(Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane are just alien enough in a love song ... turn on the music first so you know what the admiral and captain were listening to when they had the conversation in the story!)
Part 1: Galactic Explorers Think Just a Little Differently
Once the day that the treaty to bring Sultruviam into the human-led space consortium my uncle and I served as fleet officers was set, then my uncle and his fiancee could at last set the date of their wedding – and it was not far off.
“Look, this is my first marriage, and I'm 82, and her second marriage, and she's 80 – while I am too deliberate a man to be in a hurry because running on these bionic legs is easy for the bottom but not for the top of me –.”
Admiral Benjamin Banneker knew how to get people to laugh themselves right out of his private business – it would be a quiet, private wedding, with only his and the bride's closest friends and relatives invited. We all knew that the dignitaries of the Sultruviamin, who adored my uncle for making the most comprehensive and dignified treaty agreement with respect to a planet's natural environment in consortium history, were going to take a day from the treaty celebrations to situate a reception for him and Captain Jackson – Captain Jackson who had handled all the hospitality events for the negotiations flawlessly.
We all knew the fleet and the scientific community across the galaxy were going to each come up with some event, for my uncle was one of the most celebrated science officers in the fleet, and had made twenty years in retirement blazing an equally impressive record as a private scientist.
But all that would be over and done with before the actual wedding … the future Mr. and Mrs. Banneker-Jackson wanted nothing of pomp and circumstance, and their loving practicality extended over into the details of the planning of their lives after marriage.
“Well, I am considered a poor ambassador, but a rich admiral, and wealthy scientist!” my uncle quipped to my future aunt.
“The Non-Einstein Theory of Relativity, eh?” she said, and they both cracked up.
“Of course!” he said. “What I am getting at is that of course I already own a house in San Francisco, you already own a house in Kanakadur on Altair 5, and the Sultruviamin cannot give me a house owing to embassy and fleet rules but are 'keeping' a mansion for me out of their gratitude – but do we want to buy our house, and do you feel like system-hopping around to find something between Kanakadur and San Francisco? My money is long enough to get you anything you want for us.”
“Look, Benjamin,” Aunt Almira-to-be said, “If you're long on money, I'm long on expensive tastes, and having an 'admiral's woman' house was the dream of a lot of us giggling cadets – but when are we going to be in it if I'm going to be burning your money like that?”
“The idea is that you will be fully retired again before I will, and so you can enjoy it.”
“That's what the house on Kanakadur was for,” she said, “and I realize you don't understand yet what I'm about to tell you because this is your first marriage, but I've already been on the merry-go-round. Mr. Captain Jackson and I worked hard for that house on Kanakadur, and maybe we spent a total of five years together in it before he passed away. Our deepest regret was that between both being fleet commanders, keeping up with those payments, and making sure our children were good while we dealt with fleet life, we spent more time thinking about all that than making more time to communicate and connect about our love for each other. I loved him dearly but I can say now that while our marriage never fell apart, it didn't quite fall together either until close to the end.”
“Almira … I am so sorry.”
“Don't be. It was what needed to happen so that I wouldn't make the same mistake again, now, with you. It is written: 'Wherever your treasure is, there shall your heart be also.' You have at least 3.5 more years on your post-retirement tour with the fleet, and I suspect I've done well enough in my portion of getting this treaty done that I won't be allowed a quiet retirement either any more.”
“Almira, we couldn't have done it without you – you made everyone feel at home, all the way through.”
“And that's my point, Benjamin. That's what I've learned since losing Mr. Captain Jackson. We are galactic explorers at heart, like our African ancestors became everybody's ancestors as they spread across the world – we make a home, we don't just buy something someone else has made. Sultruviamin is a new possible home for human beings now – we did that for humanity. Home is something we bring with us, because you know I am never at that house on Kanakadur, and you were hardly ever at the house in San Francisco, and neither of us are going to be coming all the way back out here all that often to be in this kept mansion on Sultruviam even though it is not politic to say this!”
“I was just explaining the nature of the rest of my deployment – unless the embassy truly does intercede with the fleet, it will be four years before I can get out here again for an anniversary of the signing, and given my age and fleet life in general, that could indeed never happen.”
“Given fleet life in general,” she said, “every day is precious, which is why Mr. Captain Jackson and I learned to stop worrying about the house on Kanakadur and say this: 'wherever you are, there also shall my heart and home be.' ”
“Our niece and nephew Khadijah and Rufus are experts at this, and I have been taking notes – they did not expect her commission to be renewed when the trans-warp accident happened, but they have adjusted marvelously by prioritizing their times to connect remotely and in person as occasion allows.”
“That's all I need, Benjamin. I don't need the burden of taking on another house. While you are working on the Amanirenas and finishing the work on the new security features inside the Solar System, I'll happily live in your home in San Francisco. When you return to Admiral Triefield's fleet studying the accident itself, I'll live out of either San Francisco or Kanakadur depending on my own travels and future light deployment schedule. All I need, Benjamin, is time for us to stay connected.”
“You will have that. I love you, Almira. I have not waited this late in life not to have all manner of intimacy with the woman I love, in marriage. I adore your spirit and your intellect as much as I do the rest of you, and if you don't need an admiral's long money for a house, I will make sure you travel in style inside the consortium and have everything the way you want it when you get there so you can concentrate on making memories and having stories to tell me every day – because the way you tell a story is the best! Of course, you could go to the grocery store and have a way to tell it so it is fabulous, and of course I may need to invest in some bionic ribs because you have me laughing so hard sometimes, but hey, what is an admiral's long money for?”
“Oh, go head on and get those ribs, Benjamin, before we get married, because again, I have expensive tastes and designs on your admiralty money – you are going to get the best stories your long money can buy, best believe that! Ever seen the procession of the Tulafanus in the Scratlet System?”
“Now that's something I've never had time to get over and check out.”
“Get ready for all the photos, video, and story you can handle, Benjamin – I'm taking you there with me, in the spirit, just like you don't know yet, but lettuce around the galaxy is frankly hilarious at every store!”
Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Almira still have not purchased another house. They are still living between San Francisco, Kanakadur, Sultruviam, visiting friends and relatives, and slowly but surely doing their travels together but also sometimes separately in company with other friends and relatives … but every day when they are apart, they are still making each other at home again by connecting, for indeed, they found their treasure in each other, and wherever your treasure is, there your heart and home shall also be.
Part 2: My Process As Author and Artist
I decided to be contrarian, just a little, because I have been thinking about the feeling of home in comparison to the experience of African people. We know from science now that all human life descends from African roots, and so spread out from there, and we know from history that Africans continued to explore the world and establish civilizations right down to the colonial and enslavement period that created the African Diaspora ... and then all of us got free, and, assuming a righteous 23rd century, would be out also exploring and establishing our portion of human civilization in the galaxy. Assuming a righteous 23rd century, as it was in the beginning, it now and ever shall be, so far as humanity is concerned!
That said, particularly in the last five centuries, people of African descent have had to make home where they found it, and one of the ways we have done that is through our music, which is why I chose Thelonious Monk's "Crepuscule with Nellie" to go with this art -- that was the great jazz man's love song to his wife, Nellie. Entertainers, like military personnel, are always on the road, and it is a tough life for a family man as Mr. Monk was ... but that connection remained, and it was a good piece of music to also consider the energy and connection of the love between Admiral Banneker and Captain Jackson as they are on the verge of becoming Admiral and Captain Banneker-Jackson, symbolizing their union with a hyphenated name and keeping the weight of both their ranks ... who knows how long they may find themselves called out of retirement for the last time, after all?
Because the couple here is both back on limited active duty, there is not much chance of them actually being in each other's homes all that often ... that is the nature of deployment ... but they will find their way to be at home together, no matter how far apart they are.
I needed a galactic background, so I went to Pixabay and found this and stretched it out to make my center line:
Of course we remember Admiral Banneker, made in Arty AI:
And also Captain Jackson, likewise made in Arty AI:
Once I had them situated on the center line, now I had to nest them and connect them, and did so by arranging copies of these three fractals made in Apophysis 2.09:
