Posted by Lieutenant Commander Dr. Royal Sinclair (Chief of Security) in Cori’s Quarters- Evaluating Options

Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton/SARAH (Ships AI/Avatar) in Cori’s Quarters- Evaluating Options

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Dr. Royal Sinclair (Chief of Security) in Cori’s Quarters- Evaluating Options
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

“And he decorates too…” Cori commented idly, tossing a smirk at her friend. “What’s next, macramé?” she said as she handed him the vase to place where he had suggested.

He took the vase and said “No, but I knit and crochet, smartass.” and set the vase on the shelf.

“Make me a scarf?” she said with a grin. “Blue to match my eyes?”

Royal grinned and said “I’ll make ‘em whatever color I want. You can change your eyes to match, now can’t ya?”

“I can,” she agreed with a nod. ” I could say that I left my appearance intact for a reason, but then again my eyes have their own weird thing now. And I kind of like that. Makes people look twice,” she said with a mischievous gleam.

“Anyway, after the brief occupation by the Klingons there was a lot of rebuilding to do. Most of us spent our free time working with salvage and other sort of teams, most of which were formed by Starfleet officers. I had stopped going to the dance studio, so when I wasn’t at school or doing homework, I hung out with the teams and just did whatever work was needed. The farm was gone and my horses were also dead, so it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.” She lifted her brows as she pulled out a framed object tucked on the long side of the crate. “You can guess where that story goes. It’s so cliché, after all. Child is exposed to Starfleet and for whatever reasons a therapist can easily point out, decides that that is what they wanted to do instead of whatever they had imagined for their life.”

Unwrapping the paper that covered the metal frame with protective glass, she hesitated. She knew what it was and she lived in that world often enough that she wasn’t sure she wanted to drag it here too. But Cori knew Royal wouldn’t let her get away with it and finished unwrapping it. It was a watercolour painting of rolling hills overlooking the ocean with her family’s farm nestled in the one little valley, with two horses (one dun-tan with black mane and tail, one grey) grazing at the top of one of the hills. To this piece of art, Cori had no immediate commentary.

~Corinne Dalton

Royal didn’t ask, he just took the picture and set it on the very top of the bookcase and angled it so that it was visible from the desk.

“What’s next?” he asked without a look to the picture.

Sinclair

Underneath some other wrapped objects that she would come back to, there was a bit of fabric and Cori was pretty sure what it was. “It was here on the Saracen that I decided to go hunting for my birth parents, Royal. Up to that point there had been no information on them as the info from the freighter was spotty. There was a lovely woman at the Displaced Persons Bureau that helped dig deeper and she eventually came up with an answer. And that’s how I came to know who my parents were and what my birth name was.” She looked up at Royal and grinned. “I kept Corinne. Never felt like Vivian.”

“Solid choice. You don’t look like a Vivian.” Royal said with a smile.

“But that day, with that looming question answered, I grabbed my ballet slippers which I had dragged with my everywhere, including the Academy, and never worn mind you, and I went to the holodeck.” Corinne’s smile was sad and yet wistful. “I put on my slippers and I danced. For a brief moment I felt like it was okay, that while I had chosen a different path and wasn’t ever going to be some sought after dancer, I could have a little bit of that old feeling back.” Those ballet pointe shoes represented something she still couldn’t quite name but felt integral to her identity. Maybe it was hope- she kept them close even though she had no intention of using them. But the possibility had always been there.

~Corinne Dalton

Royal paused and cocked his head to the side,as he was want to do when deep in thought. After a moment, he said “So in psychology, there is a school of thought that breaks down own consciousness and personality into three different segments. The id, the ego, and the super-ego. The id is the primitive, instinctual part of our minds. That contains sexual and aggressive drives and where we store our hidden memories. The super-ego operates our moral conscience, our ethical behaviors and our desire to be part of something greaylter than our selves… which is a defining characteristic of most sentient life. The ego is the realistic part of us that mediates between the desires of the id and the morals of the super-ego.” and he smiled as he sat down.

She could have told him that she had all of that at her mental fingertips as it were thanks to the database, but Cori understood that he had a point to make.

“The vast majority of sentient beings become attached to tangible objects because those objects become a focus of one or more of those three parts of our psyche. Your slippers are an anchor of sorts. They keep you grounded by reminding you of who you were, and who you have become. My focus is the model ships I build. When I see them, hold them in my hands… no matter where I am I feel a connection to my past self. And that past self is responsible for my present self, so it is important for us as human beings to remember where we came from… especially as we stray further and further into the unknown.”

Sinclair

He understood and that made Cori smile, at least for a moment. Pulling out the fabric, she revealed her class of 2383 Starfleet Academy t-shirt, holding it up to herself. “I always did rock a t-shirt,” she said, her electric eyes brightening for a moment.

“You know what really bothers me about not having my shoes? Them being considered evidence and being held by others feels like they are being tainted. It’s like before, they were made of something pure, but by dragging them into the mess that surrounds the reason I exist they way I do, they’ve contaminated them. Is that weird?”

~Corinne Dalton