Rating: K+ to T, if you know what gustatory calyculi are.

A/N: I had to watch that scene from "Patterns of Force" twelve times to figure out who did what when with those tiny crystals and the muddled fiddling with things. Not that it was a great hardship, mind you, what with all the sweaty, whipped, naked, hairy men climbing on top of each other everywhere.

Special notices: I will be out of town for my cousin's wedding from the 25th through the 31st, which means I will probably be unable to write or post new chapters for that period. As if Chapter 10 would have gone up that quickly anyway, ha ha ha.

Speaking of chapters going up: Chapter 4 of "Malt Shop" is going up tomorrow, which is only FOUR HOURS from now by my time zone. In case you didn't know.

How much interest do you guys have in reading additional purqae-flashback material that got cut from the main fic after I wrap up the centaur alien plot, or any other possible bonus material? This is the kind of fic that offers oodles of opportunities for bonus material (centaur-alien POV whaaat?), and I might write some after the fic is "over", if there's enough interest and I'm not too mentally wrung out.

Section List: 1 is from "Patterns of Force", 3 and 4 are from "The Ultimate Computer", 5 is from "Spectre of the Gun", 7 is from "The Paradise Syndrome", 9 and 10 are from "The Enterprise Incident", 11 is from "And the Children Shall Lead" (yes, THAT scene), and 12 refers to, but does not quote, "And the Children Shall Lead".

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY! Make sure you all memorize the following syllogism: And I Am Undone = Best Beta Ever. There will be a test.

I love all of you and hope all your dreams come true, especially the ones involving Spirk looking dashing in various cheesy period costumes. Your reviews for chapter 8 just blew me away, guys. And I enjoy being blown. If you know what I mean. So write that good stuff, baby, you know you'll always be the best to me.

x 1 x

He attempts to use the strip to find the transponder, but the awkward angle makes his task difficult. He hands the strip to you.

"Are you trying to kill yourselves?"

You ignore Isak and press the edge of the metal against the soft skin of his inner arm. You flinch involuntarily when a small line of red suddenly blooms, but he remains steady. When you see the gray corner of the transponder, you carefully pull it out and hand him the strip; you hold the transponder in your hand, arms extended. His left hand supports your arm, and his right rests against the inside of your wrist.

He has some difficulty removing yours. He seems reluctant to use enough pressure to break the skin.

"I know it's there, McCoy put it in...there." He returns the strip to you. "Do you have the figures computed, Mr. Spock?"

"Yes, it will be necessary to hold the crystals rigidly at a specific distance, which I believe should be [one over the focus of the first minus focus of the second over the average of their indices of refraction squared minus one over the distance to the door] 27.2 millimeters." You both sit upon the bedframe. He attaches one crystal while you attach the other and bend the strip to the appropriate angle.

His hands have not been more than eighteen centimeters from yours for the past forty-nine seconds.

"27.2 millimeters would be, approximately, there. That is, of course, a crude estimation."

"Of course."

"What is that you're making there, is it some kind of radio?" Isak has been observing the proceedings with great curiosity and no small measure of puzzlement.

"No, not a radio...the power from this light is very low."

"Yes. To reach that light, I shall require some sort of platform..."

"I would be honoured, Mr. Spock." He says it casually, and if you had not been looking closely, you would have missed it—but the corner of his mouth twitches up, and suddenly it is slightly more difficult for you to ignore the fact that he is not wearing a shirt.

Not that it was easy before.

He is toying with you.

You successfully suppress the urge to determine the salinity content of his perspiration with your gustatory calyculi and attempt to—there is no better word for it, unfortunately—mount him.

"Now, the rubindium crystals should find enough power here to achieve the necessary stimulus. As I recall from the history of physics, the ancient lasers—" his trapezius muscle tenses under your hand as you kneel on top of him—"were able to achieve the necessary excitation, even using crude natural crystals."

What a thoroughly unfortunate series of words.

"Oh, Mr. Spock, the guard did a very professional job on my back, I'd appreciate it if you'd hurry."

"Yes, of course, Captain." You raise the crystals to the light, then you think: you can toy with him, too.

"You realise that the aim will, of course, be very crude—"

x 2 x

Item thirty-two is presenting difficulties.

The Captain must know. There is no possible way he could be ignorant of it, for he is a perceptive, resourceful man, and he knows Spock better than anyone else does. (The only way he could know Spock better, in fact, is if—but that train of thought is quickly aborted.)

Spock has not hidden it as well as he should have, especially in the early months of their mission, when he made the mistake of thinking it was something harmless, something transient. Spock has played the game with him; Spock has done things, said things, things which were far too revealing and have left him far too vulnerable.

Yet if he knew, he would have done something by now. He would have sought Spock out to talk, then taken appropriate action. He would have requested that Spock transfer to another ship, perhaps (it is only a hypothetical, it does not merit such a violently painful reaction, Spock tells himself firmly) or he would have taken—the other available course of action, which Spock is careful not to think about in great detail, as it would only cause pain.

It is this pretending that Spock cannot stand, if that is what it is. The uncertainty is unbearable. He knows, or he doesn't; he reciprocates, or he doesn't; there are only four possible realities, but they feel like four thousand.

And in the meantime, the two of them talk about everything but this.

x 3 x

"Why were the Captain and the Chief Medical Officer not included in recommendation?" Daystrom asks.

The flat voice responds with true absence of emotion, not the pale imitation the Doctor accuses you of. "Non-essential personnel."

For a moment, the Captain is shocked. The blow is written in the way his face suddenly tightens like so many knots in a net, a net drawing itself close to trap and hide all vulnerability.

Non-essential.

M-5 is possibly the most remarkable computer unit ever designed, and it is certainly the most ambitious. It is efficient, capable, and effective, an admirable endeavor in every respect.

And it does not interest you any more.

x 4 x

He walks to you, briskly, efficiently, and with great economy. You have come to realize that he is an economical man, despite his flair for the dramatic. "Evaluation of M-5 performance. It'll be necessary for the log."

As he speaks, he looks everywhere but at you.

"The ship reacted more rapidly than human control could have manoeuvred her. Tactics, deployment of weapons, all indicate an immense sophistication in computer control."

He glances at you; but it is only a glance. "Machine over man, Spock? It was impressive." He looks around the bridge, but he is clearly seeing something else. "It might even be practical."

He expects you to agree, to side with the machine. And that is what decides it for you: he does not know. If he knew, he would know that that is impossible.

"Practical, Captain? Perhaps. But not desirable. Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them." He is looking at you now, as he has not for days. Over time, it has become easier to say these things; you remember how once, not so very long ago, he shone like a year of summer.

"Captain, the starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it, or him."

His eyes crinkle at the corners, and his mouth turns down in that curious frown humans use when they are trying not to smile.

It is enough.

x 5 x

It will not be a deep meld. In this instance, that is unnecessary. You will go deep enough to show him, and no deeper.

No deeper.

Fingers to the meld points—your mind to his mind, your thoughts to his—his thoughts, tauraya, his thoughts are beautiful—you are here for a reason, you must not go deeper, and you draw a barrier between your minds, but even through this shield the elemental purity of his thoughts is almost enough to drown you.

He twists in front of you, a parallax vision seen through two sets of eyes. His mental presence, hot as a star even through the shield, radiates through the thin veil of his physical body; it is dangerously easy for the two of you to slide together in this slippery, melting space. Unlike the Doctor and Mr. Scott, he has no trouble meeting your eyes, and no trouble holding his mind still in the meld.

The Doctor and Mr. Scott trust you, but he trusts you.

Take one breath. Take another—and he breathes that breath with you.

You reach (gently, gently) and your minds touch, and almost-but-not-quite-together you think:

Unreal. Appearances only. They are shadows. Illusions. Nothing but ghosts of reality. They are lies. Falsehoods. Spectres without body. They are to be ignored.

And when the time comes, he ignores them.

x 6 x

Spock has borne it for two years, and he bears it now, and he will bear it as long as he must. But that does not mean—

[it is a condemned man waking up in the morning of the day he will die, it is telling a fevered child that the doctor will come in the morning when the doctor is dead of that same fever, it is a harvest consumed by insects when winter comes tomorrow, it is knowing that you are not yourself anymore because who you are has been subsumed by what you need, it is all that you value, thrown away and replaced by the only thing you still have faith in, but really it is nothing else in the universe]

—that does not mean it is bearable.

x 7 x

If the angled n-slash is only a placeholder, then—

"I thought you were reporting to sickbay."

"There isn't time, Doctor. I must decipher those obelisk symbols. They're a highly advanced form of cipher writing."

If it is only a placeholder, then the m1 crosshatch might indicate temporal—

"You've been trying to do that ever since we started back to that planet. Fifty-eight days."

Fifty-eight days. There are 2.223 days left before the asteroid makes impact with Amerind.

"I'm aware of that, Doctor. I'm also aware when we arrive at the planet, we'll have barely four hours to effect rescue." It will be sufficient. It must be. "I believe those symbols are the key."

—no, that would imply the m2 crosshatch was associated with space. You discard that theory.

"Well, you won't read them by killing yourself. You've hardly eaten or slept for weeks. Now if you don't let up, you're going to collapse."

It has been exactly 486.64 hours since you last slept, and 91.23 hours since you last ate. You choose not to share this information with the Doctor.

"I am not hungry, Doctor. And under stress, we Vulcans can do without sleep for weeks."

"Well, your Vulcan metabolism is so low it can hardly be measured, and as for the pressure, that green ice water you call blood—"

What if the m2 and m1 crosshatches were numbers? Then 6b could actually indicate a musical matrix, perhaps to scale the inscripion to the appropriate—

"My physical condition is not important, Doctor. That obelisk is."

"Well, my diagnosis is exhaustion brought on from overwork and guilt. You're blaming..."

The Doctor's voice fades in and out of your awareness like a badly-tuned radio. You close your eyes, just for a moment. 6b would scale the inscription to the appropriate...appropriate scale...

"...wrong! So were you. You made a command decision. Jim would have done the same. My prescription is rest, now. Do I have to call the security guards to enforce it?"

Without saying a word (speaking would necessitate lying), you go to the bed and lie down. The Doctor leaves the room, apparently satisfied, completely unaware that you have just caused your pituitary gland to release enough myadrenalin-12 to keep you awake for the next 2.223 days.

There is a scar on the Captain's neck in the shape of the m1 crosshatch, three centimeters below his left ear.

If 6b scales the inscription to the appropriate interval, then the n-slash would represent a sort of clef—

x 8 x

Spock, being in possession of an eidetic memory, holds inside his mind a huge assortment of useless information and trivia.

For instance, he knows that for some time, it was the fashion on Earth for farmers to grow watermelons in square boxes, so that the melons would grow into the shape of a cube. Such melons were more efficient to transport and store, since they conserved space and could be stacked for display. In addition, the novel shape of the melon made it more popular with consumers. Square melons could fetch twice the price of naturally-grown melons.

Of course, if one was growing a square melon, but removed the melon from its box before the process was complete, over time, the melon would revert back to its natural shape. The box shaped the melon while it was there, and the melon would retain the shape the box gave it for a time after removal; but, provided the melon was still growing, it would eventually assume its natural shape. If one allowed the melon to grow long enough, one would never be able to tell that the melon had been boxed at all.

The melon would, in other words, recover.

There is no such thing as a melon which recalls the box which shaped it, and treasures that shape, and retains that shape when the box is removed, and refuses to grow no more when the box is gone. There is no such thing as a melon which, without its box, has no purpose.

There is no such thing as a melon which knows no other way to grow but the way the box gave it.

x 9 x

"He is a Vulcan. Our forebears had the same roots and origins. Something you wouldn't understand, Captain. We can appreciate the Vulcans, our distant brothers." The Commander cocks her head towards you, in the manner of someone sharing a secret; she walks slowly over, hips swaying.

"I have heard of Vulcan integrity and personal honour. There's a well-known saying, or is it a myth, that Vulcans are incapable of lying?"

"It is no myth."

It never ceases to amaze you how readily non-Vulcans accept your word as truth simply because you say you cannot lie. Of course, you will not—but you have learned ways of lying without lying.

She sways, and smirks, and speaks softly. Her presence is commanding, and she is no fool. But you are her enemy, and it is her mistake to think that you are capable of being anything else.

x 10 x

"Commander, the cloaking device is gone."

"Full alert. Search all decks!" A note of panic creeps into the Commander's voice. Subcommander Tal rushes past you to execute her orders, taking a centurion with him.

You walk slowly to the empty socket where the cloaking device was. The severance was clean. There are no frayed wires, no exposed circuitry. It must have been a simple thing for him to remove it.

"That will be profitless, Commander. I do not believe you will find it."

"You must be mad," she hisses; and you do not understand her, because it would have been mad of you to do anything else.

"I assure you I am quite sane."

"Why would you do this to me? What are you that you could do this?"

The Doctor, your mother, the Commander; they are all the same. It is always about what you do to them, always that you should act based on what they feel. No one ever seems to realize there is no other choice that could possibly be made.

"First officer of the Enterprise."

She slaps you.

"What is your present form of execution?"

You do not expect you will actually be executed, but it seems polite to ask.

x 11 x

His face abruptly collapses into a mask of complete terror—and that is finally enough to wake you from your fever-dream. You go to him. At first, he just stares at you, paralyzed, with no trace of recognition in his eyes; he reaches for you with a shaking hand, but the movement is aborted.

"Captain, we must get off this bridge."

"Yes, we must..." It is no more than a whisper, the barest glimpse of lucidity. "I'm losing command of—I'm losing my ability to command." He looks wildly around the bridge, wringing his hands, shoulders and spine deformed by fear. "I'm losing the Enterprise." He breathes it in a tone of purest disbelief, as if he finds nothing more unthinkable—and there is nothing more unthinkable.

You take his arm and pull him with you to the turbolift. Suddenly, he grabs you, fingers branding your bicep. The two of you stand frozen, twisted together against the wall in some strange, frantic triangle.

"I'm losing command, I'm losing the Enterprise! The ship is sailing on and on..." He breathes it into your shoulder like a plea, then throws himself away from you. "I'm alone! Alone...alone...I'm losing command..."

You do not know what to do. You do not know how to help him. You have learned nothing which prepared you for this.

"Captain."

He cannot hear you. "I've lost command, I've lost the Enterprise—"

And because you do not know what else to do, you move toward him—and he lunges, choking you in animal terror. Through the bare skin of your throat, you feel the utter certainty of his loneliness, sharp as crushed glass.

But he is not alone.

"Jim."

Slowly, he looks up at you. He straightens, and you feel his breath, ragged against your jaw.

His eyes are the color of dawn over Mount Seleya.

You do not breathe.

"I've got command. I've got command..." His hands slide down your throat, over your shoulders. "I've got command."

He looks at you with uncertainty, for confimation, and you feel for one fleeting moment that if you told him he was Alexander the Great, he would believe you.

"Correct, Captain."

He takes a breath, and his mask rolls down. You can almost trace its path as it travels over his face, from the tension between his eyes to the tightening of his jaw. The two of you exit the turbolift.

"Where to, Captain?" you ask; and if he said "The heat-death of the universe", you would go.

"Auxiliary control, my Vulcan friend. This ship is off course."

He walks purposefully down the corridor, steady as thunder. You follow. The two of you step perfectly in time.

x 12 x

Lieutenant Sulu saw a tunnel of knives through space, annihilation by mutilation at every turn the ship made.

Lieutenant Uhura saw herself growing old, eventually dying a painful and diseased death.

Lieutenant Commander Scott thought the engines would break down, leaving the Enterprise forever lost in space.

The Captain was convinced he had lost his command, and that he was completely alone.

Spock merely found himself unable to obey the Captain.

x 13 x

There are some humans who, when they hold affection for an individual they do not believe returns that affection, pine.

But not quietly, no. They turn hopeless love into an art form; they pine.

They laugh too loudly at the jokes of the one they hold affection for. They cast longing looks. They sigh, quietly enough that others believe they are trying not to be heard, but loudly enough to be heard-for they want to be heard. They write their pain clearly on their face, not because it is so great that it cannot be disguised, but because they want others to think it is so great it cannot be disguised.

They want the world to know they are pining. They want sympathy, they want pity, they want kind words, they want someone else to drop hints to the object of their affection. They want a sudden confession of love in a dimly-lit corridor next to a star-filled porthole, because they do not really believe their love is unrequited; they only want the object of their affection to be the one to take the first step, so they are not the one assuming the risk of rejection that exposure entails.

Above all else, they want their pain to be noticed.

They do not take that pain and push it down, or turn it off, or gently fold it up and put it away into a box and lock that box and place the box under something heavy (like the weight of a star, for example) so that even if the lock breaks, the lid does not come off. They do not seal their pain with so much silence and pressure that their pain would never even be guessed at. They are not practical, they are selfish; they manipulate the world into turning around them, because when it does, then they win their fairy-tales.

There are no such things as fairy-tales. There are only square melons.

—