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Soji was tired. Or rather, she supposed, she perceived that she was tired—she might have known now that she was an android, but all the little biological red herrings that had deceived her for three years remained. Resting in her darkened quarters was still a welcome relief, thoug. She was happy to be able to relax at long last.
Her Deltan hosts had been very kind to her, of course, even if it was the kind of attention that was naturally accorded to an (admittedly minor) celebrity. She was well aware that this was her new life, of course—not Soji Asha, but the synth Soji. As the synth Soji, she would always be able to find herself an audience, new friends, people delighted to look upon her—but lasting friends, people who wanted and she wanted to know her, were in shorter supply. It was strange. Strange enough to make her wistful about life on a reclaimed Borg Cube, even.
The accommodations provided to her were large—lavish, even, with streamlined chandeliers that clearly prioritized form over function and silky fabrics in various muted hues applied to what seemed like as many surfaces as possible. It was all very nice, of course, but Soji would have taken at least one dense, worn armchair any day. The bed would have to suffice. It, at least, was dotted with pillows and not short on comfort.
Before she could settle in, though, someone knocked on her door. She sighed, although this was not altogether unexpected; she had retired slightly early, after all, and the Deltans had been nothing if not attentive.
She opened the door, however, to find not a Deltan, but another humanoid she could not place, wearing what looked like a courier's uniform and holding a plain white envelope in one hand. "Um, hi?" She began, surprised into misplacing her now well-practiced social abilities.
"I've been having to chase you all over the quadrant for this one," said the courier, although his tone seemed cheerful enough. "Good riddance to it, whatever it is. Sending a paper letter." He tsked. "Who could imagine, in this day and age?"
"Thank you," said Soji, and she accepted it. "I'm sorry for the trouble—I'm what they call a goodwill tour."
"Oh, I know," said the courier, and Soji was uncomfortably reminded of her own new-found prominence. "You're the synth. Lovely to meet you. You're visiting my home planet in another few weeks. What's it like, being a synth?"
Soji was several weeks and many straws past being drawn into casual conversation with everyone who wanted her. "I'm sorry, but I really have to go."
"Of course! Not a problem," he said, which was really good, because Soji was already closing the door.
Soji returned to her bed and increased the lighting to seventy percent. It was, indeed, a letter in the style that would have been ordinary a few centuries prior. The envelope listed no return address. She figured she should probably have displayed some caution—all sorts of nasty things had come through the mail in those days—but ultimately was met with only her own indifference. It would be fine, probably.
She gently lifted the envelope's flap, fighting the glue that seemed determined to tear the paper apart before it relented, and pulled out the contents. They were a few pages of slightly yellowed lined paper, covered in lines of cursive handwriting of the sort that suggested the writer's thoughts flew far faster than their hand.
She unfolded the pages, looked for a signature, and had to laugh. Kestra—who else? She was glad, though, to receive the letter. She had been so scared, then, on Nepenthe—just starting her journey into her own identity, and it had seemed like the whole world was against her. Kestra had been welcoming, but not in the kind of way that tiptoed around her feelings and only reminded Soji more about how fragile she had felt. She'd asked strange questions, of course, but Soji suspected she did that to everyone—and, more importantly, in Kestra's eyes, being a synth was something magical, not a curse. She saw her as a person who was a synth, not a synth who she supposed was also a person.
She began to read.
Hi, Soji! It's Kestra. Is it weird that I'm writing to you? I don't know, but I wanted to do it anyway. I could have sent you something electronically in any number of ways, of course, but that didn't seem special enough, so I'm sending you this instead.
You're one of the most interesting people I've ever met, so I wanted to keep in touch (more interesting than Mom or Dad, but don't tell them that. They are interesting, but not when you've been around them every day of your life. It gets to the point where you hear another story before breakfast about some life-or-death situation on a starship and it's like okay, congrats! You saved Starfleet again! Did you ever not do that?)
Anyway, I totally digress. I think I do that a lot, but at the same time, that's the fun part of basically anything, so I keep doing it.
I hear you are doing all kinds of galactic travels, though! That's awesome. Do you think I could visit you sometime, or that you could visit Nepenthe? I know your whole purpose is to act as an ambassador for your whole kind or something (no pressure!), and we really don't need convincing that you won't go rogue and murder us all, but I think we'd like to see you again anyway. I'd like to see you, at least. If you could rope Admiral Picard in as well Mom and Dad would like that, too.
I'm not doing anything nearly as exciting, of course, but I did invent another language, and I bet you haven't done that. I'll send a dictionary your way if you'd like. I would have written this in Viveena, except I didn't want someone to open this and not be able to read it and think you were a spy or something. That would be unfortunate, although they'd probably just try the Universal Translator on it and then be really disappointed. If I found a letter in a mysterious language, I would totally want it to be spy code, at least.
Just in case, I'll give you more reasons to visit Nepenthe: It's really, super pretty this time of year. We do have four seasons, and I don't know which is my favorite, but autumn is definitely great. All the green things (and we have so many green things) turn many awesome colors. I think the soil makes the foliage extra vivid. We have a tree species whose leaves turn so deeply red they're nearly purple, and others that are the most saturated shade of yellow you've ever seen (growing naturally, at least), and a few that stay green until the very last moment just for contrast. Sometimes all the colors look good enough to eat, especially the oranges. One time when I was maybe three I actually did try to eat them, but I don't think tasted very good, which was disappointing.
If you can't make it right away (which I totally understand, since you're really busy and all), then you can come in winter, and then we can go ice skating and have all kinds of fun. Do you know how to skate? Since you're an android, I think you can figure it out pretty quickly if not. Mom joked last winter that she thought my skates would grow into my feet if I wore them much more. It's just so much fun, zipping along, with the air cold enough that it feels like it's trying to bite off your face and the snow blowing around you and the smooth sailing feeling of flying along the ice.
When I'm not outside or working on the new language (it needs a name —once I get you the dictionary you can give me suggestions) I've been working to enrich Viveen culture with new motifs of art. Earth history has had so many different movements and styles of art, of course, and so you can't just make a few scribbles that all look the same and call it good enough. Most of what Thad and I worked on was analogous to prehistoric art, which is all well and good, but once their tools developed their art probably would have too. I'm making some pieces that are inspired by our old designs but a little fancier, and introducing some new elements and styles of composition to show evolution. I'm enclosing one sketch for you. What do you think? Honest thoughts appreciated.
Anyway, my hand is getting super sore from writing this much, so I'm going to sign off. That's lucky for you, because it means I'm leaving off all my additional weird questions about what it's like being an android.
Sincerely,
Kestra Troi-Riker
The bunnicorns were proving especially elusive that day, but the weather was so fine that Kestra really couldn't be frustrated. She supposed that applied to most days on Nepenthe, given how frequently her parents remarked on it. It was strange, really—life on a starship, and then life on a planet that was so alive. One day she'd probably have to live somewhere ordinary, but was something really ordinary if, to her, the ordinary was the extraordinary, the outlier?
Not that it mattered for now. Starfleet Academy wouldn't consider her for another several years yet, and was that really what she wanted, anyway? What she wanted was to spend her whole life in the woods, but that might not turn out to be practical. She was a practical person, after all. Creating civilizations required it just as much as it did creativity.
The path back to the house stretched out before her, green and soft and lovely. She wondered what destruction looked like, accustomed as she was to this evergreen land. She couldn't pictured it withered or wasting away—even the dampening effects of winter were slight. And then she thought of her brother, and decided maybe she could.
It wouldn't do, though, to dwell on that. She could do that later, when she'd left this place as one day she surely would, and when the days wouldn't already be filled with little reminders that pricked and bled her.
She ran down the hill toward home, just for the fun of it. She let her arms windmill around her, feeling the wind on her face and the straining in her shoulders propeling her ever faster. She was running, free, leaving behind what she wanted to. Sometimes she did this and she tripped, but that was okay. Her Viveen attire always looked a little more convincing when it and she were a little scuffed and dirtied.
She reached the house to find her dad outside, weeding part of their garden. He turned, and she held up her empty hands. "I have nothing to deliver, I'm afraid. The bunnicorns all ran away too quickly."
"Speedy little buggers," he said. "I do, however, have something to deliver to you."
This piqued her interest, much more than a little bit. Her parents periodically received deliveries, of course, from old colleagues sending new items from far away, but she didn't usually get deliveries outside of birthdays and holidays, and even then it was too often clothing she would never wear accompanied by rather forward notes from her grandmother. "Really?"
"Yes!" He rummaged around in his pockets and pulled out a slightly rumpled envelope. "It's right here."
Kestra accepted it immediately. She really, really hoped that she was guessing its origin correctly. "See you later!" she said over her shoulder, already in the middle of running off. She could chat later. For now, it was time to see to the letter. She caught her dad's quick wave out of the corner of her eye.
She settled in the shade of one of the oldest trees on their lands. It was bent and gnarled by centuries of storms, but still lived on, thriving above the youngsters that surrounded it. The bark was coarse and scored, but Kestra relaxed against it in relative comfort. A string of tiny ants were making their way along one root, and she shifted to avoid disturbing them.
And now for the letter. She grinned, and tore it open in delight.
Greetings, Kestra!
I'm so happy to hear from you. It's not weird at all! I've been wanting to see how you were doing and what you were up to, but with all that's happened I just hadn't gotten around to it. It was difficult to find the supplies I needed to properly answer you—the Deltans, the species I'm currently visiting, have apparently never really seen the point of paper—but I think it was worth the effort. This is much more fun!
I could keep you in suspense for another few paragraphs, but I think you would rather I avoid that. Another stop has been added to my trip through mysterious and unknown means. I'll be visiting a planet called Nepenthe. That wouldn't happen to be a convenient location for you, would it? ツ
And your drawing is lovely, by the way. I love how the composition of the horse and the rider clearly echo Paleolithic motifs, but the style has progressed with the introduction of new materials. The sense of character and motion you've captured really brings it to life. I'd enclose something of my own, but I've never really tried to do art, if you know what I mean. I should. Data did, and apparently he was good at it. Maybe I will be, too.
There, I think you've given me a hobby to try as soon as I can get some materials and have some time off. I'll be sure to report back with the results! I'm not sure what I'll draw, since I don't have a whole civilization of my own. There's a fountain here that's very nice. Maybe I'll give that a try.
Speaking of time off—oh my goodness, I've never thought of myself as an asocial person, but having to be an ambassador for all synthetics (i.e., convince scores of people that I'm totally not a horrible violent murderer!) is nearly turning me into mush. I think of Nepenthe a lot. It—and you and your family—were a brief moment of peace in what's been a crazy ride, and I really can't thank you enough for that.
I do have to thank you for sparing me more android questions—I've had enough of those lately for a lifetime. Most people are kind, but there are a few who seem to think I don't have feelings to hurt. They act like I'm Data, and even that's unfair because everything I've read seems to indicate that he always had emotions, in his own way, even when he didn't think he did. He was a person, and I'm a person. We were androids, too—that's unavoidable—but at the end of the day, I don't think being an android should be any different from being, say, a Vulcan. We're a long way from that being a universal attitude, though.
Making that happen—making us become just another species in the galaxy—is my job, these days, and don't know what to make of that. I don't think I'm the right person, but I don't know who else would be the right person, so here I am.
I suppose I should close out now, before I spend too much time bemoaning my own situation! People on the whole really have been receptive, and I have great hopes for making progress. I would love a dictionary of your new language, if you would be so kind as to send me one, and I can't wait to see you again.
Your friend,
Soji
Kestra sat quietly for another moment, rereading the letter, before dashing off again—she had another message to write. Soji was the coolest friend ever, even if she didn't know it.