An intriguing proposal

It was a curious situation we had found ourselves in; alternate versions of ourselves have usurped the ship and begun implementing their mode of conduct over our living conditions. In a way this could be considered a sublimation of our crew’s way of life, but I stand by the vote conducted by our captain to adhere to this, as it was the most prudent course of action and avoided bloodshed. The caveat was that we were now subject to foreign rules of law and behavior, more particularly; acts of sexual expression has become much more… expressive.

My inter-dimensional ‘brother’ may have been at peace with this sort of behavior, perhaps even welcoming of it, but such deviant acts was beyond my years of conditioned self control. Perhaps he took it as a logical conclusion that I would agree to this proposed tryst, or he took the opportunity of the mind meld to see something in me that I did not, but my participation in this meeting was a foregone conclusion to him.

The inclusion of my Linda Trask; (a designation I attribute purely to differentiate her from the mirror universe’s version, not as a claim over her in a romantic sense), was the part of their plan that they were more unsure about. It is a logical supposition that since they paired up in their universe, Ensign Trask and myself would be compatible as well, but often times speculation does not necessarily play out to fruition.

Despite the shaky hypothesis this situation was based on, the two other realmers have brought us all together. The two Trasks stood by the door, dressed in similar loose fitting gowns, reminiscent of an ancient Roman tunic or toga, only with Imperial Trask wearing a reddish version while my Trask wore blue. Imperial Trask was easily differentiated by the nanotechnology grafted on her temple. She spoke, “Well, first of all, to make things simpler, we decided that I will be called Abby based on my middle name and she will keep the name Linda…”

Linda made a self satisfied smile as my thoughts started to ponder what method they employed to make this decision. My thoughts then wandered to myself and my own doppelganger; over how we would identify ourselves to the crew. Abby broke up that thought as she continued to speak. “Second, she wants to speak with her Davis before she makes a decision…” she looked at me with a gentle smile, like a mother introducing a child to a new friend. “So, why don’t we give these two some time alone?”

The couple removed themselves from the room to give the Linda and I some privacy. They opted to do this in my bedroom and I found it would be inappropriate to ask them to leave completely since they were hinging on the decision we made at present. It would be better to have them around for to receive our response immediately.

I sat cross legged on the floor, since the arrival of the Trasks interrupted our meditation, and Linda walked over sitting herself next to me. She was trepidatious at first, giving me an awkward smile to placate any uneasiness I may have been feeling.

“You will note that I require no signs of appeasement, ensign,” I pointed out, not having to explain my Vulcan heritage to her.

She smiled again and dipped her head as she half shrugged, “Sorry, **** of habit…” She sat back against my couch and folded her knees up to her chest and hugged them as she turned to me. “So… I take it the other Skylar made the same suggestion that Abby did with me?”

“You are correct in your assumption,” I said, a bit uneasily.

“Did he…” she started and glanced back, “I mean… you meet your twin and they get all flirty with you… did you get that far?”

I paused as Trask’s supposition inferred to me what must have occurred between her and her twin. This didn’t help matters for me, physically, and adjusted my position as I did my best to withhold questions over her experience, in order to keep things dignified. “The… situation did not come up…” I meekly replied.

“Oh…” Linda responded, growing an adorable flush of red as she hid her face in her knees. We sat there quietly as she presumably questioned her own decisions. I had to discretely adjust myself again as my phallus continued to threaten its way through my pants. She finally spoke again, “So… it’s weird, huh? Us ending up together?”

“I do find it a... revelation…” I admitted. She looked at me a bit forlorn and I felt it best to append the statement with some conciliatory aside. “Among the crew, I would admit, you would have been a good choice.”

She smiled. “Yeah? We barely know each other… how would you know?“ she prodded, playfully.

“Although our interactions have been sparse since your arrival on the ship, I have been keeping notes on all the capable pilots on the roster in case the need should arrive for my replacement,” I explained. “Your records show that you are easily capable in those regards; have been shown to take initiative, albeit a little recklessly; and have the well being of your crewmates in mind over your own safety.”

“All that was in my records?” she asks.

“That as well as observation,” I replied.

“So you have been noticing me…” she smirked with a tone of victory.

“So, has that helped you come to a decision, ensign?” I asked back.

“Well, not really,” she answered with some dismay. “I mean, we’re being thrown together just because our counterparts are together? Seems kind of ****, don’t you think? What about what we want? What do you want?”

I felt a pang in my chest as I wanted to tell her that I did feel an attraction. I wanted to tell her that the very fact that she cared about my own wishes only made me want her even more. I wanted to lean in and kiss her, remove her gown and take her right there in my living room. I wanted all this, but my Vulcan training held me back. It felt like I was shackled by the lifetime of conditioning and those shackles were dragging me down into the ground itself. It pulled me in until I began to suffocate from the weight of it all. I leaned in and looked Linda in the eyes. I don’t know if she could see the longing I had for her, for a release, but I retreated, looked away.

“I have spent a lifetime learning and training to suppress my emotions. Despite what my counterpart implies, it is not something that can simply be shrugged off in a night of wanton debauchery,” I concluded.

Linda titled her head and looked up at me as she said in empathetically, “Sounds like you’d be OK if you could…”

“He accused me of being selfish. He said that if I had acted, I could have saved lives…” This was another factor that was weighing on me. Had I been like my Imperial brother, would that have prevented the catastrophic events that had occurred? “I am **** to wonder if we were more open to sexual expression… that perhaps the entire episode could have been avoided. Chief Dumont may not have sent us into the middle of the Beta Quadrant and more of ¾ of the crew would still be with us…”

Linda put a consoling hand on my shoulder and turned my body so I would have to face her. “Listen... “ she told me sternly, “Nothing that happened was your fault! We didn’t know… it was two days of horror and we simply did what we could do to survive..” I stared at her blankly, too lost in my own self loathing. “Besides, it wouldn’t matter how much sex the guys had… the virus took them anyways…” I had to admit that much was true. While we managed to isolate a majority of the infected males, they succumbed to illness rather than phaser fire. “I think maybe it was a different strain than the Imperium ran into, they had an alternate thing from an alternate version of our universe…”

“Thank you, ensign. I have to admit, this entire situation has caused me to become somewhat… disoriented…”

Linda smiled, “You know, the fact that you keep addressing me as ‘ensign’ leads me to believe you’re still on the fence about this entire ‘situation’...”

I looked at her, becoming even more infatuated with her the more time we spent together. “Linda…” I said.

Linda lifted her body over so that she knelt in front of my seated position, face to face. Her arms wrapped around my neck and I could hear and feel the warmth of her breath close to my lips. I looked back at her as impassively as I could while she gazed into my eyes and whispered softly to me, “Should we do this?”

I looked down, unsure of the choice myself. “You do understand that if we go through with this, nothing will be the same again?”

“I know… but we just joined a new order and are lost millions of lightyears away from home… is anything really the same?”

“Under that logic, you disregard the possibility of us successfully returning home.”

“Yeah… I guess I do. But I joined Starfleet to find out what’s out there, not to be content with how things are.” She leaned in and added, “What if we find that we like what's out here better than what’s back home?” She leaned in closer and pressed her lips to mine. I breathed in, taking in her sweet scent as her lips meshed against me and our tongues intertwined. After a long moment of embrace, she pulled away. “Well? Should we explore this new world together?”