Architects of Infinity

by Kirsten Beyer

  “Why in the world would you do that? You need a break as much as any of us.”

  “I’m going to get plenty of time off. But this is a big deal for Icheb. I should have thought of it myself.”

  Paris pondered his wife for a few silent moments.

  “You’re not playing matchmaker again, are you?”

  “Bryce asked. I’m just approving the request.”

  “That’s my job.”

  “What’s yours is mine, my love. It was in the fine print when we got married.”

  Paris opted not to argue with that.

  5

  * * *

  VESTA

  Captain Regina Farkas paused briefly at the entrance to Vesta’s medical bay. Gamma shift was well under way, and both she and her CMO, Doctor El’nor Sal, should have been sleeping. That El’nor wasn’t meant trouble, and while Farkas would gladly travel from one end of the galaxy to the other in an EV suit for her oldest and dearest friend, the captain had absorbed more than her own fair share of awful since assuming command of Vesta and her short-lived predecessor, Quirinal. She wasn’t sure she was up for one of El’nor’s moods tonight.

  Not that she had a choice. Sal would have traveled from one end of the galaxy to the other for her in an EV suit filled with fire ants. And according to her duty logs, Sal was currently getting by on less than three hours sleep per day. In Farkas’s experience, this was a recipe for disaster.

  The captain found Sal hunched over one of the lab’s data terminals. The other gamma-shift medics were clearly giving her a wide berth and conducted their work in hushed tones despite the fact that there were no patients present.

  Taking the bull by the horns, Farkas moved to Sal’s side. “Last call was a few hours ago,” she said softly.

  Sal didn’t tear her eyes away from the display, but replied, “It’s okay. The owner is an old friend of mine.”

  “You know, the only person on this ship who needs her beauty sleep more than I do is you.”

  Sal chuckled grimly and rubbed her eyes. “I’m afraid that ship has sailed for both of us, Regina.”

  A genetic analysis ran down the screen Sal was studying. A single word caught Farkas’s eye.

  Kriosian.

  The captain’s stomach lurched.

  It might mean nothing.

  Or it might mean that the doctor was inexplicably courting demons laid to rest thirty years ago.

  “I’ve got a sciences briefing on the planet we’re about to explore at oh-seven-hundred,” Farkas said. “I have reason to believe that some fairly challenging math will be involved, and I really want to be at my best.”

  Sal turned toward Farkas. “I have a patient I’m not going to be able to save.”

  Farkas placed a hand on Sal’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, El’nor.”

  “I hate my job,” the doctor said.

  “It’s still not too late to throw sixty-some-odd years of experience out the window and enter the command track. You could have my job.”

  “Your job is the only one on this ship that is worse than mine.”

  “Yeah, but think of the perks. For instance, I get to order you to take better care of yourself. Get some rest. Now.”

  Sal looked at her data screen and reached over to shut off the display. Turning back to Farkas she said, “In the last few weeks, I’ve bent, spindled, and done everything short of mutilating my Hippocratic oath to get my patient to agree to the one procedure that might help her, but for a lot of reasons I can’t go into, that door is closed. I have to find another option, and I have. But you’re not going to like it.”

  Farkas knew what was coming next.

  “Did you know there is a half-Kriosian female on Voyager?” Sal asked.

  “I didn’t. I suppose the odds were pretty good in a fleet this size. I bet we had a few more before we lost those other five ships.”

  “Do you think if we asked the Kriosians one more time?” Sal began.

  “No.”

  “It’s been decades, Regina. Most of the folks who were there back then have probably retired by now. Their successors might see things differently. They might at least talk to me.”

  “We barely made it off that planet with our careers intact, El’nor. Just hand over your pips now. You stir up that hornet’s nest again, that’s how the story will end.”

  “I’m trying to save a life.”

  “And what, pray tell, do the good people of Krios have to do with that?”

  “You and I both know at least part of the truth. We know what they hid from the Federation when they joined. We know what they are capable of.”

  “No, we don’t,” Farkas said, her voice and her ire rising. “We know the story of one troubled woman.”

  “She wasn’t crazy, Regina.”

  “She was at the end.”

  “That wasn’t her fault.”

  “Why are we relitigating this thirty years later in the middle of the damn night? We tried to help her. Against my better judgment and most of the words in the oath I swore to Starfleet, we gave it our best shot and we failed. I took responsibility for that because I was the senior officer. Along the way, unless my memory is faulty—which it isn’t yet—we almost lost the Federation one of their most important members. We aren’t responsible for the sins of the Kriosians’ past any more than we are responsible for the merry mess our ancestors almost made of the planet we both call home. We are responsible for the choices we make tonight and tomorrow and the day after that. So help me, I won’t allow you to pick up that tattered flag and start waving it around when all it will most likely do is bring the full weight of the uniform code down on both our heads.”

  “I just need a few thousand cells.”

  “You said she’s only half Kriosian.”

  “They’re there.”

  “Not according to Starfleet Medical, or the Kriosian Science Ward.”

  “You can’t stop me from asking her.”

  “No, but I can stop you from repeating rumors that have no basis in fact in order to convince her to part with those cells, which I’m guessing she will be unwilling to do.”

  Sal picked up a cup of something dark and murky at her station that had long ago grown cold and took a generous sip. She grimaced as it went down, then reared back and threw the cup with all her might. It slammed into the partition separating the terminal from a biobed and bounced off the transparent aluminum, landing on the deck.

  “Feel better now?” Farkas asked.

  “Not really.”

  Farkas shook her head, dismayed. “I’m going to have to make this a direct order, aren’t I?”

  Sal lifted a padd from her station. She scrolled through a few documents before finding the one she wanted and handed it to Farkas.

  “What is this?”

  “A paper published by Doctor Dorothy Chen-Minatta fifteen months ago.”

  “That was going to be my first guess.”

  “She’s not in Starfleet anymore—has her own research facility on Thrux. She cured Rinoud’s syndrome in a sixty-three-year-old human female by successfully reverting a single donated blood cell to an undifferentiated state, correcting the regulatory sequence that governs C27a, making a few million copies, and delivering those copies directly to the woman’s bone marrow. Once there, the cells made some friends, shared some data, and corrected an error that has killed thousands in the last fifty years. Do you know why that’s amazing?”

  “You know damn well I don’t.”

  “Because it is one of a handful of occasions in the last several hundred years of gene therapy when reversion of an adult cell to an undifferentiated state resulted in a vector that was malleable enough to survive the necessary gene editing. We’ve been able to revert adult cells for a couple hundred years now. But they are typically useless when it comes to modifying damaged DNA. They look like embryonic stem cells, but they don’t act like them. Even removing as many of the epigenetic markers as we can identify doesn’t solve the proble
m. Do you know why it worked this time?”

  “Because the donor was Kriosian?”

  “Because the donor was Kriosian, the patient’s sister-in-law. That got them around the cultural restrictions regarding tissue donation. Chen-Minatta doesn’t come right out and say that the blood cell in question was metamorphic. The Kriosians would have silenced her had she mentioned the alterations to chromosome seventeen that I’d bet my life and yours were present. Maybe she honestly had no idea why the cell was so easy to manipulate or she had to play by their rules to get this published and save lives. Either way, it’s all the cover I need.”

  “You believe you can do the same here?”

  “I just need an ensign to give me some blood. If she’s carrying the mutation, we’re in business.”

  “Even if she were willing to overlook her people’s cultural taboos, you can’t genetically modify her cells and inject them into someone else.”

  “I can if she gives me permission. And according to her file, she is unaffiliated. For all I know, she doesn’t give a damn about her people’s quasi-religious bugaboos.”

  “El’nor.”

  “If there was another way, Regina, don’t you think I would be using it? This mutation is already killing my patient slowly and incredibly painfully.”

  “All you’re asking for is a blood sample?”

  Sal nodded. “I’m pretty sure I can incite the necessary changes to the cells once they are extracted. From that point on, I follow Doctor Chen-Minatta’s protocol to the letter.”

  Farkas sighed. She didn’t know if she believed El’nor, or if she just wanted to believe her.

  “No one else ever has to know,” Sal insisted.

  “What about the other fleet doctors?”

  “Unless I point out the variation, they’d never begin to know where to look for it. We’re trying to cure a unique mutation. This therapy isn’t going to have widespread applications beyond curing this one patient.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  Farkas suddenly realized she had lost the argument before it started. By the time she had returned to her quarters and settled herself into her rack, sleep was a lost cause.

  U.S.S. DEMETER

  During the first year of the Full Circle Fleet’s exploration of the Delta Quadrant, Seven had never had cause to board Demeter. She was the smallest of the fleet’s experimental mission ships, and the chain of command was unusual for a Starfleet vessel. Commander Liam O’Donnell was the ship’s captain, but given that his expertise was botanical genetics, the ship’s XO, Lieutenant Commander Atlee Fife, functioned as O’Donnell’s de facto captain during tactical engagements. For the first several months of their journey, it was an open question as to whether or not this command structure would work. After a near mutiny by Fife when the ship was captured by the Children of the Storm, that question was answered, just not in the way anyone expected.

  Rather than ship Fife back to the Alpha Quadrant to stand court-martial, O’Donnell had offered him a second chance. By all accounts, the partnership that now existed between them was stable and incredibly productive.

  Fife greeted her when she transported aboard at O’Donnell’s request. A tall, gangly human male in his late thirties with sandy-blond hair and unusually large brown eyes, he had escorted her to O’Donnell’s private lab in companionable silence.

  While guiding her through a long hall containing a transparent canopy, he noted that this feature unique to Demeter was capable of absorbing and storing several different kinds of radiant energy for use in the ship’s ongoing botanical experiments.

  “Will it be programmed to collect exotic waves created by the binaries?” Seven asked.

  “Of course. Commander O’Donnell has already given us a lengthy to-do list pending our arrival. There are a number of experiments he intends to run while we’re in orbit.”

  “I see.”

  “Will you continue your analysis of the biodome where you made your initial discovery when we return?”

  “I have asked to remain aboard Voyager for the duration of our mission.”

  “Why?” Fife asked, clearly surprised.

  “There are a number of interesting features in the binary system I wish to analyze further, and they can best be studied from our astrometrics lab.”

  “Why don’t you tell him the truth, Seven?” a familiar voice called.

  At the end of the hall a stout man in his late fifties stood just outside an open door. Wiry tufts of dark curls, generously flecked with gray, began at his temples and circled the lower third of his otherwise bald pate. His eyes met hers merrily as she approached.

  “What truth is that, Commander O’Donnell?” she asked.

  “You have even less patience than I do with the idea of these forced team-building exercises,” O’Donnell clarified.

  Seven could feel Fife’s eyes bulging in her direction. She didn’t want to admit to this, but she couldn’t deny it either. Chakotay’s suggestion of intership cooperation was fine, in theory. She, however, preferred to work alone and was looking forward to several days of uninterrupted analyses. Rather than run the risk of insulting Fife, she settled for replying, “How can I assist you, Commander O’Donnell?”

  “Thank you, Atlee,” O’Donnell said with a knowing smile as he gestured for Seven to precede him into the lab.

  The space was large for any single officer aboard a ship Demeter’s size. Three long diagnostic stations occupied the center of the lab. Their contents were meticulously arranged and banked by operations panels. At the far end of the lab a large workstation stood beneath a long port with a stunning forward view. Seven guessed the lab was situated just below the ship’s bridge.

  Without further preamble, O’Donnell invited her to the nearest diagnostic station and called up an analysis of a sample of the construct she had taken while on the surface of DK-1116.

  “I thought you might want to take a look at this before I go any further, Seven.”

  At first blush, there was nothing surprising in the data. A handful of atoms of the new element were present, reinforced by several more common stable elements and isotopes. Whether or not these elements were responsible for the unexpected stability of the Sevenofninonium was, as yet, unclear. Chemists had discovered a few unexpected islands of stability as they had added to the periodic table over the centuries, but Seven’s discovery was well outside any previous theoretical bounds.

  It was the final data set that caught her eye, however.

  “A fossilized helix?” she asked.

  “A partial fossilized double helix,” he confirmed.

  “But not DNA.”

  “Strictly speaking, no,” he agreed. “Until I’m on-site and can be certain this isn’t simply a case of cross-contamination by a nearby life-form, I can’t be certain of the significance of this finding. But the gross structure of this find is incredibly provocative.”

  “Four thousand years, give or take, should not be sufficient time for genetic material to have decayed this much,” she noted.

  “Were we looking at a living thing, I would agree with you. But we aren’t, are we?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “Look at this,” he said, magnifying a section of the sample shaped similarly to a brick wall.

  “What are these?” Seven asked.

  “I don’t know. I just know what they resemble most other places we find them in nature.”

  “Cell walls.”

  “I’d say so.”

  “Is this where you found your fossil?”

  “It is.”

  “It is your hypothesis, then, that we are looking at a life-form?”

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far.”

  Seven turned to face O’Donnell. “Explain.”

  “Whatever this is, I don’t believe for one second that it is a naturally occurring organic life-form. But every single one of those biodomes is lacking evidence, at least on the surface, of any tec
hnology that could have created the structures containing your new element. And there is almost no way it simply arose on this planet.”

  “As far as we know,” she insisted.

  “Granted, but you have to admit we would have been far more likely to have discovered it in a black hole or subspace permutation than here, sitting on this uninhabitable planet, and stable. This and the constructs that contain it have to be as synthetic as the biodomes.”

  “These structures could have been created on starships and brought to the surface.”

  “Also possible, but not likely. Biodome 10 contains acres of constructs surrounding that water source. That’s a lot of weight for a starship to carry. And even if it did, why just leave it here?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “I’m trying to understand the purpose of these constructs as suggested by their design and how they ended up where they are.”

  “They might be merely ornamental,” Seven suggested.

  “Their subjectively pleasant physical arrangement aside,” O’Donnell said, “vast sections of them are composed of this boxlike structure similar to a plant cell. They’re relatively large, and it’s possible they grow by expanding rather than multiplying.”

  “Plant cells that grow in this fashion absorb nutrients. Do you have any theories as to what might serve as a food source?”

  “There’s plenty of exotic radiant energy hitting that planet from the binaries.”

  “Have you considered the possibility, Commander, that as this is your particular area of expertise, you are simply seeing what you want to see in this sample?” Seven asked.

  “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail?” he asked, smiling.

  “Something like that.”

  “I don’t particularly care which conclusions the evidence points to, as long as it is supportable and can be reproduced under multiple discrete experiments.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “What I see here, however, scares me a little.”

  “Why?”

  “In nature, this structure is associated with one thing—the most efficient absorption and conversion of energy possible.”