Making Time, Part 2

Posted on Tue 27th Aug, 2019 @ 11:17pm by Elizabeth Anderson M.D. & Lieutenant Damion Ildaran

1,457 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Damion Ildaran's Quarters, Deck 30
Timeline: MD-10, 1735

If it's important enough, you'll make time for it.

Having blanched his Roma tomatoes, Damion removed them from the boiling water and plunged them into a bowl full of ice water to shock them and peel off the skins. Then he pressed each one to remove excess liquid, quartered them, and set the quartered fruit aside. "Time for the syrup part," he said to Elizabeth.

For the syrup Damion reserved the juice squeezed from the tomatoes, adding water, sugar, lemon slices, and the quartered tomatoes to it, along with ginger and cinnamon. He partially covered the pot with its lid and looked at Elizabeth. "Now we'll just let this reduce. Can I get you something to drink or snack on?"

"I don't know. How long will it take to reduce? If it's going to be a while, yes, I'd love some water. It's so interesting to watch you do something like this. Of course, I didn't grow up cooking or ever work around anyone who cooked. I have the intellectual knowledge, but very little experience before the last few months. I presume you learned at home, and that's why you don't even have a recipe out."

"It'll take 20-30 minutes to reduce before I add the tomatoes, and then that same amount of time after I add them," Damion said. "You're right; I learned it at home. You can have several tomato harvests a year, so my mother and grandmother would make this pretty often. Grandma's were better, though." He poured some chilled water into glasses for the two of them and handed one to Elizabeth. "In my family, we either love these or hate them."

After taking a swallow, Elizabeth moved to a chair at the table and sat. "I'm going to presume that means you love them, or you wouldn't be making the recipe. Fond memories of home. You haven't told me a lot about your family in all this time. Is there ... was there ... some separation that occurred when you left, or perhaps it's a painful topic? I'm not meaning to pry," she stopped and thought about that.

"Well, yes, I suppose I am meaning to pry, but if you don't want to talk about them, we'll move on to something else. I'm always fascinated by families, not having a real experience of one. A group of scientists who treat you like their proud petri-dish creation isn't exactly the same," she gave a wry grin. "There's no need for you to satisfy my curiosity, though."

"I don't mind talking about my family," Damion said. He joined Elizabeth at the table and sipped from his water. "I don't talk about them much because I miss them, and I know I can never go back to Turkana IV. If I did, I'd be trapped there; our faction leader would see to it. I'm too well educated, too valuable now to be allowed to leave again. I've no mind to become a pawn of the Coalition or the Alliance. I'd have to hide everything I've become."

"What about getting your family out? Is that ever going to be a possibility?" She wondered if the person who called herself La Llorona would ever be interested in helping someone who wasn't a construct of some kind. "Maybe ... the pirates? You haven't finished that job, have you? I'm wondering if in their self-interest, they might help you in some way? Though maybe that would turn forces loose on Turkana IV that are better uninformed."

Then her ethics kicked in, and she shook her head. "Never mind, forget I ever said that. Right can use might, but it can't use wrong to achieve its ends. But still, is there a way?"

"I don't know that my family wants out," Damion said. "I was always the one saying, 'There has to be something better than this.' 'Twas never them, at least in my hearing. I think if they wanted out, it could be done, but 'twould be difficult. We still have the ability to scan for incoming spacecraft--or we did before I left. I'd want to come in as far from Turkana City as I could, though. If there were, say, a runabout coated in the same material they coat the Black Lightning interceptors with, that might work."

Damion sipped from his water, glanced at Elizabeth, peered down into his water glass, and then glanced back at Elizabeth again. "Elizabeth, I want to ask you something."

"That's only fair, after I've been so personal," she answered. "Ask away."

"You might be offended," he warned. "Elizabeth, are you all right? That idea you suggested a moment ago--I can't think of too many humans who'd have come up with that notion, and you usually think a lot more clearly than that. It leads me to ask how human you're becoming and how human you want to become."

Elizabeth stared at him for a moment and then said slowly, "You could never offend me. Apparently, no one can, because that's not a trait that's developed. Maybe it's counter to intellectual development." She dropped her eyes to the table, thinking about his question. She'd already run a diagnostic. Ethics she had, but sometimes when one was thinking outside the normal parameters ....

She brought her eyes back to his. "The answer to your question will have to wait until I know the answer myself, but I was brainstorming, and my brain and mouth got ahead of my programming. In spite of all my growth and development in the last couple of years, of emotions that sometimes overwhelm and confuse me ... and other things that have developed, don't make the mistake of thinking I'm human, Damion."

Anderson's eyes dropped again, her voice turning softer, more difficult to hear. "I'm a long way from it. I might fool a lot of people, but I don't want to fool you. I can't see any universe in which I'll ever be completely human." Something in Elizabeth ached as she admitted this to Damion. She'd always known it, but she realized she hadn't ever put it into words, even for herself.

"Lips moving faster than brain--which is, actually, an all too human trait," Damion pointed out. "I don't mistake you for human; I doubt you could ever be completely human, and why should you want to be? 'Twould be as silly as me longing to be a Vulcan. What you are is wondrous and beautiful in its own right. I respect and cherish who and what you are and how that will change over time."

Elizabeth chose to ignore the thrill his words gave her. If that was how he felt, why had he asked the question? Because that was how he wanted to feel, but he still held residual concerns. There was no other reason to basically ask her to self-check her moral compass.

"But some part of you still worries that I'll go rogue somehow?" she asked, torn between humor and anguish. She buried the anguish to examine later, and went with the humor and smiled. "That because I can overcome my programming, I'll do it in a dangerous-to-biologicals way? Or endanger my own ethical chip? You did ask a question that could be taken that way."

"What?! What do you mean, I worry about you going rogue?" Damion asked. "I don't worry more about you 'going rogue' than I do anyone else. Where did that come from?" He paused. "I asked you the question because of something a friend of mine once told me. He said, 'If you see I'm not acting right, be a friend and tell me; don't just let me keep on acting oddly and say nothing to me about it.' That's why I asked. The idea of hiring pirates to help me get my family off Turkana IV is--bizarre--to me, anyway. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you would suggest. I knew you were trying to help; I just wasn't prepared for that sort of idea. Usually, your ideas are better than what I might come up with."

"Um. That one might still fit that description ... but I don't see it as a particularly good idea. It could go wrong in so many ways, and it is on the bizarre side," Elizabeth agreed.

"The flaw in your statement is that I wasn't acting on anything, merely throwing out a suggestion as it occurred to me. All's well that ends well. If your family isn't likely to leave, even given a chance, then there's no need to contact a pirate to see if his heart is made of gold."

To be continued ....

 

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