Nova Artino is your Worst Nightmare (littlenightmare) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2020-06-10 10:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, james kirk, nova artino |
Who: Nova and Kirk
What: Kirk beams Nova up to his spaceship
When: Early May
Where: The Enterprise; Space
Ratings/Warning: Low/none. Some talk of wars and revolutions
Status: Complete
Nova was not convinced that this “Jim” actually had a spaceship, or was able to beam anyone up to anywhere. She wasn’t sure if he was delusional and actually believed the things he said, or if this was some sort of elaborate prank, and she was equally unsure about why she was here at all if she didn’t believe him. Maybe she was just as delusional as he was.
There was no way something like that existed. She was sure she would have heard about it if the technology existed. She crossed her arms, shifted her weight from one leg to the other, and looked around, wondering if she should just give up on the whole thing and just go home.
This was, honestly, something Jim kind of enjoyed. After all he knew how crazy it sounded and while technically it was a violation of the Prime Directive he'd never actually agreed to any of that.
The Dreams were a special kind of case, as far as he was concerned.
This wasn't his past, the Enterprise wasn't this Earth's future. It was complicated
The console beeped when Nova walked in range of where he'd hidden a tricorder and once he'd had the ship's computer verify it was really her and there was no one looking to notice, he engaged the transporter beam.
Hopefully this wouldn't be that one in a trillion chance; though it did seem like the Enterprise saw more than her fair share of accidents.
Luckily, there was no problem, and the woman materialized on the pad, and he grinned at her, "Welcome aboard the Enterprise."
Nova’s jaw dropped. Seconds ago, she had been outside, surrounded by people, and now.... Now she very much was not. She quickly looked down to make sure that she was still there - no matter what Jim had said, a matter-energy transporter did not sound “safe” - and gave herself a quick patdown, and then she was looking around the starship again. It was like something taken straight out of one of the sci-fi shows she sometimes would watch with Leroy or Winston.
“Sweet rot,” she breathed.
“I’m Jim,” he said coming around from the console and offering his hand. “I’ll be happy to give you a tour but there’s one thing I think you’ll want to see first.”
The observation deck was just a turbolift ride away and would provide a fantastic view of the Earth below them. Kirk couldn’t think of a better place to start.
Nova looked at the hand, but didn’t take it. She hadn’t held hands with anyone since she was six years old and her parents had still been alive. The Family didn’t avoid touching her, but they sure didn’t go out of their way to do so either, unless Ingrid was teaching her to fight, and the whole concept was foreign to her, especially now, when she was completely floored by… well, everything else. Her mind kept screaming that this was impossible, that she had to be hallucinating or dreaming or something.
Getting into something that looked like a small elevator with a near stranger wasn’t something Nova would trust, but it didn’t seem like Kirk had lied to her about anything else, and so she got in. Whatever the turbolift was wasn’t a normal elevator, and Nova was overcome with curiosity about how it worked - when she was a child she used to make hydraulic elevators out of syringes she’d find in the back alley, but before she could ask Kirk if he could explain it to her, they were on the observation deck. Nova gasped, her hands covering her mouth, and she stepped closer to the huge window. “This can’t be real,” she breathed.
No handshake? That was okay. Jim nodded at her before leading her to the lift and from there to the observation deck.
The view, of course, was their planet, that pale blue dot suspended in a sunbeam.
“Oh, it’s real,” Jim said, folding his arms and giving her some space. “We’re in an orbit designed to avoid the ISS. Usually the Enterprise remains behind the Moon or at one of the Lagrange points, but I brought her in for this.”
Nova felt tears pricking at her eyes, and quickly rubbed them away with the back of her hand. Nova had always loved space, and had been studying astronomy since she was old enough to read - it was the only non-practical thing she’d ever put any time into - but she’d never thought that she would ever get the chance to venture into the great unknown herself.
It was the most breathtaking thing she’d ever seen.
She turned to Kirk, her eyes still shining, though luckily, she wasn’t doing anything as embarrassing as actually crying. “This is amazing,” she said. “And you can just… come up here whenever you want?”
No matter where he'd gone, the wonders he'd seen, Kirk would never get tired of the view here. Of Earth hanging serenely, proof positive that there was far more worthwhile pursuits than squabbles over borders.
He didn't judge her for crying; he'd cried too the first time.
"Yes, I can. Sometimes I'd rather stay up here, but I don't think that's entirely healthy. Maybe if she had her crew, the living heartbeat of any Starship, then I probably would have warped away a year ago. Always come back." He pointed at Earth, and voiced his thoughts, "Still one of the best views in the galaxy."
“Anyone who got to crew this ship would be the luckiest person on Earth. Off Earth.” She said it before she’d even thought about it, but it was true. Sure, she already had a job, one she was born to, one that was important. But this… this was the stuff dreams were made of.
“You know, I spend most nights staring up at the stars. Who would have guessed that one day I would be among them and be looking back down at Earth.”
Jim couldn't dispute her comment about the ship; he agreed 100%, and in another situation he'd brag about it being the flagship of a whole fleet of vessels. but that wasn't true, not here. There was the Enterprise, and a few other stray ships and fighters, none of which were as large or powerful as his ship. Most of them appeared to be trade ships or small warships.
"This is one of the possible futures waiting for us," Kirk said, the passion evident in his voice. "Hardships and trials and tribulations but at the end of it, the stars and a society as equitable as it should be."
Nova couldn’t help but smile, because… well, that sounded pretty damn good. That was what she and her Family were fighting for, wasn’t it? To make everyone equal. Trials and tribulations and sacrifices had to be made, but at the end of it, there’d be no government, no crooked police force, just everyone doing their best for a better world.
“Yeah?” she asked, managing to pry her eyes away from Earth floating below them. “How did we manage that?”
"With the right advancements in technology. First came the warp drive, rising out of the ashes of a nuclear holocaust like the Phoenix. And after that we discovered how to provide food and clean power for the whole planet, so that people could pursue their dreams since they don't have to worry about survival and money is virtually non-existent. It's not perfect yet, but it's a lot better than now."
Technology. Of course that made sense, and Nova wasn’t sure why it wasn’t something she had thought more deeply about. The problem as she saw it was that people too much on the people who had decided that they were in charge instead of on themselves and their community. But with the right technology, suddenly, people wouldn’t be so helpless anymore. They’d be able to actually help themselves instead of relying on corrupt forces like the government or the police.
“It sounds perfect,” Nova said. “I wonder if we’ll ever get there.”
"I like to think we will." Jim would agree that it would take people fighting, but technology helped. As long as the technology was used to help people rather than control them, or stagnate them. He'd seen too many planets where one or the other had happened.
Sometimes it felt like Earth as both. "I'm a dreamer, an optimist. Always have been."
“Seems like everyone on the Network is a dreamer,” Nova muttered, rolling her eyes. Honestly, all the dream talk was starting to get on her last nerve. She’d only ever had one dream - a nightmare, really - since she was six years old, and she was pretty sure that everyone constantly going on about their dreams had done nothing but make it more detailed and weird.
“I like to think the best about humanity, but sometimes…” she shrugged. “They don’t really make it easy down there.”
“That kind of Dreamer too,” Kirk said, his laugh soft. “But I meant about the best in people and in humanity. Yes, there’s darkness, but there’s light too. People all over that world…” He gestured to the planet below, “Would I be wrong in thinking you know the Carl Sagan pale blue dot quote?”
“You mean the one that talks about the endless cruelties, frequent misunderstandings, and the rivers of blood spilled by generals and emperors so that they could become momentary masters of a fraction of that dot?” Nova said, with a bit of a cheeky grin. She was pretty sure that wasn’t the part of the quote that Kirk was talking about. “And how there isn’t help coming from anywhere else, so we’ll have to do it ourselves? Yeah, I know it.”
“From here we can see the pointlessness of all of that. If more people could see it, experience this, then we could be better stewards of our planet and our future. I know the potential exists, because I’ve seen it.” He frowned, “But a lot of people were sacrificed in one last war just for us to survive long enough to make it there, and that’s the part I’d like to skip.”
“All revolutions come with death,” Nova said, frowning down at the Earth, biting her lower lip. “Some must die so that others have life. It’s a tragedy, but it’s also the truth.” Nova didn’t like it much either, but she knew it was true. Her uncle had never believed in sugarcoating the truth from her, not even when she had gone to live with him when she was six, and it was one of the truths of life that had been instilled in her ever since she was a child. She added, repeating as if by rote, “Sometimes the weak must be sacrificed so that the strong might flourish.”
“Maybe. But that’s a sacrifice we eventually move past. A future where anyone can do anything they want, as long as it doesn’t harm others. Explore the galaxy, or stay at home painting or making wine.” Kirk smiled, “There’s a couple vintages I enjoy. And people still collect things, of course, but it’s a lot easier to engage in that when you’re not worrying about your next meal. A society where the weak are uplifted and the strong are not worshipped.”
Maybe the Federation had never quite met that ideal, but he liked to think they tried. “I met a man once. His was a time ravaged by war, that period when we first went to the stars, and fought others before we had a chance to understand them. He fought, because that was all he knew. I fought against him because it was the right thing to do.”
Nova’s face softened into a genuine smile as she looked down at Earth. Back home, the idea of doing anything on the scale of freeing humanity from their oppressive governments and their apathy seemed so overwhelming, but standing up here, being able to see all of humanity in just one look, hearing Jim talk… well, it didn’t seem so impossible afterall. The thought of people working together, and having the freedom to do what they wanted…
And then he talked about the other man, and Nova’s face closed off again. “Sometimes I’m scared that that’s the only thing we’d be capable of in this timeline. Just endless fighting and wars and mindless listening to tyrants.”
“That’s a very real and understandable fear,” He said, understandingly. It was one he shared, even if he was generally more hopefully about the nature of humanity. “But the good people outnumber the bad. And I don’t think they’re very far off from recognizing that. The world will change. Slowly or quickly, but it will change. And then we can look back on the here and now, as a species, in the same way we look at other points in our past.”
Nova pressed her fingertips onto the glass that was all that separated the two of them from the expanse of empty space, as if she could touch the Earth itself, cradle it in her hands, protect it from the people that called it home. It was cool to the touch, but not cold - one would never guess that on the other side, it was only 2.7°K.
“Thanks,” she said, her arm dropping to her side as she turned to Kirk, smiling at him. “Thank you for bringing me up here. It’s…” Well, she didn’t have the words to describe what it was, but she thought he would understand what she meant.
"Something told me you'd appreciate this." If he could show everyone he would, but that was impossible. So he was more than happy to show someone who'd truely appreciate it.
"Probably more so than many other people. Would you like to see other parts of the ship? You can stay here for a time if you’d like. Trust me, I understand."
There was a part of Nova that would have liked very much to just sit in front of the window and take in the scene. Maybe stare at the stars that lay behind the earth, like pinpricks in the neverending expanse of emptiness.
But there was a bigger part of her that wanted to see the ship itself, how it ran, what technologies breathed life into it. That kind of technology… well, there was nothing she wanted more than to be able to study it firsthand. Her face split into a wide grin. “I’m dying to see the rest of the ship.”
“Okay.” Jim’s smile turned into a proud grin, “We’ll start with the heart of the ship, and work our way up to the brains.”
The soul, however, was absent.
Because the soul was the crew.