Architects of Infinity

by Kirsten Beyer

“Could you step back inside please,” Icheb asked, his voice tight.

  “Join me, Icheb,” Elkins suggested instead. “Don’t be afraid, son.”

  It was a challenge and if only to save face, Icheb would swallow his fear and accept. Moving like a man condemned, he did as Elkins had suggested and paused only briefly before stepping beyond the apparent boundary of the field. A faint smile played over his face as it dawned on him that he, too, had survived.

  “Now look at this,” Elkins said, raising his tricorder for Icheb to see.

  “The field strength has intensified along a forty-five-degree axis,” Icheb said.

  “Do you see?” Elkins asked.

  “In order to accommodate this geometry, the field generator must be located several miles below the surface.”

  “If we think of this not as a dome but as a sphere of energy, its source has to be roughly ten kilometers down beneath the absolute center of the area,” Elkins agreed. “Based on the placement of the other domes . . .”

  “A single generator creates and sustains all of them,” Icheb finished for him.

  Elkins clapped the top of Icheb’s shoulder. “Brilliant, isn’t it?”

  “So I guess we’re not going to dig it up,” Benoit said, clearly disappointed.

  Elkins sighed, stepping back inside the normal boundary, Icheb following on his heels. “I’ll admit I’d give anything to take it apart. But to do so would be to endanger the entire ecosystem, and I’m not comfortable with that.”

  “Now that we know where to look, with properly placed sensors in each biodome, we might at least be able to get a schematic of the design and more precise readings of its power distribution,” Bryce suggested.

  “It will take at least a few days to replicate and place those sensors,” Benoit noted.

  “You gentlemen have somewhere else you’d rather be?” Elkins asked.

  Bryce did, but held his peace. Instead, he shook his head along with Icheb and Benoit. “No, sir.”

  GALEN

  “When Tama was not much older than you are now, he met Drak. They spent their days running wild beneath the hariar blossoms and sucking the juice from the siamate until their fingers were stained rahar. They knew themselves to be brothers. Drak’s mother feared that one day she would lose her son to Tama’s people because she was not one of them. She decided to return to her home across the ocean. But Tama could not bear to be separated from his brother forever. He wrapped himself in Drak’s ashanyar and presented himself to Drak’s mother, saying, ‘I am ready to return to our home as you bid me.’ They journeyed several setz across the ocean, and when they finally reached Drak’s home, Tama was brought before Drak’s family, who stared at him, unable to believe their eyes. ‘This cannot be Drak,’ they said. ‘How is it possible that you do not know your own son?’ Tama said, ‘Your eyes deceive you. Do not trust them. This woman knows the truth.’ Only then did she understand that the differences between her people and Tama’s were so insignificant as to be meaningless. The fear that had driven her to separate Tama and Drak was the lie. She fell to her knees before Tama and asked, ‘Is there a place for me among your people?’ Tama took her hands in his and said, ‘You are my mother as surely as Drak is my brother. There is no place in the world where that is not true.’ She smiled at Tama and begged his forgiveness. Together she and Tama returned across the ocean and were reunited with Drak. She lived among them in peace for the rest of her days and when her eyes closed for the last time, she was still smiling.

  “You are truly blessed to be born into a universe where this truth, Tama and Drak, at Mianna, is already known by so many, little one,” Doctor Sharak said, placing his hands against the gestational incubator where Lieutenant Conlon’s child floated.

  “What the hell?”

  Sharak turned to see Lieutenant Kim hovering in the doorway. He immediately understood the lieutenant’s disorientation.

  That morning, Sharak had discovered a unique property of the Doctor’s medical bay. Several of the treatment rooms, including this one, were also miniholodecks. They were installed to allow patients to access a number of peaceful, scenic environments during recovery.

  He had chosen to replace this room’s dim lighting with an illusion he found particularly delightful. To anyone entering, it would appear that Sharak and the baby floated among a sea of endless stars.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Sharak said. “Do come in. I thought she might find a slight adjustment to her environment stimulating.”

  “She can’t hear you, can she, Doc?”

  “Not yet,” Sharak replied. “But her neural pathways develop daily. I assure you, this will not inhibit that process in any way.”

  “I didn’t think it would,” Kim said. “It’s actually very cool.”

  At least once every day, Kim visited both Lieutenant Conlon and the baby. His current responsibilities prohibited lengthy stays, but that only intensified Sharak’s respect for Kim. Many in his position might not make the effort at all.

  “The vibrations of the world around her are the critical thing at this point. Their presence alerts her developing synapses to the whole of which she is a part. Were she still developing in her mother’s womb, the sensations would be constant. As that is no longer possible, I am spending as much time as I can compensating for the deficit and encourage you and Lieutenant Conlon, as soon as she is able, to do the same. It would indeed be tragic, should the child survive the next several months, for her to take her first breath unaware that she already belongs to a thriving community.”

  Kim moved to stand on the other side of the incubator and placed both hands on its smooth, transparent surface. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s your daddy.”

  “The processing power will still be insufficient, won’t it?” the Doctor’s voice sounded from the main medical bay. The Doctor and Lieutenant Barclay had been working for the last several days toward a goal Sharak was not at all sure he understood. They had clearly just returned from the main holodeck, where most of the research was currently centered.

  “It depends entirely upon how independent you expect this program to be.”

  “Ideally, the lieutenant would have access to the entire ship. Confined to sickbay, she would probably run mad in short order.”

  There was a longish pause while Lieutenant Barclay apparently considered the problem.

  “In order to maintain integrity, which will be crucial, we will have to run this program through its own discrete holographic generator. Linking it to the rest of the ship will produce a noticeable drag on other systems.”

  “Other holographic systems?”

  “All systems,” Barclay said. “During normal operations no one would be likely to notice other than ops, but in battle, or if other systems were critically damaged, it might be an issue.”

  “I won’t place her neural patterns in a program that is vulnerable to the whims of Ensign Drur.”

  Sharak watched Kim’s face as he, too, listened to this exchange. At first he seemed confused, trying to grasp the significance of the Doctor’s and Barclay’s words. In a startling dawning of awareness, Kim hurried into the main bay.

  Sharak patted the incubator, gently saying, “I will return shortly,” and hurried after Kim.

  Lieutenant Kim had placed himself between the Doctor and Barclay. “Whose neural patterns are we placing inside a hologram?” he demanded.

  The Doctor seemed peeved at first, but quickly shifted his countenance to one of patient concern. For his part, Barclay simply appeared devastated at the sight of Harry Kim. One of the things about humans that had most heartened Sharak during the few years he had worked among them was the speed and ease with which they assumed one another’s burdens.

  “We haven’t done anything yet,” the Doctor assured him.

  “But you’re talking about Nancy, right?”

  The Doctor nodded.

  “Please forgive me for dropping eaves, but I do not understand,” Sharak admitted.<
br />
  All three turned their attention to him but it was Barclay who said, “Technically, it’s not eavesdropping if we can all see you standing right here.”

  “Most appreciated, Lieutenant,” Sharak said.

  “You want to do the same thing to Nancy that you did to Denara Pel, right?” Kim asked.

  “If it becomes necessary,” the Doctor said. “We’re not there yet. But I want us to be prepared in the event we run out of other options.”

  “Gentlemen,” Sharak said insistently.

  The Doctor turned his attention to Sharak. “As you know, Doctor Sharak, Lieutenant Conlon’s condition is progressing more rapidly than any of us thought possible.”

  “What about the stem-cell therapy Doctor Sal was going to try?” Kim asked.

  “Although she successfully harvested some cells, there weren’t enough for her to create the appropriate therapeutic vectors,” the Doctor replied. “I’m sorry, but that possibility no longer exists.”

  “So this is Plan B?”

  “Think of it more like Plan Z,” Barclay said. Turning to Sharak, he continued. “We know it is possible to temporarily transfer the neural patterns of an individual into a holomatrix. The Doctor already successfully did so several years ago with a patient named Denara Pel who was suffering from the Phage.”

  “The Phage?” Sharak asked.

  “As degenerative illnesses go, the Phage made Lieutenant Conlon’s condition look benign,” the Doctor said. “The point is, until we can come up with a way to reverse the damage to her DNA, we need to do all we can to keep her body alive and to slow the progress of the condition. One way to do that is to place her in stasis. By transferring her neural patterns into a holographic matrix, she could continue to exist among us while we work on a more permanent solution.”

  Sharak looked to Kim, who appeared to take the suggestion quite well.

  “How long do you think she could survive in a holomatrix?” Kim asked.

  The Doctor shrugged. “That’s the issue. A program like that requires an immense amount of free processing space, and Galen doesn’t have it.”

  “I’m working on a discreet interface with its own dedicated power source,” Barclay said. “The issue now is whether or not to tie it directly into a segregated section of the main computer or keep the entire mechanism separate.”

  “You trade power for security,” Kim said, nodding.

  “We’ll probably end up opting for the segregated processor,” Barclay admitted. “We just have to keep it operational during unexpected power distribution disruptions.”

  “Do you really think it’s going to come to that?” Kim asked.

  The Doctor shook his head. “Doctor Sal is working on an alternative theory as we speak. She hasn’t yet shared her progress, but we all believe she is the most likely among us to find the mechanism to reverse the damage repair syndrome. Our focus is keeping the lieutenant alive until she succeeds.”

  “But is that life?” Sharak asked.

  Again, all three directed their attention toward him. This time, from the looks of confusion between them, Sharak wondered if he had unconsciously briefly lapsed into his native tongue.

  “It is not life as you experience it, Doctor Sharak,” the Doctor admitted. “For anyone who has been organic, it would seem like a pale shadow of the existence they once knew.”

  “But you cannot know,” Sharak said. “You have never been anything other than what you are.”

  “In point of fact, I did once share my consciousness with Seven’s. It was a fleeting gift, but during that time I was able to grasp more than you might imagine of what it is to be organic: to taste food, to feel the touch of another.” An elemental sadness seemed to momentarily overtake the Doctor, but he quickly shook it off. “While holographic existence cannot compare to the sensations available to an organic being, it is not intolerable and in this case, might be the best way to protect her neural patterns from degrading along with her body.”

  “You will, of course, give Lieutenant Conlon the option to refuse?” Sharak asked.

  “Yes,” the Doctor said, “but I doubt she would.”

  “I doubt she would accept,” Sharak said.

  The Doctor appeared taken aback, perhaps even insulted.

  “Why do you say that?” Kim asked.

  Sharak sighed deeply. “What you are suggesting might be an effective temporary solution. You might see it as a brief vacation from one’s natural state, a short respite. I submit to you, however, that such a radical shift in one’s ability to perceive and interact with their environment could be terribly destabilizing.”

  “It wasn’t for Doctor Pel,” the Doctor said. “In fact, in the end, she resisted returning to her body, so preferable did she find living as a hologram.”

  Sharak shook his head. “I cannot speak for this woman,” Sharak said. “And perhaps given the alternative, Lieutenant Conlon might feel the same. But surely part of our role as healers is to prepare those we cannot save for acceptance of their imminent death. To postpone the inevitable, and to do so in such a radical way, seems . . . I am not sure if this is the right word . . . but disrespectful?”

  Kim stepped toward Sharak, his face drawn in tight lines. “I can’t speak for Nancy either, but should it come to this, I will do everything I can to convince her to attempt this alternative. Death is inevitable for all of us, but as healers, it is your responsibility to put it off as long as possible using every means at your disposal.”

  Sharak considered Kim. He understood that the young man was unwilling to accept the reality that his beloved and the mother of his child might not survive. He felt immense pity for the lieutenant. But that did not change his belief that this solution, marvelous as it might seem in the abstract, could do more damage to Lieutenant Conlon than the alternative. She had already been forced to contend with one violation of her consciousness by an alien life-form. That act of aggression was responsible for her current medical condition. While he did not doubt the intentions of the Doctor, Barclay, or Kim, he did fear that they were acting more in their own interests than Conlon’s. He resolved to keep these fears to himself, but to bring them to the attention of Counselor Cambridge at the earliest opportunity.

  “It will, of course, be Lieutenant Conlon’s decision,” Sharak said. “Now if you will excuse me, I will return to your daughter. Before you go, you should spend some time speaking with Lieutenant Conlon. The same positive effects I described for your child will also apply to her, even in a comatose state.”

  Kim nodded. “I will. Thank you, Doctor.”

  Sharak had only lived among the variety of alien species present in the Federation for a few years. He respected them tremendously, particularly their tenacity. But one belief the Children of Tama embraced that he feared these men never could, was the certainty that death was not an end. It was merely a transitional state. To deny it was to deny the preciousness of life itself, and to live in fear of it was to endure constant, unnecessary anxiety. Like them, he hoped Lieutenant Conlon would survive. Unlike them, he knew that either way, she would endure. How she did so mattered. Inflicting intense mental suffering in the name of a few more days or weeks seemed cruel.

  Sharak hoped dearly that this option, however well intentioned, would never become reality.

  9

  * * *

  SHUTTLECRAFT VAN CISE

  What about that one?” Ensign Gwyn asked.

  “No,” Seven replied.

  No-o, Gwyn repeated in her head, consciously modulating it to re-create the satisfyingly petulant sass of her five-year-old self when she’d asked to spend a few more minutes splashing in the creek before dinnertime and been refused by her mother.

  It had taken them only two hours to reach the asteroid belt surrounding the B star. The rest of Gwyn’s life was apparently going to be devoted to finding the most perfect chunk of rock among them for Seven to sample.

  “It’s almost the right size.”

  “Size is not
the issue.”

  “Then what is?”

  “Adjust your course bearing four-eight mark two-one,” Seven requested.

  Like everything else in the Federation, courtesy is free. This had been a favorite phrase of Gwyn’s leedi, Mayla Fui, a dear friend of her mother who had attended every large and small family gathering from Gwyn’s birth to her going-away celebration before her departure for the Academy. They still corresponded often. More often than Vara and I, come to think of it. As well as Vara knew her daughter, Mayla’s insight into her favorite “daughter of the heart” was uncanny. Often she didn’t even need to see Aytar to know something was up. She’d just happen to knock on the door the day before a big test or the day after a fight with a close friend. There would be long walks and hot soria cakes and somehow everything would look different, better than it had before she’d come.

  When she’d been a girl, Gwyn had often feared her mother. She missed Vara, but on her worst days, ached for Mayla’s company.

  Inside, Gwyn was cursing Seven’s obliviousness. Mayla would have remonstrated Gwyn for allowing her impatience to fester. It cost Seven nothing to be courteous when suggesting a heading, especially as she was a mission specialist with no rank and technically couldn’t order Gwyn to do anything. But Gwyn was not obligated to take offense. That was a choice. To allow the whims of others to determine one’s own internal state was to cede power. If Gwyn was going to give hers up so cheaply, she deserved the pain and frustration that accompanied the sensation of weakness.

  “Course altered.”

  Seven did not respond.

  You’re welcome.

  Though the asteroid belt was relatively dense, they were navigating an area free of the smaller rocks that made traversing such fields so hazardous. Seven had her sights set on a fragment large enough to land the shuttle on and with enough gravity to allow both of them to take an EV walk without running the risk of flying off the surface.

  They’d already passed six such sites for reasons Gwyn could only guess at. Apparently Seven didn’t feel the need to confide in anyone else. Of course, for most of her life, she’d had no choice about that. Being Borg meant your thoughts were never your own. Maybe she’s overcorrected her course, Gwyn thought. It might be too generous. Seven could just feel so superior to everyone else that no one else’s ideas were worthy of consideration. But placing Seven’s actions in a context that suggested a less insulting reading made Gwyn feel marginally better.