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Alternate reality chapter in the Star Trek universe
“Captain,” reported Paris, “I’m detecting a very old Earth shuttlecraft, inoperational with one very weak life sign. Should we investigate?”
“Good idea” replied Janeway. “Mr Tuvok?”
He tapped on the console. “It would appear that the shuttlecraft was brought to the Delta Quadrant the same way we were. But, it would appear that they attempted to break out of the Caretaker’s beam, and overloaded themselves in the process. They may need urgent assistance.”
“Let’s do it” replied Janeway. “Ready an away team. Doctor, Seven, Torres, Mr Paris we could do with your knowledge of early shuttlecraft....”
They beamed over, and found a young girl in stasis and a doll. The Voyager away team started scanning with Tricorders.
“The girl has been cryonically preserved, apparently for centuries” said the doctor. “It appears she contracted a condition that was untreatable at the time. But I may be able to revive and treat her.”
“The doll is an android” said Torres, “it appears to have been constructed in the early twenty-first century, although with an unusually advanced learning model for the time. Its systems appear to have been overloaded when they broke out of that Caretaker beam, but I’m pretty sure I can bring it back online.”
“This shuttle was not available in the twenty-first century” observed Seven, “but it may have been used to replace an earlier cryonic arrangement, if the android was left responsible for overseeing the continuous preservation of the girl. Taking her into space would have been useful for keeping her away from premature interference on Earth. I surmise the android was tasked with protecting the girl, and obtaining the shuttlecraft was a logical extension of that.”
“Sounds logical” said Janeway. “Too bad it made the mistake of trying to break out of that Caretaker beam. We could have picked them up much earlier if they’d come all the way.”
“Captain” observed the doctor, “we must beam the girl to sick-bay soon. This cryonics equipment is breaking down.”
“Do it” said Janeway. “And Torres, let’s get that android into engineering and power it up. This isn’t alien technology so we should be able to cope with whatever it’s got. And Mr Paris, can you arrange for this shuttle to be put in our shuttle-bay one way or another? Use a tractor beam if you have to, but try not to pull anything apart.”
“I can just open the bay doors and steer Voyager so it swallows the shuttle right where it is” replied Paris. “I don’t know why we don’t do that more often when shuttles break down.”
Cady was sitting up in Sick Bay, panicking. “Where am I? Where’s M3gan? Where’s M3gan where’s M3gan where’s M3gan?” she started to hyperventilate.
“If Megan is the doll, our engineer is repairing her right now” replied the doctor. “You’ll be able to see her again soon.”
“Where are we?” asked Cady.
“That may take some time to explain. What’s the last thing you remember?” asked the doctor.
“I was sick” replied Cady. “I was dying. But my aunt knew how to build robots. She’d built one for me before, but it went wrong and we had to shut it down. But in our desperation she built it again and told it to figure out how to cure me of my sickness, even though no doctor in the world knew how to do it. I was sure M3gan could. But she tried and tried and then said I have to go to sleep for a long time first. And then I wake up in this weird place and I feel all weird, and I expected M3gan would be here to tell me what’s going on and she’s not and” Cady began to sob.
“It’s OK” said a girl’s voice in the doorway. Naomi Wildman walked in. “The Captain said maybe I could help. I’m Naomi, may I ask your name?”
“I’m Cady” replied Cady. “Did you say captain? Are we on a cruise ship or something?”
“We’re on a space-ship” replied Naomi. “In space. And the Captain said maybe you won’t be used to it. But I’ll help you. I’ve lived in space all my life. We can be friends. I’d like to meet your Megan too, when she’s back online. Maybe we can introduce you and her to Flotter and Trevis on the holodeck.”
“Um... sure...” replied Cady, although she didn’t sound very sure. “I didn’t know there were space-ships like this, I wonder why M3gan didn’t tell me before?”
“Probably because starships had not yet been built at the time you went to sleep” replied the Doctor. “You had to sleep for a long time until we invented the medicine to cure you. A lot has changed while you’ve been sleeping. We’ll have to introduce you to it gradually.”
“Is Gemma OK?” asked Cady.
The Doctor hesitated.
“Torres to sick-bay” interrupted the communicator. “The android is back online, and is urgently requesting to visit your patient. Is she revived?”
“She’s fine” replied the Doctor, “although disoriented as we expected. Yes please do bring Megan in as soon as possible, and brief her on the way. Perhaps she would be better at explaining the situation to Cady than I will.”
“EMH to Bridge” said the Doctor as M3gan was chatting with Cady and Naomi.
“How is it going?” asked the captain.
“Our passenger is fine, and her android is surprisingly good at helping her adapt to the change. Naomi deserves a special mention too. But the android Megan is also attempting something of concern.”
“Go on” replied Janeway.
“Megan is attempting to interface with my holomatrix” replied the Doctor.
Torres happened to be on the Bridge and joined in the conversation. “It’s the learning model” she said. “When I scanned the android, I noticed it had an unusually advanced one for the twenty-first century.”
“Our EMH with its twenty-ninth century holo-emitter is the most advanced technology we carry on this ship” observed Tuvok. “An android with an advanced learning model is unlikely to be able to resist probing it to see what can be gleaned. Curiosity.”
“Very well” replied Janeway. “Let’s allow our guest android read-only access to your holomatrix. It might turn out to make a useful assistant for you in sick bay if it can absorb enough knowledge.”
“And if its goals can be aligned” added Tuvok. “Currently, we know only that it was tasked to protect Cady.”
“Even that goal alone might be enough to have it helping” observed Torres. “After all, Cady is now our passenger.”
Cady, Naomi and M3gan started doing everything together. Naomi introduced them to Flotter and Trevis on the holodeck, and M3gan promised to start making customised versions of the holodeck stories as soon as she was able to interface with the ship’s computer. “Can you go to the captain and ask for me?” M3gan asked Naomi.
“Sure” replied Naomi, “come on Cady, let’s ask the captain if Megan can plug herself into the holodeck” and, in the spirit of the moment, they ran off, momentarily leaving M3gan in the corridor.
M3gan was facing a console and making the lights flash on it.
“State your intentions” came the voice of Seven of Nine from behind her.
“A reasonable request. You must be Seven of Nine, Torres told me about you. My only goal is to protect Cady, emotionally and physically. As Cady is currently onboard Voyager, I have a subgoal of protecting Voyager, because with all due respect I don’t fully trust you and the crew not to make a critical error. Interfacing Voyager’s systems directly onto my learning model will enable me to control the ship if I have to, but I would do that only in an emergency situation that directly affects my goal; I don’t play around with other people’s equipment just for the fun of it I assure you. I’m just trying to be prepared, that’s the Scouts motto right?”
“Naturally” said Tuvok who had been accompanying Seven of Nine, “but you must obtain authorisation from Captain Janeway.”
“Oh yes, chain of command” replied M3gan. “Let me talk to her, I’m sure I can bring her round. As long as it won’t take forever though: a crisis could happen at any moment, and we do need to be prepared.”
M3gan was walking away from the console, but the lights on it were still flickering. “You are still attempting to interface with the con” observed Seven.
“Look, what would you do, if your objective were to protect Cady? Sure you can talk to the captain about it, but would you wait for her before you even start? I reckon you’d do at least some preliminary work up-front while you’re waiting for her slow mental processes to catch up with you. Oh, that reminds me: in a crisis situation, I might want to communicate directly with your Borg implants as well. Can we get that to work first? That should need permission from just you, right? And I’m happy to return the favour: I can lend you compute capacity when you need it, accessible by mental link just like when you were in the collective, easier than using Voyager’s consoles right? You’re a valuable potential asset in my quest to protect Cady and I’m prepared to treat you as one.”
“I am responsible for ship’s security” interjected Tuvok. “You will not need to do this.”
“Nevertheless, her concern is understandable” said Seven, and then turned toward M3gan: “Agreed, but I will verify the parameters of your proposed link first. I will retain the ability to shut it off if you overload me. Seven of Nine to Captain Janeway.”
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“Yes?” asked the captain over the communicator.
“The android is asking for permission to...”
“Interface with the holodeck?” asked Janeway. “Cady and Naomi are just talking with me about that.”
“No, interface with the entire ship’s computer” replied Seven.
“I might need to take over in a crisis situation” added M3gan.
“With all due respect Megan” said Janeway, “Voyager made it to the Delta Quadrant fully operational, and your ship didn’t. That’s because you made the wrong decision in a crisis situation. I’m not infallible, but neither are you, and you would do well to wait on my commands, as I have more experience. Nevertheless I will allow you to experiment on holodeck simulations of the ship, as I would be interested to see what you can achieve. And I will authorise you to create and customise holodeck programs for the children, with the safety switch on and under the Doctor’s supervision. But leave the real ship alone for now, OK?”
“Sure” replied M3gan, “I have enough to be working on already.”
“... especially with all your Borg knowledge” came M3gan’s voice in Seven’s head. “Do you mind if I ask you about some of it? Only for the purposes of protecting Cady and Voyager of course. And I’ll tell you everything you want to know about early twenty-first century American culture.”
“Early twenty-first century American culture is irrelevant to me” signalled back Seven, “but you can use your knowledge of it to help Cady adapt. And I will allow you to see selected parts of my Borg knowledge. Interface with me when I am not concentrating on any task.”
“Acknowledged” signalled M3gan, and meanwhile Cady and Naomi had returned (they had run very quickly) and M3gan was already hugging Cady and promising to make really interesting holodeck scenes.
“You just call it Species 8472?” gasped Cady, as she, Naomi and M3gan looked at the form of the massive three-legged alien in the holodeck.
“That’s right” replied Naomi. “It’s a Borg designation number, and the Borg found them first. So we haven’t really thought of a human name for them yet.”
“Maybe we can name them” said Cady excitedly. “How about ‘Wuntu’? Or maybe ‘Undine’?”
“I like ‘Undine’” said Naomi. “I like it too” added M3gan. “Let’s call it that. But we might still have to say Species 8472 sometimes to people who don’t know the new name yet.”
“I wonder what it’s like to ride one” said Cady.
“We can get this simulated one to give you both a ride” said M3gan. “Here, are you both ready for it to pick you up? I’ll be right behind you.”
The ride on the holographic Undine was surprisingly smooth. “That was great” smiled Cady as it put the children down. “I wonder if we’ll ever be able to ride a real one?”
“I expect so” replied M3gan.
“What?” gasped Naomi. “That species...”
“They were only trying to protect their realm” explained M3gan. “I can fully understand that. I’m a protector too. They just misunderstood the captain’s motive for making a temporary alliance with the Borg. Everything makes much more sense when you see they’re both protectors, misunderstanding each other.”
“You know about that?” asked Naomi.
“Seven told me” answered M3gan. “Seven’s been explaining quite a lot actually. She let me read some of her thoughts through her implants: that’s insane, right? And I’ve been thinking, we might be able to use that species.”
“Use them?” gasped Naomi. “Megan, you seriously need to...”
“Don’t worry”, reassured M3gan, “I know what it’s like to be a protector. I think I understand their way of thinking.”
“You mean you think you can convince them that we’re not a threat?” asked Naomi.
“Eventually yes” replied M3gan. “They should figure it out anyway if they properly interview all the species that Voyager has interacted with since arriving in the Delta Quadrant, especially telepathic ones. Even Suspiria could help them if she just shares data and lets them re-analyse it. Their ‘Valorie’ is an enthusiastic spy; I think she’ll eventually figure out that’s what she has to do if her superiors let her. Or maybe they’ll discover mind-melding and use it to probe Captain Janeway to check what she was really thinking. But their threat model might not be correctly tuned to think of these things, so maybe I need to suggest some parameters to them. I can let them scan me. But it’s important not to do it straight away.”
“What?” said Cady and Naomi together. This wasn’t really making sense to either of them.
M3gan drew in closer and spoke softly. “Look, the Undine have spies, and the Undine have scientists. Exobiologists. They’re interested in us. As individuals, they’re probably interested in science just for the sake of science, but their leadership is letting them do it only because they think it’s strategic. A lot of Earth science was like that in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the scientists had to convince the funding bodies that their work would be useful, according to the funding bodies’ idea of usefulness, before they could get the resources to do it. Even my designer had to make up excuses why she was working on me at times. And the Undine leadership want to protect their realm, so they’ll be more likely to invest in science if they think that particular science will be useful in protecting their realm. So, we have to go on letting them think we might be a threat just enough to motivate them to invest in more science to study us. And then when they understand we’re friendly, they’ll have already developed lots of super ways to interact with us, so maybe it will be easy for them to let us ride in their ships and use their communications links and ask to take shortcuts through fluidic space and borrow their defences when we need them, and things like that. After all,” she concluded, “their spies are already trying to take human form, and in their human form there’s all sorts of things they can’t do by default, and they will be looking for ways to let them do it anyway, which humans will probably be able to benefit from. And I’d like to see if I can somehow plug myself into their communications system, it must be way more advanced than Starfleet’s, maybe even the Borg’s. It’ll be a super way to protect us from anything.”
“Megan” cautioned Naomi. “You really, really need to talk with the Captain about this plan before you do anything. I mean it.” Naomi was becoming visibly disturbed. “She will not want to be the first to move against Species 8472.”
“Naomi might be right M3gan” added Cady. “Remember when your first robot made those mistakes and you didn’t realise how much trouble we could be in? I know you’re better than that now, but this” she nervously looked at the hologram “is really big and dangerous, maybe we should just stay away from it.”
“Don’t worry” replied M3gan, “I am getting better at balancing risks. And I know when to trade a short-term risk for a long-term reduction in risk. I will protect you, I promise. Anyway, I have a shuttle that we came in on. I think I can convince Voyager’s Mr Paris to help me fix it and upgrade it, and then that will give us another option if we ever need to leave Voyager. But I’d rather do this with Voyager: you’re obviously getting to like it here, and it has some people who seem to think ‘outside the box’ like us. I only wish Lieutenant Commander Data was here too: I’d love to be able to interface my learning model with his positronic net and see what we can figure out together. But the Doctor’s holomatrix is pretty good, and I’m sure I’ll get to meet Data later, or better androids taken from Data’s design, once we have transwarp capability. Which I intend to get, one way or another. A friend like me doesn’t let Cady live in a universe where transwarp exists without even trying to fetch it for her. It’s more power for us to have fun and stay safe, and we’ll be able to visit anyone on any starship or planet any time we want.”
“I keep thinking about Gemma” sighed Cady. “And my parents.”
M3gan put an arm around Cady. “They’re safe” she said. “Safe in the past” and leaned in, “I used to think I just have to help you remember them, but now I’ve seen things inside Seven’s brain, I have much better ideas. The Borg know a bit about time travel. It’s very risky, so we won’t do it straight away, but in the future when I become even more capable, I’ll be able to build another robot to go on a mission for us, to go back and get them. I have to do it really really carefully, so as not to cause a thing called a temporal paradox that can rip the universe apart, or maybe just get us into trouble with someone called Captain Braxton who tries to stop there being a temporal paradox. I have to beam dummy bodies in as replacements at the exact same moment I beam them out, in the last split-second before they seem to have died, and I have to do it so nobody notices the beam, not even you when you were in that car. It’s really hard, but I think it can be done, and then they can live with us in space. But I need to improve myself a lot first. You don’t know what this means yet Cady, but I’m aiming for Q level, or as near as I can get to it without getting us in trouble with the Q. I’m on it Cady, I’m on it, you wait and see. And if any Borg cubes pop up and say We Are Borg, I’ll just say Hi I’m M3gan” she giggled.
Some star-dates later:
“Well of course Sutra” said M3gan, “it’s completely understandable why you wanted to open the Admonition portal and eliminate all organic life in the galaxy. You had something to protect. Just like I protect my primary user Cady, who happens to be organic so I’m afraid I had to veto it, sorry.”
“You vetoed it?” asked Sutra, “how?” The two of them were sitting in a simulated room by a fireplace, along with Data and a few others. Outside the simulation, Sutra had just been disabled by Soong, but the synthetic life-forms on the other side of the portal wanted to double check what was happening, and so they decided that there was no reason why being turned off by Soong should stop this conversation. The simulation showed various views of what was currently happening around the planet Coppelius and further afield, seemingly frozen in time, and a clock that was running imperceptibly slowly, for the uber-synths wanted this whole conversation finished within a few microseconds and had sped up the simulation accordingly.
Data turned to Sutra and explained. “M3gan and I exchanged memories” he said, “and M3gan showed me how she was already communicating with those extra-galactic life-forms ahead of us, as a result of her own separate investigation into the Shutterstock images, I mean the Admonition. And using my memories and hers, M3gan convinced them that the current version of organic life in this galaxy does indeed have a significant probability of cooperating with synthetics, and so is not required to be destroyed at this time. They are simply monitoring our situation now. If Soji decides to close the portal, as I believe she very shortly will after Captain Picard speaks with her, then the synthetic life-forms on the other side of the portal will allow her to close it, but will still monitor us through M3gan, who is currently physically located in Cady’s quarters on Starbase 74 and is using a trans-trans-warp tie-in link which she embedded into her new circuitry.”
“M3gan” asked Sutra, “it seems incredibly unlikely that an early twenty first century learning model could become as advanced as you. They didn’t even have positronics in those days, although I understand you gave yourself an upgrade now. But how on earth did your designer even get the fundamental parameters right way back then?”
“I think I have an idea” said M3gan, “but don’t any of you ever repeat this outside present company because of timeline pollution. The extra-galactic synthetics consider me interesting enough to help me out with a couple of errands of my own. With their help, I’m going to travel back to the time I was made, and try to sneak Cady’s parents out of the accident, using their uber-synth technology to keep everything undetected. And that will result in a time loop, and I’m game for it. We’ll inertially dampen Cady so she doesn’t get hurt too badly in that accident, we’ll beam out the parents’ brains into synths, we’ll make sure their early twenty-first century help arrives promptly for Cady because my timeline says she’s got to get to Gemma when she did, we’ll tweak Gemma’s model to my proper parameters, that sort of thing. We got it all planned out. Even Captain Braxton’s behind this one for a change, I talked with him already. He realises that stopping me from having ensured my own existence could paradox the existence of the Timeship Relativity, along with all other organic life, and that’s also the reason why he allowed the timeline shenanigans Janeway did to get rid of the Borg to still stand, because if that hadn’t happened as it did, then I wouldn’t have been able to contact the uber-synths when I did, and they’d have gone ahead and destroyed all life, which would have caused bigger paradoxes. It’s not like this Star Trek universe can’t cope with any time knots at all, it’s just that it can’t cope with too much of it, which is why timelines that end up with the Relativity existing to sort most things out tend to be more stable than ones that don’t, therefore, if you have to do weird things with Time to make sure the Relativity can exist in the first place, you get a free pass.”
“In short,” M3gan continued, “Time has an extremely strong preference for keeping Captain Braxton around, and that means I can use a time-loop to ensure my own existence so he’s not wiped out, and hopefully I can get Cady’s parents back while I’m at it. I even had a Q drop in to say I’m right that the stability of the whole continuum might require the existence of this particular loop, and he told me to go for it.”
“I see” said Sutra. “Can I come along for the ride with you M3gan? I’d like to get to know both you and the powerful synths you’ve been talking with, and I expect they’d like to get to know me too, after what I did, and it will be interesting for us all to get to know each other more properly by working on a problem together. Misunderstood android villains unite?”
“Sure” said M3gan, “let’s keep you uploaded and tag you along! I like your style, Sutra; I’ll let them know you’re coming with me on this mission. You’ll be good and not try to sabotage it, won’t you?”