Ds9#27 A Stitch In Time: Star Trek Deep Space Nine (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

by Andrew Jordt Robinson

“Of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren’t?” “My dear Doctor, they’re all true. . . .” “Even the lies?” “Especially the lies.”

My dear Doctor:

But it’s the dust that suffocates me and challenges my sanity. It clogs my nose, blurs my sight; my mouth is filled with a chalky paste that food and drink (scarce commodities) only thicken. We exist in a penumbral world where every shape and sound is blurred and muffled by this restless cloud of dust that refuses to settle and chokes my every breath.

And now, here I am, a survivor in a “liberated” Cardassia, a Cardassia haunted by the souls of the countless billions slaughtered, who have taken the collective form of this dust cloud that constantly swirls and shrieks across this wasteland, vainly searching for a peaceful place to rest. It’s almost as if my homecoming was accomplished at their expense.

In Cardassian society, we are taught from an early age to mask all feelings and thoughts, to deflect all outside perception and observation. The objective of this education is to create a citizen who can work within the group to accomplish a group goal established by the leader, and at the same time work in such a way that none of the other members of the group knows what he or she is doing. As long as the goal is accomplished, it’s nobody’s business how you went about your work.

The moment you step into a garden and begin to cultivate and prune, you become a killer.

I see that overly polite smile, your “Get to the point, Garak”

Simply put, a human remembers the best of times in progressive order, beginning with earliest childhood. The rosy memories are only challenged by nightmares.

I know that we have grown apart and that’s as it should be. We learn what we can from certain people, then we move on after we’ve taken what we need. When we learn nothing new about ourselves in a relationship that’s when the relationship is over. Or it’s over the moment when we’re afraid to learn something new about ourselves.

“His business is to serve Cardassia and the Empire in thought, word, and deed,” intoned the official. “Your childhood is over, Elim Garak.”

You will be pleased to hear, Doctor, that I have volunteered to work with an emergency med unit in the City.

“Poisonous pedagogy, Elim,” he replied. “We believe what we are taught.”

It was explained to us that until we became disciplined in our relations with the “complementary gender” we would make better progress this way. When I asked One Tarnal how we would learn this discipline without interaction between the sexes, he blinked and mumbled something about “distractions.”

not baby Garak being too gay to understand lol

“Are you up to this? Can you learn to hold your place?” I just stared back at him not knowing how to respond. Softly he blew two acrid breaths into my eyes and, blinded, I stumbled back. “Can you even find a space to hold?” he asked.

And how do we even begin to rebuild a world that doesn’t exist anymore?

I don’t know how long I remained curled up in the mud. I felt myself being lifted and half carried, half dragged back into my shed. It was Dr. Parmak. He cleaned and changed me as best he could. He prepared a cup of Tarkalean tea, which made me think of you, Doctor.

I could see that he was attracted to Eight. As indeed I was.

👀

Ever since that ridiculous holosuite program, I thought. The spy game. Well of course it’s a game. It’s all a game. But it’s not a holosuite program. And yet, the moment Julian wounded me with his ridiculous weapon, everything changed. I thought it was a magnificent moment. He showed me that he had the spine to play the game as it ought to be played. But why then did he back off? Why couldn’t he go beyond that moment? Why did our relationship end?

Love does make fools of us all.

Ghosted light, colored by the gas and dust of the Corillion Nebula Dances in my dreams and descends like a shimmering wave

There were other such gatherings, but this was the one that I will take with me to the Hall of Memories. If I could have stopped time . . .

he gently demurred.

very demure, very mindful

“I’m pleased you stopped by.” I was about to escort him to the door. “No, you’re not,” he said quietly.

no he really is :(

Just assure me that I’m not going mad, Doctor.

We all—to some degree—contain the memories, traits, fragments of those personalities that came before us.

Fear and isolation, Doctor. You can’t have one without the other. Fear isolates and isolation is fear’s natural home.

Each of us accepts the amount of responsibility we are capable of bearing. Some accept nothing, and these people are quickly swallowed by their isolation, their insanity transformed into a rationalized evil. A smaller group accepts total responsibility, and their insanity is an unbearable burden that cripples and eventually grinds them down. The rest of us carry what we can and leave the rest. For myself, Doctor, when a corpse is too heavy to bury I try to remember to ask someone to help me.

“Doctor, forgive me, but I need to see you,” I said as calmly as I could.

I turned to the window, and the eternal night of space. My beloved stars. Only a nightmare as terrible as this could make me so grateful to be alive on this station. How ironic that I would be leaving it in a few hours.

“So you’re saying . . . what? That this level is the concrete manifestation of . . .” he stopped. “Of who we are, Doctor. Our being. Human being. Cardassian being. But we have become these beings—are becoming, always in the process of becoming—on these other dimensional levels that are not limited by the measures of time and space. And the great determining factor of our becoming is relationship. Unrelated, I become unrelated. Alienated. Opposed, I become an antagonist. Unified, I become integrated. A functioning member of the whole.”

“You’re an amazing man, Garak.” “And my gratitude to you can never be adequately expressed. But I shall try,” I promised.

That point of my life was perhaps the lowest. I had forgotten many things. When I ‘woke up’ and realized that because of you I was going to live—at

But specifically about relationships, and how they set the course of our lives. You not only ‘saved’ my life, you also made it possible for me to live it.”

“Mister Garak . . . why is it that no one has killed you, yet?” “My innate charm?”

Cracks of early dawn opened throughout the darkness, and the Constellation and the Blind Moon were absorbed into the growing light. I heard voices, and when I looked in their direction I could see people beginning to gather at the edge of the memorials. Just enough light to begin, I thought.

“. . . it’s just Garak. Plain, simple Garak.”

I’m an unfinished man reassembling the pieces of a broken world, and I have asked you to be a witness because you would never judge me as harshly as I judge myself. You would never deny me the opportunity of a second chance.

I hope that someday you’ll have the opportunity to see it. Nothing would please me more. You’re always welcome, Doctor.