Confessions of a Joined Trill: Duty & Duality
Posted on 07/26/2020 @ 11:27am by
A new ship, new uniform any delightful Sherry red, two solid gold rank pips, and a new me (in a way)? What is this life and how did I even end up here? It was not all that long ago that I was a bright-eyed physicist with a speculative nature about him, who was fresh out their educational programs and slipped into a Starfleet uniform of a very different cooling color. My place was mostly at a science console if I wasn’t tucked away somewhere reading up on the latest chatter about a stellar phenomenon as I grew sleepy and started to twirl my hair around my index finger before ultimately catching a few hours of much-needed sleep.
I barely recognize myself now when I wake up to splash a bit of water onto my face and I look into the mirror. It is not nearly as startling as it would if I woke up and looked like a Romulan, but that said, I think I would look rather cute with pointed ears, but I would not give up my spots for them. No, the face is the same as it always has been, freckled to the Gods with sun-kissed reddish spots against my porcelain white skin and otherwise clear complexion. I still have that youthfulness to me that sheds a good decade off my general appearance (especially when I am skin and bones as my mother would say) which has always caused officers to take a second or third look back at me as I walk by them: Frankly, I know. They see a kid in an officer’s uniform and expect me to be a cadet. Well, that is not the case, and now more than ever.
I have heard from some Human buds of mine back at the academy that the ‘eyes are the windows to the soul’ or so an old Earth expression goes. My eyes are still the same warm chocolate brown that they have always been, however, beneath the façade is something more, something different, and it scares me at times when I stare into the mirror too long. I start to not recognize myself. I receive information from Starfleet Command rather than simply Starfleet Science.
The reports are different; they could be about the same thing, and yet the perspective is different. Whereas one looks at a wormhole from the scientific value and the potential research needed, secrets that may be unlocked; Command does not fuss around with that. Scientific information is footnoted. Political ramifications and strategic value are brought to the forefront. It is reflective of the change within me because I now understand the footnoting of scientific information. As important as it still remains to me, I see more value in the strategic, political, and logistical information.
It is a sacred honor to be joined on Trill with a symbiont unless you come from my family or a family that shares similar views of a silenced minority. Having gone through the process without the preparation or being a chosen candidate, I can tell you that the whole ordeal is no stroll through the forest unless your idea of a stroll is rolling down a steep hill and going through a patch of sharp briar plants and jagged shrubs. Before you go in, you are who you are and you ideally know that by then. When you come out, you come out a different person, tattered and torn with small tears, and your life essence rising to the surface and coming out of the small lacerations. That is the joining process. It is losing part of yourself to become part of something else, some would say something better though my parents have always chosen to view it as something ‘other’ and undesirable.
As much as my parents willfully want to see me as Jodan Daos: cherished son, educated astrophysicist, all-around humble as pie, and shy; I am not. I am Jodan Joral, a joined trill, second host to the Joral symbiont, and a Starfleet Lieutenant serving as First Officer of the USS Crazy Horse. I have a lifetime of command experience to draw from as well as years of astrogation experience, a passion for low altitude aviation, and the ability to comprehend theoretical physics and make complex mathematical computation in his sleep…when there is synergy within my mind and ‘soul’ otherwise, I often feel frozen in the moment and caught between two conflicting personalities, but I was always more docile and subservient than Joral. So, when there is a conflict it is likely going to go a certain way approximately eighty percent of the time. When it comes to matters of science, who I was before tends to get the upper hand. Now, that is the life of being a joined Trill and I am excited and yet terrified of how I will be as First Officer on the USS Crazy Horse, but I will always do my best.
