The Logic of Love

The Logic of Love

By Linda

Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Paramount invented the characters (accept Tovin), I just go outside and play with them in their sandbox.
Genre: Angst
Date: 02/24/05
Ok to archive
Summary: The story fits in after the episode ‘Affliction’. It is about loss but ends with hope. It is also about the creation of ideas by anonymous people, which great philosophers build on.

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

Tovin shuffled across the cold bare stone floor in ill-fitting footgear. The slippers were the legacy of an old monk who had died that week. The monk had been a mentor to Tovin, so they let Tovin have these sehlat hide slippers lined with bird down. Tovin had been at the monastery a year now and the contemplative life suited him. It gave him plenty of time to work out his own philosophy of life.

Without love there is no logic, because what stimulated the combining might as well be called love, affinity, or attraction. The elements merged and life was born. What were the chances? Not great, but the universe is vast. Infinite. Diverse. Combinations were inevitable.

Silly, really, these musings that he had while fasting. Were they only the ravings of a subsistence starved mind? He had written them down in the past, but that was dangerous. Someone else had read them and he was censured. He dared not risk being ostracized. His frail body and clubfoot would prevent him from hunting and he would starve.

* * * * *

T’Pol sat cross legged with the Kir’Shara open in front of her on the metal floor of her quarters. Let us contemplate the beginning of life. What gave rise to life on Vulcan? What was the spark that set off the evolutionary chain? T’Pol was searching for meaning in the words of Vulcan’s greatest philosophers. She had lost her bearings in the events of the past few years. What was the point of life, of HER life, with so many conflicting philosophies in the universe: Vulcan, Human, Andorian, even Xindi? Why go on after the intolerable losses in her life?

T’Pol’s thoughts drifted into the past where her mother shaped baby T’Pol’s fingers around her first paintbrush to draw Vulcan characters. Her mind moved on to the image of Trip’s sister in a blue dress and long blond hair, flashing an incredibly beautiful smile. But if he had not lost his sister, she might not have found him and then pushed him away. Scenes of her father came sharply into view. Her father facing assassination on Earth and on Vulcan while he pursued his goal of attaining peace between worlds. He used methods that made him unlikable, increasing his chances of becoming a target. The potential loss of her father was something that she could not contemplate, not on top of these other losses.

There was also the possibility of the loss of shipmates who had become as dear to her as blood relatives. The odds were, and as a Vulcan she could precisely calculate them, that more losses were inevitable. How could she cope without descending into the Vulcan equivalent of permanent insanity? She must find the answer in the roots of her culture’s coping techniques. For if she lost HIM, she knew that what effectively made her a person, would die. That is why she had backed off in their relationship. If she distanced herself from him, maybe she could survive loosing him. Maybe.

* * * *

It has taken eons to evolve a Vulcan. What an accomplishment. He is a sentient creature capable of compassion, of wonder at the universe, of ability to understand and manipulate the universe. A Vulcan is a creature of infinite capacity for building or for destruction.

Tovin put down his quill. Again the pain in his foot broke through his contemplations. He massaged his swollen foot and sighed. The walking meditation had relaxed his mind and the rest of his body, but he paid for it with his foot. All he had left to himself of this day was the time the sun’s shadow took to pass from one mark to the next on his windowsill. Then he must help with the food preparation for the communal meal. The chief cook was trying to create new recipes, which pleased the tongue while combining vegetable proteins that could replace animal proteins. The reasoning was to stop harming your fellow creatures. Tovin approved of that. Would that mean weaving grass footwear when sehlats were no longer hunted? They still might be able to collect bird down from abandoned nests though, or invent something entirely new.

* * * *

He had left the Enterprise! She had not anticipated that. She needed him to be close, even if they never touched again. How deeply he had hurt her when he said that not everything revolved around her. She had not meant to be selfish with her question, just wanted there to be reasons other than herself for his transfer. But his answer actually confirmed that she was the reason he was leaving, because his bitter remark was meant to hurt.

The meditation candles softened the sharp edges of her quarters. They emitted a quiet flickering and friendly comfort that she tried to draw into herself to still the roiling depths of her mind. Her eyes were filming over with moisture that threatened to spill out and run down her cheeks. How un-Vulcan, how wasteful of the moisture her body had been bred to conserve. She blinked the moisture away and returned to the Kir’Shara before her.

The universe is logical. We can tell that by the steps life takes to build from the first one-celled creatures to the wonder that is our own bodies. This process repeats on the other known worlds. The proof is in the mathematics of progression of life cycles over time.

T’Pol closed the book after another half hour and prepared to retire. She blew out the candles, one by one, noting how the shadows they had cast, vanished into darkness. Something glinted in the light of the last candle before she put it out. She closed her hand around it and lay down on her bed. Falling into a fitful sleep, T’Pol’s hand relaxed so her mother’s IDIC slipped through her fingers, pinging as it hit the metal of the floor next to her bed.

* * * *

He closed the last journal with shaking hands, reviewing in his mind, the final words.
Tovin was dying. Even the ingeniously padded boots designed to fit his misshapen feet no longer prevented pain. He would pass them on to another, but they would fit no one he knew. He wanted so much to leave a legacy. Tovin could no longer reach his aching foot to massage it, so he sighed as he laid his head back on his cot for the last time.

And so we see that we must be the keepers of logic. We must teach others that tolerance is the way to peace. Differences should be appreciated, studied, understood, conserved, instead of being obliterated. I hear echoes from the future: “reverence for life, passive resistance of evil, treat others as you would yourself, the planet is not part of us, we are part of the planet, we will achieve peace and long life only if we know that we come to serve”. These are themes, which will develop on our world and others. Over time they will be scoffed at and their practitioners will be killed. But slowly, they will come to prevail, as they must, if life is to continue.

Tovin’s apprentice closed the last journal and packed them all up as he had been instructed. They would go into the monastery archives. At least Tovin had grown enough in respect over the years to have the privilege of the archiving of his writings. The apprentice thought the last entry was an encouragement for someone else to take up the thread of Tovin’s logic and express it more eloquently. His work was as the one-celled animal on which a greater philosopher would build a sentient being. Tovin was part of the process, part of the universe. It was enough of a legacy, even if his name be forgotten, thought the apprentice as he took the journals away.

* * * *

T’Pol left her quarters for her duty shift. The days had become enervating with constant shuttling between the bridge and engineering. They had not yet become an efficient team. Though Kelby was trying his best, he was just not a Trip Tucker.

So would she be able to make love with him ever again? Yes, in time. Yes, because it was a continuation of the nature of the universe, this combining of diverse elements. The Kir’Shara had promised that and she believed it. She held the answer in the pocket of her uniform, where she now carried her mother’s IDIC. It was inevitable that there would be bondings between Vulcans and Humans that created a new kind of child. This was the next logical step in evolution. She wanted to be part of it; the logic of love would transcend loss.

Back to Fan Fiction Main Menu

Have a comment to make about this story? Do so in the Trip Fan Fiction forum at the HoTBBS!

Nine of you have made comments

Very nice! Very hopeful! :) Great stuff, Linda!

It is painful just how many times T'Pol has pushed Trip away yet each time he retreats she considers how much he has hurt her. Her self absorption needs to stop and more honest reflection allow her to realise she cannot nor should fight the feelings they both have for each other. It would be not only wasteful but cruel to do otherwise. I hope she will be kinder to Trip when they next meet and hopefully at long last will be entirely honest with him. Ali D :~)

Pretty! I liked it, thank you! :)

very nice i liked it inspiring

Thanks for the comments so far! This is my first story here and I was kind of nervous about it. I forgot to say that I am assuming Soval is T'Pol's father in this story like we assume in our Soval's Annex stories, but I quess you can tell that anyway.

very well done - I really liked the tie in with the origins of the Kirshara :o)

I liked it a great deal ... there's good depth of thought in your story. Is Tovin apprendice Surak?

I don't know yet if Surak is Tovin's apprentice directly. The way I write, I have to let the characters 'come and speak to me'. Maybe that is a writer's technique to let the writing flow as if it was not really me doing the writing.

I assume Surak and other Vulcan philosophers were 'influcenced' by Tovin as other people in Earth cultures are influenced by those that come before. It is my belief that no great inventor or philosopher ever operates in a vacuum. They have to build on what came before in their culture. Whatever is achieved is always a group effort! And there are always people who never get credit for their efforts. But that is just my opinion. It is not to take anything away from those who are rewarded for their efforts. Does that make sense?

Again, great si fi.