the delphic expanse

It's been awfully quiet around here, so I thought I'd pose a question that I've been wondering about for awhile: just how how much can two people do within a bond? From the show we know that they can see and hear one another. But what about the other senses. Do you think they can touch and feel? Distinguish scents? Taste? How much control would they have over the Vulcan white space? Can they change it?

If you say they can do all of the above, this leads me to wonder about the future of the world in which they live. If you can do everything you want within the bond, with full sensory experiences, in an environment you can control, do you really need the physical world? Do you think that this is possibly how some of the alien races evolved to a point where they could exist without a physical body?

Would this be what you would want out of live? Would it be best if there were some limits to what the bond can do? Or should it provide two people with experiences which contain all the benefits of real life?

Great question. I think potentially they could access all of the senses and change the white space. The experience would probably vary based on many factors - the strength of the bond and their openness to it, distance between them, focus (on the external world, on their own experience or on the bondmate), the awareness of sensations each person has, the strength of the sensations and emotions, the control over thoughts and feelings each person has, etc. My guess would be that it's usually at least a little bit attenuated compared to the actual sensation.

I doubt it would ever replace physical experience except when sharing the physical experience isn't possible (like physical separation or a sighted bond mate providing a visual experience to one who is blind). There would be a richness to sharing a physical experience with a bondmate that you couldn't get any other way. You would have access not only to your own physical experience, but also to your bondmate's experience of that same reality. Dealing with those two layers would probably be disconcerting at first, but once you adapted to it, it would be incredible. Of course, there would also be situations where you would want to limit or avoid sharing your experience with your bondmate to prevent distraction, minimize suffering, etc.

I think for humans (and probably for Vulcans), it's better if there are limits on how much the bond can create an imagined world that they can control. It would be too easy to spend all of ones time in the imagined world,neglect what we need to do in the real world, and miss all the opportunities in the real world to experience things we would never imagine. I think without real world experience to feed it, the imagined world might become dry and boring before too long.

I think there have been some alien races in Star Trek who have moved beyond physical bodies. Some seemed to want to have physical experience again where others seemed to prefer the lack of the limits and problems of corporeal life. Personally I want to stick with physicality for the forseeable future, but I can imagine other species reaching a very different conclusion.