The Long Mirage

by David R. George III

  “I appreciate your forbearance,” the captain said as Kira reached her.

  “Not at all,” the vedek said. “When I took over after Captain Sisko, I remember the long list of standard procedures Starfleet forced on me. It made me think that, considering how many processes they followed and reports they required, it was amazing that the Federation ever managed to expand beyond Andor and Vulcan.”

  Ro chuckled. “I think it’s gotten worse,” she said.

  Across the room, Boudreaux collected the portable diagnostic scanner from the bed and carried it over to a small, square table in the corner. “It’ll take a few minutes to review these results,” he said.

  “I understand,” Ro said.

  As the two women waited for the doctor, Kira took stock of the guest cabin she’d been assigned. The accommodations did not seem larger than those on the old station, but they still felt like a considerable upgrade. The dark, sharp-edged, almost reptilian character of the original DS9 had been replaced by a brighter, softer ambience. Kira didn’t think she drew that determination out of any residual antipathy for the Cardassians that might still linger within her, but from an objective assessment. On the new starbase, at least in her guest quarters, she did not have to step over any raised thresholds, she did not mistakenly think she’d spotted movement in a shadowy corner, she did not experience an abiding sense of discomfiture.

  When Boudreaux finished his work with the portable scanner and his other equipment, he walked over to the women. “From what I can see, Vedek, you’re in good health,” he said. “I do read indications of recent stress, and you’re showing signs of both mental and physical fatigue, but it’s nothing that an uninterrupted night of sleep won’t relieve.”

  “I could have predicted that result,” Kira said with a weary smile.

  “I’m waiting on the lab to complete more involved tests for me, but only regarding longer-term health matters,” Boudreaux continued. “Based on what I’ve seen so far, I don’t expect those analyses to turn up any issues. You’re in good physical shape and your artificial heart is functioning well within normal parameters. I have no concerns about your immediate medical condition.”

  “What about any evidence of time travel?” Ro asked. The captain must have informed Boudreaux about Kira’s journey into the past, both because he gave no outward sign of surprise at the question and because he’d obviously known to run the relevant tests.

  “I detected no chronometric radiation,” the doctor said. “Normally, that would indicate that an individual has not traveled in time, but we have evidence that’s not necessarily the case when the wormhole is involved.” Kira assumed that he referred to an incident Ro had mentioned to her, when a visitor recently emerged from the Celestial Temple and apparently out of Bajor’s past, much like the poet Akorem Laan had done a decade and a half earlier. “It might be that the wormhole’s own properties—the significant neutrino activity and proton counts, the subspace distortions, the asymmetric wave intensities—it might be that all of that dampens or masks the residual effects of chronitons.”

  “Or it might be that traveling in time within the wormhole is achieved by some means that doesn’t involve chronitons at all,” Ro conjectured.

  “Possibly,” Boudreaux said. “You’d be better off talking about that with Commander Candlewood. I have enough trouble figuring out how to make it in one piece from the morning to the afternoon.”

  Ro smiled. “Thank you, Pascal.”

  “One other thing,” Boudreaux said. “I compared Vedek Kira’s physiological age with her chronological age. They more or less match. In the twenty-eight months she’s been missing, she’s lived roughly the same amount of time.”

  “Understood,” Ro said. Kira understood the implication as well: the fact that her physiological age had advanced the same amount as the calendar since she’d disappeared inside the wormhole provided no independent evidence of her travel through time. If she’d lived only a year in the intervening period, or if she’d lived five, the mismatch would have gone a long way to substantiating her temporal displacement.

  Boudreaux returned to the table in the corner, gathered up his medical equipment, and headed from the bedroom out into the main living area. Ro followed along after him, as did Kira, her concerns about what she’d just heard growing in her mind. Once the doctor had departed, she addressed the issue.

  “Captain,” she said, careful to keep any hint of accusation from her voice, “do you doubt my report about traveling in time through the wormhole?”

  “I don’t doubt you at all,” Ro said. “But as we just discussed, Starfleet has its rules. I’m actually pleased by your medical results. If Doctor Boudreaux’s exam had turned up any chronometric radiation, that would have provided concrete scientific proof that you’d time-traveled. In that case, I would have had no choice but to file a report with the Department of Temporal Investigations.”

  The vedek heard exasperation in Ro’s tone, and she empathized. Kira had dealt with DTI personnel on a few occasions during her tenure on DS9, and they had universally proven to be humorless, self-important, and fractious. “So you won’t have to report this?” she asked.

  “No, unfortunately I will,” Ro said. “But without verifiable proof of time travel, I have some leeway on how soon I have to report it. Better than that, I might be able to stave off an actual visit from the clock-watchers.”

  “May the Prophets smile upon you,” Kira said, offering a familiar blessing.

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Kira felt a yawn coming on, and she raised a hand to cover her mouth. “Forgive me, Captain,” she said. “It’s been a long day. I need to sit down.” Kira paced toward the sitting area.

  “Of course,” Ro said, trailing after the vedek. “I’d like to talk more with you about your experiences in the past, but that can wait for right now.” Kira settled into the first seat she reached, an overstuffed chair arranged with several others and a small sofa around a low, oval table, but the captain remained on her feet. “You obviously need to get some rest, so we can meet tomorrow. Do you have any idea when you might want to head back to Bajor?”

  Kira hesitated. She hadn’t given the matter any thought. Fresh from enduring the Ascendant attack on Idran IV, she’d come racing through the wormhole intent on engaging the zealots, not anticipating that she’d end up at a time when the battle she’d envisioned joining had been fought eight years earlier. Even so, she still bore the aftereffects of entering a combat zone, something she hadn’t experienced in a long time. Since trading in her Starfleet uniform for the attire of the Bajoran clergy, such experiences had become a rarity in her life.

  More than all of that, though, Kira felt drained—even almost traumatized—by everything else that Ro had told her. Although it appeared as though the vedek might well have fulfilled the role given to her by the Prophets, the loss of the scientific community on Bajor’s largest moon weighed on Kira as if it had just happened—because for her, it had. It also shocked her to learn about the assassination of the Federation president, part of a conspiracy orchestrated by a power-hungry Bajoran.

  “Everything’s happened so quickly and so unexpectedly that I haven’t had time to think about what comes next,” Kira told the captain. “I know I need to contact the kai and the Vedek Assembly before long, but I’m not prepared to do that just yet.” She anticipated that her return from the Celestial Temple after such a lengthy absence—longer even than that of the Emissary—would likely incite a tempest, especially considering the emotional and spiritual upheaval already in progress on Bajor thanks to the discovery of the Endalla falsework.

  “You’ve been missing for more than two years,” Ro said. “I don’t suppose that waiting another day or two before announcing your reappearance will make any difference.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Kira said. She appreciated Ro’s consideration, but she also noted that t
he DS9 commanding officer hadn’t offered to keep her return secret for more than a couple of days. Given everything that Ro had told her had taken place recently, and taking into account the captain’s responsibility for more than twenty-five hundred crew and ten thousand civilian residents, it made sense that she would want to ship Kira off to Bajor as quickly as possible, if only to avoid further complicating life aboard Deep Space 9.

  “I’ll let you get some rest,” the captain said. The vedek stood up and approached Ro. “We can talk again tomorrow. In the meantime, if you need anything, you can contact me directly, or my first officer, Commander Blackmer.” Kira did not know Blackmer well, but she had met him during some of her visits to the old DS9; back then, he had served as chief of security.

  Kira watched the captain leave. She thought about ordering something to eat from the replicator—she’d begun to get hungry during Doctor Boudreaux’s exam—but then decided to head straight back into the bedroom. She collapsed onto the bed without even removing her clothing, thinking that she would close her eyes for a few minutes and then get undressed. As tired as she felt, she worried that she wouldn’t be able to sleep because of all the matters clamoring for attention in her mind, from her travels through time to everything that had happened in the Bajoran system since she’d been gone, from the people she would have to contact to how she would handle whatever furor her return might cause.

  Within minutes, though, Kira drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  vii

  * * *

  “Computer, run program Bashir Sixty-two.”

  Candlewood waited quietly beside Nog as the holosuite about them faded from view, overlaid with the drab tones of a cheerless, begrimed hallway. Dim light filtered in through a cloudy window up ahead, revealing cracks in the plaster walls and deep scratches in the wooden floor. The air tasted of something sour, like a piece of fruit that has spoiled.

  “This place is terrible,” Candlewood said.

  “Shhh,” Nog hissed, as though he worried about rousing the attention of any holographic characters that might be behind the closed doors lining the hall on either side. “This is where I found Vic when I finally uploaded his program,” he whispered. “This is where I saw him get abducted.” He pointed to one of the doors, and the two men walked over to it. A single tarnished metal number—3—hung there, beside the outline of a second digit—2—that had once preceded it. Candlewood saw a sizable chunk of wood missing from the jamb.

  “It doesn’t look like it’s been repaired since you saw those thugs kick it in,” he said.

  “No,” Nog agreed, and he reached for the knob. “It’s locked.”

  “How can it be locked?” Candlewood asked. “It’s not even securely in the frame.” He sidled past Nog and tested the knob himself, which refused to turn in his hand. He leaned forward, placed his shoulder against the door, and pushed. Nothing happened, so he set his thigh against the bottom half of the door, which immediately lurched inward. The latch pulled free of the strike plate, and the lower hinge from the jamb. Candlewood awkwardly swung the door around and propped it against the interior wall.

  As Nog entered behind him, Candlewood looked about. The squalid room contained little in the way of furniture. A small bed, its drooping mattress set in a rusting iron frame, almost filled the entire space. A tattered piece of fabric straggled across the floor beside a flimsy rod that Candlewood suspected had once held it up as a curtain in front of the lone window.

  The science officer took a step forward and felt something beneath his foot. He reached down and picked up a metal 2. Candlewood thought that the number had probably come off when the door had been kicked in, but given the hotel’s state of disrepair, it wouldn’t have surprised him to learn that it had fallen onto the floor long before that.

  “This was where Vic was living?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Nog said. “I don’t know if it was permanent or temporary, but he was definitely staying here when I saw him.”

  “That just doesn’t make any sense,” Candlewood said, turning in place to take in their dilapidated surroundings. “I know Vic is just a hologram, but he’s a pretty well-­defined character. He would never live in a place like this.”

  “Not under normal circumstances, no,” Nog said. “But I told you that something must have occurred inside the program.”

  “Right, right,” Candlewood said, but something else nagged at him. “Why is the holomatrix entry point here? I only visited Vic’s a few times, but whenever I did, I entered a large, well-run hotel and casino. Before you successfully reloaded the program, did it ever bring you here?”

  “No,” Nog said. “It always brought me to the same place it brought you. I just supposed that when Vic took up residence here, the program must have automatically reconfigured the entry point.”

  “But Vic’s no longer here,” Candlewood said. “If the program resets to Vic’s location, why isn’t it bringing us to him now?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Candlewood shook his head, trying to puzzle out the situation. Not since his days attending the University of Mumbai had he coded any holographic software, and only once had he crafted an open-ended narrative program. Still, his training as a computer specialist provided him with more than just a rudimentary understanding of the field’s fundamental principles. He knew that Bashir 62 represented a departure from some of those standards—chief among them Vic Fontaine’s awareness of his own nature as a holographic character—but that didn’t mean that attributes like the program’s entry point would change randomly.

  Candlewood looked down and saw that he still held the metal 2 he had picked up. He tossed it onto the bed. “We can’t help Vic unless we know where he is.”

  “I know,” Nog said. He stepped over to the bed, lowered himself to his knees, and peered beneath it. “I was hoping that we could find some clues here that’ll help explain who kidnapped Vic and why.”

  “I don’t know if any of that matters as much as where he is,” Candlewood said. “Computer, take us to Vic Fontaine’s current location.”

  “No!” Nog yelled as he leaped back to his feet.

  Around them, the scene shifted, wavering as the holoprogram reshaped the setting. Their shabby surroundings vanished, replaced by opulence. They suddenly stood in a corridor wider than Vic’s tumbledown hotel room. Bright crystal chandeliers hung from a high ceiling, illuminating wainscoted walls and beautifully patterned carpeting.

  “Computer—” Nog rushed to say, but if he intended to reverse Candlewood’s command or end the program, he never got that far. “Vic?” Candlewood didn’t recognize the lounge singer from behind, but Nog clearly did.

  Vic turned at the sound of his name. So did the two large men walking on either side of him. Candlewood would later think that Nog had taken a step forward, and that Vic had called out to him, but everything happened so quickly that he couldn’t be sure. Before the science officer could process what he saw—a captive being led somewhere by his abductors—the two burly men reached into their jackets and drew weapons.

  In the back of his mind, Candlewood knew that he and Nog could not be harmed inside the holosuite, that the safety protocols would protect them from whatever fictional perils they faced. But he also could not help conjuring up the image of Nanietta Bacco standing on the stage of DS9’s auditorium. Like most of his DS9 crewmates, he had watched as three shots had brutally torn through the Federation president, ending her life. Afterward, he had also been called upon to perform a ballistics analysis. Projectile weapons might be considered antiquated and seldom used in the twenty-fourth century, but Candlewood did not doubt their capacity to inflict damage on living beings.

  The two big men strode forward as they began firing. The loud report of their weapons filled the corridor, and brief flashes of orange-yellow light accompanied each shot. An acrid scent filled the air. Candlewood instinctiv
ely raised his arms to protect himself. He felt multiple impacts on his body, the holosuite producing sharp taps in place of what would have been hot metal piercing his flesh. He felt himself pushed backward by the impacts, another part of the program’s illusion. He reached back to brace himself as he fell to the floor, but the holosuite encoding cushioned his impact.

  By the time Candlewood looked over at Nog lying beside him, the corridor had disappeared, along with Vic Fontaine and the two armed men beside him. The flat environment of the holosuite, featureless but for the door and rows of embedded emitters, had returned. “What just happened?” Nog said.

  “I’d say we found the people who abducted Vic,” Candle­wood said. The two Starfleet officers climbed back to their feet.

  “No, I know that,” Nog said. “I mean why did the program shut down?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Computer,” Nog said, “run program Bashir Sixty-two, with the entry point at the Fremont-Sunrise Hotel.” Candle­wood assumed that had been where they had first found themselves in the program. Nog clearly wanted to ensure that they didn’t end up right back in a hail of bullets.

  A discordant hum sounded, followed by the voice of the computer. “Unable to comply.”

  Nog’s brows knit. “Computer, run program Bashir Sixty-two,” he said, omitting the specification of the entry point.

  The off-key drone signaled again. “Unable to comply.”

  “What—” Nog said, and then his eyes went wide. “Oh, no. Computer, was Vic Fontaine killed in program Bashir Sixty-two?”

  “Negative.”

  “Then Vic is still alive?” Nog said, as though he needed reassurance.

  “The character of Vic Fontaine continues to exist in program Bashir Sixty-two.”

  “Computer, then run program Bashir Sixty-two,” Nog tried again.