The Triple
A Star Trek Story
I
The loudspeaker urged immoderate caution in all things, as I approached Detective Spock staring out an airport window, on to a black tarmac and the Hong Kong night. My partner's hair was black but greying, he wore a long black rider's coat, despite the heat of the terminal, and I surmised the clothing was chosen as part of an armoury to conceal the marks on his body and arms. On the other side of the glass two airport staff – Ferengi – smoked and backed up to avoid oncoming luggage carts. The entire world was in grayscale.
"I am sorry to keep you waiting, Detective," I said, raising a salute, my outspread fingers the not quite the same grey, but in an almost imperceptibly lighter hue than his, almost violet.
"You are very seldom early, Commander," he replied. The use of our formal titles resolved the inevitably evaporating quaintness of referring to each other in turn as "Mr Spock". Detective Spock did not turn his intensity away from the window, noting my salute in the reflection and reciprocating, and I detected in his tone, ever so slightly, the dry humour that a Vulcan sometimes permits to permeate the logical sphere.
"I am in fact precisely on time," I said. At the slight raise of his right eyebrow I felt moved to consult my watch to confirm. In between arrival announcements, the loudspeaker told of the epidemic spreading through earth. Our suspect was set to disembark at midnight on a flight from Peking (on this Earth the vowel 'e' stretched to a long 'ee' but was corrected for dialect by the universal translator).
"Let us repair to the interrogation room," Detective Spock said, turning to face me for the first time, and not waiting for me to announce the time, "that is if you are ready, Commander Spock."
"I shall follow your lead in all things, Detective," I replied. Detective Spock was in charge of this investigation: I was merely seconded here. I had requested this assignment as my seven yearly Ponn Farr approached, as partial respite from my duties, and was officially here only as an observer – in its full phase I was to return to Vulcan. I was curious to learn that the 'facsimile' of Earth had been made at a time when I was visiting Earth during the [REDACTED] delegation, and as such I had been doubled along with the planet, [REDACTED] years prior to my arrival. This trip would allow me to observe the differences in our two destinies on a world unregulated by the federation.
We two walked from the terminal to the restricted area. We were briskly scanned by airport personnel, before entering a small office space with a door on the far side. There was a desk in the middle with two chairs on our side, and one on the other. On the left wall, there was an incongruous poster – a local pop star, Johnny Dribble, a singer who had won a television contest and was well loved in Hong Kong. Detective Spock silently tore it down and stuffed it into the trash receptacle.
"May I ask, Detective, what we shall we be discussing with the suspect?"
"I take it you have not read the brief, Mr Spock?"
"I regret that I did not have the time. I had a bout of the malady to which I understand you have a pharmaceutical aid?" This world experienced a certain amount of 'degradation' that affected him in an unfortunate way: the facsimile was taken when I was undergoing a particularly intense Ponn Farr, which had fixed permanently in him.
"Despite custom, I do recommend you take suppressants if you are to be of use in this investigation, Commander. I do hope you to be of use. To answer your question, we are here to discuss a case of alien currency importation. "
"Am I to understand that currency is in use on this Earth?"
"You are correct. However, the Queen of Earth wishes to enter the Federation, and feels that elimination of all forms of money on Earth – this Earth – will endear her to the Federation. My unit is part of a trial…"
A staff member entered from the door on the far side, interrupting with "Doctor Cheung has landed sir." Detective Spock nodded as if to say: "Bring him in." The two of us sat down and waited. Detective Spock was silent, as if preparing to meditate, but stood up, removed his coat, and then placed it on the coat hook on the grey door, and sat down. The scarring on his arms was now visible.
The suspect shuffled in: he was compact, with large brown eyes, spectacles, and apart from a fuzz of black hair, typical of his people, he was fastidiously neat. He was a native of Nicephore, the beings who originally fashioned this world with a kind of galactic lense, before the annexation by Talbeth.
"What is this about? I'm not a criminal," said the doctor, addressing my double only.
"That is what we intend to determine, Doctor," Detective Spock replied. From the length of the pause, more than from the imperceptible closing of his right, I sensed that the Detective wished me to take the lead from here.
"Would you mind putting your bags on the table sir?" I said. It was obvious to me, and I'm sure to my colleague as well, that the suspect did not like being addressed by me, for some deeper reason beyond the inconvenience of his position.
"I've already been through customs. I've already been searched," the passenger said.
"Not by us," I said. Doctor Cheung did not appear entirely comfortable with my other self, either, and I observed him glance nervously at the other Spock's arms. Dr Cheung complied with my request and lifted a khaki sports bag on to the table with a thud.
I unzipped the bag and began a search. At first glance there was nothing out of the ordinary. I laid out a camera, some small wooden artefacts, a set of books and some engravings on the table. Detective Spock took a picture book from the desk and opened it.
"What have we here, Doctor?" I said, pulling out a small cardboard box tied with an elastic band. Detective Spock remained silent, tossing the picture book back on the table.
"It is a game," the suspect sighed, "It's called Fa Ta Ool. We play it on my home planet. You will find some currency in there but it is not legal tender. You will find it is not inlaid with the markings typical of Nicephorean money. I believe games are still allowed under the regulations."
"Let me see," I opened the desk drawer and found in there what I hoped to find: a Ferengi pipe lighter. I removed a note from out of the box and held it by the corner with two fingers. The note did indeed lack any Nicephorean watermark. Though the note was paper it did not catch alight – not all of it. Tiny lines of white fire coursed through the paper in intricate patterns and in a few moments I held in my hand an undeniable, 500 unit note. Doctor Cheung looked simultaneously bored and anxious throughout the whole performance, slouching in his chair, and pulling out the hairs on his knuckles.
"Doctor Cheung, you're under arrest." Detective Spock said, breaking his silence like a thunderclap.
"For 500 units? That's outrageous. That's not enough to pay my dry cleaner. Not all of those notes are… You know the traditionalists in the Diaspora won't take Hong Kong dollars."
"I'm afraid you do not understand me, Doctor. You are not under arrest for importing currency. You are under arrest for murder."
"Murder!?" the suspect exclaimed.
Detective Spock gestured with a derisive movement of his head towards one of the books on the table "I believe we've both viewed the classic manual by Zeroh: Royal cloning without tears."
"Do I need to ask, Detective?" I said, in the corridor, after the prisoner had been taken away.
"No, you will of course require some explanation: [REDACTED]"
"There are some theorists who postulate that this is precisely what occurs when a person is 'beamed': that the original is destroyed and then recreated. If the copy is an exact replica of the original, then…" I replied.
Detective Spock interrupter, "As much as I would love to converse with you about the theoretical considerations, Commander Spock, time is of the essence. The Talbeete's considered this more than an attempt to transport via kidnapping, something akin to murder…"
"What were the Zeroh followers hoping to achieve?" I interrupted.
"The world you see, this Earth, required 900 years' worth of energy to accumulate in order to create. [REDACTED]… the Queen of Talbeth has been missing since Friday."
"What do you propose we do next?"
"I am going to take Doctor Cheung to Nicephore and try to attempt a prisoner swap. I want you to visit the Queen of Earth and provide what assistance you can, she is likely to be their next target. You will find her in Athina."
"I will limit myself to one question, though I could ask many… your scars… you mean we have a triple?"
II
A white light hovered over the entrance to the airlock of the access point to Athina, the underwater city, an almost-violet grey globule, like a great jellyfish. "Ki... Damiel Shehmet requesting access to C-square," a man spoke to an intercom.
A voice replied, "I'm afraid you've been reassigned to Delta five. You should have checked your axis log before docking." Damn. Axis communications had assigned him to a male dorm. Damiel was annoyed. The Queen had not officially filed for divorce – Axis ought still to recognise him as King and assign him a family room, in the expectation that she might join him when her assignment was over (the official story was she was on a diplomatic errand).
Unbidden, the robot guided the craft out of the port and swung along the side, weaving in and out to dodge schools of fish, until they reached Delta Five. Damiel climbed through the small hatch, dragging his bags behind him, finding himself on a metal gangway.
"Who are you?" A man with a long beard and wild hair, covering most of his face, asked him, before he could truly get his bearings.
"I am King Shehmet. Where is the unit commander?"
"Dead, dead! They're all dead."
"Excuse me?" Damiel soon realised he would receive no reply. The ragged-clothed man was squatting in a corner now, scratching his arms. The King wondered how in such an ordered city, a man could be in such a wanton state.
Damiel dismissed him and followed the corridor towards customs and quarantine. The gates were totally unmanned and he was greeted by a robotic customs official. The robot's eye-scanners were a luminous sheen of white.
"Your name please."
"Come on, you know who I am. I'm the only one here."
"Name please."
"King Wenscales."
"Sir..."
"Alright, damn you. I'm King Shemet."
"Hello Damiel, welcome to Athina. May I ask about your travel history for purposes of quarantine? Which countries, oceans, skies...?"
"You may." The robot made on odd whirr when he said this, but accepted his non-answer.
"What is your occupation?"
"Short skirts and windy days."
"Sir?"
"I'm a photographer."
"Sir, come with me."
"What?"
"We have reason to believe you are harbouring a virus."
"Who is we? How does one 'harbour' a virus?"
"Sir, come with me."
The machine was clearly off its rocker. Damiel shrugged. There was no arguing with the thing. Thoughtlessly following his robot guide through a series of winding corridors, he spotted some more ragged people, but they were frightened of the robot and did not disturb him.
In a short time the guide stopped in front of a door: "Welcome to your accommodation in Delta Five, room F-6. You have been provided with fresh towels and linen today but in future you will be expected to clean your own."
"What about the virus I am supposed to be carrying? Why aren't you taking me to quarantine?"
"Sir, I do not know what you are referring to. You were cleared by customs and you requested I show you to your room. I have done so. I must return to my post."
"If you say so. One question: is it day or is it night time here?"
"Sir?"
"Day or night?"
"It is always night time in Athina."
The dormitory was empty. The robots behaviour was baffling but he was relieved to have gotten past without a search. The ousted King opened the bag on his bed and unlocked the false bottom. "We're here," Damiel said, as the form of a woman expanded from the tight space and fell to the floor, a perfect black film covering her body, wobbling like jelly.
III
I stood on the gangway of Delta Five chewing Ponn Farr gum. I felt the scars on my body ache. I could not logically deduce whether this was as a result of a triggered memory of cloning, a particularly resilient burning of the blood, or something in the air pressure underwater.
It was difficult to recognise my partner under the long facial hair and ragged clothes, as if I were coming across him in the midst of a vision. His hair piled up over his ears so that, under certain lights, he might pass for a man. "Spock, is that you?" I said.
"Do you know of the Richard Kimble murder?" He said.
"Spock it is me, Mr Spock. Have you sighted the suspect?"
"Marilyn Monroe is buried under a fountain at Chesterfield shopping centre."
"Mr Spock what has happened to you?"
"Sir, I am forever grateful for what you have done, sir, but I do not know you, sir."
"Spock, listen to me. Have you seen King Shehmet?"
"The King. Yes. He was here."
"Where did he go?"
"He's dead. They are all dead. Please leave me alone."
I made several attempts to pass him, but at each turn he blocked my path and soon lunged at me with a hiss. With a vice-grip at the neck, I brought him to the floor in the manner of our people, leaving him unconscious. I would return to him but at present the most pressing concern was in rescuing the Queen, a logic with which my likeness must surely agree. Yet I discovered that at the same instance and with the same cunning and vice-grip I had employed, this other Spock had dislodged my Ponn Farr suppressants from my coat, and despite every possible effort, and though this other Spock was doubtlessly unconscious, I could not dislodge them from his grasp.
"Your name please, sir." The robot was unusually impassive, cold in its tone. Anomalies in tone are difficult to detect in a machine, but they are there.
"Spock."
"Welcome to Athina, Detective. May I ask...?"
"No. Tell me, did a man named Damiel Shehmet come through quarantine earlier today?"
"There have been no entrants to Delta Five for the past six weeks. Delta Five is under lockdown, therefore, no-one could have entered."
"Can you tell me what happened here?"
"Come with me sir."
"And where do you propose to take me?"
"We have reason to believe you are harbouring a virus. Come with me sir."
"No."
"No, sir?"
"I want to speak to one of your superiors.
"I'm afraid that is not possible."
"Why not?"
"Because they are dead, sir. They are all dead."
I spat my gum on to the floor. The customs sentry did not react. If its law and order protocols were functioning it would in the natural course of events informed me I was littering, asked me to pick it up, and silently notified the city police if I refused. I waited. No-one came.
I walked right past into Athina. Any other day and I would immediately have been seized and taken to the Axis prison compound. The suspect had entered the city approximately six hours ago, during this same robot's shift. Therefore, the most likely place to find him was in quarantine, assuming that the robot had displayed the same malfunction, and if King Shehmet had followed it willingly. Two, two.
On my way I sensed what was different about Athina: there was no scent. In days gone by, there had been floral scents pumped into the air. A group of huddled people in one of the hallways scurried away. As they fled I saw their animal skins drapery – probably children from the Arab quarter celebrating Eid al-Adha, I thought. Something had really spooked them – if they were not demanding a toll.
IV
Quarantine: authorised personnel only
Dark bronze Spock encounters total darkness inside of quarantine, fumbles around with his hands all over a writing desk looking for pink Ponn Farr pills, finds a bottle of blue pills but is unable to see the label, enters an orange cell, encounters a brunette woman in total darkness, shakes, shakes hands, asks her if she can read the markings on the white bottle, drops the bottle from the shakes and the purple lid, green pills scatter, she picks the red ones up, tells him thank you, these are massage pills, they'll make you feel-a-like-you-have-spent-two-hours-in-a-day-spa, asks why he came in here if he knew there was a contagion, he says he can't bring her any food because he has to save the Queen-of-E and she asks why-is-she-so-important, and he reaches towards her with his wrinkly hands – she can see in the dark – and grabs her by the head and feels her ears, feels that they are pointed behind the black fuzz, and she says yes-sir-I-am-ah-tri-pah-buh-ple, feeling a little too relaxed after the massage pill. And he says: "I take it Madam Spock, that you are saying you are a triple?"
Says she is Queen Spock of Talbeth, he does, and runs away yellowily babbling about combinations and she follows him for a while purpily and doubles-back and goes in a different way altogether; she, finding some chewy-gum on the floor, thinks must be what the-guy-who-was-too-good-for-a-massage-pill was after: picks-up, walks by the robobuzzard, finds the other guy who is two people, brighterer now and shineyer, on the floor, wrong place, and she feels sad that he looks so dead and plops the gum in his mouth. He opens his eyes and turns off his universal translator and says something in reply to her like: "Am I to take it, Madam Spock, that you are saying that you are a Tribble?".
All of them get together in a single room somehow, (didn't forward me the deets), and Dark runs through his mystery to everyone, Light says he stole the other ones' gum because a different order of logic was required, and then points at me and says I am half female-Spock, half-tribble, like he was peeking through the gauze to the red deceit of a wound or the secret of the creation of multiple worlds; Light Spock says the woman-in-the-black-film is the QoT and she's dying or suffocating under the jet-black, and Dark Spock says that he has uncovered a greater mystery in mishearing Tribble-girl-me, combinations-of-people, copying to make the ones with knowledge more compliant to torture-to-get-the-secret and that I was part-'him' and part-'Nicephorean woman' with fuzzy hair; King Shemet is running around randomly, unable to sit still, looking confused, and Dark Spock looks frustrated that he can't figure-him-out, but finally he accuses him of some greedy plot with the Nicephoreans (who are indeed nice, but used to be known as daggers or Daguerre).
And then I – she – is the only one with any logic, say, that since the information was split into four, and the QoE (whom no-one spoke to) and the QoT in the black bag and Spocks-by-the-dozen are here, then if I am a combination of Spock-Tribble (the only 'damned' thing that would make that bastard compliant to torture, someone mutters), and they only need one combination of two-of-four-to-make-three, that they already combined QoT and QoE from spaceships, and what is actually inside the black wobbly film is an assassin come to kill King Shemet that he foolishly brought with him himself and who is none other than Karaoke Star Johnny Dribble!
No-one agrees with my logic, and Light Spock, still worried about the person underneath asks grumpy Doctor Cheung on the monitor, who at first says: "Oh it's you" and berates him for the poor prison conditions he's under, and then he realises it is the other, and says "Oh it's you" and berates him for no apparent reason but eventually says scornfully: "Have you tried lighting her on fire?"
We do (despite my protestations) and she lights up like burnt money and it turns out that in his own twisted strand of the helix Dark Spock was right and they were experimenting with combining folks with more compliant folks, but they ended up combining King Shemet with the QoT, and the hapless fool fell in love with hermself, stole herm, and he says she was going "to be my wife again, but more-merm-merm like me", something which annoyed Dark Spock very much because he saw this as lacking any logic, as did everything about him, and luckily the King's 'fiancée' was still unconscious. The QoE was silent throughout, did not make a move, but did give the most extraordinarily disgusted [REDACTED] grimace at King Shemet (on behalf of her dead sister), which made her presence worthwhile. Light Spock solved the mystery of my-own-good-self, and what was setting off the robots (tribbles eating their circuits), but, silly, boy, got the title of his report wrong, as it ought really to have been, each syllable like the sound of chess pieces bitterly toppled over, all of them prematurely dead, floating in a winsome reflective pool, but too easily corrected in the sequel, when Detective Spock returns in…
The Tribble:
A Star Trek Parody
Exegesis: The Unfaithful mimic: Nabokov, re-writing and Despair
This essay will explore techniques used by Nabokov in mimicry and distorting the objects of inspiration, whether that is in nature or another text, and is a first attempt at developing a conceptual framework for a larger project in 'literary salvage'.
Nabokov teases the reader of English with two phantom texts in his introduction to 'Despair', the 1932 version written in Berlin 'Otchayanie' in Russian, inaccessible except by readers in Russian, and the clumsy youthful 1936 English translation, destroyed both by poor sales and a German bomb (9). With the 1965 version of 'Despair', rather than revamp his original translation, Nabokov says he 'revised' Otchayanie itself. Compare Nabokov's views on translation, in which to create an 'ideal version' a translator must 'possess the gift of mimicry…with the utmost degree of verisimilitude' (Art of translation, 319); with Nabokov's views on the art of literature—'Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between... Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat nature.' (Lectures on Literature, 5) The virtue in translation is in its fidelity to the original, the virtue of art is in its faithlessness to the object of inspiration – in nature, or, by extension, where the object of inspiration is another text.
The 1965 version should be considered a distinct artistic work from the 1932 version and the original Otchayanie, the text itself may be the 'double' of each. Asides from the narrator like: "So, more or less, I had thought of beginning my tale…"(13) invite us to locate precisely where and what the differences might have been between the 1932 and 1965 translations, by a process of inference. Thus 'Despair' declares itself from its opening page as exploring the phenomenon of re-writing from an original source, framed in the narrative as re-writing a previous or merely contemplated draft, meaning that various (speculative) drafts are given in parallel for the reader.
In evaluating the work of Dostoyevsky, Nabokov concedes only 'The Double' declaring it 'a near perfect work of art' (Lectured on Russian Literature, 104), noting its marginalisation for its similarity to Gogol's 'The Nose' almost to the point of parody. Parody is traditionally defined as a form of mimicry that exaggerates to mock – but the text of 'The Double' does not mock 'The Nose' it simply borrows its techniques and realigns the target of mockery from an already satirical text: from Gogol's poking fun at the vanity of an status-obsessed official by way of a lost nose, to Dostoyevsky's exploring the social anxieties of a low-ranked official against his peers, in the form of an exact physical double. Nabokov persuasively 'diagnoses' the difference between the two texts in the very title of his own novel; Dostoyevsky writes of Mr Golyadkin that: 'He spent the entire night in some sort of half-sleeping, half-waking state, running over from side to side, from flank to flank, moaning, groaning' etc (114) – a level of despair difficult to imagine for Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov in Gogol's story.
We can safely assume that given Nabokov's admiration and defence of 'The Double', that the work, though borrowing its plot, is not a parody of that work. Rather, Nabokov, as if exercising a 'right of reply' in a conversation carried out across centuries, borrows the plot from 'The Double' and techniques from 'Notes From The Underground'— (which he would have translated as the more diminutive 'Memoir From a Mouse Hole'— (Lectures on Russian Literature, 115) – including the self-aware narrator who openly manipulates the accretion of information in the novel; and seems to parody, to mimic and realign Dostoyevsky, in a work that ultimately comments on originality and use of cliché. The target is not even the trope itself, but the writing process which attempts to avoid using them and in so doing refusing to take part in the literary tradition. As the narrator of 'Despair', hyper-sensitive to critics and criticism, valiantly attempts to avoid cliché, his inability to do so only deepens his torment – though attempting to evade the 'mirror' (30) as a motif, and narrowly avoiding encountering one in the final pages (174), Hermann nevertheless considers – and rejects – calling his memoir 'the mirror', or a combination of two tropes: 'Portrait of the artist in a mirror' (167). The parallel, unused 'draft' is nevertheless still there in the mind of the reader; he has not escaped cliché, merely created a delusion of escape. When asked directly about his use of parody in Despair and his apparent serious and repeated use of genre tropes, Nabokov replies wryly: "My boyhood passion for Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown stories may yield some twisted clue," (Appel, 1971).
Nabokov himself made liberal use of mirror metaphors, even in his later work. Appel writes that "[a]s a literal image and overriding metaphor, the mirror is central to the form and content of Nabokov's novels" and aptly describes "doubles, parodies and self-parodies" as "crooked reflectors" – the reflection is never exact (1967, 206). There are few 'double' stories where two people, identical both in appearance and personality, work together the more harmoniously for their similarity to resolve a problem – such a story would not be dramatic. The double is always changed in some way, usually malformed in morals or appearance, as in the Jekyll-Hyde model. In 'Ada or Ardor', Nabokov's last novel, about a double of the Earth itself, the narrator(s) write:
"There were those who maintained that the discrepancies and 'false overlappings' between the two worlds were too numerous, and too deeply woven into the skein of successive events, not to taint with trite fancy the theory of essential sameness; and there were those who retorted that the dissimilarities only confirmed the live organic reality pertaining to the other world; that a perfect likeness would rather suggest a specular, and hence speculatory, phenomenon." (21)
Philosophical divides on the realness of the doubled world, centre on dissimilarities, with an exact likeness suggesting a 'specular…phenomenon', meaning pertaining to the properties of a mirror, or 'speculatory' suggesting, according to Merriam-Webster, occult speculation– a fitting turn of phrase for the writer who describes the highest purpose of the art of literature is to 'enchant' (Lectures on Literature, 5). However, if we try to apply these observations to the art of literature, the triple association between exactitude of likeness, mirrors and unreality (or unattainability), given to only one side of the debate, here seems to suggest that 'true', 'real' copies be viewed with suspicion, whereas and only those that are imperfectly mimicked are 'living'. Though the work opens with a parody – significantly through mistranslation (9) – of our world, the world created is not mocking, is rather a lovingly realised other world.
Works Cited
Appel, Alfred Jr. "Lolita": The Springboard of Parody, 1967, Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 8, No.2, pp 204-241.
Appel, Alfred Jr., Conversations with Nabokov, 1971, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 209-222
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, The Double, 1846, Trans: Hugh Aplin 2004, Alma Classics Ltd, UK.
Gogol, Nikolai, The Nose, 1836, Trans: Ronald Wilks, The Penguin Book of Russian Short Stories, Penguin, 1981, UK.
Nabokov, Vladimir, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, 1969 (USA), Penguin Books, 1971, UK.
Nabokov, Vladimir, Lectures on Literature,1980, Harcourt Publishing Company, New York.
Nabokov, Vladimir, Despair, 1965 (New York), Penguin Classics, 2000, UK.
Nabokov, Vladimir, Lectures on Russian Literature, 1981, Harcourt Publishing Company, New York.
Nabokov, Vladimir, Art of Translation (1941), The New Republic Inc, re-printed in Lectures on Russian Literature (1981) Harcourt Publishing Company, New York.
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