From Toq's diary
I spent several hours sitting alone on some bench, waiting for the messy whirling of thoughts in my head to calm down enough to let me think clearly again.
A few hours earlier I had left my assigned room with the intention of telling Cassiopeia about all the doubts and contradictions appearing day after day in my mind. New emotions were emerging more quickly than how I could elaborate on them, I needed more time to give them a meaning before being overwhelmed by them, that is what I wanted to tell her.
What she told me instead really managed to make me surpass a line. I could sense emotions in her with an intensity I rarely perceived before, she was worried about what she was about to tell me, unsure about her future, hopeful to convince me to live with me like an earthling family, whatever this means in the practice, and many other emotions I was not able to assign to any word, either in my native language or my local one. And all those emotions triggered a cascade of other ones within my mind: at first I felt confused about what she meant, then scared when I realised to be absolutely clueless about all the hypothetic imagines I could see in her mind, and then anguished when I noticed how my lack of an answer was just making her feeling even worse, and many, many other ones I was never able to really define.
Those were too many emotions, all at once, so many I could barely process any other sensorial signal received by my brain at that moment. My head hurt more and more, my vision became blurry, and my hearing muffled. I am not sure whether she said anything or not, or what her expression looked like, all I remember is that I needed to go away from there.
I wandered around for a while, waiting for the chaos in my mind could calm down a bit. I needed a bit of telepathic silence, I needed to remain alone for a while. Eventually, however, I could not do much other than returning back to my assigned lodgement.
The others were still discussing work when I entered the room. I would have rather teleported to my personal room and avoided any contact with them, but I was also very aware that it would have been basically impossible. In any case they had already sensed my presence and my state of mind, and they were all about to ask for explanations. As usually happened, eventually it was Arizhel to take the lead and give voice to those questions.
Toq: ...
I did not find suitable words for answering their question in a way they could understand, my mind was still working slower than usual.
So I hesitated, and my hesitation gave Arizhel the time to reach me and start talking.
Arizhel: How much more do you want to insist on this behaviour before admitting that this is not meant for us? Look at yourself, this nonsense is reaching the point to affect your health and mental stability, all your vital parameters are so off right now!
Looking back at it, now that I am writing down a report of what happened, I admit Arizhel was not being particularly unreasonable. But at that moment I was not in the state to elaborate a rational answer myself. Thus, my eventual answer was:
Toq: Shut up, just leave me alone!
Everyone immediately turned towards me, speechless. That was the first time someone had the nerve to interrupt Arizhel, let alone with such a sentence.
At that point, only Antaan was the only person able to re-establish the order in the room, and so he did.
Antaan: Calm down, everyone. And you, Toq, follow me.
He then told me to sit down, and gave me a warm beverage to help me to calm down. He later told me it was a trick he saw on an old video record broadcasted by the local media system. It sort of worked, it was hard to remain mad when the person sitting in front of you was a friendly person offering you a sweet and warm beverage with a smiling face.
Antaan: What happened to you, Toq?
Toq: I...
Antaan: Mental overload is dangerous, you should know it well.
Toq: (confused) Wait, what are you talking about? I did not hav...
The beverage was probably having an effect, I could feel my brain calming down second after second. And, with that, I was quickly regaining my capacity to think clearly.
Of course that was an episode of mental overload, what else could have it been? I still remember well what I was instructed about back in the days, before I became the telepathy specialist of our crew. The number of neurons in our brains is very close to the one of humans, yet telepathic signals strongly increased the volume of sensorial information to be elaborated at every given moment. A sensorial excess could thus result in a depletion of oxygen within the cerebral tissues, resulting at first in a confusional state and then in permanent damage. When we lived on Sixam the members of the Elder's Council kept us under close check to avoid the occurrence of any similar event, but during long space exploration missions I witnessed a few very serious cases, not even as the telepathic specialist I was really able to help them.
What could have caused it, though? For sure the circumstances were very different from any past episode I could recall, but given the situation all I could think about was...
Toq: Do you think it was the emotions I felt to cause the overload?
Antaan: On the basis of what I can sense in your mind, it seems likely.
Toq: But...
Antaan: However, Toq, I really do not think you should think about it right now. Your body temperature is still largely exceeding the normal range, all you should do now is resting.
Toq: But...
Antaan: I know I should not give you orders anymore, but tonight I have to make an exception. Go to your assigned room and avoid any contact with others until tomorrow at this time. Is it clear?
Toq: Yes, sir.
I obeyed the order, I knew way too well I needed to give my neurons some rest. Not to keep thinking about what happened earlier that day was almost impossible, though. Cassiopeia seemed so anguished when I left, I did not want her to feel that way for my fault. But the more I tried to think about it, the more I could feel the headache worsening and my thoughts return to the chaotic mess they were earlier that day.
And then I had to force myself to stop thinking about it, I clearly had not recovered yet from the mental overload. Up to that moment I had been relatively lucky, I had never lost consciousness and I could not perceive any permanent damage in my mind, but I could not know with certainty what could have happened if I continued to insist on those same thoughts.
I knew I needed to sleep, and so I did.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It took a few weeks before I could leave my room and interact with others. I still was not able to address the consequences of my last encounter with Cassiopeia, the related memories were still too vivid and any time I tried to elaborate on them I was again invested by the same amount of emotions I felt that night.
Antaan proposed to erase those memories for me, that was the standard procedure after all, but I refused. I was not able to safely access those memories yet, but I did not want to dispose of them either.
A big reason why those emotions were so overwhelming to me was that they were incomprehensible to me, resulting in a source of confusion, fear and other complex emotions I cannot define yet. It will take time, but I know I would be able to learn enough about this society and its people to eventually be able to face them, though.
And I also knew this was not something I could do by remaining there, at the shared lodgement. During all those months they never really supported me, anyway, if I wanted to find my place in that city I had to distance myself from them. And so I did, by finding a new small apartment where to live on my own.
The only member of the crew I remained in touch with was Antaan, while my relationship with all the others deteriorated quickly.
It took me a few months to find a new job to cover for my rent and food expenses. I learnt how to execute several tasks on Sixam, and my old mindset kept reminding me that the most logical choice would have been to exploit my previous knowledge to contribute to the local society. Yet, none of those old tasks had ever really interested me.
Looking back with the awareness I had reached by then, I remembered that there was actually a lecture I found interesting: it was that time when we were shown how the teleport engine in our spaceship worked. However, I have never had any chance to dedicate any time to that activity before.
Teleport was returning to be a common technology in New Sixam, and many dedicated stores were present all over the place. Stepping into one of those stores and asking if they were willing to teach me was not that hard, after all.
The owner seemed a bit perplexed at first, but after a couple of lectures she proposed to hire me. Apparently, my knowledge of other Sixam technologies was useful also in this case.
The job at that local store was a great chance for me to get more accustomed to many local habits, and I also started to understand better how I could fit in it.
That was also the time when I started to develop preferences: I knew clothes all served the same purpose, yet I noticed to prefer blue ones. All food is able to provide nourishment, but after trying several local dishes I found out to like spicy pizza. Paintings and music did not have any practical utility, nor did walking in nature or watching a sunset, yet I was learning to find serenity in them all.
Upon our arrival, we thought that none of these things was of any use. No energy and time should be wasted without aiming for a practical and tangible purpose, that is what we were taught. The society in which we were born and raised was on the verge of collapsing, for us it was the only way of surviving. Yet, by living with the earthlings in this more relaxed environment I am progressively learning that also immaterial and impractical things had their own value.
The driving force of the locals was their attempt to reach their personal fulfilment and happiness, which came in a lot of different forms. To this day I still do not fully understand many of them, but I also managed to have several interesting exchanges of opinion on the topic.
And they also made me wonder: what should I do, to feel fulfilled myself?
I lived this way for a few years, exploring and investigating my surroundings, and often updating Antaan about my progress. He has been fundamental, I do not know what could have happened if he was not there listening to me. Thanks to him the image of the person I am was finally getting into focus, as if the lenses I used to interpret my surroundings were reaching the right distance and curvature to project a clear picture.
Antaan: Oh, so you learnt how to use rollerblades? Was it difficult?
Toq: Quite so, at first, but after a few attempts it becomes, how to say...
Antaan: Do not worry, take your time.
Toq: ... I think that the locals would use the word thrilling, that is it.
Still, to this day, I have never understood how Antaan could have adapted to the terrestrial way of thinking so quickly and serenely. We suspected this could be the consequence of one of the tasks he was assigned to earlier in his career, when he received the order to closely monitor the earthlings' habits by intercepting the radio signals their used for mass communication from the Moon's operative base. However, he has never confirmed any of our conjectures.
Antaan: I sense in your mind that you are still thinking about them.
Toq: Well, of course I do.
Antaan: Do not you think you could be ready to face those memories? It was a lot of years ago, and you are clearly more accustomed to those local dynamics than you used to, right now.
Toq: Well... Honestly, I think they could be doing better without my interference. The dynamics of what locals call families are still beyond me.
Antaan: (Patient) I see...
Yes, by then I was able to face the past memories, what I did not feel ready for was to face Cassiopeia again, though.
The more I learnt about the locals' way of thinking and customs, the more I felt ashamed for what I did to her. I left her alone during the most vulnerable part of her life, she had all the right to hate me at that point. Not to speak about my absence during the growth of the kid, I learned way too late about the local social norms surrounding families, and how immoral my behaviour appeared to their eyes.
No, the more I learned about how they could have experienced my actions, the more I was convinced that what I did was beyond repair.
Antaan kept posing to me that question periodically for a long time, but I remained adamant on my answer. Or, at least, I did until when Venus and Steve faced me along the way to the grocery store.
Venus is nothing like Cassiopeia. Actually, there is something in her way of being so aggressively defensive of what she cares about that reminds me of Arizhel.
She was so angry at me, what I perceived from her was the most concentrated hatred I had ever felt from anyone around me, even worse than from those who call me "squid head". However, after arguing a bit with Steve, they decided to bring me to their place.
Would my mind have been able to handle such an encounter, I wondered? Not that I really had a choice at that point, Venus was already dragging me to their place at that point.
From what I could see in their thoughts, they mainly wanted me to admit in front of Cassiopeia how big of an idiot I was. However, there was also something else in their thoughts, something like a very small possibility that Cassiopeia could have actually wanted to talk with me another time, or that the child could have wanted to meet me in person. That helped me to calm down a bit before walking through that door and facing her again.
Seeing Cassiopeia again after so much time hit me even harder than I anticipated, but meeting Sirio was just mindblowing.
Parenthood was one of the aspects of the local customs I initially found the hardest to understand. On Sixam, children were born with the aid of genetic engineering and dedicated devices, and every adult was involved in their care and education. I was assigned to work at the nursery a couple of times, so I technically know how to take care of infants, yet our system did not fathom any kind of preferential interactions with specific children sharing half of our genetic makeup.
In that very moment, instead, the thoughts swirling around his little head made me suddenly understand many of those words that earthlings used so often to describe the relationship with their children, and which I was never able to understand so clearly before. The world seemed so colourful through his eyes, I have never met any children like him before.
He looks a lot like Cassiopeia, apart from a few tiny tendrils on the head which he clearly inherited from me. He seemed curious just like her, and I think that he immediately understood who I was. In fact, the very moment he saw me he asked to be put on the ground, and then he reached me and started asking one question after the other.
I was astonished, his reaction was nothing like I had imagined it. I could clearly perceive that he had always wondered about where I had been hiding for all that time, but he did not seem mad at me. On the contrary, he spontaneously trusted me from the very moment he saw me, and seemed elated at the idea of finally meeting me in person. And he clearly did not want me to leave, either.
It was hard to explain my feelings about that meeting at that moment. However, if there was one thing I was sure about, it was that I did not want to continue disappointing him.
Cassy: (accusatory) I think you really have a lot to explain to me...
If meeting Sirio had been a surprising revelation, confronting Cassiopeia remained a quite scary perspective. But I did not want to run away again, my mind was clear enough to sustain a confrontation this time. So I prepared to put order into my thoughts, preparing myself to convey them to the best of my ability.
I did not expect her forgiveness, not after all that time, but I think she did at the very least deserve to know what happened.
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