by Greg Cox
“What?” Q said. Over by Ops, Q was enjoying a reunion with his family. Little q came to a landing within his father’s waiting arms. A half-eaten glopsicle bobbed perilously near Q’s ruffled brown hair. “Oh, I see what you mean.”
Q snapped his fingers and gravity was restored to the bridge, dragging Picard swiftly toward the floor below. Bits and pieces of broken technology also plummeted abruptly, clattering onto the duranium floor. The captain himself landed on both feet with as much dignity as he could muster, then quickly took stock of his new surroundings.
He didn’t like what he saw. Even in the alarmingly dim lighting, it was clear that the bridge of his starship had been through a costly battle. Besides the temporary absence of gravity—and Picard noticed now that Riker and the other crew members present, with the notable exception of Q and his family, were equipped with magnetic boots—ominous signs of damage and violent destruction were evident in nearly every direction he looked. The overhead lighting had obviously gone out, so his eyes had to adjust to the resulting gloom as he glanced about the bridge. Flashing alert signals and the glowing viewscreen cast deep scarlet and magenta shadows over the scene. The aft engineering station looked completely devastated by some sort of electrical fire, while bits of ash and lightweight debris polluted the ordinarily pristine atmosphere of the bridge, gradually drifting toward the floor. “The Calamarain, I take it,” he said to Riker, who approached the captain with a worried look upon his face. How long have I been away, Picard wondered, and what has become of the ship in my absence?
“You called it,” Riker confirmed. His voice was tighter than usual, as if he were in some pain. He gave Q a dirty look. “Good to have you back, Captain.”
“Trust me, you are no more pleased than I am, Number One,” Picard said wholeheartedly. He turned around to inspect the main viewer. To his concern and puzzlement, the screen showed nothing but a constant purple glow. “Where are we?” he asked Riker, fearing he already knew the answer.
“Inside the barrier,” the first officer informed him. “It was the only way to escape the Calamarain. At present, we are waiting for La Forge to complete repairs on the warp engines before attempting to leave this sector.”
Picard nodded. He could get a full report later on; for now, it appeared that, while the ship was definitely in difficult straits, Commander Riker had the situation in hand. “And the wormhole experiment?” he asked with some apprehension.
“Aborted,” Riker said bluntly, “after we ran into trouble with the Calamarain.” He stepped aside and let Picard take his place in the captain’s chair. “Protecting the ship took priority.”
“You made the right choice, Number One,” Picard assured him, “and a better one than you could even realize.” Riker gave him a quizzical look so Picard elaborated, tipping his head toward Q. “I’ll give you a complete briefing later, but let’s just say that I’ve learned more than enough about the true nature and purpose of the barrier. Hopefully, that will be enough to satisfy Professor Faal and Starfleet Science.”
Settling into his chair, Picard noted that the female Q had apparently commandeered Deanna Troi’s seat; it was a bit odd to realize that this was the same woman whom he and Q had just observed several hundred thousand years in the past. He scowled when he saw that the baby Q had left sticky handprints all over the armrest of the counselor’s chair, although, from the look of the rest of the bridge, he decided he should be thankful that the command area was intact at all. Taking a quick mental inventory of the bridge crew, he was surprised to see Lieutenant Barclay stationed at the secondary science station and that young Canadian officer, Ensign Berglund, manning the tactical podium. “Where is Lieutenant Leyoro?” he asked. “And Counselor Troi?”
Riker’s face warned him there was worse to come. “Sickbay,” he began. “The news isn’t good….”
Six
Bring down the wall. The wall is all….
Gravity returned to sickbay without warning, but Lem Faal failed to notice. His mind ablaze with new concepts and sensations, he awoke suddenly, his transformed eyes snapping open, to find Beverly Crusher leaning over him, a worried frown upon her face. Surprised by his unexpected return to consciousness, she gasped and stepped backward involuntarily, bringing a hand to her chest.
Faal was disoriented by the familiar surroundings. Sickbay? How had he returned to sickbay? What had happened to him? The last thing he remembered was standing by a turbolift, trying to get to Engineering. My experiment…my work…my destiny… Then the power of the barrier had invaded his mind, bringing with it…something else. A renewed sense of purpose, along with the strength and the focus to overcome the endless limitations of his decaying body, or so he had thought until he woke here. I must have collapsed, he realized, overcome by the power of the barrier…and the voice on the other side. The voice had spoken to him for months, promising him immortality and infinite knowledge, enough to transcend the disease that was killing him, to overcome mortality entirely. Come to me, free me, be me. Faal had followed that voice to the very edge of the galaxy, all the while concealing his true purpose from Starfleet.
Closer now. Close, closer, closest….
“Professor?” the human doctor asked urgently. “Can you hear me? How do you feel?”
He felt like a new being, but saw no reason to explain anything to the doctor. He had evolved beyond her, beyond everyone on this starship. They must have brought me here, he realized, just as Picard’s crew had interfered with and delayed his mission ever since he first stepped aboard. They can’t see what I see, hear what I hear. No matter. The ship was still within the barrier; Faal could sense its power all around him. He knew where he needed to be: Engineering, where the equipment necessary to his experiment waited. My work…my destiny. It was time for the final step, to remove the barrier between himself and the voice.
Bring down the wall….
“Professor Faal,” the doctor repeated. She glanced anxiously from his face to the biobed monitor and back again. “Can you understand me? Do you know where you are?”
Engineering, Faal thought. I have to go to Engineering. He tried to sit up, but something restrained him. Lifting his head a few centimeters from the bed, he saw that translucent straps held his wrists and ankles to the bed. A longer strap stretched across his chest, further limiting his movement. Why have they confined me? he wondered. Don’t they realize how close I am? Close, closer, closest. He had vague memories of an altercation with the doctor, and with Counselor Troi, but that felt like it had occurred ages ago, to another person, one very different from the being he had become.
Come. Hurry. He could still hear the voice, but now it seemed like the voice was his, almost indistinguishable from his own thoughts. Bring down the wall. Break through.
Dr. Crusher saw him inspecting the restraints. “I’m sorry, but it was for the best. I’m not sure you’re fully responsible for your actions. It’s just a precaution.”
He ignored her babbling. The barrier was all that mattered, and the voice. The voice that was both inside him and waiting on the other side of the great wall. Come. Hurry. Now. He had to leave this place. Neither he nor the voice, if there was truly any difference left between them, could not wait any longer. Hurry, it pleaded and commanded. Fast, faster, fastest.
His shining eyes stared at the band across his chest, concentrating his will upon the crude impediment, which began to undo itself as though possessed of a will of its own. Simple telekinesis, he observed. Mind over matter. All that matters is mind. Crusher made a surprised sound and grabbed for the strap, trying to pull it back into place, but the band resisted her. The straps holding down his wrists and ankles also came free. He didn’t even need to touch them; just thinking at the straps was enough. Release me. Release the voice. He started to sit up and the doctor’s hands pressed down upon his chest, struggling to keep him from rising. “Daniels. Lee,” she called desperately. “Help me. He’s getting free.”
Faal dimly recognized the
security officer who had originally escorted him to sickbay, what seemed like decades ago. He didn’t know who the other officer was; he had never seen her before. So many people on this starship, he thought. Too many. He didn’t need any of them anymore. All he needed was the voice, just as the voice needed him.
Come. Hurry. Bring down the wall. Release the All….
They tried to help Crusher restrain him, but there was nothing they could do against the newfound power in his mind. With a casual glance, he sent both officers flying away from him. They were propelled backward, limbs flailing, until they crashed into the nearest obstacle. Daniels slammed into a sealed doorway, while the other crew member collided with a metal cart holding a tray covered with medical instruments. Both cart and officer fell over, sending hyposprays and exoscalpels sliding across the floor. On nearby biobeds, injured crew members sat up in alarm, the most able jumping onto their feet and rushing to assist the stunned officers.
“Stay away from him,” Crusher warned them all, backing away from Faal as he swung his legs off the bed and onto the floor. He wondered for a second why he was wearing such cumbersome boots when the ship’s artificial gravity was very obviously functioning again. He stared at the boots and they transformed instantly into more conventional footwear. That’s better, he thought. Better, best, bestow. The voice had bestowed this power on him, the better to bring down the wall.
“Oh no,” Crusher whispered, observing the seemingly magical metamorphosis. He could sense that she was confused and wary. Best, better, beware. No fool, she kept her distance as he stood still for a moment, savoring the restored strength and vitality in his limbs. The voice sang within him, filling with power and purpose. Mind over matter. My mind renews my matter. He had not felt so robust, so capable, in months, not since the Iverson’s had begun eating away at his physical stamina. He felt the power of the voice rushing through his body, eradicating every last trace of disease. I have defeated death, he exulted. I will never cease to be.
The doctor reached for her combadge, intending to alert Riker and the others, but Faal heard her thoughts before she had even finished thinking them. The shiny golden badge disappeared, transformed into nothingness with just a moment’s thought. He glanced around the ward and, just for good measure, removed the rest of the combadges as well. No more interference, he vowed. No more small-minded rules and procedures. The head nurse, Ogawa, came running in from another ward, no doubt attracted by the clamor of Starfleet personnel slamming into doors and objects, and he consigned her badge to oblivion. No more delays. The wall is all….
He started toward the exit; then an apprehensive thought in the doctor’s mind caught his attention. He looked past her to where his son lay unconscious upon a biobed.
Milo, he thought. The sight of the motionless boy gave him pause, although he wasn’t sure why. He had attained true immortality at last; physical reproduction had become irrelevant. But my family…? Peering deeper into the doctor’s thoughts, he discovered that Kinya was also here in sickbay, resting quietly in the pediatric unit, her childish mind temporarily deactivated by the doctor’s technology.
Milo. Kinya. He stood frozen between the insensate boy and the exit from sickbay. My children. Images from the past raced through his memory, coming from someplace other than the voice. The birth of each child, their first words and telepathic outpourings. He saw their entire family together, his wife, Shozana, still alive to share each precious moment. Milo opening a talking gift box on his tenth birthday, the sculpted face upon the ornate container urging him on. The whole family sharing a picnic lunch alongside Lake Cataria, the afternoon sun shining down on them. Little Milo, a few years younger than he was now, lifting up his baby sister for the first time while Shozana looked on, radiantly proud and happy….
For a moment, his purpose wavered. Hurry, the voice demanded, but Faal was transfixed by his son’s plight. What will become of him? Probing the boy’s mind, he discovered a power not unlike his own growing within the sleeping child’s brain. Perhaps Milo had followed him across the evolutionary threshold, attaining the same paranormal capabilities? Faal found himself both pleased and disturbed by the prospect. This had not been part of his plan; he had resolved to leave such mortal ties behind him forever. Flesh does not matter. Matter does not matter. The sunny recollections welling up inside him gave way to the searing image of Shozana as she disintegrated forever upon that malfunctioning transporter pad, demonstrating irrevocably the fundamental frailty and impermanence of humanoid relationships. He could never allow himself to be hurt that way again.
Milo has been gifted, too. He doesn’t need a father anymore. Mind is all that matters. Faal turned away from the boy’s bed, confident that he was making the right decision. Milo could look after Kinya, too. He had always been good at that, especially since their mother died. Besides, there was another child that concerned him now, concerned the voice. An image came to his mind of an infant, a mere toddler, with incredible powers and an even more astounding heritage. The child of Q and Q, the next step in the evolution of the mind. The child of the future. His future….
Goodbye, he thought to both of his children, the children of the past, and left sickbay. No one tried to stop him.
Come. Hurry. Now.
The corridors outside were blessedly free of people. All crew members were at their posts, he assumed. Red alert signals, horizontal in orientation, still flashed upon the walls. Faal walked at an ever-increasing pace toward the nearest turbolift. The last time he had trod these halls, intent on the same destination, he had been near the end of his tether, scarcely able to force his debilitated body to take another step; now he raced effortlessly upon legs that no longer ached with every movement. The closer he came to his destiny, the stronger he felt. By the time he reached the turbolift entrance, he was literally running. He waited impatiently for the door to slide open.
Close, closer, closest.
“The turbolifts are not currently available to unauthorized personnel,” an automated voice informed him. “Civilian passengers should report to either sickbay or their quarters.”
Of course, he remembered. The blasted red alert. The officious computer and its meaningless protocols had halted him before, but this time he would not be denied. “Open,” he ordered the door, his enhanced mind adding force to his command. No more obstacles. The bright red door slid open obligingly and he stepped inside. “Engineering,” he said, receiving no further argument from the computer. The turbolift carried him nearer to his destiny. Soon, he promised the voice. Soon, sooner, soonest.
The trip to Engineering took less than a minute. Exiting the turbolift, he entered a beehive of activity. Moving with the efficiency and coordination of a finely calibrated isolinear relay, Starfleet personnel scurried about the massive multilevel engineering center, performing diagnostics and needed repairs on a variety of systems. Mere specks, he dismissed them. Specks inside a shiny, silver bug. The bulk of their efforts appeared centered around the warp-engine controls, but the crew was also focused on systems as diverse as the subspace field distortion amplifiers and the structural integrity field power conduits. The master situation monitor, featuring a cutaway schematic of the Enterprise, highlighted malfunctions throughout the entire vessel, although one by one systems seemed to be slowly coming back on-line.
None of this matters, only the wall. The wall is all.
So intent on their repairs were the crew that no one noticed Faal’s arrival at first. He went straight to the chief engineer’s office, where La Forge had earlier delegated an auxiliary workstation to Faal. To his relief, no one was utilizing the station as he approached, although Ensign Sutter was hard at work nearby, using a handheld laser wielder to seal the ruptured casing of a waveguide conduit junction. He logged into the computer terminal and called up the parameters for the subspace tensor matrix necessary to create his artificial wormhole. He was surprised and pleased by how easily he could read the complicated display screens; he wasn’t even far
sighted anymore. Mind over matter. The mind sees what mere matter cannot. Providentially, proving the unstoppable inevitability of his quest, the data was still intact, despite all the damage caused by the senseless attack of the Calamarain. The quantum torpedo containing the specialized magneton pulse generator was unharmed as well, and ready to be launched into the barrier as soon as he took over the tactical controls.
Yes, he thought. Mind was all that mattered, but he still needed these machines, at least for this one last task. The voice told him so. The barrier was made of mind as well, and so could not be undone by mind alone. The minds of the Q had made it so. Curse the Q, curse them all! Only his wormhole, born of mortal science, could bring down the wall. Machine against mind…
First, though, he was going to need extra power to generate the subspace matrix via the Enterprise’s main deflector dish. With that in view, he began rerouting the preignition plasma from the impulse deck to the auxiliary intake. He and La Forge had already worked out the procedure, back before Captain Picard disappeared and his fainthearted crew lost their enthusiasm for the experiment. Fine, he thought, diverting the plasma as planned. Fine, finer, finest. This would only take a moment or two.
His efforts did not go unnoticed. Geordi La Forge came running from the matter-antimatter reaction chamber, darting around the tabletop master systems display. “What the devil is going on with the plasma injectors?” he asked loudly, then slowed to a stop as his optical implants spotted the Betazoid scientist at the auxiliary station. “Professor Faal? What are you doing here?” He looked more carefully at Faal. “What’s happened to your eyes?”
Says the blind man, Faal thought ungraciously. Not long ago, but before Faal’s apotheosis, La Forge had banished him from main engineering after Faal tried to overrule Commander Riker’s order to abort the experiment. Despite all that happened to him since, Faal had neither forgotten nor forgiven. They are all against me. The crew, the Q, all of them. “I’m doing what I came here to do,” he said icily. “What Starfleet Command ordered you all to assist.”
