String Theory, Book 3: Evolution

by Heather Jarman

  Jagged energy threads sizzled and sparked, burrowing thorough his body at lightning speed. His matrix frazzled, splintering him into bits of matter; every particle in his being spun at reckless velocity, unleashing torrents of superheated, subatomic tornadoes, scorching through every millimeter of his form. Out of self-protection, his thoughts instantly retreated into a detached, drifting place. From a separate vantage he processed the searing torment coursing through every photon he was composed of. It is odd, he thought, to have existed as long as I have and not understood pain before. His matrix oscillated with such speed and force that he wondered if he would explode into billions of tiny bits. As reflex took the reins from conscious thought, he twitched uncontrollably, soon jerking with seizure force. A single thought lingered: Save me.

  As instantly as the attack had begun, it ended. The forces coursing through him ceased; cohesion returned. The Doctor’s consciousness lurched for a few moments longer until stumbling to a peaceful stop. He recovered quickly from his ordeal; his matrix hummed along as though it had never been disrupted. More importantly, he had been freed from whatever forces had bound him. Sensation returned to his body and he became keenly aware of being sprawled, flat on his back, his vertebrae pressing uncomfortably into a cold, hard surface. He blinked several times but the impenetrable, silent darkness still surrounded him. Clearing his throat, he touched his combadge. “Doctor to sickbay.”

  Silence.

  He repeated the action, calling on the ship and half the members of the crew before he accepted, howbeit reluctantly, that he must be out of combadge range. A few of Lieutenant Torres’s choicer curse words came to mind, but he believed he was above such impulses. As a thinking being, he would reason his way out. He eliminated being trapped in the Gremadian black hole (no out-of-the-ordinary gravitational pull) and being suspended in a space vacuum from the list of possibilities. He sensed neither motion nor mechanically generated noise, allowing him to rule out a presence on any starship or traveling craft. Methodically, he contemplated every potentiality his mind could conjure until a strangely beautiful sight drew his attention from his ruminations.

  Funnels of glowing specks swirled around him, casting shadows and illuminating, in flashes, rippling velvet black walls. He instinctively knew, as a distant relation, that the specks were individual photons. A steady stream of photons poured from an unseen place above him until a saturation point was reached, and the Doctor felt as though he was encircled by a glittery, golden tube. A transformation began. Sparkling white-yellow flecks danced, touched, and joined together in waves. In turn, waves braided with other waves, forming ribbons that became progressively brighter with each added strand until curtains of light revealed all. At last, the Doctor could see his surroundings.

  The velvety black surface was not a wall, but hanging bloodred curtains; the hard surface beneath him was a floor of joined wooden slats painted matte black. High above, he saw row after row of red, blue, yellow, and white spotlights mounted on metal strips. A canvas backdrop painted with a typical pastoral setting—grass, trees, blue sky, and sun—stretched horizontally behind him and up past catwalks and hanging ropes. The ceiling was at least sixty meters away. I’m on a stage, he thought. The realization filled him with pleasure.

  As he became more aware of his surroundings, he heard the faint strains of music playing somewhere beyond the curtains. He listened carefully. String instruments. Repetitious, almost atonal melodies, though the key progressions in that last section are quite sophisticated. Nothing in the style or sound of the piece recalled anything in his vast knowledge of music across the galaxy. He decided to investigate—in the interest, of course, of augmenting his database. Placing his palms against the floor, he pushed himself up to his knees, then onto his feet. He took a few careful, creaking steps toward the curtains, the music becoming louder by the meter. Recalling his recent encounter with near-dissolution, he surveyed his surroundings to assess the danger and found nothing more troubling than an abandoned backstage area furnished with light panels, props, and cast-off costumes thrown over chair backs and tables. He walked more quickly to the front of the stage, curled his fingers around the edge of the curtain, and pulled it back.

  The magnificent trappings of an ornately decorated theater—perhaps nineteenth-century European—filled his view. Upward of two thousand people could sit in this auditorium, resplendent in its gold-leafed railings and red velvet seats. The Doctor’s eyes glanced upward—and that chandelier! Voyager’s bridge could hardly contain it! Flickering candlelight glinted through the teardrop crystals, illuminating the ceiling painted in round-cheeked cherubs and gauzy angels floating among the clouds. He stepped through the curtains into the empty auditorium and for the first time saw the source of the music.

  The orchestra pit was filled with a large string ensemble—as he had anticipated. What he hadn’t anticipated was instruments playing themselves. He watched, fascinated by the bows seesawing over the taut strings, the plink-plink-plink of plucks by unseen hands. The Doctor, who didn’t believe in ghosts, failed to understand why a creator with the brilliance to either perfectly automate an instrument or endow it with sentience would set his creations to playing rather obscure, purposeless music with no audience looking on. He was approaching the pit, hoping to study the curious technology, when the stage curtains parted abruptly and were pulled into the wings. The Doctor spun around and saw the pastoral backdrop, illuminated by spotlights calibrated to evoke the sense of dawn. Though the curtains had been drawn by an invisible hand, he was no longer alone onstage.

  When the transformed Assylia emerged from the cocoon in sickbay, awe had filled him. Such beauty had been a flickering candle compared with the blazing sun that he witnessed descending from the stage’s rafters. Creatures of light and wings illuminated the muddy gloom, radiating with serene majesty. One by one they emerged from a place beyond, until a dozen became a hundred, then thousands. In the lifetime he’d experienced since he’d been activated, he had come to know the fragility of life, both the steadily weakening flutters as a life was extinguished and the exuberant celebration of a life seized from death’s grasp. Neither of those emotional extremes could compare to the rapturous wonderment he felt watching these astonishing creatures. Their wings beat rhythmically, up and down, with the strength of a massive sail catching the wind. The Doctor watched the creatures dashing around the vivid sky-canvas, feeling an unfamiliar longing to be freed from the restraints of his holographic existence, to live with utter abandon.

  Tentative fingers of sunrise cleaved the blue. One by one, golden pink sunbeam spotlights heralded the day. Like angels, the creatures flew among tufts of clouds singing up the dawn. And the music! Had there ever been a more divine chorus? The Doctor, who prided himself on understanding the nuances and subtleties of the most complex music known to galaxies, satiated his senses on the glorious harmonies, soaking in each chord progression, each trilled treble note. With soul-starved intensity, he devoured the songs ringing through the sky, imprinting the memories into his holomatrix with the fervent hope that someday he might be able to join his voice with their song and, by so doing, reexperience the choruses he now heard.

  A thought occurred. Tuvok’s music, the music that drew him from Voyager and led him to Gremadia—this must be what he heard. Understanding—and empathy—overcame the Doctor as he comprehended what Tuvok had forfeited when he gave up his own transformation so that Assylia might join her people. Her people…. He mused on this for a long moment, and then realized, These angelic beings are the Monorhan’s Fourteenth Tribe!

  A shadow darkened the sky. The Doctor’s holographic innards twisted.

  A sextet of shiny black chitinous, segmented legs curled over the edge of a cloud. How such a thing could be conjured on stage astounded the Doctor. Attached to the legs was a globular abdomen, covered with coarse shaggy hair. Sharp pincers descended from the abdomen, flexing open and snapping closed. A pair of glowing eyes, the color of dried blood and mounte
d on slithery tubules, emerged from the abdomen and hovered, shifting from side to side, watching. Even from this distance, the Doctor could hear the insectoid creature chittering hungrily, tapping its legs together with a clicking crackle. Soon another insectoid followed, and then another, until they stained the dawn sky.

  Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. The chatter rained from the sky, pelting the stillness with angry hisses. Legs tapped together more rapidly and the hissing grew. The Doctor could sense the malevolent rage radiating from the insectoids directed toward…the angel creatures. The transformed Monorhans. But, why? Surely such lovely beings could hardly have malicious capacity—they would harm no one. From what the Doctor could see, the angel creatures sought only to play, to fly, to rejoice in their existence. To that end, the angel creatures continued their carefree play, seemingly oblivious to the storm gathering around them.

  The attack came so swiftly the Doctor might have missed it if he looked away. The insectoids plunged over the cloud top toward the angel creatures. With their pincers, the insectoids ripped the wings from the angels’ bodies, crushed them, and tossed them away with gleeful abandon, then grasped the wounded creatures between their three sets of legs before snapping the bodies into small pieces. Helpless, the Doctor watched as long as he could bear it before looking away, their pained cries tearing at him.

  Just as their song had called the sun, their nightmare brought the storm. The sky darkened, rumbling with thunderous protest. The angel song became howling, mournful cries of suffering. From among the wails, the Doctor discerned that some of the angels fought back: he heard the shrill, insectoid squeals, the crunch of broken exoskeletons shattering to bits. He returned his gaze to the battle, hoping that the angels could defeat the insectoids swarming through the sky. Hope wasn’t enough. He wanted to fight beside the transformed Monorhans. He opened his mouth to shout warning: what emerged was song.

  The Doctor sang with all the conviction he could muster, pleading with the creatures to cease their fighting. Words he didn’t know came to mind and he set them to music that came from a place deep inside. As he sang, the sparkling funnels of photons swirled around him, creating a spotlight. Their presence strengthened him. His musical commands slowly overtook the cacophony pouring from the painted sky. The demonstrable progress prompted him to sing as loudly and powerfully as he could. One by one, the combatants broke apart from their fighting until nearly half of the insectoids had retreated behind the clouds. I’ve done it, he thought, buoyed by confidence.

  So filled with the power of his song was the Doctor that he almost didn’t notice that the instrumental song from the orchestra pit had changed. With the decreased battle noise, he became keenly aware that the instrumental music behind him was playing counterpoint to his song instead of the odd music of before. As much as he felt compelled to continue forging peace, instinct told him he needed to see what was happening in the orchestra pit. He walked back to the edge of the stage, singing with each step.

  His eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. Each instrument in the orchestra had a player: him. There he was—many of him, in fact—attacking the violin with the expertise of a fifteen-fingered zessi, and again with the cello and bass. He had no idea where he’d learned to play the piano with such expressiveness, but there he was bent over the keyboard, making hand-over-hand runs with a finesse that even he didn’t know he had. Curious as to the results, the Doctor continued his aria but transposed the notes into a different key. On cue, the instruments followed him, playing harmony. Satisfied, he smiled. He took a deep breath, prepared to embark on yet another measure of musical brilliance.

  A female figure materialized beside him, her auburn hair flowing out behind her, like a figure out of a Raphael painting. The blue eyes, the high forehead, the full lips were familiar to him…. Then he remembered: the woman was a replica of one he’d met in sickbay. The captain had introduced her as Phoebe Janeway, but she was actually a Nacene taking on Phoebe’s appearance. Could this be the same Nacene poseur? The version the Doctor knew from Voyager was off her rocker, to put in mildly. Presuming this redhead was Nacene might mean that he’d been transported to—Exosia. The thought of being in the realm of the Nacene chilled him, knowing that, thus far, he’d found the pandimensional species to be far from sympathetic creatures. Unbidden, the Doctor heard a refrain of the old air “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” whistling in his mind.

  Her eyes didn’t smile; her eyes radiated cold rage.

  “I want it transported to engineering.” B’Elanna Torres studied the tricorder readout for perhaps the twelfth time in the last five minutes, enraged that the results, yet again, were useless. “I’ll study it there.”

  “Lieutenant, I believe you have already obtained any diagnostic results that will be forthcoming from the remains of the tetryon transporters, “Ensign Vorik said, his voice an even monotone that made B’Elanna want to squeeze his throat until his vocal cords emitted a sound other than irrationally-calm-in-the-face-of-disaster. He studied the padd in his hand, which contained all the data they’d accumulated since Tom and Harry vanished nearly a day ago.

  B’Elanna could quote every line on Vorik’s padd chapter and verse. She knew the code and the frequency of every sensor and piece of communications equipment on the now-vanished shuttle. She also knew that Vorik was absolutely correct in his assessment of the situation: they already had whatever data they were going to get from the junk heap in the shuttlebay.

  And she didn’t care. There had to be something she’d missed even if she had to analyze that congealed glob of circuitry and metal one molecule at a time.

  She touched her combadge. “Torres to Seven. Update me on the Blue Eye microsingularity.”

  “We have been able to conclude only that there may be a link between the growth of the microsingularity and the destruction of Gremadia and the subsequent disappearance of the Gremadian black hole. If our theories are correct about the artificial nature of this region, we may encounter more navigational or communication problems due to subspace destabilization, perhaps even deterioration.”

  “Subspace doesn’t rot like a bad piece of fruit!”

  “You are theoretically correct, Lieutenant. But the fact remains that if my current projections hold, subspace, as we understand it, will change—evolve—into something else, and no, I cannot explain it.”

  “Will Voyager clear this region before this evolution begins?”

  “I cannot say.”

  B’Elanna balled her hands into fists and counted backward from ten, clinging to the knowledge that losing her temper now would get her nowhere. If it’s not one problem, it’s fifty. “Thank you, Seven. Let me know if you have any breakthroughs. Torres out.” Turning, she noticed wide-eyed Ensign Matthews waiting nervously at her elbow, clutching a padd tight against her chest.

  A sensor design specialist, Voyager had been Matthews’s first posting on a nonscience vessel. She’d been used to quiet, respectful research laboratories. The constant chaos of Voyager had been an adjustment, to say the least, never mind the stress of working with a boss who lacked appreciation for the romance of pure science.

  “Yes?” B’Elanna snapped, threading her arms across her chest, immediately castigating herself for her tone when Matthews flinched visibly. She took a deep breath and tried again, using a calmer voice. “You have the results of the latest sensor and communications sweeps searching for the Homeward Bound.”

  Wordlessly, Matthews passed the padd over to B’Elanna, who scanned them quickly, looking for a hopeful sign.

  When she saw none, she cursed and kicked the remains of the transporter; the bones of her toes crunched like shells against rocks. An involuntary cry of pain escaped her before she clenched her jaw and forced any further traitorous noises back into her throat. A fiery pain surged through her tissues, shot through her leg muscles and into her torso before it diffused into throbbing stabs. Breathe, B’Elanna, she ordered her lungs. Through gritted teeth, she managed to dismiss Ensign Ma
tthews before collapsing onto the deck.

  “From the sound emitted when your foot came in contact with the transporter, I believe you may have broken the bones in your foot, Lieutenant,” Vorik said. “Shall I initiate a site-to-site transport to sickbay?”

  “No, transport these heaps of tetryon trash to the lab adjoining main engineering. I’ll walk to sickbay.”

  “Is that wise?” Vorik asked.

  “You don’t get a vote in the matter.” Squaring her shoulders, she started toward the turbolift, each excruciating step bringing tears to her eyes. A sudden, knifelike pain gave her pause; B’Elanna suspected it was a bone shard puncturing her skin. And yet, surprisingly, she felt liberated by the pain instead of crippled by it. It was as if the howling nerves in her feet sliced through her knotted-up insides, released all the pain she had carried since the shuttle disappeared, and allowed it to melt together into one big old seething mass. The emotional burden had been far more difficult for B’Elanna than her current physical predicament and now it was all indistinguishable. Pain was pain.

  She entered the turbolift and after ordering the computer to take her to sickbay, she took advantage of the brief private moment. Her head dropped to her chest, she scrunched up her face and let loose a loud, visceral wail until her ears rang with the echo of her own voice. Exhaustion overtook her; she covered her face with her hands, slammed back against the wall, and slid to the floor.