Birthday Girl

Posted on Thu Feb 14th, 2019 @ 4:19pm by Commander Rita Paris
Edited on on Sun Feb 17th, 2019 @ 11:39pm

Mission: Recovery Trek
Location: USS Hera, Deck 8, Commander Paris and Mr. Sonak's Quarters
Timeline: 2396, February 13th

According to the old earth calendar, which was what Rita Paris preferred to use over the stardate time measurement (which just confused her), today was the ancient astronaut’s birthday. She hadn’t realized it until she had returned to her quarters after her duties of the day, and saw the old-fashioned digital calendar she maintained on the side of one of her kitchenette cabinets. There the date was laid out in bold bas relief- February 13th, 2296.

Today was her 163rd birthday… or her 33rd, biologically speaking... give or take.

Growing up in a Starfleet home where her father was a political schemer and gladhandler, her birthday party had always been quite an affair… just not one about her. Commander Clifford Paris would invite the brass, upwardly mobile movers and shakers and their families to the Paris family home in Nob Hill, and while the menfolk headed off to his expansive den slash library to smoke cigars and drink good scotch, the wives were expected to keep the party going and entertain the children, as the enlisted men catered the affair and upwardly mobile cadets manned the server positions.

The Fleet shipped out in March, the Academy graduated in May and Rita’s late winter birthday was perfectly timed to enable Clifford Paris to do his schmoozing and political maneuvering to affect the fate of Starfleet for another year, and every year he took full advantage of it. Once her mother was gone, Rita quickly learned that her birthday was very much not the point of the party, and that she could expect a gift chosen by her father’s aide de camp of the moment, and a card signed by the same, assuming he remembered, which more than once he did not. But there would most definitely be a gathering of other fleet brats whose parents were gathered for the event for the same reason as her own father.

Most of those fleet kids were not friends to her, although some became friends after a few years of seeing them semi-regularly at a child’s party that was not at all for children.

When she had thrown a fit on her 9th birthday because she wanted her father to pay attention to her on the day she understood was supposed to be her special day, it had not gone well for her. The career Starfleet officer had emerged from his den to scold her and send her to her room, which was where she spent the rest of the party. No one had come to check on her, no one had come to see her, and she had cried herself to sleep that night as she realized how little her own family cared for her. Banished from her own birthday party, it had settled in to her that it was not a celebration, a special day as so many others viewed it. Not for her. Instead, it was just another excuse for her father to use his daughter to further his own career.

Unsurprisingly, this colored how she viewed birthdays from that moment forward.

As an adult, she had simply stopped mentioning it to people. If anyone asked she’d tell them, but then they would just scold her for not making them aware of it and prompting them to celebrate with her. Which seemed selfish to her, and just compounded her misgivings about the entire tradition. Which flowed directly into Valentine’s Day, which was another holiday of which she was not overly fond. After all, when she was barely a teenager her father had started directing suitors her way, and many of them made quite the show of trying to woo her as she grew up. Even into her twenties as they were advised by her father to produce grand gestures designed to sweep her off her feet, which were wholly unwelcome, as Rita had her own ideas of what she was looking for in a suitor.

As she got older, the fact that she’d been born the day before Valentine’s Day just seemed to confirm that the universe had one hell of a sense of humor about her. It seemed she was destined not to find love in her lifetime, so it was just plain mocking to her. When she had spent a five year mission as a ghost, she had watched couples fall in and out of love, and while she yearned to be able to touch or feel someone, anyone, it just made her loneliness that much more acute.

When she had met Sonak, all of that had changed, of course. But Vulcans didn’t celebrate the date of their birth as a significant personal holiday, so she had never particularly brought it up. Given the negative connotations she had associated with the day over the years, she had just left it behind, as she had so many things, and forgotten about it.

Today, in the here and now, she stared at the calendar, and it took her a moment to realize just what birthday this was for her. According to Doctor Dael, she was in her early thirties, so today would count, if she had done the math correctly, as her 33rd birthday. Chronologically speaking, as of today she was officially 163 years old. Which somehow brought a tear to her eye.

Through her adventures, she had outlived everyone and everything she had ever known, save for Sonak and Starfleet, the two most important relationships in her life. A human being was not supposed to live that long, and she hadn’t, yet in a way she had. Everything was different, here in the future, and she continued to adapt. But that fact of the number of years her life had spanned somehow struck her. 33 years old was not even a quarter of her projected lifespan, so she was still a very young woman, barely more than a girl. Yet she felt her age, with the science she did not understand, the technology that was often so beyond her which she struggled to adapt to every day, and the exotic races that now comprised the majority of Starfleet, of which she was mostly ignorant.

As of today, she felt the disconnect that the elderly so often feel. Out of touch with modern times, left behind by ever-advancing technology, confused by a galaxy far more complex than the one they grew up in, and somehow intimidated by a universe that no longer needed them. It was silly for her to feel this way, she knew- after all, she definitely served a purpose on the USS Hera, acting as mentor, guide and sometimes conscience to the Starfleet of the future in which she now served. But that did not ease the feeling that she was somehow very, very old as of today. A walking fossil, a museum display come to life, an antiquity that somehow still moved about in the modern world, seeking answers to questions most took for granted.

“Happy birthday to you, Rita. A hundred and sixty-three years since you were born, and here you are, all alone on your birthday.” Staring at the calendar, she sighed and shook her head. She wasn’t alone… she was never alone. Sonak would oblige her with some time if she asked. She had friends amongst the senior officers with whom she could spend time if she chose. Even the captain would spend time with her, and likely any or all of them would even celebrate her birthday with her if she asked.

Chin up, chest out eyes clear, Rita strode out of her quarters, headed to 10-Forward. It was her birthday, so she would celebrate it as she saw fit. With a slice of red velvet cake with butter cream frosting, her favorite, with a candle in it she could blow out and make a wish upon. What she would wish for, she did not know. After all, she kind of had it all- her health, a good posting, friends and a loving and supportive man by her side.

But like the rest of her very long life, she’d figure it out as she went along.