Strange New Worlds X

by Dean Wesley Smith

  Jack blinked, then in a flash, grabbed Doctor Wilson and clamped his hand around her throat from behind. “Let me see Benny!”

  Wykoff raised his hands in alarm. “Jack! Don’t do this! Let Doctor Wilson go and we’ll talk about this.”

  Wilson struggled in Jack’s grasp, but he managed to keep hold of her. He yelled at Wykoff, “Open Benny’s door! I want to see Benny!” He tightened his grip on Wilson’s throat. She fought with him, tried to drag his hand from her throat.

  Around Jack’s grip, she croaked, “Open the damn door!”

  Wykoff stared hard at Jack, then backed up to the door to isolation ward four. He pulled a ring of keys from his pocket. He glanced at Jack as his hands sorted through the keys. “Okay, Jack. I’m going to open the door. Don’t hurt Doctor Wilson.”

  Jack watched Wykoff from behind Wilson. “Just open the door.”

  Wykoff found the right key and unlocked Benny’s door. Jack pushed Wilson into Wykoff and dove for the door. It swung open, and Jack fell into Benny’s room.

  Roughly Sixty Trillion Years Later

  The universe, for eons condensing unchecked, finally collapsed upon itself and exploded in a conflagration of light and energy, near-simultaneously annihilating and recreating everything in the entire universe.

  Stardate 53445.6

  Jack stared at Bashir’s computer screen, biting at his thumb. Bashir keyed information into the computer at a high rate of speed, his nimble fingers hammering away at the keypads. Jack closed his eyes for a few moments, reorienting himself. One moment he was in that place, wherever it was, and the next, he was here. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought he was getting used to the jumps back and forth. Maybe he was finally losing his mind, and wouldn’t that make the people at the Institute happy?

  Jack opened his eyes and looked at the computer screen again. He pointed at a series of variables. “See, see? The gravimetric coefficient is all wrong.”

  Bashir nodded as he worked. “I noticed. Trying to compensate.” He entered a few more commands, then ran the test program. Jack and Bashir watched a computer simulation of the galaxy expand, contract, and implode.

  Jack stared at Bashir. “It didn’t work.”

  Lauren, lounging on Bashir’s couch, said, “You two are so boring to watch when you work.” She slithered around to leer at Bashir. “Isn’t there something better you could be doing with your time?”

  Bashir nodded. “Actually, yes, there’s plenty I can be doing. But,” he glanced at Jack, “I thought I’d give Jack a hand.”

  Patrick, still dressed in his admiral’s uniform, glanced up from his seat on the carpeted floor. A small pile of multi-colored building blocks lay scattered in front of him. He said, “It’s not nice to humor Jack, you know.”

  Bashir stared at Patrick. “I’m not humoring him….”

  Jack crossed his arms. “Yes you are, but I was being polite and not mentioning it.”

  Bashir rolled his eyes at him. “What did you really expect, Jack? You come here in the middle of the night and drag me out of bed, and tell me a story about how you’re trying to stop the galaxy from imploding.” He paused, pointed at his computer screen. “Which, according to your calculations, isn’t supposed to happen for several million years!”

  “Trillion.” Jack turned away, defensive. “I thought you Starfleet types were supposed to be protecting the galaxy.”

  Bashir sighed. “We can’t protect the galaxy from itself!” He indicated the computer simulation again. “We’re all going to be well long gone before that occurs, Jack. I expect the whole galaxy will be very different once that finally occurs. I certainly won’t be around to see it.”

  Jack brushed him off. “Technicalities. We need to do this, Doctor Wykoff. And I need your help.”

  Bashir stared at him. “Doctor who?”

  Jack bit at his thumb. “What?”

  “Who is Doctor Wykoff?”

  Jack glanced at Lauren and Patrick, saw no help there. “Doctor Wykoff?”

  Bashir frowned. “Jack, I don’t have time for your little games. You just called me Doctor Wykoff.”

  Jack mirrored Bashir’s frown. “I did?”

  Bashir nodded, emphatic. “Yes, just now.” He turned a critical eye on Jack. “Are you feeling all right? You look pale.”

  Jack turned away from Bashir. “I’m fine.” Then, that familiar pencil lead smell struck Jack, and he smiled.

  Roughly Sixty Trillion Years Later

  The universe, for eons condensing unchecked, finally collapsed upon itself and exploded in a conflagration of light and energy, near-simultaneously annihilating and recreating everything in the entire universe.

  Jack turned around and looked at Benny, again standing by his writing-covered wall in isolation ward four. He had a new pencil in hand, but he was looking at Jack with an expectant look.

  Jack smiled. “Here I am again.”

  Benny nodded. “Any closer to the end of the story?”

  Jack shook his head. “It took a turn I wasn’t expecting.” He considered it, finally nodded in defeat. “I don’t think I can save the universe.”

  Benny shrugged and giggled. “That’s all right. No one expects you to do the impossible.”

  Jack sighed. “So what am I expected to do?” He tapped the side of his head. “I’ve been genetically altered to be smarter, stronger, and faster that most other people. If I can’t save the universe, what can I do?”

  Benny grinned as he rolled the pencil between his long fingers. “You just said it. You’re smarter, stronger, and faster than most other people. I’m sure there’s something you can find to do, something to contribute.”

  Jack sat on the floor and picked at his cuticle. “I’m open to suggestions. I’ve spent most of my time recently trying to save the universe.”

  Benny tapped his pencil against his lips then pointed it at Jack. “You should go to Bajor. To the Celestial Temple. I bet you’ll find an answer there.”

  Jack stood up. “You think so?”

  Benny grinned and gestured at a section of his writing. “I think so.” He smiled at Jack, a strange twinkle in his eyes.

  Jack stared back, and grinned.

  Stardate 53558.9

  Jack stared at his computer screen, nibbling at his thumb. The simulation displayed on the screen showed the universe expand, contract, then explode in glorious multicolored violence. He couldn’t stop it, he knew that now, but the knowledge didn’t bother him. There were other things he could do; other ways he could contribute his genetically-enhanced intellect to the universe at large, and to a small corner of it in specific.

  He keyed in some new commands. The screen switched to a schematic of Deep Space Nine and its nearby wormhole. According to the calculations he had made while visiting DS9 with his friends Bashir, Lauren, and Patrick, he was sure, absolutely sure, that the wormhole the Prophets lived in was going to collapse in fifty million years, give or take.

  Jack grinned as he started a new program and began entering data. He had to find a way to prevent that from happening. The Bajorans and the Prophets needed to be protected. He wanted to do it for them and for Captain Sisko, wherever he was. He also wanted to do it for his new friend Benny, and, to be honest, for himself. If he couldn’t save the universe, maybe he could save a part of it. Maybe.

  Jack shrugged, grinned, and then got back to work. He just had to find out how his own story was going to come out.

  STAR TREK: VOYAGER

  The Fate of Captain Ransom

  Rob Vagle

  Rob Vagle is a writer living in Eugene, Oregon, who likes to work on both short stories and novels. His short stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy and Polyphony 5.

  I t had come to this: imminent warp core breach.

  Captain Rudolph Ransom sat in the Equinox’s engineering room as the warp core groaned and shuddered, sending plumes of gray smoke across the floor. His feet dangled in the haze and he braced himself on the console i
n front of him.

  Burke’s life sign faded. He had been killed by the attacking nucleogenic lifeforms, the ones the Equinox had used for fuel. Damn it, Max, Ransom thought. You shouldn’t have mutinied.

  The console chimed. On screen showed Captain Janeway on Voyager’s bridge. “Captain?” she said.

  “Things didn’t work out exactly as I planned but you have everyone worth getting,” he said. Voyager had the last of his crew, five of them in all.

  “We’re beaming you out of there,” she said.

  Heat radiated against his face. His back was slick with sweat. “This ship is about to explode. I’ve got to put some distance between us. I’ve accessed helm control.”

  Everyone worth getting didn’t include him and he wanted Voyager to reach Earth. Janeway would get Voyager home without killing lifeforms for selfish means.

  Janeway stood up from her chair. “You can set auto-navigation and then transport to Voyager.”

  “There’s no time!”

  Another explosion ruptured from the core, sending up larger plumes of smoke. The ship rumbled from the stress and the vibrations shook through him.

  “You’ve got a fine crew, Captain. Promise me you’ll get them home.”

  “I promise,” she replied.

  Ransom nodded in her direction, cut the communication, and powered the Equinox away from Voyager.

  He picked up his synaptic stimulator and applied it behind his ear as the ship groaned from stress. He had used the stimulator to run away from responsibility and his conscience, but now he felt he had set right what he had done wrong. The stimulator would make death easier and much more peaceful.

  Falling bulkheads and the billowing smoke of engineering faded away.

  And he stood alone on an alien coast, a place he had never physically been. The odd spice smell hung in the air. Mist from the jade colored waves crashing into the rocks dampened his face.

  He still had the physical sensations of his body back on the Equinox. His back was pressed against the chair, his uniform wet with sweat. Heavy vibrations no longer rippled through him. With some focus, he listened to the engineering room. No explosions, no sounds of falling bulkheads—only a drawn out drone, like the sound of a metal rod tracing the inside of a metal barrel.

  The Equinox still hadn’t exploded.

  He raised his hand to remove the synaptic stimulator and the hand in his mind’s eye rose to his neck. His body back on the Equinox, however, didn’t move. He was paralyzed.

  “Even at the moment of death, you still hide,” she said.

  He found Seven standing next him as if she’d been there all along. Her face was smooth and unblemished, the Borg implants gone from her forehead and cheekbones. Her long blond hair tossed in the breeze like the foam from the crashing waves below them. Her expression was cold and clinical. Her eyes scrutinized him.

  Things hadn’t been right with the synaptic stimulator ever since they encountered Voyager. His conscience manifested in the form of Seven from the Voyager crew—at least that’s what he told himself. She appeared every time he used the damn alien device. He could no longer hide. He could no longer find peace on this alien coast.

  “I earned this,” he said. “I saved Voyager and I stopped Max from killing more of the lifeforms.”

  She looked to the sea and wind ruffled the flower-pattern dress she wore.

  “Why are you here?” he asked. “Is there some kind of Borg technology you’re using?”

  “I am not here by technical apparatus. I am here only as a product of your imagination.”

  “If I don’t want you here, you’ll leave?”

  “Immediately.”

  “Don’t,” he said and grabbed her arm. She looked down at his hand on her arm and then turned her attention back to him. “At least don’t leave yet,” he said.

  He released her arm and she gazed back at the sea. “You wish to know why your body on the Equinox is paralyzed.”

  “Yes.”

  “You also wish to know why the ship hasn’t been destroyed and why you’re still alive.”

  “Correct,” he said.

  She looked at him, her eyes shimmering green like the alien sea. “Since you’re paralyzed, the only direction is inward.”

  “Explain.”

  “You cannot move your body at will,” she said. “Therefore you can’t physically seek answers to your predicament. Use your mind to comprehend. Use your intellect. Use your imagination.”

  “Well, that’s certainly logical,” he said. “Is it practical?”

  “You have no choice,” she said, echoing the words he had used when he claimed using the lifeforms as fuel was his only option.

  “Imagine,” she said, “a rock wall on this coast and instead of caves exposed in the face of the rock wall, there are doors. Imagine as many doors as you wish. These doors are from your life.”

  She looked the same as when he had used the stimulator in the past. That Seven had talked like her and acted like her. The Seven before him now wasn’t talking like Seven at all.

  “Who are you?” he asked her.

  She ignored the question. “Picture that rock wall and turn around.”

  When she turned, he turned as if he were her mirrored image. He faced a rock wall that had not been there a moment before. Dark, wet brown sand stretched several yards between him and the base of the wall. The wall vaulted approximately fifty feet meters and stretched along the coast for a hundred meters. The rock was black and porous and dotted among its face were doors, all doors that were familiar to him.

  There was the red door to his dorm room at the academy. High up on the wall there was the door to his quarters on the Equinox. At the base of the wall there was a door where the rock met sand. No footprints, the sand was unmarked leading to the door of Brianna’s apartment in the historic district of San Francisco. The number in brass was 772. The door was white, with blue trim. The door even had a doorknob.

  He hadn’t focused on the doors when Seven suggested it, yet here they were, all in a rock wall, doors pulled from his mind.

  Their shadows stretched across the sand, Seven’s dress billowing in the wind around her knees.

  “Go through a door,” she said.

  He waited, feeling the chair in engineering warm against his back. If he listened carefully, he could hear the odd droning sound.

  He staggered forward, his feet sinking in sand. Brianna was behind that door. A woman and partner, someone he had made up his mind a long time ago that he’d never see again. The Caretaker and the Delta Quadrant drove the final nail in that coffin.

  Even as he worked his way through the thick, heavy sand, he knew this couldn’t be real, that this was all in his head. However, his senses were alive as if this place was made of tangible mass, and not intangible, ethereal memories and dreams.

  He ran his hand across the identity plate and the door opened inward. Then he looked over his shoulder and found Seven back there watching him. She nodded at him and Ransom went through the door.

  The first thing he noticed was the wet dog smell. Brianna had a Great Pyrenees, Moby, a great white dog as big as a small horse. Moby had a thick, wooly coat and whenever Brianna took him out for walks in the cool, fall, evening air, Moby’s coat would become damp, sometimes soaked if it rained. He found the smell pleasant in the moment, if only for the nostalgia of his days with Brianna in her apartment.

  Moby ambled down the hallway, his thick, bushy tail waving. His dark, almond-shaped eyes sparkled and the dog gave Ransom a firm, soft, “woof.” His lips parted and his tongue lolled out, giving Ransom the goofy Moby smile.

  “Hello, Moby,” Ransom said.

  He didn’t have to bend to pet the dog. Moby’s head came up to his sternum and he stroked his head, letting his fingers catch the tangles of wooly hair down the back of his neck. The dog pressed his muzzle into his belly and made sniffing sounds.

  The droning sound from the Equinox was remarkably hidden behind the sounds i
n Brianna’s apartment: Moby’s heavy-pawed steps, jazz music playing softly in the other room, footsteps on the hardwood floor.

  “Rudy, I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Brianna walked down the hall with a brilliant smile on her face. She had her black hair tied up in the back. She wore a white, waffle-weave robe with a plunging neckline that exposed her elegant neck and coffee-and-cream skin.

  Ransom didn’t know when the Equinox might explode, but hoped death would wait a few more moments.

  Her smile remained, but she gave him a questioning look. “Well, aren’t you coming in? Moby, let Rudy in.”

  She came forward and slapped Moby playfully on his back end. Ransom wondered about the date, the day, the year, of this memory of a moment now very much alive.

  “I have a nice glass of shiraz waiting for you,” she said.

  Shiraz. He hadn’t tasted any Earth wine for six years. Brianna preferred merlot, but she liked to treat him with his favorite wine.

  “Computer, music off,” she said.

  In the living room, the lights were dim with a real fire burning in the hearth. She had been sitting on the floor, an Oriental rug covered with data files and slides. She was in research mode again—she was an exo-biologist just like he was. Her apartment had always been a flurry of data files, strewn clothes, dog hair. Brianna reached for the lone glass of wine on the marble coffee table and handed it to him.

  “Thanks, Bri,” he said.

  In an instant she was narrowing in on an item on the data strewn floor like a bloodhound. She touched a finger to her lips and bent at the waist.

  “Take a look at this, Rudy,” she said and grabbed a padd in the far corner of the rug and returned to him.

  “What’s this?” he said even as he started to read it.

  It was a report on the Taurus incident, an early crash site just after the discovery of warp drive.

  “Go ahead, read it,” she said and picked up her own glass of wine from the floor.