“Activate our tractor beam. Enterprise won’t hold her long if she really wants to move, but we’ll know it.”
“Acknowledged. Do you want a security team to your location?”
La Forge pointed. “Captain, there.”
A flickering light came from the parlor beyond the door on the far side of the room. Picard nodded. “Stand by, Number One. Picard out.”
With the captain leading the way, the two crossed the room toward it. Before they reached the light, however, a red brick wall appeared in the doorway.
“This isn’t necessary,” Picard said to the air. He turned back toward the bathroom and called out to the holo-Riker. “Tell him this isn’t necessary.”
A moment passed—and then the wall disappeared. Picard and then La Forge stepped through the doorway.
The room beyond was like any other VIP quarters aboard a Starfleet vessel: a tastefully appointed sitting area, this one with various musical instruments and pieces of Betazoid art on the walls. But in place of the usual desk and chair, there was something else entirely. A human figure sat in a sophisticated-looking chair with consoles at each arm—while above him, tiny lasers danced between his head and a half-globe emitter in the ceiling.
Picard walked before the high-tech throne and beheld the real William Riker. “WELCOME ABOARD, CAPTAIN.” The voice came from Aventine’s main computer, and echoed around the room. Riker’s lips did not move, nor did his expression change. “SORRY I CAN’T GET UP.”
“As I suspected—just like Reginald Barclay.” Picard stared up at the flickering lights. “The Cytherians are back.”
Thirty-two
PRESENT DAY
Eyes closed, Will Riker held his face in his hands and took long, labored breaths.
“Are you unwell?” Simus asked.
He raised his head without opening his eyes. The fuzzy feeling he’d felt on waking into Simus’s earlier simulation of Titan had turned to a full-blown headache as he’d remembered more and more about recent events. His conversation with Simus had moved from the Corvus Beacon to the No’Var Outpost to the Adelphous Array, jogging his memory each time—and each time bringing a new wave of discomfort.
And now, with one word, his headache had a name.
“Cytherians,” Simus said. “What do you know of them?”
Resigned, Riker raised his eyelids. “I think you know how much I know of them.”
Simus regarded him quietly. “Yes, that’s very true. But I’m not interested in what I would learn about them from a database. I would like your account.”
Riker glanced around at his surroundings. The holographic representation of Laplace’s deck had been replaced several times over the course of the day by settings depicting other locations, showing moments reconstructed by internal sensor feeds. Riker had seen the recorded events that took place aboard the bridges of Aventine and Enterprise, and even the wrenching communication Picard had with Titan and Deanna.
He stood as one of two Rikers in the holo office aboard Aventine. His counterpart from the recent past sat frozen in time in his makeshift throne, being confronted by a concerned Picard and La Forge.
It was hard to look at. “Simus, I’ll tell you what you want to know,” he said, gesturing to the other Riker. “If you can make him go away.”
“Certainly.” Simus pressed a button on his wrist control unit, and the statuelike figures from the past vanished, including the bizarre chair the other Riker had been sitting in. Two comfortable chairs replaced them. “I think these match your decor,” Simus said.
“It’s a holographic version of a holographic version of a room. Close enough.”
“I hope you’ll sit,” Simus said, settling into one of the chairs.
“Something tells me I’ve already been sitting too much.” But tired bones having their say, Riker collapsed in the chair.
Simus clasped his hands together. “What do you remember about the Cytherians? Your first encounter, I mean. I know it was years ago.”
Riker took a deep breath. He couldn’t imagine that Simus didn’t know it all already, but he clung to the hope that talking might ease the headache some.
“They’re an incredibly advanced race—if race is the right word. They live in isolation near the galactic core, never venturing outward. Not until years ago, when the Enterprise-D discovered a probe.”
“At the Argus Array.”
“At the Argus Array.” Riker thought back on the experience, many years before when he had been first officer under Picard. “The Cytherian probe was designed to instruct outsiders on how to reach their system, but not in the way you’d think. The probe attempted to integrate with the array—and after that, with one of our shuttlecraft. Both attempts failed. Next it pursued Enterprise through warp, emanating so much power it nearly destroyed us.”
“But it didn’t,” Simus said, unclasping his hands. A withered finger pointed to Riker. “You’ve left out a step.”
“If you know the story, why ask?”
“I want to hear it from you. Who saved the Enterprise?”
“Reginald Barclay, one of our engineers,” Riker said. “The Cytherian technology hadn’t been compatible with the array or the shuttle. But unbeknownst to all of us, when it tried to interface with the shuttle, it transformed Barclay instead.”
“Transformed. Transformed how?”
“It made him hyperintelligent. And driven to visit the Cytherians.”
Simus leaned forward with obvious interest. “How did he achieve this end?”
Riker took a breath. He’d known this was coming. “Barclay took control of Enterprise from an interface he designed on the holodeck. That chair you just saw. We never did figure out how it worked. And he went beyond that, altering our propulsion systems in order to permit a one-time trip across half the galaxy to visit the Cytherians.”
“That must have been frightening.”
Riker looked down at the floor. “The Cytherians were peaceful. Strange, but peaceful. They manifested in our dimension as giant floating heads.”
“Heads?”
“Like yours and mine.” Riker touched his forehead. “With crystals right here.”
“That physiognomy seems odd.”
“I don’t think that’s what their bodies really look like—if they have bodies at all. I think their appearance was for our benefit. We stayed there a few days and had . . . well, I guess you’d call it a brief cultural exchange.” He rolled his eyes as he finished the sentence.
“Why that reaction?”
“Well, the exchange was mostly one-way.” Riker shrugged. “I don’t know that we understood any more about their culture after we left. They didn’t have a Prime Directive of their own. However, they didn’t let us keep the advancements Barclay had developed for Enterprise. But they certainly seemed pleasant. It was a nice visit, once we got our bearings.”
“And yet the trip to visit them was not so pleasant,” Simus said. “Tell me, how did Lieutenant Barclay describe what he experienced?”
Riker stared. He certainly remembered. “He told Deanna they reprogrammed him.”
“Like a computer? Or a robot?”
“Or a tool.” Riker then followed up quickly: “But they let him go. Returned him to normal, with no trace of what they’d done.”
Simus scratched his cheek. “But they left him his memories of the event.”
“You knew the story already.”
Riker put his elbow on the armrest and rubbed his temple again. It wasn’t hard thinking that far back in time—but every time his thoughts danced near the present, he got wobbly. Simus’s next question took him further off balance.
“Tell me, did you like Lieutenant Barclay?”
Riker looked up. “He’s all right.”
“But back then?”
“He was a bit of a problem. He was always a little out of step with everyone else and it showed.” Riker smirked. “He also had a thing for my wife.”
“But you thought
Barclay was sane.”
“Any sane man would be attracted to Deanna.”
“Amusing, but not what I meant. Did you think Reginald Barclay was the same person after the events you’re describing?”
“Yeah. Maybe even a little better for the experience.”
“Better, how? Did you suspect he retained skills given him by the Cytherians?”
Riker shook his head. “Nothing like that. He picked up a little confidence after what he’d been through. It was natural growth. Human growth.” He looked pointedly at Simus. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“He was definitely sane.”
“Ah.” Simus leaned back. “And was he sane when doing the Cytherians’ bidding?”
Riker thought for a moment. “He was acting rationally. We just didn’t understand what he was trying to accomplish for the Cytherians.”
Simus nodded. “You said he was their tool.”
“Yes.” Riker felt himself growing tired again. He didn’t know where this was going. But Simus clearly had a direction in mind. The older man leaned forward and looked directly at him. “A tool can be a weapon, can it not?”
Simus touched a control on his wrist, and the chair Riker was sitting in transformed with a flash. The Cytherian interlink chair was back, only now Riker was the one sitting in it. He looked around, feeling lightheaded. Was this another game, or . . .
No.
“Simus, am I still aboard Aventine?” He looked up at the half-dome and its crackling lights. “Am I still in the Cytherian machine?”
“That,” Simus said, bringing his hands together in a prayerful pose, “is for you to tell me.”
STAGE THREE:
SHUTDOWN
* * *
“Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli
Thirty-three
EARLIER ABOARD AVENTINE
ADELPHOUS ARRAY
Admiral William Thomas Riker had longed for several things during his existence, but one stood above all the rest: the desire to occupy the center seat aboard a Federation starship.
He had gotten that opportunity first as a junior officer on the third watch of his first ship—and finally his own command: Titan. Those moments had meant a lot to Riker. But now he knew how shallow and meaningless those experiences had really been. Now, he truly sat at the center seat aboard a Federation starship. And from his interlink chair in Aventine’s holodeck, he controlled it all.
His mind had raced without stopping since that moment at the meeting table in the Far Embassy when the brilliant light enveloped him and the other envoys. He had been given directives, a familiar feeling for an officer in an interstellar fleet. But he had struggled to put them into effect. His mortal form was a dam, forcing the flood of his intellect into the narrowest of channels.
That was when the mission had been the most difficult. His new gifts came with obligations that had to be met, tasks that could not wait for him to find more effective ways to put his thoughts into reality. Yet at the same time, he could not reveal his new capacities while others could still thwart him.
He had been forced to lie.
The most difficult lie was the first one. Deanna Troi posed a double threat. She had more knowledge than anyone of Riker before the change and she had most closely observed Reginald Barclay after his mind had been touched by the Cytherians. Her skills as an empath were something he did not have; they represented a threat to his assignment.
Riker’s solution, arrived at not long after he stepped away from the table at the Far Embassy, was brilliant in that it did something else to improve his chances. Aventine was faster than Titan; it was a better fit for the missions he knew were ahead. And while Riker did not know Ezri Dax as well as he knew Titan’s Christine Vale, he calculated that the former’s recent brush with Starfleet justice would make her less willing to question his authority.
Commandeering the holodeck aboard Aventine had allowed him the privacy and the opportunity he needed to design his interlink chair. It was an easy thing for one of his intellect to subvert the safeguards that he, himself, had played a role in designing; it then became a simple matter of choosing the moment to take control. When Aventine’s crew balked at attacking the Ferengi station, the episode hadn’t caused him a moment’s concern. He just walked back to the holodeck—and started his life anew.
His first moments in the interlink chair had lasted a seeming eternity—and they had been agonizing. But not painful: the procedure was the very definition of non-invasive. Through the holodeck, which for its purpose needed to know the disposition of every molecule on its grid, Aventine’s main computer had scanned the location and condition of every neuron in Riker’s brain. That had enabled his thoughts to escape the artificial confines of his skull. One by one, his neural pathways had been extended to connect with the main computer interface he had constructed. That hadn’t hurt at all.
No, the agony had come from Riker’s repeated realization, as each microscopic connection had been made, that he had spent his entire existence as a prisoner. In place of five senses, he now had a seemingly endless array. And in place of his body, he had the perfect form for living among the stars.
The beings aboard Aventine were foreign bodies in his bloodstream, now—but he could not simply eliminate them, any more than he could wantonly kill those at the targets he had been sent to disable. Such went against Riker’s human morality and against his patrons’ desires. Dax and her crew had done everything in their power to take back control of the starship. Riker had played the patient parent—something made pet-owner seem an inappropriate term—redirecting his charges to locations and activities where they could not harm him.
Then the Enterprise had appeared.
Riker could not be deterred from his appointed quest. But as an old Stratagema player, he was accustomed to considering multiple different courses of action at once—and now he could consider millions, all while calculating their odds of possible success. This, he realized, was what existence must be like for Data: steps could be planned far out into the future.
And even though Picard and Enterprise would be sure to oppose him, practically every scenario that included them resulted in less harm for any innocents involved. He could not permit Enterprise’s captain to stop him any more than he could allow Aventine’s; Riker’s fate was sealed when he sat down at the table in the Far Embassy. His career was over. His life was over. But at least with Picard around, the damage Riker did might be mitigated.
Riker saw Picard and La Forge standing several meters away from him. His human sensory organs still functioned, but holodeck one’s sensors necessarily kept track of everything in the area. It needed to know the locations of every molecule of actual matter in order to position its force fields, to replace photonic images with replicated matter when necessary. Through the room’s systems, he knew everything about his guests, from their body temperatures to their genetic makeups. He knew Picard was about to speak long before the sound waves went into motion.
It was then a matter of being patient. Picard’s words only moved at the speed of sound, after all. He had calculated a strong possibility that they would be words of greeting, and they were.
“I KNEW YOU’D BE HERE EVENTUALLY,” Riker replied, his voice echoing eerily through the room. “I WASN’T ABOUT TO UNDERESTIMATE YOU.”
Picard nodded. “It wasn’t all our doing. We had some assistance from Captain Dax.”
Riker considered that. He had protected the holodeck with power reserves; his interlink chair had been unaffected by the torpedo detonation. But the shock to Aventine’s systems had been significant, and he was still struggling to bring them online even as Picard spoke. Sensing foreign objects moving through one of the ship’s arteries he had access to, Riker calculated that one of them might be the Trill captain.
“THERE,” he said. To La Forge’s right, a flash of light indicated two figures beaming into the roo
m. Both figures appeared prone, arms before them as if swimming, one after another, through a narrow underwater cavern—and both were half a meter off the deck. When they fully entered reality, both Dax and a young human—Riker identified him from Aventine’s personnel files as Ensign Nevin Riordan—plummeted the short distance to the floor.
“SORRY ABOUT THAT,” Riker said as the startled pair got to their hands and knees. “I’VE RESTORED GRAVITY IN HERE.”
“And you’ve got control of the transporters, evidently.” Picard knelt to help Dax up. He looked back at Riker. “Will you be whisking us out of here now, or will you talk?”
“IF I HAD DECIDED TO SEND YOU AWAY, YOU WOULD ALREADY BE GONE,” he said. “WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DISCUSS?”
Thirty-four
Ezri Dax beheld Riker in his interlink chair. “What is that?”
“It’s a Cytherian interlink unit,” La Forge answered before Picard could.
“Cytherians?” she asked. Picard watched the dark-haired woman’s expression go from puzzlement to surprise to recognition. Dax finally nodded. “I read the report on them.” She let out an exhausted sigh. “That explains a lot.”
“I’m not sure how,” the young ensign said. He gawked at the power crackling above Riker’s head, causing him to look like Zeus in his throne. “An interlink with what?”
“It connects the admiral’s brain functions to those of Aventine’s main computer,” La Forge said. He squinted at the chair. “That’s not holographic matter, is it? It’s real.”
“GOOD EYE, GEORDI—AS ALWAYS,” Riker said.
“Whoa!” Riordan said, looking at Riker—then at the ceiling and all around. “Admiral, your mouth didn’t move at all, there.”
Dax looked at Picard, almost apologetically. “This is Ensign Riordan. He helped us get in touch with you.”
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