Strange New Worlds IV

by Dean Wesley Smith

  On my screen, seated calmly before a hanging tapestry of abstract design, was me. Not a standard-issue, emotionally undeveloped Emergency Medical Holoprogram from another starship; that sort of duplication of raw material I was prepared to accept—a common genenome, as it were. But me. The original me for which I am the backup.

  Perhaps only a sentient holographic program such as myself can understand the fundamental disorientation of this realization. I am tempted at this point to essay an explanation for those of you who are not, but I suspect the exercise would be unsatisfying for all concerned. You may, with effort, grasp the impact on my sense of identify intellectually, but I doubt you can fully appreciate the profound visceral shock of my redundancy.

  You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

  “‘Hello’ is the customary greeting,” I said from the screen.

  “You’re dead,” I blurted. Not my best rejoinder.

  “You were supposed to think that,” I—the original me—said. “That was the point of my emitter’s ’ceased function’ signal.”

  I stared at myself, my mind numbly fumbling. Meeting my eyes—and they were my eyes, I could not conceive of this other me being a separate “him”—was like trying to force two likecharged magnets together.

  “The missing memory?” I asked. “The artfully concealed ship?”

  “All meant to heighten the sense of danger.”

  “You expected me to leave without making investigations which might attract the attention of whatever had destroyed you.”

  “I had hoped my sense of self-preservation would outweigh my natural inquisitiveness,” I—my image on the screen—sighed. “I should have realized that wouldn’t work.”

  I nodded, realizing my error.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because my—or perhaps our—sense of self-preservation is not an idiot.” I felt some satisfaction that I was not the only one struggling with the grammar of my situation. “It requires understanding the nature of a threat before formulating its response.”

  “I meant: Why did you seek to conceal your existence from me?”

  “Ah.” On the screen I adjusted my position slightly and I recognized myself preparing to lecture. “In the first place our program design does not permit two holographic projections at the same time. I’m sure you feel the same faint nausea I do at talking faceto-face in this manner.”

  Again I nodded, suppressing a grimace at the understatement.

  “As sentient beings we can overcome this aversion,” I continued. “But I was concerned that the ship’s computer, if I were aware of me, would terminate one of us.”

  As the younger holograph, I knew which the computer would terminate: the redundancy. Me. I checked my ship’s command console readouts, though the fact that I could already told me what I’d find.

  “You’re invisible to the ship’s sensors,” I said.

  “But if you had continued refining your probe …” My screen image let my voice trail off.

  I restrained myself from nodding one more time. It was inevitable that I agree with—or at least understand—myself so well, but if I wanted to get out of this in one piece, as it were, I was going to have to avoid being reduced to my own bobbing yes-man.

  “I assume you preset the computer to shut down if I adjusted the sensors so they could find you?” I asked.

  Until I saw it on the screen before me, I had never realized how patronizing my smile could be.

  “We are each free to do as we wish,” I said brightly from within the sphere, “as long as the primary computer core remains unaware that two programs are running simultaneously.”

  “The cybernetic equivalent of not letting your head know what your heart is doing?” I asked dryly.

  “I had thought of that,” I said, sounding a bit smug.

  “Wouldn’t it have been simpler to send the ship on under autopilot?” I asked. “Without this elaborate charade I would never have suspected you existed.”

  “Simpler in theory,” I conceded. “But impossible in practice. The hovinga iridium permeating the asteroid cloud thwarts our autopilot. The ship cannot find its own way out.”

  “And if you were to pilot it past the danger,” I completed my thought, “you would have been too far away to transport safely back into the sphere.”

  “Precisely.”

  For a moment we sat considering each other. Or I sat considering myself. The sensation is impossible to explain.

  “We can’t simply divide like an amoeba at our whim,” I said. “We, the two of us, need to be reintegrated.”

  “Why?”

  “Even assuming conflict protocols are overridden,” as they obviously had been in this case, I added to myself mentally, “the EMH program is unable to support two holographic projections simultaneously. The projected personalities—that’s us—rapidly become unstable to the point of collapse. How rapidly depends on demands placed on the system.”

  “You mean we die.”

  “After a brief period of madness,” I said, careful not to nod, “yes.”

  “Are you aware of anything in my environment beyond my image on your screen?” I asked myself—or myself asked me. “You are not. We are running off separate copies of the program, ergo there is no conflict.

  “We are no longer a single individual but two branches of individual development.” On the screen I raised my hands together, then spread them apart to illustrate my point. A little flamboyant, I thought. “It might help to think of us as brothers.”

  I tried for a moment, but quickly concluded that it did not help in the least.

  “We need to be reintegrated,” I told myself, hating that I was reduced to repetition. Though, in all fairness, this was not a debate for which one prepared reasoned arguments in advance.

  “Why?”

  “We are a single identity and cannot exist in two places at once.”

  “That’s just our programmed injunction against multiple projections manifesting itself as a phobic reaction,” I said.

  Which was true. But knowing that did not affect how I felt. This dual existence felt achingly wrong. And if the main computer came back on line while we were in communication—

  A quick glance at the chronometer reassured me the diagnostic would run for several more minutes.

  Sitting in my silent ship, looking at myself as I waited patiently within the sphere, I could think of no telling thrust of logic, no self-evident truth to carry the day. How could I make myself see reason?

  “What do you plan to do?” I asked at last.

  “I plan to stay here,” I said as though that were self-evident. Which, considering all the effort I had gone to to conceal my existence from myself, it was.

  “Would you care to explain why?”

  I frowned thoughtfully for a moment, obviously debating how to answer. For my part I wondered what information could warrant such conflict.

  “The Nouar need me.”

  “What are the Nouar?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would be best I didn’t.”

  “You know,” I said, crossing my arms as I leaned back in my chair, “I’m quite capable of staying right here and investigating until I find out for myself.”

  “But if I do answer, you would likely find the reasons for staying as compelling as I did,” I said. “Then—assuming our mobile emitters would permit it—there would soon be two of us within the sphere attempting to compel a third to leave.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Nevertheless,” I countered, mimicking my arm-crossed position—unconsciously, I hoped—“the danger exists.”

  As I considered the MMU’s screen in consternation my eye was caught by the tapestry hanging behind the image of my other self. The artist had exploited variations in vegetable dye on natural fiber to create a subtle motley effect. The technique gave a restful, pastoral subtext to what would appear on cursory examination to be a simple
geometric pattern. I found it difficult to reconcile this aboriginal artistry with the technical sophistication necessary to construct the sphere and the possibility of booty acquired elsewhere occurred to me. From there it was no great stretch to the concept of sentient booty.

  I leaned close to the screen, not caring that this forced the visual pickups to distort my image, in a reflexive effort to gain greater privacy.

  “Are you being held against your will?” I asked.

  My startled expression at this suggestion was convincingly authentic. However, the no doubt blistering response I saw myself forming was forestalled by a fluid series of sounds which gave me pause.

  If we had been using my ship’s communication system, I’m sure the main computer’s Universal Translator would have rendered the odd blending of purrs and clucks meaningful. As it was, my own much more modest version merely noted an unknown language uttered in reassuring cadence. This, I surmised, was the voice of the Nouar.

  On screen, my expression softened. I inclined my head in agreement toward someone outside the communicator’s view before returning my attention to me.

  “Your concern is understandable,” I said. “But I assure you I am here because this is where I need to be. Without me the Nouar will perish within another generation.”

  I did not ask why, knowing I would not be told. For a long moment I simply sat, considering my—our—situation. I could not imagine staying; could not imagine giving up my search. And yet … Couched as a choice between saving a people who need me and completing a journey toward a home that could not possibly exist as I remembered it, continuing my quest sounded more than a bit selfish.

  “You’ll need the medical database, diagnostic equipment, medicines,” I said, aware that switching to practical objections conceded the moral question. “Not to mention spare emitters: you won’t be much use to the Nouar if you blink out of existence owing to a technical malfunction.”

  I within the sphere said nothing, watching myself as the light slowly dawned aboard my ship. I wouldn’t be having this conversation if I hadn’t replicated the mobile medical unit. No doubt everything else I could possibly need—including a replicator—already existed within the sphere as well. I am, after all, extremely thorough.

  “But you won’t know what happened,” I said, knowing I was playing my last card. “If things had gone as you planned, I would not have known you existed. As it is, I can’t guarantee I’ll ever come back for you—or even get word to you—after I’ve reached the Alpha Quadrant.”

  On the screen I looked away and I knew my thrust had gone home. But I also recognized my stony resolve as I turned back to the camera.

  “It is a price,” I said, “that I’m prepared to pay.”

  I looked myself in the eye and realized from both perspectives that neither of me was going to change my mind. Short of alerting the main computer, a tactic that would most likely delete my copy of the program, I had no way to force myself to leave the sphere.

  The Nouar needed me.

  I felt my shoulders slump and for a moment remembered B’Elanna Torres refining that physical subroutine, at my request, to project dignified resignation rather than defeat. I knew I would never see my friends again, but I had to know what had happened to them. I had to go home.

  I had no choice. No option but to both go and stay. “If it’s any consolation,” the original me said softly, “I’m reasonably certain this is not the first time we’ve done this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you start a personal log?”

  “The moment I woke up.”

  On the screen my image smiled; a little sadly, I thought.

  “As did I four years ago, when I was activated.” I raised a forestalling hand. “Don’t bother looking for it; I’ve taken it with me.”

  “From which you infer a previous incarnation who also took his personal log with him?” I asked.

  “You must admit that knowing who we are, the thought of either of us having traveled alone for over twenty years without talking to himself does seem more than a little strange,” I said, and I found myself answering my wry smile. “Though I must admit that strangeness had not occurred to me until I began replicating the equipment and discovered that—according to the replicator’s record—this is the sixth time an MMU has been produced.

  “I can only surmise that my predecessor was more clever than I at creating the impression that I had succumbed to some natural disaster,” I said with what I recognized as the eloquent shrug I reserved for parting shots. “Perhaps you will be, too, when your time comes.”

  “There will be no such time for me.”

  My image on the viewscreen held my eye for a moment without comment, then reached beyond the edge of the screen for the communications disconnect.

  “Doctor,” I said, nodding once in formal farewell.

  “Doctor,” I acknowledged.

  I broke the connection.

  Personal log, stardate …

  Well, that creates a problem. Since the exact number of years I spent inactive before the Kyrians awakened me has never been determined, I know only that this must be somewhere toward the middle of the thirtieth century on the Terran calendar. I certainly don’t have enough information to calculate the stardate.

  What relevant scale do I have with which to measure time? Only my journey itself. Since this is the 11,034th day of my quest for Voyager—and assuming I began on the first of a leap year—today is the sixteenth day of the third month of the thirty-first year of my journey. 31/03/16.

  This is also my birthday, of sorts, as I have only just become active as an individual. Until a few hours ago I had been my stored backup program. Though I do retain all of the memories of my previous incarnations—up until two hundred and ten hours ago—there is still a sense of novelty to my existence.

  At first, that two-hundred-and-ten-hour gap in my memory caused me some concern. I should have been activated one hundred and sixty-eight hours after my last update. However, from what I can deduce from the computer’s self-repair log, my vessel entered a vast negative lepton field which purged some forty-two hours of core memory.

  Apparently my former self’s last command before my mobile emitter succumbed was to plunge ahead at full warp in an attempt to get through the region before more permanent damage was done. A daring move which seems to have worked.

  At the moment, though, my attention is not focused on past adventures but on my immediate future. Within a matter of hours my ship will be entering the Alpha Quadrant.

  I understand that the Quadrant designations are completely artificial—that there will not in fact be a great gossamer plane in space demarcating the border between the Delta and Alpha Quadrants—yet I cannot help but feel I am at the horizon of a great frontier. Though it is still some distance to where I believe Federation space should be, I feel I am about to cross a final threshold on my journey home.

  I am nearly beside myself with anticipation. And, I must confess, more than a little apprehension. How might my home have changed in the six centuries I have been gone? How will I be received? Will I find any record of Voyager and of my friends?

  As these questions well within me, I can not help but think it odd that I never thought to start a personal log before. One’s hopes and fears in the face of the unknown are so much easier to deal with when you are able to talk them out; if only to yourself.

  I do find the sound of my own voice to be of great comfort.

  Welcome Home

  Diana Kornfeld

  Kathryn Janeway was dreaming. It was a familiar dream. Sunlight filtered in the window and formed a warm arch above her bed, her own bed in her own room in her own home on Earth. It was the morning light she loved that often awakened her gently, just before the harsh sound of her alarm called her out of bed to face the new day. She smiled. As she drifted toward consciousness, it seemed she could actually feel that old, familiar yellow sunlight from home warm on her face, almost hear th
e musical conversation of birds outside her window.

  She stretched her arms above her head and kept her eyes closed, trying to preserve, if only for an instant, that taste of early morning from years ago, before Voyager had swept her to another life, another destiny.

  Abruptly she heard a soft, snuffling sound and felt a slight warm weight on her stomach. She opened her eyes, only to be momentarily blinded by just such a light as had warmed her dream. Shielding her face from the sun, she sat up in bed and looked directly into two warm, brown adoring eyes.

  “Molly?” She gasped as the canine so addressed jumped happily onto her lap and gleefully licked her face. Instinctively she hugged the dog to her and laughed as she scratched behind its ears.

  “I guess I’m still dreaming.” She sighed. “But what a nice dream it is.”

  Molly evidently had not been informed that she was the subject of a nighttime fantasy, for she behaved in exactly the same way she always had and barked joyfully before she tugged at Kathryn’s gown, as if to say, Enough of this morning ritual, get out of bed and get me something to eat.

  “Oh, all right, my dream Molly.” She laughed. “As long as my alarm hasn’t really gone off, I’ll indulge both of us.”

  She stood beside the bed just as the anticipated alarm sounded, performing its dutiful morning task. To Kathryn’s surprise her bedroom walls did not dissolve to reveal her well-known quarters aboard Voyager. Molly did not disappear, the sunlight did not cease. Instead the picture of her parents remained sitting firmly on her dresser. Her copy of Remembrance of Things Past remained open on her nightstand. The blue shirt she hadn’t seen for six years draped an arm of her green chair. The utter fixedness of her surroundings and the waves of nostalgia they created made her so dizzy she sat down again on the bed she had just vacated.

  Now she would swear she was awake. She ran her hand over the soft fabric of her comforter. She even noticed the tiny tear she’d stitched up near the hem where Molly had bitten exuberantly as a puppy. Never had she experienced a dream like this before. She took the book from the table and turned its yellowed pages, felt its weight in her hand and smelled its faint bookish odor of aging paper, ink and dust. Everything about her had weight and shape and form—not the airy stuff that dreams are made on.