Ohio

22 - I'll Never Fall in Love Again

Don't Tell Me What Is All About

'cause I've Been There and I'm Glad I'm Out,
Out of the Chains, the Chains That Bind You.
That Is Why I'm here to Remind You.

-- Bobbie Gentry (I'll Never Fall in Love Again)

=/\=

Sheilagh spent much of the weekend going over the same things, over and over again. This was what she'd been doing, ever since they'd returned from the second trip to Kent. Over and over, fueling her growing obsession.

She had, foolishly, recorded Allison Krause's unrealized history onto her PADD. There was more, much more, than she had shared with Rick.

Allison would have made quite an activist. MIRACLE – the Migrant Rights Action Continuing Legal Education group she would have founded – it would have won a ton of cases for workers' rights.

Congress would have passed a bill, signed into law by President Obama, providing a limited amnesty for migrants, in exchange for two years of service to the United States. Pardoned illegals would have taught Spanish classes, cared for children, planted trees and served as companions to the elderly. But that only would have happened, had Allison Krause lived.

For without her, MIRACLE was never founded, and her friends scattered after graduation. Chrissie Hynde went on, eventually, to The Pretenders. Diane Evans married Roy Kamen and became a wife and mother, never working outside of her home. Sherry Wilson got her Master's in English Literature at Bentley and taught high schoolers in Western Massachusetts. And Annette Bradley had a career at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, rising to a managerial role before retiring in 2015.

Their experiences at Kent, it seemed, had been all for naught.

=/\=

Levi continued working, squirreled away at his home on Bajor. He could have stayed at the Temporal Integrity Commission, but Otra had, at the club, told him to go home already. She was one of the only people he ever really listened to, so he had left.

His home was a jumbled mass of science fiction memorabilia, including old action figures in their original casings and framed stills from ancient classics such as the original Twilight Zone television program.

He was sitting under a still showing a large man in makeup holding up a book called To Serve Man when it hit him that the first sentence of the bedeviling paragraph, in its entirety, was:

Humans have slaughtered each other by the millions.

Excited, he started calling people. Deirdre didn't answer – that seemed strange to him, as she'd been the most interested in the Manifesto, except for him – but it certainly wasn't strange for her, for Bruce was finally making his move. The sinking matzoh balls – just like his Mom made – had done the trick.

Rick's Communicator was emitting a busy tone, too, for he and Eleanor were having dinner with Steven and Chloe and Chloe was grilling them about whether Tom really was a nice guy. Carmen also wasn't answering – her chugged scotch had been joined by a few more at the Tethys Tavern, her watering hole of choice. HD, well, Levi didn't think he could help much, but he wasn't answering, either, as he'd been pressed into service to spin when the designated spinmeister had left with a patron of The X Factor.

Boris didn't answer; neither did Marisol. Levi didn't know that they were playing doctor at her apartment on Cardassia.

Tom was unavailable, too – he'd gone to visit his parents, and perhaps, have a better answer when his mother, inevitably, asked him if he'd been keeping company with any pretty ladies recently.