Scene 10

            The Vulcan doctor entered the brig and drew Riker to the end of the corridor, speaking quietly to him. Jarod heard Miss Parker muttered, “Oh, good. The human semi-truck again. Just what I need.”

            Broots chuckled. “He’s not Human, Miss Parker. He’s Vulcan. See the ears?”

            “Yes. They’re…attractive.” She looked at the Vulcan speculatively.

            “You can forget trying to tempt him to release you, Parker,” Sydney smiled. “Vulcans have no emotions.”

            She and Broots both looked at him in surprise. “No emotions?” Miss Parker repeated at the same time that Broots said, “I thought you didn’t know anything about it, Sydney.”

            “I know that much at least,” Sydney said. “It stayed in my mind because it interested me.”

            Against his will, Jarod grinned, mostly at himself. Yes, that would interest Sydney.

            Riker called in a security guard and left the brig. V’Lan came to Jarod’s cell. “Captain Picard would like me to perform a mindmeld on you. Will you allow me?”

            Jarod’s eyes widened. “A mindmeld! Yes! I would like that!”

            Both the doctor and the security guard gave him odd looks, but the guard released the field, and the doctor entered the cell. “Please sit down,” he said and sat beside him. “You will experience disorientation and emotional confusion. You will experience my mind and memories as I experience yours. Are you ready?”

            “Yes.”

            The Vulcan put out his right hand, pressed his fingers to Jarod’s left temple and cheekbones. Jarod briefly felt the tingling energy in the fingers as the Vulcan intoned, “My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts.” And then he was plunged into a kind of intimacy he had never experienced before, an alternate universe within his own mind.

            Parker, Broots, and Sydney jostled for position to see what was going on. “Broots,” Sydney whispered, “what is he doing?”

            “A Vulcan mindmeld,” Broots whispered back, awed. “He’s linking their minds together, so he can see Jarod’s and Jarod can see his.”

            “What?” Sydney laughed softly. “Such a thing is possible?”

            “Here it is. Gosh, I can’t believe I’m actually seeing it!”

            Miss Parker shuddered. “The idea makes me sick.”

            “Too much exposure for you, Parker,” Sydney said. “Too much honesty.”

            She glared at him. “Oh, you’re as bad as a Vulcan, Syd.”

            “That’s a compliment, Miss Parker,” he smiled.

            V’Lan and Jarod sat for a few moments after the meld had been broken, recovering. The Vulcan was shaking. He raised wide eyes to Jarod. “You are alien.”

            “Yes,” he acknowledged.

            V’Lan slowly got up and went to the entrance. The security guard released the field.

            “Are you alright, sir?”

            “Yes.” He left the brig.

            There was a long silence.

            “Jarod, are you alright?”

            “Yes, Sydney.”

            “What was that like?”

            His voice was a little shaky as he answered. “Like the most real Pretend imaginable. When I became someone, I really am him, for a moment. But this was…even more real. I was him. He was me. I have just lived a complete Vulcan life. It is…dissipating now. It is less like real memories than remembered images. But to be a Vulcan is unlike anything I have never been before. The rewash at one and the same time great calmness and great turbulence. Vulcans are emotional people, wildly so, but they put on calmness and logic like a shield and seek to keep the emotion so contained that it no longer has any impact on their lives.”

            “Ah, fascinating,” Sydney breathed.

            “It is a crippling way to live life!” Jarod flashed.

            “Yes, it is, Jarod,” Sydney said. “But one can see why they would choose it.”

            “Yes, he answered, subdued. “One can.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scene 11

            “Captain, I agree with Deanna and Beverly.”

            Picard stared at Riker. “You agree with them, Number One? You were the one who suspected him to begin with and convinced me to let you investigate them.”

            “I know, Captain. I had a feeling that he wasn’t what he said he was. Well, he wasn’t, and we found him out. But now we’ve found out that he is what he said he was. Intrinsically he is the man he said he was, doing the work he said he was doing. Our work, as Doctor Crusher said.”

            Picard leaned back in his chair. “It must be an extraordinary person who has made two of my senior officers so passionately willing to circumnavigate regulations on his behalf.”

            “We have circumnavigated regulations before, when the cause was more urgent than the regulations. Five Federation administrators whose work is undermining what the Federation stands for are nearly here and will be expecting Jarod to meet them. I say we let him do it.”

            Before Picard could respond, the door opened and Doctor V’Lan entered. He stood at attention before the captain.

            “Your report, Doctor?”

            “The prisoner holds no threat for the Federation, Captain. Quite the contrary. He wishes to see it prosper as much as we do. He also feels very strongly about the mission he has created for himself. He saw a need and had no hesitation about expending himself to fill the need. That is one of the major goals of his life.” The same passion that had been in Beverly’s Deanna’s, and Angelo’s eyes was quietly in the Vulcan’s. “It ought also to be one of our goals. Do we not on this ship often act as though it is?”

            Picard understood then something about the man who had called himself Jarod Westmore. For a few moments he had suspected that the man was forming a personality cult around himself, but it was different than that. Jarod received the loyalty of the people around them because he understood them, because he cared for them, and because his passion and his goals awakened their own often dormant passions and goals. Many of his people, he knew, had joined Starfleet because they wanted to change their worlds. Daily life could easily drown out those old passions. But Jarod lived his passions in his daily life, and he reawakened the core values of the people around him.

            “Captain?” Riker said when Picard’s musing silence had stretched out uncomfortably.

            “Thank you, Doctor,” Picard said. “Is there anything else?”

            V’Lan hesitated. “Captain, there could be a great deal more. I experienced his whole life in a few moments. There are things inside his head that have confounded me. He is far more alien than anyone you will ever meet on any planet you discover. But I do not think I should tell them to you. I will if you order me to, but it would be better if you did not.”

            Picard examined him for a long moment. “What you learned disturbed you.”

            “Yes, sir. But it is not about Jarod himself. It is about—” The Vulcan hesitated. “Reality. The reality of his world.”

            “Reality?” Picard’s eyes narrowed. “Do you judge that this would have any bearing on his mission here?”

            “No, sir. I do not believe so. Otherwise I would have told you immediately.”

            “Then reserve the information for such a time as you deem it necessary to tell us. Thank you, Doctor. Dismissed.”

            V’Lan nodded and left. Riker gave Picard a look.

            “Well, Captain?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scene 12

            “Jarod, tell us about the children,” Sydney had said. So Jarod had told them, and they all listened. Broots’ emotions showed clearly on his face. He had a child of his own. Sydney leaned back with his face tipped up, thinking who knew what. Jarod could have figured out what, but he didn’t try. He was tired of trying to be Sydney in his mind. Miss Parker listened quietly, too, and he knew she was remembering. Remembering their years in the Centre together, she the boss’s little daughter, he the company’s pet experiment, two lonely children who found a friend in each other. How had it come to this, her vivacity and sparkle subsumed under a hard exterior, their old friendship turned into a cat-and-mouse game? The Centre, of course. It had taken away who she was just as it had taken away who he was. That was why he could never bring himself to give up on her and treat her completely as his enemy, why he hunted her past as he hunted his own and reached out with veiled compassion. The Centre had hurt her as it had hurt so many others. He couldn’t believe, though, that the change was as permanent as the change Angelo had undergone. He knew his old friend still hid somewhere inside his new enemy.

            Another visitor came to the brig, and like the good Starfleet officer he wasn’t, Jarod rose to meet him. “Captain Picard,” he said.

            “Jarod,” Picard said, “put your uniform jacket back on.”

            “Sir?”

            “You have a mission to complete.” He released the forcefield. “The jacket, Jarod.”

            Dumbly Jarod put the jacket back on. Then he stood at attention as Picard came up to him. “I am granting you a field commission. You will be an acting lieutenant. Which means that you need to give me one of those pips.”

            Still dumbly, Jarod plucked it off his collar and gave it to him.

            “Acting-Lieutenant Jarod Westmore, you are authorized to complete your mission. Geordi is waiting for you in Engineering with the cloak nearly complete.”

            “Thank you, sir,” he said automatically. “Sir? To what do I owe this honor?”

            “To your own character, Jarod, which shines out of you so completely that you have had half my senior officers storming my ready room on your behalf. Including Commander Riker.”

            “Commander Riker?”

            “You will find, Jarod, that though it takes time to earn his trust, when you have earned it, there is no one more loyal than William Riker.”

            “I believe it, sir.”

            “Dismissed, Lieutenant.”

            “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

            Jarod flew—but before he flew, he paused before the others’ cell, and he smiled at them. Broots’ grin back was full-hearted and enthusiastic. Jarod was living his fantasy, and Broots did not begrudge it to him. Sydney, too, gave him a smile that told him, like a shot, that he was proud of him. And Miss Parker put her hand against the forcefield and gave him a small nod. Do what my mother tried to do, she might have said. Succeed where she failed.

            Then Jarod flew.