Chapter Text
The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 3: Yours Is No Disgrace
Scene 16: Silly Human Race
3.16
Silly Human Race
Blue fingernail polish. Blue eyeshadow. Colors of mourning and remembrance.
Commodore Yui Song found herself wondering if Skip Howard was empathizing or sympathizing.
When she had been a girl growing up in Shanghai, a teenage Song and her girlfriends used to wear dark pink or light brown eyeshadow, which had made her feel sexy - or at least less self-conscious about her looks. She had been such a beauty and had never even realized it.
Morning glory.
Yui Song brooded over the tea before pouring out a cup for Skip and a cup for herself. She had invited Captain Howard to her quarters, but not Captain Carter. Blue eyeshadow she could handle. But she was in no mood to handle Carter’s newly cobalt blue hair. Maybe Rhonda Carter was trying to recapture some of her lost youth as well - she was nearly 50. Skip Howard was barely in his 30’s.
Howard was keeping his silence, but seemed entirely at ease. Which, for the moment, made him the perfect companion for Yui Song’s mood. She finally sighed heavily and tried to put her thoughts into words: “Nearly 2 months of work. It just feels like such a disaster. And all around us everyone is celebrating. I suppose because those humanoids, the boreans, get a second chance at civilization. Their machines fratzed out and destroyed themselves just seconds after our negotiation and communications processors were added to them. And everyone’s so proud that we were so clever. All of them talking about Captain Kirk.”
“You should understand their mood better than anyone, Song,” Skip Howard observed. “We’ve been through one existential crisis after another with semi-biological antagonists. The Founders. The Borg. And here were these machines, programmed to murder and torment some very human-looking aliens. Just waiting for their chance to terrorize the Federation with their subspace shattering engines…”
“It’s precisely that biological prejudice that bothers me,” Yui Song rejoined. “We made first contact with a promising species - a strange new civilization - and in seconds they self-destruct. As if we had dug up a conundrum designed by James T. Kirk himself. To make the machine self-destruct because of some contradiction in its programming…” Commodore Yui tried not to be too obvious in her scrutiny of the young captain of the U.S.S. Beagle.
“But that is exactly what we did, Song,” said Skip Howard. “We expanded their frame of reference. And against that new context they diagnosed their own existence as an environmental threat." Howard took a breath. "What do we do when we introduce ourselves to any new, proto-superluminal culture? We tell them all about the Federation. The perfect, well balanced, environmentally sensitive, weather satellite controlled, biologically dominated Federation and our humble, helpful, non-predatory machine servants...”
“The prejudice is built in,” Yui Song mused.
“Well, we are rather… biological…” Skip Howard teased.
“We have to do better.” Yui poured another cup of tea, waited a moment before she drank it.
Skip Howard waited until the right moment, then: “Next time we’ll let T’Eln talk to the machines…”
Commodore Yui nearly spit out her tea. Coughed hard a few times. When she could breathe again, she looked up and said, “I’m going to pretend I never heard you say that…”
“Heard me say what?” was Captain Howard's dry response.
Yui snorted, then assumed a more serious expression. “I guess what is eating at me is that it seemed that they had developed some sort of conscience. Of course, that’s just me interpreting Rhonda’s dreams. And Pel’s. And Lieutenant Kresid’s.” She looked down.
“I brought you something,” said Howard. He set a small box on the table.
Yui Song looked at it without touching it or opening it up. After a moment, Skip Howard opened it with a flourish.
“Eye shadow?” Song asked.
“Please, allow me…”
Commodore Yui leaned forward, her elbows on the table, chin in her hands. She closed her eyes and felt just the slightest touch on and above her eyelids. Light. Quick. Expert.
“Have a look…”
She opened her eyes to see that Skip Howard was holding a mirror. The application was extremely light and subtle. The same color as Howard was wearing, but far more subtle than the treatment Howard gave his own eyes. Oddly, it made her feel young again. Just a little like she remembered how she felt when she was a child playing with her girlfriends so very long ago.
“Always makes me feel better,” Howard observed, turning the mirror slightly. “Kind of a subtle feeling... like there are a few things that you can control.”
Captain Skip Howard handed the mirror to his commanding officer. Watched as she admired his handiwork. He got up and walked around behind her, looking into the reflection of her eyes in the mirror:
“So tell me, Song… What makes you so certain that the dreamers who contacted Rhonda and the others were those machines, and not somebody else?”
Yours Is No Disgrace