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I vomit.
I have never vomited before. I am 54 years old, the exploratory beginnings of adulthood for a Vulcan.
Although, I have very recently discovered I am not a Vulcan.
I am the Engenuity Movement’s failed attempt at populating New Vulcan with a stronger, better thing.
I am, in just existing, a violation of every single one of Starfleet’s founding eugenics laws.
Every single person’s home I have ever visited, every ship I have boarded, every planet I have ever been to is now subject to the wrath of the entire Federation, as long as there is proof I was there at any point, down to a fingerprint or a single hair.
I wretch my eyes shut as I expel weeks of nothing.
I watch the greyish puddle of watery substance grow and pool on the floor just under my chin and I make the executive decision to get off the cold, metal ground. I feel my heart pounding in my right side, my lungs struggling to keep up with all the sprinting I have been doing. I am fairly sure my right wrist is broken. I feel it twinge as I stand and look around me.
I am on the Ingenuity movement’s battleship Pyllora, which vaguely translates to the Guide. What that name has to do with this Engenuity movement’s objectives, I am not sure. I am in one of the ship’s many research laboratories, the door of which I barricaded before I collapsed due to my injuries. My head throbs, in harmony with my wrist and rapidly heaving chest. This room is extremely large, like a human cathedral, with a black upper balcony and many screens and storage units. I feel a gust of climate conditioning work through my hair.
For no explainable reason, my childhood home flashes through my mind.
So does Vy.
Vy.
My whole head feels like it is burning.
I do not know how long I have been trapped on the Pyllora. Vulcans are supposed to be able to last without water or food for around 300 days. I am not a Vulcan. I can feel myself dying.
I am jolted out of my thoughts by a vibration pulsing through the entire room.
I also hear a discordant, grating squeal of metal against metal. I am, to put it in more human terms, horrified. I frantically search my surroundings. I watch a silhouette enter my fortified oasis, a previously unaccounted for door struggling and creaking as it slides open. I am struggling to breathe as I attempt to decide whether to keep my eyes on the figure or run, search for a weapon, something. Outside of my body, as someone else, I watch the figure come into the light towards me. A Vulcan woman, wearing the internal outfit for a spacewalk suit. She has a gun of some kind, a big, hulking thing with a metal blade strung like a crossbow. Her hair is cropped close to her head. I feel something like affection for her for half a moment.
This is the first person I’ve seen in more than a month that hasn’t immediately darted to kill me at first sight.
This is my mother, one of 265 Vulcans left in the known universe.
I immediately feel her intercept my thoughts with our familial “bond”. I can only describe it as someone jamming their foot into your front door and coming in. I may be an experiment, an artificial creation, but other Vulcans can vaguely enter my mind, similar to how it is supposed to be. Her gun swings lazily at her side.
/my son. my finest creation. come to me. /
I feel her nerves as mine, her thoughts as though I am planning to say them myself. She has never attempted to connect with me so deeply. She has never named me as her son, or her ‘finest creation’. She has always been present in my life, yet a gaping absence of a person. Her right shoulder, the one bearing the weight of the gun, aches. I feel it.
/placed into me so long ago, i raised you, fetched for your every need./
/The nurses raised me,/ I think. At that thought, every muscle in my head spasms, working down my back through my spine. It is undescribably painful, and likely wrought upon me by her. Once I open my eyes again, I am on my knees, and she is towering above me.
/i knew the destruction of old vulcan was going to happen. the romulan told me. so i spread the news. i framed it as a fresh start, a redemption for our people. so began the ingenuity movement. true logic could finally come back to us. another golden age./
I had an uneventful childhood. I thought she was busy with work. What was really going on? When did this all start?
/you are the first of the kar-if-ar. the new beginning. be grateful. if you will not, you will die. it does not matter to me what you choose./
I look up at my mother. I feel her neck ache as she looks down at me.
She places her hand on my shoulder.
I do not know if she intends to comfort me or hold me down.
/i am surak’s second coming. you are replaceable. i will create a perfect vulcan.
i will succeed./
I inhale.
I hear the kc-click of her gun readying itself.
I exhale.
I feel her place it against the side of my h