Disclaimer: Star Trek: The Original Series belongs to CBS, not me.

Author's Note: This novel assumes that the events in As Hours Pass happened during the Enterprise's second assignment, shortly after Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Jim has been blind for precisely 4 years, 11 months, and 3 days, plus an undefinable number of hours, minutes, and seconds. Even after all these years, I find that undefinable period unsettling. Owing to that very quality, it has become a landmark for me, a temporal beacon forever orienting me. It is how I tell time.

Jim does not mark the time so precisely. "Four and a half, going on five years now, I guess," is how he measures the same period. We discussed the topic six days ago, and that was his response. "I don't know exactly. I'm not keeping count."

When I pointed out the illogic posed by his lack of regard for such a seminal event in his own life, he merely answered with the same smile he uses to charm the other crew members and said, "I'll let keeping count be your responsibility." (People believe this charm is lost on me. It is not. It is duly noted, catalogued, appreciated. Jim knows this.)

"You need to take a rain check tonight, Spock?" he asks now. We are already more than two hours into a chess game.

"That would be highly illogical, since the Enterprise is incapable of manufacturing inclement weather outside of the hydroponics lab and arboretum. Why do you ask?"

Ignoring my attempt at humor, Jim waves a hand toward the multi-tiered chess board between us. "Because I'm just killing time here until you show up." He then gestures toward the vast collection of metal pawns on his side of the desk. "If you're otherwise engaged somewhere, I don't mind taking a rain check."

That after such a short time he already possesses three-quarters of my pieces demonstrates a clear lack of opposition. "My apologies. I have not posed a very formidable adversary tonight."

He shrugs. "It's not the game I'm concerned about." He inclines his head, eyes shut. "Come on, Spock. What gives?"

"Unknown."

Rising to fetch a container of water, he carries it into his bedroom to water the plants there. Jim moves with the same confidence and ease he had before, looking now with fingers and ears rather than with eyes. It is at once gratifying and distressing to realize that this is the case. "Unknown," he asks, "or unwilling to tell me?"

I bow my head, vainly—illogically—attempting to hide my shame by avoiding eye contact where none exists. Not only can Jim no longer make eye contact, but it is a rare occasion now when he even attempts it with one of his shipmates, and even rarer still with me. With his shipmates—in his most relaxed state, as now—he relies instead on ear contact, and by observing where his ear is pointed I am nearly always quite accurate in gauging what he is attending to. Hence, my head is now bowed because I do not wish to see that he is watching me. It is the closest I can come to preserving my dignity. Eye contact is voluntary and can be easily revoked by shifting the eyes, thus allowing both parties an element of privacy even when in one another's company. This is not the case with ear contact, which is completely involuntary because ears, unlike eyes, are omnidirectional. Blindness has stolen that social convention from us, like so many others.

"Spock—"

"Possibly an element of both." It is untrue that Vulcans cannot lie—merely that I am unwilling to lie to this particular Human. "I do not recall precisely what thought or event caused my distraction, nor did I intend to disturb your evening with my misgivings. I had resolved, after our last such discussion, to tend to these affairs myself without intruding upon you further."

"What happened during our last discussion to make you resolve that? Did I say something?"

"No." The very suggestion provokes an unexpected twinge of panic, and I hear the pinch of it in my voice. The remainder of my response is better modulated. "My apologies if that appeared to be my meaning. On the contrary, you have always been most tolerant with me."

Jim shrugs. "What, then?" Laying aside the watering vessel, he feels the overall shape and growth pattern of the large palm in the corner and squats to rotate its back toward the light. He then repeats this process for the smaller plant on his sideboard: water, evaluate, rotate. "Something I did?"

"Negative. My resolution was not based on anything that you said or did, nor anything that I may have surmised you to be thinking or feeling. It was based solely on my perception that I have troubled you too many times already with different iterations of the same conversation."

Presently, his troubled expression clears and an amused smile flickers across his face. "And who decides what constitutes the proper number of times we should have his conversation? You, because it's your pride we're trying to preserve? Me, because I'm at the heart of the issue? Some imaginary social norm? Spock, as far as I can tell this isn't an issue we can ever completely resolve because the blindness is always going to be here. We're always going to have lost something. I think it's something we have to keep negotiating."

His choice of words surprises me. "I had not considered that this was a negotiation process, but I suppose that it does bear some resemblance."

"Actually, I was thinking of the other meaning—more like negotiating a maze."

"Ah. That does indeed seem an apt comparison." If he is correct about this experience being essentially labyrinthine, it is imperative that we continue to travel it together or else we will become irreparably separated. That would suggest that these conversations are, and will continue to be, an essential part of our relationship. "In that case, I perceive that you have progressed further into the maze than I have."

"Oh? How so?"

"Changes no longer trouble you."

"Probably because I'm losing the reference point." He shrugs. "The more time that passes, the harder it is for me to remember what exactly 'before' was like."

"That does indeed explain the problem: you have turned a corner of which I was unaware." The presence of that corner disturbs me. If the only way to turn it is to forget, are we destined to become separated at this juncture? I choose my words carefully. "Jim, do you think it possible—likely, even—that I may be unable to turn the same corner? As a Vulcan, my memory—"

He shakes his head. "Of course not. It isn't that I can't still look back; I can. It's just that it's getting harder—and the payoffs when I do are getting smaller—so I mostly choose not to."

"Do I understand that you have made a deliberate choice to forget?"

"Not exactly." When Jim says that this experience is one that we must continually negotiate, this is his negotiation process. His words are deliberate, slow, chosen not more than one at a time. If this experience is a labyrinth, he is moving one step at a time—hand over hand, palming the walls of his own experience—in an effort to ensure that he negotiates it accurately, as if he perceives this to be a critical point. "What I make is a deliberate choice not to keep trying to hold onto what used to be. Forgetting is more like an act of mercy after I've let go."

My mind skips to a story my mother once told me when I was small. I had asked whether she missed the life she once had on Earth. She responded by relaying to me a story from the Old Testament: that of Lot's wife. When commanded to flee her home to avoid impending destruction and to do so without looking back, she disobeyed and looked back and was changed to a pillar of salt. I've often thought that it wasn't the actual looking back that was so harmful, Mother told me. It was the longing that destroyed her. I grasp now what my mother was trying to tell me all those years ago. Given the salty nature of Human tears, I should have understood the symbolism long before now.

"Does that make any sense, Spock?"

"It does." Despite the saltless nature of my Vulcan tears, I have been—or have come dangerously close to becoming—a pillar of salt, not outwardly but inwardly where my Human genes remain quite strong. "I believe my mother attempted to make a similar point many years ago, when I was a child. I have just now grasped her, and your, meaning."

He nods. "Your mother is a wise woman. If my solutions end up resembling her advice, I take that as an enormous compliment."

"I shall tell her you said so."

Jim has now fetched a second container of water and begun watering the enormous bromeliad that sits near his door, fingers testing first the soil and then the collection tray beneath the pot. When it is sufficiently moist, he reaches up to take stock of the plant's overall growth pattern. Eventually, he tilts his face toward the overhead light and turns his head, using his skin to detect where the concentration of heat is greatest. He then rotates the bromeliad so that the undergrown back side is aligned with that same concentration of heat. Satisfied that his adjustments will ensure the plant's even growth, he stands and returns the watering vessel to the shelf where it belongs.

I watch this as if with new eyes. For the first time, I see Jim as he is now—truly see him, all ears and fingers and skin—and do not wince or shrink back from it. Instead, this time I see the extraordinariness of it. That five years ago he should have existed in an entirely other body, and that in this short of a time he should have become so completely comfortable in this one, is truly a remarkable feat. For the first time, I feel no regret over the body that was left behind those five years ago. Instead, I feel pride in what Jim has accomplished in this comparatively short space of time; I feel admiration for the practical way that he has approached living with this new body.

If this experience is a maze, then I have just turned a corner and found my old friend once again in sight. He is somehow larger than I remember.