“Harry, would you care to explain?” Janeway asked. She would’ve tried it herself, but the theory had too much in common with temporal physics, and she could do without the headache.
“Yes, Captain. Councillor Rosh.” Harry rose. “Well, a parallel universe is just another place—a physical realm that’s somewhere else in higher-dimensional space, with its own separate laws of physics, its own separate stars and planets—or not, as the case may be,” he said, nodding to Boothby, “its own distinct inhabitants and history. But an alternate timeline is just another quantum facet of our own universe. It’s physically the same place, but with a different history.”
Rosh was still confused, and Harry tried to clarify. “It’s like…are you familiar with the Schroedinger’s Cat paradox?”
“I believe the Vostigye equivalent is Kamornen’s Box,” Janeway interposed.
“Ah, yes. The animal that’s both alive and dead.”
“Essentially,” Harry said. “Quantum physics says a single particle can be in multiple different states at once. A radioactive atom, say, can be both decayed and undecayed. But set up a switch so that the decay releases a poison capsule, put it in a box with a cat—and is the cat alive or dead? Or is there a way it can be both at once? The paradox is whether a classical object like a cat can behave like a quantum particle.
“The thing Schroedinger overlooked, and Kamornen understood, is that the cat is made up of individual particles too, so it’s a quantum object just the same. Each of its particles reacts to both states of the radioactive atom, and is in two simultaneous states as a result.
“But for a while, the question was: how do all the different states of those different particles add up to the reality we see? One theory was that they all averaged out to a single large-scale, classical state, similar to the way the individual motions of the atoms in the air around us average out to a single temperature and pressure. Supposedly, that’s what makes a multiple quantum state seem to collapse into one when you measure it, the cat to be either alive or dead when you open the box—the particle’s state doesn’t really collapse, but the measuring device or the cat averages out to just one state, so it looks like the particle is in either one state or the other.
“But the other theory was that the different states aligned and reinforced each other in what’s called a coherent superposition, so that the whole macroscopic system—the atom, the poison, the cat, the scientist, and everything that interacted with them—ended up in two distinct states at once, each isolated from the other, effectively splitting the universe into two different realities: both made up of the same particles, but experiencing different histories from that point on. When you measure a particle, it still looks like it collapsed into one state, because you can only see the state that aligns with the timeline you’re in. One copy of you sees a live cat, the other sees a dead cat.
“Now, the problem with the second idea,” Harry went on, “was that it’s hard to get so many particles’ quantum states to align like that. You can create a coherent superposition made of a large ensemble of particles, but just the general jostling it receives from the particles around it can cause that coherence to break up and collapse into a single average state. Like a sand castle in a sandstorm—you can build the sand into two or more different towers, but when the storm hits, they’ll collapse and blend together again. Now try doing it with a whole universe’s worth of particles.”
Rosh frowned. “But we know alternate timelines do exist.”
“That’s right. We now know that when a coherent superposition forms, the two macroscopic states shift into slightly different subspace phases, giving them enough stability to survive as separate realities. That’s also how two temporal copies of the same person can interact as though they were physically separate beings—essentially the subspace phase shift splits their bodies’ quantum waveforms in two.”
Rosh held up his hands. “This is all intriguing, but what does it have to do with Mister, uh, Boothby’s presence?”
“Like Boothby said, fluidic space doesn’t have alternate timelines,” Harry went on. “We believe it’s because their universe is so much denser than ours. Any particle existing in a multiple quantum state just interacts with too many other particles right from the start. The ‘sandstorm’ is so heavy that you can’t build the sand castle in the first place, and so the subspace phase shift never happens. Our universe is constantly splitting into alternate quantum states, alternate histories, but in Boothby’s universe, it all averages out to a single classical state.”
“So there we were,” Boothby said, “minding our own business, when a big ugly cube showed up and started talking about assimilating us. Naturally, we fought off the infection. And when more of them came through, we decided to take the fight out to them. Imagine our surprise when some of our troops came back—and then came back again.”
“They were duplicated,” Janeway clarified. “While they were in our universe, something happened that created a new timeline, splitting them into duplicate selves. But their home universe didn’t undergo the same split. So both sets of duplicates returned to the same reality, shifted just enough in phase that they couldn’t collapse together anymore.”
“Remarkable,” Rosh said.
“That wasn’t the word we used for it,” Boothby said. “If we normally used words, that is.” He cleared his throat; no matter what, the alien remained in his Boothby character. According to what he’d told Janeway, the infiltrators had practiced their human personas so long and hard that they had become second nature to them. “The thing you have to understand is that our universe is a carefully balanced whole. We’re not like you, with all these big empty voids keeping you insulated. What’s bad for one part is bad for everybody. That’s why we have to keep our universe pure, to fight so hard against contamination. It’s the same reason your body has to kill off infections. Maybe you’ve got nothing personal against the germs, maybe they’re entitled to live off in a pond somewhere, but once they get inside you and start to multiply, it’s kill or be killed.”
“And that’s your species’s function?” Rosh challenged. “To kill?”
Boothby threw him a sour look. “We’re the brains of the outfit. Our job’s to take care of the place. Tend the flowers, water the trees…trim the weeds. I guess you could say we’re the groundskeepers.” He smirked. “Got to be easier to say than ‘Species 8472.’
“But we Groundskeepers are part of the whole, too. And it’s all about the balance. We all have our own jobs to do, and we all get our fair share of the pie. A nice, neat, orderly system.” He fidgeted. “Or it was, until some of us started coming back beside ourselves. Now there are too many of us. And the more your universe keeps splitting off new timelines, the worse it gets on our side. There are three, six, sometimes dozens of each individual wrestling over the same job, the same place in society, the same share of food and resources. All with the same perfectly good claim to it, since they used to be the same individual.”
He fell quiet, as though he could say no more. Janeway was surprised it had been this easy for him; the first time, he could barely get the words out, and the Doctor had related most of the tale. Apparently this situation was a profound embarrassment to them. They prided themselves on their strength, their fitness to defend their realm, and the weakness of being divided into conflicting selves was intolerable. “The weak will perish”—that was the telepathic message Kes had gotten from them at first contact. It had been as much a justification as a threat—they saw this universe as the source of their own weakness, and they needed to prove their strength by conquering it or else die to pave the way for a stronger copy of themselves.
Boothby and his fellow “Groundskeepers” had not told any of this to the alternate Voyager crew they had encountered, finding it too shameful. The only reason he was confessing it now was because the Doctor had discovered it when he visited fluidic space. Apparently, the Groundskeepers who had approached him had suspected him of being
not a spy, but another duplicate soldier returning from a branching universe, another cell in a growing cancer. They had been surprised by what they had actually found, though they had quickly adapted and neutralized his self-destruct mechanism before he could trigger it. But apparently Boothby had come to some kind of peace accord with the other Voyager, and he had intervened on the Doctor’s behalf.
The Doctor, his secret-agent self now fully reintegrated into his neural matrix, picked up the story. “Essentially it’s resulted in a civil war over there. Although it’s not brother against brother, it’s self against self. Duplicate selves are fighting, even killing each other over the right to claim their place in the social order. Only the strongest copy gets to survive. And the leaders are endorsing this…extroverted suicide because they think it’s the only way to resolve the crisis. Except the number of duplicates keeps multiplying.”
“Then it seems the solution is simple,” Rosh said. “Keep out of our universe.”
“It’s not that easy,” Boothby said. “We still have to fight off the Borg. And remember, we’re fighting Borg from more than one timeline. Every time your universe splits, the invasion gets worse on our end. We have to take the fight to your universe, no matter the cost.”
“What about your attacks on the Voth? On us?” Rosh demanded.
“Keep your shorts on, son, I’m getting there. Now, as I was saying. Things might not be quite so bad for us if not for you clever people on Voyager. In one of the timelines, you not only made an alliance with the Borg against us, you gave them the nanoprobe weapon you developed. They started hitting us damn hard after that, and we had to fight like nobody’s business just to survive. Eventually,” he said solemnly, “we had to set off a string of Omega molecules in that timeline and the few new ones that had branched off of it. Blew up half the Borg, stranded the rest at sublight. Wasn’t much fun for the rest of the people in this part of the quadrant, I’d imagine.”
Janeway stared in horror, while the others just looked confused. “What’s an Omega molecule?” Harry asked.
“That’s a question for another time,” Janeway said, her tone commanding him to drop it now. Delta Coalition or no, she still intended to return to Starfleet one day and thus remained bound by her Starfleet oaths—including the one commanding strict secrecy about the most destructive force ever discovered.
“Now, there was another group of timelines,” Boothby said, “where Voyager used their nanoprobe weapon against us once, to force us into retreat, but didn’t give it to the Borg afterward. We left that branch of your universe alone for a while, since it was leaving us alone and we were busy with the fight elsewhere. Once we wiped the Borg out in the other timeline, we turned our attention back to Starfleet. After all, it had been a Starfleet crew, your counterparts, that created the nanoprobe weapon. We needed to find out if they were planning to invade us next. But they’d kicked our butts, so we decided to take the sneaky approach. And that’s how I became the handsome devil you see before you now.”
“But how does this explain your attacks in our timeline?” Rosh asked.
“The Borg here were nearly as bad as in the first one, once they got their own version of a nanoprobe weapon. As for the Voth, well, we figured we couldn’t take any chances.”
“But you’ve made peace with Voyager in that other timeline,” Janeway interposed. Boothby hadn’t quite gotten around to explaining this part before. “So why are your forces attacking the Coalition so aggressively now?”
“It wasn’t my decision, Captain. I’ve been trying to convince the leadership to back down, but they’ve been through hell this last year, and we’re not a forgiving people to begin with. Besides, there are a lot of timelines. I can only tend one plot at a time. I managed to convince them to lay off the timeline where I made peace with your other self, Captain, since there’s no immediate threat from there.” He gave a heavy sigh. “But even that is temporary.
“Borg aside, Voth and Federation aside, the very existence of your universe is seen as a threat to the stability of ours. The hardliners don’t believe coexistence between us is even possible. The weak must perish, and a universe that can’t make up its mind about its own history is mighty weak in their eyes. So they want to destroy your galaxy. One timeline at a time.”
Silence filled the room. “Can they even do that?” Harry finally asked.
“Our universe has a lot more energy to spare than yours,” Boothby said. “Your galaxy’s just about the size of our universe, so destroying it should be enough. It’ll take time, of course; Omega molecules don’t grow on trees, so it’ll be a few months before they have any more to spare. So for now, they’re going about it the old-fashioned way, one planet and colony at a time. And they’re starting in your block of timelines, since we’ve already got so much of our fleet here from the war with the Borg.
“You’ll be the first to go—but the hardliners won’t rest until they’ve wiped out your galaxy in every timeline they can reach.”
13
“It’s been months since I asked myself if we made the right decision,” Janeway said. “If we would’ve been better off if we’d made that deal with the Borg. Now, I’m not so sure.”
Chakotay didn’t pause in massaging her soapy back—his own quiet way of offering comfort. Although his dwelling was modest for a government official, he’d made sure to have a sizable bathtub installed for her benefit. But Janeway was too busy studying the flexible (and waterproof ) display sheet in her hand. To prove his claims, Boothby had provided information from the other timelines the Groundskeepers had visited, information that included copies of Voyager’s logs. The timelines fell into three major “sheafs,” as he had described, and Janeway found it simpler to think in terms of only three timelines.
She knew that, right now, her focus should be on the threat of galactic destruction, on assisting Boothby’s efforts to find a diplomatic route to avert the crisis. But it was impossible not to be preoccupied with the knowledge of her own life in other histories—alternative paths that had actually happened, that were happening right now in other facets of reality. She knew that everyone else who had been entrusted with this information must be similarly affected. Perhaps it wasn’t so self-centered; getting a feel for what it was like to confront one’s alternate lives could help her understand the plight of the Groundskeepers and see a way to a solution.
She recognized one of the alternate histories as the one Kes had described jumping backward through nearly two years ago. The Borg-Groundskeeper war had only just started escalating then, so it was the earliest divergence the Groundskeepers had experienced. In that history, Kes had lived out her life aboard Voyager, and so had Tom Paris, who had become her husband. But Janeway herself had not lived to see it, dying with B’Elanna Torres in an attack by a race called the Krenim.
But before then, they had needed to get past the Borg. “True,” Chakotay said, not looking up from her back. “We made an alliance with the Borg and gave them the nanoprobe weapon once they’d escorted us through the heart of their space. Whereupon they immediately double-crossed us and would’ve assimilated us if a Groundskeeper attack hadn’t let us slip away.” After which, apparently, they had salvaged a transwarp coil from a Borg wreck, allowing them to jump several thousand light-years closer to home and away from the Borg threat. That had undoubtedly saved them from the Groundskeepers’ later Omega-particle attack.
“But as a consequence,” Janeway said, “the Groundskeepers devastated this part of the quadrant to stop the Borg. And we endured a ‘year of hell’ at the hands of the Krenim.”
“And we lost you.”
“But we still had Tom. And Tuvok, and Carey and Vorik…”
“And lost others. How can we say one life is worth more than another? All I know is, I’m glad you’re with me in this life.”
“They destroyed trillions of lives in that history. Because of events I set in motion.”
“That was their choice. You’re not to blame—
whichever you we’re talking about.” Chakotay reached over her shoulder and tapped the display sheet to bring up records of the other sheaf of timelines. “Meanwhile, in this version of history, we made our deal, but the Groundskeepers attacked us before we could finish the weapon, and the Borg double-crossed us and used Voyager to invade fluidic space. The Borg didn’t get the weapon, but they remained a major threat once the Groundskeepers were driven out. And we lost Kes to some kind of accelerated evolution.”
“But most of us lived, Chakotay. We stayed together as a family.”
Chakotay came alongside her, met her gaze solemnly. “As a family, Kathryn? You and I were still just colleagues. Annika was buried beneath her Borg persona and never fell in love with Harry. Neelix had to live without Kes. Lyndsay Ballard was killed, along with Clemens, Pratt, and others. And the Delta Coalition never existed.”
She matched his gaze. “So you’re saying you were right to talk me out of the Borg alliance.”
“You tell me. It could’ve gone either way. In fact, it did. All these histories are real. Every one is better for some people and worse for others.”
“So what are you saying? That none of our choices matter?”
“No,” he told her gently. “That our choices are all we have. We can’t know, we can’t control, how the random factors of the universe will shape the consequences of our choices. The same choice can lead to a universe where the Borg are a major threat and most of the crew is still alive, or one where this whole region of space has been blasted back to the impulse age and Kathryn Janeway is dead. So we can’t let our fear of the consequences keep us from making choices. All we can do is try to be true to our own hearts.”
Smiling at his words of comfort, Janeway pulled him to her. As always, it was bittersweet. She loved the life she had with him, but she still felt an obligation to get her ship home, to report to Starfleet, to reunite her crew with their families one day. She believed she could persuade Chakotay to come with her when that time came—but she didn’t know if she should, when he had built such an important role for himself here, made so many friends and connections among the Vostigye and their allies. How could she choose when the time came? She couldn’t abandon her home forever, but how could she ask him to abandon his?
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