| abstract | - At Starfleet Academy in San Francisco, Commander Spock tells his communications students that their theses must be uploaded to the campus server by 2100 hours on Sunday. When a student approaches him, Spock assumes she is asking for extra time to complete the assignment. The student is Nyota Uhura, who has already uploaded her thesis, which has been graded first in the class. Now that Spock is no longer her instructor, Uhura invites him to dinner. Months later, Spock invites Uhura to participate in "emafa kito", a Vulcan mind meld with him. During the mind meld, Spock and Uhura mutually experience a memory from Uhura's childhood, when she and her parents visited her uncle Raheem off-planet. As the four of them orbit a ringed planet in a shuttle, a malfunction develops due to meteorite damage. While Raheem is making a spacewalk to check on it, an explosion severely damages the shuttle and knocks Uhura's parents unconscious. Raheem, still outside, contacts Uhura and tells her to drag her parents into the escape pod at the rear of the shuttle. He talks Uhura through opening the pod's hatch manually and encourages her when she thinks her parents are too heavy to pull into the pod. As the pod moves away, the shuttle explodes. Uhura calls out to her uncle, who is falling toward the planet. He tells her that the first explosion blew him away from the shuttle, and that there was no chance to save him. As he falls into the planet's atmosphere, Raheem tells Uhura how proud he is of her. Emerging from the mind meld, Uhura says she never told anyone but her parents about these events. Spock says that her uncle was very brave. Weeping, Uhura embraces and kisses Spock.
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