Reviewer: CeJay Signed [Report This]
Date: 05 Jul 2013 00:16 Title: Chapter 1

Fascinating, to borrow Vulcan parlance.

The destruction of Vulcan was of course a world-shattering event (duh!) and the implications are immense. As a result it stands to reason that a desperate Vulcan government would go to whatever length to try and get their hands on every last surviving Vulcan, even if it means appealing to other governments to release their Vulcan prisoners. Of course considering the nature of Vulcans one would not assume a particularly significant Vulcan prison population.

Enter Eriecho and Saddik, falsely convicted and seemingly doomed to spend the entirety of their remaining life behind bars, they find themselves suddenly released and forced to adapt to a world they barely know, and in Eriecho's case, they hardly even understand. It's a dilemma as old as prisons themselves but driven home particularly effectively here with a young Vulcan woman who has never mastered suppressing her emotions.

Her actions and observations make this story a particularly entertaining read even if I find myself agreeing with the prickly Vulcan woman at the end that this camp they've landed in feels almost as much a prison as the place our heroes have left behind. Perhaps Eriecho doesn't quite agree with that sentiment yet, but one would think that after spending some time in such a strictly controlled environment, she'd long for some real freedom.

Excellent story. Very well done.

Author's Response:

Many thanks! Freedom's a little scary when you've never really had it before, I imagine. But she'll adjust. :)

I fear, though, that an endangered sentient species might lose a lot of its personal, individual rights, all in the name of preservation.

Reviewer: Ghiri Mai Signed [Report This]
Date: 14 Jul 2012 05:11 Title: Chapter 1

Your story is both fascinating and disturbing, a combination that marks a tale that makes one think. In some of your replies to reviews, you compared Vulcan sanctuaries to the Japanese internment camps. There is an element of that, but to me, the sanctuaries resemble a modern breeding program for endangered species. Currently, zookeepers maintain records of the relationships between their animals and exchange individuals for genetic diversity. The animals are provided with enrichment activities to keep them mentally alert and reduce stress.

The sanctuary idea is an interesting one. Concentrating most of the remaining Vulcan population in a single location could be dangerous. An attack or outbreak of disease could push the remaining Vulcan population past the recovery point. The main issues would be the stress on the surviving population. Going from founding members of the Federation to protected breeding stock must be mentally traumatic.

Thank you for sharing your fiction with us.

Author's Response:

Thank you for your kind review!

There is a sequel in the archives, if you want to look, called Double Helix. Actually, there's another one after that, too, here in the forums: 

http://forums.adastrafanfic.com/index.php?topic=1710.msg27488#msg27488

It is a bit of a zoo/captive breeding program. I recall stories in TOS, the Twilight Zone and I believe even in The Outer Limits about humans being kept in alien zoos. What would happen if the original intentions were benevolent yet misguided?

Reviewer: Mistral Signed [Report This]
Date: 24 Oct 2011 19:40 Title: Chapter 1

Bravo! A very different take on the circumstances surrounding the Vulcan Diaspora-and many ideas carried to their "logical" conclusion.

Author's Response:

Thank you so very much! :)

Reviewer: Lil black dog Signed [Report This]
Date: 21 Oct 2011 22:30 Title: Chapter 1

Very nice piece, jespah.  I am always amazed by your world-building skills - not that either Canamar prison or the Vulcan colony on Mars are a unique alien world to be sure, but you've given each place its own culture, its own set of rules, and made each feel very real, and tangible.

I am particularly taken with Eriecho's views on the world, and life, given her limited experience growing up in Canamar prison.  At first I was a little surprised that Saddik hadn't done more in terms of her 'Vulcan education' while they were living there - I get the impression that most Vulcans would view this as their civic duty, regardess of the circumstances in which they find themselves - but Eriecho's later questions about why Vulcans needed to be logical, and unemotional, hit home.  Now that Vulcan is gone, and with it their tumultuous past that led them as a race down this path, how much of what they were, what they believed, is really necessary now, and more importantly, how will it aid them in their attempt to preserve their race?  Does the fact that Eriecho doesn't subscribe to traditional Vulcan teachings, values and codes of conduct somehow diminish her worth as a Vulcan, especially in the eyes of her peers?  Should it? 

Like your last challenge entry, I feel this story begs to be explored and expanded on as well.  I'd very much like to see how Eriecho fares now that she is living among her own kind for the first time, and whether their views will influence her behavior or vice versa.

Once again - well done!  A most enjoyable read. :D

Author's Response:

Thank you very much!

Eek, a sequel! :)

The sirens thing - when we moved to LI, there used to be a 6 PM siren. There was no town square but the local firehouse would run the siren at 6 and you knew it was time to get home and go to dinner. At least, I knew that when I was 10 years old. And I remembered that for the Martian complex - egads, when we moved to LI, we thought the siren meant (of course) that there was a fire or something. I think we'd lived there about 2 days before we met a neighbor or 2 and got a chance to ask about it. For an ex-con, that would be the sound of terror if it had not been explained.

I was also thinking a lot about traditional, old school overly structured summer camp. You get up, you eat, you go to Arts & Crafts, then there's canoeing and then swimming and you just move from one activity to another. And it's patronizing, too. You treated us like children, now we're gonna do it right back to you. So Shaw, in addition to having what is sort of a cushy command and responsibility, and a way to maybe impress his girl (or wife, I haven't decided yet), also can lord it over the Vulcans a bit. A bit of passivve-aggression.

I do wonder, if a race is that decimated, and they are desperate for anyone to be around to carry on, for the parts that make them Vulcan, or make us human (besides genetics, of course), do those things matter more, less? Is it okay to be a Vulcan in name only? Eriecho will probably end up being pretty hard to accept, and they may not care so much that she was innocent. She's not really one of them.

Eek, a sequel!

Reviewer: Gul Rejal Signed [Report This]
Date: 26 Sep 2011 11:11 Title: Chapter 1

I had suspected that Eriecho meant something, too. But I didn't expect it to mean that. A very good choice H'Shema made. It shows that she cared and for her the little Vulcan girl was very important.

Colonel Shaw worried me, though. At one point I felt like reading thoughts of someone who was calculating how much money he could get for a young woman, unrelated to anyone, therefore--rare and expensive.

The Vulcan settlement on Mars also looks very...organised. Too organised. I have no idea how refugee camps work and if they are organised in a similar manner, but it looked to me like not-fully-freedom. It would appear that Saddik and Eriecho change one prison to another, just not so strict.

Eriecho and her imprisonment at Canamar. It was terrible that she had to spend her life there, in spite of not being guilty of anything. She had just a bad luck of being born on a transport to prison and she had to live there, even though she had never committed any crime.

It's going to be tough for her not only to get used to non-prison life, but also to Vulcan suppressed emotion culture--if she would want to adapt to that thing at all, and I'm not so sure she would.

I like how you open and close the story with "daughter." Two opposing sentences; first Saddik trying to deny his relation to the girl he had raised in fear of his ponn far reactions and needs and then coming to a natural conclusion that in spite of lack of blood relation, Eriecho was his daughter. She was his eriecho.

A great story! :)

Author's Response:

Thank you! The name just came to me one day and I kind of filed it away, not sure of when I'd use it. For H'Shema, this is her only way to really cope. I don't even know if H'Shema was guilty of anything, or even the pretext for her being at Canamar.

Canamar is canon (no pun intended) - there is an ENT episode with that name. Archer and Tucker are sent there, also with no trial and no guilt. They are rescued off the transport but Eriecho and Saddik are not as fortunate. There is also an episode called Detained where Archer and Mayweather end up in a Tandaran Detention Complex with Suliban, but there are family units there. My vision of Canamar (which is never actually seen in canon) is sort of like that - nasty and survival of the fittest so you end up banding together if you have needs, and of course Saddik couldn't possibly keep Eriecho alive by himself.

The Martian center is meant to, in some ways, resemble Manzanar. It's kind of internment, kind of not, allegedly for people's protection, but it's being overly managed. There was a recent article in the NY Times about people going back to one of the Japanese internment camps (not Manzanar; I've forgotten the name of the facility) for a visit and they were actually reminiscing about the kids playing baseball, etc. It's also meant to be a bit like an old-fashioned summer camp. Plus it is - as Shaw admits - a rather clumsy execution of a very real need, to keep Vulcans safe and somewhat contained, at least for a while.

Shaw's motivations are definitely mixed. He wants to succeed at his task (and he's been given a lot to do in a short amount of time), and he also wants to get Julie a house. But the way he's going about it is not so kosher - but that's also what Saddik had observed about prison life, that things are not necessarily what they seem, and everything is a tangle of obligations.