String Theory, Book 3: Evolution

by Heather Jarman

  “Nice outfit, Harry,” Tom said, smirking.

  “I wouldn’t point fingers if I were you,” Harry said, putting his index finger and thumb together to flick smallish soldier figurines across the cardboard starscape.

  Tom pulled on the braided red and white leather dangling beneath his chin and tipped his head forward. He discovered the straps were attached to a white straw cowboy hat with a thick red band. A shiny gold star imprinted with the word SHERIFF was fixed in the center of the hat. He looked down at his clothes: a red, black, and white kerchief tied around his throat, and a red-and-white checked shirt tucked into pants similar to Harry’s.

  “Quite the dandy,” Harry said, teasing.

  A figure seated in a yellow velour reclining chair dropped a newspaper to look down on them. Removing the tobacco pipe from between his teeth, he said, “Play nice, boys, or there’ll be no dessert for either of you. Where was I? Oh yes. The Nacene. They began like every sentient species—wanting to explore, to understand their environment.”

  The plastic spacecraft in Tom’s hand flew out of his grasp and into the cardboard space backdrop, where it hovered and blinked its colored lights.

  “The Nacene discovered what you call ‘strings’ as part of their natural exploration. All would have been fine if they’d left well enough alone. They didn’t. The problem with their failure to keep their proverbial hands to themselves was that their happy-go-lucky carelessness with the strings affected more than just Exosia and your dimension, but every dimension that emerged from the Big Bang. You see, what you humans call ‘strings’ is a fundamental building block of the universe. All the dimensions are interconnected in a cosmic ecology that expands infinitely in all directions, and one of the key elements connecting all these pieces together are what you perceive to be ‘strings.’ The strings have different names, manifestations, and roles depending which dimension is being considered—”

  “So the Nacene messed with the strings and everything got all knotted up,” Tom said.

  Q clamped his teeth around the pipestem and exhaled sharply, producing a small but perfectly shaped mushroom cloud from the bowl. “I’ll handle the wordplay if you don’t mind. But—to continue—yes, and not only in their dimension. They managed to manipulate the strings into altering the fabric of space-time of this dimension, allowing them to intrude into this existence. Initially, none of the damage they did was irreparable; the Q had a few nuisance clean-up issues to deal with, but nothing permanent.

  “But like most sentient species that first discover they have power, they tended to abuse it.”

  Without warning, several light beams erupted from the bottom of the spacecraft, alighted on the plastic soldier in Harry’s hand, and began incinerating the figurine. Harry looked on, forlornly, as the soldier melted into a khaki green lump in his palm, a curl of acrid smoke rising up from the remains.

  “The Nacene possess abilities many species would envy and they developed even more—” Q snapped his fingers.

  Still wearing the attire they had on in the living room, Harry and Tom stood before a series of mirrors, the plane of each mirror varying from the one beside it. The result was distorted reflections wherever Tom looked: Harry with a disproportionately large abdomen, Tom seeming as thin and tall as an evergreen. Each time he shifted his glance or walked in a different direction, he saw himself transformed into something he could only say was otherworldly.

  Beyond the room where they were, slightly off-key calliope music played cheerfully; Tom swore he smelled salty buttered popcorn.

  Q’s voice reverberated through the chamber. “The Nacene developed a miraculous ability to manifest their energy as corporeal life-forms. Wherever they went, they adapted, explored, and manipulated their environment.”

  Tom’s and Harry’s bodies morphed before their eyes, stretching and contorting until they saw facsimiles of their faces mounted on alien bodies. Harry’s skin had turned puce and he had four arms spouting out of a squatty, hair-covered torso; Tom had elongated into a knotty stick, with wiry limbs with eyes sitting one atop the other. Tom barely had time to assess his new body before he morphed into another, then another and another in increasingly rapid succession until…

  He and Harry were back in the living room in their cowboy regalia, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Q, who held an open newspaper in front of his face.

  “Because the Nacene could blend in wherever they traveled,” Q continued, “they started interfering in the affairs of worlds, rarely seeking to better the circumstances of the aliens they visited.” Q pointed to the headlines of his newspaper: LYRA GALAXY DEVOURED BY GREEDY SINGULARITY and, in smaller writing, NACENE BLAMED. Q tsked. “Not pleasant, is it? The plasma storms were particularly lovely in that system.” He sighed. “Quite a loss.”

  Harry grimaced. “Why didn’t someone stop them from doing so much damage?”

  “Alas, there’s that pesky fundamental principle called choice again. The Nacene had to be allowed to run amok for the same reason you’re allowed to run amok.”

  A finger snap and…

  Seven of Nine had information of vital importance. She felt it was imperative that she share her newly acquired knowledge as soon as possible. Commander Chakotay had agreed that Seven’s discovery needed to be shared, but he also believed that Seven needed to wait until her turn came up on the agenda. “In this case, ten minutes won’t change anything” had been his exact statement to her. Perhaps feeling the residual influences of B’Elanna Torres in her consciousness, Seven had wanted to throttle the commander. Agendas, Seven believed, could be partially to blame for the Federation failing to achieve total dominance in the galaxy. The Borg never used agendas. The Borg stated their intentions and executed the task without waiting for a vote. In this case, Seven had been reduced to taking her place at the table and keeping her mouth shut until the commander asked her to share her data. She glanced across the table at B’Elanna Torres, wondering if the engineer was equally as irked as she was. When Torres met Seven’s gaze, she shrugged as if to say “Don’t look at me,” and dropped her eyes back to the padd sitting on the table before her. B’Elanna twirled her stylus absently between her fingers, staring off into space. Seven was disappointed that B’Elanna would not be her ally. She had come to count on her impatience to move meetings along.

  Since being disconnected from the Borg, Seven had learned that successful interaction between species required the employment of specific behavioral niceties that she found inefficient. Small talk. White lies. Euphemisms. Success on Voyager required that she learn such unspoken social protocols. She hoped, however, that if she agreed, at least in theory, to adhere to such rules of etiquette, eventually she could persuade those in charge to see things her way. Given enough time and resources, she was certain she could prove to the ship’s leaders that the Borg’s stripped-down approach to assigning and completing tasks would improve all of their lives.

  Regrettably, today would not be the day Seven would convert Voyager’s command staff to the virtues of Borg management. Unfortunate, considering that the crew didn’t have a lot of time or resources to expend.

  Commander Chakotay appeared to be determined to keep to the routine, carrying on with the meeting as if it were normal to lose half of the senior staff and trade them out with new personnel. Had Seven been in charge, she would have employed a more centralized, authoritarian leadership matrix until the crisis was over. No one asked her what she would do, however, so she was forced to sit here for as long as it took for Chakotay to go through the motions of reorganizing the staff.

  Considering all that Voyager’s crew had been through in recent days, Seven believed the ad-hoc creation of a new senior staff was going as well as could be expected. Seven had learned that, as adaptable as most humanoids were, they tended to vary in their ability to adapt to change. Her consistency in this area due to her Borg nature was a distinct advantage she had over her compatriots. Looking around the briefing room table, she sa
w that none of those seated around the perimeter had much of any reaction, including nervousness, to any of Chakotay’s selections. Perhaps so much has happened recently that they are desensitized to change.

  Lieutenant Ayala was an adequate replacement for Ensign Kim, though Seven believed she herself might have been a better choice for ops or sciences, in spite of her own “incomplete” credentials. She recognized, though, the merits of delegating responsibilities so that others could feel competent and needed. Her work in astrometrics would continue uninterrupted, however, and she would continue to report directly to Commander Chakotay or to Commander Tuvok. Lieutenant Rollins would be acting chief of security, though Chakotay hinted that he and Ayala might switch jobs as part of a cross-training initiative he would implement for the long term.

  Seven was surprised but pleased with the choice of Lieutenant Yuko Nakano, who had field-medic experience with the Maquis, to supervise sickbay. She’d worked with Nakano on several away missions and was impressed with the woman’s efficiency. Because of Seven’s perfect recall and comprehensive knowledge of many species, Chakotay assigned her to supervise Nakano’s certification in the basic Starfleet medical course from the computer’s database. Seven understood that Nakano had a reputation for being rather chameleon-like among the crew, never building deep relationships or sticking with one group for too long. The adjective “Machiavellian” or “mercenary” had sometimes been used to describe her, though Seven had never found merit in that label. She appreciated Nakano’s ability to do what difficult circumstances required rather than dithering on the way many crew members were prone to.

  B’Elanna had a curiously indifferent reaction to Nakano’s appointment, considering how little she cared for her former Maquis comrade. Noting the distracted look on the engineer’s face, Seven concluded that B’Elanna must have known about the new assignments in advance. Or perhaps Chakotay’s announcement that Ensign Clarice Knowles would be acting chief helmsman had been an unpleasant reminder that Tom Paris’s whereabouts remained undetermined. Until the status of the missing personnel could be determined, all assignments were temporary, save one that remained unchanged.

  As usual, Commander Tuvok was inscrutable when Chakotay made his appointment to the first-officer position official. The Vulcan acknowledged his new job with a perfunctory “Yes, sir.” Furthermore, he gave no indication that anything was amiss when Commander Chakotay explained that Tuvok would be responsible for training Seven, ostensibly to increase the pool of personnel qualified for command track.

  In the short term, Seven realized, assigning her to Tuvok allowed Chakotay to have a form of checks and balances. Should their present crisis be prolonged—should no solution to Captain Janeway’s neurological deterioration be found—a confrontation between the commanders would be necessary and hard choices would have to be made. Her Borg perspective aside, sensible humanoids acknowledged that a command structure would be successful only if those in charge had a relationship underscored with trust. For the time being, though, Seven would have to ameliorate the situation.

  Chakotay placed his hands on the table and said, “Seven of Nine has an issue that requires our immediate attention.” He nodded to her, indicating she should begin speaking.

  Seven rose from her chair and began circling the table. “As I’ve reported previously, the area we refer to as Monorhan space is evolving. The combination of the destruction of the Blue Eye, the explosion of Gremadia, and the disappearance of the black hole by Gremadia has destabilized the subspace fabric of the region.”

  “This isn’t new information, Seven,” B’Elanna said.

  Inwardly, Seven smiled, glad that the predictably irritable and impatient engineer had remerged from her cocoon. “Correct. But the exact severity of the problem was unknown to me until just before this meeting. Within the next twelve hours, this region of space will become riddled with instabilities.”

  “Instabilities?” Rollins asked.

  Seven searched for the correct words to explain her analysis. “Rips, pockets—”

  “Holes?” finished B’Elanna.

  “Exactly,” Seven said. “This region will be virtually impossible to traverse.”

  “Are we talking phenomena similar to what we experienced when the displacement wave pushed us into the subspace pocket?” Tuvok asked.

  “Perhaps some of the vulnerabilities will be similar, but I cannot say for certain. The clearest way I can explain what is happening is to state that space-time in this region is undergoing a transformation on the subatomic level.” As soon as she concluded, she realized her explanation was overly simplistic. Seven paused, searching for the right words. Had a detailed mathematical analysis about particle spins and quantum reality been called for, she knew she could articulate the equations with breathtaking perfection. How can I make them see? she thought. She realized that she was the only one in the room with an in-depth background in theoretical scientific realms; this new awareness caused a sense of helplessness she was unaccustomed to.

  “How does this subatomic transformation impact us?” Rollins asked. “Is it a situation where a quark is no longer going to be a quark, meaning that the personalities of protons and electrons will change?”

  “And I second Lieutenant Torres in wondering how this is different from what we experienced when we first came into Monorhan space—we’ve known that subspace was different here since we arrived,” Ayala said.

  “No,” Seven said adamantly. “This is not the same circumstance we faced a week ago. But I…am not sure the best way to explain what is happening.” Kathryn Janeway would have known how to translate algorithms and formulas into word pictures that nonscientists could comprehend. This flustered feeling…this inadequacy…Seven found disquieting. In circumstances requiring expert social maneuvering, Seven had become accustomed to Janeway filling in where she lacked, whether it was softening Seven’s customary bluntness or soothing the hurt feelings or egos of those peeved by her superior Borg knowledge. Simply put: Seven didn’t know how to talk to people. Talking at them—ordering them—was far simpler, but ineffective. Though her communication skills had slowly improved, Seven would readily admit that she had a ways to go, but for now—

  She missed the captain.

  The revelation startled her. For the first time since placing Janeway in stasis, Seven felt a hollow ache in her abdomen that had no correlation to any physiological deficits nor could it be mended by nanoprobes. The routine loss of drones among the Borg was akin to the life cycle of cells in the body. As drones were eliminated, their functions were assumed by other drones. Termination wasn’t…personal. She stood beside her chair, uncertain as to what she should say.

  Her crewmates around the table looked expectantly at her. Speak as the captain would, she admonished herself. She reconfigured her thoughts, imagining talking through her discoveries with Janeway, and found that the words began flowing.

  “Changes in the subquantum realm are, in turn, changing how particles express themselves. So yes, to answer Lieutenant Rollins’s question, it is theoretically possible that a quark may become something other than a quark. I cannot provide specifics without further analysis, but my best guess is that an external event instigated a chain reaction that has stretched into subquantum reality.”

  “An external event like the destruction of the Blue Eye,” Chakotay said.

  “Precisely.” A thought occurred to Seven. A metaphor Janeway had used in a discussion they’d had about why Seven couldn’t continue carrying on doing whatever she pleased whenever she pleased because of how it affected the entire ship. “We have our own little social ecosystem on this ship, Seven,” she’d said. “Your actions affect those of your crewmates. We have our own web of life on Voyager…”

  “It is like…dominoes,” Seven said, as she continued recalling Janeway’s words. “When one is knocked over, it knocks over another, then another until there is a cascade effect. In this case, I theorize the destruction of the Blue Eye was th
e first domino that began destabilizing an already vulnerable subspace layer.” Looking around the table, she saw, with satisfaction, the comprehension in their eyes. Thank you, Captain.

  Seven continued. “The consequence of these changes is that our space-time boundary is becoming permeable. How our dimension is expressed—how we experience it—is undergoing a metamorphosis.”

  “Could this transformation spread beyond Monorhan space?” B’Elanna asked, watching Seven intently.

  Seven perceived that, not surprisingly, B’Elanna had started toward the same conclusions she had. “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Atoms, molecules,” Rollins said. “Mesons, baryons, neutrinos—all of them would potentially change if there was a radical quantum-level reconfiguration.”

  “Gravity, electromagnetic force—how would they work?” B’Elanna asked.

  “Reality as we currently know it could cease to be,” Seven said.

  Chakotay blinked, took a deep breath, and shook his head.

  Seven knew she should have been first on the agenda.

  Chapter 3

  Tom and Harry, back in their normal forms, followed Q down a carpet-covered aisle, each side of the aisle lined with floor-to-ceiling glass cases. From what Tom could see, each case contained a rare or precious item with a flashing electronic price tag attached. He saw wahahi diamonds, figurines, works of art, photographs, icons, relics—he thought he saw a dodo from Earth in one case. They walked down several long rows before pausing in front of one of the cases where a sea of marbles was displayed on an artfully draped velvet cloth.

  A cluster of marbles sparkled iridescently, hypnotically. Tom crouched down to study them more carefully. Within each of the miniature globes, Tom saw different celestial objects: swirling galaxies, wisps of nebulae, pulsars, quasars, and other phenomena that Tom had previous believed only to be theoretical. Amid the glistening orbs, Tom saw a familiar blue-white swirled marble that evoked a pang of homesickness. “Hey, Harry,” he said softly, reaching across the shelf toward the “Earth” marble. “Come look at—” Unexpectedly, the shelf where the marbles rested tilted sharply, sending the marbles flying to the hard floor, where many shattered spectacularly. Rhythmic alarms blared. Tom jumped back, reflexively trying to gather up what few marbles survived. He grasped one—