few Cardassian and Romulan keepsakes on this otherwise still temporary desk – and nothing marked it as his own. He’d sent this threadbare staff home for the evening. Tomorrow was a big day for them. In that empty office suite, in his empty office, Hamlet’s soliloquy, the one that started, ‘To be or not to be,’ kept rolling through his mind as he thought about the Korinn. Commander Zahn’s answer to his question had started him down this path. Her hemming and hawing irritated him. Rice knew he was being ungenerous: people needed time to think. Still, Hamlet kept jumping in with his final thoughts on the matter: Thus conscience makes cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.

“Eight hundred years old and still relevant,” Rice muttered out loud, tossing his PADD on the desk with a clatter.

“Are you talking about some El Aurian hottie?” Moon’s voice called from the door.

He looked up with surprise, “What are you doing here? What time is it?”

“It’s past 11…no, hold on…It’s past 2300 hours Federation Standard Time,” she smiled, pleased with herself and sauntered in the rest of the way. She plopped a brown sack down on his desk. The smell of Kung Pao chicken wafted up from it, immediately filling his mouth with saliva.

“There’s a Chinese place on the promenade?” he asked, pulling open the bag and pulling out the white box imprinted with a red dragon clutching chopsticks. He’d never mastered the art of the wooden utensils and was pleased to find Moon had thrown a fork in.

She nodded, looking around for a chair and, when she couldn’t find one, just plopped down on the edge of the desk next to Rice. Moon combed her fingers through his hair and sighed. “I came to give you that, but also to strategize about my mother.”

“She probably won’t be here for another few weeks,” Rice said as he pulled the white box from the sack. Some of the sauce had leaked out and he had to lick sweetness from his fingers.

“I know, but I can’t stop thinking about it. She’s this unescapable force and I can feel her hurtling toward us.”

“I’m not worried.” Rice found the fork at the bottom of the sack and dug into Kung Pao.

“Why? I feel like she’s the one who planted the idea in my head that I should dump you! Then I did!”

Rice finished chewing. “There were underlying problems with our relationship, so she was right. We’ve only been here a few days and we’ve had more open and honest conversations than we did the last year of our failed attempt.” He’d taken to referring to their relationship on Earth as a distinct separate thing. It was easier (at least for him) to forget Moon’s fling with that actor in the few months they’d been broken up.

Moon tsked loudly. “Please, please don’t defend her.”

“Okay, she was right for all the wrong reasons.”

“Better. Not perfect, but better.” Moon sighed. “So, I was thinking that I should have the store up and running before she arrives. That gives me three weeks.”

“Do it if you get the deal you want from your partners,” Rice told her as he shoveled rice from a smaller white box into the large one with the chicken. He began folding it in with this fork. “You’re mother won’t care one iota if you have it running or not. She’s set her mind to bringing you back.”

“Maybe. Anyway, I’ll have to have Brek and Sylvie over for dinner to show some of the designs I’ve been working on.”

“Brilliant idea. Win the investors over with spectacular designs.”

“You remember yesterday at breakfast you were talking about your goals for the Korinn? Well, I thought that I should have some goals, too.” She took out a miniature PADD and scrolled through her content, throwing it over to a holographic display on Rice’s desk.

He took a minute to study it. One of the bullet points made his eyebrow arch. “Ferengi generally don’t like giving out product for free. I don’t know Syvlie Hardt well enough to know if she’s one of those Cardassians with heart – some are worse than Ferengi. Have you come up with a plan to sell them on it?”

Moon nodded. “I’m going to let them set the price on the other clothing. I don’t understand value anyway. Why does a piece of cloth have more value than another piece of cloth? If you can’t get it for whatever reason, you just choose a different material. No big deal.”

“Mmm. Capitalism is head scratcher.”

Maybe a few high-rocking clients will bring in enough to satisfy him or them or whoever.”

“Could. And it’s ‘high-rolling.’”

“What? What are they rolling? Why is it high?”

“I think it’s got to do with gambling,” Rice said. “The more funds you bet in gambling, the richer you are. Or the more your addicted, which was a real problem on Earth in the late 20th and early 21st. People bet currency they didn’t have. World War III really nipped that in the bud. I guess that’s a silver lining of something that otherwise totally destroyed the world.”

Her brow furrowed in disbelief. “They didn’t have the currency that they gambled with? I thought you said people who didn’t have…er…money struggled to live.”

“You see the problem.”

Moon shook her head; the more she learned about humanity’s past, the more impressed she was that they managed to survive to the warp age. “Well, anyway. That’s a major goal.”

“It’s all perfect. Go after those goals, don’t back down. Tomorrow night is just the start. Your conversation may have to happen over a longer time, just keep focused on want you want,” Rice said as he stuck some chicken in his mouth.

“Speaking of which…how’s the planning going?”

He looked down at the PADD he’d been twirling and shrugged while he finished chewing. “Just a meet and greet tomorrow. Harshman’s aid sent me a message saying that they wanted changes to the rest of the agenda that we’ll discuss upon their arrival. So.”

Moon saw Rice's shoulders slump a little. For an instant he looked dejected, but quickly shook and buried his feelings. Damnable man. Burying his feelings was a trademark of his, but even so she was unused to seeing him look discouraged; suddenly, she saw her own insecurities reflected back. The trepidation of something unconquerable coming directly at you.

“Dad said you changed after Exterior pulled you onto a project with the Romulans. Something after Mars?”

“What? Oh. Yeah. Did he?” He stared into his Kung Pao chicken uncomfortably. Dae-Jung never said how much he knew about that assignment and Rice never told him.

“Yeah. He said you came back bitter. Something hadn’t gone right. You used to build consensus, but after you got back you just started going for the throat more. What did he say? Er… ‘you were more apt to move to eliminate opponents who stood in the way of progress.’”

“Jesus. Makes me sound like an assassin.”

“If I’m honest, I don’t understand what that means.”

Rice shrugged and speared another piece of chicken with his fork. “I try to smooth the path to the outcome that is just, using whatever diplomatic and political tools are at my disposal. Sometimes what I need to do is…clear some things or people out of the way for an optimal outcome. Mostly Federation people.” And mostly Starfleet the last decade or so, he left unsaid.

Moon snorted. “And this Admiral who’s coming. Harshman. She’s a problem?” She paused yanking on a sliver of a memory. “Hey, I’ve heard that name from you before. Was she involved in some Cardassian stuff, too?”

He stirred the food in the container with his fork before putting it down on the desk with a sigh. “Yeah, but we'd crossed paths before during my Romulan assignment. At the very end. She…” Agitated, he pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to the window to stare into the darkness of the Environmental Ring. “She stopped a plan I’d put in place. Then people died. A lot of people”

“Romulans?”

“Romulans are people, too.”

“You think she’s going to do the same thing to the Korinn people, huh?”

Rice whirled around. It felt like Moon had hit him. No. It felt like she’d handed him a plasma grenade and pulled the pin. A pain consumed him and a face came hurtling out of the past. Moon faded and Desmona now sat on the desk. She was dressed as she always was for working in the fields on Bardol: brown jacket and loose pants tucked into knee-high boots. Her black hair was pulled back into a long ponytail that hung down her back, showing off her Romulan features. She smiled widely at him.

And an instant later it was Moon again. Rice felt like he was going to throw up, but an instant later, a coldness started to course through his body like a river moving from his head to his toes. Not this time. Desmona’s sparkling voice, the one that made birds sound off key, echoed in his mind. Not this time.

“No,” Rice said quietly, speaking for the dead. “Not this time.”

Moon walked over to him and put her arms around his neck. “Good.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist. They stood there embracing for a couple of minutes before she finally let go. He straightened his uniform jacket and adjusted his comm badge. “I’m going to be late tonight. I have to figure out how I’m going to play this. Probably have to throw out all my plans for the opening meeting.”

“I know. I’ve got my own work,” Moon said walking toward the door. She paused. “Will I see you for breakfast?”

Rice had already deleted his agenda for the opening meeting. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. A new list was forming on the PADD, options and probable reactions. He needed to be three or four moves out in front if he wanted to change anything. Allies. He’d need allies he could trust…

He looked up. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

She smiled blew him a kiss, which he pretended to catch.