The Autobiography of Mr. Spock

by Una McCormack

  Time fractured. I fractured. I became numb: I experienced the world around me as if I were looking through a pane of frosted glass. I lost track of the normal passage of time. I felt nothing, although I knew that every single doubt that had ever been harbored about me was vindicated. What I always expected would happen had happened: the two parts of my being—the logical and the emotional; the rational and the instinctive—were not able to co-exist. This experiment—that was how I saw myself, as an experiment on the part of my mother and father—had failed completely. They should not have tried; they should not have brought me into existence. To be at once human and Vulcan was logically impossible and emotionally unsustainable. All my training and self-discipline, all my attempts to reconcile these two halves of myself had proven in vain. I saw red bursts and experienced premonitions. I believed I saw angels and visions of hell. The only logical conclusion to be drawn was that I was insane.

  To learn, then, that the red bursts had been independently observed came like a lightning bolt of clarity. These visions of mine were not simply happening within the confines of my own disturbed mind. I asked to leave the hospital; I wanted to leave—and was told that I could not. By this time, powerful and secretive interests within the Federation had become interested in what was happening to me, and they attempted to hold me at the facility against my will. They were not successful. When I escaped, they spread the lie that I was responsible for murdering my doctors. I went to find the only person that I could trust. I did what we all wish to able to do when faced with distress that we can barely name, never mind articulate. I went in search of comfort. I went to find my mother—who concealed me.

  Who were these individuals, who wanted my knowledge of the Red Angel so badly that they were prepared to murder innocent people, and blame me for their actions? You are surely aware, Jean-Luc, of groups operating within Starfleet that are permitted to act outside of the law, and largely without scrutiny. You surely have your own opinions on the necessity or otherwise of such people, as do I. They seem to be present throughout the history of the Federation; their power waxing and waning; sometimes visible, sometimes hidden. Perhaps you have your own name for them. I knew them as Section 31. Such were the people now pursuing me, and they set both my sister and my captain to find me. My mother trusted me to Michael; Michael hid me until my sanity was restored. We learned that the Red Angel was Gabrielle Burnham, Michael’s mother, sending a warning of a future that was currently unfolding—the destruction of sentient life. We discovered the means of preventing this from happening, in which Captain Pike played a vital part. All that it cost us was Michael, her ship, and her friends.

  You must understand that this was not an external threat, Jean-Luc, this was a threat that arose from an unhealthy combination of internal factors, not least the existence of that clandestine organization. But also significant were the suspicions that arise as a result of being on a war footing, which brought a new hawkishness to that organization. Civilizations such as our own must be constantly on the alert for such shifts, if we wish to continue to consider ourselves civilized. I regret to have to say that I see some of this paranoia again, in Starfleet’s retrenchment since the attack on Mars and in the general and growing hostility toward the Romulan people.

  But let me explain more of the events which led to the loss of my sister, and the crew of her ship, the U.S.S. Discovery. In the wake of the war with the Klingons, Starfleet Intelligence became increasingly reliant on a new analysis system, Control, which used an artificial intelligence to predict and pre-empt threats to Federation security. When the red bursts began to appear with more frequency, elements within Starfleet Intelligence promoted use of this system to increase their own power base. But the system went rogue, causing the deaths of many intelligence officers and gaining access—control—of a fleet of ships. We learned that the vision I had seen of the destruction of Earth, of Vulcan—of all sentient life—was the likely trajectory of the AI gaining full access to Federation secrets. In particular, the AI was attempting to access the records that Starfleet had received from an ancient life-form, known as the “sphere”, which Discovery had recently encountered. The sphere, which had lived for hundreds of thousands of years, had, during those years, collected an unparalleled body of information on the galaxy, knowledge of multiple systems and species. If Control gained access to this data bank, the dead future which I had seen would come to pass. The best solution we could find meant that my sister and her ship were lost—not destroyed, not dead, but gone. We did not destroy the sphere data, but instead sent it beyond the reach of Control, hundreds of years into the future. Michael went first, following the lead provided from the future by her mother, Gabrielle, and her ship and crewmates followed. Or so we hoped. I do not know if they reached their destination. I do not know whether Michael found her mother, or whether her friends found her in turn. I know that we, in the present, survived, and that their sacrifice was not wasted. I must therefore hold out hope that they are safe and well, where nobody, including myself, can reach them.

  At the time, those of us who facilitated Discovery’s journey into the future knew we had to maintain strict silence about all that occurred. Discovery’s mission would have to remain classified; a secret for all time. My sister—her name, her career, almost her entire existence—was consigned to the shadows. So many decades have passed, and the promises I made then seem almost to have been made by a different person, from a different world. I find that I cannot write this book without remembering and honoring her in full. I remember Michael, and I will not have her completely forgotten. I will not have knowledge of those sacrifices fade completely into oblivion. I can only be grateful that we had the chance to reconcile. Before she left us, for good, Michael told me that I would find a galaxy of people who would reach out for me, if I would only let them. It has not always been easy, but for her sake, I have tried.

  You are no fool, Jean-Luc, and I suspect that you have your own information on those clandestine parts that operate both inside and outside of Starfleet. As I grow older, as my time runs shorter, I grow weary of these games that others play. They claim they act out of necessity, but I see in them a taste for what they do, a delight in their secret knowledge and their extreme acts. I have no taste for it; I have little time for it, now. At the end of my long life, time has become my most precious commodity. What matters to me, recalling these events—what matters to this t’san a’lat—is that before Michael left on her new course, she and I were reconciled. We met as two hurt children; we parted as two healed adults. We looked once again at the past that lay between us, the pain that we had caused each other—and we forgave each other. In all the confusion, distress, complication, and fear of those days—there are two things, I see now, that mattered most. That my sister and I parted as friends; that when I was at my most lost, my most shattered, my mother was there, to hold the pieces, until I was ready and able to begin the process of reassembling them. As for my father—my mother told me later that he was reconciled with Michael before she left. But, for the moment, the distance between father and son continued.

  What man existed on the other side of this? Who, after all of this, was Spock? Returning from this was not easy. I resumed my duties on the Enterprise; I attempted to re-assemble a functioning adult self from the pieces that were left behind. I believe that you understand something of this, Jean-Luc, given your own experiences with the Borg. I went back to the Enterprise as quickly as I reasonably could. There were some certainties that I could rely on. There was the routine of life aboard the ship. There was the certainty of Pike’s respect and regard. There was the knowledge that I had not been wrong or delusional. There was the fact that my mother loved me, whatever happened, which I had never doubted. These are not bad foundations on which to try to build a functioning self. Many have achieved this phenomenon with a great deal less.

  * * *

  There is one coda to this story, one which I have not previously revealed to any other perso
n, but which I must tell you now, Jean-Luc, because it brings this story full circle, and because of the glimpse that it gave me of a possibility that my future might hold. I had one last sight of the Red Angel—almost an after-echo, one might say. Not long after I resumed my duties on board the Enterprise, I was off-duty, alone in my cabin, when I felt—or saw, it was always difficult to distinguish—the aura that always preceded one of the visitations from the Red Angel. I am not ashamed to admit that my first reaction was terror: that despite the events of the previous few months, these experiences were not in fact explained but might be the signal of the onset of a second breakdown or period of intense emotional distress. I recall now, as clearly as if this had happened yesterday.

  But there was something different about what was happening this time. For one thing, there was not the reddishness to the aura I had come to associate with the previous visions. Instead, this was blue, and deepening steadily in hue, becoming ever closer to indigo. Redshift; blueshift. This small detail allowed me to pause, to take stock, to ground myself, and most of all to recall how my prior experiences had altered me. I was able to take a moment to remind myself that my visions had, after all, been vindicated: there had been a Red Angel—wondrous and unusual, but not illusory. I had not been—I was not—insane. I did not try to deny what was occurring, or try to resist, but, instead, I allowed the experience to unfold. I sat down upon the floor of my cabin, breathed steadily, and opened my mind.

  Once again, I saw a woman—and I knew her immediately. This was Gabrielle Burnham, whom I had first glimpsed as a child and whose recent reappearance had brought me so close to the edge, for as long as I tried to deny her existence. The human mother of my human sister. I looked around the room in which she was standing—it was not a place that I knew, but there was a quality to the light that I recognized immediately. This world was (or, perhaps, had been) Vulcan. There was a great deal more that I saw, but what was most puzzling were the clothes she was wearing. One does not grow up on Vulcan without becoming able to recognize the robes of some kind of religious or philosophical order. Gabrielle was dressed in such: a dark blue habit with a veil; a staff upon her back. I did not know this order; I would not know it for many years. What I did know—what I could see—was the unity of self about this woman, an integration of disparate parts that I found not only compelling but consoling. Whatever path this woman had trod, however far she had been flung from all that she knew, she found her way. She was whole, and she was, I hoped, reunited at last with her daughter, my sister.

  Later in my life, when my knowledge of Romulus became much greater—perhaps only rivalled by yours, Jean-Luc—I learned the name of the order of which Gabrielle had become a part. I would guess that you have recognized it already, my old friend. The Qowat Milat—dwellers in the house of truth, followers of the way of absolute candor. A fascinating group: infuriating, yes—or perhaps I should say “refreshing”. Knowledge of their existence went some considerable way to deepening my understanding of the Romulan way of life. And meeting these women in person of course at last gave me the crucial piece of information fully to understand what I had seen of Gabrielle Burnham. A human woman, dressed in the robes of a Romulan order, living on Vulcan—need I say how profoundly meaningful this was to me? Gabrielle Burnham had achieved the kind of unity for which I had been striving my entire life. That last sight of her, which I could not entirely understand at the time, later seemed to me a kind of promise, giving as it did a glimpse of the kind of integration that was possible to me. I did not see it in full at the time—I could not, at the time—but I did recognize that she was a unified whole, and I took comfort from the knowledge that such a state could be achieved. Understanding in full what I had seen has been a source of such comfort once again in these recent, difficult years—that the tangled histories of the three great civilizations into which I am inextricably woven, might one day acquire cohesion.

  Do I believe in visions? Logically, one would be wise to approach them with caution, as a manifestation of our desire for how we wish the world to be, and not the “reality-truth” of the world-that-is, which anyone of intelligence must learn to accept, and which we know best through meticulous observation, the acquisition of data, the systematic testing of hypothesis, the steady accumulation of testable evidence. We might consider them as the antithesis of chthia. And yet what all my long years of acquiring information and amassing knowledge have taught me is how much more I have to discover about this vast, most wonderful, and various universe which we inhabit. I do not “believe” in visions, if by that we mean messages from a supernatural entity or some special access to revelation. Yet that sometimes we acquire insight from intuitive means, without being able to evidence our conclusions, is undeniable. The universe holds many surprises for us, not all of which we have the language or terminology to be able to describe—this, surely, is self-evident. These experiences of my early adulthood perhaps explain to some extent the decision I have made now, the leap into the dark that I am about to take. I hope that this makes sense to you, Jean-Luc. I hope you will understand.

  Spock’s parents, Amanda Grayson and Sarek, on their wedding day in this portrait commissioned by Amanda’s parents. Image courtesy The Amanda Grayson Foundation.

  Spock, at around fifteen Earth months old. Amanda Grayson treasured this photo, which was found among her personal effects shorlty after her death. Image courtesy The Amanda Grayson Foundation.

  Spock and T’Pring’s betrothal plaquette Image courtesy Solen of Vulcan.

  Momentos from Spock’s childhood include an Andorian Fire Blossom given to him by Sybok, an image of Spock’s friend & companion, l-Chaya, a small stone carving young Spock made for his mother, and her treasured IDIC pendant. Image courtesy Jean-Luc Picard.

  Ensign Spock’s Academy graduation photo. Image courtesy Starfleet Archives.

  Pike

  I SUSPECT THAT ALL NEWLY MINTED OFFICERS, taking on their first assignment, go through the same voyage of discovery. They quickly discover that while everything they have learned at the academy is true, it does not come close to reflecting the reality of life on board a starship. The information that we have acquired barely scratches the surface of what is needed to operate efficiently and effectively. In this respect, I am sure that my experiences were no different from those of the many thousands of young officers who had gone before me, and the many thousands that have come after. I found that the persona that I had adopted in my final year at the academy—the wry observer of human folly—carried me some way. My hope was that in time this part that I was playing would become so natural that it might become reality. To some extent, I believe that it has. The mask of the Vulcan has come in very useful many times, over the years.

  Like most young officers, I was carried a significant way by my immediate superiors, in this case, the first officer, Una Chin-Riley, known to us all as “Number One”, and the captain, Christopher Pike. I should speak now of Pike, since his influence upon my early career was so great, not only during my breakdown, but such that even when I was serving under a new captain, my sense of debt to Pike was so profound that I was prepared to face a court-martial in order to repay him. But his influence upon me was at least as much by example: how to conduct oneself as an officer; when to act and when to listen; the difference between being decisive and being rash. Pike took the training of his junior officers seriously. Take, for example, the test that all junior officers who were not on the command track undertook when they joined his crew. At the academy, only those cadets who were on the command track were required to take the Kobayashi Maru test, in which their ability to come to terms with a no-win situation was tested and observed. Pike believed this was a deficiency in the training of the other cadets and sought to remedy this. Not only command officers, or so he argued, might find themselves facing critical decisions. He was, as usual, correct. To this end, Number One designed a simulation to evaluate how the newest recruits would react in difficult situations. I was myself
subject to such a test, shortly after arriving on the Enterprise.

  During a stopover at Starbase 28, the base went suddenly onto red alert. Summoned to the brig, where a prisoner was being held, I was told by Pike that the prisoner knew information vital to the safety of the base. As the only serving Vulcan officer to hand, I was instructed to mind-meld with the prisoner to obtain this information. The safety, security, and even the survival of the base most likely depended on this.

  This was not an order that I could accept. The mind-meld is not an interrogation tool; it is a technique by which consenting consciousnesses may meet and merge. It should not, and must not, be abused in the way that Captain Pike was requesting. Beyond the room, I heard explosions, alarms. The situation was escalating. Pike continued to press me, and I continued to refuse. As the sounds from outside the room and the communications Pike received became more desperate, he explained to me that refusing to accept a direct order was mutiny, and that I would be court-martialed.

  “Torture does not provide useful information,” I replied. “All the evidence supports this statement. This order is both illogical and unethical, and I am not bound to obey. Please do not ask me again, Captain.”

  “This will mean a court-martial, Ensign.”

  “I shall take that chance, sir.”

  He held my eye for a long moment—and then, quite suddenly, the alerts ended. The prisoner relaxed and laughed. Pike smiled and commended me for my calm and my resolve.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said to him, “but your words are not earned. This was not a difficult choice for me.”

  “No?” he replied. “Good.”