Part 1
USS Yreka
Commander Yon-Oa-Shnai sat on a couch looking across from chief engineer T’uisza, a burly female Vulcan with a gambling problem. She called it looking for truth in the context of consequential chance. She was full of shit.
“Do you think she’ll do it, Commander?” T’uisza asked him.
The Andorian XO didn’t blink looking at her, then back to the bulkhead door separating them from their captain. “Do I think Captain Liu will kill herself? Yes. Yes I do. Are you asking for the betting pool?”
“My curiosity only. The results won’t matter. Will you try to prevent her?”
The commander made a standard UFP “no” gesture with his hands. With so many species and cultures, gestures had been standardized, specifically to use hands or other topmost appendages. In pressure suits, head gestures were meaningless, and some species weren’t that flexible, anyway. A Vulcan could convey a world of meaning in one of their eyebrows, same as an Andorian with their antennae, but it did no good if you could not see them.
“I told her I’d honor her decision. If we keep this up, we all have to make that call. You saw what happened to Lloyd. Even YOU don’t’ want to go down like that.”
A group of officers had all watched as Boyd had slowly dissolved into nothingness and wiped out of existence. One always thought being wiped out of existence would be instant and painless. It was neither.
And in that messy way the universe worked, it left a lasting imprint on their minds. There was an officer named Lloyd, who screamed his head off as he slowly faded away. There was no record of him in the ships registry, no record of him anywhere. He’d never existed. He might have been Yon’s best friend, but no one knew. He might have been someone's lover. He was a screaming phantom. He had a name. A few had been calling it out to him. So they remembered that, like details from a fading dream. You clung to those few details, you reminded yourself and reinforced them but in doing so they became more ephemeral, more inaccurate.
He was the first to go, as far as anyone remembered. Captain Liu was experiencing pain, now. It wouldn't be long.
The engineer said flatly, “I followed her orders and put her name, birthdate and rank into the containment buffer around the inner warp core along with details of project Unravel. Since it exists in and out of realspace it may be the only record of her existence after she’s gone, and what we’ve done.”
“But no one will remember if it’s there or how to look for it,” Yon considered openly.
Commander Yon said, “We’ll have the output log, that’s something anyway.”
They looked at the deck carpeting as minutes dragged on.
There was a warning klaxon, “Alert! Alert: Phaser discharge detected in captain’s quarters”
Well that was silly. He was captain. He always had been. Any why was he sitting here outside in the corridor with his XO, T’uisza. “That was odd. Did you just hear an alert?”
T’uisza said, “I thought I did. No. I suppose not.”
They opened his cabin door to find nothing amiss.
“I’ll have comms do a diagnostic on the computer. Unless.”
They looked at each other and both hurried to deck 10, into the sealed hatch, scooting past a Black-badge wearing guard to open it who didn't even bother with protocol, anymore.
Inside the Anthropic Engine looked quiet as ever, just a dodecahedron of coppery metal plugged into various outputs. They looked at a the output log and noticed a spike at a time the false phaser discharge warning occurred. The Andorian and Vulcan looked at each other.
Captain Yon said, “Computer, give the ship’s compliment.”
There was no pause, “204, Captain.”
Captain Yon said, “For our mission profile it should be 206. Computer, have there been any fatalities or transfers from the Yreka since this mission began?”
“Negative, Captain.” the computer answered.
T’suiza raised an eyebrow, “It should be 205, assuming Lloyd was indeed on the ship.”
“Then we lost someone else, in the captain’s quarters” He touched the captain’s lapel pip on his uniform instinctively, embarassed that the Vulcan saw him do so. He remembered his promotion, remembered being assigned to this Cali class ship and her bizarre clandestine assignment. The Dominion War was in its 15th year. Every ship was needed. No idea was too reckless or crazy to not try, and it all came down to logistics. He remembered his own ethical and moral reservations about this damned Engine, and yet he was swayed by the passionate of argument of.. someone. Who?
There was a fuzziness, like music in the back of the mind. A memory, a dream, a fata morgana that was lost the instant you fixated on it.
They both looked at the Anthropic Engine. It continued to happily eat up a small region of the past and future and convert it into supercharged dilithium. All possibilities, all things that should happened because they happened, not happening at all now, the resulting imbalance against the quantum foam released in unprecedented energies. Or the rape of spacetime itself, if you were poetic.
“We have to find a way to switch this off” he said.
“You know that we cannot.” his XO answered, “It will run until it’s finished, and if we leave this region, we only magnify its effects erasing broader swaths of spacetime.”
“So we drive it right through the wormhole and into Dominion” Captain Yon said, "Wipe out half their quadrant"
“And risk them capturing it?” the XO asked sharply. Despite her Vulcan control of logic she showed shock that he’d even suggest this.
"I know you're right. I wasn't serious. Not really." The captain looked at the dodecahedron. “All I know anymore is that this thing is evil.”
“There is no evil, captain, only the evil that we do.”
USS Yreka
Commander Yon-Oa-Shnai sat on a couch looking across from chief engineer T’uisza, a burly female Vulcan with a gambling problem. She called it looking for truth in the context of consequential chance. She was full of shit.
“Do you think she’ll do it, Commander?” T’uisza asked him.
The Andorian XO didn’t blink looking at her, then back to the bulkhead door separating them from their captain. “Do I think Captain Liu will kill herself? Yes. Yes I do. Are you asking for the betting pool?”
“My curiosity only. The results won’t matter. Will you try to prevent her?”
The commander made a standard UFP “no” gesture with his hands. With so many species and cultures, gestures had been standardized, specifically to use hands or other topmost appendages. In pressure suits, head gestures were meaningless, and some species weren’t that flexible, anyway. A Vulcan could convey a world of meaning in one of their eyebrows, same as an Andorian with their antennae, but it did no good if you could not see them.
“I told her I’d honor her decision. If we keep this up, we all have to make that call. You saw what happened to Lloyd. Even YOU don’t’ want to go down like that.”
A group of officers had all watched as Boyd had slowly dissolved into nothingness and wiped out of existence. One always thought being wiped out of existence would be instant and painless. It was neither.
And in that messy way the universe worked, it left a lasting imprint on their minds. There was an officer named Lloyd, who screamed his head off as he slowly faded away. There was no record of him in the ships registry, no record of him anywhere. He’d never existed. He might have been Yon’s best friend, but no one knew. He might have been someone's lover. He was a screaming phantom. He had a name. A few had been calling it out to him. So they remembered that, like details from a fading dream. You clung to those few details, you reminded yourself and reinforced them but in doing so they became more ephemeral, more inaccurate.
He was the first to go, as far as anyone remembered. Captain Liu was experiencing pain, now. It wouldn't be long.
The engineer said flatly, “I followed her orders and put her name, birthdate and rank into the containment buffer around the inner warp core along with details of project Unravel. Since it exists in and out of realspace it may be the only record of her existence after she’s gone, and what we’ve done.”
“But no one will remember if it’s there or how to look for it,” Yon considered openly.
Commander Yon said, “We’ll have the output log, that’s something anyway.”
They looked at the deck carpeting as minutes dragged on.
There was a warning klaxon, “Alert! Alert: Phaser discharge detected in captain’s quarters”
Well that was silly. He was captain. He always had been. Any why was he sitting here outside in the corridor with his XO, T’uisza. “That was odd. Did you just hear an alert?”
T’uisza said, “I thought I did. No. I suppose not.”
They opened his cabin door to find nothing amiss.
“I’ll have comms do a diagnostic on the computer. Unless.”
They looked at each other and both hurried to deck 10, into the sealed hatch, scooting past a Black-badge wearing guard to open it who didn't even bother with protocol, anymore.
Inside the Anthropic Engine looked quiet as ever, just a dodecahedron of coppery metal plugged into various outputs. They looked at a the output log and noticed a spike at a time the false phaser discharge warning occurred. The Andorian and Vulcan looked at each other.
Captain Yon said, “Computer, give the ship’s compliment.”
There was no pause, “204, Captain.”
Captain Yon said, “For our mission profile it should be 206. Computer, have there been any fatalities or transfers from the Yreka since this mission began?”
“Negative, Captain.” the computer answered.
T’suiza raised an eyebrow, “It should be 205, assuming Lloyd was indeed on the ship.”
“Then we lost someone else, in the captain’s quarters” He touched the captain’s lapel pip on his uniform instinctively, embarassed that the Vulcan saw him do so. He remembered his promotion, remembered being assigned to this Cali class ship and her bizarre clandestine assignment. The Dominion War was in its 15th year. Every ship was needed. No idea was too reckless or crazy to not try, and it all came down to logistics. He remembered his own ethical and moral reservations about this damned Engine, and yet he was swayed by the passionate of argument of.. someone. Who?
There was a fuzziness, like music in the back of the mind. A memory, a dream, a fata morgana that was lost the instant you fixated on it.
They both looked at the Anthropic Engine. It continued to happily eat up a small region of the past and future and convert it into supercharged dilithium. All possibilities, all things that should happened because they happened, not happening at all now, the resulting imbalance against the quantum foam released in unprecedented energies. Or the rape of spacetime itself, if you were poetic.
“We have to find a way to switch this off” he said.
“You know that we cannot.” his XO answered, “It will run until it’s finished, and if we leave this region, we only magnify its effects erasing broader swaths of spacetime.”
“So we drive it right through the wormhole and into Dominion” Captain Yon said, "Wipe out half their quadrant"
“And risk them capturing it?” the XO asked sharply. Despite her Vulcan control of logic she showed shock that he’d even suggest this.
"I know you're right. I wasn't serious. Not really." The captain looked at the dodecahedron. “All I know anymore is that this thing is evil.”
“There is no evil, captain, only the evil that we do.”
