by Judith
Thirty seconds.
Worf reported. "The Boreth is swinging off course."
"Are we going with it?"
"Not if we detach ... NOW!"
On the viewer, the Boreth tumbled toward the red wormhole.
As the blue wormhole grew larger.
"...No...," Weyoun sobbed. 'This wasn't supposed to happen."
Twenty seconds.
"Full thrusters, Doctor!"
"Hydrazine is exhausted," Bashir cried. "All we've got now is momentum."
Dazed, crazed, Sisko checked their rate of approach. Checked the time.
They weren't going to make it.
Fifteen seconds.
"DAD!"
Heart soaring, Sisko wheeled. Saw Jake run for him.
Caught him in a wordless embrace, stricken with horror at what he had brought to
his child, felt the same inexpressible feelings in his son.
Jake.
Ten seconds.
Worf reported again. "Supernova shockwave approaching."
The Defiant trembled.
Sisko looked up. "What was that?"
The young ensign—at the science station. "Subspace pressure wave! It's caught
us."
Sisko heard Worf's voice. "Distance to wormhole is decreasing."
Five seconds.
On the viewer, long tendrils of red energy. Snaking. Twisting. Engaging blue
tendrils.
Sisko heard Worf again. "The wormholes are merging as predicted."
"The Temple!" Weyoun was raising his red-robed arms to the ceiling. "The Temple
is restored!"
Three seconds.
Sisko appealed to everyone. And no one. "Are we going to make it?"
Two seconds.
"Are we—"
Worf said, "Impact."
Weyoun screamed.
One second.
The bridge went dark, the viewer died.
Gravity shut down.
Sisko felt the Defiant fall away from him. Felt Jake fall away from him.
Felt everything and everyone and nothing and no one in the universe streak away
as if he and they and it had plunged from an infinite cliff and were tumbling
toward the infinite—nothingness—never to land.
'1 did everything I could," Sisko cried into the silence that engulfed him.
But everything he had ever done was for nothing.
For everything that had ever been was for nothing.
Zero seconds.
It was over.
t = W
it was so simple a reaction, the equation describing it could fit on a leisure
shirt.
What had been broken was made whole again.
The dimensional wound—upon whose fractal edges something called reality had
grown like random frost— closed seamlessly in an instant. Healed at last.
And where there had been eleven dimensions of existence, there now were none.
Perfect unity had been achieved again.
In that last eternal moment before the illusion called time ceased to be, the
expansion of what had been called space-time abruptly stopped. All at once.
Throughout the full extent of its reach.
Some sentient intelligences might have been aware of something gone awry, a
sudden slowing of the worlds around them, a sluggishness to the atmosphere or
the liquid from which they drew life. But that mo-
ment of disquiet was all that they would know. For there was no more time left
to explore the reason for the slowing.
If a vantage point had been possible within another realm, then the cessation of
expansion would have been apparent. Followed not by an explosion from the point
at which the ripped dimension had been rejoined, but by a sudden condensation. A
condensation of existence.
Matter did not move through space. Nor did energy change over time. But
space-time itself shrank.
Instantly.
A bubble bursting.
A dream vanishing upon awakening.
Not even a black hole extinguished existence as swiftly, as absolute as the
effect of total nothingness.
There was not even a place for there to be an absence of anything.
There was not even a place for nothing to exist.
The human adventure had come to its end.
The universe was gone.
EPILOGUE
At the Doors of the Temple
sisko opened his eyes, half expecting to see nothing, half expecting to see
white light.
Instead he saw a room.
Familiar.
Comforting.
An observation lounge. On a Starship.
He shook his head, clearing it of the disturbing dream he had had.
That's it, he thought with relief. It was all a dream. A simple disruption in
his sleep during the journey out here. The journey to...
He looked out the curved viewports of the room.
Bajor.
A beautiful planet, he had to admit. Though he didn't want to stay here. Not
really. A space station was not the place to raise his son.
But his eyes kept turning back to Bajor, so perfect and green and blue.
A dream... ?
Had he even had a dream?
He closed his eyes a moment, rubbed them, saw again the disastrous ruin of the
Promenade of Deep Space 9.
He had just been on it, touring his new command.
He had been awake twenty hours, between reviewing reports and briefings, even to
squeeze in an hour with Jake at the fishing hole.
So when had he managed to have a dream? Let alone a nightmare?
The door slid open. Another man entered.
Or maybe he had been there all along.
"Commander, come in," the man said. "Welcome to Bajor."
He pronounced it in the old way, with a softy.
Sisko reached out to shake the man's hand, thought the man looked better than he
had just a few ...
Sisko recognized him.
"It's been a long time, Captain."
Picard! Sisko thought. Of course...
Picard looked at Sisko with a puzzled expression. "Have we met before?"
Sisko grinned with relief, all the pieces coming together.
"That depends," he said to Picard. "What does 'before' mean in nonlinear time?"
Picard did not answer the question, said what he had said before. "I assume
you've been briefed on the events leading to the Cardassian withdrawal."
"It's all right," Sisko insisted. "I know what's hap-
pened. I know where we are. This is the Celestial Temple. We've met before, or
will meet, or have always known each other."
It isn't over, Sisko thought in excitement. Some realm beyond the universe still
existed. There was still hope....
"Incorrect," Picard said. "Even here, there's a first time for everything...."
Through the viewports, Bajor suddenly dissolved like a child's sandcastle,
flying into billions of fragments as the shockwave of the sun's detonation hit.
Sisko shrank back from the heat of that destruction. The viewports cracked. The
top surface of the conference table curled up and ignited.
Sisko looked for Picard, saw him at that table leaning forward, appearing to be
falling—but no—he was—
—growing.
—transforming.
Eyes now afire with the same flames that were consuming the ashes of Bajor.
Sisko stepped back, hit something, turned to see—
—his command chair.
He was back on the Defiant.
The bo
dies of his crew around him.
All dead.
Because of him.
Everything—everyone—dead because of him.
The thing that had been Picard loomed over him, and whether it was the admiral
or Grigari or Weyoun or Dukat, Sisko had no way of knowing.
All he did know was that it was coming for him, its eyes ablaze with the insane
fury of the Pah-wraiths.
The creature leered down at him, slime dripping
from its yawning maw. "Welcome to Hell, Emissary!" The flames reached out for
Sisko and their heat
seared his flesh. The universe had ended. But in the Temple of the Pah-wraiths,
his punishment
had just begun.
TO BE CONTINUED IN ...
DEEP SPACE NINE®
MILLENNIUM
BOOK III of III
INFERNO