by Various
Kira was starting to believe they were right. The Federation used its technology and weapons to heal the scars of the Occupation and defend Bajor. She prayed Federation technology would end this nightmare. But she’d read the reports; only the most powerful ships could maintain a warp field for a short time inside the storms, but they were also the most vulnerable. The Department of Temporal Investigations had released the Voyager’s armor specifications and Starfleet had begun refitting, but even the few ships with the shields were at risk. Communication was haphazard, and trade and exploration had stopped. The Federation was unraveling. “Will this work?”
The starship captain’s eyes reflected what the entire Alpha Quadrant already knew.
“It has to,” he said. “Picard out.”
The Enterprise’s viewscreen switched to the sickening view of the plasma storms. It had been weeks since anyone had seen stars. As he watched the blue-white lights rush toward the wall of flame, Picard prayed they would extinguish the tribulation that had fallen upon them all.
“Report,” Picard ordered.
“All Starfleet, Klingon, and Romulan ships report successful synchronization. One thousand, three hundred and four trilithium torpedoes have been launched into the plasma storm. Detonation in twelve seconds.” Worf, working double duty as first officer and tactical specialist, had spent many hours patrolling the plasma storms of the Badlands—he’d even been lost in them—but this was different. Planets were in flames, and the very stars themselves had been engulfed in plasma. This was evil.
Geordi La Forge was smiling as he read the telemetry from the torpedoes. “Transpectral sensors are online.” A lot of people were saying this was the apocalypse, just like they’d said during the first total eclipse or the first recorded star going nova. It didn’t matter to the chief engineer if the storms were evil or an anomaly of nature. The only thing that mattered was the science, and when that much trilithium hit plasma, the storm in this sector would simply cease to exist. “Shield generators are at one hundred thirty percent optimum capacity. Six seconds to detonation.”
Worf watched the torpedoes disappear into the breach of flame like Klingon warriors marching into Gre’thor to do battle with Fek’lhr himself. “Detonation in three seconds . . . two . . . one.”
All eyes turned to the viewscreen, but nothing happened.
“Captain, I’m no longer receiving telemetry from the torpedoes.” La Forge sounded shaken, unsure. “But the storm density in this sector has increased by more than thirty—”
Without warning, tentacles of flame reached out and curled around the starships that represented the last hope for the Alpha Quadrant. Shields flickered, then collapsed like cracking eggshells as superheated plasma tore through them in the cold of space, shattering the hulls of the Starfleet, Klingon, and Romulan armada. Lights went dark throughout the vessels, followed by the telltale puffs of venting atmosphere from hull breaches and then the twisting and turning abstract specs that could be only one thing: bodies.
Picard reacted immediately. “Deploy armor!”
As the steel-gray skin covered the Sovereign-class starship, warp cores were breached on the crippled ships. A squadron of Romulan warbirds tried in vain to back off but were caught in the chaos, with each explosion of energy marking an extinguishment of life. A wing of Klingon battlecruisers broke formation, veering off wildly to avoid the deadly debris and shockwaves.
Picard realized these were no random energy surges. They were precise, malevolent, and—from their pattern—the Enterprise was next. “Drop shields! Helm, take us on a parabolic heading toward the debris. Lock on to any life signs in range and beam them aboard!”
As the Enterprise began its arc, streams of superheated plasma tore into the mighty vessel. A growl slipped from the Klingon when the console next to him exploded. Ignoring the metal shard in his side, he wiped the pale purple blood from his station. “Armor is holding. Multiple signatures being beamed aboard.”
Dozens of tendrils concentrated on the Enterprise, their numbers increasing as the ship’s defenses withstood their onslaught. Antimatter leaked out of the port nacelle like blood from a wound as the mighty starship moved even faster through the graveyard.
Picard knew there wasn’t much time left. “Mister La Forge, prepare for warp speed!”
La Forge didn’t have time to answer Picard. Systems were failing faster than the chief engineer could reroute them. Duranium girders groaned, protesting the insanity of a ship designed for space doing battle in a sea of flames.
The Enterprise was in trouble.
“Five hundred seventy-two life signs aboard.” Worf’s voice tightened as he fought to keep his balance amidst the conflict between twenty-fourth-century technology and the anger of the storm. “The debris field is clear.”
The starship captain could feel the predator bearing down on his ship. “Picard to all ships: Fall back to DS 9. Helm, maximum warp!”
Kira watched the viewscreen go dark as the Enterprise and the few remaining ships escaped.
A voice echoed throughout Deep Space 9. “What are the three keys to enlightenment, Nerys?”
Ops fell silent as all eyes turned to the top of the stairs in front of Kira’s office. Dukat walked out from a pyre of flame. Kira was ready. “Computer, run program Kira omega!”
The chroniton force field surrounded Dukat, but the Cardassian stepped through it, unconcerned. “Am I not a merciful God? Have I not shown charity? Bajor remains untouched by my hand, a gift of my love to you.”
Dukat slowly descended the stairs toward Kira. “Has not the mighty Federation been humbled before my power? Does not the entire universe now know humility before the majesty of the Pah-wraiths?”
Two Bajoran officers fired their phasers directly at Dukat. He glanced at them, and they disintegrated into ash. “Have I not shown you that all these years your faith has been misplaced in false gods?”
Kira could no longer hold back the tears as the demon approached her.
Dukat smiled. “Open yourself to me, to your destiny, Nerys. Take your rightful place at my side, and we will rule the universe from our throne here on Terok Nor.” Dukat outstretched his hand. “Join me in the fire of enlightenment, Nerys, or burn with them in the fury of my power.”
Kira Nerys looked at the outstretched hand and knew that the fate of Bajor and the universe rested on what she did next.
April 9, 1959
Lester Johnson was speechless.
The janitor had been sneaking into Benny Russell’s room for the past three years to read his stories. This was the first time one of the stories upset him.
“I don’t understand, Benny,” Johnson said, shaking his head. “This here story, this ain’t like you.”
The author looked at his friend. Other than Manning, Johnson was the only person he could talk to. The older man’s dark skin hid his age well, but his eyes showed each and every hard lesson life had dealt him. Johnson meant well, but there was no way the man could relate to what he was going through.
“Lester, I’m in here because I couldn’t stop writing, because I felt I had to tell these stories. But tell them to whom? You and Doctor Manning are the only people to have read my stories in years. I’ve been writing all this time and for what?” Benny Russell looked around the room at the boxes that bore the names of starship captains on them. Six years of dreams were in those boxes, six years of writing about others’ lives while he spent his in a psychiatric institution. “For nothing.”
Johnson understood the pain in Russell’s voice. He knew what the young man had been through—being pushed down for speaking up, with the occasional beating included just because.
Johnson had started a family late in life, which meant he had to work two jobs with his head down and mouth shut. No matter what was said to him, he took it so he could put food on the table a
nd a roof over his family. His wife never spoke about it, but he knew she could see it was more than just a hard day’s work that made him so tired when he got home. He could feel it in the way she massaged his shoulders and always had dinner ready.
Although he’d never said it, Johnson was proud of Russell. It was like something inside the young man had never learned to keep his head down and mouth shut. Through it all, Russell just kept writing and fighting for his release. On visiting day, his friend seemed almost free, rejuvenated every time that Cassie walked through the door. But now she was gone, taking his smiles with her. Johnson was no doctor, but he knew that would be enough to break anyone.
As the janitor stared at the pages filled with pain and anger, he knew he needed to reach out to his friend, help him, but he didn’t know how. He wasn’t like Russell. He didn’t have the words. Hell, he’d never even finished high school. But maybe there was something he could say to the young man.
“I never told you this,” Johnson said, “but I been telling my kids your stories.”
He thought about his two boys and precious girl, wide-eyed and taking in every word that came out of his mouth, and smiled. “Man, you should see their faces when I tell them about starships and all them worlds. They raise their hands, asking questions like they in school. I’m telling you, they can’t get enough; they know the names and places better than me.”
Pride in Russell and his children washed over Johnson as he continued. “But it’s more than that. When I talk about your Captain Sisko and his son, or Geordi, or that Lieutenant Uhura, they see themselves. Your stories tell them that they can be somebody.”
Russell stared at Johnson in disbelief. Could this be true? The janitor always looked forward to every twist and turn in the stories that filled the boxes around them. Like Russell, they too were imprisoned, but Johnson had freed them, taken them out into the world Russell yearned to rejoin. His friend had breathed life into them through his children. The story now lived within them.
Johnson interrupted his reflective moment as he returned the handwritten pages. “Son, don’t you get what’s going on out there?”
Russell could feel the pain and anguish in his friend’s voice. “You got people fighting and being beaten . . . dying for the right to be human. Churches being burned, children are being murdered—children no older than mine.” Johnson tapped on the pages with his thick fingers. “And here you is, writing about a future where black, white, red, yellow—it don’t matter, we just people. My babies now dream of a time when the color of a man’s skin don’t mean he’s less than anyone. This here Star Trek that you writing ain’t no science fiction, son. What you’re writing is . . . hope.” Johnson’s voice broke. “You can’t destroy that.”
“What do you mean you’re changing the ending?” Russell heard the frustration in Doctor Manning’s voice. He leaned forward in the worn leather chair across from her. Her office always relaxed him. Here he felt as if he could talk to her without the institution’s eyes upon him.
It was crucial to him that she understood his decision. “You’ve helped me see that focusing solely on my stories was a mistake. I’m not retreating into them again.” Russell stared deeply into the doctor’s eyes, hoping she could feel what he dare not say until he was free of this place. “I want to—need to—get out of here and start living.”
For the first time ever, Nia Manning broke eye contact with Russell as she spoke in a tone filled with an emotion he’d felt from her but never heard in her voice before.
“If that’s true, Benny, then please, explain to me why you’re doing this now, when we’re so close.”
Russell exhaled, and in doing so realized he’d finally let go of a burden he’d been carrying for far too long. “Life is about joy and pain, happiness and despair. Taking all my anguish about Cassie leaving, about this place, and pouring it into Epilogue won’t ever truly set me free. But accepting it, learning from it, moving beyond it, will.”
He smiled—more to himself than his doctor. “My stories have always been about overcoming the darkness in the world around us and in ourselves. I don’t have to destroy that message so that I can live.”
Russell thought about the possibility of one day getting his stories published. When that day came, he wanted it all to be for something.
“I’m not sure how I’m going to end Epilogue, but I refuse to live any longer in darkness—and I won’t leave those characters like that either.”
For a long time, doctor and patient sat in silence. Manning studied her patient for what felt like an eternity before she finally spoke. “Perhaps your characters don’t need you anymore. Perhaps you’ve outlived your usefulness.”
“Excuse me?” Of all the things Russell expected to hear, this certainly wasn’t on the list. I-I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
The doctor sighed and spoke as if to a child. “Try to follow along. When you wrote Tears of the Prophets, the Pah-wraiths possessed the Orbs of Time and Wisdom among others. Did you ever stop to think what they did with that access?”
Russell shifted uncomfortably. Was she still trying to change his mind? He found himself trying to understand and answer the question at the same time. “What they did? Th-They’re characters . . . I don’t know—it served the story, moved it forward.”
Doctor Manning smirked as she removed her glasses. “Let me tell you a story, Benny.” She stood, turning her back to her patient as she moved toward the gated window in her office. “You’ll like it. It’s a story about the power of the written word. A species that existed outside of space and time discovered that members of their kind had influence over their future through their writings. What they wrote became so.”
The afternoon sun delivered an uncommon April heat despite the ceiling fan that struggled in Manning’s office.
Manning stood in front of the window as she spoke, allowing the sun to bathe her in its warmth. “These few strove for peace and harmony, but others feared this power. They were hunted almost to extinction.”
Manning noticed a group of ants, moving to and fro along the windowsill with purpose, yet oblivious to the larger world in which they existed.
“The few survivors saved themselves by escaping to the one place their enemies could not follow,” she said, not taking her eyes from the ants. “They fled into their own written word. They wrote themselves into a new plane of existence where space and time existed in a multiverse of universes.”
The doctor turned and smiled at Russell, but he noted that the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. He shook his head in disbelief. “I must be dreaming.”
Doctor Manning laughed. “You are more right than you know; the dreamers dreamt and it became so.” Slowly, almost seductively, the doctor walked along the wall where her degrees hung, admiring each. “But once in this new multiverse, they forgot who and what they were. The creators lost themselves in their creation. They went on to fall in love, raise families, start and end wars, but what endured with all of them was their passion to write. So they continued to imagine and to write and, of course, because they wrote it, it became so.”
Doctor Manning stopped at the globe on her desk across from Russell, offhandedly spinning the blue sphere before speaking once again.
“Eventually, their writings became history, and from history stemmed religion and from religion, fiction.” Manning moved to lean on the front of the desk, shifting toward Russell, moving into his personal space. “Now, of course, they’re long gone, having forgotten their own immortality, but every so often in this universe a member of their lineage becomes a writer and dreams, and because he writes it, it becomes so.”
Russell didn’t understand why his doctor, his friend, was doing this to him. This wasn’t a dream . . . it was a nightmare. “What are you saying?
Manning snapped back: “You’re a scribe, aren’t you? You’v
e told me often enough how alive these characters feel to you.”
Russell shook his head in denial. He’d never told anyone about his experience in the ambulance with the priest. He’d almost convinced himself it never happened—until now. “Nia . . . Doctor Manning, I only said that because it’s all so vivid to me, but as passionate as I’ve been about my stories I know they are fiction. The Pah-wraiths aren’t real.” He shrugged. “They’re just characters.”
“Actually we prefer Kosst Amojan.” Doctor Manning smiled the smile Russell had seen a thousand times before, the smile she had rehearsed so well. “Pah-wraith sounds so . . . evil.”
The author could feel the walls of reality crumbling around him. “This isn’t . . . possible, what you’re saying is . . . insane.”
The doctor returned behind her desk, no longer concealing the contempt in her voice. “How pathetic. Prometheus’s small mind can’t accept the scope of his gift.” She pushed a hidden button under her desk. “We should actually thank you, because of you we became aware of the true order of things. Because of you we were able to travel to this time and possess Doctor Manning. Because of you, the future is now ours.”
Russell struggled to hold on to some remnant of sanity. “But I’ve written about the past and the future—how?”
Ignoring the obtuse perspective of the question, the Pah-wraith allowed her hate to flow. “You dare create gods and then imprison us. Now we return the gesture.”
On cue, orderlies brandishing nightsticks rushed into the office. “Doctor Manning” performed masterfully, tears streaming down her cheek. “Put him back in isolation. Take away anything he can use to write with. There’s nothing more I can do for him.” She wept. “He’s insane.”
Nurse Richards smiled while massaging his knuckles. They ached, but damn if it didn’t feel good to get reacquainted with Russell’s face. “That bitch upstairs done cut you loose now, boy, you back where you belong.” Richards smiled as he thrust the nightstick back into the leather holster on his belt.