Epilogue
“What was it all for?” Zaliel asked as she strode through the streets of Seattle. It had been months since the night Amanda kicked her out. Months since she was forced to move onto Miga’s couch until she landed an apartment in Portland, just a quick bullet train ride to Seattle and her favorite park. She could have taken a transporter, but the smooth ride along the coast was usually too beautiful to be skipped.
Miga shrugged. “You are the one who called me,” she replied simply. “Why you like living somewhere so damp though, I couldn’t guess.” Zaliel smiled at the aristocratic way Miga scowled at the thin mist of rain—not even a drizzle.
“I like the rain and the museums and the tourists. There’s this relaxed vibe—if that’s the word—and I think I’ve had enough drama for a lifetime.” She smiled and drank hot chocolate. “The drinks here are always hot and no one cares if your skin is cold or if you are a bit weird. In San Francisco, I always felt pressure to be a certain way.”
Miga nodded. “It can be a challenge: the language and customs. Humans have come a long way, though, give them that much credit.” The rain picked up and Miga’s expression became downright hostile. Zaliel tugged on her arm and the duo took refuge under the awning of a shop offering various brightly colored flags.
Zaliel admired the window display as she spoke. “No, I mean,” she took a breath. “Amanda would always—“
“I will remind you,” Miga interjected, “that you told me to stop you if you ever started,” she cleared her throat, “quote, ‘bitching about Amanda again,’ end-quote.”
“Ha! I did, thank you. I’m, um, going to miss these talks.”
“Are you going somewhere?” Miga asked, an eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, so, I wanted to be the first to tell you but, I’m, well I’m leaving our department for Command School.” She couldn’t help it—she blushed, terrified of reproach or ridicule. Miga was the first person—she hadn’t even told her parents.
“You? Command School?” Miga paused as though she were attempting to reconcile an oxymoron; a misshapen piece in the model of her universe. “Why?”
“Officially? Because I want to actually see the worlds I’m reading about. I want to write those reports, not check them for errors or write code. I want to explore.”
“I recall when I invited you camping you said, and I quote again, ‘hell no! Are you insane? There are wild bears in the forest, Miga, are you crazy?’ end quote.”
“Do you just have this eidetic memory of things I’ve said to throw back at me?”
“Yes,” she said smugly, a smile in her eyes.
Zaliel laughed and shook her head.
“So, what is your unofficial reason? Why are you doing this? I thought you loved your coding and quiet desk job.”
“That was, well, when things were still good between me and Amanda—I’m not bitching,” she said as Miga raised a warning hand, “I’m answering: I hoped she would calm down, but she’s still furious. She’s all smiles and professional when there are other people, but it all goes away the second we’re alone. I need a change.”
“Better the devil you don’t know?” Miga asked, clearly admiring a reflection of herself in the shop’s window. Zaliel didn’t mind—Miga was gorgeous. She is so far out of my league I can’t believe we’re even friends, was an ugly thought Zaliel might have believed before getting to know her, but now she understood that so much of what defied Miga’s beauty was refined confidence. Her regality didn’t exist to challenge others or be wielded as a weapon; rather, it stood on its own merit, like a statue of Athena or Kyra Nerys. When Zaliel saw her friend admiring herself, it wasn’t vanity, but the natural reaction one might have if they stumbled upon fine art in the park.
Oh, right she asked me a question. “I mean, space travel and unexplored worlds can’t be as dangerous as staying in that office.”
Miga snorted and smiled approvingly. “You are a surprising one.” She faced Zaliel again. “Will you keep seeing Ben?”
“I don’t know, you know? Amanda brought us together.”
“But now she is driving you apart?”
“More like,” she bit her lip. “It’s like there’s this huge Borg cube in the room no one is talking about—this tension that’s kinda there all the time, now.”
The rain really started coming down. As people fled from the park for shelter, the shopkeeper whose awning they took shelter under stepped out and invited them in from the cold and wet.
Miga immediately agreed. “Praise the Great Bird,” she said sincerely and found herself a cozy seat on a couch by an old, lit fireplace before Zaliel even managed to clear the threshold.
When she entered, she found the shop offered a lot more than flags—but they were everywhere, on tables and shelves—and the eye-catching rainbow pattern featured prominently on a wall-sized mural of life-like drawings of different Human men and women. “Who are these people?” Zaliel asked.
“Some of the biggest names in Human Civil Rights movements across time,” the young man said. “You don’t recognize them?”
“Sorry, I don’t mean any offense,” Zaliel said. “I’m, you know, not from Earth.” She pulled her hair back enough to show him her spots.
Similarly, the shopkeeper took his beanie off to reveal pointed ears. “Who is, really?” he laughed. “But you don’t have to be from a place to learn its history or admire its figures.”
“You’re a refugee? From Romulus?”
“I like to think of it as an ‘unplanned upcasting,’” he smiled easily. “And you’re in the Seattle Civil Rights History Museum—well, one of them, anyways. You want the tour?”
“Oh, Miga, do you—?”
“Go, go on and enjoy!” She already had managed to find fresh tea and was preparing it eagerly. “I am going to sit right here and remember what being warm feels like.”
Zaliel walked through the building. It was tightly packed and consisted of three levels of displays. Artwork and recorded interviews dominated the rooms. She listened with intent as the curator—Jo’miri—walked her through the last two thousand years of rights movements, mostly focusing on Earth, but then how those beliefs reached out to touch other worlds.
It was a difficult, winding path of peeks and valleys; a topography of triumph and suffering. Slavery, segregation, oppression, bigotry—all checked by emancipation, integration, liberation, acceptance. But the horrors of the past compelled Humanity to do better; to grow and learn to work towards the betterment of all life. What once were hands dirtied by blood now tilled the garden of peace and prosperity.
Humanity was not perfect. In places where the light of the Federation shown dimly arose seemingly timeless problems: authoritarianism, demagoguery, and even bigotry flared to life. “In truth, Miss Zaliel, those who seek to make peace are like Sisyphus: doomed for eternity to push the bolder of progress high up the hill.”
“But doesn’t the boulder always roll back down?” She didn’t like where this analogy was going. Zaliel clutched her handbag close against her chest.
“That’s where each new generation comes in: they take up the challenge and keep pushing; if we ever take a break, the bolder rolls down hill.” He placed a kind hand on her arm and she didn’t shy away; the comfort was welcomed among the heavy tone. “It’s a promise as much as it is a warning.”
They had walked idly as they talked, then entered a large room covered with the same flags and symbols she saw in the windows by the entrance. Zaliel asked what they meant, having seen a few before in parks or windows.
Jo’miri was happy to explain many of them and Zaliel found herself fixated on one in particular. With a smile, the curator continued: “For most people living on Earth, these symbols are like the flags of old countries: a historic curiosity. If you’re born here, the acceptance of diversity is near-universal. Kids don’t fear telling their parent’s they’re gay, trans people are no longer persecution over bathrooms or deal with medical gatekeeping. Regardless of your race or ethnicity, you have access to the same services and opportunities as anyone else. It’s understood that sexuality is what you do—or don’t—make of it. And disability is really more ‘alternative ability.’” He looked away for a moment. Zaliel caught his expression as he turned, suddenly distant. “I hope everyone can be so lucky.”
“So, most people forgot about the flags and stuff?” Zaliel asked, hoping to draw the curator back.
“Not forgotten, just didn’t need. Symbols like these are like a rallying point. But, once you have everything you need,” he trailed off.
“You don’t need to rally.”
“Or another symbol comes along to take its place,” and here he produced a tiny badge from his pocket. “I know plenty of people would sooner sport this Vulcan IDIC—Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations—before anything you’d find here. There are still lots of people who remember and love these flags and signs, but by and large, they don’t really need them in their daily lives like they used to.”
Zaliel finally let go of her handbag and it rest against her hip. The tour was so much to take in—all of this history and suffering, successes and setbacks time and again: of unrecognized marriages performed in secret, homeless children rejected by parents, stonings and acid attacks—all for the things they couldn’t control. All because they demanded equality.
“You know,” Jo’miri said, his warm smile returning, “sometimes the past belongs in the past,” he said, guiding her back to the ground floor. “Other times, past symbols can be a present anchor.” He pulled a small, knitted patch of alternating blue and pink lines with a white one down the center from a shelf. “For your bag,” he said.
Zaliel recognized it immediately from the tour. It was the one that she had stared at so intently before. “How did you know?” she asked wide-eyed. It was a part of her she never advertised—for her, that always seemed like an unnecessary conversation; one she had had enough of with her parents. When she put her heart in Ben’s hands, he couldn’t have known what it took for that moment to happen—years of confusion and acceptance and forgiveness. It was only that she desperately wanted him to know her—really know her as only someone who loved her could. And here Jo’miri had seen more than most people guessed.
“When you’ve done this job as long as I have,” he said, “the tour has a way of revealing the truth. Sorry, I know what it’s like when someone figures it out.”
“You?”
He smiled widely. “And now you’re paying me a compliment. You’re too kind. Come on, let’s find your friend and make sure she stayed out of the catnip tea!”
They reunited with Miga who had, over the course of only an hour, managed to fall asleep lounging resplendent on a throne of plush cushions Jo’miri didn’t even know he had.
As the curator sewed the patch to Zaliel’s bag, she gently woke, then excitedly regaled Miga with all she had recently learned. The Caitian was patient, if not invested, too assured in herself to let ancient history affect her. Let the past be forgotten; her philosophy focused on the future—preferably one that was warm and dry.
“Maybe, one day, I’ll be as confident as you, Miga,” Zaliel admitted on their way back to the transport hub. “You seem to have this love for yourself—this assurance I’ve never known.” When sky had finally cleared, they left Jo’miri with friendly goodbyes, Zaliel making a point to hug him dearly, like an old friend. Maybe it was the flag: the rallying point where they met.
Miga chuckled. “I’ll tell you my secret: I respect myself. I respect that I am capable, but fallible. That my youth is privilege and fleeting. My life is meaningful but finite. I look for the opportunity to do the most good and seize it. If I was wrong,” her tail flicked decisively, “I was wrong. But a life without failure is no life at all, Zaliel.”
“Do you think it’s possible to love someone and that be a bad thing?”
“Of course, but I don’t have an answer for you, Zaliel. I cannot tell you what to do. And love is something you cannot rationalize,” she stopped, her ears flicked, and she turned toward a sound. It was nothing, but it offered Miga a moment to collect her thoughts. “If it were me? I’d ask if we are stronger together or apart. If our love can survive all the trials ahead and forgive all the pain behind. I would ask if our love is a celebration or an obligation. And then, my friend, I would act.”
Zaliel thought long and hard about Miga’s words as she walked, then rode the train home. By the time she reached her apartment, she knew it had to end. Knew the wedge she drove between Ben and his sister hurt their whole family daily. Zaliel knew their romance would never survive, built on this foundation of conflict.
“But I love him,” she said to the aloe plant in her kitchen. It offered no answer.
Amanda will never budge, she told herself. But their relationship must come first, or I’ll always be the one who split the family.
When she had cried all the tears she could, she dried her face, sat at her desk, and placed a call. “Ben,” she began gravely, his gentle smile almost enough to break her resolve.
“Ben, we need to talk.”
END