2294
In a small annex situated off the main room in the Akrelt Refuge, T’Vora sat in a straight-backed chair along the rear wall, observing. Seated beside her, Sokel also looked on. One of the two elders assisting T’Vora with Spock’s Kolinahr, he specialized in facilitating a mind bridge between master and aspirant. Less invasive than mind melds, bridges allowed individuals to share singular thoughts or memories, compartmentalizing mental connections for the sake of both privacy and safety.
At the front of the annex, Spock sat facing Rekan, the second elder assisting T’Vora. At the moment, Spock showed indications of fatigue: a slight slump in his normally erect posture, an excess of blinking, a pallor recognizable even in the dim light spilling down from the apertures in the ceiling. T’Vora wondered if the weeks of logic exercises had worn on the aspirant, but then she noticed how enervated Rekan herself appeared. It stood to reason that if Spock’s inquisitor tired, then so too should Spock.
“Given an n-dimensional hypersurface,” Rekan said, her voice beginning to grow hoarse as she started another exercise, “with n invariant curvatures, K-sub-x, of the surface at each point, with x equal to the integers from one to n…”
T’Vora watched as Spock listened to the formulation of the mathematical problem. The solution to each question put to him, she knew, required no specialized knowledge beyond that which he already possessed. She wanted not his knowledge and recall put to the test—though they necessarily were, by virtue of the content of some questions—but his ability to reason logically.
“The aspirant is nearing exhaustion,” Sokel said quietly beside her.
“Yes, I see,” T’Vora said as Rekan finished laying out the particulars of the problem setup and posed an interrogative. “We will end shortly.”
The daily regimen of queries, ranging from very simple to very complex and generally lasting from dawn until dusk, had occupied much of the first two months of Spock’s Kolinahr. He had borne up well, displaying a strong and focused intellect. As well, he had demonstrated unflagging discipline, a testament to his commitment here.
“A preferred orthogonal basis,” Spock said, responding to Rekan.
“That is correct,” the elder said. Then, without waiting, she moved on to her next challenge. “You are standing on Vulcan with a partner at one end of an unremarkable field that is one hundred meters square. Ten thousand chairs like this one—” She pointed to the simple wooden seat upon which she sat. “—have been placed randomly in the field. Your partner is a blind Vulcan with no ability to interact telepathically to any degree. Without being permitted to touch your partner, you must direct him to walk from one side of the field to the other. How would you accomplish this most efficiently?”
As Spock paused, obviously to consider the question, T’Vora thought about it herself. It required only a moment’s deliberation for her to see the correct answer, understanding that logic demanded she scrutinize not only everything that Rekan had said, but also everything that she had not. As she waited for Spock to find the solution, she decided that this would be the last question of the day.
After a moment, Spock said, “I would verbally direct my partner across the field, while I walked ahead of him, moving any chairs in his path.”
A simple problem, T’Vora thought, but not if you allowed yourself to make assumptions on the information given. Rekan’s parameters stated that you could not touch your partner, not that you could not touch the chairs.
“That is correct,” Rekan said. Before she could continue, T’Vora stood up.
“Kroykah,” she said, bringing the proceedings to a halt. Both Rekan and Spock peered toward the back of the annex. “That will be all for the day,” T’Vora said. “Rekan, Sokel, you are excused.” Without a word, the two elders rose from their chairs and exited through the door at the rear of the annex.
T’Vora paced to the front of the room, where Spock stood to face her. Up close, she could see even more clearly his weariness. “How do you feel?” she asked.
“If the question is meant to evoke an emotional response,” Spock said, “I feel nothing.” T’Vora thought for an instant that he might have intended humor with his response, but discounted the possibility as he continued. “If the question is asked with respect to my physical and mental states, then I would say that I am fatigued.”
“Is this due only to today’s exertions?” T’Vora asked.
“From today’s exertions, yes,” Spock said, “but not only from them. The past weeks have been challenging, and I find myself growing tired faster today than, say, a month ago. I therefore conclude that the impact of the daily sessions has been cumulative.”
“Do you understand why this is being done?” T’Vora asked.
“Not entirely,” Spock said. “I can see the value in assessing my logical faculties, but in my estimation, I have already proven my fitness. Also, this is so far very different from the Kolinahr training I experienced with T’sai.”
“Each Kolinahr is distinct, one from the next,” T’Vora said, “among both aspirants and masters. Just as your experience with me is different than that with T’sai, so too is my experience with you different than that with any of my previous aspirants.”
“While I do not question your methods,” Spock said, “the uniqueness of each Kolinahr does not explain the intense concentration on my ability to reason.”
“Your ability to reason is not at issue,” T’Vora said. “But in seeking to purge yourself of all emotion, you must hone your logic, not only as a tool with which to reason, but absent feeling, as the singular means by which to conduct all aspects of your life.”
“Yes, of course,” Spock said.
“You will continue to sharpen your logic as your Kolinahr continues,” T’Vora told him. “But you are ready to move on. Clearly among the tasks ahead you must inure yourself to all emotional catalysts. This necessarily demands that you deal fully with anything from your past that has left any residue of feeling within you.”
“I understand,” Spock said. T’Vora knew that no matter the method or approach, T’sai would also have addressed this with Spock.
“You obviously contended with such matters during your first Kolinahr,” T’Vora said. “Since then, new events in your life have impacted you, and some may have reignited sentiments previously doused. You must face all of it, peel away your emotion responses until there is nothing left but memory and understanding, with no feeling whatsoever.”
“I understand,” Spock said again.
“Tomorrow you will rest and regain your strength,” T’Vora declared. “We will begin on the following day to examine your life through the lens of emotion. All that you control must be studied and the restraint removed in favor of elimination.”
“Yes, Master T’Vora,” Spock said.
“Now go,” T’Vora said. “Proceed to the refectory for the evening meal.” Spock nodded in acknowledgment, then padded to the rear of the annex and through the door there. After he’d gone, T’Vora sat down in one of the chairs at the front of the room. She would sit for a while in quiet contemplation, as she would tomorrow as well. She needed to gather her strength in preparation for what was to come.
T’Vora had chosen to begin here.
Here, on the lower level of main engineering, aboard the Enterprise, in the Mutara Nebula.
Out in one of the deep, narrow fissures that sliced through the high plateau of Gol, Spock saw himself aboard the ship and no longer felt the heat of the Vulcan day around him. He had walked here with T’Vora and Sokel, away from the Akrelt Refuge, to this barren locale where he would, as aspirant, start to reveal his past. The three of them had kneeled in the dust, Spock and T’Vora in meditative poses, Sokel between them.
The master had chosen where to begin: Spock’s “death” and “rebirth” and the emotions surrounding those events. Sokel had instructed Spock to access his memories of those times, to bring them to the forefront of his consciousness. He had done so.
The Mutara Nebula. The Enterprise. Main engineering. The containment chamber.
Out in the canyon, Spock had sensed something touch his thoughts, but he had detected no other presence. The recollections he’d brought forth had suddenly seemed… bare…uncovered…available. Only then had he become aware of T’Vora’s mind, not within his, not as with a meld, but connected to him in a secondary way. Sokel had opened himself as a conduit, joining but insulated from the two minds he had bridged.
And as he’d been told to do, Spock remembered.
Keenly aware of the seconds passing and knowing that he would also have to reseat the assembly’s protective cap before the injector would function again, Spock concentrated as much as he ever had. With every thought focused on his hand, he willed every scrap of strength he possessed into fighting this one piece of machinery.
Spock knew that these memories had formed within a brain, within a body, soon dead, and would have been lost if not for the telepathic linkage he’d had with his own katra, which he’d stored within McCoy. As the time ticked away within his recollection—twenty seconds left—Spock allowed himself to summon what he’d felt, even as he’d contained his emotions as the events had unfolded. The sense of urgency with which he’d begun to take action had only grown in the preceding minutes, as had his desire for his death to come in the service of saving the rest of the Enterprise crew. It had felt illogical, but he had argued to himself that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few—or as Jim had noted, of the one. But he could not claim now that his actions had lacked emotional motivation; he had fiercely wanted to save the lives of his shipmates.
In his grip, the injector shifted, moving less than a centimeter. Spock pushed himself, and the component all at once shunted back into place. He bent down for the cap and lifted it with difficulty, his strength seeming to vanish. He set it atop the assembly, then pushed it back into place.
And still time had passed—down to ten seconds—and what had been a deeply felt need to preserve the lives of the Enterprise crew—and among those, the lives of his closest friends—had transformed into desperation. At some point Spock had worried about his mother, about how devastated she would be to learn of his death. And his concern had reached to Jim as well, knowing how many terrible losses the admiral had previously suffered in his life—losses to which Spock himself had already contributed.
He fell backward, his back slamming against the control panel in the bulkhead. He barely felt the impact, the sense of his flesh catching fire overpowering the rest of his physical awareness of self. He tried to open his eyes and realized that they already were open; he could no longer see.
With virtually no time left, he’d been unable to do more. Spock had cried out in his mind—Did it work?—frantic to know if he’d succeeded. And when in the next instant he’d felt the familiar vibration telling him that the Enterprise had gone to warp, carrying the crew and his friends away from what had been certain death, he had been elated. Looking back now, he could not deny it.
As he leaned heavily on the bulkhead, Spock turned toward the hard surface, then pushed himself away from it, trying to stand up straight. He immediately lost his balance, lurching to his left and collapsing to the deck. He reached down and attempted again to push himself up, but all of his strength had gone.
It didn’t matter. As he let his upper body fall forward into the bulkhead, he knew that he had served the needs of the many. It is logical, he thought.
Then Spock waited to die.
In that moment, he had not feared death, but neither had he accepted it. More than anything, disappointment had saturated his being. For his parents, for his friends, but also for himself. Spock had not accomplished all that he had wished to, and though he had in the past put his life at risk when circumstances warranted, he had discovered there in the containment chamber that he wanted badly to continue living.
Within minutes, he heard Jim’s voice.
“Spock,” the admiral called, the word echoing in the chamber, obviously emerging from the intercom.
Spock’s body hurt as though disintegrating, every movement an agony, but he would move anyway. He had to act, had to unburden himself of this one final failure—for his own sake, and for Jim’s. Slowly, he reached up along the bulkhead with his right hand, still in the protective glove he had taken from Scott’s engineering suit. Mustering his best effort, he pushed himself up into a crouch with his left hand, also gloved. He would do this. He had to do this. The need filled him completely.
Somehow, he found the strength to stand.
Idly, he straightened his uniform jacket, then turned from the bulkhead. He could not see, but he knew the location of the intercom circuit outside the chamber, and therefore where Jim must be. Spock walked unsteadily in that direction, moving deliberately in order to maintain what minimal balance he retained.
He walked until he struck the transparent bulkhead on the other side of the containment chamber, at the curve of the entry compartment. As he staggered back, vague shapes and colors played across his vision, his eyesight not yet entirely gone. He eased to his right, to where the intercom and Jim would be.
“The ship,” Spock managed to say, his throat raw. “Out of danger?”
“Yes,” Jim said, the single word full of sadness. Spock could just make out the form of his friend standing opposite him on the outside of the chamber.
“Don’t grieve, Admiral,” he said, his voice low and harsh, the words rasping in his injured throat. He had already wounded Jim and did not wish to do so again, though that seemed unavoidable. “It is logical,” he avowed. “The needs of the many outweigh…” He winced, his body seizing up in a paroxysm of pain.
“The needs of the few,” Jim said.
Spock nodded. “Or the one,” he added. His legs began to buckle and he steadied himself against the chamber bulkhead. “I never took…the Kobayashi Maru test…until now,” he said, speaking of the Starfleet simulator in which a starship commander is faced with a no-win scenario. “What do you think of my solution?”
“Spock…” Jim said, the depth of his anguish plain.
Spock slid down the transparent bulkhead of the containment chamber, and on the other side, Jim followed him down. “I…I have been…and always shall be…your friend.” He removed one glove, lifting his hand to place it flat against the clear partition, his fingers splayed in the traditional Vulcan salutation. “Live long…and prosper,” he said, as he did neither. Jim reached his hand up to Spock’s on the other side of the bulkhead.
Spock slumped and then died.
And then lived, in schism—
His body, revived by the Genesis Wave, awoke as an infant in the empty photon torpedo casing meant to be his casket. Growing unnaturally, at an accelerated pace driven by the protomatter utilized in the Genesis Device, he fled through subtropical vegetation, finding nourishment. But the planet and its climate changed rapidly, as unstable as Spock’s own aging process. Blue skies turnedgray, sunlight to snow. Saavik and David Marcus—Jim’s son—found him, and Saavik helped him through the Pon farr.
But the descriptions of all that, the knowledge of all it encompassed, had come later. At the time, there had been only experience, sensation. His mind had been wiped clean, birthed again, and with no training, with no conscious decision to control his emotions, he had felt fear and sadness, loneliness and longing and anger.
The Klingons arrived, murdered David, and then…and then—
His katra, stored within McCoy, became essentially inert after the death of Spock’s body. But it haunted the doctor, the echoes within impelling him to climb the steps of Mount Seleya. McCoy faltered, at first not understanding.
But Spock’s mind, the essence of his being, had not truly lived, though neither had it perished. The understanding of the events that McCoy had experienced while carrying Spock’s katra would also come later. But for McCoy himself, there had been sorrow and dread, confusion and panic and hope.
After his shipmates—his friends—recovered Spock’s body, McCoy did go to Vulcan, did climb the steps of Mount Seleya, and then…and then—
The probing wisps of T’Lar’s mind grazed the primitive consciousness within Spock’s restored body. Her presence remained only for an instant and then vanished. When it returned, it did more than just brush past his mind…it searched through it. Spock recoiled, but T’Lar followed, attempting to soothe him, to convince him to let her help.
He had been terrified, Spock recalled. The memory, formed in such an indistinct time, would have proven elusive if not for the force of the emotion. But faced with the choice of being frightened or being alone, his unformed mind had sought assistance from T’Lar.
But T’Lar had not entered his mind again. McCoy had.
The dual nature of his mind…his minds…their minds…crippled him. He could no longer flee, and he could no longer let go. His psyche drifted, and with it, McCoy’s. And then he sensed—
A tangle of images and sounds, tastes and scents and textures, of which he could not make the slightest sense. He felt lost…and yet not alone…alive…and yet unformed. He floated through the void, vulnerable and ready, a canvas upon which the universe could throw its infinitude of colors, an ether through which the universe could hurl its bounty of notes. He was nothing, waiting to be everything…or anything.
And then remembrance broke like a wave on the shores of time, bringing forth from the deep a clarity of perception.
In the desert of Gol, a sound broke the stillness. The touch of Sokel’s bridge against his mind fled, and with it, Spock’s connection to T’Vora. In the silence that ensued, he opened his eyes.
The day had faded, the Vulcan sun invisible beyond the rim of the canyon. The red sky had dimmed to a burnt orange. A light breeze had picked up.
Spock heard the movement in the dust and peered over to see Sokel scrambling to his feet, the elder’s attention firmly on T’Vora. Spock looked at his Kolinahr master and saw her still on her knees, but doubled over, her palms to the ground, her arms trembling. As Sokel reached her, she gazed upward. To Spock’s astonishment, she appeared dazed, and a trickle of blood flowed from her nose.
“Master, are you all right?” Sokel asked, taking hold of T’Vora’s upper arms, steadying her. Spock pushed himself up from the ground and quickly found himself lightheaded. He reached up to his face, and when he pulled his hand away, he saw the green of his own blood on his fingers.
“Yes,” T’Vora responded. “Yes, I’m all right.” Recovering his stability, Spock walked over as T’Vora breathed in heavily, then exhaled slowly. Extricating herself from Sokel’s grasp, she straightened up onto her knees. Sokel reached into the folds of his robes and pulled out several cloths.
“Your nose is bleeding, Master,” he said, handing it to T’Vora. She accepted it and dabbed at her philtrum as Sokel offered a cloth to Spock. He took it and wiped at his own face, then at his hands.
Carefully, T’Vora stood up and regarded Spock. “I congratulate you,” she said. “Rarely are aspirants so successful in recalling the emotions they have controlled, or in allowing me—or even themselves—access to them.”
“It is that which I wish to purge,” Spock said. “Without my recollections, without opening them up to scrutiny, how could I hope to do so?”
“What you say is logical,” T’Vora said. “Nevertheless, it is uncommon. Perhaps it is due to your human extraction, or to your ability to emote, or to the uniqueness and intensity of your experiences.”
Whatever the reason, Spock understood why masters conducted such efforts via a mind bridge and not a mind meld. A direct connection between Spock and T’Vora during such a powerful experience could have caused damage to either or both of their minds. Nothing such as this had happened during his first Kolinahr, but then, at the time, he had never before “died.”
“Regardless of the reason,” T’Vora continued, “this has been a very useful step in this process. Tomorrow, Spock, you and I will discuss what we experienced. This night and morning next, I wish you to contemplate all that we visited today. I must do the same.”
“Yes, Master,” Spock said.
“I will call upon you in the afternoon then,” she said. “We will now return to the sanctuary.”
Together, the three started through the canyon, back toward the Akrelt Refuge. As they walked, the stars began to appear overhead. They did not speak again that night, parting in front of the altar nearly an hour later.
In his room, Spock lighted a candle. He lay down on his bed, holding his fingers steepled together above him. Cautiously, he allowed into his thoughts some of the images and feelings that he had called to mind that day. As he reflected on all that he had been able to reveal to Master T’Vora, he suddenly realized why he had so readily been able to recollect emotions that, when they’d first occurred, he had suppressed. It was because this was not the only time he had remembered and experienced those emotions. Since Jim had died, much of this had filled his dreams.