From julifolo@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu Sun Aug  4 00:43:48 1996
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 12:13:55 -0500 (CDT)
From: watkins julia k <julifolo@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: b5-creative@lists1.best.com
To: b5-creative@lists1.best.com
Subject: "Circle" (a WWE story)


Hello all!

This is my contribution to the growing list of WWE reaction
stories, with my own strange twist. Standard disclaimers.

Julie

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Circle

When you lay dying and you stood yourself before your God, by
what name did he call you?

Garibaldi stood in the observation dome, wishing he was in a
starfury so he could stop the spinning stars and point his
gaze where his thoughts were: Sector 14.
   He tried to call up a image of his friend and he could not
do it. The face was gone, the name was gone. In the quiet
hell of night he had awoke in a cold sweat. Jeff had been
talking to him--his mind trying to make sense of what the others
had told him--but he couldn't listen to the words. It wasn't an
apology, it wasn't a goodbye. It had been quiet excitement, a
challenge, work to be done. He knew Jeff wanted him to understand. 
He couldn't.

He had stared the ceiling until he had the choice of falling
into madness or calling up the lights. He stumbled out of bed
and went to his monitor and started searching the history
records. After several washouts he decided he needed help
from someone with access to a different set of databases.
   He woke Lennier out of a sound sleep, dragging him to the
computer at his desk. "I want Minibari historical records," he
explained. "I don't care if this terminal or the files aren't
set up for translation." Lennier, ever the dutiful aide,
reacted to the urgency in Garibaldi's voice and took the
orders without question. "Give me unenhanced visual, anything 
you've got. History, not philosophy -- Valen."
   The files were enormous and the ancillary larger still.
But the search criteria of unenhanced original records
chopped it down to a core handful of matches. No audio
survived. Somewhere during the procedure Lennier became aware
of why and what Garibaldi was asking for. He kept his
thoughts silent and, as if he were a program, paged through
the results without comments:

There were fourteen photos, most of a commemorative nature.
There had been much rebuilding to do and not much energy
devoted to history, except long after the fact. The quality
of the images had degraded over time. There was one short
video clip filmed near the end of Valen's life, addressing a
large gathering. Lennier said the topic was on the importance
of peace. He showed Garibaldi how to cycle through the
file and then stood so that he could sit.

He looked at the records, one by one. "I don't know you," he
said to the screen. How could you do this to me? his thoughts
continued.
  "It was his destiny," Delenn had said in the docking bay, 
and her face had that "spiritual" look he had seen her wear so
many times when she was talking in certainty--she, Minbari member 
of the religious caste--and he with everyone else had to take
what ever she pronounced on faith, as the captain always did. 
   She had told him that when he had angrily demanded of those
who had returned from the _Whitestar_ where was the man who had
gone with them and had not returned. That man no longer existed.
"He told us 'I will take the station back because I have always 
taken it'", Delenn had said, quoting--she said--Sinclair's words. 
"'It has already happened.'"
   And he was supposed to accept that circular reasoning, and he
hadn't wanted to. "Could you do that?" he had hissed at Sheridan.
"If someone handed you a letter and said 'Here, this is your life'
--would you accept it? Just like that?"
   "It was not 'just like that'," Delenn answered instead of
Sheridan, and she continued, speaking words he didn't want to hear.
It made no sense. What was Minbari religion to Jeff? 
   Garibaldi had to admit Jeff had a spiritual side to him that he
could never understand. The protest he clung to, the protest he
had shouted first to Delenn, and then to Lennier when Delenn
did not react, was unbelief. He, Michael Garibaldi, would never
presume to dictate another's religion. How much more, then, would
not Jeff have felt--he who had so much respect for other's beliefs?
That isn't, that *wasn't* you, Jeff. He pushed aside the memory of 
comments he had made to himself, watching the Ranger reports Sinclair
had started to send once the network was up an running, wondering why 
Jeff seemed more relaxed than he ever knew him while the universe was 
going to hell.
   "How could he do that?" Garibaldi had screamed at them, searching
for a reason he could deny it all. "What you're telling me-- it 
wasn't, it isn't his own world. How could he ask himself-- how could
he _pretend_ such a thing?"
   "It wasn't pretense." Lennier had answered calmly, showing no
emotion. "You feel a wrong has been done to us. No. Sinclair did 
not take Minbar, Minbar took him." 
   "It was Minbar that told him what to do," Sheridan had continued,
looking equally accepting. "He would not have stayed there, he would 
not have learned what he learned, would not have formed the Rangers as
he formed them if he did not agree with what he found there. It's
a circle and there was no 'beginning'."

It makes no more sense than "Chicken and egg", Garibaldi groused.
   He shook his head free of the memories of other people
explaining. He didn't want Sheridan's words, not Delenn's. He
looked at the blurred images of a stranger, a Minbari, and tried
to see something he could recognize. He tried to talk to the 
screen, tried to pretend it was Jeff there, that he was talking
to him, but he couldn't make the words leave his throat. So
he had to pretend he was talking, just as he would have to pretend
he was hearing Jeff answer. If he could make him answer, even in 
his imagination. If he could expect words from the dead.
   Did they leave you any part for yourself, Jeff? he asked. Do you, 
did you know me any more or was the change too great? The only 
possible answer wasn't answer enough: "I'm sorry, old friend."

And the room was filled with silence.
   Emptiness.
   Loneliness.

As time bled away, Garibaldi tried to pull himself back together.
If there was anything more, he knew he'd have to look for it, and he 
would never be sure if it was really there or it was just him wanting 
to find some sign. On the screen Valen gestured, pleading for a peace
that might endure.
   Do I have to learn to read Minbari now? he asked himself. Search 
"his" teachings on friendship on the chance that something he wrote 
had specific as well as general significance?
   His head reeled over the abyss. That way lead back to madness.
It was no place he belonged.
+++

He had lost track of how many times he had cycled through the
file when he heard the door open behind him. "On the
relevant meridian on Earth it's coming up on dawn." The voice
was Marcus'. He approached to stand behind Garibaldi. "Lennier
would like his quarters back."
   Garibaldi keep his eyes on the monitor and didn't speak.
Three more photos, and then he took his hands from the keyboard
freezing the display. He sat back. On the screen was a blurred 
photo of three Minbari standing in front of a stylized structure. 
He couldn't tell one from the other. 
   The question hung there for several moments and then Marcus
cleared his throat. "Ah, him," he touched the screen. Hollow
eyes turned to lock with his. He retreated, shrugging an apology.
"I read the caption."
   "Oh," Garibaldi spoke at last, putting the display back onto
automatic cycle. "How's your head feeling?"
   "You want to know what I think about this."
   You, Susan, John ... Delenn, Lennier and the rest of the 
Minbari race. "Yeah."
   "It happened."
   Garibaldi waited for more, and his breathes got deeper the
longer the silence grew. "Is that all you have to say?"
   "Yes."
   All the anger he had cried out in the docking bay was ready
to surface again but had been deflected by the odd, almost shaking
tone of Marcus' voice saying that "yes". Garibaldi at first turned his 
head back and then had to look down to see him. He had lowered to a 
squat, sitting on his heels, eyes looking upwards to the monitor. 
Garibaldi rolled the chair sideways to give him a better view. "Marcus?"
   "Michael," he swallowed, "this feels ... so odd."
   It was a cold comfort to him to finally see someone else react.
"What?"
   "I've seen these. Most of these," Marcus explained. "Ent-- Sinclair
has seen these. But-- what we each saw first were the reconstructions,
the augmentations. Later computer artists trying to rebuild the
degrading data of over-used files." Each iteration, each correction
had been colored by that artist's idealizations. And the original
recordings for most reconstructions had been lost. "The standard
portrait--"
   "Don't I know it." Garibaldi muttered, spinning towards the
abyss again. All the limited station history files had were five different
versions of the same painting, and that had been what had sent him 
running to Lennier, all the while his mind screaming in denial:
"It's a lie, it's a lie."
   "That surface was all we saw," he said, standing again. "There wasn't 
reason to look deeper."
   Garibaldi couldn't believe the implication of what he saw on
Marcus' face. "You see a resemblance." 
   He was shocked. "Yes. Don't you?"
   "No."
   The display had cycled back to the halting video clip. Chopped
motion and frequent white-outs. Marcus watched Garibaldi's eyes rather
than the screen. He saw it, how the hand descended though the mouth
was too blurred, but he didn't want to believe.   
   "Damn it, Jeff," Garibaldi said to the screen without seeing it. 
His throat clenched. "I don't know you," he said again. Did I ever?
   "Maybe you didn't," Marcus said carefully.
   "Are you going to start spouting all that 'destiny' crap again?"
Garibaldi surprised himself. The words were angry but his voice was 
already defeated. "What right did he have--" He tried to call up
the anger, because he didn't want to find a reason to accept.
He gestured at the screen."What right did he have to play--"
   "Moses," Marcus inserted. "Not God," he added too quickly.
"It is a large distinction. 'Moses' is the closer analogy
though probably overstated."
   "'Moses'," Garibaldi repeated, feeling even more alone.

He grieves, Marcus told himself, more than any of the rest of us. 
It's a pain too deep to answer directly. He found an appropriate
tangent for a gentle approach. "It's an interesting question, 
difficult to answer: 'Who are you?'"
   Garibaldi looked at him, puzzled.
   "Excuse me," Marcus grinned apologetically. "You wonder, I think, 
how he--" he nodded to the image on the screen, "--would answer?"
   Garibaldi waited, eyes dull, anger gone.
   "There's the answer Delenn believes," Marcus continued, "that he
was/is a 'Moses', and there are three other possibilities." He spread 
his arms wide. " ... or infinite shadings in between."
   "Namely," Garibaldi prompted when Marcus didn't continue.
   "Maybe he was the Wizard of Oz," he shrugged. "A con man," he 
then explained in response to Garibaldi's pained expression. "Or maybe 
he was a Vorlon puppet or a madman. Who do you think he was?"
   My friend. Garibaldi didn't say the words aloud.
   Marcus withdrew the question. "Who do you think the Minbari are, 
and who do you think they would have followed? Could something false 
have had the strength to survive?"
   Garibaldi looked away and stopped trying to solve the
paradox. I told you, he said to the fading memory of Jeff in his
mind. How many times did I ask it. Why do you do this? Try to get 
yourself killed. You were always looking for something, looking for 
a way to die, looking for meaning. You were my friend, Jeff. That was 
meaning enough for me. You found your meaning, but it didn't include me.

His head hurt. "I could have come with him. He didn't give me the 
choice." His voice dropped to a whisper. "He didn't want me there."
   "No."
   He continued to stare, drained of emotion.
   Marcus gave him five more moments and then, all business, pulled
out a blank crystal from a pocket. He copied the file before signing
off and powering down the computer. "I'll make you a translation."
   Garibaldi didn't move.
   "Michael."
   "OK, yeah." He  stood and let Marcus' hand on his back guide him to
the door. His eyes and mind focused only the minimum needed to
navigate. He had to think. It was going to take a long ... time ... 
to untangle this.

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