I've been around this whole planet, and yet, it never ceases to be beautiful to me.
My parents were big on travel, but not in the same way most people are today. My father taught history, and my mother wrote it. Earth history, which shouldn't come as any kind of surprise to those who know me. But where most kids had been to the moon, sometimes before they even could remember, I didn't go until I was in middle school. While most kids had been at warp before they even gave up their bottles, I didn't even see that until I was much older.
Long before I was taught to look at the stars, I was taught to look at the ground.
Not just to look at it or walk on it. But to see it, to read it, to understand the footsteps that came before me. And sometimes, just sometimes, to find some place where no footsteps came before -- where I'm the first.
It's hard to believe such places could exist on Earth, but they do. Once humanity went looking for the stars, things on Earth didn't seem nearly as exciting. Whole generations turned their eyes to the skies. Who wants to go to wander around the Sahara, when they can jump on a shuttle and go see Vulcan? Who wants to trample around Antarctica, when they can go to Andoria?
So when I walk this seemingly snowy emptiness in a forever state of all or nothing, looking at the ground and seeing the ancient history of Earth, I know I'm the first to walk here. Following Shackleton, then pressing on.
Antarctica is beautiful. It seems almost like chaos at times; the patterns of ancient ice meeting ancient rock, the formations of the sea ice as it crackles to the shores. In the summer, flowers can grow. Most people would never believe it -- all the explorers who came here to prove otherwise, and so many still think this is a wasteland good only for seals, penguins and scientists.
I walk here after coming off of a scientific research vessel where I moonlighted as a deckhand. I have to go back soon, but I'm well-insulted and it's warmer here than people might ever imagine it to be at this time of year. So, once I go to the last point of man, I go further.
I know my footprints won't last forever, like Armstrong's on the moon, where they're so carefully preserved amongst the outcropping of souvenir shops and tacky storefronts. But I was here, and I was the first, and there are no souvenir shops here. It only matters to me. Someday, I hope others rediscover that feeling, though. Right here on the ground.
In two weeks, the Nailers are going to meet with someone who says he can give them a voice. I'm not sure myself, but I've become something of a leader in the group, and really, we need to have a voice. It's not that we hate anyone. At least, I know for sure I don't, and I've done my best to weed out those who joined the group with malice in their hearts.
We don't hate non-humans. We don't really even hate space. We just want people to realize that we can't go running off into the stars without knowing where we came from. Without learning how our ground looks, before we leave it.
There's plenty of case precedent for this idea. Take a look at history. We manage to get into war after war here, and what's one of the first things we do when we go into space? Find another war. We couldn't even learn to live here together as ourselves, as human beings, first. Instead of doing that, still within living memory of WWIII, we go off and we take that with us.
And now...
Oh, we get along fine on Earth now. Religion, culture, race, creed... none of it matters. There are still people who practice religion or cling to what's left of their own human culture, but they're few and far between. Once we took to the stars, education shifted to try to compensate for the fact that we humans are very finite creatures. So many species outlive us, it takes all we have just to try to keep up. History, Earth history, is now relegated to a few classes in grade school and maybe an elective somewhere later. The lessons of the past remain unlearned.
And because we never learned all the lessons we should have here, we go out there and fight. Little battles, big wars, more names read on the news broadcasts.
In reaching for the stars, we lost sight of the ground.
I keep it in sight. Following Shackleton.
--
There came a time when Pasha gave in to curiosity and pride. You would think that pride would have kept him asking for help, but it didn't. If anything, it was pride that made him want to know -- how could he argue with me, when I held all of the winning cards and he was just holding empty pieces of paper? But if he was armed with knowledge, enough to argue my philosophies on a middle ground between us... well, that is more than enough for him to seek answers.
So, we sought. We started with his family tree. He was related to Anton Chekhov, though distantly. But this Chekov didn't know that until we searched it out, digging for hours through old records in the computer, and then even more ancient records on paper. Surrounded by those archives, I can still smell the dusty sort of scent, and even more wonderful, the way aged paper smells something like nutmeg.
His family wasn't exclusive to Russia. In fact, far back during the American Industrial Revolution, his branch ended up in Chicago for a time. That was where they became distinctive, and while eventually they went back to Russia, his very name bears the mark of Ellis Island and hand-written account books by people too ignorant to spell it properly. Now, it's both a history lesson and a point of pride -- that in his history is a great writer, but also in his history are brave men who brought their families to a then-new world in hopes of building something better. Brave men who worked hard, sweating away long hours in steel mills.
I took him to all these places until excitement gripped him and he took me instead. From Tagenrog, to Chicago, to Moscow, and a million other places along the way. Following two great writers: Sandburg and Chekhov.
I know that it didn't stop him from chasing the stars, but it gave him something. He mostly kept that something locked away, especially in Starfleet, but where before he was just a little boy with dreams, now Pasha had a fire and determination to achieve those by whatever means necessary and despite all fears.
I wonder if he'll ever know how much he inspired me.
"A bar of steel--," Sandburg wrote. "It is only smoke at the heart of it, smoke and the blood of a man."
The Nailers are meeting this new guy in a few hours. But Pasha is out there, one of the few people who I think understands, even if I wish that he would have spent more time on the ground.
Following Sandburg and Chekhov.
---
I don't know what I'm doing out here, but I know that it's wrong.
So, so wrong. So horribly wrong.
The fog only lifts sometimes, when I can fight it off. But most of the time I don't think I'm here at all. I move, but not really under my own power; I act, with my knowledge, but not by my own will. The rest of the time I watch in horror as my body speaks, my hands kill, through a haze that refuses to lift until I can claw it away briefly before it descends again.
I lost sight of the ground.
In the times my body sleeps, I dream of the past, and history. Of all people, I should have known better; of all of us, I should have put a stop to this before it started. I should have seen the signs: Despots remembered throughout history. Their names are bloody beacons. But I didn't see until it was too late.
So many of these people I put here; I convinced them to join. I thought I was convincing them to join history, to join a peaceful movement towards remembering our roots.
They'll be remembered through history, too, though. As murderers. As genocidal, xenophobic killers.
I cry out in my mind to my friends. To Maryann. To Pasha. Even to Liman. Back to this more innocent time in my life, long before all of this came to be, when all I wanted was to show them the ground they walked on. I managed to send out a message, but I don't know if anyone will ever hear it. I should have said everything I wanted to say better than I did. I should have told them how much they meant to me. How sorry I really am.
But in this, words fail; no authors, no poets, no historians could ever reflect it.
Still I keep some fragmented poetry in my head, even as I commit terrible acts. Here Coleridge, sending his mariner to keep telling the story, like Ahab who dies trying to reach his whale. Now Frost and his woods, dark and deep; now Sandburg again, with the dusty road and old remembered pictures.
I lost sight of the ground. This is all I have left.
For you there is no song . . .
Only the shaking
Of the voice that meant to sing; the sound of the
strong
Voice breaking.
Strange in my hand appears
The pen, and yours broken.
There are ink and tears on the page; only the tears
Have spoken.
Following Millay.