Zoë Steiner

            On Sunday morning I finished working out the chords for “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. 

            In my Christian’s Translations blog I continued preparing “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation for publication. I might finish posting it tomorrow. 

            I weighed 88.35 kilos before breakfast. I had bacon, an egg sunny side up, and seven grain toast.

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Around midday I cleaned the warm mist humidifier that’s been running this week. I set the other one going but I suspect I’ll need it less before it has to be cleaned next Sunday. 

            I weighed 89.25 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since March 8. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 88.9 kilos at 18:10.

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:32. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity a performance by my band Christian and the Lions at Fat Albert’s. Tom Smarda was on Stratocaster and Steve Lowe was on acoustic guitar and they both did some backup vocals. We played my songs “The Next State of Grace” and “Sixteen Tons of Dogma”. At first the digitization was distorted but I restarted. The waveform was still small but then I noticed that Windows had snuck an unknown driver onto my Device Toolbar. I switched it back to my Scarlett audio interface and it started recording normally. 

            I made pizza on seven grain bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, three slices of bacon and five year old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching episode two of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. 

            A delegation from Betazed comes to Starfleet Academy to negotiate the possibility of rejoining the Federation. They have kept themselves isolated behind a psionic wall since The Burn 100 years ago. The younger generation of Betazoids however are protesting the isolation that has been imposed upon them. 

            Caleb discovers that his roommate at the Academy is his enemy Darem. Neither of them likes it.

            Caleb is still searching for his mother who was taken from him and imprisoned 15 years ago. She escaped prison and was last rumoured to be on Goja V but the Federation database has no record of such a planet. 

            The Academy is sharing a campus with the far more conservative War College, which unlike the Academy continued to exist during and after the Burn. 

            Caleb is not enjoying the Academy and so he goes to the edge of the campus and starts to climb over the wall. A pretty young woman sitting on a bench asks him why he’s climbing the fence. She describes some of his feelings and concludes he’s conflicted. He wants to talk with her but she walks away and he is grabbed by security for going out of bounds. He is taken back to the Academy and into the auditorium where the negotiations with the Betazed delegation are about to begin. The girl who was talking with Caleb is part of the Betazed Youth Delegation. She is also Tarima Sadal, the daughter of the president. She asks for a tour of the Academy and specifically wants Caleb to conduct it. He takes her to the Stellar Lab where he searches for Goja V but again it does not seem to exist. Tarima lets the computer access the Betazed star chart from before the Burn and Goja V appears. Caleb takes Tarima to an aquarium to admire a humpback whale which Tarima senses is pregnant. Nobody seems to care that whales are still kept captive in this distant future of Star Trek. Caleb and Tarima are out of bounds and are caught. Caleb is especially in trouble. Caleb and Tarima meet later and he asks her about the small device on her neck. She explains that it’s a neural inhibitor that she must wear because her empathic powers are beyond those of most Betazoids and she could cause harm if it is not checked. 

            During negotiations Nahla offers president Sadal that the Federation would build its seat of government on Betazed if they join the Federation. He’s hesitant but then Tarima and her brother stand in approval as do all the Academy cadets. 

            Nahla tells Caleb she found out his mother left Goja V three months ago for the Ramal sector.

            Caleb meets his second roommate and it’s Tarima’s brother. Tarima has surprisingly enrolled in the War College. 

            Tarima is played by Australian actor Zoë Steiner, who studied at the 16th Street Actors Studio in Melbourne and the Michael Chekhov Acting Studio in New York. She made her professional debut when she co-starred in the mini-series Significant Others. She won the role of Tarima Sadal after auditioning over Zoom. It’s a sign of the times.