Title: Circle
Author: Vesper (Regina)
Warnings: none
Category: ENT, TOS
Codes: Sato, Uhura
Summary: Communications officers.
Disclaimer: The almighty Paramount encircled by twenty-two stars owns these particular shows, but I own the story.
Archival: Permission to Warp 5 Complex (EntSTCommunity) and Linguistics Database. All others, please link to my website. Please keep all my headers intact.
Acknowledgment: Janet Kagan's superb ST:TOS novel, Uhura's Song. Her meaning of Uhura's name is Star Freedom.
Dedication: For nostalgia. I love thee and thy craft as well.


When she is much older, she will be revered, honored, and feted.

Right now, she doesn't know that her teachers marvel over her gift, her amazing gift.

'How does the child do it?' they ask, with breathy voices and shaking heads.

They turn to their books, to the past, to their labs, in an effort to understand. They succumb to the lure of science.

They quantify and classify.

'Leave her alone.'

Her parents waver under the pressure.

No one tells her that eventually programming will be preferred over human intuition and cognizance.

They are secure in their knowledge that progress and science will overcome. They see a need. She will fulfill that need.

She hears and remembers. She speaks and meaning flows from her.

She grows older. She learns about math, about physics, that language and meaning can be transmuted to zeroes and ones.

She quantifies and classifies.

She suspects that time will render her useless, but still slaves to the demands of her conscience.

She paves the path of meaning.

One will follow. Her name will also be star. She will have a different nationality, have darker skin.

Her teachers will wonder, 'How does the child do it?'

They will turn to their computers with the vast memories, to the past encased in silicon. They will point to what has been.

'She had a gift,' they will say. 'This one does too.'

Her parents will be proud.

She thinks she will go to the stars, like the one before her.

She will be revered, honored, and feted.

She will quantify and classify.

She will not suspect, like the star before her. Instead, she will know that time will negate the need for ones like her.

She will not be able to ignore that need.

Just like her.

End.