Strange New Worlds X

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “So a horse walks into a bar,” Vic said, by way of greeting. “The bartender asks the horse, ‘Hey, buddy, why the long face?’ “ He waited for a reaction, but none came. He looked at Zimmerman curiously. “Say, aren’t you the guy who created all those docs-in-a-box?”

  “If by that you mean the Emergency Medical Holographic Systems, then yes.”

  “Yeah, my friend Fritz used to talk about you all the time.” Zimmerman’s hand gave a slight twitch. The bartender took a triangular glass from a washbin behind the bar and slid it into a slotted rack above his head. “Fritz is the one they say gave me my sparkling personality. Force fields and light bulbs and such, you know.”

  “Yes, your friend Fritz is making quite a name for himself.” Zimmerman rubbed at a water spot on the bar in frustration, but it didn’t fade. A holographic spot as it were, he thought, on a holographic bar. “There’s talk of offering him a position on Jupiter Station.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well if you see him, tell him I said congratulations. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer Joe.”

  “And you know Fritz well?”

  “Oh, yeah, Fritz and I?” Vic chuckled. “We go way back, sure.” He moved farther down the bar, wiping the counter studiously with a rag.

  “Tell me,” Zimmerman called, “how is it that you understand who made you, and where you come from?”

  Vic stopped wiping, his eyebrows arched in confusion. “Look, Doc, I know plenty of guys who aren’t exactly sure how to draw their family tree, you know what I’m saying? So my background’s a little unusual.” He winked. “Hey, at least I can sing.”

  Zimmerman walked down to Vic, and leaned over the bar. “It took years to program the EMHs with a functioning understanding of their own holomatricies.” He rolled his eyes. “You should have heard the philosophical moaning of the Mark NX-O-Two when he learned he wasn’t ‘real.’ How could you have gained such self-awareness so easily?”

  “Look, pal,” Vic said. “You want to know how I know that I know what I know? I don’t know. I’m just trying to run a restaurant here. You want philosophy? Go ask Mister Worf. I’ve heard he’s got some interesting ideas about what heaven is like.”

  “And I’ve heard you can appear in other holoprograms at will. Interesting.” Zimmerman tapped his lip with one finger as if in deep thought, his tone full of sarcasm. “Because theoretically, it would be near-impossible for one single component of a ready-made holographic program to remove itself from its program and integrate itself into the program of another, especially while that program is locked and running.”

  Vic offered a shrug. “Hey, what can I say? I’m a bartender, not a scientist.”

  “Ah, but you see,” said Zimmerman, darting forward, “neither is your friend Fritz.”

  “Eh?”

  “With all the hoopla surrounding this Fritz, I thought I’d go see for myself. Everyone says he could revolutionize the holographics industry. ‘He could be the next Lewis Zimmerman,’ they say. But I sat down and questioned him, and the truth is,” Zimmerman leaned close, speaking in a whisper, “he can’t really explain some of the things you do any better than you can.”

  “Is that so?” Vic said, laughing. At the same time, Zimmerman saw that Vic couldn’t help but wipe a holographic bead of sweat from his forehead. Vic’s eyes scanned the room, as if to make sure no one had come in while the two had been talking. “Well, that’s all very fascinating, but I’m sorry, I’ve got to close up now.” As Vic spoke, the lights of the bar slowly went out on their own, until only a bit of dim illumination came from the stage. One by one, the chairs flipped themselves onto the polished wooden tables. “You want to talk more shop, you’re going to have to come back tomorrow.”

  “On the contrary.” Zimmerman reached into his pocket and withdrew a small padd, laying it on the bar with a slap. “This is Starfleet directive 731.9, authorizing me to remove the Vic Fontaine holomatrix to Jupiter Station for further study.”

  Vic picked up the padd, stepping around the bar as he read it. His face glowed in the shine from the screen as he mouthed the words to himself in astonishment.

  “Hey now, pallie,” he said, “wait just a minute.” He slipped his arm around Zimmerman’s shoulders. “I was too abrupt before. Let’s talk a while, see if we can’t work something out.”

  “I think not,” Zimmerman said, shaking him off. “First Starfleet retires the EMH Mark 1, saying they’re ‘too abrasive.’ I spent years working on the Mark 2, and now Starfleet says they’re ‘too skittish.’ Everyone wants to know, ‘Why can’t they be more like that Vic Fontaine program on Deep Space Nine?’ Well, I tell you, I will not be made a fool of!”

  “But Doc,” Vic said, “who’s going to tend my bar if you take me back to Jupiter Station with you? You think Captain Sisko’s going to let you deprive the station of Vic’s?”

  “I’ve thought of that.” In a raised voice, Zimmerman said, “Computer, initiate Emergency Culinary Holographic System.”

  The air between Zimmerman and Vic rippled, and there appeared a perfect replica of Vic Fontaine, from hair to spats. “Hey!” Vic said.

  The second hologram stared straight ahead, nonplussed. “Please state the nature of the culinary emergency.”

  Vic walked over to stare at his duplicate nose-to-nose. “Knock me over with a feather,” Vic said. “He looks like me, but he sounds like you.”

  “I get that a lot,” Zimmerman replied.

  Vic walked a circle around the ECH. “Yeah, but Doc, even you admit I’m not your everyday lightshow.” The duplicate Vic stood at attention, blinking occasionally. “You think anyone’s going to settle for this look-alike when they could have the real deal?”

  “I assure you, the ECH is fully functional. Observe.” Zimmerman raised two fingers to catch the hologram’s attention. “I say, bartender, could you recommend a drink?”

  The ECH blinked once more. “Hey pallie,” it said stiffly, “how about a martini? Will that be vodka or gin? Shaken or stirred? Marinated olives or cocktail onions? Anchovies? Dirty or—”

  “All right already,” Vic interrupted. “Doc, you got to be kidding me with this. Even if I had any interest in going to be poked and prodded by the likes of you, do you think I’d leave my bar in the hands of Robby the Robot over here?” He addressed the hologram again. “Tell me, big shot, what would you do if a Changeling came in here with a broken heart?”

  “Well, pallie, I was talking to Dino and Sammy the other day, and they said—”

  “Enough, enough!” Vic waved a dismissive hand at the hologram. “Sorry, Doc, but you can go find somebody else to play mad scientist with. No way am I leaving, so you can take your ‘pallie’ there and scram.”

  As Vic retreated behind the bar, Zimmerman said, “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.” The doctor took a thin cylindrical data rod from his pocket and waved it toward the bartender. “When I said I had authorization from Starfleet, I meant full authorization. Either I find out what I want to know, or in twelve hours I’ll be on the next shuttle back to Jupiter Station with you riding along in this data chip. I’m the foremost expert on holography across the universe; I can download you with or without your assistance.” He laid the cylinder down on the bar; it rumbled across the wooden surface and stopped with a bump at Vic’s open hand. “Those are your only options.”

  Vic rolled the data rod in his palm. He considered it closely, as if actually picturing himself inside it. Suddenly Vic appeared very serious, and Zimmerman realized just how far Vic’s ever-present smile went toward making the hologram seem years younger than his character actually was. Vic looked old. For an instant, Zimmerman thought he saw the unusually clear hologram lose cohesion, as if he might blink out of existence altogether.

  “You know, Doc,” Vic said finally, “what if I … had some insights that might clear up your confusion? Do you think that might be enough, that you might lay off the kidnapping?”

  Zimmerman regarded Vic carefully. “Possibly. It depe
nds on what you have to say.”

  Vic contemplated the data rod. Between he and Zimmerman, the ECH waited, barely breathing holographic breaths. The bartender snapped his fingers, and his doppelganger disappeared. Zimmerman stared at the empty space in surprise.

  “Tell me, Doc,” Vic said, “can you keep a secret?”

  Even Lewis Zimmerman, the universe’s foremost expert on holography, felt momentarily jarred when the room changed, no longer Vic’s sparkling lounge. Instead, Vic and Zimmerman suddenly stood in a dark, panel-walled room, small lights blinking on every surface. It was Engineering, certainly, but remote, even rougher than the Cardassian-built Ops center of the space station.

  They were not nearly alone. The engineer, O’Brien, sat at a makeshift computer console; standing behind him were Captain Sisko and the Bajoran officer, Kira. Zimmerman recognized them all from the interviews he had conducted about Julian Bashir, but their uniforms were different—both men wore Starfleet uniforms from a few years back, with bright shoulders and gray collars. As was Vic, Zimmerman saw—whereas Zimmerman noticed with surprise that he himself wore a drab uniform with a Bajoran emblem. Most of the time, holoprogram users donned period costumes before they entered the holosuite—that Vic could feign others’ wardrobes using holograms required skills that even Zimmerman wasn’t sure he could code. He felt his right leg tremor.

  O’Brien peered over his shoulder at Sisko. “Ready, Commander.”

  Sisko glanced side-to-side, as if concerned the walls might begin moving around him. “How long do you expect it to take?”

  “If it works, we ought to be able to get all the probe’s files manually transferred to the six isolinear rods in less than sixty seconds.”

  Vic watched every movement, an entranced smile on his face. He mouthed the words as Sisko said, “Let’s do it.”

  O’Brien hesitated only momentarily. “Computer,” he said, “run a level five diagnostic of all power systems on board.”

  “Requested function will require forty-three minutes,” the computer’s female voice replied. “Stand by.”

  Zimmerman tapped his foot. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, just a regular day at the mill.” Vic pulled at the bottom of his uniform-shirt, straightening it. He looked at Zimmerman with feigned boredom. “They’re about three minutes away from a reactor breach.”

  Though Zimmerman knew he was still safely in a holosuite, he couldn’t help but feel slightly ill at the thought of the station exploding around him. O’Brien’s voice startled him. “Crewman,” the engineer said impatiently. “You have your orders.”

  Zimmerman turned to Vic. “Me?”

  Vic gave Zimmerman a little push toward a compartment to O’Brien’s right. “They want you to begin removing the core memory while they distract an errant sentience in the computer,” Vic said. That the level of Vic’s technical vernacular had risen was not lost on Zimmerman. He felt torn between his curiosity and the pain he would experience bending down. Bracing himself against the side of the console, Zimmerman gingerly lowered himself to his knees, and eased open the compartment, slowly beginning to pull out the clear isolinear rods.

  “Computer,” Sisko said, “give me an analysis of all Cardassian traffic along the border.”

  “Processing long range sensors. Stand by.”

  The Trill woman, Jadzia Dax—now deceased, if Zimmerman understood correctly—spoke up from an operations station behind him. As the computer acknowledged her complicated request—purposefully so, Zimmerman surmised—the usually unflappable computer voice began to pause and hiccup, slowly at first, and then with increasing fractures.

  Zimmerman had four of the six isolinear rods in his hands. To his right, Vic spoke, presumably filling Zimmerman’s own role in the holodrama: “Computer, access musical files in the Bajoran master database and create a concert program of Bajoran serenas.”

  Zimmerman dipped forward, watching the slow rise of the isolinear rods. The fifth moved stiffly from the slot, reminding Zimmerman of his own joints when he woke in the morning. He stared at the metallic shine, momentarily hypnotized by the glow. Had time slowed down? He heard the computer hoarsely begin, “Stand—”

  Then the console in front of O’Brien exploded.

  Zimmerman felt the heat sear past him, shutting his eyes instinctively against the blast. He recovered almost immediately, startled more by the sudden silence than anything else. He opened his eyes.

  They stood in an expanse of foggy cloud-white, completely absent of any form or landmark. Vic was back in his tuxedo, Zimmerman in his traveling clothes.

  “Is this the inside of a reactor breach?” Zimmerman’s voice still shook from the surprise of the explosion; he tried to mask it with a note of testiness.

  “Nah.” Vic paced through the mists, his hands in his pockets. There was a slight echo, even as the space was empty. “Just a little place I heard about, conducive to thinking about the past.”

  “And what, pray tell, was the point of that little jaunt, other than blowing up a computer in my face?”

  Zimmerman took a few steps away, and Vic hurried after, stopping just short of putting his arm around the doctor’s shoulders. “Aw, Doc. I was just having a little fun with you there.” Vic walked around the doctor to face him. “That moment’s always had a tender little place in my heart, see?”

  “A tender place?” Zimmerman scoffed. “Your heart?”

  “This probe came through the wormhole; the Chief downloaded its memory core, trying to find out what it was. Except it turned out the thing was alive, and it started playing racquetball with the station’s systems. The Chief and company had to pull the con you just saw in order to get the thing to let go.”

  Zimmerman squinted at Vic. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but faltered. He felt cold, suddenly. Zimmerman started, “What does that—” and paused, staring at Vic with a look of concern. “Go on.”

  “The Chief ended up creating a little bachelor’s pad in the computers for the alien to live in. Only more like a library, because even though it couldn’t go anywhere, it could still access all the data on the station. The Chief would visit it every once in a while, move some files around and such, but eventually with the war and his family, you know how these things go, right? So for a long time it just sat there, watching the world pass by in front of it.”

  “What happened?” Zimmerman’s voice had a flat affect that momentarily startled Vic. “What happened?” Zimmerman repeated.

  “You’ve got to understand,” Vic said. “I mean, all that time, just sitting there, learning about the crew, and then with the war and all … when Julian installed the Vic program, I mean, the matrices were compatible. I’d joined myself to it before I’d even really known what I’d done, honest!”

  “You’re an alien.”

  “Well, an alien-holographic hybrid, I guess you’d say. Formerly a non-biological lifeform. Never simple, is it?”

  “And that’s why you have all these abilities,” Zimmerman said, almost to himself. “You’re an alien. All this time you’ve been an alien, and no one ever suspected.”

  “Well,” Vic smiled, “I ain’t saying it was a flawless switcheroo.”

  He snapped his fingers, and the mists parted, slowly fading as they were replaced, once again, by Vic’s lounge. Now, however, the bar was crowded with people, from tuxedoed men and well-women at all the tables, to a second Vic and his full band up on stage, to a nearly full contingent of Deep Space Nine senior officers standing in the back, where Zimmerman and the current Vic stood off to one side.

  On stage, the band raised their instruments in a loud finish, and the second Vic thanked the audience for attending. Zimmerman looked to his Vic, who nodded his head toward the scene.

  The second Vic shuffled through the restaurant toward the gathering of Deep Space Nine officers, pausing at various tables for a handshake. The hologram had a suave, fluid walk, but from Zimmerman’s outside vantage point, he imagined he detected a s
light uncertainty to Vic’s smile—a hint of nervousness.

  “Vic,” Julian Bashir gushed, “You’re terrific.” The others chimed in with similar compliments.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said the past Vic. “He has pretty smooth pipes for a lightbulb.”

  Next to Zimmerman, the “real” Vic leaned in close. “First time I met ’em all as Vic. Way I figured it, best to go for the direct approach. Let them know something was up, but then give them an easy answer for it.”

  “He knows he’s a hologram?” O’Brien was asking.

  Bashir smiled knowingly. “Felix designed him that way. Thought it would give him the right attitude for the era.”

  “If you’re going to work Vegas in the sixties,” laughed the past Vic, “you better know the score. Otherwise you’re going to look like a Clyde.”

  Just as a discussion began on the definition, exactly, of a “Clyde,” the scene froze. “See?” said the present Vic. “It’s the old bait-and-switch. Offer up a little information, then toss in a confusing Earth-term to change the subject. Trick’s older than my Aunt Sally.”

  “And that was it?” Zimmerman asked. “The so-called greatest minds of Starfleet, fooled by holographic doublespeak?”

  Vic examined the frozen scene for a moment. “You know, the day after, Odo came to see me, and for a minute, I was absolutely sure the jig was up.”

  The crowd faded away, and behind Zimmerman, another Vic faded in, sitting at the bar. Odo stood next to him in a dark brown uniform. This Vic had taken off his jacket, and he had a half-full glass of whiskey in front of him. The room had darkened, and Zimmerman shivered against a sudden chill in the air.

  “Yesterday,” Odo said, his voice raspy, “when my friends and I were here, you seemed to know things.”

  “I’ve been around the block a couple times,” the jacketless Vic replied.