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When I was five years old, it was discovered that I had a rare talent: unlike that of many of my people, my hearing is very astute. It does not rival a Vulcan’s hearing by any stretch of the imagination, but, every once in a while, a Cardassian is born who hears well enough to be a successful musician.

I am one of those Cardassians.

The story of my discovery, as it were, is one that I remember well, even though I was only four years old at the time. I did not understand then, that Cardassians keep secrets, that we are, in fact, singularly preoccupied with accumulating them as a manner of social currency. The reason I did not understand this was not my young age, nor was I mentally underdeveloped: it was the simple fact that I have always been able to overhear the people around me when they were talking. I did not understand that I was not supposed to hear the subject of those conversations, nor did I understand that others could not hear as I did.

One day, I brought up something I had heard my mother say to my father – and for both their sakes, I will not repeat what it was – while we were in the company of house guests. My candidness caused my father a great deal of embarrassment, and I will never forget the hiding I received as a result.

Eventually, I was forgiven my lapse – I was, after all, a child, and the repercussions for our family from that incident remained very minor.

One of our guests from that day, however, became curious: she asked me, in what I still didn’t know would have been an inaudible tone to everybody else in the room, to bring her her reading glasses. I had no trouble discerning her words at all, even though there were people bustling around and it was quite noisy; I brought her her glasses from where she had left them on the table, and thought little about it.

But it was after that, that a man came to visit our house in the Eastern district of the Torr sector in Kardasi’or. His visit came to pass upon an invitation – although the more fitting word would be ‘application’ – that was issued by my parents with the aid of sponsorship by our guest, the lady with the glasses. My parents were very anxious, and it seemed I could do nothing right in the hours leading up to the event: my mother fussed over my clothing, my father chastised me for not sitting straight, and I was sent to polish my shoes, wash my hands, comb my hair back properly… it was a seemingly endless list of chores I was required to perform, before I could be seen by that man who was about to visit. I remember that my father took me aside, and impressed upon me how important this was, but that I was not to speak of any of the things I might have heard, unless asked directly.

I do not remember the man’s name, just what he did. I was taken into our living room while my parents waited in the hall. The man then proceeded to put a sort of apparatus on my head, covering my ears, and instructed me to press a button as soon as I could hear a tone.

This went on for a while, and I could see the man making notes on a data padd. I had no idea whether I was doing well, or what the purpose of this… testing, was, and I felt as nervous as my parents must have been. After I had apparently completed this first task, the man played a series of notes via the speakerphones covering my ears, and asked me to discern whether a note was higher, lower, or the same as the one I had heard before. It was very easy to do, and I became more confident as this test went on. Finally, I was asked to reproduce a melody by pressing buttons corresponding to the notes I was hearing.

When it was over, the man spoke with my parents briefly, and left.

Four weeks after that, I was sent to the most prestigious conservatory of the Cardassian Union.