Kristom Stardate 46277.4
Kristom Delnor ... Science Officer's Logs ... Star Trek: Starbase 27 ... Starbase 27 ... Star Trek: The Triangle Missions
It seems that whenever I get settled in somewhere the Universe reminds me just how quickly it can contract onto me. Spending time peering through the new phased subspace sensor array into the vast mystery that turns and dances around us fills me with such a sublime feeling that I cannot but weep at its enormity. How can a being like myself be anything but the most insignificant mote of dust when measured into the swirling waltz of tachyons and gravitons? And yet as I work and ponder in my lab, believing myself out of the way of anything truly important or exciting, the great mystery conspires to shrink the very boundaries of the Universe until the Important and Exciting have nowhere else to exist but around me.
Now, I do realize that in the more circumscribed realities that are the Federation and Starfleet, the odds do increase in Exciting and Important's favor. And Starbase 27 is not the most unimportant outpost, so odds do increase some more. But to become not only witness, but research subject, experiment and First Contact Team to a new species while not more than some tens of meters from the sanctum of study and introspection that is Science Bay 4 does stretch even my considerable imagination! Indeed, I did not imagine that simply joining my comrades Robert andP'Kyrr for our customary drinks on The Boardwalk would also result in meeting Dr. Dante Burgess. An exobiologist of no special repute, Dr. Burgess put lie to that impression with wild ravings that forced us to hospitalize him under the care of the admirable Dr. Nicholas Matson.
As I understand it, the Terrans invented the custom of gripping hands in order to assure each other that no weapons were being carried. What a thing it is to have to consider making a tricorder scan a prerequisite even to such a primitive custom as shaking hands? The nanomarkers that Dr. Burgess had been impregnated with spread to my comrades and I, setting us irrecoverably on the path of First contact with a Solanogen-based species. An auspicious meeting, despite its irregularity. This species has most impressive bio-fabrication technology as well as very inquisitive and open minds. I look forward to following new developments as they occur. I shall have to make time for meetings with Emony, the new "Ambassador" to the Federation. I will admit to a little hubris in giving her such a nostalgic name, but I think history will not be overly harsh with me. I would wonder what might be waiting for me tomorrow, but as the recounted events show, it is likely I simply cannot even imagine. The Terran philosopher Socrates had it right when he said, "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."
