Carbon
Creek
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| Celebrating
T'Pol's first full year with the Enterprise crew over dinner, Archer
asks why her record states that she once took a five-day leave to
visit an old Pennsylvania mining town called Carbon Creek. She claims
Carbon Creek was the site of actual first contact between humans
and Vulcans, long before the historical First Contact in 2063, and
her second foremother (great-grandmother) was there. Trip Tucker
scoffs at this, but then T'Pol offers to tell "the story." T'Pol's
ancestor, T'Mir, was on a survey ship with three other Vulcans investigating
the launch of Sputnik, Earth's first artificial satellite, in October
of 1957, when their impulse manifold malfunctioned and forced them
into an emergency landing in a North American forest. The captain
is killed, leaving T'Mir in charge of the surviving crew, Mestral
and Stron. Not knowing whether their distress call to the High Command
was transmitted in time, they use up their food rations within a
week, then face the question of how they will survive. Despite the
risk of cultural contamination, Mestral insists on visiting the
nearby "settlement." Stealing clothes and hiding their ears to blend
in with the locals, T'Mir and Mestral walk into Carbon Creek and
enter a local tavern called the Pine Tree Bar & Grill. Realizing
that "currency" is required, Mestral gets himself involved in a
pool game for a bet. Quickly mastering the game's simple geometry,
Mestral wins enough money for him and T'Mir to buy several bags
of groceries. Trip interrupts T'Pol's story, skeptically comparing
it to an old episode of The Twilight Zone, but he and Archer are
intrigued, so she continues. Hoping that a rescue vessel will eventually
arrive, the three Vulcans take up residence in Carbon Creek and
secure jobs Stron as a plumber/handyman, Mestral as a coalminer,
and T'Mir as hired help at the tavern. Despite their aim to stay
to themselves as much as possible, Mestral becomes increasingly
captivated by human culture, such as television and baseball, and
by the townspeople themselves, particularly Maggie, the single mom
who tends bar at the Pine Tree. After observing news reports of
atomic bomb tests, T'Mir becomes convinced Earth is on the brink
of self-annihilation, making their efforts to construct a subspace
transceiver more urgent. But Mestral disputes that pessimistic view,
seeing this species as empathetic and compassionate, and having
great potential. In fact, Mestral makes excuses to leave the apartment
so he can spend time with Maggie. T'Mir catches him and forbids
him to make further contact with that woman, but Mestral counters
that they must accept the fact they may never leave this world.
In spite of herself, even T'Mir takes an interest in the locals,
as she learns that Maggie's son Jack is a very bright kid who desires
a higher education but may not be able to afford it, even after
his mom has been collecting donations in the bar's tip jar. The
Vulcans are further drawn into community affairs when a coalmine
accident traps at least 20 men underground. Mestral convinces T'Mir
and Strom that they should use their technology to help, so by retrieving
a particle weapon from the crashed ship, and with an assist from
T'Mir's scanner, Mestral succeeds in rescuing the workers. Three
months pass, and just as they've resigned themselves to living out
their lives on Earth, they hear from a Vulcan vessel that will arrive
in three days to rescue them. They inform their respective employers
that they'll be returning home "up north." When Jack hears about
it, he tells T'Mir he'll miss her, and reveals that he and his mom
couldn't raise the money he needs for tuition, so he won't be going
to college this year. Despite her own rule against getting involved,
T'Mir retrieves something from the wrecked ship, travels to the
big city, and sells it to a businessman an "invention" that would
later be called Velcro. She takes the money and anonymously stashes
it in the tip jar devoted to Jack's college fund, which leaves Maggie
astonished when she finds it. As the Vulcans prepare to depart,
Mestral announces he plans to stay here's a unique opportunity to
study an emerging species, one he's developed quite a fondness for.
Stron argues the High Command would never allow it, but when the
time comes to rendezvous with the rescue team, T'Mir covers for
Mestral by telling the other Vulcans he was killed in the crash
and his body cremated. Mestral stayed on Earth presumably for the
rest of his life, according to T'Pol. Archer and Trip question the
veracity of her story, and ultimately dismiss it as a dinnertime
entertainment. But when she returns to her quarters, T'Pol can't
help but dig out an ancestral memento the purse that T'Mir used
during her time in Carbon Creek. |
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