TITLE: Dear Annie ("Carbon Creek")
AUTHOR: Mara Greengrass
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL: fishfolk@ix.netcom.com. Feedback is better than chocolate.
PERMISSION TO ARCHIVE: Linguistics Database, others, just let me know.
CATEGORY: Gen
RATINGS/WARNINGS: G
SUMMARY: Hoshi writes home after the events of "Carbon Creek."
DISCLAIMER: Enterprise and all its crew belong to Paramount and many other entities with expensive lawyers. I am making no profit from this story.
NOTES: Hoshi and I were confused by the whole thing. Can you tell? Sorry it took so long, but RL got in the way. Thanks to Captain Average for his usual speedy beta, he's the original superhero who edits. (And what better thing for a superhero to do?)
* * * * *
Dear Annie,
You probably haven't even gotten my last letter yet, but I just had to write and tell you about how strange things are at the moment. The crew's in a really odd mood since our reprieve by Starfleet, not to mention recovering our Captain. But would you believe that T'Pol was teasing Trip and Jon last night at dinner? Not just the slightly sarcastic wit she shows normally, but if you can believe Trip, she told an elaborate tale just to wind the two of them up.
Trip, Malcolm, Liz, and I were having lunch today, and Trip was lost in thought. He kept shaking his head a little, as if in disbelief, until Malcolm finally was annoyed enough to ask him what was wrong. That was apparently what Trip had been waiting for, because he told us what she said.
I won't go into the full details of the story, because Trip's memory was hazy on a few points, but according to T'Pol, three Vulcans (including her ancestress) crash landed in Carbon Creek, PA in the 1950s.
Uh-huh, I did a double take when he said that part, too.
Supposedly, they were investigating the launch of Sputnik when their ship malfunctioned and they ended up spending several months living in this small town, working odd jobs and interacting with the locals. We were all (including Trip) a bit dubious about their ability to stay undetected in the middle of the Cold War period, and I, for one, would have asked T'Pol when they learned to speak English.
Honestly, the whole story seems weird. My first thought was that *Trip* was teasing us, but honestly, he's a lousy liar. And his ability to lie to *me*, when his body language tells all, is nonexistent. (Kind of like your ability to lie--or lack thereof--actually.) So, if Trip didn't make this up, then either it's true, or *T'Pol* made it up!
It seems to me that if she were inventing a story, she would have made the whole thing more plausible. (For instance, I found the idea that her ancestress invented Velcro a bit odd.) And she wouldn't have claimed that one of the Vulcans stayed on Earth for the rest of his life.
Okay, the Captain's been a bit smug recently, but I can't believe that T'Pol would go to the trouble of rewriting Earth history just to burst his bubble. So, having concluded that would be a non-T'Pol action, does that mean her story is true? That's even more troubling than T'Pol acting uncharacteristically, I think.
Perhaps at some point I'll get up the nerve to ask her about this. In any case, it's been nice to have some downtime after all our excitement. Nice to have this as the biggest mystery to solve.
Engineering has been working overtime to get the ship back in shape and we've all been trying to help out whenever we can. It's one of those times it's frustrating to be a linguist, but I'm afraid I'm of little use in repairing warp engines or EPS grids.
Now that I think about it, I wouldn't put it past T'Pol to set out this story just to get us thinking about something other than the condition of the ship. She often completely misunderstands humans, but she also shows occasional moments of rare insight. This could be one.
Do me a favor, would you? In your copious free time, could you and Tracy do a little research in the Vulcan archives and see what you can find out? Subtly, though, I don't want to get T'Pol in trouble if she wasn't supposed to tell us this. I'll sit down with Trip and get as much detail as he can remember and send it to you. Let me know what you find.
Meanwhile, I promised Liz to help her with her spoken Denobulan tonight, so I'm off to work with her on conjugations. Don't say it, I know exactly what you're thinking and you need to clean up your mind again. It's *filthy* in there. I just hope Amanda appreciates it. Good luck with those grant applications, and let me know if you need a letter of support for NSF.
Love,
Hoshi
AUTHOR: Mara Greengrass
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL: fishfolk@ix.netcom.com. Feedback is better than chocolate.
PERMISSION TO ARCHIVE: Linguistics Database, others, just let me know.
CATEGORY: Gen
RATINGS/WARNINGS: G
SUMMARY: Hoshi writes home after the events of "Carbon Creek."
DISCLAIMER: Enterprise and all its crew belong to Paramount and many other entities with expensive lawyers. I am making no profit from this story.
NOTES: Hoshi and I were confused by the whole thing. Can you tell? Sorry it took so long, but RL got in the way. Thanks to Captain Average for his usual speedy beta, he's the original superhero who edits. (And what better thing for a superhero to do?)
* * * * *
Dear Annie,
You probably haven't even gotten my last letter yet, but I just had to write and tell you about how strange things are at the moment. The crew's in a really odd mood since our reprieve by Starfleet, not to mention recovering our Captain. But would you believe that T'Pol was teasing Trip and Jon last night at dinner? Not just the slightly sarcastic wit she shows normally, but if you can believe Trip, she told an elaborate tale just to wind the two of them up.
Trip, Malcolm, Liz, and I were having lunch today, and Trip was lost in thought. He kept shaking his head a little, as if in disbelief, until Malcolm finally was annoyed enough to ask him what was wrong. That was apparently what Trip had been waiting for, because he told us what she said.
I won't go into the full details of the story, because Trip's memory was hazy on a few points, but according to T'Pol, three Vulcans (including her ancestress) crash landed in Carbon Creek, PA in the 1950s.
Uh-huh, I did a double take when he said that part, too.
Supposedly, they were investigating the launch of Sputnik when their ship malfunctioned and they ended up spending several months living in this small town, working odd jobs and interacting with the locals. We were all (including Trip) a bit dubious about their ability to stay undetected in the middle of the Cold War period, and I, for one, would have asked T'Pol when they learned to speak English.
Honestly, the whole story seems weird. My first thought was that *Trip* was teasing us, but honestly, he's a lousy liar. And his ability to lie to *me*, when his body language tells all, is nonexistent. (Kind of like your ability to lie--or lack thereof--actually.) So, if Trip didn't make this up, then either it's true, or *T'Pol* made it up!
It seems to me that if she were inventing a story, she would have made the whole thing more plausible. (For instance, I found the idea that her ancestress invented Velcro a bit odd.) And she wouldn't have claimed that one of the Vulcans stayed on Earth for the rest of his life.
Okay, the Captain's been a bit smug recently, but I can't believe that T'Pol would go to the trouble of rewriting Earth history just to burst his bubble. So, having concluded that would be a non-T'Pol action, does that mean her story is true? That's even more troubling than T'Pol acting uncharacteristically, I think.
Perhaps at some point I'll get up the nerve to ask her about this. In any case, it's been nice to have some downtime after all our excitement. Nice to have this as the biggest mystery to solve.
Engineering has been working overtime to get the ship back in shape and we've all been trying to help out whenever we can. It's one of those times it's frustrating to be a linguist, but I'm afraid I'm of little use in repairing warp engines or EPS grids.
Now that I think about it, I wouldn't put it past T'Pol to set out this story just to get us thinking about something other than the condition of the ship. She often completely misunderstands humans, but she also shows occasional moments of rare insight. This could be one.
Do me a favor, would you? In your copious free time, could you and Tracy do a little research in the Vulcan archives and see what you can find out? Subtly, though, I don't want to get T'Pol in trouble if she wasn't supposed to tell us this. I'll sit down with Trip and get as much detail as he can remember and send it to you. Let me know what you find.
Meanwhile, I promised Liz to help her with her spoken Denobulan tonight, so I'm off to work with her on conjugations. Don't say it, I know exactly what you're thinking and you need to clean up your mind again. It's *filthy* in there. I just hope Amanda appreciates it. Good luck with those grant applications, and let me know if you need a letter of support for NSF.
Love,
Hoshi