Star Trek - DS9 - Warped

by Неизвестный

  "You seem to be doing an adequate job of it," said Sisko dryly. "I'd like to remind you that I have managed to keep abreast of your and Dax's research efforts, at least until these latest developments."

  "Well, yes . . . of course. I didn't mean—"

  "And if there were time, I'd be able to tell you a few things about Dax's research." He studied the chief medical officer through his arched fingers. "I take it that the notes you found regarding the plans Dax had made, were based upon your previous discoveries regarding the CI modules' interference effect? I'm already aware that Dax previously used the effect to achieve a temporary separation of her symbiont and humanoid neurosystems."

  "Precisely, Commander. She had gone back to what had been observed the first time that she had experienced the CI module's effects, when we went into the altered holosuite together. The processing lag between the humanoid cortex and that of her symbiont was immediately apparent, mani­festing itself as a severe nausea and disorientation. Basically, it's a failure of the CI technology to coordinate its inductive force upon a shared consciousness; McHogue apparently didn't have Trills in mind when he programmed his holosuite modifications."

  "I recall from the report you filed that Dax found a way around that problem."

  Bashir nodded. "By using the CI modules' interference effect for her own purposes, Dax was able to separate the components of her dual consciousness—and that was what enabled her to enter into the CI module's illusory sense-world, and for her to move and operate within its field."

  "Perhaps it would have been better if Dax hadn't come up with that little maneuver." Odo spoke up. "Or if at least she had refrained from using it again."

  The doctor had glanced over his shoulder at Odo, then turned back toward Sisko. "I'm sure that Dax felt she had come up with an entirely rational course of action, given the rather unusual circumstances in which we've found ourselves." A defensive tone entered Bashir's voice. "A thorough review of her last research notes—"

  Sisko turned a hand outward to interrupt. "Dr. Bashir, I've known Dax a great deal longer than you have, in both Jadzia's host body and his previous one. You don't need to convince me that Dax had perfectly sound reasons for whatever's been done. At this point, however, no one has explained to me exactly what that is."

  "Yes, of course—" Bashir pressed his hands against the arms of the chair. "As I was saying: Dax found a way to separate the symbiont's consciousness from that of the humanoid host body, and she had recent experience of doing just that, from our research into the CI module's effects. What she had done before, though, was to merely have the symbiont's consciousness removed from the merged state, so that the humanoid consciousness could experience the effect of the CI technology upon its neurosystem unimpeded by any processing lag. What Dax had done then was to establish a temporary state of dominance by one component of her shared consciousness over the other; the symbiont essentially became, for the duration of our time inside the altered holosuite, passive and without sensory input or awareness of the humanoid host's perceptions and actions." Bashir leaned forward, his voice edging up. "What Dax has done now, according to the notes she left behind, is to attempt achieving a parallel consciousness, with each half of her conjoined mind operating simultaneously and equally."

  "Can that be done?"

  Bashir shrugged. "I can't say—it certainly goes beyond the limits of my knowledge about Trill neurophysiology. No conjoined Trill would have tried to do such a thing before now, because there had never been a situation where such a state was called for. There would have been no advantage achieved, inasmuch as a Trill's shared consciousness invariably has a synergistic nature, resulting in an effective intelligence greater than the sum of its parts. For Dax to sacrifice that synergism, and all the strengths it gives her, only points up the unique nature of what she's undertaken."

  "And that is?" Sisko leaned back in his chair. Only the pressure of his fingertips against each other betrayed the impatience he felt.

  "As I understand it from her notes, Commander, what Dax has attempted is to use the CI modules' interference effect to split her joined consciousness in such a way that one component—the symbiont half—goes under the influence of the CI module and experiences its effects; for all practical purposes, the symbiont's neurosystem would perceive the hallucinatory environment that McHogue has created. The other part of Dax's consciousness, the humanoid host that is Jadzia, would not be a passive observer of the symbiont's perceptions and actions. Do you see what I'm getting at? Dax found a way to go beyond the hallucinated world. One neurosystem undergoes the CI technology's effects, and thereby both components of the Trill consciousness achieve entry into McHogue's private universe—but once there, the other neurosystem uses the interference effect to force a division from its partner, so that it can perceive the actual raw data stream being put out by the CI module. It's as if you were watching images on your computer panel, and you then shifted focus to the actual screen itself instead. Or even beyond that: it would be like studying the screen with a high-powered microscope, so that you could actually see each individual pixel that makes up the digitized image. That's what Dax set out to do, only on a much greater scale, with the CI technology's entire sensory bandwidth."

  "But if she could do that . . ." Sisko nodded slowly. "I think I'm beginning to see."

  "What everyone who has gone into one of the altered holosuites has discovered—including yourself, Commander—is that McHogue himself is the basic substratum of that illusory world. All of us have agreed that the experience is like stepping inside his head. Even when he doesn't make an appearance, when you're not directly aware of him—he's still there." Bashir hunched his shoulders, as though from an involuntary reaction to his own memory of the altered holosuite. "He's made himself into the omnipresent deity of that universe; that's what makes it so essentially claustropho­bic in there, no matter how far off the horizon might seem to be. Every brick, every leaf on a tree is McHogue; there's no getting away from him in there. Except for the way Dax had discovered."

  "A shift in focus . . . like standing to one side of the data stream . . ."

  "Exactly, Commander. Once the symbiont's neurosystem had locked onto the CI module's effects and gotten Dax into that hallucinatory world, she planned on separating her humanoid consciousness away from what the symbiont perceived—and thus go behind the hallucination. And direct­ly into McHogue's consciousness."

  "I can imagine," said Sisko, "the actual reason why Dax didn't consult me about taking this course of action. It wasn't a matter of time running out. It was that she felt I would never authorize such a risky undertaking."

  From behind Bashir's chair, Odo regarded the commander. "And would you have?"

  "I don't know. . . ." He wondered for a moment. Some­thing had gone terribly wrong with Dax's plan; but without the virtue of that hindsight, it was impossible to tell what he would have allowed his old friend to do. Sisko drew himself back to the situation at hand. "It's not important," he said, shaking his head. "Right now, all we can be sure of is that somehow Dax has wound up not just mentally, or perceptually or however you want to put it, but physically in McHogue's world. She's down there in Moagitty at this moment." His hands drew apart and became fists. "How could it have happened? How did McHogue do it?"

  "We seem to have underestimated our adversary's powers." Odo stepped closer to the desk, turning his gaze from Sisko to Bashir, then back again. "That's been our mistake from the beginning. We assumed that the essential transformations caused by McHogue were from the real—this universe around us—to the unreal, the universe that he had created. We were never prepared for the unreal to become real."

  Bashir chewed at one of his knuckles. "That's unfortunately true. And Dax, who of all of us should have been able to see what was happening, made that same mistake. She had left herself an escape hatch, in case anything went wrong: the CI module's effects were a function of her physical proximity to it. All she had to do was take a step backw
ard from the lab bench where the module was situated, and she would have been out of reach of the field generated by the CI technology—rather like stepping from one world to another. The symbiont would have been able to assume sufficient motor control of the host body, to do that much. But something else happened, that Dax hadn't foreseen."

  The words Odo had spoken now stirred in the commander's memory. "The unreal . . . becoming real . . ."

  Biting his lip, Bashir nodded. "That seems to have been the case here. Somehow, the powers that McHogue has gained through the CI technology have achieved reality in this universe. Once Dax had stepped into his hallucinatory world, McHogue was able to reach into the station, as though with a transporter beam, and remove Dax's actual physical being to Moagitty. We have the tracer signal locked on Dax's comm badge to confirm it."

  "What shall we do, Commander?" Odo's voice reached again into Sisko's brooding thoughts. "We need to make a decision. . . ."

  He didn't reply. Without asking for any more information from Bashir, any more data from the research notes that Dax had left behind, he knew what she had been attempting to do with her risky course of action. To go beyond the CI module's illusory reality, into the one beyond it . . . into McHogue's head, the dark labyrinth of his mind, stripped of all sensory artifice, the bright-lit summer world and the empty twilight city alike. Impossible to guess what Dax would find there. But what she hoped to find, Sisko knew, was the solution, the cure to the insanity that had engulfed both Deep Space Nine and Bajor.

  A line from an ancient folktale, one that had been read to him when he had been a child on Earth, echoed inside him. To go I know not where . . . to fetch I know not what . . .

  That had been the mission that Dax had given herself. He had it easier; he already knew where he was going, and what he would bring back.

  "Gentlemen—" Sisko roused himself from his silence, as though emerging from the darkness that had sealed over him. He looked at the faces of the two officers before him. "I have made my decision. I'm going after her."

  Do you see it?

  "No . . ." She shook her head. "Not yet . . ."

  You have to open your eyes, chided the wordless voice of the symbiont, from that place both deep inside her and extending through the tips of her fingers. You'll have to open them sometime.

  The symbiont had already told her not to worry, that it would be all right; that there was nothing to be afraid of. She had come here, to this false world, as a single entity, one conjoined mind. The decision, the plan, had been made by Dax with no division between one part of her consciousness and the other. To carry out that plan would require the ending of that state—for a time, a small death, such as the one she'd suffered when she had gone into the altered holosuite.

  "It's you I worry about." Dax spoke aloud, though she knew she didn't need to for the symbiont to hear her. When she had first experienced the CI technology's effects, she'd had no personal knowledge of their soul-destroying evil; what she knew had come from her observations of its victims, such as poor Ahrmant Wyoss.

  You needn't.

  That had been part of her inner deliberations as well: which half of her joined consciousness should stay locked upon the illusory environment generated by the CI module, and which half should go on to whatever lay beyond that false world. The symbiont was over three centuries old; it had seen and experienced things that its current humanoid host only knew of through their shared memories. So much accumulated wisdom gave the symbiont a defensive armor against the toxic illusions; its soul, for lack of a more scientific term, had developed beyond the mortal concepts of desire and fear that McHogue preyed upon.

  The nature of the symbiont made the decision simple enough, if no less intimidating for the humanoid part of Dax. The CI module's world was at least a known evil, one that had become familiar to her through the time in the altered holosuite and the computer simulations she and Bashir had been able to run with its programming. What lay beyond that was the unknown—though from what she and the others aboard DS9 had already discovered about McHogue, she knew better than to expect it to be anything pleasant.

  Child, even in this world, time is passing. The symbiont had already withdrawn partway from the joined consciousness, enough that it could enter into an unspoken dialogue with its young partner. Time that is not yours to waste.

  "I know. . . ." Jadzia's voice sounded lost to her, as though the world into which she stepped was so wide, the horizon so distant, that no echo could return to her ear. The cold wind she could feel touching her arms carried the words away.

  She opened her eyes.

  The world she had seen once before—McHogue's world, Ahrmant Wyoss's world; the world that held a weeping boy in a dark cellar, and was held in turn by each tear and drop of his blood—stretched on all sides of her. The dark, empty city, the crumbling walls, the bricks wet as if an inanimate fever were sweating from them; shadows that bled into one another, that would not flee even if a guttering flame were held against them . . .

  And this was where she would be divided in two, the CI modules' interference effect forcing her humanoid neurosystem apart from that of the symbiont inside her. As though she were about to leave part of herself behind—the symbiont would be alone as well, waiting for its humanoid half to return.

  "And what if I don't come back?" She couldn't stop herself from saying it. There was always that possibility, and no way of knowing what world lay beyond this one.

  Then I'll go on waiting, came the symbiont's reply. But I won't leave you behind.

  That was as much comfort as she could expect. And as much as she needed. She drew in a deep breath of the hallucinated world's night-heavy air.

  Go on . . .

  Already, the symbiont's wordless voice was farther away; she had to strain to hear it. The interference was already beginning to set in. The gap between the symbiont's neurosystem and the single one with which she had been born was widening, a space measurable both in microns and centuries. Don't worry about me; I'll be fine.

  She smiled at the small joke, the way the symbiont said goodbye as if she were running an errand to another part of the station.

  "What'll you do while I'm gone?" That was her joke in return.

  Its reply was just faintly discernible to her; the image of a pair of shoulders shrugging formed in her thoughts. Maybe I'll take a nap.

  The visualized incongruity was even more humorous; she found it hard to imagine what the symbiont's shoulders would be like, if it were to have any.

  Go on now . . .

  A whisper; all the efforts at alleviating her fears were over. Jadzia let the connection between herself and the symbiont come to an end, a thread drawn down to its final atoms and then broken. She was alone.

  And in darkness.

  The chill breeze she had felt against her skin had disappeared, along with even the faintest light that had seeped around the night world's buildings. All sensory processing of the CI module's effects had been taken over by the symbiont's neurosystem. Leaving her cortex, the humanoid part of what had been their shared consciousness, to pass beyond the CI data stream.

  A voice spoke inside her again, but this time it was her own. Go I know not where . . .

  She could feel it happening. She had moved through two worlds now, as though her steps could carry her across one universe after another. The real world, and that which would take its place. If it could, if she could not find a way to stop it.

  There was no time here, so Jadzia could not tell how long the process took. The work of an instant, or centuries—she had counted upon the innate hunger of the senses, their constant searching desire for stimuli, their inability to tolerate a perfect lightless, silent vacuum.

  A spark moved at the center of her vision, then twisted into a spiral, swelling and multiplying in fractal-like patterns, consuming darkness. Transforming it into raw color, then shade and form.

  The infinitely small and busy machinery, the creating of another reality, surged
to the peripheries of her sight, then were gone. She saw a high-ceilinged, white corridor in front of her.

  And someone waiting. Who smiled.

  "How good of you to drop in," said McHogue. "I've been expecting you."

  "It's impossible. There's no way it can be done."

  Sisko turned a hard gaze toward his chief medical officer. "I didn't ask for your estimate of a rescue mission's chances of success. But since you've seen fit to speak up on the matter, I'll allow you to elaborate."

  "There's not much to say." Seated before the desk, Bashir spread his hands apart. "The only operational CI module we had available to us, the one that we were working with in the research lab, has self-destructed; the damage to the compo­nents is so thorough that even O'Brien wouldn't be able to patch it back together. Without that, we have no entry to the artificial world that McHogue's created—a world that he's somehow been able to bring even further into reality."

  "I had no intention of going after Dax by placing myself under the CI effects again." Sisko reached over and activated the computer panel on his desk. "It seems obvious now that whatever reality McHogue created with the altered holosuites has now become overlaid with his personal domain of Moagitty—why else would we have been able to trace Dax's comm badge to the surface of Bajor?" He made a few taps at the panel's keyboard, then leaned back to study the information that had appeared. "I'm surprised the solution doesn't seem more obvious to you, Doctor. I'm going down to Bajor myself, to find Dax and fetch her back here." He pressed his own comm badge. "Sisko to Ops; have a runabout prepared for immediate departure."

  Standing beside Bashir, Odo slowly shook his head. "While I acknowledge the gravity of the circumstances that prompt your decision, Commander, I feel compelled to express my reservations regarding it. There's been a temporary decrease in the severity of the spatial disturbances emanating from the planet, but all indications from the monitoring crew is that the next wave to hit the station will be considerably stronger—and we have no ability to determine when that will be; it could be anywhere from seconds to hours from now. The impact of the shock waves has been sufficient to cause extensive structural damage to DS9; a runabout caught in that kind of flux field could be crushed like an egg."