"So Spock," Jim started once they were back in the barn with a now-visible spaceship, "what exactly… happened, in the mind meld?"
Spock turned around from where he was examining the ship and Jim rushed to explain himself: "Because I know that mind melds don't usually go like that, I'm not supposed to know that, because it's just meant to be a… an upload/download situation but now… Spock, I think you're in my head."
Spock looked grim as he sat down on the hey-strewn floor. Jim sat opposite him.
"It is true," Spock began, "that bonds usually involve a ceremony, or familial attachment, and only surface bonds can be initiated through a single meld… however you are correct, this is different."
"So you are in my head," Jim tapped his temple, "this is you?"
Spock nodded. "We are parted and never parted. Never and always touching and touched. Perhaps my frayed relationship with T'Pring and the distance from my parents and home planet created a… lapse."
"Nah, you'd never let that happen. I know you miss your family - shut up, you do - but this is serious stuff," Jim said, dismissing his theory.
"Then I confess I am at a loss."
"It could be one of those things from Pre-Surakian times," Jim said, startling Spock.
"Pre-Surakian times?" he echoed.
Jim nodded, hand to his chin. "Yeah. My memory isn't as good as yours so I've already forgotten most of what you know, but that stuff is interesting. And they have a lot of words for things in Traditional Golic Vulkhansu that aren't in Modern Vulkhansu, like those girls that met once on the battlefield and ended a war because they had to get married?"
Spock looked uncomfortable, and a little surprised (if it was possible to surprise him), and the tips of his ears were green. "They were… an exception. They were T'hy'la. We have an initial Telsu bond."
Jim shrugged, and dropped it. Spock hadn't really gotten that deep into his classical literature education yet so Jim didn't really know all that much anyway.
"Ok, so, somehow you're in my head even though that's not supposed to happen, really, but you can't, like read my thoughts…" he trailed off, and Spock nodded in confirmation "so basically it's like I've got a Vulkhansu mood ring for a husband. Wow, married at 15. What would my mother say."
"You have… such a way with words," Spock deadpanned.
Jim shrugged. "It's a gift. Now, how do we fix this communication thingy? I'd call him on the home phone but I don't think your dad has a landline."
Spock merely raised an eyebrow and went inside the shuttle. They popped open the dashboard - the communications array was in shambles. It would take delicate hands and a few 15-cent miracles to even get to the subspace amplifiers, let alone fix them. And they were definitely going to have to tear up the microwave. Maybe the toaster, too.
They were in the process of taking it all apart when Spock paused for a moment. "Frank is awake," he said, low.
Jim also stopped what he was doing for a moment, but then continued to poke around amongst the singed wires. "Tell me if he comes out here," he said, "but he probably won't. He's got better places to be."
"The bar," Spock said, unscrewing the side panel in order to expose more hardware.
"The bar," Jim agreed. He could feel Spock's frustration, but he still refused to talk about it. What was the point of theorising solutions when Frank was a problem that could never be fixed? It would be easier and faster to make a working origami warp drive than it would trying to fix the Frank issue. This was his life until he was eighteen and there was nothing he or Spock could do about it. They'd fix the intergalactic walkie-talkie and Spock would fly off into the stars with his parents, back to T'Kasi and T'Pring and a long illustrious career in the Science Academy, and Jim would still be here. Alone.
"Jim." Spock placed a hand on his shoulder, and Jim slumped.
"Can we just forget about Frank?" he pleaded, "Tell me about the space telephone."
Spock gave him a look. "Vulkhansu have excellent memories, I shall not just "forget about Frank," but we are getting close to the subspace amplifiers."
"Yes. Good. Subspace amplifiers. Tell me about them."
"We will only be able to fix the bare minimum, using what is left here and potentially your microwave, and the subspace amplifiers will be necessary in order to entangle the array here to the one on the ship my parents are on, through the use of a subspace relay station," Spock recited, "once sent, the signal will travel at a propagation speed approximately equivalent to warp factor 9.9997-"
"Approximately?" Jim smirked.
"-which is several times faster than light. This means that it should reach my parents before they have given up their search."
"Hey," Jim nudged Spock's shoulder, still holding a few random wires, "your parents wouldn't give up. Your mum would hijack the ship first and you know it."
The corner of Spock's lips quirked up. "Perhaps," he allowed.
Maybe because he had never worked with someone on such an interesting, life-changing project before (maybe cus the kids at school were losers), but Jim felt like he could live off this feeling. The theorising, the back and forth between Jim asking something, Spock explaining, and then Jim suggesting some outrageous monkey brain idea mostly as a joke that Spock would be able to see something in.
They talked and they worked and Spock was worried, but he was less worried when Jim was rambling on about the chickens from Mr. McGee next door or when he had his chin tucked around Spock's shoulder, examining what he was doing (Spock always assigned himself the more delicate tasks, which was probably for the best). Working with Spock was good.
It was mid-afternoon when they stopped for lunch. For Jim, who could get bored with the most exciting new video game, to be able to stay in one position for that long said a lot about how utterly cool fixing an alien ship was. And maybe also who he was fixing it with.
"I can't promise we have all that much," Jim warned, holding open the back door for Spock, "especially cus you don't eat meat."
"I do not mind," Spock said, properly looking around at Jim's living room and kitchen for the first time - the high wooden ceiling, dusty fireplace and mix n' match furniture.
"Sure you don't. Minding would imply emotion and we can't have that can we?"
Jim had meant it as a joke, but something clicked in Spock's expression. "No, we cannot," he agreed.
Jim found some assorted fruit - two apples and a peach he wouldn't recommend - and half a head of lettuce for Spock (which he apologised for), and put a TV dinner in the microwave.
"What?" he said when Spock raised an eyebrow at him, "We can't just tear her apart without saying a final goodbye."
Jim put the fruit and the lettuce on a plate, slid it across to Spock who was seated on a bar stool on the other side of the counter along with a knife and fork.
"It might be hard to cut but I, uh, guessed you wouldn't want to eat an apple with your hands," he said. Spock's ears went green as he thanked Jim stoically and started to slice up the fruit.
"Just don't eat the seeds they've got cyanide in them."
Spock stopped cutting. "There are easier ways to kill me," he said.
Jim laughed and put on an old-timey voice: "It's all part of a bigger plot, my dear."
The microwave beeped and Jim took the TV dinner and sat next to Spock. "So," he said, cutting up the lasagne that was probably as deadly as Spock's apple seeds, "what are we going to do with the microwave?"
"I don't know exactly what is in them, but any machine that uses radiation to some extent must be useful."
"Wow, we're just winging it?" Jim said, "Who are you and what have you done with Schlin… Shhi- Spock?"
"I am S'chn T'gai Spock. And under the circumstances, I am using what I have to my advantage. I cannot use what I do not know I have."
"It's okay Spock, you can say you're winging it, I won't tell the Vulkhansu High Council," Jim teased.
"I refuse."
They left their plates on the counter and Jim pressed flat the microwave manual out on the floor. A house to themselves and a microwave at their feet. Jim had done much worse with less. The rubber dishwashing gloves he had found under the sink made it hard to handle the tools delicately, but soon enough the outer casing was off.
He only had a vague idea of how communications arrays worked, and thus was content to unscrew and pull out everything and let Spock sort through the junk. They ended up collecting the cavity magnetron, the high voltage transformer, and a twelve volt relay but scrapped the rest - Spock said anything that generated energy or could connect the two would prove useful.
Spock carefully held the cavity magnetron with both hands (the thing was covered in warning stickers) and delegated the other items to Jim as the pair made their way carefully back to the barn.
They set down the parts next to the mangled communications array, which now looked less like a marvel of Vulkhansu engineering and more like the microwave they had left behind. There was an open chasm in the reddish metal, and from which spilled an endless number of mismatched wires and circuit boards and other high-tech parts Jim couldn't recognise, even with half of Spock's knowledge. And despite the situation he was in, Spock looked at home sitting amongst the mess.
Jim placed the high voltage transformer and the relay down, and sat behind Spock, chin on his shoulder. Spock tensed briefly, and then relaxed. Jim probably wouldn't be allowed to do this on T'Kasi, but the Vulkhansu High Council could stick it bc Spock was comfortable. It was nice, watching Spock work. He still had the thick rubber gloves on to protect his hands but his fingers moved nimbly, twisting wires and carefully attaching the magnetron to the subspace amplifier.
"Can you set up the antenna?" Spock asked softly, and Jim nodded.
He grabbed a flat metal shape that had five sides and opened a panel in the dashboard, looking for a port. There was none, so Jim began peeling away at the thin screen with a pair of pliers to reveal the circuitry underneath. This was fine, circuitry he could do - there was one computer in his school that he'd secretly taken apart and put back together in breaks when he was bored (which was always. The fun part was trying to do it quicker than last time and not get caught afterwards). He compared what he knew pre- and post-Spock. There were some similarities. He could do this.
Jim began tracing which parts led where and estimating as best as he could, attached the two prongs at the end of the antenna to the dashboard. He went to rub at his eye, but immediately thought better of it - the bruising wouldn't go down for a few days.
Spock was still fiddling with the magnetron, holding the device close to his face and squinting as the sun sunk over the horizon.
"Come on," Jim said, "let's finish up - it'll all be here in the morning, and we need to get you hidden before Frank comes back."
Spock looked up at him, and nodded. "First we should cover up the hole in the wall so that my ship remains undiscovered."
Jim turned to the splintered wood and laughed. He forgot about that. "Probably - hey, I bet there's a tarp somewhere."
Aight now for some fun facts about microwaves since I now know too much about them:
- the cavity magnetron is the thing that generates the microwaves. They used to be used in fun things like pre-WWII plane radar thingies
- the high voltage transformer is the thing that generates power. Does something called electromagnetic induction that makes even more power
- a voltage relay is something that takes electricity from point A to point B. A 12 volt relay means it does this when the energy reaches 12 volts. I think.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong all I have is wikipedia and tutorials on How To Take Your Microwave Apart