“What you were and what you are to become will always be with you…
That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.”
~ Q to Captain Picard in “All Good Things”
Star Trek: The Next Generation
The rings of Saturn were almost completely gone. A freakish comet the size of Titan had scooped them up and carried them off. People used to think the rings of Saturn were as everlasting as space itself, but now they were nearly invisible to the naked eye. A few wisps remained, a planetary comb-over, but nothing as spectacular as the concentric bands that once glistened in the distant sun.
Some astronomers conjured up elaborate plans to recreate the rings. The favored plan was quite logical but hopelessly monumental: haul a load of stones and water into space and crush them into bits at just the right location above the planet. The second plan involved the destruction of several moons, including the innermost moon Pan, named after the wild Greek shepherd god. Somehow, this irritated the astronomers’ poetic notions.
“Is it worth the effort?” wrote Robert Helmut, a writer for the Kuiper Times. “There is no future here,” he argued, speaking with his infamous practical perspective on science. Helmut was the bane of every Deep See explorer, although he reflected their own internal fears, that utility was more permanent and worthy of intention than beauty. The sentiment caused their hearts to flag, because they all knew of utility, there was ultimately no such thing. “The lengths we go to,” lamented Helmut, “just to allay nostalgia and grief!”
Cautiously, her ship approached the station for a layover between Mars and Saturn. Phoebe was leaving the solar system to begin her next mission, although she had no agenda yet in place. She interrupted her exodus from the frigid Martian colony she briefly called home to see Dustan again.
The last time she saw him, the moon was setting over the the Deep See Explorers conference on Earth, an annual gathering of scientists who investigated the more clandestine reaches of existence, from the metalic gastropods on Abkhazia to the consciousness of chlorophyll. Making no distinction between the physical and the metaphysical, the conference attracted researchers from every conceivable domain. One researcher had returned from a classic ghost hunt on Europa. His remarks did not set well with the Alaskan xenobiologist, who preferred that her discoveries be technically alive, but even she appreciated the audacity of his search. No one was eschewed for being foolhardy, and asking the questions was honored at least as much as finding the answers.
No one spoke of Saturn nor of plans to recreate its former countenance. What was the purpose of the rings in the first place other than to inspire? They were inspiring, she thought, because they formed naturally. She preferred a barren Saturn to artificially born rings, although she found herself longing intensely for its familiar halo.
Saturn in eclipse, photos by Cassini
Phoebe’s ship had just made its fifth escape from a vast region of space known as the Orion Bardo, a cosmic Bermuda Triangle where innumerable galactic vessels had found themselves isolated and powerless. Most explorers stumbled into the Orion Bardo without knowing the dangers. Distortions in the underlying properties of space altered the relationship between surveillance and navigation. What often looked like a way out was actually a crushing singularity. Some did not survive. Some made their home in the Bardo believing they had escaped. Phoebe, however, ventured repeatedly into the dark chasm on missions to map the territory and chart any routes leading safely from one nauseating edge to the other.
At the conference, she presented her latest maps and saw Dustan sitting in the third row, listening attentively. Even in the Orion Bardo, they had remained in contact. In each of their vessels, they had installed custom-built, quantumly entangled commmunicators, which transmitted signals to one another using Indra technology, circuits based on Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.” Still, seeing his lovely form gave her ineffable joy.
When she found him in the halls, he shared news about his expedition, an enchanting foray through the valleys of Antera. He found something.
“A gem? An artifact?” she wondered, excited. Nothing so prosaic. He had found a new travelling companion, one more suited to the passions of an archeologist.
She had once explored the valleys with Dustan, but their travels came to an end when she entered the Bardo. She knew his heart was elsewhere even as she wandered through that convoluted galactic hellhole, but the news still cut deep into her heart. When she returned to her ship, she tore out the communicator. Better to not know what adventures she could no longer share with him. She put the drive on reduced power and returned to space.
Months passed, and the hole in her vessel wall where her communicator once hummed remained gaping and silent. The silence was an analgesic, but she missed her archeologist friend. Now, in this stopover station in the vaccuum, she would see him face-to-face. What was his heart saying these days? And would it hurt like before?
Nestled in the station, the doors of her shuttle opened. She left the bay and walked through the halls towards the arboreteum where Dustan would be waiting. As she walked, she pushed away thoughts that brought pain.
Clean metal hallway walls. What an ambiance. Just like an engineer. New traveling companion. What an elegant strip of pearl lighting embedded in the carpet. Adventures on Antera. The spiral layout of the station suits the weary traveler. Alone in the Orion Bardo.
Before she reached the arboreteum, she spotted him. Tall and quiet and still as handsome as ever. He was standing in the hallway beside a box of digging equipment from Hesperia. The box also contained an artifact.
Without a word, he pulled out a translucent pane of smooth, pliable material framed in silver. She gazed at it silently and explored it reverently with her fingers.
“In the hieroglyphs on Hesperia, this is called ‘window to the soul,’” he explained, “a kind of ancient brain scanner. Except… not for the brain.”
At the core of every being is a sphere of consciousness unlike the ordinary, organic logic machine that often forms the basis for our identity. Empaths perceive it as a core of light. The device was designed to reveal the core of light within and illuminate the dimensionless portal (or rather, the sameness) between one core of light and another.
They found a quiet section in the arboreteum beside the hibiscus and blueberries and positioned the pane between them. He pressed his hand against a black gem embedded in the silver, and the pane shimmered.
Her inner vision filled with his image. She saw a white light growing in his body, small at first but shining brighter and expanding until it encompassed his entire form. A similar light grew within her own body. A portal opened, and the light passed between them.
Suddenly, all fear ebbed. She was not afraid of loss. Nor of being left behind. She was not afraid to allow the corona of love enveloping her to meet the corona enveloping him. When love meets love, an event horizon of pain and fear is generated, but once this surface is penetrated, there is only love. Always into the pain and fear one finds the love and presence. At a great distance from the event horizon, there is respite, but it is a numbing emptiness, an ignorance really. The artifact dissolved the membrane of fear and revealed their intrinsic unity.
He was not afraid to take her hand and hold it close. When she looked at him, he savored her gaze.
“Will I see you again?” he asked.
She tried to wrap her mind around the timelessness of love entrenched in the transience of form. Why is form so alluring, though it passes? She had no answer. The core of light finds no refuge in the organic logic machine, though the latter struggles so fervently to assimilate the former.
“There’s a season for everything,” she offered. “A time for every purpose under heaven. Maybe this is ‘a time to cast away stones.’ Not to gather them together.” Her eyes were sad.
“Those are things that happen under heaven. What about every purpose in heaven?” he asked.
“Uh,” she stopped and thought for a moment, “I guess purpose doesn’t mean anything in heaven.” Was any Deep See explorer engaged in the task of mapping heaven? There, her next mission.
At that moment, she noticed a copy of the Kuiper Times on the bench beside him. The headline read, “Comet To Return Rings to Saturn.” The same comet that whisked away the rings was coming back around with its borrowed ice and dust particles in tow, and they would reenter Saturn’s orbit. After nearly twenty years, its closer brush with the gas giant would cause it to redeposit the particles and ultimately join with them.
She wondered how it would feel to see the rings again after watching the comets rip them away. Would the sight be too bitter to enjoy? According to the article, the new rings would include exotic minerals from the comet, giving them a pearlescent sheen.
“Oh yeah, I read that,” Dustan said, as she glanced at the paper. “The rings are going to be unimaginably beautiful, even more spectacular than before.”
Suddenly, the time that had elapsed without rings seemed part of a larger magic. In fact, in their trek around the sun, the rings had grown to encompass the entire solar system. They were never lost.
Fear can fall away forever. The fear of losing someone precious, even that can subside. The fear of causing pain or disappointment. The fear of being hurt. The fear of broken connections or dying light or decaying configurations of matter. All of these fears can disappear, leaving the eternal pure mind which manifests continuously in the forms we love.
They say that all good things must come to an end, but there are no real things, and it is all good.
She held him. Then, like a child disembarking from an amusement park ride, she whispered, “Again, again!”
Postscript
After writing the story, I found this excerpt from Religions of Star Trek, by Ross Shepard Kraemer, William Cassidy, Susan L. Schwartz:
“The closing image of “All Good Things . . .” is circles: the circle of playing cards on the circular table in the circular saucer of the ship in the vastness of space, which may itself be circular, or spiraled, as the galaxy. The image of the circle/spiral is ubiquitous in Eastern religious imagery, from the Hindu and Buddhist mandalas, to the yin-yang symbol of the Tao, to the Shinto image of the rising sun; the circle emerges as the dominant manifestation of ultimate reality. It is ironic and interesting that at the end of the Next Generation series the predominant image is not linear at all but the persistent, spiritual image of the circle that also happens to form the letter Q.”
