Eternal Lines To Time
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Star Trek: Voyager
Copyright: Paramount
"But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
Juel Ducane, twelve years old, stared around him in awe as he and his mother beamed onto the transporter pad of the Voyager Museum. The 500-year-old starship, lovingly restored by antiquarians and open to the public, was just what he had imagined: the subdued color scheme, the sharp right angles, the small screens … it was all so very unlike what he was used to.
"Please state the nature of the medical emergency," said a short, balding man in a green-and-black 24th-century Starfleet uniform. "Excuse me. Just my little joke. Welcome to Voyager."
He shook both their hands and smiled. "My, it's certainly a small tour, isn't it? My name is Dr. Joseph Zimmerman, and I'll be your guide today."
"The Dr. Zimmerman?" Juel gasped. "The real one?"
His mother put a hand on his shoulder, mildly embarrassed by his bluntness, but the Doctor appeared to be flattered.
"In the photonic flesh."
"Don't you work at Starfleet Medical?"
"Oh, I moonlight here in my spare time. I take it you've heard of me?"
"I learned about you in school. You're the father of holographic rights."
"My son is fascinated with history," Anett Ducane said proudly.
"Goodness, is that what they're calling me?" The Doctor cast his eyes down, trying to look humble and not quite succeeding. "I was really just the catalyst, the great work was done by the ones who came after me … the stories I could tell … ah, but you didn't come here for that, did you?" He shook his head vaguely, as if to clear his thoughts. "Never mind. Shall we begin?"
He led them along the hallway and to the Bridge, where he pointed out each senior crewmember's position, pressed a button, and started a reenactment of a battle scene. Juel clung to the rail as the floor shook, ducked to avoid a shower of sparks from an exploding console, and listened to Captain Janeway's raspy voice shouting commands from her chair in the center of the room. The history student in Juel paid close attention to the types of weapons being used (quantum torpedoes, really? Those things were notoriously unstable) and the tactics (evidently Janeway favored the direct approach).
The replicas of the crew were non-sentient holograms, of course, unlike the Doctor, but seeing them fade from view at the end of the "battle" gave the young boy a strange, shivery feeling, as if he had seen ghosts. He was a modern individual and didn't believe in ghosts, but that was the first image that sprang to mind.
"Next stop: mess hall," said the Doctor, ushering his two patrons away with one hand on each of their shoulders. "Home of the notorious Mr. Neelix. Aren't you glad you don't have to eat the leola root stew?"
Was it Juel's imagination, or was the tour guide's voice a little too deliberately bright? He fell behind a few steps as the Doctor talked nonstop, Anett chiming in with the occasional question about daily life during the famous Delta Quadrant voyage: Was it true they had to ration replicator use? How dangerous were those early holodecks really, before the technological advances that made them safe?
But it was in Cargo Bay Two that the Doctor began behaving strangely.
The Borg crew's quarters were what Juel had looked forward to the most. He admired Seven of Nine, not only for reasons that were obvious to a twelve-year-old boy, but because he could relate to her. He wasn't an ex-Borg, of course, but as a lonely, awkward kid with more knowledge than was good for him, he often felt like he could use some lessons in being human.
He reached out to touch the glowing green regeneration alcove with one reverent fingertip.
"Don't touch that!" the Doctor barked.
"Sorry!" Juel backed away, both hands in the air.
"It could be dangerous, isn't that right?" Anett glanced nervously at the flickering green halo above their heads. "It's Borg technology."
"Indeed it is," the Doctor frowned, "And one wrong button could unleash a swarm of nanoprobes across the ship. Really, Icheb, you should know that."
"It's Juel," said Juel, but their guide didn't seem to hear him. A vague, unfocused look had come into his eyes, like that of a very old man.
"You ought to keep an eye on your student, Seven," he said to Anett, who stared back at him in bewilderment.
Juel glanced from his mother – who was tall, blonde and blue-eyed, but hardly resembled Seven of Nine – to the Doctor, whose polite tour-guide smile had turned into something else altogether. Something … personal.
"Are you coming to the Prixin party tonight?" he asked, in a warm, hopeful voice. "The Captain will be there. I hear Mr. Paris even built a jukebox. And might I say what a lovely dress you're wearing? It brings color to your face."
Anett shivered in her red sundress with white polka dots, and Juel had a feeling it wasn't only because of the air-conditioning on the ship.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I think you're mistaking me for someone else. Can we please continue the tour?"
"Hmm?" The Doctor stared at them both, and suddenly seemed to snap back into focus, like a microscope when you find the correct magnification. "Oh, the tour! My apologies, Madame. I must be malfunctioning. I really ought to go see my programmer, but you know how they are, always making trouble about nothing … now, where to next? Oh yes. Sickbay."
Juel couldn't help but notice that he'd forgotten to explain about the Borg alcove. But under the circumstances, he didn't believe he had the right to complain.
Sickbay would have been, in any case, a rather uneasy experience. The primitive state of medical technology 500 years ago was something Juel preferred to contemplate from a distance. But for Dr. Joseph Zimmerman, the sight of the instruments and diagnostic beds had a much stronger effect than the Ducanes had expected.
He became older, visibly so, his thin hairline touched with gray, the lines in his face deeper and sharper. It couldn't be from natural causes, put perhaps he had done this to himself deliberately. His Starfleet medical uniform changed to civilian clothes, a dark blue tunic and trousers. He even moved differently, slowly and with extreme gentleness, as he took Anett's arm and led her to the nearest bed.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "What's going on?"
"We're at Starfleet Medical, darling," he said, keeping one careful hand on her back, as if she were made of glass and in danger of breaking. "For your checkup, remember? Just lie back and wait for Dr. Picard."
He went over to Juel, squeezed the boy's hand with almost painful sincerity, and said, sotto voce: "Icheb! Thank God you're here, I wasn't sure the Enterprise could spare you. Is Naomi coming? And the children?"
"I, um … I don't know," said Juel.
This was true. He had no idea about these people's comings and goings, because they had been dead for hundreds of years.
"I keep thinking she'll pull through," said the Doctor, glancing over his shoulder at Anett, whom he still saw as Seven of Nine. "We of all people know how stubborn she is. But my young colleagues tell me even the nanoprobes can't keep her going for much longer. I don't know … I don't know if she … "
At first, Juel thought the cracks and pauses in the hologram's voice were due to emotion. But when he began to flicker, like an ancient two-dimensional TV screen with bad reception, Juel realized it was something more than that.
"Where … is … Seven?" came the crackly voice. "What's … happening?"
Anett jumped off the biobed and tapped the communicator in her ear. "Front desk? I believe our tour guide is malfunctioning. Could you send help, please?"
With one final glance at the blonde woman who slightly resembled Seven of Nine, Dr. Zimmerman dematerialized, leaving nothing but his mobile emitter.
Juel caught the little silver triangle before it hit the ground.
The museum's receptionist appeared, instantly and silently, on a modern transporter beam. She was a small, slim woman in a plum-colored dress, with shoulder-length blond hair and delicate features. Her name tag read Haley. As soon as she saw the mobile emitter Juel was holding, she hurried over and held out her hand for it.
"Oh, Joe," she sighed. "Not again."
"He deactivated," said Anett. "And he seemed to be having problems with his memory. He talked to us as if … as if we were crew members on the original Voyager."
"You'll have to excuse my brother." Haley tucked the mobile emitter into his pocket. Looking closely, one could see that she too was wearing an emitter in the form of a silver bracelet, which meant she was a hologram as well. "This happens every time we're due for an upgrade. I've had mine, but he keeps putting it off."
She shook her head and gave the Doctor's mobile emitter a look that spoke volumes.
"It's not easy, you see," she added softly, "With a holographic memory and lifespan. We tend to forget that what still feels real to us has become history to others."
"Like time travel," said Juel. "Time isn't really linear, right? That's just an illusion. The only difference between past, present and future is in our minds."
He had read that somewhere and thought it sounded cool, but looking into the gentle eyes of this five-hundred-year-old woman made him sharply aware of how mysterious time could be.
"Exactly, dear." Haley smiled. "Perhaps you should consider a career in temporal investigation when you're older."
"Absolutely not!" exclaimed Anett, putting her arm around her son's shoulders.
But Juel Ducane didn't notice, since he was already centuries away in his thoughts. One day, he would not only visit museums, but see other times with his own eyes. He would meet people who had died before he was born. He would study the mystery that was time, until he was no longer afraid of it.
He would keep history alive, guard it, protect it, and never, ever forget.
(Author's Note: Ducane is Captain Braxton's first officer, who appears in the episode "Relativity". His given name comes from Memory Beta. His mother Anett is my OC.)