Interludes: Daydream Believer.  

	He ate sand.  It tasted awful and wiping it off his face he rolled over to a sitting position to brush the sand out of his hair.  
	“You okay?” 
	Spock looked up through the grit at Christine Chapel who was smiling.  She knew he wasn’t hurt but wasn’t gloating over her ace.  He nodded, “You have a formidable spiking arm.”
	“That arm won me a scholarship to Dalhousie my undergraduate career,” she answered and flopped down next to him on the sand court.  She had routed him 15-2.  He had agreed to play her in a game of beach volleyball not realizing she aimed to kill.  
	“I fear my abilities are paltry compared to yours,” he excused truthfully.  
	“You do all right as long as you don’t have to try to dive.  You really don’t do that well,” she pointed out and resisted the urge to brush more sand out of the still impeccably straight hair.  “That leg gives you a lot of trouble doesn’t it?” 
	“At times, when it is humid or I attempt to move in two directions at the same time,” he explained. 
	“Oh no and here you had a double whammy.  I’m sorry,” Christine apologized.  When she’d proposed the game she’d not intended to give herself an unfair advantage.  “Maybe if we set the room for Vulcan norms the next go around.”
	“I would still lose and you would surely collapse of heat exhaustion, or worse,” he stated matter-of-factly. 
	They sat for a few minutes resting until Christine got up and retrieved their water bottles.  “So how did you hurt your leg anyway?”
	It was in his records so he felt no intrusion on his privacy and strangely enough he didn’t feel as if it were a personal question.  “While a lieutenant under Captain Pike thirteen years ago we were engaged in hand to hand combat on Rigel 7.  It resulted in three dead and seven wounded severely enough to be sent to a base hospital.  I was one of the more fortunate.  Pike considered himself personally responsible for the debacle.  He was not.”
	“No?” Christine asked in a non-accusatory tone.  “Is that why he protested at being promoted to Commodore?”
	Spock nodded, “So I assume.”
	Chapel finished her water, “I heard what happened, such a loss.  I’ve worked in wards with Delta ray patients.  He’ll forever be a hero but at that price…”
	Spock let the sand filter through his fingers as she spoke.  “What are they like?” he asked softly.
	Christine sighed wishing she’d never brought it up, “The undead who aren’t even as well off as zombies.  Minds trapped forever with useless arms, legs, voices.  I can’t imagine being confined like that even for a day, but for the rest of my life…  Most end up going mad or willing their bodies to die.  Ethically, professionally, I can’t condone euthanasia, but by God I couldn’t stand that as my fate.  I’ve had it entered into my files.”
	Spock considered her words, they chilled him to the core and he could not accept what had happened to Pike.  
	Chapel sniffed as the thoughts of Roger’s solution came to her.  She whispered, “No one need ever die again…”
	“Excuse me?” Spock asked noting her sudden distress.  
	Shakily she answered, “Roger’s justification for putting what was left of him and Brown in android form.  I think maybe I finally understand and accept…”  Tears rolled freely down her cheeks, “If only he’d lived, not destroyed himself, maybe he could have seen the true good of his discovery.  It would have given Pike and others like him life again instead of a living death.”
	Resting her head on her knees to weep in silence, Chapel could feel the light touch of Spock’s hand as he brushed the wisps of hair that had stuck to her sweat dampened shoulder.  The great depth of loneliness, regret, and guilt shot through him and he pulled away.  His emotions were enough to deal with, he couldn’t take on hers as well, but he didn’t completely pull away either.  Soon she vented enough that she regained control.  Looking up at the gray metal walls she changed the subject completely, “You know with the right equipment you could turn this room into a real beach.  The sand’s here and with the right programs you could project a seascape or even a desert on all the walls, maybe even Coney Island with the sounds of the Boardwalk and the barkers.  For a little time you could live in your fantasy instead of just play beach volleyball in a room.”
	It was possible, in fact easily done and Spock was about to say so when a diabolical idea came to him in a flash.  Where else had he been where illusion ruled and broken, twisted bodies had dreams for reality all their days… But it meant mutiny, death, dishonor…  Was Christopher Pike worth it?  Spock’s leg twinged, an eternal reminder that Pike had considered him worth saving all those years earlier.  It was time to repay the debt, but it would require time, plans, and conviction.  The Vulcan nodded, “It would be easy to create what you wish.  In fact, simple and I will attend to it immediately.”
	The idea of what he was considering balled up in his stomach and before he could leave Spock stopped, turned, “But it can wait.  Perhaps if you were to teach me to dive properly…”
	Christine brightened, “Sure.  You never get too old to learn something new.”
	Spock agreed, realizing this might be the last time he saw her and before he had no more time he said, “Thank you.”
	She laughed as she brushed off the back of her legs, “For what?”
	He thought a moment, “For a day at the beach if nothing else.”

FIN