I know. I remember seeing those stacks of padds teetering on Dad’s desk, right next to his baseball. Your surrender plan.
A surrender plan that might have prevented the needless slaughter of billions of Federation citizens.
But only if your data hadn’t been as incomplete as you’ve since admitted it was. Your key assumption going in was that the Federation couldn’t win the war. That assumption was the bedrock on which you built the entire plan. But it turned out to be wrong.
Which was why I was so very, very careful before making my tactical recommendation regarding the Undine. I used much finer-grained mathematics than ever before when I set my psychohistorical parameters and began making the many necessary forecasts.
None of that mattered to Starfleet, though.
I imagine it wouldn’t—if they saw it as just another surrender plan, that is.
What I came up with was radically different than that. Starfleet should have seen that right away. But they chose not to.
Exactly what did you recommend that Starfleet do?
I’m getting to that. First, let’s back up to what the Undine have been expending so much energy on over the past few decades—inserting disguised infiltrators everywhere they can. I had been compiling case studies of “infiltration incidents” for years, and I had noticed a number of commonalities linking them together.
What sort of commonalities?
First, let’s consider the method the Undine use to disguise themselves as us in order to live undetected among us.
Well, they… morph themselves somehow.
Yes, yes, of course they do. But they don’t do it in the same superficial, cosmetic way that the Dominion’s Founders did. The Undine use a much more subtle method. Much less skin deep, hmm, hmm? An Undine doppelgänger actually duplicates his victim all the way down to the DNA level. Down to the last nucleotide sequence. Right down to the neuropeptides that house memory in the brains of humans and most other humanoid species. And on top of that, their bodies generate a scan-obscuring biogenic field that’s capable of covering up whatever all-but-undetectable tracks the mechanics of the transformation process might have left behind.
I know. That’s what makes Undine infiltrators so difficult to ferret out.
Sure it does. Their genetic mimicry makes them the most pernicious enemy the Federation has ever faced. But it’s also the source of the Undine’s greatest weakness, if you think about it.
I’m afraid I don’t understand.
Think about it. You must have read “Instances of Metamorphic Dementia Among Known Undine Infiltrators,” hmm, hmm?
I think so. Wasn’t that the paper dealing with the tendency of certain disguised Undine agents to lose their sense of individual identity while operating under deep cover? You cited instances in which Undine infiltrators had become so comfortable in their cover identities that they actually forgot the whole “Undine agenda” they had been sent out to pursue in the first place.
Yes! Yesyesyes. You understand, then.
I’m not sure. Forgive me, Doctor Jack, but the phenomenon you wrote about in that paper wasn’t anything new. Deep-cover spies have been “going native” out in the field for centuries. It’s always been a simple function of how long a spy has to live under an assumed identity. Over extended periods, humans in situations like that will tend to form attachments to the people around them—and might even end up caring more about those relationships than they ever did about their original mission.
That’s true, but for the Undine there’s an additional dimension to the problem. When they infiltrate us, they aren’t just actors in danger of burying themselves too deeply in a role, hmm? They each carry within their bodies a precise copy of the genome and the memory engrams of a particular given victim. Therefore the Undine have to be far more intensively vigilant against the possibility of their operatives “going native” than any human spy bureau ever did.
It’s not as though there aren’t precedents. Consider the Kelvans. You’ve heard of them, haven’t you?
I remember Commander Worf once talking about fighting off a bunch of Kelvans. James Kirk made first contact with them, right?
Yes, right after their arrival from Andromeda about a century and a half ago, when they began an invasion of our galaxy. But their attack didn’t go according to plan because of their decision to adopt human form. That transformation was their big blunder, their Achilles’ heel. Despite their advanced intellects and their superior physical prowess, they succumbed to humanity’s vices and emotional weaknesses.
I’ve read about that. That took some inspired improvisation on the part of Kirk and his senior officers.
That’s the kind of creativity Starfleet needs to nurture if the Federation is ever going to stand a chance against an enemy like the Undine. Going up against them on a purely head-to-head military level is a bad idea. Just ask the Borg.
You seem to be saying that mimicking humanity may transmit some of our greatest weaknesses to the Undine. But if that’s true, then those very human weaknesses—
—could become our greatest strengths, yes.
It almost sounds as if you recommended that Starfleet exploit the gluttony and drunkenness of the Undine, using food and booze against them instead of phasers and photon torpedoes.
No. My plan was both simpler than that, as well as being far larger in scope. I concluded that the Undine had gone to considerable trouble by trying to replace so many of us with indistinguishable doppelgängers—alien agents who were so indistinguishable from their victims that they actually were their victims in every way that truly mattered. And they were straining their resources to the breaking point in their struggle to maintain, on some deep, interior level, the identities and agendas of each and every agent they had placed among us. The Undine were prepared for Starfleet to resist their incursions. But what they weren’t ready for was judo.
Judo… ? You recommended that Starfleet use some sort of metaphorical judo against the Undine?
Only barely metaphorical, hmm, hmm? After I told Starfleet everything I’ve just told you, I recommended that they use the Undine’s own impetus against them. Like I said, the aliens were devoting a huge proportion of their resources to maintaining their existing operatives’ disguises. At the same time, they were putting everything they could muster into their latest waves of new attacks and infiltrations.
That’s where the idea of judo comes in. The concept of pulling your opponent in the direction he’s already headed, as opposed to trying to put a barrier up in his path—a barrier he’s just going to find a way to break through, or climb over eventually anyway.
I’m afraid you’re losing me.
Don’t you see? Starfleet was handling the Undine incursions as though they were defending an isolated home from an invading horde. I mean, they knew how to board up the doors and the windows, and they were even capable of taking a few good potshots from the roof. But that’s not a good long-term tactical plan against an enemy as relentless as the Undine, hmm, hmm? So I advised Starfleet to do the one thing that the Undine could never anticipate or deal with adequately.
And what was that?
Let them replace us. In fact, we should have encouraged them to replace as many of us as possible.
Wait a minute. You told me that what you presented to Starfleet wasn’t like your recommendation for ending the Dominion War. You said it wasn’t a surrender plan.
So I did. And so it wasn’t.
Ah, that look on your face. I’ve seen it before, at Starfleet Headquarters. You’re having the same visceral reaction the brass hats did, every gray-haired one of them. I’m surprised at you, Mister Sisko. I thought you’d be more enlightened. I thought you’d have a broader mind than that.
Somebody once said that old age is the time when one’s broad mind and narrow waist finally change places. But honestly, broad-minded or not, who wouldn’t be horrified by what you’ve just told me?
Maybe you have a point. After all, fear
is an instinctive human reaction. It’s fundamental and completely understandable. But human beings have learned to overcome a lot of the neurophysiological baggage we all still carry around in our limbic systems, not to mention in the more reptilian parts of our brains, hmm, hmm?
If you would take a minute to think the idea through, you’ll see that it has serious merit, given everything we’ve discovered about Undine tactics, psychology, and physiology.
I’m trying very hard to think the idea through, Doctor Jack. But I can see why Starfleet Command would have seen it as a bridge too far.
Try to be dispassionate for a moment. Think about it. When the Undine replace one of us, they leave behind a living genetic duplicate that’s indistinguishable from the original—so much so that the duplicate tends to forget its original identity as an Undine.
But only in rare cases, when the Undine spy suffers some sort of stress or—
Those cases are rare only because we’ve always tried so hard to ferret out Undine doppelgängers. But every one of my studies on this subject concluded that nearly all new Undine impostors would “go native” once we employed my metaphorical judo—that is, once we began encouraging the Undine replacements rather than fighting so hard to stop them.
I take back what I said earlier about this plan being like your Dominion surrender proposal. What you’ve advocated is far, far worse. It’s tantamount to just lying down and letting a lethal enemy slaughter us all. It’s like putting our collective neck right into the mouth of a hungry tiger.
How?
How could it not be? Or did I misunderstand you? You did just give your blessing to humanity’s collective replacement by Undine doppelgängers, didn’t you?
Doppelgängers so perfect that they actually become us, and thereby forget all about their own agendas. Doppelgängers that would immediately lose their will to fight entirely, because their plans for conquest would be utterly swamped by our plans and schemes and dreams. Not to mention the distractions from all those new, unfamiliar human sensory inputs—which by themselves were enough to abort a Kelvan invasion.
Even assuming that your studies and analyses were more accurate than your Dominion War calculus was, if Starfleet had followed your recommendation we’d all still have been… replaced.
But by duplicates so perfect that no one could tell the difference, hmm, hmm? Least of all the billions upon billions of beneficiaries of the plan. The entire human species. Maybe even the entire population of the Federation and its wartime allies, hmm, hmm?
But there would be a difference.
Only to a hardcore Lockean empiricist, Mister Sisko. Remember what the philosopher William James said: “A difference that makes no difference is no difference.”
But there would be a difference.
Only the difference between you and the Undine duplicate who believes that he is you. And that’s essentially the same as the difference between you—you as you are right now—and the version of you that gets assembled out of local particles the next time a transporter transforms you from a pattern made of energy to a pattern made of matter.
What’s important is the pattern—the information that makes you uniquely you—not the provenance of whatever material substrate it’s using, hmm, hmm?
As I pause to digest what Doctor Jack has told me, I find myself wishing hard for someplace to sit besides the floor. It’s difficult to get my head around what he’s just told me. The unease that I’m experiencing at this moment catapults me back into mercifully long-forgotten recollections of some of the Pennington School’s more head-spinning philosophy courses.
The worst part of it is this: despite the visceral revulsion that Jack’s idea has placed in my belly, I have to concede that his logic is difficult to shoot down—at least without recourse to that very revulsion. I know that his plan was wrong, but I can’t explain why it’s wrong in anything other than a purely gut-level way.
Starfleet Command must have received Jack’s recommendation in much the same way. That would certainly account for their decision to suppress any writing he may have done on the subject. After all, suppose the Vulcans, who pride themselves on logic, had decided to go along with Jack’s reasoning? I try to tear myself from these ruminations, determined to square this philosophical circle somehow, with or without recourse to logic.
Until another thought, not quite as dark but very nearly so, occurs to me.
I’m surprised that you decided to share your… Undine proposal with me after Starfleet suppressed it.
It was an idea that was never given a fair hearing. But Starfleet Command dismissed it without giving it any considerations whatsoever. They never even tried to refute my logic.
Some things might be bigger than logic.
Maybe. And maybe history is one of those things, hmm, hmm?
And you think your “Undine judo” plan deserves its place in history.
It’s one of history’s great missed opportunities. It would have spared the Federation untold suffering and death, but it was never even considered. It ought to at least be preserved for posterity, should similar circumstances ever arise. And what better venue is there for posterity than your official assignment, Mister Sisko?
But if Starfleet has suppressed your every written reference to that plan over the years, what makes you think anything different will happen this time?
Recently, Starfleet has begun to give me… reason to believe that I’ve become a real thorn in its side. Or maybe it’s just that they’ve finally gotten tired of keeping tabs on me, waiting for the next time I, ah, misbehave. You know, they claim they’ve actually been “protecting me from my own rash actions” all these years by working so diligently to keep so much of my work out of the public eye.
There’s probably some real truth to that. The public was willing not to hold your Dominion War surrender plan against you because of all the… emotional difficulties you and your friends were experiencing at the time. But your recommendation for resolving the Undine War … well, the public is going to see that differently.
Maybe. But I certainly don’t want to be beholden to Starfleet for doing me any favors.
Think about it, Doctor Jack. I’m reasonably certain that a thick percentage of your audience would drop you like a flaming chunk of trilithium if your plan for resolving the Undine War ever became common knowledge.
Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, it ought to be in the historical record. Keeping it suppressed would be dishonest.
Even though keeping it suppressed may be the only hope you have of continuing your career?
Yes.
I don’t know if I feel right about letting my assignment become the vehicle for wrecking your professional life.
You really shouldn’t worry about that. Besides, if Starfleet decides to handle this interview the same way they’ve dealt with some of my earlier work, then no one will be the wiser, hmm, hmm?
You mean that Starfleet Intelligence will just quietly redact anything in this interview that they decide is too… sensitive.
Exactly. Yes. They’re enlightened up to a point, but they’re also paternal to a fault.
But if you’ve really become as big an annoyance to Starfleet as you say you have, then they could just use this interview as a convenient way to destroy you.
You mean by just leaving all this material in the interview. Releasing it as is, with no redactions.
They certainly could, even if they’d prefer to suppress the whole idea of surrender. Assuming they haven’t already classified the entire matter.
As far as I know, they haven’t. Like I said, I haven’t violated any laws, or broken any confidences. But in a civilization that’s as victory-oriented as this one, I may have violated something even more fundamental than a mere law, hmm, hmm?
And what’s that?
One of the bedrock taboos of the tribe. It’s one we share with a lot of other aggressive species, like the Klingons, the Romulans, and even the Jem’Hadar.
Which ta
boo would that be?
The one that makes surrender unthinkable—and very often makes wars last a lot longer than they really need to.
The interview trails off into disconnected academic small talk, and concludes entirely as I deactivate the recording equipment. As we exchange farewells and I take my leave of him, Doctor Jack strikes me as a man carrying a burden. A soul with a need to atone for past sins. Whether this is because he failed to convince Starfleet to embrace his heretical ideas, or because he committed the crime of presenting them in the first place, I can’t say.
All I can do is speculate about his prospects for atonement and absolution—and whether those prospects depend upon this interview reaching anybody’s eyes and ears other than my own.
And, of course, those of Starfleet Intelligence.
Whether or not the entirety of this interview manages to get out into the public eye, I, too, will carry a burden. Should Jack’s “Undine judo” plan become known via my efforts, thereby wrecking him personally and professionally, I will share some of the responsibility for whatever consequences may follow.
And if the powers that be decide to suppress Doctor Jack’s frightening recommendation yet again, I will carry the not inconsiderable burden of knowing about that as well.
THE TRANSFEDERATION EXAMINER
Dateline—Lae, Papua New Guinea, Earth,
Stardate 85893.2*
… Following her surprise “reversion” from her human guise to her natural Undine form, the enemy agent had yet another surprise for the representatives of local law enforcement and the Starfleet officers who were on the scene: she was actually a humaniform hologram who had intentionally altered her programming until she believed she was an Undine sleeper agent—thus becoming the harbinger of a new AI neurosis that might one day prove as lethal to humanity as are the Undine themselves.…†
MOVING FORWARD
STARFLEET BRATS
(Or: How I Learned to Love
ONLINE THE NEEDS OF THE MANY Page 23