Debate may be one of her lesser-known areas of expertise, but she’s always been as good with a cutting comment as she is with a phaser. A lot like Kai Kira, in her way. So I decided it would be a lot better for me if I came to Hassan instead of making him come to DS9 looking for me.
As well as better for Lieutenant Ro, I’d imagine. She couldn’t have been eager to have Orion assassins come aboard DS9. And I suppose Starfleet Intelligence would have wanted to keep you as close as possible to Hassan to help Starfleet assess the extent of the Undine’s infiltration of the Orion Syndicate—which I’ve heard turned out to be considerable.
You’re wasting your talents. You really ought to be writing more novels. Or preferably holonovels. Technothrillers. You could do one about how the Undine tried to use the Orion Syndicate to create a long-range subspace transporter as part of their Alpha Quadrant invasion—until their plans were foiled by the time-honored Ferengi values of pluck, haggling, and good old-fashioned greed.
Speaking of which, I have a business proposition that might be right in your wheelhouse.…
JAKE SISKO, DATA ROD #F-19
On the upper levels of Quark’s Bar, Grill, Gaming House, Holosuite Arcade, and Ferengi Embassy lies another world. Or rather a near-infinitude of other worlds, realms of light and shadow and force fields that can simulate every sensory input to the point that fantasy can become all but indistinguishable from reality. In one of these technologically conjured worlds, a perpetual summer reigns, and dream teams whose members lived decades and even centuries apart engage in genteel combat amid the scent of newly mowed grass and cleat-turned earth. In another faux-reality, a mid-twentieth-century international superspy, armed with only a Walther pistol and his wits, fights the enemies of freedom to an uneasy stalemate.
And in still another, Earth’s entertainment-and-gambling capital, Las Vegas, remains as it was nearly four and a half centuries ago, frozen in the golden age of 1962. Despite the passage of so many years since the last time I saw him—and the fact that his program, Bashir Sixty-two, has been running more or less continuously in this holosuite for more than a quarter century—Vic Fontaine looks exactly as he always did, from the immaculate black tuxedo to the tidy salt-and-pepper haircut that gives him a perpetual aspect of both vital early middle age and the accumulated wisdom of centuries of keen human observation. Though Vic is occupied with the duties of an attentive host, working the holographic dinner crowd in his busy nightclub, he easily disengages himself from the clusters of conversation that surround him.
“You rescued me from a bunch of sharkskin-suited Madison Avenue admen,” he says as he greets me just past the periphery of the fashionably dressed, cocktail-sipping crowd, which never wanders far from the stage where several jazz musicians are quietly setting up their instruments and equipment.
Vic’s firm handshake and inimitable high-wattage smile immediately remind me that he is far more than a mere photonic construct. I notice his eyes briefly searching mine, silently sizing me up in his own unique way, reminding me that he was the one everyone always came to when they needed help with personal problems but didn’t want to go through the formality of scheduling a meeting with a Starfleet counselor. I try to maintain my best poker face before deciding that it’s useless to try to conceal anything from this self-described “student of the human heart.”
Although I know the past quarter century has etched itself conspicuously into my face, Vic makes no mention of having noticed it. It’s as though no time at all has passed since my last visit, for me as well as for him.
As I immerse myself in his milieu* after such a long absence—starting with a martini-fueled crash course in operating the ancient audio equipment that dominates one of the club’s out-of-the-way corner tables—I remind myself not to be surprised by the fact that Vic hasn’t changed a bit, even though for him 1962 has already lasted twenty-five years and will continue into eternity, or at least until the power fails. But then why should time change him, whether he’s fastened to one particular year or not? After all, he’s not subject to the entropy and decay to which all flesh is heir. He’s an unreal thing, a human creation. Only a hologram.
Or is he?
Well, the microphone’s tested out okay, pally. Now, is this thing on?
I can see the red light from here, Vic. And it looks like the wheels have finally started turning.
“Reels,” kid. They’re called reels. Don’t look so worried about how this little recording session is gonna turn out. This baby’s a transistorized, battery-powered TransFlyweight Series 312 portable field recorder from the Amplifier Corporation of America. Top of the line. Cost me a bundle, too. It’ll work just fine.
That thing’s portable? It must weigh as much as your piano.
Hey, what do you want from me, kid? This is 1962. But you didn’t come all this way just to chitchat with me about hi-fi systems. Am I right?
Hi-fi?
Forget it, pally. Let’s catch up. Long time, no hear from.
I’m afraid work has been keeping me from visiting the station as often as I’d like, Vic.
Well, all work and no play can make Jake a dull boy. So what brings you back to the Strip after all this time?
Actually, Vic, work is what brought me here. I’m compiling an official history of the Undine War. Interviewing some of the key participants. I just finished a session with Quark, and I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to visit you before I leave the sector.
So that’s what you meant by “interview request.” I oughtta warn you, though: I’m bound to be a disappointment, since my program is period specific. An Undine War diary would be as out of place here as a manatee on a unicycle.
Actually, Vic, you might be surprised by how relevant you are to what people will know about the Undine War. Well, maybe your experience isn’t directly pertinent to the war itself, but there are some interesting parallels. For instance, the Federation experienced some important social changes during the Long War years.
I get it. Like those Rosie the Riveters who split from their kitchens for factory gigs back during Dubya Dubya Two. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You futurefolk may have conquered the stars, but you’re still just as human as anybody from my era. And the world’s bound to have at least a little unfairness in it as long as human beings are running the show.
Exactly. Of course, the sociological experts will always argue about the details of the various cause-and-effect relationships, but the fact is that war always creates social upheaval.
And social upheaval creates social change. I dig. But what I don’t get is exactly what kind of changes you’re talking about here. Like I said, my program is period specific. For me, 1962 is as stable as all the gold bullion in Fort Knox. Of course, thanks to the historical files in Deep Space 9’s computers, I know a lot about what’s coming up after 1962: the Beatles are gonna take the stage away from guys like me. Civil rights aren’t gonna stop at the front of the bus. There’s women’s liberation and the end of the Cold War.…
Some of these things are supposed to be in the very near future, at least from my 1962 pee-oh-vee. But thanks to the way Felix wrote my program, the very near future always turns out to be a mirage. New Year’s Day 1963 sometimes gets almost close enough to spill your champagne on it, but in here—in my Las Vegas—it really might as well be as far away as the moon.
But you’re more than four hundred years past any of that, Jake. So when I try to imagine whatever “social change” your world might be going through… well, I’ve gotta tell you, pally, you’ve lost me.
Appropriately enough, time seems to stand still, even though no one has called a halt to the program. Vic’s words hang in the air, like the handiwork of one of this era’s skywriting aircraft. During that elastic moment I’m tempted to ask him what actually does happen here each and every New Year’s Eve. Does the clock really just reset immediately to New Year’s Day 1962, one infinitesimal nanotick past the stroke of midnight? How many times can he remember
this same thing happening? With a shudder, I realize that I’m very glad indeed that I’m not in Vic’s shoes; I decide that I far prefer my ever-advancing slow march toward entropy, and the oblivion beyond it, to Vic’s stasis. I put this idle line of speculation aside, forcing myself back on-topic in order to deal with Vic’s confusion.
I’m talking about civil rights, Vic.
Like I said, a lot of that’s sort of permanently over the horizon, at least for me. You see, I’m stuck in what Felix called a “post-1962 Zeno’s Paradox.” Sorry, but if it happened after ’sixty-two, then I can’t experience it.
That’s not entirely true anymore, Vic. I’m talking about civil rights for synthetic persons.
Rights for synthetic persons? You mean… for lightbulbs like me?
“Lightbulb” sounds a little too much like a racial slur for my taste, Vic. How about using terms like “self-aware holograms” to describe people like you, or “sapient androids” for people like Captain Data. For years now, the Soong Foundation and other organizations have been lobbying the Federation Council to grant synthetics full rights under the UFP Constitution, including the right to vote, and all the other protections that organic citizens like me get to take for granted. The upheaval created by the Undine War may have given the synthetic rights movement all the impetus it needed to bring these changes about. What do you think?
What do I think? I think I’m glad I was already sitting down before you started talking about this.
I notice that Vic has begun to look unsteady, as though he’s had too much to drink. I suddenly realize I’ve only seen him this distressed on one other occasion—when holographic gangsters took over his club and bodily threw him out of it—and I find myself regretting having barged into Vic’s unchanging, comfortable world with such epoch-making news. Vic sits quietly, processing what I’ve told him. Looking away from his discomfiture, I turn my gaze toward the stage, where a period-appropriate jazz combo—a piano player, a stand-up bassist, a drummer, a guitarist, and a couple of brass players—has begun to tune up in preparation for Vic’s next set. When I glance back at Vic I can see that he wants to speak, but remains at a rare loss for words for nearly a minute.
Crazy. Your Foundations and Councils are actually thinking about ending Jim Crow for us holograms. Some clever team of Starfleet legal eagles might even actually get it done. But I have to wonder how many of ’em would be comfortable with a hologram or an android marrying their sisters.
Progress usually comes as two steps forward and one step back.
I wouldn’t know, pally. I’m stuck in the same year forever. And since it’s one of those years that’s west of 1968, I’ll never get to experience any of the progress you’re talking about. As long as I’m period specific, I’ll just have to be content with experiencing it all through somebody else’s eyes.
I’m sorry, Vic. I’ve been really insensitive. I had no idea you felt so… isolated from everything in here.
Hey, do I look isolated to you? Don’t sweat it, Jake. I’ve got a good life here, thanks to your father and his friends talking Quark into keeping my program running twenty-six/seven. I’m grateful for that. Sure, I wouldn’t have known that the Beatles were coming if somebody from the outside world hadn’t let me read about ’em in the station’s computer banks. But on the flip side, I also know they’re never gonna actually get here. As long as it’s 1962, I’ll never have to worry about going out of style.
That’s what I always liked best about you, Vic: you’re optimistic almost to a fault.
Guilty as charged. Now I have a question for you. Why would your war with—who is it again? The Undine? Jeez, it sounds like you’ve been fighting off a bunch of French lingerie models—why would this particular war push civil rights for androids and holograms onto the front burner? I mean, why didn’t the Dominion War do it, or one of your big dustups with the Borg?
I’ve been wondering that a lot myself lately, Vic. I’ve interviewed grunt soldiers, ivory-tower academics, and everything in between. And I’ve asked a lot of them the same question you just asked me.
The best theory I can come up with is that the idea of being replaced by Undine infiltrators terrified human beings on a really deep and profound level. It’s apparently had the same effect on Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Klingons, Romulans, and on and on down the list. It’s such a fundamental, existential fear that it’s made everyone question what it really means to be human, or Klingon, or whatever, in a way that even our scariest encounters with the Founders of the Dominion never did. The only thing that’s become crystal clear to me is that I don’t have a very good answer to your question. At least, I can’t find an answer that justifies synthetic people being exploited as a… well, as a slave race.
We sit in contemplative silence and sip at the round of martinis that a convenient bar maid brought us while I was answering Vic’s question. It’s a long time before either of us speaks, and Vic beats me to it.
So how does it all end up, pally?
End up?
For us lightbulbs. Holograms, I mean. And for the androids, too.
I realize belatedly that Vic is now the one who’s conducting this interview, not me. But that’s Vic all over, isn’t it? It’s the way Vic quietly sizes his guests up so that he can always provide advice that they can really use—even if they don’t always quite realize it at the time. I do my best to gather my thoughts to bring him up to speed on the latest developments on the synthetic civil rights front.
Well, let’s look at some of the recent box scores. An android was officially declared a person in 2365, and Starfleet’s JAG office upheld that decision twenty-one years later. That same android is now in command of the Federation’s flagship. A hologram who served aboard the U.S.S. Voyager fought for eleven years to get the Federation Supreme Court to recognize his personhood, and finally prevailed. And the Soong Foundation is on the verge of creating a mobile holo-emitter that will allow self-aware holograms to live independently in the outside world.
You mean outside of the holosuites?
That’s the plan. And the holoprogrammer who created you, Vic, has helped to create a new version of your program for Starfleet, under the supervision of Captain Deanna Troi, formerly of the U.S.S. Titan.
Crazy. Not that I think I’m perfect or anything, but why would Felix take a Mulligan on my program?
It’s for the new ECH: the Emergency Counseling Hologram that some of Starfleet’s new ships have started carrying as a supplement to the Emergency Medical Holograms that have been in use since back in the seventies. It’s really just an extension of the service you’ve been providing to the crew of DS9 for years anyway.
I’m just a hardworking entertainer, pal. If a little crooning from a close relative of mine can bring some distraction to an overworked Starfleet officer’s life, then all those hours rehearsing with the band seem a lot more worthwhile. But I think I dig where the Starfleet headshrinkers are coming from. Healthy body, healthy mind, right?
Exactly.
So what you’re saying is… it hasn’t really ended.
What hasn’t ended?
The synthetic-rights struggle you’ve been telling me about. The Undine War might be behind us—knock on wood—but the other fight’s still being slugged out. A complete lightbulb bill of rights might be headed in my direction, but it’s still over the horizon—even from where you’re sitting.
Maybe that’s true right now. But it won’t be forever, and it’s not as though you have any shortage of time. So for you, Vic, some of that change will come. No matter what year Felix might have stuck your program in.
Not for me, pally. Maybe this Vic two-point-oh you just told me about will see the Promised Land. But me? I’m part and parcel of Felix’s 1962, and I always will be. I might take one small step or two for a lightbulb, but it’ll have to be a later model of me that finally takes that one giant leap for lightbulbkind.
As the interview winds down to its conclusion, I consider pointin
g out that Vic has made a number of anachronistic references—the Beatles, late 1960s social unrest, and the first Apollo lunar landing—which might be considered hopeful signs of his untapped capacity to transcend his program, and perhaps even time and space itself. But for once, Vic—the man who gave my friend Nog so much encouragement after a Dominion War injury had nearly taken his will to live—doesn’t appear to be in the mood for hope. I’m beginning to wish that I’d stayed away from the holosuite as Vic drains what’s left of his martini, bids me a quiet farewell, and then mounts the stage upon which his jazz combo waits to begin his set.
To Vic’s credit, he performs with all the ease and charm I remember from the time of the Dominion War. He jokes with the dinner crowd and trades good-natured barbs with the Madison Avenue advertising executives he mentioned earlier. Then he wows his audience with renditions of some familiar tunes from his standard set list: Russ Morgan’s “You’re Nobody ’til Somebody Loves You” comes first, followed by Arlen and Koehler’s “I’ve Got the World on a String” and Coleman and Leigh’s “The Best Is Yet to Come.” With the steady support of the band, he seems to draw strength from the act of singing itself, almost as though it is a kind of therapy for him. It reminds me of the way I often take refuge from the world via the raw, creative act of writing.
While Vic performs, I down two more martinis—real ones, not synthehol—which is something I never do. Abashed at having dragged an old friend down into melancholy (not to mention being sorely tempted to follow him there myself), I decide I’ve done enough damage for one day. As Vic finishes up his regular set with Gershwin’s “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” I rise unsteadily and head for the holosuite door, remembering as I exit not to shut down Vic’s program, which has been running continuously since the final months of the Dominion War. I wonder, however, whether Vic would think of a shutdown as a mercy.
Then I hear his encore, a long, slow melody that sounds out of place amid the swing-era standards that comprise Vic Fontaine’s traditional musical fare. Out of place, but not inappropriate. After a few beats of Vic’s a cappella crooning, the band, apparently as surprised as I am, finds its way into the tune, hesitantly at first, and then with enough brio to sweep the audience along with them, transforming confused scowls into winsome smiles and finally, enthusiastic applause.
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