Thoughts From the Edge I: Sandoval
by Karolyn Gray <kmgray3@aol.com>

"I didn't really know you. Certainly never liked you. Why? I don't know. Maybe I saw something in you I wished I had in myself. Though I often questioned your actions, I never could question your motives. You knew what you were doing even if the rest of us did not. At times, I felt your great difference from me meant something was wrong with you. But you were so much mroe than even I imagined."

"I was jealous of you. You had done so much of what I had not been able to do. You brought a perspective that I had not even considered possible, a way of life that could be of service and still retain that which makes us what we are. You grieved when none thought it possible, loved when it should not have been. You awoke in me the realization that I was still here, that my true face lie beneath the surface, merely restrained, not dead as I had believed."

"I should thank you for that revelation: the knowledge that I could be so much more than what I appeared. I should have thanked you for the many things you did. Time and again you saved so many, fulfilled your purpose without heed to the personal cost. And yet I let my own jealousy, ambition and pride prevent me from doing so."

"What did you think when you died? Did you see my face kill you or that of the alien within? Perhaps they are the same now. I no longer know. I can only hope you forgive me for my mistakes. Despite our enmity, I think maybe you are the only one who ever could. Or would."

"I am sorry William Boone. There is so much I should have shared with you. So much I could have told you to help you understand them and to understand my service to them. As well as your own service. I won't forget your sacrifice. I promise you that. I wont forget. I will not let your death be a vain one."

Fin.