"My mother grew roses. She didn't have a green thumb.
Each spring, I'd count the rosebushes which,
no amount of digging 'round the roots and spraying antifungals
would bring them back. Each spring, my mother would
expand her garden, planting more than she'd lost.
She was a research scientist, interested in terraforming.
She imagined a programme where any planet,
no matter how barren, could be made to support humanoid life.
She considered the conditions for roses to be perfect
for any humanoid civilisation: temperate, moist, and bright.
If I hadn't specialised in weaponry, I might have considered
ecoforming instead. Or perhaps something completely different.
The principles of ecoforming are different from ecology. In ecoforming,
the assumption is that there is no ecosystem to balance,
only raw matter. It's much like a chemical equation,
and my mother sought to find the right reagents in the right proportions
to establish her rose equilibrium.
My mother and father were both devoted to expansion,
reaching into space through two sides of the same principle:
the idea that we might subjugate by willpower alone
through the force of our technology, whatever stood opposed.
My mother's rosebushes never lived longer than five years
but it didn't matter because more roses could be bought
at the greenhouse. She had an arsenal of fertilisers,
automatic watering systems, and pesticides.
Her new plants always produced wonderful blooms
the first two years, before declining in their last three.
Fungus, mites, disease, frost-
most often the graft would die and wild stalks emerged.
When Vulcan was lost and they searched
for a new planet, I didn't understand why they didn't choose something
that would make colonisation easier. Or change
their rock garden for something more fertile.
I understood the desire for a familiar climate, but New Vulcan
has less water for more land. Why not ecoform
to recreate what they had before? Wouldn't that be
in their best interests for the survival of their species?
The Vulcan Science Academy vehemently opposed any plan
of planet-wide ecoforming. Localised modifications, they accepted.
But they despised my mother's work. Just as they abhorred
my father's use of their planet's destruction to justify
his military preparations against Qo'NoS.
My mother loved her roses and took pleasure in every bloom.
But there was always the feeling that the bushes came second to
her image of freshly cut flowers in a crystal vase.
She was attentive to their every need
except their individual ones. And that is where, I think
my parents failed. I don't think it called for open disdain
on the part of the Vulcans. They never bothered to explain
their self evident truths: that within their idea of IDIC
is the first principle of ecology- every ecosystem is unique.
Attempting to recreate Vulcan, or a planet for roses
destroys the diversity and strange environment of the planet
a new, unknown place.
That within the Prime Directive is a mandate to themselves-
to allow the ecosystem to change their species
just as they are changing the ecosystem.
My father and mother were partners in the same endeavour
to make worlds safe and habitable for us,
somehow blinded to how it sweeps away other, unknown lives.
My father was willing to save me, and only me
because he was not willing to remember: life is unique.
My mother died in London, casket smothered in peach roses.
The local gardening club tends to her rosebushes now.
I am in space to change the world, and let the world change me.
That is the exchange that fathers and mothers fear for their daughters
and for themselves.
On this ship, with these people, in the time, at this place
I believe I can change the world, but they ask of me-
Do I accept First Contact?
Can I first accept that there are many worlds old, wide, unknown
and will I let them change me?
Facing this is like touching face-crushing fear."