Chapter 21: The Adventure through the Looking Glass

Lorca51, whose number of counterparts started to dwindle over the past few years and were close to naught, bought a house in the Catskills and moved in there with Yana. She started her first semester at the Academy, traveling across the country using a "highway" of transporters. They could have moved to California to be closer to the Academy but Lorca fell in love with the house and the mountains.

About two months after the end of the war, Cornwell offered Lorca a promotion.

"Well, I'm a monkey's uncle right now, what would you promote me to, the Tsar of Orangutans?" He asked.

But Cornwell was serious, though she hated this. Half the admirals resigned, feeling they were not up to the task after the mind worms. Malek was reappointed. Cornwell held out for nearly a year, though eventually the guilt over Tyler's death drove her out of the admiralty and she spent the rest of her life as an editor of psychology journals.

Offering to promote a former psychiatric patient who never completed his treatment to the admiralty showed how desperate they really were. Sully reluctantly accepted the promotion she was also offered but Lorca refused. He did accept the charge of promoting someone from Discovery to captain, since Timur left without a word. He wanted it to be a surprise and had the whole crew show up in the main gallery of the ship one day for the event. Lorca had received a medal for his bravery during the Battle of Hurgh'hov and he wore it proudly, but since it was the only medal he'd ever gotten, he put on a few other things so his shoulder wouldn't look so empty. Cornwell turned a blind eye to his Batman symbol pin, shamrock, cloud with a happy face, "I Voted Early 2020" pin, and peace sign, but she yanked off the little red star he found somewhere with a photo of Lenin's baby face.

Lorca passed in front of his former crew, carrying a little box, like for an engagement ring, that people assumed held the badge of the new captain.

"All of you experienced incredible danger and pressure over the past two years," he said. "I daresay any of you could be captain. But I had to choose among three commanders whose patience, fortitude, and leadership exceeded all expectations. Stamets!"

"Huh? What?" Said Stamets.

"You took science, engineering, and humanity to areas we never knew existed," said Lorca. "However, your preoccupation with technical issues often precludes your judgement in matters social. I suspect you will obtain a command position eventually, but probably of a research institute and not a starship."

"I didn't realize I was in the running," whispered Stamets. "I'm so flattered."

Lorca looked at Saru, who put up his hands and said, "Captain, I understand. I failed drastically. I never developed that gut feeling for when it is necessary to break the rules that you and Michael possess. I know I still have much to learn."

"You failed?" Said Lorca. "So you think being a commander is about success? No! It is about learning to cope with failure! You overcame the instincts of your species when you reached out to an alien world. You continued to overcome your own fears every day. Of course you still have much to learn, but you earned your crew's trust and devotion. You will be captain of Discovery."

He took the badge out of the box and pinned it on Saru, who looked flabbergasted. Burnham nodded happily at him, not surprised at this choice. But Lorca winked at her.

"It was a very hard decision," he said. "How can I choose between Twinkletoes and Sherlock? After all, Commander Burnham saw through me when I was lying to myself about my own ability to lead. Some might say she's brash and seeks to bend everyone to her will but I see a mind that is ready to take the next step. So, here's a little magic! The box opens from the top and the bottom."

He took out a second badge from the lower chamber of the box and pinned it to Burnham.

"We don't have a ship for her," said Cornwell. "She'll have to wait until one becomes available."

"No, they're both going to be captains of Discovery," said Lorca.

"That is not allowed!" Said Cornwell.

"Saru?" Said Lorca.

"Actually, according to Federation Regulation 111.45Δ," said Saru, "a single ship can be under the command of two captains if it is deemed appropriate. In my opinion the rule is rather vague and would benefit from an explication of such appropriate situations."

"Vagaries are where we live!" Said Lorca.

Cornwell just sighed. Saru and Burnham saluted their crew.

They had a party to celebrate Burnham and Saru's promotions. Many cans of beer were replicated. Lorca sat between the two new captains. He did a double take when he saw that Burnham had a can of beer, but it was non-alcoholic. Yana was at a table with some engineers. Anderson and Detmer50 sat in a corner and spoke quietly.

"Looks like he's made a new friend out of an old friend," said Burnham.

"Yeah, our Terran playboy has been doing some growing up," said Lorca.

He looked at the engineers again, intensely feeling the lack of one who used to be in their number. Burnham and Saru guessed what he was thinking.

"We all miss her," said Saru. "She was a hero."

"We're here for you," said Burnham. "We won't send you off alone to some psychiatric facility this time."

"Oh, it wasn't that bad overall," said Lorca. "But the anger management sessions were the worst. I hated that class!"

He accidentally crushed his beer can and it spilled on Saru. They cleaned up and chatted for a while about their adventures and the future. Burnham was a little surprised that Lorca didn't take the admiral job.

"I can't believe you're just going to retire," she said.

"Retire? I'm not old!" Said Lorca. "I'm just taking some time off. I want to pursue the painting career that my jerkoff dad prematurely terminated. And Yana needs a proper parent, one who's there with freshly-baked muffins when she comes home from school."

"I did not know you can bake," said Saru.

Burnham sighed, feeling bad for Yana who had to help Lorca clean up whatever burned mess he created, and deal with his idealistic ideas about home happiness.

People who were not part of Discovery's crew began to leave. Burnham walked Lorca and Yana to the transporters. Lorca shook hands with Saru and hugged Burnham. He looked her in the eyes for a few moments, still with a hand on her shoulders, then turned to leave.

"Gabriel?" She said.

"What is it?" He asked, with a sweet smile.

"Take the fucking Kick Me sign off my back or I swear I will knock you from here to the Terran Universe!"

"Oh, come on! Whoever is bold enough to actually do it should become your new First Officer! That's how I picked my bridge crew."

"That is not true, G—," began Saru, but couldn't bring himself to call Lorca by first name even though he was now a captain.

"You can do it!" Said Lorca. "Say it with me, clearly enunciate the syllables, Ga-bri-el!"

"Anyway, you did not pick your bridge crew by putting a Kick Me sign on your back and waiting for somebody to actually do it!" Said Saru.

Lorca chuckled, took the sign from Burnham, and went home with Yana.[1]

The fall semester was a time of imagination for the two of them. Lorca really did try to bake things, a little, but settled on having a barbeque now and then. He worried about Discovery sometimes, like he used to during the war, but then he remembered that the war was over. It was hard to get used to living on the ground again. Lorca frequently woke up from the rain and thought, There shouldn't be any rain in space! We must be in a nebula, getting pounded by space rocks! Then it hit him that he wasn't in space. The seasons mattered again while the stardate did not. He had to look it up if he needed it for something now.

Painting didn't go too well for Lorca. He didn't feel like taking any classes or watching videos online so his technique did not improve. He colored in his sketches but could not stay within the lines well, and his color mixing needed much improvement. This hardly mattered to him since he burned the paintings as soon as he had a big pile of them. He drew weird stuff, like Timur dressed up as a bride on the seaside, Tyler on the back of a galloping horse, Burnham with flaming red wings and a sword of light, Lorenza in a cave filled with treasure, and many other people he knew in places or outfits that didn't make much sense.

Yana found several of her classes to be rather easy, since she'd already worked on a real starship. The registrar didn't let her skip them so her fall semester was quite chill. She used this time to create the sequel to her anime. Lorca helped and they got the same team to animate the movie and do the voice-over for the characters. Yana thought they should settle on a manga this time, since it was really expensive and Lorca wasn't making any money anymore (also he, like almost all Starfleet officers, refused his salary for the war years even though it was offered to them once the payroll department was back in business).

"It's a beautiful story and deserves to be animated," said Lorca. "This is the Federation; we don't have to worry about money."

"But what if we have to bribe someone?" Asked Yana.

"Good point. We'll blackmail instead!"

"And what if we find out about bad guys doing bad stuff somewhere and need to go rogue and buy a starship to fight them?"

"We'll just steal one!"

"What if we find out about some ancient artifact that opens a secret door or controls the fate of the world but we can only get it at an auction from rich people?"

"Yana, if we really need a ton of money, we'll bust Malek's chops until he gives us some. I know T'Lara left him a fortune."

Thus satisfied with their fiscal (and criminal) future, they worked on the movie, "The Adventure through the Looking Glass." They started in September and finished in January. It came out in April. The story began with Captain Nara, Billy, and some others exploring a frozen planet. Ursula, who wore a very revealing outfit in the first movie that appalled Saru, now donned a form-fitting pink bodysuit like Deanna Troi. Yana made sure Ursula's experiences mirrored those of the real Saru.

One of Saru and Burnham's first adventures was to Kaminar, where Saru went through the process of vaha'rai. Similar to the events in the original "Discovery," but without a giant sphere full of data, Saru faced off against the Ba'ul and was reunited with his sister. When Lorca first heard about this on the phone, he pretended to mishear the part about Saru's ganglia falling out and yelled, "What? Saru's brain fell out?"

So in the movie, Ursula stood in an ice cavern and ran her hand through her hair, behind her ears, in a motion everybody knew and loved from Saru. She took something out from behind her ear and stared at it in surprise.

"Wow, this headpiece has been stuck in my hair for three days!" She said. "I was too scared to pull it out. I thought it would be there forever."

Saru was offended that his struggle with vaha'rai, which he thought was killing him and which kept his entire species in the dark ages, was reduced to a meager joke. Then he was even more offended because Ursula's tail twitched suggestively whenever she looked at a person she found attractive. He didn't talk to Yana for two months. She didn't notice.

The Adventure crew went to sleep in the cavern but Nara got up at night and went to explore a deep ravine. She approached a mirror wall and her reflection came up too, but the mirror Nara did not wear the same blue/pink outfit but a darker purple/black dress. They touched the mirror at the same time and the mirror version, Aran, passed through. She didn't give Nara much time to ponder this but stabbed her with an icicle, which turned Nara into some sort of tiger monster covered in mirror shards like armor.

Aran caused a cave-in, though Nara was too disoriented to move, and ran up to the group. She said she fell in cold pool, went up to the ship to change clothes, and they had to leave already. In some flashbacks it turned out she explored the cave on her side and found a hand mirror that showed her events in the mirror universe, which is how she knew when to assault Nara. Although people noticed that Aran's behavior was different, they thought their captain was just in a bad mood.

Meanwhile, Queen Galadriel and Fireheart went to petition the Association government for help rebuilding their planet. They wanted terraforming technology. The Chancellors of the Association listened to Galadriel's request but refused on the grounds that her planet was not completely destroyed and the technology was really expensive. Chancellor Murit, a man with red horns in a dark outfit, delivered this message. Chancellor Cassiopeia, a woman with wings and a gray suit, recorded.

Galadriel had not expected much from the chancellors anyway.

"I guess we'll have to do things our own way," she told Fireheart. "But first, I want to get another look at that babe Cassiopeia!"

In a rather creepy manner, she (and a reluctant Fireheart) stalked Cassiopeia to her chambers. Along the way, they passed a room where Chancellor Murit yelled at somebody on the phone. They listened in. He yelled about something not being ready on time and kept asking if "they" could be used yet. Murit sensed that somebody was outside and yelled at them not to spy on people. Galadriel asked about his conversation and he told them to buzz off before he threw something at them. Puzzled, they wandered the building until they found Cassiopeia. Galadriel boldly asked her out to dinner. Surprisingly, Cassiopeia agreed. After dinner, which Fireheart attended like a mute chaperone, Galadriel asked to go home with Cassiopeia. Again, the chancellor agreed and Galadriel went to her apartment. Fireheart stayed outside this time.

Instead of making out, though, Cassiopeia attacked Galadriel. The elf queen was not surprised and knocked her unconscious. Galadriel found an electronic implant on the chancellor's head. She took Cassiopeia to the Adventure, hoping Dr. Tabitha would know what this was and if it needed to be removed. Aran went down to sick bay while Tabitha examined the chancellor. Aran called Murit on her hand mirror (which had allowed her to contact him across universes). He told her not to kill them but to tell Galadriel the Association changed its mind. They would terraform her planet but she needed to be down there to pick up the equipment, sign some waivers and authorizations, etc.

Cassiopeia woke up. She did not remember attacking Galadriel or, sadly, any other part of their hot date. She didn't seem to like Galadriel at all. This did not stop the elf queen from hitting on her a lot. Tabitha did not know what the implant was and asked Billy for help. Galadriel didn't like all this, it smelled fishy, but Ursula confirmed that a ship carrying terraforming equipment was headed for Galadriel's planet. Galadriel figured it might be a bribe from Murit to keep her from telling anybody about his conversation so she told Billy and Ursula.

Cassiopeia accompanied her and Fireheart to an empty plain on the planet. A scientist helped them set up the equipment. It did not work and they spent a while fiddling with the equipment. Fireheart pulled Galadriel out of the shuttle to look up at the sky. The Adventure was gone and in its place was an evil-looking, spiky spaceship that resembled a giant fly. The scientist suddenly beamed away somewhere. A bunch of things flew out of the spiky spaceship. At first they seemed to be fighter drones, but as they got closer they were revealed to be giant insects armed with phasers and bombs. Galadriel and the others couldn't get the transporter to work but did put up the shields. The insects fired on them. The shields wouldn't last long.

Back on the Adventure, Billy figured out that Cassiopeia's implant was a mind control device. She guessed Murit was behind it. The Adventure went to warp without getting word from Galadriel. Billy scanned the area and detected a large ship. She collected some friends and they wondered what to do. Should they tell their suspicions to the captain? They had no idea Aran was an imposter and decided that was the right thing to do. Aran just denied their accusations of Chancellor Murit. Confused and unsettled, they returned to their posts.

The shields were almost down on the shuttle. Cassiopeia paced back and forth.

"Why do you need to terraform this place anyway?" She asked. "You're an elf, you should be able to draw power from the earth and bring it back to life."

Galadriel looked down and muttered that she didn't seem to have that strength anymore. Fireheart leaned on a wall, not saying anything.

"What's your power?" Asked Galadriel. "You're an angel or something, can't you rain heavenly fire on these bugs?"

"I'm not an angel, I just have wings. My only power is talking to animals. And before you ask, I already tried. The bugs are genetically engineered and they do not respond to me."[2]

"After they kill us they'll kill the rest of my people. I'll go outside and die fighting. You coming, Fireheart?"

He strung an arrow into his bow and headed for the door.

"Wait, there is one more thing I can do," said Cassiopeia.

She kissed Galadriel.

"If we survive, there's more where that came from," she whispered.

"Fireheart, let's kick bug ass!" Yelled Galadriel.

She ran outside and dropped to the ground while Fireheart defended her with arrows that had always seemed to be regular ones made of wood, but which turned into yellow shafts of energy when they left his bow. He took out a few bugs that way. Galadriel put her hands on the ground and made a face of immense concentration. A ball of green energy came out. She smiled and her eyes glowed green. She held up the ball of energy and shot down all the insects, like it was a bug zapper.

Cassiopeia flew Galadriel up to the spiky ship. It contained vats of goo from which new bugs were already emerging. They tried to find the scientist, ran around, impaled some bugs, and found a giant black and red object with many lobes that controlled the bug generation. They tried to destroy it but it was protected by a shield. Suddenly, Nara appeared. A flashback showed how she got out of the cave, wandered around, ate some fish, and figured out that she could create a shield around herself and fly through space. Galadriel and Cassiopeia faced off against her at first, but she lay down and Cassiopeia understood this was Nara.

Nara created her shield and attacked the controller over and over. She destroyed it but all her mirror shards fell off and revealed a shivering, bleeding animal. Cassiopeia noticed the icicle in Nara's shoulder and pulled it out. Nara turned back into a human. They got some medical supplies and found a shuttle to take back to Earth. Murit had ordered the entire fleet to be grounded for a celebration of the Association's victory over the Klorg a year ago. Nobody knew that more insect ships were approaching.

Cassiopeia piloted the shuttle. Galadriel whispered to Nara, "What do you think? If we live through this, I'm going to hit that. "

Cassiopeia made a face.

They managed to sneak into the government building where Murit organized a big party. They got in touch with Billy, Ursula, and the others who suspected something was up. They went around telling people of the danger but Murit figured out they knew and bugs swarmed into the hall. A lot of fighting, blasting, and explosions ensued. Eventually Nara faced off against Murit. Billy, Galadriel and others found the scientist in a back room and made him take them to an underground lab where he had a large computer controlling the spiky ships.

Murit fought Nara on a stage and grabbed her by the neck. Before he could choke her, Aran shot him dead. Nara reached for a weapon, but it turned out that Aran was not evil. Her methods were somewhat morally challenged, but she was a detective in her universe and when she learned of Murit's plan to take over the Association, she realized the best way to stop him would be to pretend to be evil too. That's why she didn't kill Nara in the first place.

All's well that ends well. Galadriel finally fixed her planet. Cassiopeia did not stay with Galadriel but dumped her after a one night stand. The elf queen realized that if there was one person in the universes who would not reject her, it had to be mirror Galadriel! After the credits a static scene showed Galadriel slamming a wall next to her mirror counterpart and saying, "You. Me. Hot tub. Now!" In the background, Fireheart and his counterpart compared arrow design.

The movie received mixed reviews from the crew of Discovery. While Tilly liked that her character had more action, Burnham still didn't get why Fireheart was just Galadriel's lackey. Stamets wanted to know more about the magic mirror Aran found. Yana said it was, "Just a thing. You know, a magic thing. They show up sometimes. Maybe you'll learn about it in the next story!"[3]

Burnham and Anderson visited Lorca and Yana one warm October day. They sat in the kitchen and chatted about how the Federation was rebuilding and brought up various starship gossip. Burnham brought an ice cream cake that Tilly made. Burnham was still surprised that she could be in the same room with Anderson.

"He's really changed!" She said. "He doesn't make inappropriate advances on anybody anymore, at least, not unless they want it."

"So who wanted it?" Asked Lorca.

"Well, I helped Rhys discover he's bisexual," said Anderson. "Then I helped Sarah find out what she lacked with her first two husbands."

"Who's Sarah?" Asked Yana.

"Dr. Pollard," said Anderson.

Yana and Lorca stared at him incredulously.

"She's actually really nice," said Anderson. "You just need to…I won't say it at the table. But speaking of interpersonal relationships…"

He got up and stood between Yana and Lorca and put a hand around each of their shoulders.

"Which of you wants a piece of me first?" He asked.

Burnham laughed out loud and spat her cranberry juice all over. Yana and Lorca looked anywhere but at Anderson. He laughed and went back to his seat.

"So what's the deal with you and Detmer?" Asked Yana to start a new topic.

"Which one?" Asked Anderson in a suggestive tone.

Burnham smacked him and said, "Don't even think of implying our helmsman is involved with you. She's got better taste than that."[4]

"Detmer and I found some common ground," said Anderson. "We've set up a support group for the Terrans who are truly interested in rehabilitating to this universe. As for the ones who won't be reformed, we're trying to find positions for them too. I think some of them will just leave the Federation and act as mercenaries, guns for hire, that sort of thing. I suspect that's what Captain Tilly is doing."

Burnham asked where the bathroom was. Lorca said to use the one upstairs. A few minutes later, she stomped down the stairs holding his sketchpad from Starbase 5. Ginfas had mailed it to him.

"Why do you have a topless picture of me in your sketchpad?" She demanded.

"Oh…shit…forgot about that," said Lorca. "Why did you go in my room?"

"You left the door open, but never mind that! Let me ask again: why do you have a topless picture of me in your sketchpad?"

"OK, this will be hard to believe, but it wasn't really me that drew it."

He explained how he used to draw pictures with Lorca50 as a therapeutic exercise. Burnham nodded as if she understood, then yelled, "You could have stopped when you realized what you were drawing!"

"Oh, come on, it's harmless!" Said Lorca. "And…and…you sometimes don't seem to realize this but you are a very attractive woman."

"That's it."

Lorca ran just in time as she chased after him. They ran onto the elevated terrace and down into the yard.

"They're totally going to make out," said Anderson. "Just you watch. They couldn't keep their hands off each other in the Terran Universe. It's bound to repeat here."

"It sounds like she just pushed him in the creek," said Yana.

"Yes, but she will have to help him out of the creek. She'll have to take off her jacket to dry him off and you know how that goes."

Burnham quickly came back in her jacket without Lorca.

"OK, then I'll go help him out of the creek," said Anderson.

He went down via the terrace. Burnham passed by the window, looked down into the yard, and shook her head. She glanced at Lorca's latest paintings in the living room. One featured a disgusting, slimy, bulbous black and gray hydra with the heads of Klingons and admirals. The meaning of this one, at least, was not hard to guess. The other painting was coincidentally the only one Lorca did not burn. It showed a woman in a gray robe carrying a book with a picture of a cup or chalice on the cover. She walked along a ravine with darkness down below. All along her path were glowing red and orange flowers. They led to a glittering castle in the distance. The woman's face was turned slightly towards the viewer, enough for people who knew her to identify Shweta Landry.

"How is he doing, besides drawing pornography with me as the subject?" Asked Burnham.

"Actually, drawing nudes is a common art form," said Yana. "And he's fine."

"Doesn't look fine to me," said Burnham, indicating the paintings. Then she added, "If they're not back in five minutes, I'm starting on the cake."

They were not back in five minutes. Burnham took some cake.

"Do you actually want 'a piece' of Anderson?" She asked Yana. "Or are you going to leave him for Gabriel? No matter what you say, it is kind of weird if you both…um…"

Yana just smiled enigmatically, but she and Anderson never picked up their relationship. Not that she was lonely. The Academy was full of smart, driven, energetic, and above all, friendly young people. As Lorca liked to say, "The Academy is the best time to make mistakes, which hopefully don't cost you an arm or a leg."[5]

Although he kept away for a while, Lorca50 was not gone. Lorca ignored him at first but the Terran annoyed him. Lorca50 hung out by the creek, gloomily throwing rocks in the water that made no splash. Or he sat on a bench in the rain, acting as if he was waterlogged and miserable. He looked away whenever Lorca glanced at him.

"He's enjoying this sulking," said Lorca.

"Go talk to him," said Yana. "He won't leave until you do."

"But he's such a shit! I'm tired of the creepy thing that he calls love and all his gross, narcissistic, quasi-incestuous moves on me."

"So tell him to stop. Lay down some ground rules. Besides, maybe his love is creepy and messed up but it's still love, right? On some level. Invite him in, be open and honest, and perhaps you'll kill the devil with kindness."

"Wise words, Yana Lorca, almost as if you'd lived a trillion years. But nothing will work on this one!"

Still, he let the ghost in. Yana listened to the one-sided (to her) conversation.

"No, you can't have your own room!" Said Lorca. "Because you don't need to sleep, you bastard! And you don't take up any space, except in my head. And also, you're not a guest, you're an imposter!"

Lorca liked to get up right before dawn for a cup of coffee and watch the sunrise over the mountains. He sat on the terrace as long as it was warm enough. He let Lorca50 join him every other day. The ghost did not understand this practice.

"It's the same boring thing every day. Why don't you just wake up later, since you don't have a job anymore?"

"The mountains are never the same."

"True, erosion and other forces, as well as biological flux in general, do change them every day, but it's not something your dumb human eyes can perceive!"

"The way I feel every day is different and it changes how I see the mountains."

"Oh, fuck you and statements like that!"

But Lorca50 looked at the mountains a lot after that, almost as much as he looked at Lorca, as if he felt he might solve the riddle of one or both after some contemplation. Lorca sometimes closed his eyes but didn't doze. Lorca50 usually inched closer and "put" his head on the other's shoulder. Lorca tolerated that but sooner or later the ghost put his hand on Lorca's knee.

"Hey! Quit that!" Lorca would say.

"But you can't feel anything."

"And neither can you!"

"But I can pretend. That's all I have now."

As the days shortened Yana got up at dawn too and watched her father talking to his invisible companion on the terrace. She wondered if this would have continued, had Lorenza lived. Perhaps Lorenza would not have recommended being nice to the ghost but would have found some way of nipping this in the bud.

Music also surprised Lorca50. Yana liked to build things for her electronics class while listening to music. Lorca50 listened to a bunch of songs the first time she did this.

"What is this stuff?" He asked. "Where are the 'Hail Federations,' and the lyrics about the exploits of your grand leaders?"

"If they ever make a song about Ichigari I'll kill myself," said Lorca. "But what, you didn't have recreational music in the Terran Empire?"

"We had classical music, which bores me, and propaganda pieces."

"You poor things. Now I see why you are the way you are. You didn't have rock and roll."

He gave Lorca50 a good introduction to post-WWII music that the Terran seemed to really appreciate. Sometimes Lorca even left the audio on overnight because Lorca50 wanted to keep listening, though Lorca still wasn't sure if the ghost existed after he went to sleep.

"So many of these songs feel like they were written for me!" Exclaimed Lorca50. "How is that possible?"

Lorca just shrugged, though he had to admit that Justin Timberlake's "Mirrors" did have some apt lyrics. Lorca50 listened to that one a lot. It took him a bit longer to warm up to "Reflektor," by Arcade Fire, but eventually he couldn't get enough of it.

Malek did not visit until December. He asked Lorca to ask Lorca50 an odd question and then met up with them all on Coney Island. It was blustery but not too cold, though the boardwalk was mostly empty. The sun was hidden behind swiftly-moving clouds. Yana went down to the water to pick up jellies that got washed up on the beach and throw them back in the ocean. Lorca and Malek slowly ambled down the boardwalk. Lorca50 followed them at a distance.

"Do you recognize this?" Malek asked suddenly and showed Lorca a book on his tablet. It was the space erotica Lorca50 had been reading before the attack on Starbase 5.

"I thought you had better taste in literature," said Lorca.

"But did you ever see this book before Terran Lorca showed it to you?"

"No, I'd remember an unrealistically-endowed couple like that. That doesn't mean I didn't glance over it in a bookstore without noting it but maybe my brain still somehow saved the information."

"Maybe. Subliminal messages sometimes work like that. What about the question?"

Malek had asked Lorca to ask Lorca50, "What do you owe Captain Tilly?"

"He just smiled in a mysterious way and said, 'A thing or two,'" said Lorca. "I figured it was some gross sexual favor."

"Considering our Terran friend's flippant attitude toward the matters of this world, it does not surprise me that he considers his own life to be just 'a thing or two.'"

Malek finally told Lorca about his experience with Captain Tilly. Lorca laughed until it hurt. Lorca hadn't even known the story about the pig named Gabe. He kept chuckling while Malek explained that he believed Lorca50 was real.

"Maybe you never saw that book at all. He showed it to you for the first time and it turned out to be a real book. And his answer to my question could be typical equivocation, but you did not know that Tilly saved his life. I think this is some evidence for his existence external to your mind. Vulcans believe in the reality of a soul and perhaps when he died right next to you in the Terran Universe, his soul became attached to yours since you have the same DNA."

"Oh god!" Said Lorca. "Will he be with me for the rest of my life?"

"Get used to it, bitch!" Yelled Lorca50. "And while you're at it, thank this Vulcan for me. He's the first to truly believe in me and I never thought I'd say this of a Vulcan but for him I would…"

"He just said he'd do something inappropriate for you as thanks for believing in him," said Lorca. "Take it as a compliment."

"Actually, I wanted to discuss something with you in private. Can you make him leave?"

"If I could make him leave, don't you think I'd do it already?!"

"He's treating me like a real person," said Lorca50. "I'm so touched."

"An unwanted person!" Snapped Lorca.

"Gabriel, will you go to the end of the boardwalk while I talk to him?" Asked Malek.

"Wait, which one?" Asked both Lorcas.

Malek explained and Lorca, shaking his head, went to the end of the boardwalk that jutted out into the ocean. He looked back at Malek talking to an empty spot. He could not hear what the Vulcan was saying, but Lorca50 pointed at Malek, then slowly pointed at Lorca, then laughed so hard he doubled over. Then he vanished. Malek walked over to Lorca.

"What did he do?" He asked.

Lorca described Lorca50's actions.

"That makes sense," said Malek. Instead of elaborating further he said, "I'm sure you heard, but Renalle died two weeks ago."

"Yeah," said Lorca, drawing out the word. "Sucks. I'm sorry."

"He was nearly 300 years old. It's incredible that he still had the strength to teach you Vulcan martial arts. Mother's death really saddened and fatigued him. I wanted to be with him in the hospital but he said I had a job to do that was more important than sitting with a sick, dying old person. As you can imagine, he didn't express a single emotional thought until his last breath. And yet, he left me a letter explaining how to properly polish the silverware and that I should be my own person. It was just that one line, 'Be your own person,' at the end of a long list of how to take care of things in the house. I suspect it was very hard for him to write that."

They watched a fisherman, who seemed to have appeared from centuries ago, pull out a net sack with some crabs in it. One of the crabs escaped the net but the fisherman snatched it before it could fall off the boardwalk.

"I do not want to die like my mother," said Malek. "I do not mean murdered by a logic extremist, that fate might well befall me, I mean, rather, that I do not want to die without ever having expressed what I feel to others. I do not want to push people away to uphold some logical but empty idea about deriving strength from aloofness."

"So what, you want to live it up?" Asked Lorca. "Want to have a night on the town?"

Malek leaned on the railing and looked out to sea, silent.

"You do realize that in order to express what you feel to others, you've got to feel something in the first place?" Said Lorca.

Malek still didn't respond so Lorca nudged him a little and said, "Hey, I'm kidding. Don't get on your high horse. You feel things. I think."

Neither of them said anything for a while. The fisherman pulled up a few more nets, but only the first had a lucky catch. He checked some fishing rods but they too were failures. One had a fish so small that he threw it back in the water. Lorca thought it was getting too cold and then wondered what they'd have for dinner and a bunch of other stuff.

"Your eyes seem to be the same color as the ocean," Malek suddenly said.

It was preposterous for a Vulcan to make a useless comparison. Lorca tried to figure it out. Malek kissed him. Surprised, Lorca pulled away.

"What the hell was that?" He asked.

Malek just got very red and looked away.

"Oh, so you think that because we were a couple in the past we can just pick up where we left off?" Said Lorca. "Huh? Or is it because you think I'm easy to get?"

"You…I…," stuttered Malek.

"Do you really have feelings for me or am I some sort of experiment? You just figured I'd be the least likely to turn you down while you try to understand yourself. Well?"

"No, you're not an experiment! You are my best friend."

"Hmm…I guess I am pretty easy to get."

Having given Malek a hard time he felt was required, Lorca returned the kiss. Yana watched them as she approached down the boardwalk. Perhaps, for a moment, the spirit of T'Lara passed through her, for she said out loud, "This again." But when she reached them, she saw that Lorca looked really happy, had allowed himself to feel happy, so she felt happy too. They walked back toward the amusement park and the transporter station.

"So what did you tell Terran Lorca?" Asked Lorca.

"I said I am romantically interested in you," said Malek. "Judging by your surprise, you had no idea. Hence, Terran Lorca's reaction of hilarity could be further proof for his existence."

"Yeah, I was surprised, but maybe on some level I suspected something like that. Or, I don't know, I laugh at you a lot. My brain could have just picked that as a likely reaction for Terran Lorca no matter what you said."

After they had walked some more, Lorca suddenly shook Malek by the shoulders and said, "Isn't it your birthday in a month? Can you believe it, you might actually lose your virginity before you turn 50!"

A random passerby turned around upon hearing this, but when he saw that the 50-year-old in question was a Vulcan, he thought, Ah, that explains it! Even seems a bit early for one of them.

One day after the holidays, Yana sweetly asked Lorca if he could make himself scarce for two weeks because she wanted to have some friends over for skiing, hiking, and raucous merry-making. He pretended to be pissed for all of two minutes, then told her "not to do anything he wouldn't do," and bogged off to Vulcan to help Malek move into his new apartment.

The house, with its gloomy memories of T'Lara, Renalle, and a lonely childhood, depressed Malek and he sold it. He felt bad about ignoring Renalle's injunctions about the silverware, since he gave most of it away to distant relatives. Lorca broke several Vulcan family heirlooms carrying them downstairs and Malek, trying to live according to his new creed, freely gave vent to his emotions and called his friend "a clumsy dunderhead" in an elevated voice. It felt really good. Then he broke some too because he still had two left feet and Lorca emphatically called him a hypocrite. They sat on the stairs and laughter filled the hall of that house for the first time in 600 years, and probably the last, since the family that bought it did not care for casual displays of mirth.

Malek gave some paper physics and astronomy textbooks to Sarek (more as keepsakes than for the information they contained) and as a token of gratitude, Sarek invited them to lunch. Lorca protested that Sarek just wanted to be condescending but Malek accepted and they went to a restaurant. Amanda came too. Lorca remembered their last rendezvous and could barely suppress a chuckle. They talked about Burnham's promotion. Amanda and Lorca expressed pride at her achievements but Sarek seemed dissatisfied about something regarding this matter. Not that he was ever satisfied about anything, except maybe a mathematical proof. He changed the topic and confronted Malek.

"Is it true that you have forsaken the path of logic?" He asked.

"It sounds pretty bad when you put it like that," said Lorca.

"I did not ask you," said Sarek.

"I believe there is a way to combine the Vulcan way of life with the freer, more open proclivities of humans," said Malek. "My mother, though she did not respect humans, nevertheless understood their value to our affairs."

"I have heard this argument many times," said Sarek. "In my opinion, it is simply an acknowledgement of weakness. There is no halfway point. You either renounce the way of logic or you embrace it. By wavering and vaguely circumscribing some sort of compromise between the two that does not exist, you merely embarrass yourself."

"That coming from a fellow who married a human," said Lorca.

"A human cannot be expected to understand," said Sarek. "On this topic as well, Malek, I am disappointed. Why, of all humans, did you have to choose one who is so uncouth and gregarious?"

Lorca had never thought "gregarious" was an insult, but Sarek sure made it sound like one. He then revealed that he was displeased with Burnham's promotion because Lorca was the one who granted it. Sarek did not think she had been ready for it and Lorca's judgement could hardly be considered logical.

The argument continued for a while.[6] Malek and Sarek started bringing up various Vulcan philosophers. Amanda said nothing. Lorca got very annoyed. He thought there were two possible endings to this meeting: 1. He smashed his kale yogurt into Sarek's face. 2. He shoved the kale yogurt down the back of Sarek's shirt. He didn't even like kale yogurt.

Amanda glanced at him momentarily and he remembered that he had upset her last time. Besides, weaponizing a kale yogurt would only reconfirm Sarek's judgments about his uncouth nature. Lorca checked his communicator, said he needed to make a call, and left. He went back to Malek's apartment and replicated a cheeseburger, which he ate on the balcony to keep Ragsy from feeling envious. Malek showed up an hour later.

"So who won the argument?" Asked Lorca.

"I don't even know!" Said Malek. "I suppose he did, but I don't care."

Lorca saw that he had a message from Amanda, which simply said, "Thank you."

She must have noticed the way he looked at the kale yogurt.

Before going back to Earth, Lorca told Malek to be bold and adventurous.

"Ask some people out, get to know them. I'm sure Anderson won't say no! In fact, we should all get together some day. Then maybe try…I don't know…Emilia! Yeah, she's not into me that way but you might have a shot."

Malek did not know what to say about the suggestion of a threesome and just ignored it. He did show up in Sully's office one day with flowers but she snapped at him.

"I just stopped receiving stupid love messages from Osgood! I don't need you to pick up the slack!"[7]

For the spring semester, some administrator at the Academy who didn't get out much or know anything about anybody decided it would be a good idea to have Lorca teach a class on "Warfare in the Age of Intergalactic Travel." Curious to see what the 'ol Academy was like currently, Lorca accepted. When a few old professors he had back in his day heard that he was coming to teach, they went on sabbatical or retired.

Lorca couldn't find the room on his first day of class and was late 20 minutes, which didn't affect the content of his lecture much since it was about Dr. Who. He gave a quiz on this material in the next class. One student complained that quizzes on entertainment topics provided an unfair advantage for students who slacked off and watched TV.

"You know what else is unfair?" Asked Lorca.

"Life in general?" Asked the complaining student.

"Sure, sure, also the fact that you got 17/20 questions right but I'm giving you a 0."

At first, the class thought Lorca was seriously drawing comparisons between the battles in Dr. Who (and later the Avengers movies, Stargate SG1, etc.) and events during the Klingon War, which is why they didn't drop out. Then, after the add/drop deadline, they realized Lorca just didn't feel like teaching the topic he was assigned or doing much work for the class at all. Most of them complained. Lorca received a reprimand from a dean. After that, he read dull lecture notes he found from similar classes he took years ago, though as time went by, he did make additions to the material.

One of Yana's friends from the winter vacation often stayed over with her on the weekend. This student, Sophia, took Lorca's class. She thought he was quite funny but she felt that Yana worried about him too much.

"He's your parent, not the other way around," she once said while they sat on the terrace.

"He's been through a lot of traumatic events," said Yana.

"Then he needs to see a therapist. You can't just stay home whenever you think he's feeling down in the dumps."

Yana guiltily thought of the entire day of classes she missed last week because Lorca seemed really depressed. She took him down to the village and they had a wonderful time but she missed a quiz and didn't give in her electronic device homework by the deadline.

"Hypothetical scenario," said Sophia. "What if I finally got tickets to a concert we've really wanted to go to and the day of, your father was really upset? Would you go with me and let somebody else deal with him?"

"Yes…but I'd worry about him. Maybe you could get a ticket for him too?"

"You're hopeless, though it's kind of cute how close you are to a father you only met when you were 23."

Yana wondered if she should tell Sophia the truth someday. Before starting at the Academy, Cornwell created a fake history for Yana because the admirals didn't think letting everybody know she was from some magical Y Interface was a good idea. People thought she really was Lorca's biological daughter, from some brief dalliance in college that he didn't remember (surprising that this hadn't happened for real yet). Her "mother" died at the beginning of the war.

Sophia could tell Yana was pondering something and let her take her time. She began to plait Yana's hair as a few snowflakes fell from a leaden sky. Yana didn't say anything.

"So…," said Sophia, "do you think your father has graded the term papers yet?"

Yana burst out laughing so hard that she spat on the table.

By spring, Lorca had begun to think that disasters were through with him and things would proceed in a normal, sluggish, workaday manner. But then he saw Anderson and Detmer50 sitting outside his house one day when he returned from town. He'd been hearing odd reports about Anderson, Detmer, and the Glenn, such that he felt uneasy about it a while ago. He invited them in. He asked them to wait for Yana to come home in a few minutes. They did but they didn't chat much while they waited.

Yana showed up and helped set out some food for the guests. She could tell Lorca was troubled by their presence.

"We haven't heard from you in months, Tom," she finally said. "What's going on?"

Anderson revealed his and Detmer's plan. They were going back to the Terran Universe in the Glenn, along with about twenty Terrans and a handful of Federation officers who decided rebuilding the Terran Empire was a worthy cause. It would be a one-way trip. Since they could not expect the Terrans to be friendly, they set up a self-destruct sequence in the spore drive, its peripheral systems, and all its associated data archives. They couldn't risk Terrans getting their hands on such powerful technology and potentially reaching the Federation.

"Are you insane?" Said Lorca. "This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard! Who's putting you up to it, the admirals? I'm going to give them a piece of my mind!"

But Lorca knew it wasn't the admirals. He'd noticed something off about Anderson months ago, and they had hardly talked since that day he visited with Burnham.

"We thought you might respond this way," said Anderson, "so we waited to tell you until the last minute."

"You just didn't want to give me time to talk you out of it," said Lorca. "Tom, this is ridiculous! They'll eat you alive over there, if they haven't blown themselves up yet. Be preferable if they have."

"Gabriel, those people never had the opportunities you have here," said Anderson. "They live in darkness. The civilians are basically slaves whose only hope of escape is the Fleet or administration, if they pass the intelligence exams. Not that the Fleet is any salvation! Just look at the sort of person I was. You didn't respect me when I first arrived on Starbase 5. I wanted to die when it finally hit me that I was a shameful, wretched monster. Now Detmer and I have found a higher calling."

"Tom…no, this isn't…let's go outside," said Lorca.

Detmer didn't say much during the visit. Yana didn't know how to handle the situation and asked her topical questions about Discovery's recent voyages, but Detmer and Anderson had mostly been on the Glenn since early winter.

"I understand what you're going through," said Lorca outside. "I really do. Everybody has a time in their life when they realize they're failures or bad people. But you can't just decide to martyr yourself for this! We have to keep going."

"That's what I'm doing. We don't know what happened in the Terran Universe after the spore power generator exploded. Maybe the Empire fell apart and split into factions. I'm certain Admiral Lorenza took advantage of the confusion. But that's not the point! Those are humans in need and we can't let them suffer. Having seen the Federation and how ordinary people, not just Starfleet officers, are provided for and how well resources are managed, I can't sit by and let my home destroy itself. If I can be changed, then so can they."

"But Tom, they'll just kill you. Really, they will. I know you feel guilty about the Klingon babies and all the other species you played a part in persecuting, but it's in the past. You were a different person, not yourself, and you don't need to die for it! To make up for your wrongs you don't need to become a martyr, you just have to live a good life from now on. Remember, you just wanted to do science and screw around. Those are both admirable goals that make many people happy. What's wrong with that now?"

But Anderson spoke with the coldblooded, unceasing conviction of a zealot as he repeated that the Terran Empire must not be abandoned. Lorca took his hands, feeling desperate, and begged him not to go.

"Please Tom, let history run its course! There will always be bloody empires but eventually they fall. We've just gotten out of one war, barely intact, stay here and help us hold it together. Stay…stay for me! I couldn't bear to lose another friend!"

"This is why I avoided telling you for so long and also the main reason why I must go. Your friendship is very important to me. You helped me see how things really are. You've taught me more about kindness and love than anybody else. So I have to, can't you see that I have to, bring this knowledge to those who have no hope of finding it on their own."

He pulled out of Lorca's grip and went back inside. Detmer shook Yana's hand and the two Terrans beamed up to the Glenn without any more emotional goodbyes.

Yana and Lorca were so out of the loop that they didn't even know Discovery's spore drive was going to be removed. Not that it was common knowledge. Civilians didn't really know about the spore drive, they only knew that some advanced technology helped win the war. The admirals decided the spore drive-propelled ships were too tempting to keep around. This decision was largely spurred on by F'Rog. An assassination attempt on his life ended any hope of quickly and easily assimilating the Klingons into the Federation. He had expected it. He also expected insurgents (likely loyalists of L'Rell, Kol, Silrek and/or Hurgh'hov) to attack and try to steal Discovery or the Glenn. The technology that ended one war might start another, only this time it would be in the hands of the enemy.

Anderson and Detmer50 leaped at the opportunity to take the Glenn. The admirals were well-aware of their plan to rehabilitate the Terran Empire (or martyr themselves). Until the decision to terminate the spore drives, the plan had been to jump to the Terran Universe, release a shuttle with those who intended to stay, and jump back. It was risky because Terrans might be waiting on the other side to grab them.

As it was, the Glenn left in early May and Discovery's spore drive was removed and destroyed a few weeks later. It was a hard decision to cast off something as useful as the spore drive, and perhaps only possible in the Federation.

Everybody expected some nonsense for Lorca's last class of the semester, maybe a Dr. Who-themed game. Instead he showed them videos from the Battle of the Binary Stars and spoke in a detached manner about the issues he encountered and how he didn't overcome them. He scrolled through photos and biographies of his former crew, mentioning their awards or accomplishments. He stopped at Shweta Landry's photo for a moment.

"She wrote a 500-page Harry Potter fanfiction. It took place in the future and described how the wizarding world continued to evade muggle notice as technology became more advanced. She was going to write a second one about the Vulcan equivalent of Hogwarts."

He stared off into space for a moment and finally said, "I was really looking forward to reading it."

Then he changed topics to the last battle of the Klingon War. He didn't mention the spore drives since he wasn't supposed to but he described the web devices and how Lorenza and Yana moved from ship to ship, dismantling them. He put up a photo of Lorenza but instead of a bio, he included a quote from Georgiou's log, a month after Lorenza joined her crew.

"I do not believe Lieutenant Lupe Lorenza is happy on this ship. She is much changed from the person described to me by her former captain. She does not like teamwork and spends most of her free time alone. I would send her home only I sympathize with her suffering and I believe my crew will help her find solace."

Again Lorca looked over the students' heads for a few moments, then said, "I don't think she ever did find solace. She worked better in teams and made friends, but I don't think she ever accepted that she had a future. Her life ended when her family died. I don't think believing in the future would have saved her in the end, though. In fact, it would probably have made her ultimate decision harder."

The class had ended 40 minutes ago. Nobody left, though they had other classes. Lorca looked at the time and chuckled.

"You shouldn't have let me ramble on," he said. "This didn't teach you anything, now did it? I didn't teach you anything."

Subdued, the class filed out. Though they got credit for the class, the grades were canceled by the registrar because Lorca hadn't graded most of the assignments and doled out As and Fs based on what he thought of the person. Sophia was the only one who got an A. The person who originally asked Lorca to teach a class was relegated to archive management.

Lorca continued to look at a photo of the Buran on the screen after most people left. Sophia asked if he wanted to teach the class next year.

"There are no second chances," he said.

For some, though, there were. A week after the class ended, Lorca went up to Starbase 1 to do finish up some administrative tasks from when he was captain. When he was done, we went to get a drink at a bar. As he read the names of drinks from off of a retro blackboard, somebody tapped him on the shoulder.

"Sooze!" He exclaimed as he turned around.

His former Chief Analyst nodded, then shrugged.

"I recommend the one called 'Alien Tentacles Down My Throat,'" she said.

Lorca was flabbergasted and got the drink, which tasted so vile that his throat really didn't want to accept it (Sooze guzzled down hers in three sips). They sat by a window and Sooze told her story, in few words, but still, it was more than she used to say on the Buran in a week.

"Same thing happened to me as to you. I was injured and put in an escape pod, only Klingons got me. Spent most of the war in that tomb ship."

Lorca thought of the brutal treatment prisoners received on that ship and, either influenced by the drink or being his usual volatile self, took Sooze by the hands and cried, "Oh no, it should have been me!"

"It shouldn't have been anybody," she said.

Sooze had never been one for small talk, hand-holding, or shoulder-patting, but she did all that to comfort Lorca and try to keep people from looking their way. She thought he was about to calm down but he looked down at her chair.

"Where's your tail?" He asked.

Sooze shrugged and grumbled something.

"They cut off your tail?" Yelled Lorca.

Finally he settled down and Sooze told him about her future plans to return home and start a family with a guy she'd met at the end of the war, another refugee.

"How?" Said Lorca. "After what happened to you? What if it happens again? You'll have children to worry about."

"If you could have the Buran back, wouldn't you take it, even if shit might happen again?" Said Sooze.

They walked to the transporters. Sooze let Lorca talk about his adventures and didn't say anything except for a grunt of a goodbye when they parted, though she did let him hug her one more time.

One day in June, while Yana was on Hawaii with her friends, Lorca woke up rather late for him and tried to remember if he'd been dreaming of something worthwhile. Then he noticed the odd new addition to his room; a pole. He sat up and stared as an Orion woman walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a black bikini with ribbons and beads on strings and started to dance around the pole.

Either he was still dreaming, or there was an intruder in his house, or…

"Lorca, what the hell?"

Lorca50 spun around the pole and said, "I want to cheer you up! I suddenly realized that maybe you're uncomfortable with me because I look like you. I don't actually care how I look so I picked a killer body for you, killer in more ways than one."

He hooked a leg around the top part of the pole and hung upside-down, letting his auburn hair brush the floor. Lorca just continued to stare at this display with surprise and disgust.

"Come on, put some imaginary bills in my panties," said Lorca50. "Don't use real ones because they'll fall to the floor."

"I…I don't have any real bills. But wait, this is stupid! Get this thing out of my room and put some clothes on! Better yet, go away!"

"Don't you want to know whose body I borrowed? She's a kick-ass Orion pirate named Ossyra who just robbed a Klingon bank, taking advantage of their slapstick security since the war ended."

"I don't care whose body that is! Just cover it up with something."

"You. Are. No. Fun. Why are you so no fun?"

Lorca got up to put on a jacket and ignored the sexy ghost. Then he thought of the question he'd just been asked, sighed, and sat back on the bed. The Orion pirate sat next to him, suddenly clothed in a floral-printed outfit with his hands demurely folded on his lap.

"Is it Anderson?" Asked Lorca50. "Are you still sad that he went soft in the head and left on a lost cause?"

"I'm sad about a lot of things. You wouldn't understand. Why do you even ask?"

"True, I don't understand. I don't get why you keep grieving for people who are dead and gone or why you get upset that I don't share your beliefs. If you were to die now, and I remain, I wouldn't mourn you for long."

"You seemed rather upset when you first told me you loved me and I rejected you."

"Oh, I had only started to figure out this thing you call love back then. You caught me by surprise. I understand it very well now."

"You understand love? Thousands of writers and philosophers much wiser than you have barely scraped the surface but you, you floozy, you understand it?"

"I have the benefit of coming from a place where there isn't much of it. See, you attach higher meaning to love that isn't really there. I see that love is just like the other pleasures in life; transient. It makes you feel good, like eating a well-baked cake. Life is meant to be enjoyed and it makes little sense to be sad when the cake is done or the object of your love is gone. Just find another cake!"

"You disgust me!"

Lorca50 strolled back to his pole and hugged it to his chest while letting one thickly-padded shoulder of his pink blazer slip down.

"Forget about Anderson and Lorenza and all the others," he said. "You'll make yourself ill and then life is hardly worth living."

"Why has my brain created you?" Wondered Lorca aloud. "Can't I work through my issues like everyone else—with alcohol?"

Lorca50 took off the blazer while rolling his head around and let it drop to the floor. He climbed up the pole and somehow contrived to take his skirt off near the ceiling.

"You've put me off breakfast," said Lorca. "This display would probably have cheered me up, if it wasn't you. I can't believe there was a time I felt bad about your death. You've proven yourself to be an incorrigible scoundrel who's never done anything good for anybody."

"That's not true! I died for you, didn't I?"

"We've been over this already. Your reasons for that did not do justice to your character."

"I've done good things! Really! Um…I saved Ash Tyler from being tortured."

"Only so he could be your loyal errand boy and potential cannon fodder."

"I also saved Northwood from being thrown out of an airlock! It was about a year before you showed up and her drug addiction made her neglect her duties. Luckily I was around when Tilly decided to eject her and asked her to let poor Northwood be. She was just trying to derive some enjoyment out of this wretched life. If I were a different sort of person, less of an egotist, I might have followed the same path. But I liked myself too much to succumb to that blissful intoxication."

"I find this hard to believe, that you saved Northwood without an ulterior motive."

"Cross my heart and hope to die…again. I even knew Detmer had a silly infatuation with Northwood. She was there by the airlock, trying desperately to choose between love and self-interest. Of course, if she had tried to save Northwood, Tilly would have thrown her out too."

"How did you know Detmer was in love with Northwood?"

"We once had this awkward three-way…"

"Why did I ask?"

Lorca50 was again down to his (her) underwear. He slowly licked the pole. Lorca went downstairs without another word. He still didn't feel like breakfast so he went for a run, hoping that would bring back his appetite. It did and he went into the small town of Wynding Way. He entered one of the cafés, where everyone knew him, and settled down to eat, watch the news, and look at people outside. Some children with a big dog caught his attention but then he heard something about an Orion pirate and looked at the screen by the register.

Huh, there was the exact same story that Lorca50 made up about the Orion he chose to impersonate.[8] Now, where could Lorca have heard this story before? It was breaking news and…he hadn't watched the news in days. Not only that, nobody had ever heard of Ossyra until today. People later found out her father kept her out of sight until she killed him.

Despite Malek's logical hypotheses, Lorca had basically decided Lorca50 was not real. No, not real, just something Lorca's sick mind made up to deal with trauma. But now...it started to dawn on him.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no-o-o-o-o! This could not be! How did Lorca50 know? Why, that must mean…but no, it was too terrible! Lorca needed more confirmation. He called Malek, who was pretty busy, and demanded the Vulcan find out if Tilly really had tried to throw Northwood out of an airlock.

"No, Ragsy, don't eat that!" Said Malek. "Do you really need this now, Gabriel? I have to log into the secure server to get Tilly's captain's log and I have a meeting in ten minutes."

"I need it now!" Yelled Lorca. People looked his way in surprise.

Malek sighed and logged into the necessary files. After a few painstaking minutes, he said, "Yes, here it is, 'a minor incident concerning useless Northwood occurred today. I was about to send her off to a well-deserved cold nap when Lorca prevented me. His contrary behavior seriously vexes me sometimes.' It happened about eleven months before Discovery entered their universe. I suppose it does not mention an airlock but I do not see what else she could mean by a 'cold nap.' Gabriel?"

Lorca dropped his communicator without hanging up. Malek kept calling out to him but Lorca didn't care. No, this was unbelievable, it was ridiculous, it was just intolerable!

Lorca50 was not a hallucination.

He was real.

Yana was playing beach volleyball when Malek called her and said Lorca was in a bad way. She apologized to Sophia and the others and ran for the nearest transporter without picking up her stuff. Thus she came home a few hours later still with some sand on her clothes.

Lorca sat in an armchair in the living room and looked gloomily at one of his own watercolors of a vase of peonies. It wasn't very good. Malek (who canceled his meeting) led Yana onto the terrace and told her what happened.

"Is Lorca50 here at the moment?" Asked Yana.

"Why fifty?" Asked Malek.

"That's just the number of his universe. It's not important."

"He hasn't shown up yet but your father is very nervous about seeing him now."

Yana went back in and sat next to Lorca in the armchair.

"It's OK," she said. "We'll get through this."

"How will we get through this?" Said Lorca. "People get through illnesses, or bereavements, or arduous and dangerous tasks. He's going to be with me for the rest of my life! Him, a foul, disgusting murderer who constantly argues with me about everything! I can't deal with him, I really can't!"

Malek lingered by his side and finally asked, "May I? I want to see if I can detect him."

Lorca nodded and Malek took his hand. For a while he puzzled over Lorca's memories of the "hallucination" but finally concluded that he couldn't actually feel a "foul, disgusting murderer" in Lorca's psyche. He could only feel Lorca's reactions to the ghost. Whatever Lorca50 was, his existence was tied to but external to Lorca.

"Why did he equivocate about the matter of his existence for so long?" Asked Malek. "It would be relatively easy to prove, like I've tried to do already."

Lorca continued to hold Malek's hand with his eyes closed. Eventually he looked toward the door and said, "He was just screwing with me. Weren't you?"

Lorca50, in his usual form, said, "More or less. But today it felt right to let the cat out of the bag!"

Malek turned to a space that was empty to him and said, "Captain Lorca, I seriously reprimand your behavior. This is no way to treat a person on whom your existence probably depends. We need to understand whatever phenomenon trapped you here."

Lorca50 walked over to Malek and played with one of his ears, which the Vulcan obviously did not feel.

"You know, Gabe," said Lorca50, "you said we argue about everything, but I'm going to make a concession. You are right about the xenophobia. Other races are not inferior to humans and Terrans only persecute them out of fear, greed, and boredom. If I were to return to the Terran Empire I'd keep doing it anyhow, because that's the game we play there, but I admit xenophobia is intrinsically misguided. I mean, just look at this guy, he's so cute! I can't believe you're sleeping together!"

Lorca pointed a shaky finger at Lorca50 and said, "He's…he's got you by the…"

"Oh, I'm sure," said Malek, and moved through the ghost to the other side of the room.

"Captain Lorca," he continued. "I would like some proof of your existence other than stories. I know you have a scientific background and would appreciate an experiment. I am going to place a tablet in the shed outside with a picture on the screen. Will you tell Gabriel what it is?"

Lorca50 consented and followed Malek to the shed. Then they came back. Lorca50 told Lorca what the image was. He always got it right. After four rounds of this, Lorca50 got peeved.

"I think we've established I'm real!" He snapped. "If he's going to keep showing me pictures, he has to make it worth my while. Enough teddy bears and puppies! At least show me an eggplant emoji!"

Lorca put his head on Yana's shoulder and groaned. Malek questioned Lorca50, through Lorca, about the nature of his existence.

With many pauses for inappropriate comments and other nonsense, Lorca50 described how he woke up one day after his death in a hospital room on Starbase 5. He thought he was alive until he fell through the floor and into the void of space but smacked against an invisible barrier. He discovered that he was attached to Lorca by a "leash" of a kilometer. He could not read Lorca's mind or anyone else's. He could not see through objects, he had to go through them, fly over, or teleport to find out what was on the other side. As we've already seen, he could perform all manner of manipulations on "himself," but he didn't feel pain or, unfortunately, physical pleasure. He could not access electronic data. Hence, he never read the space erotica he showed Lorca, he just saw the cover in a nurse's room. He could "go to sleep" and he often did this when Lorca used transporters, for then he got jerked around in a confusing manner he still hadn't resolved. He'd been asleep during the entire battle with Hurgh'hov.

Lorca looked rather ill after all this. Yana went to make some tea.

"I know that issues of life after death seem religious," said Malek, "but you must not consider this some sort of punishment. I am sure there is a reasonable and scientific explanation for Lorca50's presence. Yana, don't you know anything that could have caused this?"

She put the tray of tea on the table and said, "I can tell you the formula governing the separation between the two universes, but a did not pay much attention to its effects on the residents of those universes."

Lorca drew in a deep breath and asked if Stamets could help, since maybe Lorca50's presence had something to do with all their spore drive jumps.

"Perhaps he may have some theories," said Malek, "but you must tell as few people as possible about Lorca50. Others may feel uncomfortable around you if they know that you, through him, can see through walls. It is a matter of security. If our enemies, like the Orion pirate for example, find out somehow, they might kidnap you to try and make you spy for them."

"Oh, he wouldn't follow orders for so long!" Said Lorca.

"Our enemies don't know or care about that. You may tell Stamets, Burnham, and Saru, but I recommend no one else."

"I am totally down for spying on people and stealing government secrets," said Lorca50. "It's been so dull since you moved here! At least at the hospital, I could watch a half dozen medical dramas enfolding all around me. Here, I snuck into your neighbor's bedroom one day. Let me tell you, what they consider sex really isn't."

"Spare me the details," said Lorca.

"What details?" Said Lorca50. "Seriously, you must pay them a visit and show them how it's done."

Malek wanted Yana to tell him the formula for the separation of the universes. They bent over a tablet in the kitchen. Lorca vaguely listened to Malek exclaim that in over a hundred years, the universes would be close enough to move from one to the other using a modified transporter. But then the universes would move farther and farther away in multi-dimensional space.

Lorca50 perched on the armrest of Lorca's chair and said, "Look, this may be hard for you to believe, but it does not behoove me to make you miserable. I know we argue a lot and I find it rather tedious too so let's make a deal. Like I've told you several times, life is only about the 3Fs: fighting, feeding, and fornicating. I enjoy screwing with people too but that can be classified under the first F. In general, except for that, I can just barely experience the third F, if I use my imagination very hard. So, here's my proposition. I will go to sleep for the entire month except for one day when you and I…"

He whispered in Lorca's ear. Lorca sighed.

"You promise you won't bother me the rest of the month if I play this game with you on just one day?" He asked.

"I promise! I mean, you're so boring. Just…just look at this."

Lorca50 indicated a pair of binoculars that Lorca used for bird watching and a paper copy of the fourth volume in Karl Ove Knausgård's My Struggle. Yana and Lorca were in a race to see who could finish it first. Lorca was ahead by one book.

"Fine, I accept," said Lorca.

Lorca50 suddenly loomed over him threateningly and said, "But if you dare go to something fun, like a party or strip club without calling me, I swear to the devil I will find some way to murder you, if it kills me too!"

He stepped back with a sweet smile and said, "Oh, and you have to come up with a pet name for me. It can't be from Dr. Who."

"I think I know just the name. It's from a book I suspect even you have read, since it contains a lot of fighting and fornicating, and considering your recent penchant for turning into women…"

Lorca whispered the name to Lorca50, who chuckled and blew him a kiss, then vanished.

Summer passed. Largely freed from the irritating and irritable Terran, Lorca enjoyed himself. After the initial shock of discovering the ghost was real wore off, Lorca had to admit he was relieved it was not his own deranged mind coming up with these things. As for that one day of the month…well, he didn't mind that much. After all, it wasn't "real."

In October, Yana wanted to learn horseback riding so they went to a nearby riding school. Lorca knew enough about it to teach her himself and they rented a horse. He taught Yana to brush and feed the horse, take care of the saddle, etc.

"Her nose is so soft!" Said Yana.

They led the horse outside. Yana climbed on and Lorca walked her around a corral. They waved at some acquaintances in a nearby corral.

"When do you think I'll be good enough to do jumps?" Asked Yana.

"What jumps? The spore drive was destroyed," joked Lorca.

After the lesson they sat at a picnic table outside the corral for lunch. A riding instructor joined them and Lorca bragged about Yana's accomplishments at the Academy.

"She's going to be captain, I'm sure of it!" He said. "I can see it now, another Captain Lorca, but one who's much wiser and smarter than her old man."

Yana smiled and thought sadly that she didn't really want to be captain but since Lorca wished this for her, she'd try. She, like so many other children, saw no way out of her parent's self-aggrandizing dreams.

"If you got a brand new ship as captain, what would you name it?" Asked the riding instructor.

"Of course you'd name it the Adventure, right?" Said Lorca.

"Of course," said Yana.

Footnotes

[1] Burnham and Saru did not remain joint captains. It was too confusing. They kept it up for about four months to placate Lorca, then had a long talk with each other and Burnham continued on as Saru's First Officer.

[2] Cassiopeia is Malek's anime alter ego, of course.

[3] While both movies were monetized and available to the public, they were witheringly unpopular at the time. About 150 years later, they suddenly turned into cult classics and finally overcame the cost of their production. By then the proceeds all went to the philanthropic society that F'Rog and Timur founded.

[4] Detmer51 and Detmer50 became close friends, such that Detmer51 even took her counterpart's advice and attached one tiny rhinestone to her eyepiece, like a glittering tear that was only noticed from certain angles. Confusion about the names urged Detmer51 to ask people to call her by the nickname Lorca gave her a while ago, Fury. Many years later, few people knew or remembered why Admiral Keyla Detmer was called Fury, but they sure as hell thought it was appropriate.

[5] Or a heart!

[6] One of the longest debates in Vulcan history lasted one year, three months, and eleven days. The debaters, both civil servants, took most of that time off from work and nobody protested, they were encouraged and progress of the conversation was often front page news. The debate ended not because they reached a conclusion (the topic was, after all, the question of the existence of spirit) but because one of the participants died suddenly. The other, who did believe in the spirit, said, "We will continue this discussion later."

[7] Ferdinand Osgood never did get a Mrs. Osgood, but only because the woman he finally married, Captain Higgs, did not change her last name.

[8] This Orion pirate is obviously the ancestor of the Ossyra who would one day command the Emerald Chain. As it later turned out, she was not really breaking into the Klingon bank. She was working with insurgent Klingons to try and lure Discovery to capture the ship. But the spore drive was already down and the Federation arrived too late, so changing plans, she really did rob the bank. The insurgents were captured by other means and revealed this plan.