Title: The Catman
Author: Saya (� October 2002)
Code: No pairing, OCs
Rating: PG-13 for slight violence (sorry folks, no sex)
Feedback: Yes, please. Here or email
t_mina@subspacemail.com
Summary: The story of a perfect racial sample
Timeline: Between TOS and ST:TMP
Note: English is not my native language, so be tolerant with possible errors.
Beta and challenge: Voile
Disclaimer: Paramount/Viacom owns Trek, I own the OCs of this story. No money made from this.
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Personal diary log
Salath cha'Sovak
Vulcan year 3150, month of Tasmeen
P'Jem Institute for the Criminally Insane
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Vulcan's long history of genetic tampering reaches far beyound the times of Surak, in one form or another. First it manifested itself in arranged marriages between clan members who had some usable qualities, like 'the Eye' or the capability to kill with one's thoughts. When the technology developed and the genome of the Vulcan race had been bit by bit revealed, the genetic experiments naturally became far more sophisticated and scientifically accurate. But still, thus far, no responsible scientist had had the courage or the arrogance to start manipulating that part of the genome that was responsible of the development of the brain. Many illnesses had been overcome and the natural evolution of the species quickened a bit, but no one had dared to tamper with those genes that made a Vulcan a Vulcan. The very core of the brain and the foundation of one's existence. No one before my 'father' Sovak, once a well-known and respected professor and scientist in Vulcan Science Academy's genealogy department, but since his departure to the private sector to work for the leading genetic technolocy company on the planet his standing in scientific community had dropped to the ground. But he had a vision. A vision that would had been able to bring millions and millions of credits into the said company's coffer. Greed, as an emotion, was of course illogical, but the law of supply and demand was not -- it was simply one of the fundamental laws of the universe. And, for the logical purpose to raise the wealth of the company, it had also been perfectly logical for it to accept his morally questionable research program. One that would never had received the blessings of the stiffly traditional and highly bureaucratic Academy. His ambitious dream had been to develop a perfect Vulcan, a perfect representative of a race devoted to the purest, clearest logic -- free of all emotion, even the seeds of it, someone who had accomplished already at birth the task that the Kolinahru seek for decades, and naturally the marketable technology to sell to every couple that wished their offspring to be 'pure'.
Of course at that time I had no idea of the glorious future that was planned for me -- I was known as sample SV-1569-2, a single cell sitting in a lonely test tube with a long row of other test tubes containing my siblings, samples SV-1569-1 - SV-1569-16. We had a common foreparent, sample SV-1568-4, a single fertilized egg that had been let to divide four times after its genetic material had first been isolated, chopped into pieces, cleaned up from the unwanted material and then let to arrange itself back to a working Vulcan genome with use of special enzymes before being injected back into the cell. My siblings and I spent the gestation period in the laboratory, after the test tubes in artificial wombs under strict control and constant monitoring around the clock. Not all of my sisters and brothers survived, actually only I and my brother, sample SV-1569-5, lived till the time of 'birth'. I have only vague memories of my first years, but I remember the environment was functional -- I could breathe, I was warm, I was fed when I was hungry and my hygiene was taken care of -- so I would say my childhood was happy, if I understand correctly the meaning of the word 'happy'. My first real memory is my brothers death -- I was four years old at that time and I remember waking up at night from a strange noise -- it seemed that my brother had some difficulties in sustaining his vital functions. He was convulsing in his bed and making choking and coughing noises and his face seemed to be very dark in color. I crawled up from my own bed and reached for him, instinctively curious of what might have been the cause of his strange behaviour. I touched him and tried to shake him, for he was clearly not functioning correctly, but his body just spasmed one final time and after that lay still on the mattress. People rushed into the room, seemingly in agitated and upset mental states. Someone lifted me up and I was carried away. The next morning my 'father' came to me looking very tired and I could sense that he was uncomfortable when he told me that I was the only one now and that my brother had passed away during the night. I didn't understand the emotions he was projecting, why the reason that my brother had stopped functioning made him this uncomfortable. His eyes seemed watery when he sat there in the chair beside my bed and I didn't understand until later that the 'emotion' he was 'feeling' was called sorrow and that existed for example when someone who you 'cared' about ceased to exist. I didn't see any reason for that, and I still don't see -- entities cease to exist every day, that is simply how nature works. I had witnessed this ceasing of existence many times before, I had seen how shavokhs used to catch little valits and ukraluks that ran around on the yard and still no one's eyes had been watery when this had happened.
I went to school when I was five years old, like all Vulcan children. The research facility where I lived was located on the outskirts of the city of Khi'Rahl, a middle-sized city not far away from the capital of the province, Shi'Kahr. My name was Salath cha'Sovak, though I am not sure if Sovak was my biological father, I was never told whose genetic material I carried in my cells. Sovak's residence was in the city, but because I still needed to go through frequent medical and psychological tests it was only logical that I kept living in the facility. I was an extremely intelligent and talented child, I was told by the school, especially in mathematics, physics, computer science, artificial intelligence and all subjects that were based on the clear logic and the law of cause and effect. I was also very talented physically. I was the quickest, strongest and most flexible of my class and could easily run extreme long distances even under the scorching midday sun without becoming tired or even thirsty. It seemed that my father wanted to spend a lot of his free time with me. He kept telling me that he had succeeded in his work and that I was the future, that now he should find a suitable mate for me. He told me that the others around me had a flaw in their minds, and this flaw, or stain, was called emotion. That even if they were taught to keep their emotions under control and not let them interfere in their actions, they still had them. I understood the concept of this 'emotion', but it seemed like something that was completely useless, it had no purpose in any way, at its worst it only prohibited a mind -- whose purpose was to place the stimuli the sensory organs transmitted into the brain into logical order and decide the logical course of action in the current situation -- from functioning the way which was correct in order to sustain the existence and the functionality of an individual. He also taught me the necessary mental techniques, how to shield my thoughts from the minds of others and how to connect with another sentient mind -- he spent a lot of time in these 'mind-melds' with me, and after these sessions his eyes seemed brighter than usual and he seemed to be very comfortable with himself, his stance was relaxed and if I lowered my shields I sensed he was in a similar state of mind I was myself in after a good meal or a long, well-slept night, when I could sense that the needs of my body were satisfied and everything was functioning like it should. So I understood I was succeeding in fulfilling my part in the community and growing up like a normal Vulcan child.
This is why I was so confused at my father's reaction one afternoon when I came home from school carrying a bloody carcass of a vrah'kveht, a small rodent that lived in the rocky terrains around the city, with me. He slapped it out of my hands and stared at the blood stains around my mouth, projecting an emotion that I had never sensed before and which made me instinctually step back, for it was something that made me suddenly cold, like I didn't fit in anymore, like my pack had suddenly rejected me. I did not see the logic in his reaction; I had only been hungry and when one is hungry it is only logical for one to act in a way to correct this negative physical state. Vrah'kvehts were quick to move due to their flexible limbs and muscular bodies but I had been quicker, and it hadn't taken more than a few lirt'ks before I had caught one and broken its neck with a quick twist of my fingers. I had used my teeth to rip its throat open, its blood with some muscles I ripped off of its still warm body, had satisfied my hunger. I had supposed my father would have been comfortable and satisfied with me for me being able to take care of myself, but on the contrary, he seemed like he couldn't move, he just kept staring at me and emitting that very negative thing I learned later was called 'disgust' and 'anger'. Of course his words didn't reveal his emotions, he was well trained in the controls of the mind, but still the tone of his voice was tight and his eyes were very cold when he pulled me inside the house and explained to me how taking the life of an another sentient, living being was against everything Surak had taught. That we were Vulcans, bred to peace, and respecting life in its all forms was one of the cornerstones of our whole philosophy. I understood and didn't kill any more animals because I didn't wish my pack to reject me.
But then came the time of my Kahs-wan, the maturity test all Vulcan children were supposed to go through at the age of seven. The harsh and arid desert environment was not any challenge to my physiology, which had always been superior to that of my age-mates. On the contrary, it was a natural place for me, there in the middle of scorching hot, red dunes and obsidian boulders and rocky plateaus that broke the endless desert everywhere, at the end of the L'langon mountain chain that lined the horizon in the far Southwest. I had always spent as much time as possible outside, and it was like I had found my real home; alone with nature, using my instincts to find plants from which to extract water and animals to prey upon. Animals to prey -- I noticed only after a few days that I had broken my father's rules again. I had woken up and found a half-eaten krilakh beside me; I had no actual memory that I had killed it, but again my bloody fingers and mouth were a clear indication that it had been me. I wondered why I didn't remember doing this, but then hunger took over and I bent back to my meal, ripping off its leg muscles and stuffing them into my mouth, because it was the thing I had to do; whatever my father had taught me, it didn't matter in this situation.
I returned from the desert and my father seemed once again satisfied with himself. Soon after my Kahs-wan he started to talk about something called bonding, that how, because of the continuation of the species, it was necessary to find a suitable mate for one, and at the age of seven link the mate's mind together with one's, so that at the appropriate time they would find each other again and do what was logical to procreate. But because I was special and pure, like no other, he didn't wish to link my mind with one that was not pure. He told me that as soon as he would be able to find another who was suitable he would arrange this thing. I didn't ask any questions then, I was only a child and all those things seemed so far away to me, though I understood the meaning of this 'bonding'. I had seen how animals formed couples and how they mated and how sometimes the females' bellies were round and some time after that there were many small animals playing around their parents. I thought then that people were not so different from animals and that was the way babies did come into the world; but again I learned not until years later that the way I had come into the world was far from the way nature had meant it.
So, unlike most Vulcan children, I remained unbonded and my father continued his experiments. When I grew older and more educated he sometimes allowed me into his laboratory and explained his genetic research to me. He told me how I was born, a designer baby; he showed me the new batches of cells and cultures and enzyme solutions and all the sophisticated instruments and equipment that was needed in the delicate job of breeding. He explained how wisdom and knowledge and control over nature were the ways that had once saved our whole race from extinction, and his work was only a continuation of what Surak had wished to achieve over three millennia ago. He also told me how difficult his job was, that so far I had been the only one who had survived and developed like a normal child should have, and also that he was working on a solution to overcome the female cells' greater tendency to die already as zygotes. That was also the reason why there was no female equal to me to bond with, because they all usually died as fetuses at the latest stage. It seemed that the connection between the genes in the female gender chromosome and the genes that were responsible of the development of the deepest part of the brain -- the same parts that also were responsible to the reactions called 'emotions' -- was stronger than with the male gender chromosome genes. He had worked for years to resolve this mystery but thus far without success. I saw a flaw in his logic and discrepancies in his statements when I heard how many had died before I was born and how many budding lives were constantly being destroyed because of his research, and however when I had been a child he had taught me how all life should be respected. But he explained to me that his goal was logical, it was what every Vulcan wished to be -- free of all emotion at birth, pure and clear. It was of course regrettable that genetic material which could had been used to develop a healthy, living baby was in a sense 'wasted' during this research program, but then again, his goal was to finally achieve what our race strived to be, to be free from this stain called 'emotion', which was after all nothing else but a small flaw in our genetic structure, and possible to mend, and I was living proof of it. So I learned that even illogical actions could be justified by a logical goal.
Apparently everyone else didn't understand my father's logic, however. One afternoon, years later, when I returned from school I found his laboratory sealed by the Shar, the High Council's security service. His assistant told me that he had been taken away at morning, for investigations of his actions. It had come to the Council's knowledge that his research program heavily contradicted Surakian philosophy and the common morale. The assistant also told me that I was expected at the Shar office as well the next morning for they wished to know all of what had been involved. I went and told the officials what I knew, and I was informed that my father had been sent to Gol for retraining. From their words I also understood how the company he had been working for had washed its hands by claiming it had had no idea of the details of my father's research. I was set free for I had not done anything against the law or philosophy, but it was clear that I could not continue living in the facility. I had already received my acceptance to the Vulcan Science Academy so I moved to Shi'Kahr and finished my last school year there, living at the Academy's dorm and thus beginning my second part of life.
Vulcan society has always dealt with its outcasts and criminals in a subtle and polite way, keeping their identities secret and not giving any details to the public media. So I was also safe from curious questions and my parental name cha'Sovak didn't raise any special interest in my teachers or fellow students. I had chosen advanced mathematics and artificial intelligence as my major in the Academy, due to my natural talent in subjects that required perceiving the structure and behaviour of large, multi-layered logical systems. I was a top student and everything went normally until my early twenties, when I began to feel the pull of my instincts again, this time even stronger than as a child. I often found myself wandering at night time in the desert surrounding the city. Again I could not remember how I had ended up there and when I returned to my apartment I could not sleep but paced around my room like a caged animal, under the pale light of stars and the crescent of T'Kuht that filtered through the curtains. At some point I started to find my clothes extremely irritating; due to public norms I was of course required to wear them in public, but as soon as the night came and I was alone I sat cross-legged and naked by the window, the curtains snatched aside, staring at the slowly growing T'Kuht on the sky and listening to the calls of the night time predators that hunted far off in the Sas-a-shar desert. I sometimes answered to their calls; long, sharp, wailing catlike cries that touched something deep inside me and filled my mind with pictures of the hunt and blood and warm flesh and crunching sounds when teeth broke through bones into the still twitching carcasses of the prey. My breathing elevated and I felt how my heart beat faster and I could almost sense the smell of horror the prey animals emitted as the bite of steel-sharp canines ripped open their vital arteries. I stared at my reflection on the window glass, and the hairless, polished creature with short, combed hair and carefully manicured nails and shaved chin who stared back at me was not me. The calls of a le-matya sounded closer and my muscles twitched for I wanted to join them in the hunt. I needed to taste fresh blood and meat again and I was full of adrenaline. I belonged to them and my reflection was nothing but a mockery of what I really was. And sometimes I indeed followed my instincts and joined the nightly killers and hunted in the desert, finally feeling whole again when sitting naked on an obsidian cliff and ripping into the tissues of a freshly killed tcharik, only the quiet and peace of nature around me and the faint light of T'Kuht casting an eerie glow over the landscape. I also let my hair and nails grow and even if I tied my long tresses into a neat tail and cleansed myself carefully off the dirt and gore of my nighttime travels I noticed that people started to cast long looks on me on the street and my fellow students started to avoid me.
My first Pon Farr occurred early when I was in my middle 20's. I am aware that it is not a custom of my people to talk openly about these things, but what does it matter anymore? I was not bonded, but I had heard about other alternatives. So I went down to Vras'Kahr, the 'outcast' area outside the city of Shi'Kahr and bought myself a kalogi -- a woman unable to bond herself and trained to help unbonded males during their Time. It all went very smoothly, she had an apartment where she practiced her 'profession' and both I and she were able to stay out of the eye of the public until the ordeal was over. I have no memories what happened during my Fever, but both I and she survived, though I remember seeing alot of blood in the room. I also have vague images in my mind of her horror-filled expressions, bruised body, and my claw and teeth marks on her skin. The problems started to occur only after my Time was already supposedly over. I had started to spend more and more of my time in Vras'Kahr because my looks and behaviour did not gather so many disapproving gazes there than in the 'official' part of the city. I fit in better in the outcast area and I understood by now that I was different, but why, I could not tell. Then one evening I saw my woman, my kalogi, at the bar with another male and the silent and exclusive manner they made their business told me that this male was here because of the same reason I had been here not so long time ago. The scent of rapidly increasing hormonal overload and sexual pheromones that my sensitive and well-trained olfactory system could detect from this stranger released my instincts again and I knew I had to kill this rival male. I followed the couple out of the bar and to her apartment, keeping a safe distance so that neither of them could detect me. My eyes and physique had adjusted to silent stalking during my nightly preying journeys and in no time I was standing behind her door, listening to the sounds from inside and letting the rage grow inside me. No one had the right to touch a female who I had claimed my property by marking her with my sperm, no one! I crushed the locked door to shatters with sheer physical strength and rushed into her bedroom where she was already initiating a meld with this strange male. I pulled him violently off of her and smashed him to the floor, not interested in the female but only in destroying this rival and keeping him from claiming my property. He was fighting back most efficiently, but my physique had grown hard and muscular due to my nights in the desert, so it was relatively easy for me to twist him on his stomach and grip his head into deadly grasp. My weight rested atop his body and I snatched his head quickly backwards, hearing the dull snap as his uppermost vertebra severed from the base of his skull and his body went limp under me. I was still rejoicing in my victory when I felt a sharp squeeze on the junction of my neck and shoulder and my world went black.
I woke up in a strange room, secured to the bed and an armed Shar official standing at the door. He noticed I had come around and signaled something out of the little window in the door. Some people stepped in, an old woman in thick robes marked with the healer's insignia and another Shar official, high in rank according to the badge he carried on the collar of his uniform. The woman pulled out a hypo from the folds of her rope and pressed it against my neck, explaining that for the court she had to perform a diagnostic meld in order to find out the reason for my violent behaviour. The drug was designed to lower my shields and make me unresistant to her probing even the most deepest recesses of my mind. I noticed only tiredness and a feeling like I was floating; I did not recognize when she entered my mind and pryed open my memories. It was a long time before the drug wore off and she withdrew from the meld, and I saw her face which had been blank and devoid of all emotion before was pale and her expression disgusted and shocked.
I spent days in that room and many healers and other masters of the mental arts came to me, interrogating me or melding with me, trying to find out what was it which made me different. And based on the eyewitness and mental evidence the court considered my crimes against the law and the common morale and my actions against the philosophy of our people so heavy that I could not continue living in society. The punishment: further examinations and a lifelong sentence in the P'Jem Institute for the Criminally Insane. So I was packed on board a long-range stellar cruiser and transferred to the planet, or so-called 'colony world' MX-875, to begin the third part of my life.
I went through more mental and psychological examinations on P'Jem, as well as heavy physical ones, one of which was the charting of my genetic structure. The beginning of my life as a experiment of my father came to the daylight again and after numerous visits from the most advanced scholars in the field of evolutionary genealogy I was finally told the scientific reason for what was happening to me.
* * *
I am reverting. When my father tampered with the genes that should have been responsible for developing the parts of my brain that house the emotions, he released something even worse than them, the instincts. Instincts of our animal-like ancestors, instincts to prey and kill and mate and protect one's property with teeth and claws. I am reverting to our cat-like forefathers; I remember seeing a picture in the biology class in school, a picture of a big creature, half cat, half man, walking on two legs but dark shaggy hair still covering its body and its sharp carnassial teeth protruding over its lower lip and its eyes gleaming black under the thick frontal bone, and now I know I was looking at my mirror image. My fits of madness, as they call them, come more and more frequently as the time passes on and there is no cure; the missing genes will be missing forever, only heavy tranquilizing drugs can give me peace in this prison where I am doomed to spend the rest of my natural life. Isn't it ironic how thin is the coating that makes us 'civilized' beings, something 'higher' than animals, and how my people fight against this coating, these emotions, this only safety catch that keeps us from sliding back to the time billions of years ago? Isn't it even more ironic that when my father wanted to create a perfect Vulcan, he created a monster? Because now, when I know why I am and what I am, I see myself as one. Before this I accepted my behaviour because I did not know another alternative and what I did was right and natural for me. But here, in this prison, nothing is natural. My room is spacious and well-lit, the big windows allow me to see the mountaineous landscape that surrounds the institute, but I can't open them and I am aware of the sensor arrays and surveillance probes that monitor my presence here every moment. One could call my 'apartment' here almost cozy but how can a wild animal feel at home in the middle of polished walls and designer furniture and white, disinfected linen and clothes? I spend my days as a robot, muddled with drugs; no one here is paying any attention to me, I am classified as an incurable case and this is just a resort where this monster can be kept out of the public eye and prevented from shocking the 'normal' people with its irrational and illogical behaviour. The pain comes at nights; the small, pale moon of this world changes into the full, coppery globe of T'Kuht in my mind and even if this world is dead and silent of other life I can hear the calls of my pack as I used to hear them when I opened my window into the desert at my old home. But here the door is locked and the windows are secured and even my full strength is not enough to break them. I pace naked around my room and curl up on the floor, staring at the prison wall with glazed eyes, my blood freezing in despair and an iron band encircling my chest, preventing my heart from beating and my lungs from gulping the fresh air outside that I so desperately need. There are sometimes blood stains on the floor and walls when I have, in my madness, scratched the hard stone with my nails till my fingertips bleed. Then they increase my dose of tranquilizers and I sleep peacefully a couple of nights; waiting for my nightly hell to return even more strongly after this momentary rest.
In my rare moments of sanity I realize that the normal Vulcan lifespan being over two hundred years I still have over one hundred and seventy years to spend in this prison. There is no way to escape, even if one is successful in leaving the institute where could one go in this world? I have noticed that I have started to gnaw off the flesh of my wrists, like a trapped animal trying to free itself by biting off the trapped limb.
- end -
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Vulcan words:
Shavokh = bird of prey (from the novel "Vulcan's Heart")
Valit = small burrowing animal (VLI)
Ukraluk = small reptile (VLI)
Vrah'kveht = small rodent-like animal
Krilakh = small ibex-like grass-eating animal
Le-matya = large, venomous desert predator (VLI)
Tcharik = deer-like animal, accustomed to living in desert like Terran camel
Lirt'k = time unit, approx. minute (Vulcan Information Centre for Extravulcanians)
Shar = security/police (VLI)
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