I live!
TREK FICLET FOR PIIG (TOS)
Genfic, 2,000 words
Spock is unused to self-deception, and yet, telling oneself such little lies is so much a part of the human condition that in good conscience he must, at the least, experiment with it. If he is to accept the human part of himself--accept, not indulge--surely he must understand this dissensible practice. Too, the creature had not been described and documented adequately, and as Science Officer aboard the Federation's flagship, surely it was his duty to correct that.
And so he made it a little dwelling of clear polymer and filled the bottom with the clean sands of Vulcan which Kirk had scooped into a canister for him in a fit of projected sentimentality. After a moment's thought, he fetched a mass of soft cloth from the replicator and bundled it into a makeshift nest. In the interest of Science, of course.
Rational creatures require names, so they may be differentiated from one another in conversation. Those of lesser intellect did not converse, and so did not require names. And yet, humans named everything they came into contact with. Some even were granted multiple names, and not only in the good doctor's habit of half-muttered invective. After a brief meditation he settled upon Entrepreneur.
He saw no need to inform the rest of the crew.
***
Entrepreneur was a fist-sized bundle of white fur, adorned with two blotches of black, slightly longer than the rest of its coat, positioned approximately where a humanoid would expect eyebrows. However, since Spock had yet to ascertain the anterior and posterior portions of the creature--he was relatively certain of the dorsal--it may just have had flecks on its rear.
***
The first order of business was reproduction. Or rather, the prevention thereof. McCoy had concluded that the creatures were born pregnant, and so the obvious solution was a restricted diet that, while keeping the creature healthy, prevented it from overwhelming the ship with its daughters. With this in mind, Spock replicated a tiny bowl of plomeek soup and set it in the habitat. Entrepreneur stiffened its guard hairs and advanced upon the soup with great haste. The soup soon disappeared, though Spock was no closer to figuring out how. Perhaps the guard hairs were hollow. In time, with careful observation, he would be furnished with enough data for a podcast with Vulcan Science Academy. He would have to observe the creature closely.
It was fortunate he was immune to its effect.
***
Spock wasn't in the habit of entertaining his crewmates in his quarters. By invitation, at least; Kirk's presence was always welcome, and their chess games had become as necessary to Spock's well-being as his meditations. McCoy had never been shy of storming in, tricorder brandished, to heap Spock with invectives and the occassional backhanded requests for help. The Science officers were expected to work closely with Medical, though privately Spock wondered how many of his fellows were called hobgoblins of any sort. Ensign Chekov came shyly, once in a great while, to discuss neutron-flow equations or suggest greater efficiencies for the Mortron-Weekes equations. Lt. Uhura came for their weekly musical practices; Lt. Vrai'lo-ein came on alternating Tuesdays for water-meditations. Hiding the creature permanently was no solution; he could not observe something he could not see. A cloth thrown over the habitat would have to suffice.
The clear polymer reflected the lights in concentric rings. Entrepreneur approached the glass and emitted its characteristic thrum. "Indeed," Spock told it, and fetched a PADD to make notes.
***
"Spock! You missed a hell of a party. The Brereton twins got drunk and did some wriggly snakedance thing."
Tea in hand, Spock rose smoothly, slipped the replicated fabric over the polymer habitat, and went to the door. With delicate courtesy, Kirk never used his override codes, no matter how impatient he was or how sure of his welcome. Spock keyed the door and stepped aside.
"Spock!" Kirk bounded into the room with a single sedate step. "Enjoying a quiet evening? I just popped by to check on my favourite first officer. Quite a fracas with the duelling pirate ships today, wasn't it?" Kirk puffed his chest out, the gold of his tunic stretched across his chest. "Of course no one else could have pulled through the way we did. Your idea to re-calibrate the photon torpedoes and cross the beams? Brilliant! I can't tell you how glad I am to know you."
"Your effusive praise is unneeded, Captain," Spock said, inclining his head. "But I am grateful." And at that moment, the tribble purred loudly as it discovered some previously-overlooked nugget of flaked protein from its last feeding.
"Oh!" Kirk stepped closer, gaze fixed on Spock's face, his own tense with what Spock cautiously categorized as restrained-- "That sound--"
Fighting to keep his eyebrows in their resting position, Spock lifted his chin and made a credible imitation of a tribble's primary vocalization.
"My God, Spock, I can't believe we've been friends this long and I've only just learned that you purr. It isn't anything I've ever heard or, or *read* about your people." Face shining, Jim seized Spock's hand and pumped it. "I can't tell you how honored I am that you've chosen to share this with me."
Spock blinked. As always, his pulse reacted to his Captain's touch. Just as quickly, Jim let go, as if remembering the Vulcan aversion to casual contact, and said, "I've got to go, I've kept Yeoman Mills waiting long enough. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's chess game even more now. You know I'll make you purr as often as I possibly can, Spock," Kirk promised, and swept from the room. The temperature had not changed and yet, Spock's interpretation of it had.
He didn't know if anyone else ever got palpitations just because someone had touched them. Certainly he couldn't ask McCoy, and the notion of booking the subspace communicator to contact Sarek filled him with an irrational but powerful dread. His discipline was *not* weak, nor was it flawed. And yet, it seemed the heart was the one muscle to defy both Spock's logic and his control.
***
The creature was neither diurnal nor nocturnal. It refused water, but would drink even the weakest soup. Or absorb, or engulf, or siphon, Spock still couldn't say. Spock's attempts to teach it its name were thus far inconclusive, cautiously pointless.
"Computer, number of tribbles in my quarters?" Spock asked.
"One," the computer replied.
"See that it stays that way," he admonished, running one fingertip along the rim of the habitat. The tribble just thrummed.
***
Spock roused from a light seated meditation when Entrepreneur scaled his knee. The vibrations of its purr were as much sensation as sound.
"The suppression of emotion allows the mind to enter the tranquility of logic. The tranquility of logic enhances the process of thought, and the rhythms of work, and the subjective experience of life."
It did not move, or quiet itself. Spock had no difficulty resisting the urge to pet it. He focussed on the glow of his meditation candle, but the tribble's purr settled into his bones, and the creature's soft, almost antiseptic scent joined the light musk of the candle.
Though all physical examinations had thus far yielded nothing more than the quivering vocalization, Spock nevertheless found himself tracing the creature's length. A half-hour spent stroking a forefinger along the soft fur was as soothing to his Delta-waves as a half-hour of meditation. Most curious. More observation was needed.
"Father," he imagined saying. "I have been speaking to a creature of limited intellect that cannot understand me."
Somewhere in Spock's mind Leonard McCoy sniped, "What, the rest of us? You shouldn't insult fellow bipeds like that, you smug bastard. And if we had any quadrupedal crew aboard, you couldn't talk about them that way either! Bad for morale. Now get back to your damned meditation, willya? God knows it might sweeten your disposition. I'm a doctor, not an imaginary friend."
Spock wasn't sure whether to record these lapses in discipline or not.
***
The next morning Spock rose, stretched briefly, and replicated a cup of Darjeeling. He settled in a lotus position on a meditation cushion his mother had made for him, stitch by stitch, and drank the tea slowly, eyes closed. He'd settled on a schedule of feeding Entrepreneur an ounce of food once a day, and once he'd finished his tea he replicated a lump of salted biscuit and approached the polymer dwelling. No waste of any sort had appeared, but a fine layer of fur had been added to the fabric nest in a depression in the sand at the center. Spock was unsure how the creature had dug it; any limbs concealed in that fur were surely vestigial. Perhaps it had a prehensile tongue. If it even had a mouth. Perhaps tentacles?
The habitat was empty.
"...Entr--" Spock said, craning his neck to scan his quarters, then stopped. The tribble had scaled the replicator and was rolling slowly about the top of it.
"Where were you?" Spock said, giving it a three-quarter eyebrow. "Had you been there when I programmed your meal I would have seen you. I wonder how it is you scaled the polymer of your habitat."
It didn't answer. Spock approached to reclaim it. Shortly thereafter he would record in his PADD that tribbles could jump.
***
Four days later the door-chime sounded midway through Beta shift. Spock set aside the PADD--he'd been reading the latest edition of Unusual Microbes--and rose smoothly to his feet. A pale shadow scudded along the wall and disappeared behind the couch.
Spock resolved to dissuade the person at his door from seeking entrance. "Computer, open door," he said.
McCoy turned sideways to slip in the moment it was physically possible to do so. He brandished a stack of PADD's at Spock.
"You bastard! What have you done to physics? If this proof you've given me is correct then the Neyers'-scale readings for the crew are all off by 9 intervals. And Spock? The damned scale only has three!"
"Doctor McCoy--" Spock said.
McCoy swept past Spock and flopped onto the couch. He scattered the PADDs beside him and threw both booted feet onto the table, causing the paper flower Spock had set there to quiver. "I mean it! I'm not leaving until you explain this to me. Do you know how long it would take to retest the whole goddamned crew? And don't even IMPLY that I should recalibrate the *scale*, because dammit that oughta be someone else's job! Not that you or the rest of these space-cases can seem to remember what my job is and is not."
McCoy in these moods was a force of highly aggravated nature. Spock sat. A faint scrabble came from behind McCoy and a tiny bubble of foreboding quivered in a place that ought only to contain the cool stability of logic.
"And stay away from Engineering. The still that godforsaken Scott had hidden did *something* a-buggered to the Jefferies tube and now every fourth one is producing a tiny trickle of motherfucking synthahol and the fumes are enough to pickle the union. Don't want to upset that long and delicate green nose of yours. Here, let's start with the bit where you examine a scale meant to measure emotions from the point-of-view of an emotionally impaired genius hobgoblin."
"Doctor, I must insist," Spock said firmly.
"What? Speak up, then!"
"You have a tribble on your head."
Genfic, 2,000 words
Spock is unused to self-deception, and yet, telling oneself such little lies is so much a part of the human condition that in good conscience he must, at the least, experiment with it. If he is to accept the human part of himself--accept, not indulge--surely he must understand this dissensible practice. Too, the creature had not been described and documented adequately, and as Science Officer aboard the Federation's flagship, surely it was his duty to correct that.
And so he made it a little dwelling of clear polymer and filled the bottom with the clean sands of Vulcan which Kirk had scooped into a canister for him in a fit of projected sentimentality. After a moment's thought, he fetched a mass of soft cloth from the replicator and bundled it into a makeshift nest. In the interest of Science, of course.
Rational creatures require names, so they may be differentiated from one another in conversation. Those of lesser intellect did not converse, and so did not require names. And yet, humans named everything they came into contact with. Some even were granted multiple names, and not only in the good doctor's habit of half-muttered invective. After a brief meditation he settled upon Entrepreneur.
He saw no need to inform the rest of the crew.
***
Entrepreneur was a fist-sized bundle of white fur, adorned with two blotches of black, slightly longer than the rest of its coat, positioned approximately where a humanoid would expect eyebrows. However, since Spock had yet to ascertain the anterior and posterior portions of the creature--he was relatively certain of the dorsal--it may just have had flecks on its rear.
***
The first order of business was reproduction. Or rather, the prevention thereof. McCoy had concluded that the creatures were born pregnant, and so the obvious solution was a restricted diet that, while keeping the creature healthy, prevented it from overwhelming the ship with its daughters. With this in mind, Spock replicated a tiny bowl of plomeek soup and set it in the habitat. Entrepreneur stiffened its guard hairs and advanced upon the soup with great haste. The soup soon disappeared, though Spock was no closer to figuring out how. Perhaps the guard hairs were hollow. In time, with careful observation, he would be furnished with enough data for a podcast with Vulcan Science Academy. He would have to observe the creature closely.
It was fortunate he was immune to its effect.
***
Spock wasn't in the habit of entertaining his crewmates in his quarters. By invitation, at least; Kirk's presence was always welcome, and their chess games had become as necessary to Spock's well-being as his meditations. McCoy had never been shy of storming in, tricorder brandished, to heap Spock with invectives and the occassional backhanded requests for help. The Science officers were expected to work closely with Medical, though privately Spock wondered how many of his fellows were called hobgoblins of any sort. Ensign Chekov came shyly, once in a great while, to discuss neutron-flow equations or suggest greater efficiencies for the Mortron-Weekes equations. Lt. Uhura came for their weekly musical practices; Lt. Vrai'lo-ein came on alternating Tuesdays for water-meditations. Hiding the creature permanently was no solution; he could not observe something he could not see. A cloth thrown over the habitat would have to suffice.
The clear polymer reflected the lights in concentric rings. Entrepreneur approached the glass and emitted its characteristic thrum. "Indeed," Spock told it, and fetched a PADD to make notes.
***
"Spock! You missed a hell of a party. The Brereton twins got drunk and did some wriggly snakedance thing."
Tea in hand, Spock rose smoothly, slipped the replicated fabric over the polymer habitat, and went to the door. With delicate courtesy, Kirk never used his override codes, no matter how impatient he was or how sure of his welcome. Spock keyed the door and stepped aside.
"Spock!" Kirk bounded into the room with a single sedate step. "Enjoying a quiet evening? I just popped by to check on my favourite first officer. Quite a fracas with the duelling pirate ships today, wasn't it?" Kirk puffed his chest out, the gold of his tunic stretched across his chest. "Of course no one else could have pulled through the way we did. Your idea to re-calibrate the photon torpedoes and cross the beams? Brilliant! I can't tell you how glad I am to know you."
"Your effusive praise is unneeded, Captain," Spock said, inclining his head. "But I am grateful." And at that moment, the tribble purred loudly as it discovered some previously-overlooked nugget of flaked protein from its last feeding.
"Oh!" Kirk stepped closer, gaze fixed on Spock's face, his own tense with what Spock cautiously categorized as restrained-- "That sound--"
Fighting to keep his eyebrows in their resting position, Spock lifted his chin and made a credible imitation of a tribble's primary vocalization.
"My God, Spock, I can't believe we've been friends this long and I've only just learned that you purr. It isn't anything I've ever heard or, or *read* about your people." Face shining, Jim seized Spock's hand and pumped it. "I can't tell you how honored I am that you've chosen to share this with me."
Spock blinked. As always, his pulse reacted to his Captain's touch. Just as quickly, Jim let go, as if remembering the Vulcan aversion to casual contact, and said, "I've got to go, I've kept Yeoman Mills waiting long enough. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's chess game even more now. You know I'll make you purr as often as I possibly can, Spock," Kirk promised, and swept from the room. The temperature had not changed and yet, Spock's interpretation of it had.
He didn't know if anyone else ever got palpitations just because someone had touched them. Certainly he couldn't ask McCoy, and the notion of booking the subspace communicator to contact Sarek filled him with an irrational but powerful dread. His discipline was *not* weak, nor was it flawed. And yet, it seemed the heart was the one muscle to defy both Spock's logic and his control.
***
The creature was neither diurnal nor nocturnal. It refused water, but would drink even the weakest soup. Or absorb, or engulf, or siphon, Spock still couldn't say. Spock's attempts to teach it its name were thus far inconclusive, cautiously pointless.
"Computer, number of tribbles in my quarters?" Spock asked.
"One," the computer replied.
"See that it stays that way," he admonished, running one fingertip along the rim of the habitat. The tribble just thrummed.
***
Spock roused from a light seated meditation when Entrepreneur scaled his knee. The vibrations of its purr were as much sensation as sound.
"The suppression of emotion allows the mind to enter the tranquility of logic. The tranquility of logic enhances the process of thought, and the rhythms of work, and the subjective experience of life."
It did not move, or quiet itself. Spock had no difficulty resisting the urge to pet it. He focussed on the glow of his meditation candle, but the tribble's purr settled into his bones, and the creature's soft, almost antiseptic scent joined the light musk of the candle.
Though all physical examinations had thus far yielded nothing more than the quivering vocalization, Spock nevertheless found himself tracing the creature's length. A half-hour spent stroking a forefinger along the soft fur was as soothing to his Delta-waves as a half-hour of meditation. Most curious. More observation was needed.
"Father," he imagined saying. "I have been speaking to a creature of limited intellect that cannot understand me."
Somewhere in Spock's mind Leonard McCoy sniped, "What, the rest of us? You shouldn't insult fellow bipeds like that, you smug bastard. And if we had any quadrupedal crew aboard, you couldn't talk about them that way either! Bad for morale. Now get back to your damned meditation, willya? God knows it might sweeten your disposition. I'm a doctor, not an imaginary friend."
Spock wasn't sure whether to record these lapses in discipline or not.
***
The next morning Spock rose, stretched briefly, and replicated a cup of Darjeeling. He settled in a lotus position on a meditation cushion his mother had made for him, stitch by stitch, and drank the tea slowly, eyes closed. He'd settled on a schedule of feeding Entrepreneur an ounce of food once a day, and once he'd finished his tea he replicated a lump of salted biscuit and approached the polymer dwelling. No waste of any sort had appeared, but a fine layer of fur had been added to the fabric nest in a depression in the sand at the center. Spock was unsure how the creature had dug it; any limbs concealed in that fur were surely vestigial. Perhaps it had a prehensile tongue. If it even had a mouth. Perhaps tentacles?
The habitat was empty.
"...Entr--" Spock said, craning his neck to scan his quarters, then stopped. The tribble had scaled the replicator and was rolling slowly about the top of it.
"Where were you?" Spock said, giving it a three-quarter eyebrow. "Had you been there when I programmed your meal I would have seen you. I wonder how it is you scaled the polymer of your habitat."
It didn't answer. Spock approached to reclaim it. Shortly thereafter he would record in his PADD that tribbles could jump.
***
Four days later the door-chime sounded midway through Beta shift. Spock set aside the PADD--he'd been reading the latest edition of Unusual Microbes--and rose smoothly to his feet. A pale shadow scudded along the wall and disappeared behind the couch.
Spock resolved to dissuade the person at his door from seeking entrance. "Computer, open door," he said.
McCoy turned sideways to slip in the moment it was physically possible to do so. He brandished a stack of PADD's at Spock.
"You bastard! What have you done to physics? If this proof you've given me is correct then the Neyers'-scale readings for the crew are all off by 9 intervals. And Spock? The damned scale only has three!"
"Doctor McCoy--" Spock said.
McCoy swept past Spock and flopped onto the couch. He scattered the PADDs beside him and threw both booted feet onto the table, causing the paper flower Spock had set there to quiver. "I mean it! I'm not leaving until you explain this to me. Do you know how long it would take to retest the whole goddamned crew? And don't even IMPLY that I should recalibrate the *scale*, because dammit that oughta be someone else's job! Not that you or the rest of these space-cases can seem to remember what my job is and is not."
McCoy in these moods was a force of highly aggravated nature. Spock sat. A faint scrabble came from behind McCoy and a tiny bubble of foreboding quivered in a place that ought only to contain the cool stability of logic.
"And stay away from Engineering. The still that godforsaken Scott had hidden did *something* a-buggered to the Jefferies tube and now every fourth one is producing a tiny trickle of motherfucking synthahol and the fumes are enough to pickle the union. Don't want to upset that long and delicate green nose of yours. Here, let's start with the bit where you examine a scale meant to measure emotions from the point-of-view of an emotionally impaired genius hobgoblin."
"Doctor, I must insist," Spock said firmly.
"What? Speak up, then!"
"You have a tribble on your head."