Iskander al-Kwaritzmi’s personal log, supplemental: our engineering team has almost finished the work on the stasis chamber, bringing it in top shape. It has provided us with a couple of intriguing situations where our spirit of engineering optimisation has collided with our sense of historical preservation. We do not think about that often, but a stasis chamber in itself is also always a device frozen in time and untouched as much as its occupant. Still, the work was cut short when Kojik, looking like a mess, arrived to beg us to bring him out of the palace. Him, Anmol and I are now on the way to a Rellite night club.

Escaping from he palace had not been difficult: all the politics student who had spectated the debate had been invited to stay in the palace for a rich apero and mingling session, which they had been doing enthusiastically. Nobody had really batted an eye when Kojik — disguised by wearing a garishly colourful tunic and an even more garish hat — had gone out in the company of Anmol and of Iskander.

Transporting in and out of the palace was still forbidden — the internal sensors would have been started an alarm — but calling a shuttle just out of the gate was perfectly fine.

Iskander had changed out of his Starfleet uniform into a creamy-brown crop top decorated with Coptic motives and somewhat poofy Capri trousers; Anmol was wearing a slanted red Andorian-style shirt with a small cape — a bold choice — and very tight black trousers.

“Are you sure we are not going to get into troubles for disobeying Frulenk?” asked Anmol, nervously, while the shuttle was piercing the stratosphere. “She ordered us not to take Kojik out.”

“And Kojik asked us to take him out” replied Iskander, so far removed from any sort of concern that it was almost funny. “Why should we prefer Frulenk’s orders to Kojik’s?”

“Because she is the one who requested out help.”

“Well, she can un-request our help and send us back to the Redding, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Yeah!” said Kojik, enthusiastically.

Their destination was a renowned night club, the Hot Debate, but night clubs on Rellite were quite unique: they were large, darkened rooms filled with “debate pits” where couples or groups of Tellarites would argue on any sort of spicy or topical subjects. Sometimes there’d be a podium where two debaters would broadcast their argument to anyone who cared listening. The music was soft and on occasions dancing was known to occur.

Iskander knew the philosophy underneath this, as his Tellarite neighbours hat tried to explain it to him while growing up: some Tellarites believed that by practicing extreme forms of debate, a person could lose their inhibitions and fall into a sort of natural trance. They used, in other words, arguments as an aphrodisiac. Iskander didn’t know if it really worked, but the experience was enjoyable for a Tellarite nonetheless.

“This is AMAZING!” screamed Kojik when disembarking from the shuttle. “Oh, this is awesome! You are awesome! Thank you so much!”

Without waiting, Kojik sprinted inside of the night club, leaving the two humans behind.

Anmol seemed conflicted. “Should we follow him?”

Iskander still didn’t feel like worrying. “We have our communicators. He’ll call us if he needs help. And I’m not about to feel protective for an adult who is several centuries old.”

Anmol looked indecisive. “He’s clearly… out of his element.”

“Frulenk wants to make him King of the planet. He should survive a night club.”

“It’s not his fault that Frulenk wants that.”

Iskander felt a small pang of guilt. “No, it’s not. But let’s leave him his freedom: we’ll flock to his aid when he asks.”

Anmol relented. “Then I’m going to check out the podium. There’s a debate on late Tellarite aesteticisms that should be quite erotic.”

Iskander walked to the bar.

He wondered whether he was feeling uncharitable towards Kojik because of what he represented — a silly attempt to revive a monarchic system that Iskander disagreed with wholeheartedly. He had tried quite strongly to put his political colors aside, but he knew that he had to some extent antagonized that pompous so-called Countess because he didn’t agree with her political goals. Taking Kojik here was maybe a bit of a revenge on her, but he could empathise with Anmol’s concern for Kojik.

Kojik was, after all, really unintelligent, from what Iskander could see.

Trying to forget those concerns, he got to the bar, a massive construct of glass and lights and neons.

“You lost, human?” asked the barwoman, looking at him with suspicion.

“I think I am. I was looking for one of the best night clubs on the planet. What I see here is very unimpressive.”

She snarled. “Your technique is flawed. You need to be slightly inebriated to fully see the awesome that is this place.”

“Then, you see, I’m not lost because I found the bar. What’s the driest strubark you have?”

The barwoman (bartellarite?) took out a bottle of an alarmingly purple liquid.

Iskander took a whiff. Growing up next to a Tellarite family as coming useful again: he knew his strubarks. “It’s entirely not bloomy. Half a glass of this, and chase it with a Earth tonic water.”

“Mixing a strubark?” said the woman at the bar standing next to Iskander. “For a moment I thought that you knew what you are doing, human.”

Iskander turned to look at her. She was tall for a Tellarite — still much shorter than Iskander — and had painted her side flaps delicately: on her chin shone three rubies, and she was dressed in a long flowery halftunic from which her legs emerged at any minimal movement.

Iskander got his drink and prompted it in her direction. “Fancy a taste to prove you wrong?”

“I never back down” she said. She took Iskander’s glass, making a grand theatre of suspicion, and sipped the most minuscule amount of liquid possible. Her expression changed. “You ARE unto something, human. I’ll have the same as you — this has to be investigated further.”

While the barwoman was preparing the second strubark-and-tonic, the Rellite woman smiled amply. “What brings you on Rellite?”

“My ship is on a mission.”

“Starfleet?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Oh, a sailor. How exotic. Are you here to sample the best Tellarite tongue? I should debate you.”

Iskander smiled faintly. That wasn’t very subtle.

“I am thankful, but must refuse.”

She got her drink but made no move to go back to wherever her group was. “Oh, Starfleet, why? You are missing out. I’d rock your world. I’d star your ship and also star your fleet.”

“I’m into men.”

She nodded deeply. “Ah, yes, that can happen. Then come with me to my friends — anything that I could do for you with my womanly skills, my cousin can do for you with manly skills. He’s always been curious about the taste of human — we heard you resemble chicken.”

Iskander made a note to discuss the psychic damage he had just taken with Sakar, the Redding‘s counsellor. “Ah — I — thanks. I’m also not ready to do anything like that. I’m still grieving.”

“Dead husband?”

“Yes.”

“How long has it been?”

“Two years.”

She shook her head. “Then you MUST come with me. My friends are a riot! I can’t leave you here to mope.”

Iskander, with a theatrical sigh, acquiesced.

She was there at the night club in a group of five — two best friends, her cousin, and the father of one of the friends. They accepted Iskander’s presence with enthusiasm, especially when he revealed about his Tellarite childhood friends and started sparring verbally with them. The cousin was indeed a good-looking Tellarite, and tried to make Iskander lose all of his inhibitions.

At some point in the evening, Iskander recalled  question that had been bothering him. He turned to Rrunka, the bejewelled woman he had met at the bar.

“Say, I have a question about Tellarite inheritance.”

“My, how scandalous.”

“In particular, inheritance of nobiliary titles. I have looked up the family of an old King deposed in the Shallash period. Apparently, his line kept calling himself ‘Prince’ for some century, and then have been calling themselves ‘Counts’. Why have they downgraded their title?”

“Ah! Do you know the story of the old King Fruntuk?”

“No.”

“A legendary story of Tellar. A thousand years ago the King of the greatest Kingdom of Tellar died leaving no heir. He had no brothers or sisters, and no close cousins, for during his reign he had quelled hundred civil wars and had killed them all. So the lady protector of the Kingdom called for any distant parent of Fruntuk to reveal themselves, so that a grand council could be called and the nobles could declare a new King or Queen.”

Iskander felt his profund dislike for Kings and so on stirring inside him. The story sounded like the sort of absurdity that was inevitable in a monarchy. “Did someone come forth?”

“Did someone? The legend says that not a single person in the Kingdom didn’t advance a claim on the throne.”

“Well, I see.”

“Many Tellarites came forth with documentation and family stories showing that they were ten, twelve, twenty generations removed from a previous King: and it is doubtless that they were correct.”

Iskander thought about it for a moment. “It’s the exponential function, isn’t it?”

“Of course. Tellarite families in the Kingdom had regularly five children. Five to the twenty is a number probably in the billions.”

“So…”

“So a new rule was made. A claim do a Kingly line decays after like four or five generations. You can call yourself ‘Princess’ only if your grandmother’s grandmother was a Queen himself or so, but not further.”

Iskander finally understood the so-called Countess Frulenk’s need to revive Kojik. Kojik was the last of his line who could be called a Prince, who could make a claim to the throne: that was probably why he had been put into stasis, to preserve the last viable candidate for monarchy until the time was ripe. Why the so-called Countess thought that now the time was ripe, Iskander didn’t know: but she had to coronate Kojik and not, say, herself.

He came back to the story. “Did they find a new Queen or King?”

“Of course not. They argued and created disarray in the army until their Kingdom was invaded by the neighbouring Republic.”

Iskander nodded approvingly.

Just at that point, Iskander heard a commotion. He turned, looked in that direction, and saw the Kojik’s unmistakeably garish hat.

“I have to go” he said, surely to the disappointment of Rrunka’s cousin.

He made his way quickly, snaking around small groups of chatting Tellarites, getting more and more certain that it was Kojik’s voice he was hearing. As he reached the prince, he saw that he was right.

“And you!” was saying Kojik, way too loud, red in his face and wild in his gestures, “You STINK! You and your clever wordplays! Your and your snobby… snobbyness!”

He was addressing a group of four Tellarite girls, elegant and willowy, who looked embarrassed and tried not to make eye contact with him.

“Kojik!” said a voice. It was Anmol: he had probably also been attracted by Kojik’s screams.

Kojik turned, confused. “Ammol! Iskander! You — I — these women were — I –“

Neither Iskander nor Anmol needed anything to be spelled out to them. Anmol smiled. “I think Iskander and I need to go. We have had enough excitement for tonight.”

Kojik shook his head. “I want to stay! I — This is –“

Anmol smiled and, in that moment, seemed to be the very embodiment of trustworthiness and gentleness. Iskander was really quite impressed: was that a special nurse training or was he just a natural?

“Please, Kojik? Do it for us. We’re not sure that we’re going to be allowed back in the palace if you’re not with us.”

Kojik breathed deeply many times and finally relented. “Can’t we stay for a couple more minutes though?”

“We really need to be out of here” said Iskander, hoping to come off as at least half as trustworthy as Anmol.

Kojik nodded and started walking for the exit. Iskander stayed a moment behind.

“Sorry about that” he said to the four Tellarite girls. “He doesn’t get out much.”

“No kidding” said one of them. “Do you know that he goes around saying that he is a prince or something?”

Iskander couldn’t be surprise, but a bit disappointed. “Yeah, he does that from time to time.”

“He must really believe it. We called the royals of the past a group of thoroughly inbred halfwits and he seemed to be profoundly offended.”

Iskander smiled and, rather than admitting that he agreed with them, just ran after Anmol and Kojik.

____________________________________

A shuttle picked them.

Sitting in the back of the shuttle, huddled, Kojik was crying softly. Neither Iskander nor Anmol seemed to know what to do, so they sat in silence.

“Are you my friends?” asked finally Kojik, his voice trembling.

Wow, thought Iskander.

“No, Kojik” said Iskander, finally. “I’m not sure that we are.”

“Nobody has ever been as nice to me as the two of you. Not Brother, not Sister, not my mentors and educators, not Pallka, not Rennka, not Kurjuk, nobody. Everyone was always looking, judging, expecting, requesting. And you are not even my friends.”

Iskander felt quite bad. “It’s not because we do not like you, Kojik. But becoming friends requires time. I don’t know if we’ll ever have enough time to become friends.”

Kojik nodded, sadly. By now he had stopped crying. “You realize that I know it, do you?”

“Know what?” asked Anmol.

“That I’m really stupid.”

“Kojik –“

“I am, and I know it! Everyone is so good with words, so fast with their thoughts! I never understand how people can think so fast! You see a world that I do not see! And I tried to be clever, I really did, and I can’t, and when my mentors talked to me I could not understand what they were saying because I understood every single word and couldn’t even imagine what those words were doing together in the same sentence!”

Anmol and Iskander stared at the Tellarite.

“I hate that I’m clever enough to know how stupid I am. It’s the only thing that I’ve ever discovered without someone having to tell me” confessed Kojik with infinite bitterness. “Father came to hate me, and I hate that I loved him and wanted him to love me and he couldn’t because I was the Last Prince and he couldn’t bear to look at me. He put me in that heinous machine and now I’m in an alien world that I understand even less than the world I lived in four days ago. And I last spoke to Father just a couple days ago and I got mad and we had a fight and now he’s been dead for centuries and I’m… I’m…”

After that bout of introspective clarity, so insightful for someone so stupid, Kojik seemed spent.

Anmol stood and went to him. “Can you stand a moment, Kojik?”

Kojik raised his eyes to the nurse, towering over him. “What?”

“… just stand?”

Kojik stood and Anmol, to his utmost surprise, hugged him.

“I wouldn’t mind if we were friends” said Anmol.

“But I am so stupid!”

“Kojik — friends don’t have to be clever. They have to be nice.”

He seemed to relax and hugged back timidly. “I don’t want to be King.”

Anmol looked down at him. “What do you want?”

“I want to have friends. I want to make my friends happy to see me.”

Iskander observed as Anmol tightened his hug.

“Frulenk is still convinced that I’m actually just pretending to be stupid” Kojik said. “But she will discover it, and will look at me like Father did, and… can she send me back into the awful machine? Can she freeze me again and forget about me like she’s ashamed?”

Iskander thought of the machine, of how they had spent days repairing it and making it perfect.

“Iskander? Can she?” asked Kojik again.

“I have to think” answered Iskander, and said nothing more until the shuttle landed.