Star Trek®: A Choice of Catastrophes

by Michael Schuster

  McCoy felt his mouth broaden into a grin. “Jim, am I glad to see you!” He tried to move toward the other man, but he couldn’t get past the column of light. “Why can’t I move?”

  “You’re safe here, Bones,” Jim replied with a shrug. “Isolated, protected.”

  “That’s not what I want!” insisted McCoy. “I went into space to do good, not to save myself!”

  “If you had wanted to do good, the logical thing to do was to remain at home.” With a flash, the next pad lit up. It was Spock. “Perhaps you should have enrolled in medical school. I believe the space-focused course of study is a mere four years.”

  “You blasted Vulcan, I’m perfectly qualified!” He moved toward him, but again was stopped. Was it his imagination or was the edge of the beam getting closer to him?

  “That’s not how it seemed to me.” Nurse Chapel had appeared. “I may have gone into space to look for Roger, but with a degree in bioresearch, at least I know about space medicine.”

  McCoy tried to turn around, but he was trapped within the glowing column of light. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t run from here. This was his safe haven, dammit! He’d fled to the Enterprise to be safe.

  “Bones, you are safe.” Kirk smiled. “Within that column, nothing can touch you ever again.”

  “I don’t want to stay here! I want to save my patients! They need me.” The beam contracted as he talked, getting smaller with every passing second.

  “That cannot be the case, Doctor, otherwise you would not be here,” said Spock with an arch of his eyebrow. “If you are on the Enterprise, you must seek safety.”

  The espers had been reaching out to him by making him feel pain. If he wanted to meet them, he needed to go toward the pain.

  “Beam me back down there.”

  “Are you sure, laddie?” Scotty was standing at the transporter console. “You want to go back to Capella IV?”

  “Yes,” said McCoy. “No, wait.” He needed to go back to the pain’s original source. “Send me to Jocelyn. She’s at the center—”

  “—of this whole mess.”

  He found himself hunched over the computer in the office of the apartment he and Jocelyn shared in Atlanta. There was a stack of data slates, medical texts and articles and notes. His eyes hurt, reminding him that he’d been staring at this monitor for hours. He had an exam tomorrow and didn’t feel prepared. Damn, it looked like it was going to be another all-nighter.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Are you ready for bed?”

  “Not yet,” he said, suppressing a yawn. “A few more minutes.”

  “You always say that,” she said. “I’d rather you just be honest and admit that—”

  “I am being honest!” He knew it wasn’t true. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “I want you to come now.”

  “What does it matter?” he snapped, turning his chair around to face her for the first time. “We’ll be asleep.”

  Jocelyn was wearing one of his old oversized T-shirts. This one bore the words “OLE MISS.” She stood there, arms crossed. “Leonard, if I wanted to spend every night alone, I wouldn’t have gotten married!”

  “Maybe you wish you hadn’t!” he replied, astonished that he was shouting.

  “That’s not what I want!” Her expression was one of anger bubbling dangerously close to the surface. “Is that what you want?”

  “All I want to do is pass my exam tomorrow! Not all of us have an easy office job.”

  “I like how you always make it about me.”

  “I like how you just made it about me.”

  They stared at each other, not saying anything for a moment.

  With a start, McCoy remembered when he was. This was the first night he’d stormed out, a liberating move at first, establishing a pattern. The next day he’d come back, and the two of them acted like nothing had happened. Until the entire scene had repeated itself, again and again.

  McCoy knew he needed to stay to make the pain worse.

  “Maybe if you were supportive of what I do,” he said. “Med school is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It takes time.”

  “It takes time?” Jocelyn’s eyes were angry. “The only time you spend is with her.”

  “Nancy helps me,” said McCoy. “Which is more than I can say for you.”

  “She ‘helps’ you, does she?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that—”

  “I know full well what you meant!”

  They stared at each other for a moment. “If you’re just going to shout at me, why do you want me to come to bed with you?”

  “Maybe if you did come to bed with me, I wouldn’t be shouting at you!”

  “Well,” said McCoy, turning his chair back around, “I’m staying here and I’m studying. I have patients to save.” He looked at the text on the monitor—Harding-Cyzewski’s paper. He was getting somewhere!

  “Leonard McCoy, you look at me when I’m talking to you!”

  He sensed it coming before he saw it. A data slate went flying by his head, straight at the computer screen. It connected with a crack and threw the thin device off its base and onto the table.

  The monitor wasn’t shattered, but a gaping black hole had appeared in the middle of it, growing as he watched. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, McCoy felt drawn toward the increasing blackness.

  “Look at me!” Jocelyn yelled.

  The hole was enveloping the table. It would soon swallow the entire room. He could feel it reaching out to him.

  The doctor knew he had to touch it. He extended his hand toward it. “I have patients to help, Jocelyn.”

  “You could help me.” She sounded hurt rather than angry. The hole was pulling him in. He could feel it, a whole new universe beckoning him.

  With a great deal of effort, McCoy turned to look at Jocelyn. She was crying. Regret coursed through his body. Could he have done it differently? “I wish I could, honey.”

  With a gigantic jerk, McCoy was pulled out of his chair.

  “But not—”

  “—today.”

  McCoy was alone in the darkness.

  There was nothing here. As far as he could see, there was inky blackness, featureless and empty.

  It felt real. The places he’d passed through before had felt insubstantial and weightless. He opened his mouth to call out, but no sound issued forth. McCoy reached for his throat, only to realize he didn’t have any hands.

  He didn’t have anything. No hands, no feet, no head, nothing.

  Instinctively, he tried to speak. Again, no sound. The only evidence that he still existed was his thoughts. And he was alone for the first time in two days.

  Welcome.

  A chorus of voices came from everywhere and nowhere.

  He formed a question in his mind, as if he were talking to them. “Is that you?” No noise, yet McCoy felt a normal conversation was appropriate. The doctor wasn’t trained in mind matters. “Who am I speaking to?”

  Olivier Bouchard.

  Gaetano Petriello.

  Hanna Santos.

  Nanase Fraser.

  Rammal Salah.

  Then, as one: We are here.

  “I made it.”

  Thank you for coming.

  “What’s the matter with you all? What happened to you?”

  We reached out and we found Nothing.

  “There’s not always going to be a mind for you to touch.”

  We didn’t find nothing. We found Nothing.

  “What are you talking about?”

  We hadn’t noticed it before. We are low-level telepaths, none of us can read minds. And yet we always heard something. A buzzing, a crackling, a knowing. There was always something for us to hear.

  “Quantum entanglement,” realized McCoy. “All your particles were linked to everyone else’s.”

  We could hear the universe.

  “But not anymore?”

  No. Our minds reached out as they always do, to feel t
he other universe… and felt Nothing. A whole reality of Silence, from end to end.

  “And that’s what caused your comas?”

  We didn’t understand. Our minds didn’t understand. They shut down, drove us into comas. We reached out and found each other. We took solace in each other’s minds, falling together. Pushing against the Nothing. We needed to hold it back. But there was nothing we could do.

  “Why has the medical staff been seeing and hearing things?” McCoy demanded.

  We sought other minds, ones that might show us a way out. We found you and the others. We worked our way in.

  “Why the hallucinations? Who thought it was a good idea to appear as our worst doubts and fears?”

  The only way we could gain access was via the weakest point of everyone’s minds. Doubt. Your doubt was the strongest… your mind was the easiest to enter.

  It was hard to deny. He had been restless, thinking about moving on. His doubts had opened him up to outside interference.

  A thought stirred at the back of his mind. Weak … defenseless. “Did you try to reach Lieutenant Haines? Or Specialist Huber? They were in pain despite being sedated.”

  We tried to contact them. It… did not work.

  “You caused unbearable agony.”

  We were desperate. We still are.

  “You still haven’t explained how you were able to do this.”

  We reached out and found each other. Together we are stronger than we ever have been alone.

  “Five panicked minds working in concert… that could be enough to overwhelm even Spock.”

  It’s difficult to control our power. We didn’t want this. We didn’t seek it out. Because of the Nothing, our lives are in danger. We can’t survive here, so close to it. Help us!

  “What am I supposed to do? Tell me. I’ve tried so many things, but none of them have worked.”

  Get us away. It’s killing us.

  “It’s tearing the Enterprise apart. Don’t you think we want to get away, too?”

  WE MUST GET AWAY FROM THE NOTHING.

  The thought blared into McCoy’s mind from every direction, reverberating and rippling. The whole emptiness was defined by that one idea.

  “How do I cure you? Your bodies are all about to die out there.”

  The only way to save us is to get the Enterprise out of here. The Nothing will destroy the ship if we stay, everyone will die.

  “How?”

  Power is the key.

  “What do you mean?”

  The Enterprise can’t move. Her power will be the ship’s death. The Nothing will consume us all.

  “Don’t be so cryptic. What do we have to do?”

  Find another power.

  He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  You will come up with something. We depend on it.

  “Thanks. Will you let me go now?”

  There was no answer for a long time. When an answer came, it was almost too weak to be heard. We don’t know how.

  “What? You called out to me because you wanted to talk to me, but now you can’t let me out of here?”

  We don’t have control over this… We are not keeping you here.

  “I need to wake up. If I don’t, we might all die. There must be a way.”

  The blackness did not answer this time. No voice rose out of it, no thought or word came to him.

  McCoy was alone in the darkness.

  Stardate 4758.3 (0639 hours)

  With growing concern, Chapel watched the readout over the doctor’s biobed. He’d been under for fifteen minutes. At first his readings had been high due to the neural stimulant, but they had steadily dropped. They were starting to match the level of the espers’—their readings had sunk so low that they were all in danger of brain death.

  “Why don’t you stand there and stare some more. I bet that’ll help.”

  The insulting sarcasm was something she had trouble ignoring. Roger knew that. He’d been observing her and commenting on her actions, pointing out how unsuitable she was. She found it hard to concentrate. Hopefully, the doctor would find a way to banish him and the other unwelcome visitors.

  Doctor McCoy had been adamant that Chapel not wake him up unless she absolutely had to. He needed to wake himself up. “The last thing I need is to be learning what’s going on and then have you tear me away. Let it go as long as you can.” But McCoy’s readings were sinking.

  “I remember when you were a bioresearcher,” Roger said, relentless in his taunts. “We were pushing at the frontiers of medicine together. Now you just stand here holding people’s hands as they give up the ghost. What happened to you?”

  “You happened to me!” Chapel replied before she could stop herself. “I went into space to find you. Starfleet needed nurses, not bioresearchers.” Fortunately, there was no one to hear her outburst.

  “Well, that was stupid. You should have replaced me—just like I replaced you.” Roger held out his hand and suddenly Andrea was there—the android woman he had built. She never said anything in Chapel’s visions, she just stood there. Was she Roger’s perfect woman?

  Her ruminations were interrupted by the sickbay door hissing open. She heard Assistant Chief Engineer DeSalle storming in, and knew he was headed for the control center.

  The Enterprise’s situation was directly connected to the patients’ state. Chapel reasoned that she might be needed.

  “I’m sure everyone really values the opinion of the ship’s nurse,” sneered Roger.

  Roger could be such an ass. Chapel wondered why she’d never noticed it while he was alive.

  She checked Doctor McCoy’s readings—they were holding. She called in Odhiambo to stay with him and quickly made her way to the lab/control room.

  DeSalle was in the middle of his report when Chapel entered. “—position, the power systems are a patchwork of fixes. The real-space bubble is draining our power reserves.”

  “We can’t move,” Uhura replied. “We know—” She stopped when she noticed Chapel and gave her a tired smile. “Hello, Christine. Is anything the matter?”

  “No,” Chapel said. “It’s just that… with Doctor McCoy out for the moment, I thought I should keep myself up-to-date, as our patients are linked to whatever is out there.”

  Uhura nodded. “So, we know what will happen to any duotronic system entering an area of high distortion. This entire ship is loaded with duotronics.” Chapel was struck by how exhausted she looked.

  “Pow,” said Padmanabhan, miming a miniature explosion with his hands. “Like a nova.”

  Uhura gave the overly enthusiastic young ensign a withering stare. “Thank you, Mister Padmanabhan. Why are we losing power so quickly?”

  “The other universe is affecting all our systems,” said DeSalle. “Not always catastrophically, but it’s definitely draining them.”

  “Once we get out of the distort-zone, they’ll be fine.” Uhura made it sound like a certainty, but Chapel knew her well enough to spot the doubt underneath.

  “Exactly,” DeSalle said.

  Uhura turned to Padmanabhan. “Ensign, any progress in pushing back the other universe?”

  “The edges of the ship are getting worse and worse,” he said. “It provides for some fascinating scan results, though. How does matter from our universe cope with one without quantum physics? I can’t even conceive of it. The stuff I’m seeing just on ten-percent permeation—”

  “You’re getting off topic, Ensign,” said Uhura.

  “Oh, right, sorry. No progress.”

  “I want a way out of this thing,” said Uhura. “We can’t just sit here pushing back if in the end it won’t do any good. We need to shut these distortions down, and get out of this zone.”

  “We barely have power,” protested DeSalle. “And if we move—”

  “Solutions, not complaints.” Uhura cut off the engineer. “We are not going to lose this ship.”

  “Lieutenant—” began Padmanabhan.


  Uhura cut him off. “I want the two of you to come up with options to get us out of here.”

  Padmanabhan and DeSalle looked at each other.

  “We’ll move the crew to the core,” she said. “We’ll shut down as many systems as we can, too. I’ll coordinate it from here.”

  “I’ll be in the spatial physics lab,” Padmanabhan said. “Maybe Bellos has new information.”

  “I’ll be in engineering,” DeSalle said curtly.

  When the door hissed shut behind them, Uhura headed back to her chair, but she stumbled before she could reach it.

  Chapel rushed over, grabbed her, and guided her to the chair. “Are you okay?”

  Uhura was breathing heavily, clutching her chest. “It hurts,” she said. “All of a sudden.”

  Chapel grabbed a medical tricorder and aimed it at Uhura. As the readings began to come in, she frowned. “All of a sudden?”

  “All of a sudden… a couple hours ago.”

  “There’s a sliver of metal in your chest, working its way further in,” said Chapel. “It’s been there for a while, probably since the explosions on the bridge.”

  “I’ve been… trying to ignore it,” Uhura said. “I’ve got to keep on going.”

  “Well, do something.” It was just like Roger to add a snide remark when this was the last thing Chapel needed. “Standing here ruing her actions isn’t helping. You’re not turning out to be much of a nurse.”

  She ignored him and looked at the readings. “We’re going to need to operate to get that sliver out,” she said. “If Doctor McCoy doesn’t regain consciousness in the next half hour, I’ll do the operation myself.”

  Uhura nodded, grimacing with pain as she spoke. “Very well.”

  Chapel helped Uhura into the exam room. Carefully she helped Uhura onto a biobed.

  Before the communications officer passed out, she said, “Christine… tell the captain I’m sorry.”

  “I will, Nyota.” And then Uhura was unconscious.

  Chapel checked to see who the senior yeoman on duty was. She got in touch with Lawton, telling her about Uhura’s plan to evacuate the crew to the core and shut down sections near the edge of the ship. Lawton said she could implement it.