Light Reading (Rollcall)

Posted on Sat Jan 11th, 2025 @ 4:28am by Lieutenant Anna Esquivias

Mission: Season 6: Episode 5: A church beyond heaven
Location: Anna's Quarters
Timeline: MD 3
511 words - 1 OF Standard Post Measure

Anna lay on the small couch in her quarters, one foot draped over the arm of the couch and the other on the floor. It was a manifestly lazy posture. It would been quite embarrassing if any of her superior officers were to come in during this moment. It was also her easy reading posture. Not the fine, technical details she often had to deal with as an operations officer but bigger or more delicate ideas. This was how she generally read poetry or philosophy. Now she was reading a collection of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a philosopher and theologian from her native North America, albeit centuries ago. The one she was reading now was called 'Nature.' She had managed to replicate an actual book. They were so much cozier to read than a PADD for this sort of thing. Her lips were pursed together and her gaze abstract. There was a reason she was reading this. It was not just to relax or for intellectual stimulation. If she could recapture something of how humans of early times had thought and felt, maybe she could better understand these deeply faithful aliens. There were concepts that seemed just out of her grasp.

She couldn't help but smile at all the references to newness. The newness of thought. The newness of man. Perhaps humans were forever new, always rebuilding, redefining, recreating themselves, their sense of meaning and purpose. She was only half human but it's something she could identify with. The essay had been a call for a fresh experience of the world when it had been written. It had expressly addressed the idea that all of the transcendent experiences were attributed to the past and only read about. That made Anna feel like something of a fool. Wasn't that literally what she was doing with Emerson's own experience? She sighed and shifted a little, almost putting the book away. But she had already started.

She furrowed her brow. It was not exactly what she had expected. She had never had much experience with religions. She had, of course, known plenty Bajoran officers and a few Klingon ones with a deeply spiritual side, but her background had been thoroughly secular on both sides and had that of most people she'd known. Emerson, when he wrote, had seemed a freethinking opponent of traditional religious beliefs. Now, he seemed impenetrably mystical. But it was not really so alien. It had defined how human beings thought of the world around them for most of their century. For some, it still gave meaning to their lives and an experience with the transcendent. Maybe Anna needed to actually talk to someone who understood this stuff better.

She tried to relax. She wasn't approaching this as a puzzle. Or she was trying not to. She was just letting her mind wander. It was art and beauty that played this same role for Ardananas. Maybe she should spend some time on her harp after she finished reading. Or listen to music. She was trying to capture a feeling.