Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Vora Zorell (Scientist) in Conference Room- Senior Officer Briefing (The Sands of Tenra)
Anxiety rippled through her body and Vora forced herself to breathe deeply. There had never been a scenario in her head where this was reality. But having made peace with not only their destination and what prompted the assignment, Vora delved into every bit of research she could get her hands on and put her eidetic memory to very good use.

Jerrin, as it turned out, was just as mixed about the whole thing as she was, but hadn’t said no. Vora’s caveat to him was that when they got there, he was not obligated to go down to the surface, nor meet his grandfather if he wasn’t comfortable with the idea. He was an adult now and he could make that choice- Vora wouldn’t impose it on him. A part of her hoped he’d join them though. After all she had endured, it felt too monumental a moment to miss. They needed something good as a family to come from Tenra, something more than shattered dreams and nightmares. Even now Vora was certain Jerrin hadn’t told her the whole story about what he had gone through in those intervening years between her giving him up for (hopeful and ultimately failed) adoption and him coming to live with her on the Europa. She knew there was deep trauma there, but he had picked away at tiny pieces of it and much like herself if he wasn’t ready to face it, he couldn’t be forced. When it was time, he would. Hopefully before it had any negative consequences.

She glanced at Johann as they made there way down the corridor to the Conference Room. “I’m glad I didn’t have more than coffee this morning. I get being nervous but these are all people I know, mostly. It should be a fairly straight forward briefing. I don’t know why I’m working myself up over this.” They had left ten minutes before the briefing was due to start at 0900, but now she was thinking it was too much time for her to dwell.

~Vora Zorell, Sciences

“You’re working yourself up over it because it’s about your homeworld, which is important to you,” he said simply. “We’re not just visiting a planet, we’re exploring the reality that helped shape you. A world that very few people have had the benefit of already knowing about. You’ll be exposing that to scrutiny, and by extension, you’ll be exposing yourself.”

He seemed to pause a second to wonder if that was the right explanation, correctly said. But then he didn’t feel the need to revise or expand upon it further. It was something he could only understand because he knew her origin and her past loomed large in her identity; her eidetic memory always made the past feel like the present. Johann had the benefit of being from Earth, the one planet that everyone on this ship was likely to have at least spent the better part of four years of their lives living on. The one planet that could have arguably laid claim to being the center of the civilized galaxy if it had felt arrogant enough to do so.

– Johann Dvorak, CO