Architects of Infinity

by Kirsten Beyer

  “That’s what I believed at the time. Clearly, I was wrong,” Sal said simply.

  Kim rose from the chair and began to pace restlessly. “So what does this mean?”

  “My best guess?”

  “Please.”

  “It means if we don’t start making progress in the next few months, she’s probably going to die. The only upside I can offer is that her demise probably won’t be as slow and painful as we first feared.”

  Kim stopped, crossed his arms over his chest, and turned his head, peering into the dimness of the private room where Conlon rested. He looked like he was holding himself together with both hands. Finally he turned back and asked, “Have you made any progress?”

  Sal sighed deeply. There were two different protocols she could implement immediately, both of which stood a fair to good chance of slowing the progress of the disease, if not curing it outright. But one depended on the embryonic cells she could no longer access and the other upon consents she was not likely to receive.

  Sal had advised Conlon from day one that her best hope were the undifferentiated stem cells of the embryo growing in her uterus. Although her umbilical cord would eventually contain billions of stem cells, they were blood cells and not likely to be as useful as the incredibly malleable embryonic cells. For reasons she had refused to share with her physicians, Conlon had been unwilling to agree to the embryonic harvesting and had pressed them to find an alternative. Sal had assured her that the process would not harm the embryo, although she wasn’t sure why it mattered, as Conlon had also indicated early on that she did not intend to carry the pregnancy to term.

  Following some intense wheedling by her counselor, Hugh Cambridge, Conlon had agreed to postpone a final decision on the stem cell extraction and the abortion until she’d had more time to come to grips with the reality of her condition. The last few weeks had been a slow hell for Sal. With each day that passed, the possibility that enough embryonic stem cells would remain diminished exponentially. Even now, it might be too late.

  The second option was going to be an even harder sell. In the last few days, however, Sal had turned her attention almost exclusively to researching the possibility. The first person she was going to have to convince was her captain. Farkas’s permission was going to be significantly harder to come by than Conlon’s had been.

  “There are always possibilities,” Sal finally advised Kim.

  Kim nodded somberly.

  “By the way,” Sal added, “there’s someone you should meet.”

  The utter confusion on Kim’s face was painful to witness.

  Sal rose and directed him out of the office to the private treatment room, where the gestational incubator would remain for the next thirty-four weeks. As she did so, she explained. “During the surgery to repair Nancy’s brain, the embryo went into distress. In order to save it we were forced to transport it outside Nancy’s body.”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t understand,” Kim said. “I thought she was going to . . .”

  “She did not make a final decision prior to falling ill,” Sal advised. “We were required to save both of them if possible, and that’s what we did.”

  Kim paused at the doorway to the room containing his child. It seemed like he might pass out at any moment.

  “Are you all right, Lieutenant?”

  He nodded, but his breath was coming in shallow bursts and his cheeks were flushed. He took a few more steps until his gaze locked on the tiny being suspended within the incubator.

  “That’s it?” he whispered.

  “That’s your daughter, Harry.”

  Tears began to flow freely down Kim’s face. Sal excused herself for a moment and returned with a tissue dispenser and offered him a handful.

  He smiled even as he shook his head rapidly in disbelief.

  “Will she . . . I mean, can she survive?” he asked.

  Sal nodded. “The odds are very good that she will. There are complications that can arise from external gestation but medicine has come a long way over the last few hundred years.”

  Kim began to study the monitors on the side of the incubator. Indicating a small wavy line, he asked, “Is that her heart?”

  “It is.”

  More tears followed this.

  “Why don’t I give you some time,” Sal suggested.

  She left the room and several minutes later, Kim emerged. He looked exhausted and elated at the same time. He had regained most of his emotional equilibrium.

  He seemed to struggle with himself for a few moments, then asked, “Can I see Nancy?”

  “Of course,” Sal said. As they moved toward Conlon’s private room, she followed Kim’s eyes to one of the monitors in the main bay that charted Conlon’s vitals. Kim paused over it and with a finger, traced the line of Conlon’s heartbeat.

  “The last time we spoke, Nancy said she was going to terminate the pregnancy,” Kim said. “I figured she had done it already.”

  “She hadn’t come to a final decision,” Sal said, then continued gently, “Did you and she discuss why she was waiting?”

  “She said you wanted to use some of the baby’s stem cells to try and reverse her condition. She didn’t want to do it. I begged her to give it a try. She said she’d consider it, but I didn’t think she’d agree.”

  “Did she tell you why?”

  Kim lifted his eyes again to Nancy’s still form visible behind the transparent wall of her room. “She didn’t feel right about using the baby’s cells to cure her and then terminating the pregnancy. She said whether it worked or not, she would feel obligated to continue the pregnancy if she allowed you to harvest those cells. She just didn’t want to do that.”

  “Well, part of that decision has been made for her by circumstance,” Sal said. “The embryo is no longer gestating inside her. For now Lieutenant Conlon retains shared custody of her, but neither of you can order us to terminate her. She’s an individual and protected under Federation law.”

  Relief spread over Kim’s face.

  The part of Sal that was required to defer to Conlon’s wishes had been at war for weeks with the doctor that wanted to cure her patient. The moment the embryo had gone into distress during the surgery she had realized that another door might be opening to her. She had not known until now whether or not she would avail herself of it.

  “Lieutenant Kim,” Sal began, “the calculus has now changed considerably. I understand Nancy not wanting to use the embryonic cells and then terminate the pregnancy. Termination is no longer an option, but the embryonic stem-cell therapy still might be. The cells I require to attempt to reprogram Nancy’s DNA aren’t going to exist for very much longer. Last night’s scans showed a ninety percent differentiation rate. My guess is that will be closer to ninety-three percent this morning. By the time we’re able to wake her, it will be much too late.”

  Kim’s eyes turned back to Sal. He blinked rapidly, considering the statement, and his brow furrowed.

  “Do you think there’s any chance she might change her mind?” Sal asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think if she understood how much more quickly than we had anticipated her condition is advancing, she might reconsider?”

  “It’s possible, I guess.”

  “Once the cells are extracted, it will still take me several days if not more to modify the appropriate vector and begin treatment. With your permission, I could harvest them now, while they retain their multipotentiality, and still allow Nancy to accept or refuse the procedure when she wakes up.”

  “My permission?”

  “You’re not her designated representative, so you can’t approve treatments on her behalf,” Sal said. “I believe that responsibility still rests with her sister back on Earth. But you are currently the only individual able to grant me permission to harvest the cells I need. If you agree to the procedure, I can perform it now.”

  “But I’m not . . .”

  “You’re the child’s fath
er,” Sal reminded him. “You share full custody of the child. With Nancy incapacitated, the right to make medical decisions on the child’s behalf falls to you.”

  Kim paled as a penny the size of a small moon dropped.

  “I could decide?”

  “Just to allow me to extract the cells. Nothing else.”

  “But if she didn’t want that, she’d never forgive me.”

  “You said her primary concern was using the embryonic cells. That won’t happen unless she consents. All you are doing is allowing the potential for treatment to continue to exist. Nothing more. She still gets to make the final decision when she wakes up.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Take all the time you need to think about it,” Sal said. “As long as all the time you need is less than twenty hours. After that, there won’t be any point. I understand that what I’m asking you to do might feel like a betrayal. And I understand that you are being as supportive as you possibly can in these circumstances. But this door is closing, and when it does, my chances of curing Nancy go way down. Faced with her imminent demise, she might be more willing to consider the stem-cell therapy. You’re just keeping her options open. For all we know, she’ll thank you for it.”

  Kim was clearly struggling. Sal hated to see that. But she also knew better than he what they were up against. She would not voluntarily tie her own hands.

  “You’ll just extract the cells for now?”

  “With your permission.”

  “And if Nancy still doesn’t want to go through with it when she wakes up . . .”

  “There’s nothing more to discuss. I get busy working other alternatives.”

  Silence hung heavy between them for several moments. Finally Kim said, “Do it.”

  3

  * * *

  VOYAGER

  The Full Circle Fleet’s chief engineer, Commander B’Elanna Torres, had three children. Her daughter and newborn son she shared with her husband, Voyager’s first officer, Commander Tom Paris. Her first child, however, would always be the countless interconnected assemblies, circuits, chips, ODNs, conduits, and panels collectively known as Voyager’s engine room.

  Torres hadn’t fully appreciated this fact when she had been given command of the engineering department as a field lieutenant and new member of the combined Starfleet and Maquis crew that would spend seven years together struggling to leave the Delta Quadrant behind them and return to Earth. She hadn’t given it a thought when she had left Voyager upon their return, so engrossed had she been in the birth of her daughter, introductions to her new in-laws, and a cryptic message left by her mother.

  Only once she had been made the fleet’s chief engineer and found herself overseeing Voyager’s engineering department, along with Vesta’s, Galen’s, and Demeter’s, had she understood the hold this place would always have on her heart. Despite her appreciation for how small it made the galaxy, she found the addition of the quantum slipstream drive that now occupied the lower half of what had once been the solid warp-core assembly unsightly, but only because it was a change. Torres had never been a fan of change. There were also a few dozen new faces tending to her engines. A number of Voyager’s original crew had requested reassignment after their initial journey through the Delta Quadrant had ended. But there was something joyful about introducing a new crop of young, fresh-faced engineers to her favorite technological child’s idiosyncrasies and moods.

  Even so, she would bid Voyager’s engines farewell forever without regret if she could have given them back to Nancy Conlon.

  Torres had been the first person Conlon had confided in about her declining stability and her belief that she was dying. When that belief had been confirmed, no one had been more surprised than B’Elanna. She had hoped until the last possible moment that Conlon’s condition was some horrible unforeseen aftereffect of the ravaging of her mind and body by an alien trespasser. It had been the harshest of gut punches to learn that Conlon had been right, and now it seemed that a massive ticking clock hung over everyone’s head as they waited for the fleet’s medical staff to pull just one more miracle out of their bag of tricks.

  Torres had visited Conlon regularly over the last few weeks, determined to help lift her spirits. When her doctors had agreed to allow Nancy to resume an abbreviated duty schedule, both of them had been elated. Torres hadn’t learned until a few hours ago that Conlon’s return was, once again, postponed.

  Few things roused B’Elanna’s Klingon half anymore. The events of the last few years had shifted her perspective in a positive way. They had been filled with challenges, but each of them had been faced and overcome. To stare down Conlon’s fate now and be entirely powerless to affect the outcome was becoming a daily test of her self-control. Once, long ago, her former crewmate Commander Tuvok had tried to teach her Vulcan meditation techniques to help her calm her inner Klingon. She could have used his help and regretted not asking him for a refresher course when he’d recently joined the fleet for their mission on Sormana.

  But Tuvok was gone. Nancy was sick and getting sicker by the day. Voyager was once again hers for the foreseeable future.

  She was already running late for a briefing in astrometrics when she arrived in engineering. Miral had been extra fussy that morning. Sharing her parents with her new baby brother was bringing out the one-quarter Klingon in Miral Paris. When she wasn’t sleeping or on duty, B’Elanna tried to carve out time for just the two of them to engage in their favorite activities on the holodeck or dig into the educational curriculum created for Miral by the Doctor. Some days it was enough to soothe the little warrior. Today had not been one of those days.

  Her plan had been to quickly run down the day’s maintenance schedule with Ensign Icheb and assure herself that there were no pressing issues before joining the senior staff for Chakotay’s briefing. That plan was scuttled the moment she entered and found Icheb standing over what looked like a replicator module that had been hefted onto one of the engineering diagnostic stations. Beside him stood a slightly shorter young man who should have been running Vesta’s engineering section right now, Lieutenant Phinnegan Bryce.

  “What do we have here, gentlemen?” Torres said as she joined them and glanced quickly at the numbers and symbols flowing over the nearest screen.

  “Good morning, Commander,” Icheb greeted her. The young man had recently graduated early from Starfleet Academy, but given that he had been found as a child in the Delta Quadrant by Voyager when the Borg had abandoned him and spent his early years regaining his individuality, he was as much the younger brother Torres never had as her right hand in engineering these days.

  “Hi, B’Elanna,” Bryce said cheerfully. “Don’t worry, this isn’t yours. It’s mine.”

  Bryce was Vesta’s chief engineer, and thus far, he had impressed Torres every time they’d worked together. She genuinely liked him, and the frequency with which Icheb mentioned him—Lieutenant Bryce believes an excess of free hydrogen particles purged by the coolant assembly are responsible for the point zero four percent degradation in the adjacent optronic relay housing or Phinn says if we perform more frequent ionic sweeps of our bioneural gel packs, we will extend their functionality by several months—suggested a developing friendship between the two. Torres would normally have gone out of her way to encourage this. Icheb had faltered in his early days as her aide, especially with Voyager’s engineers. Course corrections in his attitude and deference had helped to right that situation, but it was slow going, not to mention the fact that as a former Borg, there was an ingrained haughtiness with which Icheb could not help but carry himself. Bryce didn’t seem the least bit intimidated.

  This morning, however, Torres had neither the time nor the patience for whatever this was. “If it’s not mine, why is it in my engine room, Bryce?”

  “I asked him to bring it over,” Icheb replied for him. “This is the processor matrix for Vesta’s primary industrial replicator assembly, and we’ve been trying to track down a circui
ting glitch for days.”

  “It keeps randomly inverting certain integers, but there’s no rhyme or reason to the errors,” Bryce added.

  “I hypothesized that the problem might lie with the gel packs and wanted to test my theory with one of ours.”

  “Our gel packs are better than Vesta’s?” Torres asked.

  “Ours are older. This particular lot might have been corrupted when they were first installed.”

  “Is there some reason you didn’t just send him a few of ours to test on Vesta?” Torres asked.

  “I . . .” Icheb began, but faltered.

  Bryce picked up for him. “It was Icheb’s theory, and I thought he should have the chance to test it. Since he can’t really get away from Voyager, I thought I’d bring the mountain to him.”

  Torres considered both of them silently as her inner Klingon offered dozens of potential responses, none of which were particularly helpful but all of which would have been briefly satisfying to utter.

  “And have you successfully tested your theory, Ensign?”

  “We were just about to.”

  Torres nodded slowly. This wasn’t about a fritzing replicator. This was about Icheb and Bryce. Their growing interest in each other had been obvious to B’Elanna for weeks. And much as she wanted to encourage their friendship, especially for Icheb’s sake, there was a time and a place for that, and engineering was not it.

  “I have a briefing,” she said curtly. “I want Bryce and his replicator back on Vesta before I return. Understood?”

  “Yes, Commander,” they replied in near unison.

  Torres started to turn away when Icheb asked, “When will Lieutenant Conlon be reporting for duty?”

  Torres looked back at Icheb. It was instantly clear that he read the disappointment in her face and shared it.

  “Not today.”