"Admiral M'eioi. Starfleet." I look around at the Carnegie's transporter room. "Head of security?"
Parlabane chuckles. He is heavily built, with a broad face and a broad smile. I get the feeling, though, that the affable look is just a layer over a very tough interior. "Mr. Vansittaert thought we weren't treating you with the dignity proper to a Starfleet Admiral," he says.
"I've no complaints. In any case, I'm just here to meet Professor T'Shal and go over some experimental results.... Where is Professor T'Shal?"
"I think she's in her lab, Admiral. May I escort you?" He stands to one side, and gestures towards the door. It seems he's not going to take no for an answer.
"Mr. Vansittaert didn't insist on this level of formality before," I remark, as I head to the door with Parlabane at my side.
"I think he regrets that, Admiral. We do need to show Starfleet the proper respect, don't we?"
"We're public servants, Commander. You pay our wages, you get to treat us how you like. Within reason and the law, I guess."
"Interesting viewpoint, Admiral." We're walking along a long, broad corridor that seems to be a thoroughfare in this section of Vansittaert's ship. People are moving along it, purposefully. The whole vast ship seems to be in a ferment.
"Something happening?" I ask.
"Just being prepared," says Parlabane. "Have you seen the latest readings from the Sokek object?"
"GO4704 seems to be reaching a new level of activity, I know." Does he know it's not a Sokek object? The remark seems like bait, and I don't think I should rise to it. "What are you preparing for, Commander?"
"The coming of the millennium, I guess. If the scientists have got it right. I know it's all over my head, anyway. Professor T'Shal's in one of the small conference rooms just now, I'll take you right there, shall I?"
"I was supposed to meet her at her lab -"
"I'm sure that's where she'd rather be, Admiral, but sometimes you have to have meetings - By the way...." His affable tone drops away for a moment. "There might be some peculiar energy discharges, they say. A lot of stuff is getting locked down as a precaution. Is there anything in your transporter buffer that the health and safety people might get worried about, Admiral?"
"My transporter buffer? I didn't bring one. I'm not on an away team here, Commander."
"Any sidearms, even? Only I'm told there may be - well, something about induction currents in nadion emitters. I don't understand half the details, but all my guys have had to turn in their stunners for the duration."
"I'm not carrying any weapons." I glance sidelong at him. "Should I be?"
He laughs aloud at that. "No, we're the hospitable type, here, Admiral." He indicates a side passage. "Here we are."
The side corridor is almost deserted, and it terminates in a plain doorway. Parlabane presses his fingertip to the panel beside it, and the door hisses open. "After you, Admiral," he says, waving me politely through.
I step through the doorway, into what looks like a moderately well-appointed hotel room, rather than a conference room. T'Shal is there, sitting behind a desk; she rises abruptly as I come in. The door slides shut behind me.
"Admiral M'eioi," says T'Shal. "I am afraid that -" She stops. She puts her hand to her forehead, and sits back down, slowly. "You should not have come here."
I look around the room, slowly. It is like living quarters, with couches, a bed in one corner, a food replicator, sanitary facilities behind a screen - and there is no one else here. Just T'Shal.
"What's going on?" I ask her.
"I think we have been asking the wrong questions," says T'Shal. "I was brought here some ten standard hours ago. I have not been allowed to communicate -"
"Allowed?" I touch my combadge. "M'eioi to Madagascar." There is no response. "M'eioi to Madagascar. Come in, please."
"Communications are disabled," says T'Shal. "I was able to bring a PADD -" She holds it up. "It contains summaries of my most recent research notes."
"I don't believe this," I mutter. I turn to the door. It doesn't open. I key the panel beside it. The door remains shut. The reality sinks in.
We're prisoners.
---
"He can't possibly think he's going to get away with this," I say, sitting down on a couch. "We'll be missed. If I don't check in within an hour or so, my team will start asking where I am. Your people must already have missed you."
"The logical conclusion is that Vansittaert must consider this factor unimportant," says T'Shal. "I believe my investigations bear this out. The activity of the anomaly is reaching a constant level. I suspect that only one more impulse is required before it reaches a new, presumably final, equilibrium." She taps on the PADD, and data scrolls across the screen. "I am no closer, unfortunately, to discovering what this equilibrium actually entails."
"It must just be a matter of hours." The Andrew Carnegie, for all her size, probably couldn't hold off a determined attack from the Madagascar. But would Marya Kothe have the nerve to commit a Starfleet ship to an attack on an important Federation citizen? Probably, once she'd exhausted every other avenue - and that would take time. And time is all Vansittaert needs.
"Do you know the comms protocols for this ship?" I ask.
T'Shal blinks. "I fail to comprehend the relevance of your question," she says.
"I'm thinking, maybe we can software hack your PADD and create a local comms interface. If we can get into the data subchannels on this ship, we could try to get a message out to Madagascar. Or, in a pinch, hotwire the door controls and get us out of here."
T'Shal looks positively alarmed. Of course, she's a civilian academic, she doesn't have Starfleet's training in breaking out of prison cells. Not that I've had that much of it. Probably nowhere near enough.
"I am not familiar with the data transfer infrastructure on this vessel. I am sorry, Admiral. I have always presumed it is a variant of the commercial comms software used by Vansittaert's own concerns, but I had not thought to inquire into specifics. Again, I offer my regrets."
"It's all right." I rise to my feet, begin to pace across the room. "There's a way out of any cage." I smile, briefly. "Old Starfleet adage. Let me take stock -"
There is a noise from outside. We both turn to face the door, as it slides open.
Parlabane is first through, and this time, he has a stun pistol in his fist - at least, I hope it's just a stun pistol, and not an actual phaser. I tense myself. Armed or not, I might be able to take him -
Then two more people come through the door: a vast, heavy-set, burly human supporting the stumbling form of a Trill woman who seems to be semi-conscious. I've only got the descriptions from Surella's reports to go on, but I know who they are: the mysterious Mr. Premaratne, and Carayl Quon. Behind them, Vansittaert comes in, followed by two more guards.
Premaratne half-leads, half-drags Quon to a couch and deposits her on it, not entirely ungently. Three armed men, and a combat cyborg of unknown abilities. The odds are, to put it mildly, not in my favour.
"So. You and your agent here -" I gesture at Premaratne while glaring at Vansittaert "- are the ones who've woken the anomaly up."
"I knew you'd be astute, Admiral." Vansittaert actually sounds pleased. "I'm sorry about the overcrowding, but it will only be for a little while. Mr. Premaratne decided not to burn any bridges with the Symbiosis Commission by, ahh, applying a final solution to Captain Quon, here. I don't think I mind. It will be a pleasure to have another witness, I think."
"A witness?"
"To the final act. Oh, come now, Admiral, you must know we're at the last stage now. The Deep Gate is about to open, and everything will change."
"Your computational models," says T'Shal, "are founded on incorrect assumptions. The result of your actions -"
"Ah, yes," says Vansittaert. "Professor T'Shal, you have my unbounded and sincere gratitude for everything you've done for me. This project would have been doomed without your work. It's unfortunate, I know, that you've been a little bit misled as to my actual aims."
"Which are what?" I demand. "Galactic domination? The usual megalomaniac rigmarole?"
"Admiral M'eioi, you wound me," says Vansittaert. "My ultimate aim is, well, exactly as I've stated it. I know I've been immensely fortunate in my own life, and I'm not a selfish person, I want everyone to have the same opportunities, the same material prosperity, as me. Tell me, have you heard of the Nexus?"
"Everyone's heard of the Nexus." The energized particle wave which sweeps through space - and, inside it, an eternity of unbridled pleasure, as reality bends out of shape at the merest thought. Paradise. Or endless meaningless idleness, to look at it another way. People have died, and killed, and threatened genocide, to get inside that ultimate lotus-seeker's daydream....
"Well, then. You know that the localised energy gradients that surround it make approach hazardous. Our work -" he beams at T'Shal "- has shown that GO4704 can interact safely at the Nexus's subspace frequencies. And that the energy fields can be channelled through GO4704's toroidal structure. You're right, of course, it isn't a Sokek object. What it is... is a back door to the Nexus. Though I thought 'back door' lacked a certain something, as a descriptor. So I came up with the code name for this project. The Deep Gate."
"You're going to open your own personal gateway to the Nexus?"
"Certainly not. That would be the height of selfishness, and I told you, I'm not a selfish person. Once the Deep Gate is open, Nexus subspace harmonics will permeate through it, and will propagate at subspace velocity through local spacetime. About warp fifteen, subspace radio speed. The entire galaxy will become the Nexus, Admiral. The earthly paradise, brought about at last. Reality itself will bend to everyone's whim. You'll have a ringside seat, when I bring the Carnegie's lab module into the correct position. You will be one of the first. In just a day or so, Admiral, you will become a god." His long features rearrange themselves into that uncomfortable smile. "I'll just leave you here to think about that, shall I?"
---
I think about it. I watch, stunned, as Vansittaert and the guards leave, and then I collapse onto the couch, and I think about it.
And I don't think anything good. The idea of the Nexus... the ultimate wish-fulfillment fantasy... it's never appealled to me. Life needs to be real. If it were my choice to make... I wouldn't choose that. And what right does Vansittaert have, to foist it on me?
Not just on me. On everyone. At subspace radio speeds, the effect will subsume the whole of the Federation in weeks. To encompass the whole galaxy will take years, but... it'll happen. I think of thousands, maybe millions, of planetary cultures, all of them with an unexpected paradise dropped in their laps. It'd make a mockery of the Prime Directive.
"This is an ethical conundrum," says T'Shal. I look at her, astonished. "Mr. Vansittaert is acting unethically in making this choice, without consultation, on behalf of everyone," she says. "But - it is paradise, after all. Do we have the right to object?"
"Self-determination," I begin, weakly.
"But, within the Nexus, everyone has absolute self-determination," says T'Shal. "That is a given -"
"Doesn't work," a new voice mutters.
I turn to Quon. She is sitting up straighter, brushing her lank chestnut-coloured hair away from her face. "It doesn't work," she repeats, hoarsely.
"Are you all right?" I ask.
"Premaratne kept hitting me with stun, but I'm OK. He was very careful, he knows my limits, and he wouldn't want the inconvenience of a corpse." She snarls. "Listen. I'm a physicist myself - well, in several previous lives - and I'm telling you, it doesn't work." She coughs. She's clearly not in good physical shape.
"Please specify," says T'Shal.
"Energy gradients. The barrier between the Nexus and the real world. To broadcast the Nexus across subspace, you'd need power, enough power to change the basic constants of subspace. The anomaly at the heart of the Nexus has enough energy to do that in a strictly local area - not even an area, a line, dammit, the Nexus itself is one-dimensional in this reality - and even then, there's a constant energy storm where the metrical frames conflict, and the Nexus is continually in motion, it can't remain constant in any one place. So where's the energy going to come from, to stabilize the Nexus effect over interstellar ranges? OK, I know GO4704 soaks up energy, but it hasn't soaked up that much. Nowhere near." She coughs again.
I turn to look at T'Shal. She is blinking, rapidly. "I am - unsure of this," she says.
"Can you calculate the power requirements?" I ask.
"Theoretically, unlimited power can be drawn from the Sokek object -" She closes her eyes tightly. "But GO4704 is not a Sokek object. Why is it so hard to remember that?"
"Psi field," says Quon hoarsely. "I'm not much of a telepath, even when my nerves aren't jangled. But there's a psi field here, I can feel it."
"The psi effect was meant to keep T'Shal from questioning the project's premises -" I begin.
"Not just me," says T'Shal. She opens her eyes. "Fascinating. The power requirement is another obvious issue, just like the shape of the anomaly. The psi field blinded me to one obvious flaw. I think it is also blinding Vansittaert to another one. Someone is using him, just as he used me. But to what end?"
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