2,473Disclaimer: I own nothing related to or part of Star Trek. This fan fiction was written purely for fun.
July 2020 Author's Note:
This chapter of the rewrite was reorganized and co-written by at16908.
The Adventures of Augment Gothic
Chapter 3 – To Be, Or Not To Be
Ship's Theatre. U.S.S. Enterprise.
The next few days quickly fell into a comfortable routine as I began to fully adjust to life in this alternate dimension and future. The only thing that stood out was a treaty conference in which the legendary ambassador, Sarek of Vulcan, had come onboard the Enterprise. He had had many notable career accomplishments during his two centuries of life, but he was also famous for being the legendary Spock's father, although the two were estranged. Like in the TNG episode named 'Sarek', Sarek was trying to negotiate a treaty with a mysterious race called the Legarans, something he had been working towards for decades. Finalizing this treaty after so many years would be the capstone of his illustrious diplomatic career.
Unfortunately, Sarek was sick with a disease called Bendii Syndrome, an affliction that effected Vulcans over the age of 200, which caused them to lose their emotional control, which made doing his current task almost impossible, as he would unconsciously transfer his repressed emotions (especially anger) telepathically to the people around him, which would enflame tensions and lead to conflict – a big no-no for a treaty negotiation. His aide, Sakkath, had been using his own abilities to strengthen Sarek's emotional control systems and hide the disease, but he could no longer keep up with the emotional demands, and the overflow began to spread throughout the ship causing incidents all over the ship, including a barfight in Ten Forward. Eventually, Picard called Sarek out on what was happening and offered himself up to help channel Sarek's emotions via a mind meld. The mind meld and the conference itself was a success, and Sarek would leave soon after – forced into retirement due to his condition. Unfortunately, I missed most of his visit as I had been busy with my studies and growing interest in holo-programming, which in retrospect, was probably for the best – a fight had broken out in Ten Forward, and if he had affected me, then it might have ended very badly for everyone else, perhaps fatally. An emotionally unstable Augment could likely do a lot of damage if my holodeck combat proficiency was any indication.
I did get to meet him once, as we both attended a recital that Data was giving. I had decided to attend mostly out of curiosity, but since this was going to be a classy event, I had decided to go all out and had replicated a six-button, double breasted, pinstripe, black Armani suit, with a handsome cream-colored spread collar shirt and rose gold silk satin tie for the event. Getting the suit made, however, turned out to be a little more complicated than I had originally planned.
While replicators can and do make clothing, most of the stuff they make are built from a standard design or pattern in its database. Most clothing choices away from the standard pattern are simply color or size related, so anybody can easily make them… but, if you want something non-standard (i.e., fancier or unusual), you have to hope its replicator pattern is somewhere in the database or can easily be converted into a pattern the computer can use to create the item. If not, then you're going have to create a unique design from scratch and better hope you have a holoprojector around to make things easier on yourself, as the human body was not two-dimensional. Thankfully, I did. Designing clothes on a two-dimensional screen that actually fit well was really hard, something I found out through trial and error.
When the suit was finally finished, I tried it on and found a perfect fit. One look in the mirror convinced me that it had been worth all the trouble. Because, damn, dude, I was looking good! I knew my choice in clothes would probably look archaic and anachronistic to many, but with my new enhanced body, covered in a perfectly tailored suit based on designs from my time, I looked sexy. Like a male runway model mixed with James Bond.
Apparently my totally unbiased appraisal was shared by others as many of the attendees crowded around me before the show, a disproportionate number of them humanoid women. I think I met more people (humans and humanoids) at that one event than I had the entire time I'd been onboard the Enterprise. The amused glances Counselor Troi was sending me confirmed I wasn't misreading the signs of sexual interest in their coy (and sometimes almost pornographic) appraisals of me. And, damn, women in the 24th century could get handsy if they liked what they saw, let me tell you.
In fact, when I first arrived on the ship I thought I was going crazy as whenever I got within something like 10 feet of a humanoid woman their nostrils would flare a tiny bit (which would have been near unnoticeable before my enhanced eyesight) and the visible interest in their eyes ratcheted up several degrees. Many of these women, especially the unattached, single ones, would find any excuse to stop, and chat, and touch me, like they were confirming I was real, sending all kinds of signals that they were sexually interested in me.
I had spoken to Dr. Crusher about the phenomenon. At first, she had looked very amused, then turned thoughtful for several long moments. She had taken a few new scans and hadn't found anything that would explain it, but excitedly speculated that humanity, and the other humanoid races, possibly had some instincts buried in their DNA that they still didn't understand the mechanics of, perhaps something I was triggering as a strong alpha male capable of giving them unusually strong offspring. It was almost as if there were sensory cues that my body was giving off that possibly signaled that I was further along the evolutionary chain, yet was still compatible with them.
Her speculation that my robust and enhanced DNA meant I likely could have offspring with most humanoid species had been in the report she'd originally given me, but there was no way, without advanced diagnostic scanning equipment, that these women should have any reason to even suspect that, beyond my being more visually attractive and fit than most. Of course, these women were unlikely to be consciously aware of this or even necessarily want children from me, but the drive was possibly there, buried in their DNA. She was excited at the possibility of figuring this out and suggested doing a study on the phenomenon which I politely, but firmly, declined. I had zero desire for the Federation to have even more information about me that could potentially be used against me in the future.
Not too long after my appearance, Sarek and his entourage showed up, which was a surprise to most since he had initially said he wouldn't be attending. Captain Picard went to greet them, and then, surprisingly, motioned me over to meet the esteemed guest.
"Ambassador Sarek, Perrin, welcome," the Captain formally greeted the Vulcan and his human wife. "I'm so glad you were able to make it."
The ambassador was over 200 years old, but looked like a vigorous man in his late sixties, still healthy and strong. There was no outward sign of his illness, probably why he refused to believe he was sick in the first place.
"It was my good wife's suggestion that we attend. It seemed an ideal diversion. Perrin can be quite logical, when she chooses to be," the old Vulcan said to the Starfleet officer. "I also quite wished to meet your guest from another time and dimension."
The Captain turned and gestured toward me. "May I please introduce, Gothic, from an alternate Earth of the 20th and 21st century."
"Live long and prosper," I greeted, using the traditional Vulcan salutation that nerds of the show loved to do, even making the appropriate split-fingered hand sign.
My inner geek was so very happy right now!
"Thank you, I already have," Sarek answered in return, with just a trace of uplifted lips.
While Vulcans were often portrayed as humorless, Sarek, as a distinguished ambassador of over a century experience, was a bit of a chameleon, obviously quite used to dealing with the other emotional races who might find the typical Vulcan manner off-putting. His Vulcan stoicism had obviously been minimized or was flexible enough to allow for congenial relations with other races. Vulcan humor was more subtle than explicit, but I know I certainly appreciated the effort and recognized it for what it was. I think we would get along just fine.
"I would appreciate the opportunity to speak with you more," Sarek said. "The chance to meet someone who is not only from the past, but also from a different universe is a once in a lifetime opportunity, even for someone who has lived as long as I have. Perhaps after the negotiations are complete you would join me for afternoon tea?"
He seemed almost eager at the prospect.
"I'd like that very much," I told the ambassador. And I did - it'd be a pretty amazing experience I'm sure. This was a man who had played a pivotal role in the development of the Federation into what it was today. Maybe he'd be able to answer some of my questions about why certain things were the way they were. As a Vulcan, and not a human, he might have a more objective, outsider perspective, on many issues that had stymied my understanding.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a brief flash of jealousy or annoyance on the Captain's face. As I didn't want to annoy the Captain (for obvious reasons), I decided to wrap it up.
After excusing myself, I sat down. I was still able to overhear the rest of the conversation.
"Commander Data will be our featured soloist this evening," Picard said, a hint of pride in his voice.
"I have been programmed to reproduce the individual musical styles of over three hundred concert violinists, including Heifetz, Menuhin, Grak-tay and Tataglia. Do you have a preference?" Data asked. While he said it in a monotone, I almost got the impression he was almost like a sports car, revving up its engine, getting ready for the green light so he could put pedal to the metal.
"Tataglia would be lovely," Perrin said.
"I hope you find the performance pleasing," Data said.
"I look forward to it," Perrin replied.
Picard motioned toward the stage, "At your convenience, Mister Data."
We all began to sit down. I had noticed that everyone seemed to be paying attention to the ambassador, almost unconsciously orienting around him, even while they were talking to someone else. People treated Sarek as if he was some kind of famous celebrity, yet he was a peacemaker and diplomat rather than, say, a professional athlete or famous Hollywood actor from my time. It seemed that what humans considered 'fame'' and what they celebrated/revered had changed greatly over the last few hundred years.
The concert soon began with Data and three other musicians performing a selection of classical music. With my new enhanced hearing, I was able to tell that the android's performance was absolutely flawless. In fact, it was a little too good. I suppose one could ask: 'How can something be too good?' Well, the answer is a bit subjective I guess, but as I see it, every musician has a certain style, a rhythm that changes due to different emphasis, different emotions at work during each performance. Data didn't have that, even when modifying his play style into different famous violinists.
While it was certainly recognizable as music, I wouldn't want to listen to it again if I could avoid it. What I heard was an audible example of the 'uncanny valley' – a phenomenon where an artificial being (a robot or computer-generated figure) is so close to looking human that it somehow begins to look almost inhuman, causing revulsion in the person viewing it. It happened most often when looking at an artificial depiction of a face, and our minds somehow notices the wrongness of it, no matter how good a rendering. My enhanced senses were a double-edged sword in this instance, telling me that something was wrong here, something unnatural.
Sarek seemed to appreciate it, but his entourage looked almost worried, especially when, during a particularly moving moment in the music, Sarek shed a tear that his wife wiped away. I felt a bit saddened by that tear – Sarek seemed like a pretty good dude, and to lose control over yourself like that, as a Vulcan? For it now to dictate the future course of your life and possibly stand in the way of completing the crowning achievement of your career, in the final moments? I sympathized.
In fact, I sympathized too much. I left the concert feeling a bit down. I had been letting fate dictate my path far too much since I got here, and it was time to take some control back, even if that control was ultimately an illusion.
(Line Break)
Guest Quarters. U.S.S. Enterprise.
I returned to my quarters and got changed into my casual wear. I stood in front of the mirror, just looking at my suit, thinking about how much it would have cost if I had bought it from a store and then had it personally altered by a tailor to get that perfect fit. A designer suit like that is already expensive, but add in the fee for tailoring, it might have cost more than $10,000 and week or two to be finished in my time. Now, though, a couple of hours of research in Earth's historical database and eventual design, and maybe 5 seconds to replicate. A good percentage of the total time was simply because this was my first time ever doing anything like this. The next time it'd probably go much faster since I now understood the process better. It was actually great practice for the future overall since I had plans to build things.
The advent of replicators must have been an incredible force for change (and for disruption) with just about every aspect of life altered by this device. I wondered how people lived in a society where it seems that their every need was just a replicator command away. The ability to supply life sustaining substance alone, like food and water, must have been a miracle. No longer were vast tracts of land and hard labor by farmers required, no longer were water treatment plants and dangerous chemicals needed.
And that was just food and water. In my time, taking an idea from paper to reality took a lot of time, effort, and money, including expensive and time-consuming fabrication. You'd need so many things to get it right, like the right materials, skilled people, the right machines and tooling - the list went on and on. Here, it was interactive computer aided virtual design and with the press of a button you'd have the ability to cheaply make practically anything. For an engineer like myself it was mind boggling and a source of endless inspiration. It was the kind of thing that could change and disrupt and possibly destroy an entire society if introduced too quickly. If such a thing came about in my time, before we were ready for it, it would have destroyed the world economy and probably ended the species. And I don't think that's hyperbole.
While I was on the subject of change and disruption, where was I going to live once I got to Earth? How would I even support myself?
This wasn't the first time I had been wondering about my future, financial or otherwise, particularly since I figured getting even a small warp-capable shuttle second hand would be an expensive endeavor. Luckily, though, that trader guy who had found my pod hadn't just decided to keep me on display, like a living antique, he'd also taken and kept all of my possessions as well, which had seemingly been found with my body wherever he had found me. What the circumstances were there, I had no idea. I don't even know why he kept it all. Maybe he felt like if you had the guy you should have his things? Or maybe they helped better prove my extradimensional and historical origins? Or maybe they were antiques worthy of display in their own right? Who knows and who cares? Bottom line, centuries old random things and pieces of technology from an alternate Earth, especially from during a time when this dimension's Earth was so disrupted by war and humanity's near extinction, were worth a lot of money to some people.
I had been shocked at the full inventory of things that had been found on the man's ship. It was like my ROB/Godly patron (whoever the fuck they were) had taken the full contents of my apartment on Earth and sent them along for the ride to this new dimension. Seriously, like everything, from my toaster, to the ice cube trays in my freezer (and my freezer), to my TV and all my games, books, music, and movies that I had once owned. You know, just the things you end up accumulating throughout your life and use to fill your home. My Star Trek DVDs were conspicuously absent, thank goodness.
The trader's ship had been impounded and everything that was determined to be stolen or acquired unlawfully or immorally had been returned to their rightful owners, and that included all my old stuff. I had little use for it now, so I decided to sell most of it off when we reached Betazed. The trade conference being hosted there was important, and would be attended by many legitimate business people, organizations, and the ultra-rich. My plan was to put it all up for auction. Hopefully, people would be interested enough to bid big.
I had big plans for the proceeds from this auction, even beyond eventually acquiring a ship of my own one day. One plan was to use my foreknowledge to invest wisely and make that money work for me, other plans were designing certain things that would need a lot of resources to see come to fruition.
My schemes were many, and should things go as I predicted, I'd be a very wealthy man in time. Not that money alone was my motivation. Money simply made things easier and would grant me more options, including a greater chance for survival in a hostile universe. Part of me also wanted to prove to everyone that Augments could be successful in life without becoming genocidal megalomaniacs bent on conquest, but the demands of survival, especially with the wars I knew were coming in the years to come, took priority.
I'd started by designing things like advanced body armor, personal shields, and weapons in my head. I was too paranoid to put anything on a computer that I didn't own, but my Augment mind and eidetic memory made virtual design a very real thing. It still would have been faster and easier on a computer, with a holo-display, Iron Man-style, but needs must and all that. Once I got to Earth, I could see what my options were.
I had so many ideas, but one thing that my military service had proven the value of time and time again, and something that I knew would be useful even in this time, was personal body armor. From what I'd learned so far, the many species of the alpha quadrant rarely used it, which, of course, was just crazy to me. I'd discovered that while the stuff did exist, in a primitive fashion, Starfleet, for example, didn't use it. I had asked why, and was given a look like it was obvious and I was an idiot for even asking such a dumb question.
After pressing them for an answer, I was told, in as condescending a fashion as you can imagine, that the primary purpose of Starfleet was peaceful exploration, making friends with alien races, and all that good hippy stuff, and that armor wasn't needed for such a mission. I suppose the primary reason they didn't wear any sort of armor, even if it was a great idea that would save lives, was that it projected an image of hostility, an image that essentially said they expected combat and violence, thus making Starfleet appear overly militaristic.
Which made some sense, I suppose. At heart these people were more explorers and scientists than soldiers. Sure, Starfleet was structured like a military organization, with a similar rank and command hierarchy, but in truth the defense of the Federation was a secondary objective for them, a role they reluctantly took on. They didn't think about going out of their way to protect themselves from the people they met as they fundamentally wanted to trust them and ultimately lacked the heart and will to truly win a fight by killing their enemies, even during a war. Sure, they'd fight when truly forced to, but that was it.
That seemed very foolish to me, especially with the amount of violent conflict they found themselves in regularly, but it wasn't as if people from my society, who committed violent crimes on each other, went around day-to-day wearing body armor and carrying weapons either. Those that regularly carried weapons tended to be either criminals or police or military. So it wasn't strictly fair to judge. But, in my opinion, if Starfleet was going to act like a military in the way they were structured and (reluctantly) took on that role when called upon to fight the Federation's battles, then they should act like it too.
The problem I had to overcome when designing unshielded body armor was that it was ultimately useless against modern energy weapons, like phasers and disruptors, if those weapons were set to a high enough level. If set high enough they were capable of entirely vaporizing a humanoid body with a single shot. It took around three gigajoules to entirely vaporize a person and that was more than enough to completely melt 5,000 pounds of steel, so no type of unshielded body armor could protect a person from a phaser set on maximum, though it would delay things a bit, or prevent a glancing shot from instantly vaporizing them.
However, that didn't mean wearing the stuff was completely pointless; while a phaser set on vaporize would kill me no matter what unshielded armor I wore, it was possible to create armor that could prevent me from being stunned or even killed by a low to medium-high power shot. Even during wartime soldiers of this time rarely set their weapons that high given how quickly it would deplete the weapon's power cell in only a few shots. The armor would also be useful in dealing with stabbing weapons or less advanced projectile weapons. I also had vague plans to make the armor fully airtight with a corresponding retractable facemask and independent air supply and recycler. That would give me protection from poisonous gasses and from being spaced, either purposefully or accidentally. Ideally the armor would detect a poison or sudden decompression and automatically deploy the full armor, but that would require something akin to a virtual intelligence control system with its own sensor suite to detect the dangerous conditions and act accordingly and independently. That was a long, long way off.
The extremely high cost per unit was another issue and a big part of why body armor wasn't standard among this quadrant's armed forces. Many of the needed materials were rare and could not be replicated, and thus had to be mined or refined the old-fashioned way, but I could afford to have something custom made just for myself.
What was even more useful, especially when used in conjunction with advanced body armor, was a personal energy shield. It was doable with this time's technology, but the power and material requirements for such devices were staggering, and even the resource rich Federation could never afford to mass produce the devices for their people, but again, just making one, while extremely expensive, wasn't impossible. The wealthy trader who'd kept me in my pod had possessed a personal shield of his own, so me having one wasn't out of the realm of possibility, and nor was it illegal to possess. A personal shield would allow me to survive even a few of those high-power phaser/disruptor shots meant to vaporize me. The shield and the armor together would grant me multiple levels of protection.
Another cool thing that I was working on in my head, was making blades with advanced Trek metals. The Klingons already did this to some degree, those Bat'leths were not made from metals that existed in my time, but humans had never tried to recreate medieval weapons with the better metallurgy and materials technology this time offered. I was so looking forward to finding out if I could build a power sword like those in Warhammer 40K or a sword with disruption field technology.
Of course, this was all a bit premature; I couldn't make any of these ideas a reality, yet, couldn't even input them into a computer I currently had access to lest I risk discovery, but each day brought these plans in my head a bit further. The more and more I learned of this time's science and technology, the better refined they became, and the quicker these designs went from pie-in-the-sky to something far more doable.
Once I got my education up to modern standards and acquired the technology necessary to design and fabricate these things, I'd be able to build a few prototypes to test their effectiveness and refine their designs. Unfortunately, I had a suspicion that the tech I needed was going to require a lot of money to acquire. Of course, I didn't even know how to do that in this time. If I were back in my world and time you could buy a computer virtually anywhere, from a store or online. You could download and pay for a license for some AutoCAD design software. There were providers you could hire to build things off a design for you. How did you do all that stuff in this time and yet avoid the relevant authorities learning about it and getting the wrong idea?
Fuck, I still didn't even know how 'money' worked in this time and dimension yet! At the moment I had only vague suspicions from the show as to how money worked in the Federation and with the other alpha quadrant races. The shows had given a very faint explanation as to how things worked, with sometimes contradictory information from show to show.
Good lord, talk about putting the cart before the horse. I've been designing advanced weapons and armor in my mind before I even found out how money worked in this time. Let's fix that as soon as possible and tell no one how big a dumbass I could still be.
Sitting down at my computer with a delicious fruit smoothie in hand, one made with several alien fruits Beverly had recommended, I started my research on unraveling the mystery that was the Federation's economy and its use of money, a mystery that had stymied many fans of the shows who only looked at the canon television series and movies to figure it out. There were various games, reference books, and novels that had tried to flesh it out and have it all make sense, but those hadn't been 'canon' materials. No, the most we had to go by in canon were several off-hand and throwaway lines in episodes of Deep Space Nine that I seriously doubted the writers intended to be examined all that closely to discover the full implications of. TNG was practically bereft of any practical information on the subject, or even references beyond language like 'we've moved beyond the need for such things.'
Several hours later I had more or less got a handle on how things worked. A long and very boring story short, the economics of the Federation was a convoluted mash up of bits and pieces of communism, socialism, meritocracy, and barter system, with a few dashes of capitalism if you looked hard enough. Every citizen of the Federation at birth was assigned what in my time would be considered a debit account - of course the 'money' assigned to a minor child would be under the control and management of the parents. Every month, a pre-designated amount was distributed to each household/individual in the form of credits (more for a child, less for an adult, who, in theory, could work to earn more), which could be spent as they saw fit on various things that were not provided by the government for free. For example, if you wanted a violin to learn how to play, you could spend a certain amount of your assigned credits to replicate that violin. Or if you wanted to use a holodeck, you could pay for that time with credits.
Communal access replicators were everywhere, scattered around most Federation planets. They provided basic food, clothing, and medicine entirely for free. Medical care, shelter, and access to the 24th century version of the internet (Galactic Information Network or GIN, for short) were also free, provided by the government to all its citizens. A set number of transporter travel rations were also given to each citizen per month, for free. All this was basically just for showing up and being lucky enough to be born in the Federation. If you actually contributed to society (in various ways), your monthly allotment of credits got bigger, which could be spent on luxury goods, better housing, more transporter usage, travel to other worlds, etc. Purchasing a small in-home replicator was another thing you could buy if you amassed enough credits. At that point you were only paying for energy. It took time to amass the large amount of credits to purchase a replicator for a home, but many households in the Federation were able to afford it given enough time and savings, which spoke of the high standard of living most Federation citizens enjoyed.
Not all things could be replicated, however, as some things required exotic non-replicable materials, or required elaborate refinement, or the cost of replication was far exceeded by more traditional mining operations. The replicators themselves also required a lot of power, and those fusion or anti-matter power generators needed something to run off of, which is where things like ores and exotic metals and materials get added into the equation as they need to be found, developed, and/or produced.
I honestly wasn't quite sure how their values got calculated within the Federation itself, but I got the impression that a lot of the Federation economy was somewhat imaginary – having little to no real value, mostly acting like some sort of resource shell game… and apparently I wasn't alone in this, as many species outside the Federation did not accept credits as currency (at least directly). In my time, there were commodities markets for all manner of materials that helped set the price of things. From a one-time reference in an episode of DS9, I knew there was a such a commodities market for dilithium, a market that Quark was monitoring as he had investments there, so there might be more such markets out there that the Federation was taking its cues from.
The Federation credit was a fiat money, as opposed to a form of hard money/currency, or commodity money, like several races in the alpha quadrant used. The Ferengi, for example, used gold-pressed latinum, a hard money currency, as the basis for their economy and was their standard currency of choice in all their transactions. Latinum is a critical, and most importantly, non-replicable component used in many technologies' quadrant-wide and is a critical component in the construction of replicators themselves. It is an extremely refined and liquidized form of platinum that is usually suspended in gold for easy transfer (the gold itself is nearly worthless since it can be easily replicated). The Ferengi used this form of currency because items now had an agreed upon value, which made transactions between themselves and different species much easier as many advanced races highly valued latinum.
Watching DS9 I had always wondered how the many Starfleet personnel stationed there had been able to easily pay Quark for drinks, gambling, and their use of his holosuites. Now it made more sense, all of them received their monthly allotment of Federation credits, which were also increased substantially by virtue of serving in Starfleet and then again by whatever rank they'd reached. According to my research, many races, especially those who maintain a trade relationship with the Federation, will accept Federation credits as payment for goods and services. For those races who did not, many banks and other institutions offer currency exchange services for a small fee. Given the amount of business Quark did with Federation citizens, he might have been accepting credits directly, or more likely, offered his own marked up currency conversion from credits to gold pressed latinum. His Federation customers probably didn't even realize he was doing it, or might not even have cared.
Fundamentally, the citizens of the Federation simply didn't care about money in the same way the people from my time did, earning it wasn't necessary to survive, which really did fundamentally change the pursuit of it. No one was going homeless, or hungry, or unable to pay for medical care due to lack of money. Making money didn't motivate them to go to work each day, no, money was just something they used when they had to. They didn't even have monthly bills in the sense I was used to. No car payment, no rent or mortgage bill to pay, no food bills, no expenses for health care. That sounded pretty damn nice on many levels and was an achievement to be proud of. Don't get me wrong, I still wanted to be rich as fuck, but they did have a lot to be proud of, maybe even a bit smug about.
I spoke with Counselor Troi and she helped arrange for me to get the debit account every Federation citizen enjoyed, the one the Federation funded for all humans. This turned into quite an ordeal with much jumping through hoops because it turned out I was in a sort of legal gray area. On the one hand, I was human and had been born on Earth, a founding world of the Federation no less and thus a Federation citizen. On the other, I had been born on an Earth in a different dimension, in a time before the Federation ever existed. Oh, and I was an Augment. It would take time for my status to be figured out, but in the meantime, it was sort of implied that I should be treated like a citizen by virtue of being a human born on Earth, even if my status was somewhat dubious as the laws did not exactly take into account my exotic origins.
Turning my thoughts away from money matters, recent events had been bothering me. As I had already realized, my knowledge of this dimension and the timeline of events couldn't be truly counted on fully. The Angosian affair, for example, had occurred at slightly the wrong time, but it had occurred. Had the Federation even met the Borg yet? Had the Battle of Wolf 359 already occurred? While I obviously couldn't get into the ship's logs, I did ask several crew members and permanent civilian residents onboard, that I had become friendly with, about the various adventures the ship had been involved in. I had to walk a very fine line here in my questioning so as to not hint that I was searching for specific pieces of information. Every word I spoke was probably being recorded and reviewed after all. The crew I talked to had been happy to share, eager even, but it's what they didn't say that alarmed me.
The biggest warning about the Borg should have happened about a year or so ago, when Q (a god-like being who seemed dead-set on testing both humanity as a whole and Picard's patience), sent the Enterprise into a distant area of space where they would meet the Borg, and hopefully realize the true horrors the galaxy had to offer. Only…the whole thing had seemingly never happened. Even if the crew had been lying to me, or even if such an encounter had been marked as a secret so dire that no one was to speak of it, there were still enough civilians on the ship that it couldn't have remained hidden for so long, yet a search on the GIN found no mention of the Borg – not even on conspiracy sites. And yes, sites like that still existed in the 24th century.
This changed everything… what else was different in this dimension? There was only one way to settle this.
While it had never come up in conversation, I knew there was one woman who knew the Borg intimately, who could tell me if they still existed, and who was on this ship – Guinan. In the TV Show universe, the Borg had annihilated her homeworld, leaving just a smattering of broken people to wander the galaxy. If anyone would know if the Borg were around, it would be her, but I would have to open some old wounds to get my answers and the danger to me was also quite real if I fucked this up – I could tell this was going to suck.
(Line Break)
Ten Forward. U.S.S. Enterprise.
I entered Ten Forward when I knew there would be few if any people around – this was not a conversation I wanted to have with others around. I took a seat at the bar and Guinan joined me soon after.
"Hey Guinan," I said, trying to project normality and calmness.
"Gothic," she offered in greeting, a small smile on her face, "your usual?"
"Please," I said, and she poured me a club soda with a knowing smirk on her face. Of course, it was club soda - after drinking that sweet nectar of the gods, I couldn't go back to that swill called synthehol. No, my palate had been blessed by Aldebaran whiskey and Romulan Ale and the contrast with this fake booze was terrible.
When I had decided I wouldn't be drinking synthehol I tried to find a number of non-alcoholic drinks from my time instead, something to remind me of home. Color me fucking shocked when virtually every soft drink (besides Coke) had been lost to time. Even some liquors were gone! Some had never even been created in this dimension because of its different history, others had been lost because of the war, some couldn't be recreated because the various things that it had been made from had gone extinct! Even some of the things that had survived humanity's near extinction were copies made from drinks and foods that had been found intact but were long after their ideal use date, so the flavor was significantly different from what I remembered. Humanity had lost a lot during those terrible years. It was pretty sad actually.
Apparently Guinan saw my hesitation, but waited for me to speak after I took a sip.
"Guinan, I got some good news today," I said, pretending to be cheerful. "I created and sold a holoprogram – looks like I'm more than just good looks after all."
"Ha!" Guinan said. "I wouldn't go that far."
"Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful," I shot back. I mentally took a deep breath – I knew it was cruel of me to do this, but I had to know.
"This program did so well that I'm thinking of making another one," I said, taking the plunge. "My last one was a racer, based on a game and a set of movies that I loved from my dimension. Since interest in movies from my time are so intriguing to the 24th century consumer, I was thinking of writing more programs along those lines, like how 20th and 21st century Earth imagined the future to be like. There was a television series called Battlestar Galactica, where humans created AI and gave birth to a race of machine warriors that they used to fight their wars for them. Eventually, as these dystopian visions of the future always go, the race of machines rebel, turning against their creators and nearly wipe out humanity. There were also the Terminator movies, where humans again create an AI who decides to kill their creator, and that AI creates these robotic killer cyborgs to wipe out humanity and they mostly succeed-"
Guinan visibly shrank back at these descriptions, putting a hand on her heart. I needed to know if the Borg were present in this dimension, but I certainly couldn't just say, 'Yeah, I'm writing this new holoprogram featuring a deadly race of cyborg zombies I've decided to call the Borg' and then wait for a reaction. How would I even know that word? No, that would be a pretty big giveaway that I had knowledge of this dimension that I shouldn't have and then Section 31 would have me on a dissection table…hence this really roundabout way of getting the information I needed and hoping it worked. If anyone checked, and I had no doubt Section 31 probably would, these fears about AI and dystopian imaginings of the future would almost certainly be present even in this dimension.
"What's wrong? What did I say?" I pretended to not know, but her reaction told me everything. The Borg had existed at some point, and might still. Perhaps Q not flinging the Enterprise where a Borg Cube would find them had just delayed the meeting. If so, the Federation would be even more unprepared to fight against them if they should come in the future… and I knew of at least three future threats that could potentially lead to the Federation's downfall if the Feds did not pivot to a war footing or simply get their heads out of their asses and start realizing the galaxy was a hostile place and their continued existence was not by divine mandate. They would need to fight for their right to survive. Many true fans of the shows had long realized that Q putting the Enterprise in the path of the Borg had been a gift to the Federation, and may have even been Q's attempt at snapping the Federation out of its complacency with what the entity knew about the future, giving them a slightly better chance to survive.
Guinan sat down hard, almost visibly aging before my eyes. She was silent for a time, before finally speaking, "A race of cyborgs like your people envisioned in their darkest imaginings of the future is real in this dimension. They were called The Borg. Monsters that appeared from the void and descended upon entire worlds, assimilating both technology and people before destroying all that was left. My homeworld… I wasn't there at the time, but from what I'm told, they swarmed through our system... and when they left, there was little or nothing left of my people. It was like they had never existed."
She paused to collect herself. Through sheer force of will, her face schooled itself into her normal, neutral look - like a mask had come over her features. Suddenly she was Guinan the host again with only a slight tremble to her lips that showed the raging storm beneath the calm shell.
She began to speak, but her voice broke, so she stopped and tried again. "Eventually, an alliance of powerful and advanced races was formed to stop the Borg, pushing them back system by system until the last Borg Cube was wiped from the face of the galaxy. Many of these races did not survive the war."
Wow, that was a serious difference from the shows I'd seen. If a butterfly flapping its wing could cause a hurricane, what might be the result of a species as significant as the Borg not being around?
"I'm sorry, Guinan, maybe I shouldn't—"
She cut me off with a gesture. She took a deep breath and continued. "No, I'm sorry. Your words simply brought up painful memories for me. You couldn't know. I've spent years onboard this ship, years with the Federation and even longer living on Earth getting to know humanity. Maybe your programs will remind the Federation that the galaxy is a cold and hard place and that a bit of fear can be a good thing, especially when there are true horrors out there."
We spent the rest of the evening in silence. Her, remembering painful memories, and I, feeling like an asshole for hurting her, knowing from the outset that this would be painful for her. But it was too important a thing for me to remain ignorant about. I didn't know what to do or say so I just sat there feeling guilty, but knowing I would do it again even after seeing the effect on her.
She eventually went to bed, and I did the same. I lay in bed for a while wondering if I should have tried to comfort her somehow, but I wasn't sure if there had been anything I could have said or done to undo the hurt I caused her. That night was the first time I had a nightmare since I arrived on the Enterprise – dark dreams of a once beautiful world, now a destroyed wasteland, covered in crumbling ruins and rotting corpses.
(Line Break)
Guest Quarters. U.S.S. Enterprise.
For the first time in this new body, I woke up feeling tired. That nightmare had really taken the wind out of my sails and I wasn't sure if I wanted to get up or just stay in bed longer. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't fall asleep when I had so much to do, so I gave up. After I finished my morning routine and grabbed something to eat, I sat down with a steaming cup of hot chocolate to think about what I had learned yesterday. On the one hand, the Borg were not something I would wish on my worst enemy – a seemingly unstoppable foe that could adapt to virtually every action taken against them. Your enemy was not made up of individuals with competing interests, but a hive mind made up of billions, and when they defeated you, death wasn't even the worst fate that could await you. I'd rather put a phaser in my mouth and pull the trigger before allowing that to happen.
On the other hand, they had been a known quantity and had served a vital role in scaring the Federation out of its complacency, at least for a time, which had led to the design and building of the Defiant-class ship, the Federation's first warship, and the upgrade of planetary defenses all around the Federation itself. What that meant for the Dominion War, I had no freaking idea. But you know what worried me the most? Nature abhorred a vacuum, and fate was a vengeful bitch. How many species had the Borg assimilated or destroyed over the centuries in the Show Timeline whose counterparts in this timeline were monsters in their own right, and who now had nothing stopping them from conquering and destroying others.
I hated to admit it, but there was nothing I could do about the situation except doing what I had already been doing - studying and training. So that's what I did. It was at times like this that I rather irrationally wished I could just experience the whole thing in a minute-long training montage and get it over with. Unfortunately, that's not the way real life worked.
While it may have seemed like the journey to Earth was taking forever, that was only because movies and TV usually skipped the long delays between one scene and the next unless something important happened during that time – as it was, only three weeks had passed since I first woke up on the Enterprise, which was currently traveling at a sedate optimal cruising speed of Warp 6 (the most efficient fuel-to-speed ratio that a ship as large as the Enterprise can achieve), as there was no pressing need or emergency that required them to push the engines harder. To top it off, while space is indeed a void, it is not exactly empty, which makes traveling in a direct path usually impossible – usually due to natural and unnatural obstacles and events that kept popping-up, usually too minor to have ever been portrayed on the TV show, but which caused delay after delay that could change the arrival date by hours, days, and even weeks.
My daily schedule was mostly set by this time. Days usually began with me waking up around 0100-0300, depending on when I went to bed. After a quick shower and a hearty breakfast that would have led anyone else to a lifetime of obesity, I studied for about 5-6 hours before having second breakfast. When the morning duty shift started, I spent about 2 hours in the holodeck, a mix of exercise, martial training, and training programs to operate, maintain, and pilot a starship.
I did manage to find multiple martial arts training programs that were really interesting, many of them from Earth, like Kung Fu, Muay Thai, Escrima, Ninjutsu, and Krav Maga. Vulcan and Klingon martial arts training programs were also in the Enterprise database, but I actually started with Tai Chi. Tai Chi was ideal for someone like me, as it allowed me to train my mind so that I could learn to better control my new body, as I still felt at times like I wasn't reaching the full potential my enhancements were capable of.
Afterwards, it was back to studying for another 5-6 hours and lunch. I then usually spent another 2 hours in the holodeck, but this time was more fun and relaxing, and was dedicated to developing new holoprogram ideas. I usually took the evenings off, spending it in Ten Forward, as this was usually the most interesting time there, with most of the main characters from TNG showing up after their duty shifts ended. It might seem like I was wasting time doing this, but I had a limited window of opportunity to pick the brains of one of the most decorated Starfleet crews in the Federation, and I learned a lot from their stories. If you made it onto the Enterprise then you were the best of the best. Over the next week or so, I saw or met most of the command crew (which made my inner nerd squee), but the reality was a bit different then I had hoped.
I certainly wasn't expecting that we would all get along and be BFF's for life, but the reality was still a disappointment.
Captain Picard showed up every now and then, and while we did have a couple of very interesting conversations about life in the late 20th and early 21st century, as he did fancy himself a historian and archaeologist, that stopped rather abruptly once he saw me having a romantic dinner with Beverly. He always seemed just a little bit uncomfortable with me after that, but I figured that was probably because he had been carrying a torch for Beverly for years and years, but could never quite take the plunge and ask her out. Late season episodes of TNG indicated that it was a combination of the rank and longtime guilt that he had harbored feelings for his dead best friend's wife (even before the man had died), that had stopped him. It had taken an episode where Picard and Beverly had been sharing thoughts via a mental link that the truth accidentally came out, finally. I felt bad about his dilemma, as he had treated me well and given me a lot more leeway than I would have if the situation was reversed, but not enough to stop seeing Beverly. I'm sure the issue would work itself out once I left the ship.
Worf, though, even after it had been definitively proven that I wasn't from this dimension, seemed to believe that if he took his eyes off me for even a second, I would start shouting "Get in my belly!", somehow unhinge my jaw, and try to eat all the defenseless children of the Enterprise. Upon entering Ten Forward, he would try and sit as far away from me as possible, his back never facing me, as if hoping that when I would slip up (and of course it was only a matter of time) he would be there to try and take me down – key word being 'try'. Honestly, I was more amused than angry really, and I liked to wave at him jauntily with a big smile on my face just to be as annoying as possible. I had been so very, very tempted to modify the enemies in his holodeck training program into indestructible giant teddy bears that would loudly yell that they only wanted to be hugged, but I thought that that might be a bit much.
I finally met Riker one night, and some of his behavior on the bridge became more understandable. Riker was a very personable guy, with charm and charisma practically oozing out of every pore, but if he thought someone was a danger to the ship or its inhabitants – that's when he became Commander Riker and it became very hard to work your way back from that. Guinan had told me in confidence that the only reason Riker had even allowed me on the bridge, without it filled to the brim with heavily armed security personnel, was that she hadn't been able to recognize me from her time on Earth. It seemed like he wasn't sure how to act around me now, cold and distant one moment and warm and friendly the next… although beating him at three-dimensional chess, three times in a row, probably hadn't helped matters. The guy in the show seemed like he'd normally be a good sport about such a thing, but maybe my winning reminded him of the famed superiority-complex of the Augments of Earth's Eugenics Wars. I always acted a good sport about it, I thought, never gloating over my victories.
La Forge was OK, but his work was his life and his life was his work – I think he even dreamed about engineering obstacles to overcome. He did have a pretty good sense of humor, and I did pick up some interesting tidbits that he dropped inadvertently here and there, but a lot of what he talked about was still seriously over my head. In secret, I was using our conversations as a sort of unofficial benchmark of my own comprehension on starship engineering - the more I understood about what the hell he was talking about, the more I knew that I was making progress and thus on the right track. With my enhanced memory, in a few weeks' time, I could review these conversations once again to see if it made more sense.
Data was probably the most interesting of them all, as he could literally modify his behavior as he saw fit – and he was a good sounding board for some of my tech ideas, so I hoped to keep that going even when I got off the ship. I even got to meet the famous Spot, his cat from the show, although it seemed something about me made her uncomfortable and she wouldn't let me pet her. I had a suspicion as to why… and further suspected that if Spot had been a dog, rather than a cat, it would have whined and rolled over onto its belly in my presence. Animals were far more in tune with their instincts and could recognize a dangerous predator when they saw one.
Troi and I got along very well, for the most part, but her inability to even consider that the Federation wasn't all sunshine and rainbows annoyed me greatly. Still, she was very fun to be around and really did want to help me – being so very attractive certainly didn't hurt either.
Beverly Crusher was my most common dinner companion. Unfortunately, that's usually all it was because as soon as we sat down to eat, I could see Wesley keeping her in view (he could give a hawk lessons) - so slipping away for even a quickie wasn't possible. Still, she did have fun teasing me. It was all in good fun since I did the same to her – who knew that she had such a wicked sense of humor underneath that serious exterior? I did arrange for a date on the holodeck and took her dancing, as I knew from an episode of TNG that she had studied and won competitions in tap and jazz dance. I had even gotten her to admit that she had once been nicknamed 'The Dancing Doctor', to her embarrassment.
While I was a decent dancer before coming to this dimension, I had brushed up on more traditional styles when I started arranging this date. I was continually amazed at how my enhancements had improved my coordination, flexibility, and ability to learn new things, especially physical skills that had thwarted my best efforts in my old life. The dancing, surprisingly, had helped me even further with footwork and coordination, but I preferred a more martial-based training method, as dancing alone wasn't enjoyable for me.
Apparently, taking her dancing had been exactly the right move, since we went back to her quarters and she practically turned me inside out. Unfortunately, just as I finished roughly pounding her pussy doggy-style to two separate orgasms, just like she really liked, when who else but Wesley fucking Crusher walked in to her bedroom when he was supposed to be working on a school project somewhere else. With another outraged, "Mother! How could you?!" he ran out yet again. Honestly, I think we were giving to give him some sort of psychological scarring because I saw him later in Ten Forward trying to convince Guinan to let him drink synthehol.
Yeah, seeing your mother getting banged like drum (tribal rhythm), wasn't exactly on anybody's list of experiences they wanted, but how about don't walk into your mother's bedroom without knocking first? And considering the number of years his mother had been alone, wouldn't he have wanted her to find someone and be happy? The kid had some serious growing up to do yet. Maybe some time away from his mother and living on his own at the Academy would help in that regard. I know I certainly grew up a lot while in the military and on deployment.
I thought about trying to mend fences with Wesley, especially if he eventually became some kind of uber-powerful near ascended being like he had in canon TNG, but I was leaving the ship soon, so why make waves when I didn't have to?
Some of the crew I made a point to also meet and befriend was Miles O'Brien and his future wife, Keiko Ishikawa, who he wasn't even dating at the moment. At the moment, O'Brien was just another chief petty officer on the ship, but in the future he would be the Chief of Operations on Deep Space 9, a space station that would become one of the most important nexuses of galactic events in all the alpha quadrant.
Keiko was currently a botanist and head of the plant biology lab on the Enterprise. In the future, though, she would have a pivotal role on the station, as the teacher of a secular school on a station filled with extremely religious Bajoran natives. An opportunist would use xenophobia and religious unrest to arrange for the school to be bombed, hoping that this would set the stage for the assassination of a political rival. I wasn't sure if these events would still happen, but being friendly with them now couldn't hurt. Not that being their friend was exactly a hardship – O'Brien could spin a tale with the best of them, and Keiko's work with plants was surprisingly interesting. Keiko also, I learned, had a submissive streak a mile-wide and could fuck like a champ when you got her motor running. Hopefully, O'Brien wouldn't be weird about it if we met again after they got married. Some guys were rather uncomfortable around their wives' previous sexual partners.
As for Guinan, while she didn't let it show much, I knew she was in pain after I had brought up some rather old memories about her homeworld and what the Borg had done to it. I had apologized for it once again, and assured her that I wouldn't bring it up again, but that didn't seem to help much. I knew I needed to make this right, so I went out on the GIN and posted a request on several forums for any El-Aurians to get in touch with me for a new holo-project I was working on. It took a while, as well as a lot of time, effort, and credits to finish, but I felt it was worth the expense. When it was complete, I asked Guinan to meet me at the holodeck and I gave her my surprise gift: a holographic reproduction of a famous landmark on the El-Aurian homeworld that they had considered almost holy. Some of her people had had pictures and sensor records that had survived till this day.
I hadn't been sure if my burgeoning holo-programming skills had been up to the task, but judging by Guinan's reaction, I had nailed it. I let her know that this was her holoprogram now, that she could share it with anyone she liked, like a little piece of her home. She reached out and took my hand and that's how we spent that afternoon – just standing in silence, with her drinking in the details, and me just being there for support. Eventually she even shared some touching stories from her childhood about her people. It was fascinating to hear about the culture of a truly long-lived race. There was a lot I might need to know considering my lifespan, assuming I wasn't killed, could be extremely long.
She invited me back to the lounge and we polished off half a bottle of Romulan Ale, which I thought was a fantastic reward. Now I don't know if it was the holoprogram or the bottle of alcohol, but one thing led to another, and I got a close look (and touch and taste) of what Guinan had under her robes. The Guinan of this dimension was practically an Angela Basset lookalike and had the fit and attractive body to match. She was the first woman I had been with in this new body who had turned sexual intercourse into an art form - with every thrust, kiss, nibble, even gasp working together somehow to make as close to perfect sex as I had ever personally experienced or heard of. She taught me things I didn't even know! At some point during the act she realized she didn't need to take it easy on me, and boy did she stop holding back! Good thing I was an Augment with incredible natural stamina or she would have likely rendered me unconscious.
Thankfully, I think I had performed to her satisfaction, because there was no way I'd be happy with not leaving my bed partners fully blissed out and happy with the experience. Even days later, I still found myself blushing at the intensely erotic memories of that night. This new dominant streak in me, and the way it brought out the submissive in all my recent bed partners, was new and fun, and I was rather enjoying it, but there was something to be said about a several hundred year old beautiful woman who didn't have a submissive bone in her body and had no problem taking what she wanted from me in the bedroom. Guinan and I were much closer after that evening, good friends now, but we both knew we were just passing ships in the night, and it didn't turn into a regular thing.
All in all, things were about as good as they could realistically get. The final leg of our journey was approaching and I was told the Enterprise would be stopping at Betazed for some sort of trade conference. Of course, as soon as we arrived, that's when things began to go off the rails.