Strange New Worlds X

by Dean Wesley Smith

The ship Taurus had crashed on Vega I. The planet had lifeforms, intelligent, yet low-tech. The vagabond species called Sleaks used wheeled carts to pull their families around. The humans were secluded on a mountain with heavy snowfall. Without food and with increasing desperation, Derek Birkeson, the ship’s captain, made the decision to eat a small band of Sleaks that seemed as desperate as they were. However, the Sleaks were worse off. Two had died already from starvation and the rest of them were weak with hunger. Instead of helping them, Birkeson had elected to kill them and use their flesh to feed his colony. He never told anyone but his first officer where the food had come from.

  As he read the words on the padd, Ransom remembered reading this report in Brianna’s apartment the first time. He felt a loss of vertigo as déjà vu pressed upon him. No longer did this seem like his imagination dreaming up a safe place. No. This was a memory, but so much more powerful because it was immediate and filled the moment as if it were happening now, in real time.

  Sadly, he had to humor Brianna and read the padd. When he had finished reading it the first time, he had told Brianna that there was no excuse for that kind of desperation, that it was unethical to kill other intelligent, indigenous lifeforms. He had also said he’d never do something like that because he was incapable of it.

  A lump formed in his throat and his chest grew heavy. He remembered the choice he had made—to kill nucleogenic lifeforms just to get Equinox home.

  Brianna didn’t know the man who stood before her in this relived moment and all he had gone through.

  He handed data padd back to her. “No excuse for what they’ve done, no matter how desperate the situation.”

  She took the data pad and considered him. “You’d never do something like that, Rudy.”

  When he tried to smile, it came out painful and hollow. It must have showed for Brianna’s face fell.

  “Who knows what I might do in that situation,” he said. He didn’t want to have this discussion with her. What had they talked about this night he lived once before?

  He sipped the wine and glanced at the fire dancing on piled wood. On the mantel there was a picture of him and Brianna standing together in Golden Gate Park, the miniature grandfather clock that had belonged to Brianna’s great great grandfather, and the lucite gem from his contact with the Yridians that he had given to Brianna. Everything familiar. Everything the same. Only he had changed and he could not get over it.

  “Rudy, is something wrong?”

  The wine was heavy and immediately went to work, loosening the tightness of his regret and guilt. This time when he turned to her, his smile came gently, easily.

  “No,” he said, and to steer the conversation even farther away, he added, “What are you researching?”

  She ignored his question and set her glass down on the coffee table. Then she did the same with his glass. When she slipped her arms around him, he wrapped his arms around her. She considered him again, looking him in the eyes, searching. He felt like he was under a microscope, but it was a warm, pleasant feeling.

  “Now, what is wrong with you tonight?” she asked.

  “Tired,” he tried.

  “You’re acting odd.”

  “I’m fine, Bri,” he said.

  “When will you be back from mission?” she asked.

  Judging from the digital calendar on the mantel, he’d be lost in the Delta Quadrant in mere days. He felt regret that he couldn’t change the past here.

  He kissed Bri’s forehead and said, “Not soon enough.”

  Hours later, with Brianna sound asleep next to him, he found that when one’s visual cortex was engaged, sleep was impossible. He felt no fatigue and he wasn’t tired. He couldn’t close his eyes. In fact, he realized, he hadn’t blinked since putting on the stimulator.

  He listened to Brianna’s calm, rhythmic breathing, and felt envious. Instead of lying in bed and staring at a ceiling he hadn’t thought about in six years, he got up.

  He knew where he was going—out the front door and onto the beach again if he could. And if he was lucky, he’d find Seven there again. He wanted to know what all of this meant. He should have been dead by now, engulfed within the explosion of the Equinox.

  A light came on in the foyer, above the front door, as he approached. The light shined on Moby, the huge mass of wooly hair sleeping on the floor, blocking the door. He raised his head when he heard Ransom coming. The dog opened his mouth and said, “The problem isn’t with the synaptic stimulator.”

  He stopped and grabbed the wall, staring at the dog. Things definitely weren’t right.

  Moby’s tail began to wag, the thick tail pounding loudly against the door. He stared at Moby, wondering if he had heard the dog correctly. Moby didn’t say another thing and Ransom wasn’t in the mood to ask him to repeat it.

  “Excuse me, Moby,” he said as he moved for the door.

  Moby gathered his legs up under him, a slow, cumbersome set of moves for such a large dog, and sauntered into the living room.

  Ransom whispered, “The problem isn’t with the synaptic stimulator.”

  Then he felt it was true, as if his subconscious had sent him a message through Moby. There hadn’t been a problem with the synaptic stimulator before encountering Voyager, so there was some truth to the notion. And he couldn’t eliminate the stimulator yet as the source of the problem until he gathered more information.

  Information he’d get outside Brianna’s front door.

  The door opened and revealed the alien beach and Seven stood with her back to the rolling, tumbling waves as if she had never left.

  He took long strides, stepping through the thick sand, his arms swinging widely back and forth. The ocean wind blew in his face, smelling like spice, and the wind howled as it whipped over his ears.

  Seven, or not-Seven, looked at him impassively.

  “Who are you?” he asked when he reached her. “You’re not Seven.”

  “You are correct,” she said.

  “Again: who are you?”

  “I will show you,” she said and touched him behind the ear.

  Seven and the ocean and sky behind her flickered, and he found himself aboard the Equinox again, the droning sound now loud in his ears. Columns of thick smoke that had been rolling across the ceiling and floor in engineering were frozen. The smoke looked like cotton or snow, something he could just brush away. A bulk-head with other tumbling debris and dust hung in midair between the ceiling and the floor.

  He was paralyzed and couldn’t remove his hands from the armrests of the chair. He could only move his eyes around inside their sockets. His heart didn’t seem to beat and he felt trapped and claustrophobic. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. He was suffocating.

  Seven flickered, her image vanishing, and in her place floated a specter-like species with no legs and at least four arms. Its face had two large black eyes and a bulbous head, and looking into its eyes, Ransom thought they held compassion. Its body was covered in a blue-gray skin that looked delicate.

  He looked back at the frozen-falling bulkhead. One corner had ticked closer to the engineering floor and the surrounding falling debris turned to reflect light from the blowing warp core.

  Then he was back on the beach again with the droning sound hidden behind the sounds of crashing waves and the wind blowing across his ears. Not-Seven removed her hand from behind his ear and he staggered back. His heart hammered inside his chest and he felt the urge to fall to his knees to get his bearings back.

  “The human mind doesn’t process fast enough for you to see us,” she said. “However, when you are in a perilous situation or in the moment before your death, your mind speeds up and the perception of passing time slows. This is the only way you can see and interact with us.”

  He looked up at not-Seven and said, “I was paralyzed.”

  “Yes,” she said. “To study your mind at an increased rate of speed, we isolated the mind by injecting a paralytic. The synaptic stimulator added an interactive i
nterface.”

  “Why the disguise?”

  “We only became the person your mind came up with and we initiated contact after you attached the stimulator on your way to certain death.”

  Being a test subject infuriated him, but when he thought about those nucleogenic lifeforms and what he had done to them he became chagrined—how fitting at the moment of his death he had become a test subject for another species’ purpose.

  “I had planned to die in peace,” he said.

  “We have no plans to save your life.”

  He smiled at the species’ pure and blunt truth. He was also struck with the continual use of the plural pronoun as if the species shared a hive mind. “May I be left alone?”

  “Yes, we can obey your wishes. Understand that we are offering you something close to immortality. We can increase the speed of your working mind and slow time even further. Then you can explore all areas of your life behind other doors.”

  Seven suddenly focused on something behind him.

  He heard Brianna say, “Rudy?”

  When he turned he found Brianna walking though the sand. Her door stood open with Moby at the threshold.

  She looked distressed. “What are you doing out here, Rudy?”

  For no logical reason at all, he’d expected it was impossible for Brianna to walk out of her apartment and onto this alien beach. In fact, she didn’t seem surprised. As she walked toward him, her concern was with him, never taking her eyes off of him. The beach didn’t matter to her. The missing San Francisco night didn’t matter to her—it was all perfectly normal for her.

  “Rudy,” she grabbed his hand and pulled, “what are you doing in the middle of the street during the middle of the night?”

  He staggered and let her walk him back to the apartment. She hung onto his arm as if he might get lost otherwise.

  “I’m in the middle of the street,” he repeated to her.

  “Yes,” she said impatiently. She gave him a sideways glance.

  “I’m not doing well, Bri,” he said.

  “Let’s get you inside,” she said.

  They waited as Moby turned his bulk around and ambled further into the apartment. Brianna walked Ransom to the couch where he knocked his shin against the corner of the marble coffee table. Ransom grimaced and groaned, and collapsed on the couch.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  The pain was real. It amazed him how strong the mind was to create this illusion.

  Did he want this illusion?

  All he had wanted was a peaceful death.

  “You’re not fit for the mission,” she said as she removed his boots. “You weren’t walking in your sleep. Unless you put your boots on in your sleep.”

  “I wasn’t sleepwalking,” he said.

  She looked at him suspisciously.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?” she said.

  “You think I’m leaving on the Equinox tomorrow,” he said.

  “Not the way you’re acting, you’re not.”

  He sighed. “Yes. But if it wasn’t for my condition, you’d fully expect me to leave tomorrow.”

  “That’s right.”

  “In a matter of days the Equinox is going to be lost in the Delta Quadrant and there’s nothing I can do because this isn’t time travel.”

  She touched his arm. “Rudy.”

  “This is all in my head, Bri.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  She was right and he knew it. The conversation suddenly seemed pointless and he felt fractured, pieces of him scattered throughout the universe and untethered from time and space.

  Yet he had no doubts about his past, crimes and all. The Delta Quadrant had been a dark and horrible place. It had brought out the worse in him.

  She sat close to him, her knee touching his thigh. He grabbed her hand and said, “Listen to me, Bri.”

  The part of him that longed to get home back in the Alpha Quadrant raised its head and screamed. That’s what this was all about. It would be easy to pretend his body didn’t sit in a chair on board the Equinox heading for certain death. It would also be easy to live here with Brianna and never leave. Of course it would be all in his imagination, living days or months or years—who knew?—but there was a romantic, carefree joy to the idea.

  All he had wanted was a peaceful death.

  She squeezed his hand. “Go on, Rudy.”

  Another part of him, in an equally loud voice, raised its head and claimed he didn’t deserve this last shot at paradise, a last look at a life lived, and perhaps to linger there.

  When Bri squeezed his hand again, he said, “I have a confession to make.”

  Her face clouded as if all the blood had drained from her face. “You’re scaring me.”

  “I have killed aliens, using them as fuel in an attempt to get the Equinox home,” he said.

  Her brow furrowed and with much tension in her face she said, “When? In your sleep?”

  She released his hand and pushed it away. “This is just ridiculous, Rudy.”

  “I need to go back out, Bri.” He said.

  “In the street?”

  He thought about it and nodded. From her point of view it was the street.

  “I need for you to know this. I didn’t think I was capable of it until I lost over half of my crew trying to get them home. We were hungry. We were alone. Like Birkeson I made an unethical choice. I used lifeforms for fuel to get us home.”

  She threw her hands in the air and looked at the ceiling. “Oh, why are you telling me this?” Then she gave him a mournful look. “You’re here now.”

  He stood and her eyes followed him. “The Equinox never made it back. Warp core overload.”

  She gave him a hurtful smile and grabbed his hand. “I still love you, Rudy. Don’t go back out there.”

  She forgave him. Of course she would. His mind would be comfortable with that and he could just stay in her apartment. Around the room he saw the photograph of the two of them on the mantel, the empty bottle of wine, and Moby sitting in the corner observing all of this. This had been his life and it had been lost long ago. He couldn’t go home again, not even in his imagination.

  He looked down at Brianna and she pulled lightly on his arm.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  His arm slipped from her grip and her face became pinched in frustration. “Rudy!”

  He walked to the door with Moby at his side. The dog looked up at him and said, “Perhaps someday she’ll learn what you had done.”

  Then Moby let out a deep “Woof.”

  Well, he was confident Voyager would get back to Earth. When he reached the door, it opened to the beach again. He ran to the lone figure on the beach.

  “Rudy!” Brianna called.

  Not-Seven with her relentless cold stare watched him approach.

  “I wish to be alone,” he said. “There’s nothing I want to relive in my past, not behind any door.”

  “Come back inside!” Brianna called.

  Not-Seven nodded. “Very well.”

  “Rudy! Talk to me!”

  He refused to turn around and look at Brianna. Her voice was so real to his mind, as well as her pain. His heart broke to hear it.

  Not-Seven stared at him.

  “Go away,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

  Then she was gone, vanishing like the sky had sucked her up.

  Brianna’s voice picked up, louder, and she said, “Come back….”

  Suddenly she was cut off.

  When he turned, the doors were gone and the rock wall loomed before him. The silence was deafening. His heart broke again, sharper and deeper.

  “Goodbye, Bri,” he said.

  He sat down on a rock and stared at the sea. Something crashed in engineering, but he ignored it, focusing on the horizon.

  The Equinox shuddered toward certain destruction.

  And Captain Rudolph Ransom waited for, and welcomed, oblivion.

  A Taste of Spam
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  L. E. Doggett

  L. E. Doggett lives in the Central San Joaquin Valley of California, the small city of Clovis to be exact. He lives with his wife of twenty-eight years and a daughter of seventeen years, along with a little dynamo of a dog they adopted and a cat that adopted them. The family attends a dynamic, hopeful church. Louis is a blue collar worker with a collage education. He got interested in Star Trek when he and his dad watched the original Star Trek when it first aired. The series inspired daydreams that had him acting like a crew member with the same duties as Chekov. At times he thought he was born two hundred years too early. Now he is an aspiring prowriter (he has been a non-pro writer for quite a while), hoping this story is the first of a lifelong series of sells. He also thanks his wife, Dean for his advice to writers, and Margaret Clark, and Paula Block.

  “N eed a face-lift? Wrinkles removed, or need your natural wrinkles redone? Come to the Beautiful Being Institute. We do beautifying surgery for multi-species. Whatever your species considers young-looking, we can do …”

  “Get that, that … advertisement off of the view screen!”

  Captain Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager did not raise her voice, but everyone on the bridge knew they had better do their best to carry out her order, or they were in big trouble.

  Ensign Harry Kim standing behind her and to her right, glanced at the view screen that made up the wall of the front of the bridge.

  Few of the bridge crew heard his uncharacteristic, “Damn,” under his breath, as his hands flew across the control board he was standing behind. He pressed keys like a squirrel on uppers, but nothing he did would delete the ad. It was the latest in a series of such ads that had been plaguing them for the last few days. It was like the computer didn’t know that there anything there to delete.

  A second later the image of the alien building disappeared, along with the announcer’s voice. The stars that had been showing before the ad started were again showing.

  “Good work, Ensign.”

  “That wasn’t my doing, Captain. I think it just finished the message.”

  “That means it will be back.”

  “Most likely, Captain, along with new messages,” stated Commander Tuvok.