by Tony Daniel
We wiped them out.
Ought we to do the same with this Federation? These new concepts of good and evil and the rest frustrated us. Many of us believed we ought to eliminate the source of that frustration before it polluted our pure thought.
This became my faction.
But some of us—chief among them Yarnek, who had been appointed judge of the drama—began to ponder another possibility.
What if James T. Kirk was right?
What if we had been missing something, some basic truth that was right before our eyes for thousands of years?
The question must be decided, and how better to do it than to continue creating and observing even more scenarios? So we began. First we played the game among ourselves. Yarnek and his troupe of re-enactors took on many personas. Most gravitated to a particular “part” or “role.”
We pitted good against evil again and again. I must admit, it became less a process of learning and curiosity and more one of amusement and diversion.
Soon, merely to play among ourselves was not enough. We began to reach out and snatch other representatives of their species to perform in our scenarios. The exclusion zone the Federation established around Excalbia did not take account of our full capabilities. Some we allowed to return home after their role was complete. Others we destroyed.
I and my faction took no issue with this. Yarnek and his faction began to believe we were committing thought-crimes against ourselves. He spoke of the concept of injustice toward others.
He spoke of murder.
Yarnek called us killers and accused himself of being the worst of all since he enabled the scenarios.
He claimed to be “ashamed” and called for the scenarios to end.
Most of us thought this was nonsense. The scenarios, in the short time of one passing of our planet around its star, had become a great source of status and advancement among us.
“No,” we said, “the scenarios will continue until we have collected the requisite data and reached a satisfactory conclusion.”
Yarnek seemed to us to become unbalanced, flinging about the new concepts he had encountered. He called us assassins, executioners, genocidal maniacs.
“But the scenarios serve a great purpose,” we answered. “They are the means to decide whether or not we shall eliminate this upstart collection of primitives, this Federation.”
Besides, we had begun to wager on the outcomes, and fortunes in prestige were being lost and won. Stop it? We were enjoying it.
Yarnek made his escape. He was branded an outlaw, a thought-criminal, and we made plans to hunt him down and eliminate him and the others with him.
Meanwhile, the scenarios went on. Good versus evil. Any species unlucky enough to stray near our system was lured in, captured, and forced to participate, to satisfy our curiosity.
We set our lure one too many times.
We attempted to capture the Demiurge.
* * *
The skin of the Excalbian was beginning to grow hotter—hot enough to cause Valek great discomfort. Anvit’s ability to maintain the lower temperature was rapidly decreasing.
She had to maintain contact. She had to follow the tale. She had to know how the story ended.
Yet if I continue like this my own skin will be burnt to a crisp.
“Move forward. Show me the worst,” Valek told Anvit in her trancelike state. “Show me the Demiurge.”
* * *
The Demiurge had no problem distinguishing between good and evil or deciding which side of good and evil It embodied.
Evil.
It was a creature as at home in the world of mind-reading and matter manipulation as we were. The fact must be admitted, the Demiurge was as far above us in understanding these things as we are above the humanoids of the Federation. It was a creature of space, wholly divorced from whatever Its planetary origin might have been in eons past.
It was, in Its way, beautiful in form. Its natural surface was a changing membrane of quantum foam, and Its interior was dark matter set with a scattering of bright pricks of light, so that It could camouflage Itself as a starfield and approach Its prey unawares.
It was an opportunistic stalker. It preyed on ships, space habitats, and entire worlds.
The interior of the Demiurge was of no material we had ever seen or imagined. Somehow dark matter and space-time itself were twisted into the makeup of the Demiurge, so that there was storage capacity for enormous amounts of data, hoards of wealth gathered from thousands of pillaged worlds, and life-forms kept for amusement in zoos as big as worlds. It could do with the fabric of space-time what we can do with matter manipulation.
Although we experienced It as a single entity, the mentality was a group-mind—It referred to Itself as “we”—but one of such startling complexity and integration that It made our own collective seem like a gathering of stones compared to a mountain of granite.
In our ignorance, we created an arena in orbit above the planet in which to run one of our scenarios, a corral for the Demiurge. In truth, many of us thought it would be fun to bait such a species. We lured It in, or believed that was what we were doing, and “captured” It with field beams we thought were unbreakable.
It was toying with us all along. It allowed the greater part of the collective to gather in one easily accessed data stream.
Then It struck. It reached down to the planet. It reached into the planet, searching out complexity, searching out life.
Absorbing. Confiscating. Eating us alive, our mentalities added to Its own, and enslaving us to perform Its functions. For those so absorbed, there would be no more curiosity, no self-reflection, no journeying toward inner enlightenment. They would only exist to serve the Demiurge. They would not even be allowed to die.
A few of us created these crystal ships from our old, long cast-aside spacefaring technology, and attempted to flee.
We believed we had escaped unnoticed. We were fools. As we ran in terror, we received a final message from the Demiurge.
It told us to look back for a final sight of our world. Since we wished a demonstration of the nature of good and evil, It was going to give us one. It reached inside the planet and destabilized the core. We had riddled our planetary structure with great complexity from our eons of thought. Like a giant claw crushing a bit of pumice within its grasp, the Demiurge squeezed—
The planet imploded.
It crumpled. Even atoms could not exist under such conditions. It became a seething mass of quarks.
The Demiurge ate it. Pulled our world into Its maw as It had many others, incorporated the planet’s former material being into Its own transdimensional structure.
Excalbia was no more.
We ran. As fast as we could. Because the Demiurge was not done with us yet. It told us as much.
It told us that when it eats, It finishes Its meal. When It was done digesting the mentalities of those It had captured, It would be coming for us.
It told us It was allowing us to escape.
Minds taste better when they’ve been seasoned by fear, It said. So be afraid. We are coming.
* * *
Valek jerked her hands away from the Excalbian, and the mind-meld broke. Her palms were beginning to blister from second- and third-degree burns. She had her answer. That was what was important.
Conscious will flowed back into her. She had her answer, and now was the time to act.
“Captian Kirk, lower your shields,” she said. “We have a larger problem than the Excalbians.”
Anvit nodded his large rocky head with its glowing eyes. “Valek will make you understand, James T. Kirk,” he said. “You, a primitive, taught us that there was more to the exterior world than was contained within our philosophy. We have now been thrust into your world, James T. Kirk. We beg of you: help us to survive.”
Nineteen
Captain’s Log, Supplemental. The Montana was disabled by the Excalbians in an attempt to negotiate an alliance with the Federation from a po
sition of dominance. Their reason: they are fleeing a powerful enemy, the Demiurge. The magnitude of Its power is difficult to conceive; the Excalbians possess the ability to manipulate matter and read minds almost at will, yet they were powerless before the Demiurge.
The Enterprise hangar deck was filled with an odd assortment of species: humans, Vulcans, and Excalbian humanoids. And, finally, there was the very large rocky mass of the Excalbian commander, Anvit. A conference room table had been taken apart and carried to the hangar. To accommodate Anvit, Scott had turned the internal cooling of the space as low as the Vulcans could tolerate, but the space remained uncomfortably warm.
The occupants sat or stood around the table, while a triscreen displayed Spock’s status report.
“We have been measuring the gravimetric waves issuing from the direction of Excalbia, or the system in which Excalbia existed. There is a significant spike, and it is increasing at a rate that allows us to extrapolate the speed of the Demiurge’s approach.” Spock paused.
He’s no doubt rechecking the calculations he’s already made in his head.
“We are heading at maximum warp toward the Vara Nebula, but the Demiurge is steadily gaining.”
“Are we going to make it to the nebula?” Kirk asked.
“No, Captain. The Demiurge will catch up with us in five point nine hours,” said Spock. “Your desire to use the nebula for cover is a good idea, even if I suspect it will ultimately be ineffective. Anyway, we will be close, but not close enough. The Demiurge will be upon us.”
Anvit stirred from his resting position. His eyes flashed as he produced auditory speech from a small orifice in the middle of what Kirk thought of as his chest. “Our course of action is obvious,” he said.
“And what would that be, Commander?”
“We must surrender to the inevitable. There is no rational alternative.”
Kirk did a double-take. “You can’t be serious?”
Washington-Yarnek turned to Kirk. “This is the Excalbian way, Captain Kirk,” he said. “Anvit is speaking as would anyone in the collective.”
“Surrender is not an option, Commander Anvit,” Kirk said.
“There is no foreseeable action we can take that will conceivably save us.” Anvit turned to Valek. “Representative, you and I have shared thoughts.”
And I find myself a bit jealous of that fact, Kirk thought. Ah well.
“That is so, Commander,” said Valek.
“You are a being who depends upon reason. Surely you see that there is no logical alternative but to surrendering to our fate?”
“I admit that a straightline algorithmic interpretation of logic does not present another answer,” Valek said.
“There, you see, James T. Kirk? The Vulcan mind is optimized for logic. Even your own Federation representative agrees with me.”
“I did not say that I agree,” Valek replied, holding up a hand of warning. “When I was young, once I arrived at a conclusion, I did not consider the consequences beyond the fact that logic was on my side. But there was one who showed me that I might be mistaken in my premises, and therefore I reached incorrect conclusions.”
She nodded toward the Enterprise’s first officer.
“Spock. He is half human. Logic dictated that his schoolmates test him to find the hidden emotion within. We claimed that we merely wished to expose his weakness for his own improvement, so that he might receive the guidance he needed. We also wished him removed so he would not annoy us and so that he would not retard our intellectual standards. We told him that he should relegate himself to a suitable position where his emotional weakness would not become a liability. Is this not so, Spock?”
“It is, indeed,” Spock replied. “You and the other Vulcan children placed many obstacles in my path.”
“Yet my brother, Varen, did not share our conclusions,” Valek said. “He showed a wisdom beyond his years. He understood that my logic—and that of the other children—was based on faulty assumptions.” Valek touched her hand to her chin and gazed downward, remembering. “We had built our premises on faulty assumptions. Varen was the only one among us who saw that in Spock were the highest ideals, instincts, and abilities of both Vulcans and humans. It was we who were lacking, and not Spock.”
She’s apologizing, but only admitting an error in logic, Kirk thought. It is, however, the only apology Spock will appreciate.
Kirk found himself admiring Valek for making the effort.
“All very interesting,” Anvit said. “But I do not see how this relates to our current predicament.”
Washington-Yarnek shook his head and let out a low chuckle. “She’s trying to tell you to stop being an arrogant bubble-eating crawler and consider the possibility that your own rationality may be limited,” he said. “Isn’t the destruction of our world enough to convince you that some of your assumptions about the workings of reality may be mistaken?”
Anvit shifted, orienting himself toward Washington-Yarnek. “I hear you, runaway,” he said. For a moment he and Washington-Yarnek seemed to be engaged in some kind of confrontation—perhaps a mental wrestling match—because both were stock-still. Then Washington-Yarnek seemed to relax, and Anvit rumbled into a lower position. “I hear, and I concede that you have a point, Yarnek.”
“You once presented me with a convincing replica of Surak,” Spock said. “I was in awe of your reproduction. Learn from your own work. The ancient Vulcans faced a similar dilemma. Nuclear war ravaged the planet. Many Vulcans died, others fled, but on Vulcan, Surak’s teachings were embraced. If we had lacked the will to live, despite the devastation, Surak’s philosophy would have been nullified by our own nonexistence. The dead do not think logically, for they do not think at all. For logic—or, as you put it, rationality—to have meaning, it is imperative to carry on in the face of adversity or even seemingly inevitable doom.”
“Vulcans are prepared to make a stand against the Demiurge?” Anvit said.
“Captain Kirk once accused me of having, when faced with what seemed inevitable disaster, logically working out the idea that an act of irrational hope was required,” Spock said. “I did not agree with his assessment at the time, but the captain had a point.”
“Perhaps ‘hope’ is not the best characterization,” Valek said. “Let us call it a random variation in the space-time continuum that we, by attempting to survive, will be in a position to take advantage of.”
Anvit again stirred. “I confess I do not understand why we should not give up,” he said. “But I have trust, based on evidence, that you of the Federation are capable of surprising, yet effective, behavior.”
“We have much to learn from each other,” Kirk said. “But we need to survive to do so.”
“Agreed,” Anvit said after a long pause. “I will return to my ships and ready them for a fight.”
* * *
Another shock wave struck the Enterprise, nearly knocking everyone standing in the bridge off their feet and setting all scrambling for handholds.
“Gravitational and temporal disruption growing stronger,” Spock reported from his sensor station. “The Demiurge entity is now one million kilometers away and closing.”
A strange whine began to sound throughout the ship. It was a tone of randomly varying pitch and level.
Hard to hear myself think with that going on, Kirk thought.
“Uhura, can you clear the intership of whatever is making that noise.”
The communication officer checked her board. “I think it’s . . . the air.”
“Confirmed,” Spock said. “What we are hearing are small tears in the fabric of space-time forming in our immediate vicinity; indeed some are forming within our physical bodies.”
“Can we damp it in some way so at least we don’t have to hear our world ripping apart?”
“Difficult to accomplish,” Spock said. “Perhaps if Mister Scott were to alter the resonance factor on the dilithium crystals to create a countering inner-ship vibration? I would sugg
est a change from frequency Alpha one six nine to Upsilon nine zero five.”
Kirk punched the comm to engineering.
“Scotty, change the dilithium crystal resonance factor to Upsilon nine zero five.”
“Aye, Captain, but I have to tell you that is not in the specs,” Scott replied.
“Do you always follow the specs?” Kirk asked.
Scott chuckled. “On occasion. Depends on the circumstances.” A brief pause, then he reported. “Dilithium resonance is now Upsilon nine zero five.”
There was a buzz, somewhat like a bad door buzzer, but it quickly died down. In its place was blessed silence.
“That took care of the problem, Scott. Bridge out.”
Kirk glanced over to Spock. His first officer merely raised an eyebrow, then turned back to his station.
“Uhura, please call President Washington to the bridge,” Kirk said. He shook his head in amusement. “I’ll never get tired of saying that,” he mumbled to himself.
* * *
Washington-Yarnek joined Kirk on the bridge. The two men stood and looked at the viewscreen. There was nothing to see except the five Excalbian ships.
“Five ships,” Kirk said. “All that’s left of your world.”
“Anvit managed to save more, Captain,” said Washington-Yarnek. “There are methods for preserving personalities in crystalline matrices, storing them. I believe Anvit escaped with at least a hundred thousand individuals in deep storage. He may hope to reanimate them someday if a suitable home is found.” Washington-Yarnek smiled tightly. “The Excalbians like to say that what they truly are is a train of thought that inhabits a swirl of magma.”
“They?”
“Yes, they, my good sir,” Washington-Yarnek replied. “I no longer am one of that species. My participation in the scenarios, my time as a runaway—this has all remade me. I suspect the others of my ilk feel much like me in this regard.”
