“Doing what?” he said gently.
“Being normal when nothing is normal.”
“I’m more than a little anxious myself, knowing that my right-hand man is capable of vanishing without warning or thought to the damage he might do. I pray that we don’t have any casualties on our way out of Monorhan space because I’m afraid we can’t treat them. Never mind what losing Harry and Tom will do to my ability to run the bridge,” Chakotay said. “Truth be told, I’m tempted to turn the ship over to Seven and take a very long nap.”
Recalling the few rancorous days she spent sharing Seven’s consciousness, B’Elanna couldn’t help chuckling. “She’d love that for about half a shift and then she’d want to assimilate the whole crew out of frustration and in the name of increased efficiency. But if you assign Tuvok to advise her, he’ll keep her in line.” At the mention of Tuvok, B’Elanna thought she saw a shadow pass over Chakotay’s face, so she quickly moved on. “If you quote me I’ll deny it, but I trust her. Especially in a crisis. Don’t be afraid to call on Seven to back you up.”
“These are strange days,” Chakotay said, “if you’ve come to believe we can trust Seven.”
“No arguing with you there,” she said grudgingly. Had B’Elanna been told several months ago that she would advocate for Seven, she would have pronounced such a statement ludicrous. Of course, she wouldn’t have believed it possible that she’d lose Tom, either, in spite of the usual disasters that typically befell Voyager. A dull ache filled her at the thought of Tom. She hugged her arms close to her chest. Chakotay eyed her closely; not for the first time, B’Elanna had the strangest sense that she was transparent to him.
“All right, then,” he said finally. “I’ll call a meeting of senior staff in a half an hour if that gives you enough time to provide me with a complete engineering report.”
“Yes, sir,” B’Elanna said. She pushed off the biobed and dropped to the ground and was immediately assaulted by waves of pain. Yeah. I kind of forgot about that little problem….
“What happened?” Chakotay asked, concerned.
“I kind of kicked the remains of the tetryon transporter. Broken toe. It’s nothing.”
Chakotay didn’t appear convinced. “Can you set it without help?”
“I’ve got basic Starfleet paramedic training,” B’Elanna said, brushing aside his concerns. “I can manage an osteoregenerator if you can find one for me—that and a hypo with an analgesic and anti-infective agent in it.” She crawled back up onto the edge of a biobed. While Chakotay searched the Doctor’s cabinets, she gingerly eased off the boot and peeled off her bloodied sock. As she suspected, a bone shard had punctured the skin of her big toe, but the blood flow had slowed to a mere seep, congealing around the wound.
When Chakotay turned back to hand her the tools, he physically recoiled, grimacing at the sight of the blackened hematoma spreading through her swollen tissues, her toes twisted and deformed from multiple breaks. “I suppose one of my first jobs will be to get someone down here to help out in sickbay until we figure out where the Doctor disappeared to.”
“You mean you don’t want me fixing everyone up?” B’Elanna asked. “But I have such a charming bedside manner.” Bracing her injured foot against the base of the biobed, she bent over and held her ankle with one hand, then grasped the distended top of her mottled big toe between her thumb and index finger of her other hand. She gritted her teeth, then forced the broken bone segment back beneath the skin with her thumb, and jammed the broken segments back together, making a crunching, grinding sound. She smiled mischievously at her old friend, noting with dark amusement how he looked a little yellow around the edges.
“Pass,” Chakotay said, and left B’Elanna to her work.
She activated the osteoregenerator and bent over to start mending her bone. She paused midway, resting her elbows on her thighs, her face rested on one hand so she could look at the medical instrument in the other. Her foot still throbbed from resetting the broken bone; pain pierced her calf and spread into her thigh. Chakotay had retrieved a hypospray containing a pain reliever. She could use it—should use it. The pain continued unabated—even intensifying as edema increased in her foot. Her skin stretched tautly over her bones and muscles as the tissues swelled with blood and water. Awareness of her injuries superceded thought. Her whole body hummed from the rhythmic firings of nerve endings.
B’Elanna liked how she felt. More specifically, liked the pain. The realization disturbed her, but she wasn’t willing to make any moves to fix it.
Then she understood.
She felt the pain. Her body was alive. Pain broke through the numbness that had never fully gone away for what seemed like months…and it had been months, she realized. This dull flatness had shadowed her since the message from the Alpha Quadrant about the Maquis had arrived. The pain radiating from her broken bones had woken her up, even if it was temporarily. She savored feeling again, wishing she could prolong it.
She glanced at her chronometer. Unfortunately, duty called: senior staff in twenty minutes. Sitting around sickbay philosophizing about the sorry state of her life wouldn’t get the engineering report done. Reaching over her leg, she waved the instrument over her foot, having mixed emotions as the warmth of the healing probe stimulated the mending of the damaged bone. I actually feel pretty good, everything considered, she told herself, hoping that a little more self-talk would be convincing.
Part of it, she realized, was that her injuries served as a distraction. As she put the tools back in the cabinets, a thought occurred: Too bad I can’t get injured more often. It would give me an excuse to see Tom during his sickbay shifts. She laughed aloud at the ridiculousness of the idea. Except Tom’s not here. Smiling sadly, she remembered him, regretting that the brief moment of self-deception had passed and wondering what she could do to escape from these interminable reminders. She didn’t want to be one of those people who spent their time cooped up in a holodeck trying to escape their lives, but she certainly understood that way of thinking better than she did a week ago. Are you out there, Tom?
Tom blinked once. The world looked honey-tinted—like the centuries-old photos he often saw in museums. Apparently, this honey-colored world existed on a seafaring vessel—a massive cruising ship, from what he could see, looking down the polished wood decks spreading out on either side of him. Round portholes dotted the walls behind their deck chairs. A life preserver with the name Q E II painted on it in bold dark letters was mounted on the deck railing. All of it honey-colored. He blinked again and nothing changed. Still—
Harry, who was no longer an ear, yanked the tortoise-shell sunglasses from Tom’s eyes and dropped them in his lap. “It helps if you take these off.”
Tom’s world immediately changed hues, though part of him wished he’d kept the sunglasses on. The pink and purple tropical flowers covering Harry’s shirt reminded Tom of a hangover remedy his Academy roommate used to swear by. Dropping his eyes, he realized his attire wasn’t much better unless you had a hankering for brown-and-yellow plaid Bermuda shorts with an orange T-shirt emblazoned with “Viva Las Vegas.” At least the locale was pleasant. Too bad B’Elanna wasn’t around to share it with him. She loved sunny climes. “I have to say,” he turned to Harry, “if you had to be thrown into the middle of nowhere by Q, this isn’t a bad place to be thrown. Still, we need to find our way back to Voyager—fast.”
“I hope you have better luck than I’ve had. Since we got here, I’ve tried to figure out where we are—even where Q is—and I’ve got nothing. I just end up wandering in circles.”
“Maybe he’s messing with your head.”
“That’s why I’m going to stay put until I’m summoned. Besides, all this dimension-traveling messes up my circadian rhythms. I’m going to take a nap, so stay out of trouble.” He wriggled around in his rattan lounge chair until he found a comfortable position, and then closed his eyes.
“Right,” Tom said. To his delight, a tall, bright green dri
nk filling a carved-out pineapple appeared on the table beside him. The straw shaped like a hula dancer was the perfect touch. He’d have to remember to add it to the resort program the next time he began tinkering. Tom suspected that Q might be trying to get them intoxicated so they’d be more compliant with whatever schemes he was plotting. He took a long pull on the straw anyway.
Looking between his sandal-clad feet and through the white-painted railing, he saw an endless stretch of serene pink-gray nebula before him. Only swirls of particulate matter and the occasional spatial anomaly breaking the surface disturbed the perfection. Wait. That can’t be right. Tom blinked. Rubbed his eyes. Nope. They were on a cruise ship churning through space. What did he expect, traveling with a Q?
Swinging his feet over the side of the lounge chair, Tom took in a deep breath, relishing the brisk, briny air filling his lungs. (The logical part of his brain wondered how briny air was possible in the vacuum of space, but who was he to care? The air, indeed, was briny.) A familiar, mocking laugh called to Tom like a beacon. He proceeded cautiously in the direction of the sound.
Down the deck from their chairs was a swimming pool surrounded by slot machines, roulette, tongo, dabo—every game of chance that Tom was familiar with and many games he wasn’t. In the midst of the revelry stood Q, wearing a white captain’s hat, a navy-blue-and-white-striped boat-neck shirt, and a jaunty striped cravat. He strolled among a crowd gathered at a craps table, shouting and clapping as a gambler shook and rolled the dice. A scantily clad Orion female was draped over his shoulders like an ill-fitting suit. Tom placed his tall, fruity drink with the hula dancer straw on the table between his and Harry’s lounge chairs and started toward the gamblers. Might as well go where the action is, Tom thought, and moseyed over to where Q partied.
“I have to tell you, Q, this is quite a rig you’ve conjured up.”
“It is lovely, isn’t it? If we had more time, I’d sign you up for the Virgo Supercluster cruise. Unparalleled fun and frolicking. Alas, we have work to do.” Q craned his head around Tom. “Where’s Tweedle-dumb?”
Tom jerked his head in the direction of the snoring Harry.
“That won’t do,” Q said irritably, and snapped his fingers.
A splash from the swimming pool drew Tom’s attention; Harry appeared, flailing madly, in the deep end. He eventually stroked to the swim ladder and sloshed up on deck, leaving puddles of water behind him.
“You can hardly take a nap when the fate of the universe is at stake. And you were the one so desperate for explanations,” Q said, tsking. “Now, pay attention, Mr. Kim. There is no remedial version available.”
Harry growled.
Q seemed not to notice. “You see, boys, there are two rules that determine the course of the universe: choice.” He handed a cupful of dice to Tom and gestured for him to throw the dice on the green felt surface spread out before them on the table. “And chance.”
Tom did as instructed and the dice came up snake eyes.
“You lose,” Q said cheerfully. “Tom could choose whether to play and by playing he took a chance that he might lose. See how it works? A choice is made without knowing the outcome, because chance chooses the outcome. It’s all so delightfully twisted, don’t you think? And no matter who you are in the universe, whether you’re a one-celled organism living in the primordial ooze or an omnipotent being like me, these two factors inevitably determine your existence. How choice and chance interplay is what determines destiny.”
Wringing water out of his hair, Harry said, “Captain Janeway chose to explore the Monorhan system and the actions she took started a series of consequences.”
“Very good, Mr. Kim. There might be hope for you yet,” Q said, and snapped his fingers.
The scene abruptly changed again. Tom was starting to find Q’s unorthodox style entertaining; he looked around to see what interesting location Q had brought them to this time and discovered he was on his back, looking up at four walls of white netting, too high for him to climb over. He smelled soap and talcum powder. Rolling over onto his stomach, Tom reached for a rattle shaped like a letter “Q,” but it was snatched away by a chubby hand: Harry beat him to it. If that squatty, chipmunk-cheeked Asian baby with the pacifier jammed in his mouth was Harry.
Mortified, Tom squished his eyes closed, hoping to avoid seeing his own humiliating state. Woosh! A thick, hairy arm swooped in from the sky and scooped him and Harry up. Before Tom could start crying in protest, he looked up into the largest face he had ever seen.
“Daddy’s going to tell you boys a bedtime story now,” Q said, and placed Tom and Harry on the carpeted floor.
Seeing the sun glinting off a swing set outside, Tom immediately crawled across the floor, heading for the exit. “For most sentient species, the first choice is to explore the environment around them.”
After butting his head against the slightly ajar door, Tom squeezed through the opening, crawled out onto the grass, and found he was face-to-face with a very wet, very smelly nose. He rolled back onto his haunches to stare at the puppy who was staring at him equally as intently.
“One choice leads to another and the world grows larger as a species seeks to push its boundaries and limitations,” Q said, walking beside the crawling babies.
Tom couldn’t believe how gigantic Q’s shoes were. Terrified, he crawled quickly to keep ahead of the Very Large Feet.
Q lifted Tom and Harry off the lawn and placed them on the seats of two tricycles.
What kind of lunatic are we dealing with? Doesn’t he know we’re babies? Tom clung to the handlebars, assuming that he would fall off, but found to his surprise that his legs could reach the pedals. How was that possible? Checking out Harry, he determined that they must have aged at least two years in the last few moments. Apparently, Q was taking them through the early years of human development. I need to stop being surprised, he thought. He pushed his sneaker-clad feet against the pedals and got the tricycle moving. Not quite as fun as a holocar, but what could he expect in a two-year-old body? Tom and Harry took off down the sidewalk, racing to see who would reach the end of the cement slab first.
Astride a pennyfarthing bicycle, Q peddled beside them at a leisurely pace, steering without gripping the handlebars. “Life is a series of increasingly more complex choices with increasingly more painful results…” At the end of the slab, Q stopped without warning.
Tom and Harry, who had been absorbed in their race, went careering toward Q. Tom frantically tried to stop, but the pedals spun faster than his feet could keep up with. The front wheel of his vehicle rammed into a lip of cement, sending Tom flying over the top of his handlebars. He winced, bracing himself for the crash—
And then they were on a lawn, wet with dew, again, lying side by side staring up a summer starscape. The sky rotated around them, constellations changing with a rapidity Tom could barely comprehend. Q was nowhere to be seen, but he heard his voice booming in his ear.
“Every once in a while, a sentient species comes along and really makes a mess of things. Their choices affect more than just their own limited sphere; they have a ripple effect on other species. For example, humanity’s quest to understand its existence led you to the atom, which is all fine and well, but what you did with that atom almost destroyed you. Like humans, the Nacene went out and explored their dimension—they call it Exosia—and in the process they discovered a building block even smaller than the atom. You call them strings.”
Harry sat up. “String theory. We’ve known about that for centuries.”
“Have you?” Q’s face replaced the wan, pale yellow moon.
“It’s great to know we were right,” Harry said hopefully, looking up at the sky.
“As if I’m going to fall for that old trick, trying to dupe me into answering a question you don’t yet have a complete answer for.” The Q moon heaved and shook with sneering laughter.
Harry folded his arms across his chest. “We do know string theory,” he said petulantly.
Tom was thinking about how Harry needed to learn to keep his mouth shut instead of arguing with a Q.
“You may think you do, but as with everything else, what you think you know is dwarfed by all you don’t know. You congratulate yourselves on your cleverness when you learn something new, arrogantly pressing on before you give yourselves time to fully process what you’ve discovered.”
“Try me,” Harry persisted.
“I don’t think so. Don’t worry, you’ll get there—if you don’t manage to annihilate yourself with the photonic core sequencing transformer—” Q suddenly put his fingers to his lips. “Oops. Was that out loud? Just forget I said that last part.”
“I hate you,” Harry said.
Snap.
Tom recognized the avocado-colored shag carpet he’d crawled on as a baby. This time, instead of being in a playpen, he was nose-to-nose with half of a cardboard box, its innards crudely painted with a facsimile of stars and planets. In his hand he held a white hard plastic spacecraft; at least, he guessed it was a spacecraft, since no planet-based aircraft looked anything like this saucer-shaped toy encircled with rows of lights, alternating blinking red and blue. Tom discovered if he pressed a button on the bottom of the spacecraft, a muffled but high-pitched voice—a cross between Neelix and tribble—said, “Greetings, Earthling. We come in peace.” Cool, he thought, and looked around to see if there were any other things to play with. He then realized that Harry was on the floor across from him. His friend wore a starched, short-sleeved orange-and-blue plaid shirt tucked into a pair of equally starched dark blue trousers. Blinding white socks, emerging from shiny brown loafer shoes, slouched around his ankles.
String Theory, Book 3: Evolution Page 7