Posted by Captain Johann Dvorak (CO) in Johann’s Quarters- Suspicions

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Vora Zorell (Scientist) in Johann’s Quarters- Suspicions
She wasn’t stupid. In fact, one of Vora’s greatest attributes was her keen intelligence and her ability to see things in ways that weren’t always obvious. Sometimes her memory enhanced this, other times it made it difficult. And right now, Vora knew that if she didn’t say something, didn’t bring it out in the open, she would betray her feelings one way or another and it wasn’t fair to Johann or herself to over-react.

After their lovely holodeck dinner (she was still impressed by Jerrin’s participation), she returned with Johann to his quarters (and soon to be their quarters?). Sitting on the sofa, she knew she had been unusually quiet, pensive, and he knew her too well to not know that something was up.

“We really should talk about what just happened back there,” he said up front. Johann had specifically waited until Jerrin was not around before even acknowledging anything happened.

Vora frowned slightly. Not at him, but at her own thoughts. “You know, one of the strange benefits of having had my life with Roquan is that I learned to read people well. Tenraiths, in any case. I can pick up the subtle cues of their body language and make very accurate guesses as to their emotions and motivations, their needs and desires. With others, especially those I don’t know as well as I do you, it’s… harder. I’m not a telepath. But damned if I didn’t have all sorts of strange little alarms going off in my head. I’m not sure if it’s something I’ve been picking up for awhile, or something new. But I’m not imagining it, am I? I mean, my irrational desire is to ask Siennadye if she has feelings for the man I’m getting married to, but that doesn’t feel quite right. But you both made it abundantly clear that there is something I’m missing.” She wasn’t jealous, at least not in the way others would ascribe to this sort of situation. But she felt… uneasy and it irritated her that she couldn’t pin point that very clearly. All she knew is there was a similitude between the life Nox on occasion mentioned and Johann’s past experiences here. And she didn’t have enough information to make it all make sense.

~Vora

“No, you’re not imagining anything,” Johann said quite seriously, as he kept standing in front of Vora on the sofa. “I don’t actually know with certainty what is going on with her, but I have a pretty good guess. I think in her universe, she’s married to… uh,” his implants darted to one side as he considered the correct phrase. “My counterpart.”

Vora straightened her posture at that pronouncement and felt she should be more surprised by the revelation, or hypothesis in any case, than she was.

“Everything we know about her universe suggests that it is remarkably similar to our own,” he explained, almost as if he was starting a lecture on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. “So much so that it’s very likely we actually were the same universe until a specific point of divergence. That point of divergence appears to be a career decision a dozen years ago; the woman we originally knew as Siennadye Nox eventually decided to pursue a command career track after the Dominion War, while the woman we know now decided to pursue a career in psychiatry after those same events. Almost everything else about her universe seems to be the same as ours.”

“The result of that decision was that, in her universe, she was assigned to the USS Korolev, sometime in the early to mid eighties. I was the Executive Officer of that ship from 2383 to 2387. During the end of my time there, in our universe, I was looking to make a change, and started looking for CO assignments on other ships, which resulted in my becoming Captain here. We all know how that played out. But it could have been different.”

“Captain Vars commanded the Korolev the entire time I was there. It is important to note at this point that, he is a Trill. Just as my time on Korolev was ending, he was selected for a joining unusually late in his life. The joining did not go well, and his personality changed in ways which were… not… compatible… with continued service in Starfleet. He was thus forced into early retirement.”

“Had I not already accepted command of Europa, I think it is entirely possible that I could have become the CO of the Korolev. There are hints that this is exactly what happened in our counselor’s universe. She’s been so reluctant to talk about anything that happened on that ship, but it’s obviously rather important to her, given that she keeps a model of it in her office. The fact that her husband is a human male is also a clue, given that I was the only human male in the Korolev senior staff while I was assigned to the ship. But the real red flag was the holodeck program; why would anyone recreate their house in such exacting detail, except every photograph of the one person they’ve been painfully missing for years? Obviously it was so we wouldn’t know who that person is, because that would make things very awkward.”

“Which they now are,” he added at last, suddenly tired from the expository monologue.

– Johann Dvorak, CO

Vora blew out a breath. “Yep… awkward,” she said quietly. But she reached out a pale yellow hand to Johann. “I don’t know how to go about this exactly, but I do know that she can’t help those facts, if they are true. And we can’t help that we’re together and have a future planned. But we can’t tip toe around it all. It’ll only make things more difficult. I mean, she’s my therapist and Jerrin’s as well. I need that professional side of our relationship to not be damaged because we’re afraid of what might happen if we address the issue. So I guess the question is, what do we do with this information? “

~Vora Zorell, Sciences