In the briefing room, once Spock and Uhura had explained the entire situation and their reasons for seeking him out, Shastri shifted uneasily in his seat as he absorbed it. He had trouble meeting Uhura’s eyes. “So you really did lose your memory,” he finally said.

“I had no reason to lie about that,” Uhura told him, unable to keep a touch of resentment out of her voice. “Did I?”

He wrung his hands together. “I didn’t… I didn’t know what to think. It was such a… so hard to believe. And coming so soon after everything that happened on Argelius…” He was visibly wrestling with deep emotions of his own. Finally he met her eyes. “I guess I was afraid it was too good to be true. That you’d had second thoughts and… and gave me a feeble excuse for breaking things off with me.”

Uhura was stunned. It explained everything she felt, yet it fit none of the facts. “We were lovers?”

Shastri winced and let out a painful laugh. “Well… only barely. We’d only just started. I mean…” He took a deep breath. “At the Academy, and afterward, we were just good friends. I certainly thought you were beautiful, I would’ve been open to that, but you were always seeing someone else. Or I was, or we were both so caught up in exams and simulations and field training that we didn’t have time for personal lives.”

“So what did we do together, Rajendra? What did we work on at the Academy? And what’s the connection to Argelius and the other planets?”

He shook his head. “So strange to hear you use my full name. To see you look at me like a stranger.”

“Mister Shastri,” Spock interposed, “there will be time to process your emotions later. For now, it is urgent that you tell us what you can about your researches with Commander Uhura.”

“Of course, Captain. I’m sorry—I left Starfleet discipline behind a long time ago.”

He took a breath and straightened his shoulders, then began again, turning to Uhura. “You and I bonded over the fact that we were both subspace hams in our youths.”

She nodded. “My family told me. It’s how we found you.”

“Did they tell you about the musical patterns you thought you heard in the subspace noise?”

“Yes. But they said I abandoned it because I realized so many signals from random points in space couldn’t share a common origin.”

“You did, but…” He let out a nervous laugh. “So strange to be telling you about your own words. You never forgot anything!”

“Please, Rajendra.”

“Right, right. Sorry. What you told me was that you knew intellectually that it didn’t make sense, but you could never completely shake the feeling that there’d been something there. You were embarrassed about having so much trouble letting go of a—of what you thought was a childhood daydream.”