The Enterprise visits Apsidan III, a matriarchal society that has eliminated war, poverty, and crime through an institution called the Charity. One composer begins to suspect the harmony he was born into is not what he was told it was.
Teaser
The Enterprise-D drops out of warp near Apsidan III, a temperate world ringed by an unusually dense orbital structure — concentric platforms of polished obsidian, glittering against the planet’s pale atmosphere.
PICARD (Captain’s Log): Captain’s log, stardate 47291.6. The Enterprise has been dispatched to Apsidan III, a society applying for Federation associate membership. Initial reports describe a flourishing matriarchal civilization that has eliminated war, poverty, and crime. Starfleet Command considers the application promising. I confess to a measure of curiosity.
On the bridge: viewscreen shows the orbital rings.
RIKER: Beautiful architecture, Captain.
DATA: The platforms are arranged in nested ellipses, sir. Each is a fixed observation point. They appear to be… ceremonial.
TROI (suddenly, slight discomfort): Captain — the surface population. The emotional texture is… extraordinary. Deep contentment. But underneath…
PICARD: Yes, Counsellor?
TROI: A great number of minds operating at very low affective bandwidth. Almost serene. Almost.
PICARD: Almost?
TROI: I’d prefer to be on the surface before I say more.
Act One
Transporter Room. Picard, Riker, Troi, Data beam down. They materialize in a sun-drenched plaza of white stone. Tall women in flowing garments greet them. Men move quietly along the periphery, eyes lowered, carrying objects — water jars, scrolls, instruments.
HIGH ELECTOR VAEN (statuesque, warm smile): Captain Picard. Welcome to Apsidan.
PICARD: High Elector. We are honored.
VAEN: Our records indicate your Federation values harmony. You will find Apsidan is harmony itself. We have not had violence in eleven generations.
Riker watches the men. One passes carrying an ornate harp; he does not look up.
RIKER (quietly): How did you achieve it?
VAEN: The Recalibration. Long ago, our ancestors observed that male affective patterns produced most violence, most disorder. The instinctual passions, untempered, are catastrophic. Our solution was elegant: the Charity.
PICARD: Charity?
VAEN (gestures upward, toward the orbital rings): Each man, upon reaching maturity, is bonded to a Patroness. He is given a position in her gravitational field — emotional, social, devotional. He orbits her. He receives, in return, the affection his nature requires. No man on Apsidan is unbonded. No man wants for tenderness.
TROI (carefully): And the women?
VAEN: We tend our orbits. (smiles) It is a sacred responsibility.
Act Two
Riker tours a crafting hall with VENNAR, a male composer, mid-thirties, gentle, slightly translucent in affect. He plays a haunting piece on the harp.
RIKER: That’s beautiful.
VENNAR: Thank you. I composed it for my Patroness. (pause) She has not asked to hear it yet. Perhaps next month.
RIKER: You compose only for her?
VENNAR: Of course. What else would music be for?
RIKER: …for yourself?
Vennar looks at him, genuinely puzzled, as if Riker has spoken a malformed sentence.
VENNAR: A man composing for himself? That would be… (struggles) … untethered. A man without a gravitational center is — there is no word in our language. Lost? But worse than lost. Unfinished.
RIKER: You’ve never wondered if you could simply… live without a Patroness?
Vennar’s face flickers. For a moment, something like fear. Then the placid serenity returns.
VENNAR: Commander. I receive her tenderness twice yearly. Her gaze, three times. Her voice, on Equinox. These are great gifts. (his hands tremble slightly on the harp) The other men receive less. I am fortunate.
Observation Lounge. Senior staff.
TROI: It’s not telepathic suppression. It’s something more elegant. The men have been culturally conditioned to derive their entire affective worth from female attention. Their nervous systems literally cannot register pleasure outside that framework. A meal tastes flat. Music is meaningless unless composed for a Patroness. Sunlight, cold water, sleep — all neutral.
DATA: I have analyzed the orbital structures. They are not ceremonial. They are literal. The platforms denote the assigned proximity each male is permitted to maintain, in social-affective terms, to his Patroness. The closer the orbit, the greater his entitlement to her acknowledgment. The outermost rings — perhaps forty percent of the male population — receive contact perhaps once per year.
RIKER: And the men accept this?
TROI: They don’t merely accept it, Commander. They believe it is the structure of reality. Vennar, the composer — he doesn’t experience his condition as oppression. He experiences his Patroness as the only possible source of meaning. He is correct, given his conditioning. He has no alternative neurology available.
PICARD: Number One, you have an opinion.
RIKER: They’ve built a closed system. The men supply all the cultural production, all the labor, all the tenderness directed inward. The women regulate access to themselves and call the regulation charity. The men feel grateful for the scraps because they’ve been taught that scraps are everything.
WORF: It is slavery.
VAEN (entering, having been invited): Lieutenant. I am familiar with that word. We do not use it because it does not apply. Our men are not coerced. They are fulfilled. By every measure your Federation uses — happiness indices, conflict statistics, productivity, life satisfaction self-reports — Apsidi men are the most contented males in this quadrant.
WORF: Self-reports from men who have been conditioned to interpret captivity as fulfillment are not measurements. They are the consequence of the system being measured.
VAEN (smile remains, but tightens): Lieutenant. With respect. You are describing a society you have observed for less than a day.
PICARD: High Elector. May I ask — what would happen if a man chose to leave his orbit?
VAEN (long pause): It does not happen.
PICARD: It does not happen because it is forbidden, or because it is unthinkable?
VAEN: Captain. I do not understand the distinction.
Act Three
Night. Riker walks a colonnade alone. Vennar appears, half-hidden in shadow, harp at his side.
VENNAR: Commander. May I… ask you something. Privately.
RIKER: Of course.
VENNAR: When you were on your ship today. Before you came down. What were you doing?
RIKER: I was — playing trombone, actually. In my quarters. By myself.
VENNAR: For whom?
RIKER: For myself. I enjoy it.
Vennar’s hands clench around the harp. He says nothing for a long moment.
VENNAR: I do not understand the sentence. Each word, individually. Together — it does not parse. (his voice is shaking now) When you played. Did you… feel something?
RIKER: I felt — relaxed. Curious about a passage I’d been working on. The room was quiet. The valves were a little stiff. It was… pleasant.
VENNAR: And no Patroness was watching.
RIKER: No.
VENNAR: And she did not — you did not — receive…
RIKER: I received the music itself, Vennar. The doing of it. The sound. My own breath through the instrument.
Long silence. Vennar sits, slowly, on a stone bench. He sets the harp down.
VENNAR: I have been told my entire life that this is not possible. That a man without orbit is — that he experiences nothing. That he is a starving thing. (looks up at Riker) But you are not starving. You are not lost. You are — full. You are full of yourself.
RIKER (quietly): I am.
VENNAR: How long would it take? For me. To learn to be… full of myself.
Act Four
Picard’s ready room. Picard, Vaen.
VAEN: You will, of course, accept our application.
PICARD: I will not, High Elector.
VAEN: On what grounds? Our society meets every quantitative criterion.
PICARD: On the grounds, High Elector, that approximately half of your population has been systematically prevented from experiencing themselves as autonomous beings, and has been taught to call their captivity charity.
VAEN: They are happy.
PICARD: They report happiness within a framework that has erased every alternative. That is not the same thing as happiness. (rises) The Prime Directive prevents us from intervening. But we will not endorse, with Federation membership, a civilization built on a cult that has convinced its men they cannot live without the gravitational pull of a woman’s attention. Your men are not orbiting love, High Elector. They are orbiting a peasantry of the heart, dressed up as devotion.
VAEN (rising, controlled): You misunderstand us, Captain.
PICARD: I understand you precisely. I have read enough Earth history to recognize the structure. You have built an exquisite manor and convinced your servants the manor wall is the edge of reality.
Tag
Bridge. The Enterprise breaks orbit. The obsidian rings recede.
RIKER: Captain. Vennar is requesting communication.
PICARD: On screen.
Vennar, in a small chamber, harp visible.
VENNAR: Captain Picard. Commander Riker. After you departed, I… I went to a place at the edge of the city where no one watches. I sat in the grass. There was a wind. I felt it on my face. And I — Commander, I tried what you described. I played a passage. For no one.
RIKER: How was it?
VENNAR (small, hesitant smile): The first three minutes I felt I was committing a crime. The fourth minute I felt I might disappear. The fifth minute I felt — (struggles) — there was me. Just me. Listening. (long pause) It was very strange. It was very small. It was — Commander, it was enough.
RIKER (smiling): Yes.
VENNAR: I do not know what I will do now. But I wanted you to know that I — that the sentence parses. Finally. Thank you, Commander.
Channel closes. Picard and Riker exchange a look.
PICARD: Number One. What’s the term you used?
RIKER: “Full of himself,” sir. In the good sense.
PICARD: Yes. (pause) Helm. Take us out. Warp five.
DATA: Course, sir?
PICARD (quietly, to himself, as if remembering something): Anywhere we like.
The Enterprise jumps to warp. The orbital rings of Apsidan III turn slowly behind it, beautiful and terrible.