Letters Home

Chapter 7

                                                                                                                                          July 30, 2153

Most Esteemed Mother,

We have been able to get communications out between anomalies.  And I received your last letter.

I have caused you much emotional trauma.  Even the strong defenses we have developed over centuries become battered and weaken over time if severe enough to interrupt compensating meditation levels.  We are, at the root of our existence, a very emotional and violent species.  I know you will regain control in time.  You are a strong and resourceful woman.   I feel your pain but at the moment cannot do anything more about it.  Hopefully, sometime in the future I will come home and we can rebuild our relationship.  Until then, know that I care deeply about you.  Yes, caring is an emotion, but not one either of us should be ashamed of.

Do not read the rest of this letter until you have regained  some emotional control.

There are many species living within this Expanse.  Some are carrying on a normal life while others have been showing the effects of this strange area.   It has not always been like this and the anomalies are becoming worse.  We found a strange world that used to have a healthy humanoid civilization but contracted a condition that killed the whole species.  In an attempt to preserve their biology and culture they created a virus that would change other species into their own.  A few of our crew became infected by this virus but we were able to reverse the process.  Our captain ordered Dr. Phlox to preserve a vial of the virus as the last vestige of a lost species.  While a dangerous act, it does show the human compassion that I admire.  Our IDIC principle, on one side, would also approve of this.  Logic on the other hand, would say that destroying this virus would preserve species that the virus might destroy in the future.  Which act would be more logical?   Let me know your take on this.

An act of human kindness turned on us recently.  The captain gave asylum to an enslaved female humanoid who was being sold in a market place where we were looking for members of the Xindi species.  This female was actually employed by the Xindi to get biological information about humans.  Her people have a form of touch telepathy similar to ours and I was attacked by her.  I was able to block her mental probing but sustained some synaptic damage which fortunately was repairable.  I am sending you and Uncle Soval information on her and the medical scans Dr. Phlox took of me.  Pass   these on to the Science Academy for study.  I think it would help your status there to submit it quickly before Uncle does. I would like to see you gain more status with the Academy.  This female spy has escaped to the Xindi, and I think she has gained from her human melding victims, some information which will be damaging to us.   

I am also sending you some information about a substance called trellium.  Refer to the chemical formula enclosed.   It is deadly to Vulcans and harmful to most species.  We Vulcans have lost our ship, the Seleya, which was nine months in the Expanse.  Enterprise came across the Seleya in the last throes of its existence, the Vulcan crew was infected beyond recovery by this trellium.   It is urgent that you pass this information on to the Science Academy and to the High Command, if Uncle Soval has not already done so.   Our defense fleet and our merchant ships should go nowhere near this Expanse.  This is one place where we need to let the humans take the lead on resolving interspecies issues.

Trellium is what ships in the Expanse coat their hulls with to combat the effects of the anomalies.  Our ship is doing so too.  As long as it is on the outside of the hull, I will not be affected.  I will end this letter by telling you that human compassion is as strong a force for good as is Vulcan logic.   Logic would have dictated that the captain leave me at the nearest inhabited world.   But he refused to abandon any one of his crew.   He said he could not save humanity on this mission by letting go of what made him human.  Believe it or not, I think that what we are doing here will also be saving Vulcans.  You can be assured, Mother, that the captain and the rest of the crew are looking out for me.  Although we are on a dangerous mission, I am being cared for as well as I would be on any Vulcan ship.  I hope this gives you some peace of mind.

Your long disobedient but respectful daughter, T’Pol

                                                                                                                                      August 22, 2163

My Respectful Daughter,

I must ask your pardon for my last letter which showed my unfortunate lapse in emotional control.  It demonstrates that your emotional makeup was not entirely inherited from your father even though I often said so to entice both of you into more acceptable behavior.

This telepathic attack you sustained is the sort of thing which makes me strongly object to you being alone among humans.  Your own kind would know better how better to protect you from it and how to help you recover from it, despite the expertise of your Denobulan doctor.  

Are you getting any closer to resolving this argument the humans have with this Xindi species?  It is disconcerting that you are in a region of space where our fleet cannot oversee or aid the efforts of the humans.  As to humans protecting Vulcans by stopping the Xindi, that would be a first and at least a bit of payback for all we have done for them.  I sincerely hope they succeed.

The information you sent me was immediately turned over to the Science Academy Medical Department.  It did have the effect of enhancing my status, but it also had the effect of them wanting to know how I got it before the High Command did.  The Earth Embassy has tried to maintain my privacy by  emailing my letters from you to my home computer.  I think the High Command is now onto this.  I have asked that they be hand delivered on coded padds through an intermediary other than someone through my meditation group. 

So you have, as I feared, established a strong companion bond with the members of your human crew.  At this point, considering the high risk factor, I no longer consider this an undesirable thing – as long as it means that one day you will be coming home.  And hopefully home for good. 

Ivy plant, second generation, is thriving in an isolated corner of my garden.

Your still concerned Mother    

                                                                                                                                               September 5, 2153     

Esteemed Mother,

Our search in the Expanse continues, with steady progress toward our objective.    Thanks to our communications officer who had a brief association with an alien exile, we obtained the location of a factory which manufactured a substance called kemosite which is used in the weapon that attacked Earth.   Through the pattern of anomalies we have encountered and known location of two strange spheres in this Expanse, I was able to build a theory that there were fifty of these spheres.  We mapped them and the captain suggested that it is the spheres that are creating the anomalies – a logical deduction.   We will be following up on this.

(Two days after the last paragraph) We found the kemosite factory and negotiated with the Xindi arboreal scientist who was in charge of it.   These Xindi species, despite a violent interactive history, have come to the point of working together.   This arboreal did not know what his kemosite was being used for and was quite shocked about the attack on Earth.  He has agreed to sabotage his product to prevent further attacks on Earth.       

I continue with the neuropressure sessions with our chief engineer.  Trip, as he likes to be informally addressed, has told me that they are helping him sleep without the disturbing dreams generated by the emotions surrounding the violent death of his sister.  These sessions have helped me too.    

As we progress deeper into the Expanse, we have been discussing the possible artificial nature of these anomalies as generated by these spheres and the hope that there is a way to stop them and return this vast area to normal space.

Your hopeful daughter, T’Pol

                                                                                                                                      September 27, 2153

Hopeful daughter,

I am gratified that there is progress and hope in your dangerous mission.   Information has come to me that the High Command is waiting in attentive silence for information on the progress of your ship in the Expanse.   Soval has urged me to give him first any information I might gain from you, before I pass it on to the Science Academy.   The Science Academy has asked that I continue to give information to them before I pass it on to the High Command.  I sense distrust between these two organizations.

I have been keeping casual company with Tasik, an academic in the Anthropology Department who is interested in how the Xindi managed to evolve five sentient species without one dominant sentient species eradicating all the others as is the pattern on most worlds.   He has been my latest intermediary for our letter exchange and we usually have mid day meal together the next day after a delivery, so I can share information with him.  I have had no indications that I should not trust him.  We have attended two concerts together recently at the end of our Academy work day.   No, to the question I know you will ask, he is not a good cook and therefore falls short of your requirements of a mate for me. 

Your second generation ivy plant and I have established a peaceful domestic co-existance.  So far.

Your Hopeful Mother of a Hopeful Daughter

                                                                                                                                                           October 9, 2153

Esteemed and Hopeful Mother,

Being knocked around in the Expanse is having strange effects on the ship and crew, although we are tolerating it rather well.   The captain and I were briefly encumbered by a falling beam during one of the anomalies and managed to help each other out from under it.   He sustained a minor incursion to the head when the anomaly swept over us.  In sick bay, when I brought him a pillow to make him more comfortable, he made the strange statement that I would make a good nurse.  Not very likely.

Remember when both you and father were confined to your bed for two days with the virus I brought home from school?    For logical Vulcans you both were astonishingly unappreciative of my creative variations on plomeek soup.   They did have the right amount of nutrition value according to the testing stick.   I saw no logical need to taste the soups myself since I had already recovered from the virus and it was fine for me to dine entirely on sweet honey cakes, especially since neither of you were in a position to impose parental supervision from your sickbed.   Upon recovery, you both concurred that I was a less than adequate nurse.   Apparently humans are not as fussy as Vulcans under similar circumstances. 

I will end this letter quickly as Trip just poked his head in the door to my quarters to say we have a brief period of clear subspace to send letters home. 

Your obedient daughter, T’Pol