Theophany in blue
Posted on Tue Aug 13th, 2024 @ 1:06pm by Commander Rovak & Lieutenant Commander Alex Flynn & Lieutenant Atna & The Watchman
Edited on on Mon Aug 19th, 2024 @ 1:27pm
1,599 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Startup Sequence [0]
Location: Unknown
Timeline: Immediately following 'Annihilation'
Klaxons blared. Structural integrity fields failed. Ensigns ran from console to console hoping against hope they might find a new result from scans or attempts to resist. The hull began to crumple, slowly. Screens shattered and consoles burst, but not all at once, spitting sparks and flares of plasma. The hull was strong enough that they all had time to see what came for them, to hide, to prepare themselves for a slow crushing death.
Rovak closed his eyes and quietened his mind. He thought of Surtha. The whimpering and screams were quiet to him, they all shared the same fate. He valued his colleagues, but he was not about to have feelings for those falling victim to an experience he would not himself survive, he hoped they did not suffer.
After what seemed like longer than the forces crushing the station would need to destroy it and all aboard, Rovak opened his eyes.
There was a tangled mess of crumpled bulkhead stopped only inches from his face. He leaned back, bumping his head on another crushed surface. He was surrounded by a cocoon of the collapsed station, he could move a few inches in each direction, but not much.
Rovak felt something, like the hum one’s cells felt as a transporter disassembled them, but more sudden, and somehow, more pleasant. A blue light consumed him, and he had been taken from the entombing singularity the station was being crushed into.
He felt himself reassembled as he found solid ground beneath him in a new place. Immediately he knew that things were not as they should be.
He was standing on what looked to be a large glass disc. It extended across into a transparent floor that appeared to be suspended in the void. Alex and Atna stood beside him, they were near an outer ledge. There was light, but no obvious source. Only darkness beyond their visible selves and the crystalline circular shelf they stood upon.
“Are you both.. alright?” Rovak asked, hesitating momentarily as he considered if the query was appropriate.
“No. What the eff.” Alex asked, having only looked up from a self-bracing position as she heard Rovak’s voice. “Are we dead? Is this hell?”
As if to answer Alex’s question, the dark space surrounding them filled with the bright colours and patterns of interstellar space, vast strings of galactic superclusters lit by the light of uncountable stars, strange and fantastic nebulas of incalculable scale.
Atna was standing upright, aiming her tricorder. “I cannot identify our location or the properties of anything surrounding us. According to the tricorder, the three of us and the platform comprise the entire universe.” Atna had been perfectly calm as the station imploded, keeping her tricorder running with a blackbox entanglement memory device so their last moments might be someday recovered.
“I don’t want to be in hell with Vulcans. I’m sorry, you know I love you both. But I just can’t, you’ll be sitting there picking everything apart and I’ll be suffering and screaming and shitting forever. I’d prefer privacy for this.” Alex explained honestly.
“Be patient, Alexandra. While you are correct to observe that we are experiencing a metaphysical phenomenon, your human superstitions are irrelevant.” Rovak said.
At the centre of the great disc they stood on, the surface seemed to rise into a point, creating a spear-like protrusion that emerged from the middle mirrored at both top and bottom. So too around the edge of the disc, a lattice of the same transparent mineral formed into an irregular shape suggesting a wider sphere surrounding the disc. As it finished morphing, it resembled a sort of three-dimensional clock.
A blue light flared in empty space and dispersed into a wave of dissipating blue energy. Like the Cherenkov radiation flare in an activating fusion reactor. In the space away from them, a man stood at the sight of the flash. He was muscular, blue and completely naked. From his obvious anatomy, he was human, despite his colour and apparent inner glow.
“I am Ro-“ Rovak began, stepping forward.
“Rovak of Vulcan. Atna of Vulcan. Alexandra Flynn, prefers Alex. I know who you are. You are here not by accident.” The bald blue man said in a gentle but masculine voice. He had a black dot, surrounded by a ring etched in his forehead.
“Who are you?” Alex asked, forgetting the propriety of command in such a situation for a moment.
“I have had many names, none will be useful to you. I am a technician, responsible for the maintenance of the infinite universes. A watchman.”
“Then please, tell us why we are here.” Rovak asked of the being.
“You have run afoul of a breach in the material of interreality that I am responsible for. I cannot allow you to be harmed as a result of my negligence.”
“The creature from the anomaly. That was your doing?” Atna asked.
“I was responsible for keeping it out, yes. I failed, because I was unaware until now of the opening into your universe becoming active. I apologise.”
“Why are only the three of us here. What happened to the others?” Alex asked.
“It would not have been efficient to bring everyone. The three of you can effect sufficient change.”
“Are you saying you let everyone else on DS13 die to avoid inefficiency?”
“Versions of them will die. A version of each of you or someone else dies every time you make an especially impactful decision from sheer entropy buildup over the course of your lives. Numbers of deaths is not a practical way to look at the weight of a decision when remaking causality. The survival rate is always zero on long enough timeline.” The Watchman said with the respectful disagreement tone of a laboratory scientist.
“If you can remake causality, why are you talking about it and not just doing it?” Atna asked the blue man.
“Because you are three-dimensional beings. You require a certain amount of explanation to be able to correctly guide and comprehend what will come.” The watchman explained to the Vulcan woman.
“Then please explain to us whatever it is you intend to explain.” Rovak instructed the man.
“I know your universe. I know your Federation. The role I serve leaves me unable to interact with you except in the most extreme of circumstances. But I must tell you that the anomaly you have discovered is a bridge between realities. Like what you would call an unstable wormhole, fixed at your end of spacetime, but jumping randomly through the entire multiverse. Through every possible existence that has ever transpired across infinity. Some may be nothing but a mass of protomatter, some may be expiring of heat death, others might take you to the familiar world where stars are all dimmer, and the nature of sentient beings is more savage.”
“You speak of the supposed Terran Empire that is said to exist in a universe that seems to mirror our own. The concept of such a reality is widely discarded by experts as specious, and the evidence anecdotal.” Atna said.
“Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, Atna of Vulcan. Your station is currently trapped in a late-stage post-entropy negative universe. They are vanishingly rare, and hostile to the residents of other realities they come into contact with. I come from a time when nuclear physics were freshly discovered on Earth, and spaceflight was still thought impossible. Through a perfect and irreplaceable set of circumstances, I am here now, as the being you see before you. I know that trust is important to you and you have no reason to trust me, but I want you to know that I need your help.”
“How can we help you?” Rovak asked.
“By surviving. Ask the Romulan Ambassador about the rainbow bridge. Do as she says.”
“Are you going to uncrush the station?” Alex asked. “That might be necessary.”
“You will be reintegrated with your consciousnesses at the moment your smaller ship returned to your station.” The watchman explained.
“Why not prevent the opening of the anomaly altogether? Or close it?” Atna asked.
“It was a naturally occurring action by a native of your reality, and it is beyond my abilities to unmake the anomaly itself. I cannot intervene in dimensional affairs under normal circumstances, only interdimensional ones. Even then, only when it is a matter of significance. You will likely never see me again. I can do what I have said for you, but if you do not wish it, I can return you to your previous fates.” The glowing blue man explained dispassionately.
“We’ll live. Rainbow bridge. Got it.” Alex said, hoping to diffuse any chance Atna or Rovak may have inadvertently created with Vulcan indelicacy of returning them to be crushed.
“What help do you need from us?” Rovak asked.
“If I tell you, you might not do it.” The blue man said.
“Sir, respectfully, we are not –“
“You will find a package in your office, it was lost between realities. I trust you to serve as custodian for it.” The blue man ignored Rovak’s new line of questioning, raising his hand at the three of them.
"Please, if there is any further guidance you could offer, we would be grateful." Rovak said, feeling the atomic disassembly tingle starting once again.
“If you should encounter him, do not trust the man with the briefcase, unless you have no alternatives. His help comes with unforeseen consequences.” The Watchman cautioned. In a flash of blue light, they vanished.
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