Star Trek: Voyager
String Theory #2: Fusion
by Kirsten Deyer



p.-1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself
     And what I assume you shall assume,
     For every atom belonging to me as good
     belongs to you.
     --Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

p.14 Tuvok.
     Vulcan.
     Head of security.
     Husband.
     Father.
     Friend.
     Traveler far from home.

p.22 Resisting the urge to extend her assimilation tubules and simply spoon-feel the data he required, she began again, in the most patient voice she could muster.

p.27-28 "You require my assistance?" Seven asked as she joined B'Elanna at the astrometric display control console and added softly, "Perhaps for the duration of the next four or five hours?"
     This time B'Elanna didn't bother to repress her smile.
     "You've been working with Ensign Brooks again this morning, haven't you?" she teased.
     Seven's reply was uncharacteristic, due more to the heat than the speed with which it was delivered.
     "I have, and if I am forced to return there in less time than I have suggested it is my belief that at least one of us will end up reassigned or on temporary medical leave."

p.37 When he allowed the music to break the surface of his conscious mind, he could hear a distinctive change in texture and complexity. It was as if a string quartet had suddenly been overrun by a full symphony orchestra. The delicate harmony lilting above the urgent bass, which continued to pound with the force of its constant voracious need, had become scattered, dissonant, as if the various musicians could no longer agree on a piece to play and instead opted to throw out their sheet music altogether in favor of individual variations. For the first time since this journey had begun, Tuvok found himself wondering whether he might be facing one telepathic entity, or hundreds.

p.42-43 Harry was already back in bed. And just in case Tom intended to be exceptionally obtuse, he had reset his eye mask and placed two pillows firmly over his head.
     Perching himself on the edge of Harry's bed, Tom checked the computer's chronometer before saying, "Come on Harry, you've been off duty for six hours already."
     Through the muffling of the pillows Tom probably barely made out Harry's "And I have two more to go, so get out!"
     But Tom was never this easily deterred.
     "Harry, do you remember that time you were trapped in a parallel universe or alternate time line or, whatever, back on Earth and only an incredible act of self-sacrifice, that resulted in my death I might add, allowed you to return to your proper..."
     "That wasn't even you!" Harry screamed into his pillows.
     "Yes, but it was a version of me, and the way I see it, I pretty much saved your life, so..."
     Unwilling to give in to the inevitable, but still determined to make his point, Harry sat up, scattering the pillows, and removed his mask.
     "You know, I didn't even have to tell you that story. You would never have known..."
     "But isn't it great to think that that's the kind of friendship we have? I'll be that in almost every conceivable time line out there, we've always got each other's backs," Tom continued.
     Harry had successfully deluded himself for almost two minutes that he would be able to sneak in another hour of sleep, but the twinkle in Tom's eye made it perfectly clear that whatever scheme Paris had in mind, Harry was already an integral part of it.
     "This is one of those 'resistance is futile' moments, isn't it?" Harry asked.
     "I'm afraid it is," Tom replied.
     "Where are we going?"
     "To build a rocket ship and save the galaxy!"
     Harry smiled in spite of himself.
     "Could be fun."

p.44 The form was a little less than two meters high. A soft, flowing, brightly patterned fabric composed of a combination of organic and synthetic polymers covered its four appendages, two that rooted it to the floor for balance and two that extended from its upper torso for the purpose of crudely manipulating solid matter. A round formation with several vulnerable openings sat atop the torso, and it was from these openings that the disturbing vibrations were emanating.
     Finally, it found the distant memory it was seeking.
     She is laughing at me.

p.47 For a transdimensional sentience, you are surprisingly obtuse."

p.56 "Tom thinks there should be multiple settings increasing in intensity, but I'm thinking... hey, this is a ray gun. It's only got one purpose--to blow up a planet. Do you see where I'm going with this?" Harry was asking.

p.59 As soon as the words "Caretaker" and "exploded" had fallen from the Doctor's lips, Chakotay's mind began to automatically render and prioritize scenarios that could account for such a thing. As usual, the captain and B'Elanna were also immediately in the hunt. The moment they locked eyes they began to speak in the fragments and clipped sentences that Chakotay had grown accustomed to between these two women whose passion for science was surpassed only by the apparent effortlessness with which they dug their teeth into a complex problem.

p.65 Falor entered the temple of Kir
     Certain that at last his journey
     Had brought him to this place of peace
     So that his burdens and sorrows
     Could be lifted from his weary mind
     But all that greeted his newfound hope
     Was silence, only silence.

p.79 "Belief is irrelevant," Seven said simply. "One of the two rings that comprise the array is dedicated completely to the accumulation, storage, and processing of atomic particles ranging from the simples to the most complex. There are hundreds of transfer conduits which branch out from the central refinery so that energy can be distributed throughout the array's various systems. In addition, there are forty-seven docking bays equipped with storage tanks and fueling systems which would appear to be compatible with all known starship propulsion engines and power grids."

p.94 Phoebe hid herself between the second and third electrons orbiting the phosphate atom contained within a molecule of ioxicyllic phosphatase in a remote deck plate within the array.

p.129-130 As she made her way back to engineering, she realized that she had fallen into an old habit, underestimating humanoids. Having spent so much time among the life-forms of this dimension, she had grown used to thinking of them as lesser beings.
     It hadn't started out that way. When she had made a choice to turn her back on the Others, she had done it with a firm sense of the possibilities that this dimension would hold. For thousands of years she had marveled at the complexity of life, and its seemingly limitless potential. But their tendency toward sameness, the mistakes she had seen countless different races make time and time again, as if they had no interest or intention of learning from the wisdom of others, or even their own histories, had gradually soured her on the experience.
     She had yet to encounter a humanoid species that even approached the limits of their own abilities. They evolved at a torturously slow rate, and were hindered, of course, by their mortality. Though it was true that Phoebe and her kind were "mortal" in a sense, their life span could be extended almost to infinity if the proper measures were taken.
     She had made the same early mistakes as many of those who had once shared her passion for exploration. She had intervened in the normal development of countless life-forms, helping them enhance their natural abilities, artificially extending their life spans, restructuring their environments to make them more hospitable to their evolution.
     But time and again, she had been disappointed.
     Perhaps the Others had been right about that much. The consequences of interference could be harsh, but to simply witness senseless death and wasted potential seemed equally inappropriate. Why exist, if one's existence did not make a difference?

p.143 Harry couldn't help but feel an unreasonable sense of vulnerability. If his brief history aboard Voyager was any guide, he was certainly the most likely to suffer a painful and violent death at the hands of an unknown hostile alien.

p.155 "What is it?" Harry asked.
     "I don't know," Tom answered. "We have a perfectly well-lit corridor here to our right that we know leads to the engineering center. And on our left, we have the dark spooky hallway. You want to check it out? You first, my friend."

p.265 Kathryn had always despised the rigid and uncomfortable testing facilities where Academy cadets reported quarterly for technical examinations. This was due in equal parts to the design and purpose of the rooms where the examinations were given. The inevitable anxiety that knotted within her each time she crossed the threshold to that room all but consumed her, no matter how well prepared she was for her tests.
     Long benches with low desktops circled two-thirds of the room, arena-style. The distance between the cadet's seat and individual workspace was calculated to the specifics of each cadet's height and weight and body structure to provide maximum ergonomic support during the long and rigorous exams. Nonetheless, as the exams stretched into the sixth and, in some cases, seventh hour, Kathryn, like most of her fellow students, found herself hunched over, head resting on the desktop as she struggled to pry something resembling a coherent response from her lethargic and uncooperative brain.

p.266 Kathryn rose from her station and craned her neck to look past the rather tall humanoid seated in front of her, but was unable to see beyond the podium to the source of the sound. She searched in vain for the small comm button embedded in each station to alert the proctor that a student had completed a section or required assistance. Frustrated, she was about to simply make her way down to the exit aisle when a padd and small holographic image of a Class-M planet appeared before here. Similar items materialized at each station, and rather than disrupt the others, she chose to resume her seat.
     Though she was certain that she wasn't supposed to be taking this test, her curiosity got the better of her and she picked up the padd and began to read over its contents.
     The series of equations that streamed across the padd were relatively simple. These were calculations that provided for the planet's density, gravity, and composition. With a sigh she decided that this had to be a first-year exam. But as she continued to read she saw that each successive equation was more complex than the last. The equations suggested that the planet was infinitely more than any single planet could possibly be. In its present form it existed, theoretically at least, in not three but seven different dimensions.

p.267 Turning from the cadet on her right, Kathryn studied the planets that were being manipulated by the rest of the cadets taking the test. Some of them glowed as the one on the right had done. Others were covered with sheets of ice. Some were several times smaller or larger than they should have been, and a few had left their static position on their respective workstations and were zinging around the room, crashing into one another and exploding in bursts, dissolving into liquid masses, or being duplicated by factors of ten or more.

p.268-269 One of the planets came zooming toward her. Kathryn caught it instinctively, as if it were a perfectly aimed hoverball. The moment she touched it, an unexpected sense of power flowed through her. Suddenly, all of the equations on the padd were part of the fabric of her mind. She could se them in their infinite possibility and realized at once that this planet was not a planet at all.
     This planet was her mind's representation of the entire universe, in dozens of different dimensions. She suddenly remembered Seven of Nine, standing before her in her ready room, exactly when she could not recall, describing a computer that could hold every quantifiable fact of all living and nonliving things in the galaxy. It had sounded like an impossibility at the time, but in this moment, her mind contained the processing power of that computer.
     The universe was hers...to do with what she would.
     She could not deny that she was tempted to play. The rest of the cadets seemed to be enjoying their work, and given the vast possibilities at her fingertips, she could hardly blame them. What would the universe look like if one removed all but ten dimensions? The fact that she could conceive of ten dimensions was dizzying, but as she thought it, she watched the planet erupt violently , losing its spherical form in favor of an irregularly shaped mess.

p.273-274 He respected Kathryn. She was a force of nature who had entered his heart four years earlier and taken up permanent residence. Her absolute certainty that Voyager and her crew would overcome all of the odds stacked against them and return to the Alpha Quadrant someday reinforced his faith and transformed his doubt to hope.
     Without her...
     He would do what he could and what he must. He would not dishonor her by failing to live up to her fierce and lofty expectations. But her loss would break his spirit in a way he would never be able to express...to anyone but her. He was not willing to even consider that possibility at the moment. Duty demanded that he push it from his mind until every alternative had been exhausted. The tightrope they walked daily together since their journey home had begun was suspended above a pit of uncertainty, and Chakotay had always secretly suspected that the rope would snap without their unflinching mutual resolve.

p.289 "Let me see if I have this right," she said. "You and the others were once in Exosia, where you discovered the strings. You learned how to interact with them and somehow that knowledge allowed you to leave Exosia and enter our dimension?"
     "We played with them, as you played with your toys when you were a child. But as you saw, to touch one, was to disrupt them all."
     "So the strings which somehow form the fabric of all space-time were disrupted by your...play?" Janeway asked, incredulous.
     "We meant no harm," Phoebe replied.
     Neither would a five-year-old who picked up a phaser, Janeway thought. But that wouldn't change the outcome at all.

p.332 Clayton was the first in her family to enter the Academy. The second daughter, one of three children, she had been taken to Bajor with her parents when she and her siblings were just toddlers. Because her parents were Federation citizens not affiliated with Starfleet, the Cardassian authorities had granted them permission to work as teachers within the occupied territories. This was one of many positive faces they tried to put on the Occupation for many years. But Clayton knew intimately the true methods and means of the Cardassians, and their unspoken determination to crush Bajor's people and civilization. Her sister and brother had died fighting for the resistance not long after their parents had been stripped of their status as "neutral advisors" and thrown into a labor camp. Clayton had been smuggled off on a cargo vessel and, once returned to the safety of the home of her father's sister on Earth, had immediately transmitted her application to Starfleet Academy. The years on Bajor had left an indelible mark upon her spirit. Human by birth, a Starfleet officer by choice, in her heart she was, and always would be, Bajoran.

 

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