Architects of Infinity

by Kirsten Beyer

  VESTA

  “What did you do?”

  Doctor Sal did not look up from the display panel of her microscope. She had spent the last several hours analyzing the embryonic stem cells she had extracted from Nancy Conlon and Harry Kim’s child. The results were far from what she’d hoped to find when she performed the procedure.

  “Good morning to you, too, Counselor Cambridge,” she replied.

  “Our patient’s medical log shows a procedure done in the wee hours of last night to harvest stem cells from her embryo.”

  Despite the fact that Sal didn’t have time for his displeasure at the moment, she marked the current slide as unfinished and gave the counselor her full attention.

  “That’s right.”

  “The timing of the procedure coupled with the approval from Lieutenant Harry Kim suggests that you did not receive Lieutenant Conlon’s permission.”

  “I didn’t need it. The father is well within his rights under these circumstances to authorize the removal of the cells from his child.”

  “You know damn well that our patient would never have allowed you to remove those cells.”

  “And you know damn well that her approval was made irrelevant by the progression of her illness. At least she got part of what she wanted. Her pregnancy was effectively terminated during the surgery.”

  “Do you honestly believe that when she is revived and sees the child gestating in that incubator, she is going to feel relief?”

  “I don’t know. And at this point, it’s not really high on my list of things to worry about. The embryo was in distress. We had to transport it in order to save it. In the absence of a prior authorization to terminate the pregnancy, we had no other option.”

  “But you did have an option when it came to convincing Lieutenant Kim to go against Conlon’s expressed wishes.”

  “Save your indignation, Counselor. I was too late. I didn’t get a tenth of the number of cells I needed to create a therapeutic regimen. The cells I extracted will have to be discarded. They’re of no use to us now.”

  Cambridge actually paled slightly at this revelation. “Oh,” he said softly.

  “As far as I’m concerned, she never even has to know we performed the procedure. When she wakes up . . . if she wakes up, we will simply advise her that stem-cell therapy is no longer an option.”

  “Is there an alternative?”

  Sal smiled wanly. “Not a good one.”

  Cambridge sighed. “How bad?”

  All I have to do is risk pissing off the entire scientific community of one of the Federation’s most venerated members, lie to my best friend and captain, and quite possibly coerce an unsuspecting ensign to betray her people’s oldest cultural taboo, Sal thought. Aloud she said, “Just this side of impossible.”

  “That sounds like a tall order, even for you,” Cambridge observed.

  “I’ll make sure I get plenty of rest tonight,” Sal said.

  “Do I want to know the details of this prospective cure?”

  “I doubt it. The less any of you know going forward, the better for your careers.”

  “El’nor, speaking as a counselor now, and not just part of Conlon’s team, have you considered the possibility that you will fail to cure Nancy?”

  Sal’s face hardened. “Of course I have. It’s not something I’m accustomed to. It’s not something I take lightly. But it’s always there. I can tell you this: In the few instances in the past where I have failed, I have done so spectacularly. I have done so in fantastic fashion. It was truly a sight to behold. I don’t expect this one to be any different. If I fail, it’s going to be for the right reasons. It’s going to be because I exhausted every single possibility available to me, and it won’t be without a fight, Counselor.”

  “That’s how you live with it?”

  “It’s the only way I know to keep the ghosts quiet.”

  Cambridge nodded slowly and turned to go. Just before he reached the door’s sensor, he said, “I’m not comfortable with the idea of lying to Nancy about the procedure.”

  “Given that you know how she will likely respond and that the emotional distress could further exacerbate her condition, you might consider it a small sin of omission. Before she collapsed on that holodeck, she had one vision of her future in mind. Whatever it was, the reality of her future when she wakes will be quite different. She will have to decide whether or not to participate in the life of the child she inadvertently created or to give up custody. I’m guessing those are going to be some long counseling sessions between you two and Lieutenant Kim. There is no reason to add information that will only create acrimony between them. Especially since the results of the extraction were useless.”

  “You don’t think she has a right to know that the man with whom she will be considering raising this child made a choice that went explicitly against her stated wishes?”

  “I was pretty convincing. Without my interference, he never would have done it. Tell them they can blame me. Or don’t. Personally, I think where matters of the heart are concerned, ignorance is often underrated.”

  “You never married, did you?”

  “I did not.”

  “That’s almost hard to believe,” Cambridge said lightly.

  “It wasn’t for lack of desire, I assure you. We all have two lives, Counselor: the one we want and the one we learn to live with. I’m content with both of mine.”

  “I think it would be quite something to know the man who would have tempted you.”

  “The man?”

  “Ah. My mistake. The woman?”

  “Honestly, the few times I was tempted, the last thing I cared about was the arrangement of either of our reproductive organs.”

  Cambridge smiled. “Forgive me for underestimating you. It’s not a mistake I will make twice.”

  “Now, unless there’s anything else, I have some ethical boundaries to test.”

  “I and my ignorance will leave you to it. I wish you luck.”

  Sal nodded. She was going to need it.

  VOYAGER

  “Good morning,” Chakotay greeted his fellow captains, Regina Farkas, Clarissa Glenn, and Liam O’Donnell. Seven stood beside him at the astrometric lab’s main control panel. Commander B’Elanna Torres hurried in with her head down and situated herself beside Admiral Janeway on the staging area between the controls and the massive display screen that dominated the lab. Knowing full well how much she had on her plate these days, the captain gave her a quick nod and tight smile to indicate that her tardiness was not an issue.

  Chakotay could have held this briefing in Vesta’s large conference room. The holographic rendering technology embedded in the conference tables would have provided the same data. But the effect of the larger display combined with Seven’s ability to manipulate it—zooming in on several of the notable features the shuttle’s sensors had captured in transit—was significantly more impressive.

  The screen showed a small, reddish-brown planet orbiting two stars of unequal mass. Several hundred million kilometers outside the system lay a massive and likely ancient spherical asteroid field, a common enough phenomena given the extreme stresses of binary system formation. The stars were engaged in a graceful dance around their barycenter, which was located closer to the A star. A smaller debris field was also present around the pair’s B star.

  The planet’s orbit was circumbinary: its course followed a stable path around both stars, approximately eighty-three million kilometers distant from the B star at its closest approach. The planet appeared to be nothing more than a dead terrestrial world.

  Glenn stepped past Chakotay and placed herself next to Commander Torres. Farkas and O’Donnell followed as Chakotay said, “Permit me to introduce you to DK-1116.”

  “If I had my way,” Vesta’s captain mused, “only poets would be permitted to name planets and stars.”

  “Regina, there are three hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone, and our galaxy is one of two trillion,” Jane
way observed. “The last time I checked, the number of planets in our universe topped one septillion. If they did nothing else with their lives, all the poets who have ever lived could spend all day every day naming astrometric phenomena and we’d still be short by at least a couple hundred sextillion, give or take.”

  “Did you just do that math in your head?” Farkas asked the admiral.

  Janeway nodded. “I’ve already had my coffee.”

  O’Donnell, who was reading the data stream running along the side of the screen, said, “There’s something wrong with your display. That planet falls outside the Goldilocks zone. It can’t sustain life.”

  Seven turned to O’Donnell. “I assure you, the display is accurate.”

  “Did somebody change the laws of physics while I was asleep?”

  “Seven,” Chakotay said.

  With no further prompting, Seven enlarged the view of the planet and the binaries vanished. Several gasps sounded as the surface’s patchwork of red rocks interspersed with vibrant green and blue swaths became clearly visible.

  “Apparently they did,” Demeter’s captain conceded.

  Commander Torres interrupted. “Can I see the biodome-field readings, please?”

  A new chart appeared beside the graphic of the planet.

  “Geothermal?” Torres asked.

  “At least partially solar,” Seven replied.

  “Huh,” Torres said, clearly impressed. “No discernable degradation. Those things are going to last as long as the stars do.”

  “That is my belief as well,” Seven agreed.

  “Here’s what we know,” Chakotay said, taking control of the briefing. “Based on the scans done by Lieutenant Kim and Seven when they were on the planet, the biodomes you see on the surface have been operational for roughly four thousand years. That’s the blink of an eye in the life of the binaries and the planet, but apart from the Borg, we don’t even know of any other alien species that have been around these parts long enough to have created this. All of the biodomes contain water and most contain atmosphere we can breathe. A few have different atmospheric mixes, so we’d have to study them in EV suits. All of them also contain these odd sculptural growths. The biodomes appear to have been designed to sustain themselves and their particular ecosystems indefinitely.”

  “Growths?” O’Donnell, the resident botanical geneticist, interrupted.

  “They’re not living now by any definition we use,” Seven said. “But their molecular structure is unique. It is theoretically possible that they are some sort of fossilized remains.”

  “Some of these structures also contain molecules of a heretofore undiscovered element that in theory shouldn’t be stable,” Chakotay continued.

  “And yet it is,” Janeway noted.

  “I, for one, would like to know more about this element and the planet it calls home,” Chakotay said. “But beyond that, I’d like to see us take a few weeks for a combined exploratory mission and recreational retreat.”

  “How would that work?” Farkas asked.

  Chakotay handed out padds to each of the captains and continued, “If we send small teams to each biodome on six-hour rotations, each crew member could look forward to a minimum of fifty hours planetside over the next two weeks and maybe twice that much for personal recreational pursuits. One of the larger domes contains a body of water so massive it’s basically a freshwater lake. I’d like to establish a central camp there for any and all off-duty crew members to enjoy outdoor activities. Other domes offer opportunities for rock-climbing, hiking, or just enjoying the alien flora.

  “I would also suggest that we use this time as an extended exercise in intrafleet cooperation. Rather than assign away teams in familiar groups by ship, we could select them by specialty. Obviously, Vesta’s crew is much larger than any other fleet ship, but as many as possible could be assigned to groups made up of individuals from their sister ships in the same specialty. By assigning our science, security, tactical, flight control, engineering, operations, and command officers from each ship to joint task forces, we can give them a rare opportunity to work side by side and really get to know one another. I believe that the knowledge gained through such an exchange could go a long way toward improving performance and cohesion in the future. And I think a few weeks spent in constructive exploration would significantly improve morale.”

  “This system also presents a unique opportunity for those remaining on board to expand our knowledge of binary star formation due to gravitational capture,” the admiral added.

  “They’re almost the same age, aren’t they?” Glenn asked. “Why wouldn’t you assume that they have always orbited each other?”

  “The debris field around the secondary star,” Janeway replied. “Something cataclysmic happened here and fairly recently in astronomical terms. The amount of mass present in that field and the size of the fragments suggest that there might once have been other planets in this system. That in conjunction with the ancient terraforming efforts on the surface of the one otherwise uninhabitable planet is awfully intriguing. Is this a case of an advanced civilization attempting to colonize another planet in their system when the death of their own became inevitable? And if so, where did they go? Any evidence we could find of the civilization that established those biodomes might lead to one of the most interesting first contacts in the history of our Federation.”

  “Then we are agreed?” Chakotay asked.

  “Are there any objections?” Janeway asked of the other fleet captains.

  “Have all of the domes been scanned for biotoxins and hostile life-forms?” O’Donnell asked.

  “There are no higher life-forms present,” Seven noted.

  “But those ecosystems contain a variety of plant life that could be every bit as hostile as any animal,” O’Donnell cautioned. “Never mind the potential for alien bacteria, viruses, and extremophiles that might inhabit the unprotected areas of the surface.”

  “Prior to beginning the shipwide rotations, small teams will conduct safety surveys,” Chakotay said. “We don’t want any unpleasant surprises.”

  “We should hold off announcing the planned retreat until those surveys are complete,” Farkas suggested. “The only thing worse for morale than skipping an opportunity like this would be getting everyone prepped and then disappointing them.”

  “Agreed,” Janeway said. “I’d like Commanders Paris and Roach to take point with personnel assignments.”

  “Will participation in the planetside explorations be voluntary?” O’Donnell asked. Off Janeway’s raised eyebrows, he added, “In the event anyone has experiments currently under way that might be disadvantageously affected by a prolonged absence?”

  “I’d be willing to entertain requests,” Janeway conceded, “but not from you, Commander.”

  O’Donnell’s shoulders drooped visibly.

  “This is truly a rare opportunity for us to work together without the concurrent pressure of establishing diplomatic relations or fending off hostile aliens. I, for one, am looking forward to it, aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” O’Donnell said, clearly unwilling to court the admiral’s displeasure. “Seven, would you mind forwarding copies of your scans and any samples you can spare of this new element to Demeter? I’d like to review them en route.”

  “Of course, Commander O’Donnell.”

  Turning back to the viewscreen, the admiral smiled. “Let’s set course and see what this strange new world holds.”

  GALEN

  It wasn’t unusual for Lieutenant Reginald Barclay to find himself summoned to the Doctor’s presence at all hours of the day. The Doctor never slept, and Barclay kept odd hours when he was engrossed in his own projects, so when the Doctor requested Reg meet him on Galen’s main holodeck in the middle of gamma shift, the holographic specialist thought nothing of it. The moment he entered the holodeck, however, he immediately questioned his sanity.

  Seated on the biobed before him, wearing a famil
iar crimson velvet smoking jacket, was Commander Data. His left scalp access panel had been opened and Galen’s CMO, the photonic being that had begun his existence as Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram and was now one of Barclay’s closest friends, peered intently at Data’s neural network.

  “Hello, Reg,” the android said congenially.

  “Ah, Reg,” the Doctor echoed, “thank you for coming so promptly.”

  “What the . . .” Barclay began, but a stammer that hadn’t bedeviled him in years locked the rest of the question securely behind his lips.

  “Reg?” His obvious distress earned the Doctor’s full attention. “Are you all right?”

  Barclay tried desperately to force his mouth past the words it would not form. “Wha . . . wha . . . what have you done?” he managed.

  The Doctor appeared to be at a loss.

  Barclay stepped forward, placing himself between the Doctor and Data. Turning to face the android, he was momentarily overwhelmed. A thousand thoughts unspoken and words unsaid fought for release. All he could do was gently close the panel that had exposed Data’s delicate cranial innards and smile sadly at his beloved friend.

  “Data?” he finally managed.

  “It is good to see you again,” Data said.

  Barclay couldn’t respond to this most basic pleasantry. Commander Data, former first officer aboard the Enterprise and one of the most extraordinary beings Reg had ever known, had sacrificed his life in the line of duty three years prior. His existence had been unique and his loss exquisitely painful. By all rights, Data should have lived forever. Even now, his absence was most keenly felt by those who had served with him, including Barclay. There was no way this . . . whatever it was . . . was Data.

  That didn’t make the illusion any less compelling.

  “The Doctor and I have been discussing the ways in which a positronic neural network could be made to temporarily house the neural pattern of a living individual,” Data said with the light timbre Barclay thought of as cheerful.

  Briefly wondering if he might have wandered into a nightmare, Barclay gathered his courage and said, “Computer, end program.”