This is my very first fanfiction... or any literary work written start to end... be gentle, generous, encouraging... I admit its not really any good. Maybe more bad than good. But I had fun writing it so I hope you have some measure of fun reading it if you can tolerate doing so. Mistakes of spelling and grammar are a work in progress as is learning to use the site. Thank you for your patience... or at least trying to be polite about it.

Chapter 2 – On Earth

Bashir walked up into Ops and to Captain Sisko's office. Habit died hard and in solidarity with the firm hope that Sisko would return Colonel Kira insisted everyone treat her command of the station as temporary. She said she expected Sisko to walk through the door and she will give him back his desk asking how his day was.

The doors slid open to the office.

Kira glancing up for a second before getting back to work, "Ah! Doctor. How can I help you?" "My leave started today and I will be leaving for Earth later today. I know everyone is more than capable of filling in for me while I am on Earth but I wanted to know if there was anything else I could do before I go?"
Kira smirked sarcastically, "Doctor we are more than capable to keep from falling dead while you are away. Go and enjoy your time with Chief O'Brian. Or whatever his title is now." Bashir noticed that Kira had barely looked up from the pile of pads in front of her and seemed terribly swamped with pads. "The health and wellbeing of the station means more than not falling dead. You seem…" "Stressed. Agitated. Short-tempered. Annoyed. I am now the Bajorian Liaison officer and the station commander. With my dual-duties, training new officers, and being up to my neck in busywork it hardly gives me time to run the station. Quark now without Sisko and Odo here its like he thinks he owns the place. And I envy that you get to go home and be with your friend Chief O'Brian while I am short one more officer."

Bashir paused for a bit before interjecting, "I could still cancel my leave." "No. Get out of here. Don't look back, have fun, and don't come back till you are ready to get back to work. Like I said doctor we can manage without you for a while." Bashir stood a bit mystified but nonetheless amused and pleased, "Did you just dismiss me?" Kira looked up firmly at him, "I said go!"

Bashir with a bit of a smirk on his face walked out the door hearing it slide shut behind him looking across ops. It was refreshing to see the station while off-duty and about to go on leave. Gave it a sense of beauty, grandeur, and importance that became dulled over time. It made him feel just a little bit left out. But plans were plans and now he was to go down and see Ezri before leaving.

After a beautiful lunch in Ezri's quarters they were exchanging pleasantries discussing what would be missed while he was on Earth. She was mentioning her counseling schedule and the various kinds of therapeutic methods that were being explored by Starfleet Medical. Including using the holosuits a bit like Nog used in his recovery, which was featured in her paper on the topic, both on Ferengi psychology and neurology, and the potentials for holo-environments in therapy.

Ezri continued eating and drinking as she talked about her paper, Bashir politely listening, "Which its difficult to write a paper including a holosuit character as one of my witnesses. I know I still have a hard time understanding your belief of him more as person than fictional character. But some people are really sensitive to this idea of interactive characters and narratives for therapeutic purposes" "Well you know there are people through history who got help through literature, both writing and reading, and through the performing arts. Its not hard to imagine that regardless if he is a person or not that he could be helpful. But you are right I suppose I do think of him more than just a fictional character. Ezri smiled nodding, "I've noticed.""What is that supposed to mean?" "Its not uncommon for people to personify things around them from tricorders, ships, animals, and the like. It can be good or bad." Bashir paused for a bit, feeling a jab for an argument or perhaps a tease, "So you are saying that the idea of an artificial life-form is an illusion?"
Ezri shook her head as she sipped some wine, "Well no. But hes just an elaborate puppet on holographic strings. He is no more alive than a lightbulb. Which even he admits hes just a glorified lightbulb." "I think you are oversimplifying this somehow." "Am I? Or because you like his character and you relate to him you have been pulled into the fiction that he is real as you and me?" Bashir thought for just a moment, "What about Commander Data. The android. Is he just a puppet to you too?" "No. The kind of technology that goes into Data is very advanced, not recreatable or at least not easily. Vick is just a hologram in Quark's Holosuit. Do you really expect me to go into how this isn't the same?" "It just seems like a slippery slope. We know we can clone people and they are still persons. Look at Will Riker. He was recreated down to every detail." Ezri shook her head again, "But you said it yourself cloned from a 'person'. There is no dispute that he is a sentient being." "So how do we decide whos a person and whos not?"

Ezri stopped, thinking long and hard, "I wish I had an answer for you." Bashir smiled, "So how does this tie into your holo-environment therapy." "So far we consider holo-environments to be more places for recreation, distressing, and the like. Ever since the EMH came about there has been some talk of adapting or making a hologram for psychiatric and counseling services. Deep-space vessels and such. As Starfleet considers making portable emitters for the EMH to be standard apart of survival kits perhaps someday too we will be relying more on these sorts of elaborate programs to help people alone in the depths of space or are somehow stranded." "I've read that some EMH programs have already been programmed with psychiatric abilities and already are taking on these roles." "They are limited but yes this has happened. Its more controversial than the EMH is itself. But in my paper I am discussing if perhaps these fictional characters in these holo-environments could engage people in ways that real people couldn't."

Bashir stopped her again, "Real people. Rather than fake."

Ezri smiled continuing, "Look at Nog's case. Because we don't understand his peoples neurology or psychology as we do other humanoid species we tried treatment after treatment after treatment after treatment. Counselor after counselor after counselor. It honestly felt like a bit of a lost cause. Also the harder we pushed Nog the worse he seemed to get. Also the more reclusive and hostile he became. Which is why I recommended returning him here to the station and letting him relax in a familiar setting. They had him nearly all day bed-to-bed in some kind of treatment session. I would have been exhausted and resentful too." Bashir interjected, "I think we could learn something from 20th and 21st century Earth here. Ezri nearly looked offended setting down her fork folding her hands looking right at him, the glare was intense. Bashir continued, "They tried taking these sick people and pushing them into hospitals. Treating them unfairly and unequally. They kept focusing on more treatments when in reality they needed some simple reaffirmation of their human dignity to be apart of society like everyone else. They also kept trying to treat symptoms rather than treat causes or even considering that maybe the sociology of it had any role in care. Maybe Nog is just a repeat of that hypertreatment of some sort. "That is somewhat true but that's a bit of an extreme oversimplification on your part. They barely understood what they were treating nonetheless how it interconnected with the rest of them as a person or society. Besides the 20th and 21st centuries while seeing good progress in 'mental health care' as they called it was still comparatively medieval compared to now. Why not compare us to Spanish inquisitors or to Borg assimilation tactics." Bashir tried to seem unphased by that, "Or maybe we are so used to in this day and age of the 24th century that we can cure so many illnesses and injures of mind and body that when we can't stop the continuum of treatment aggressiveness and we over-treat creating an unhealthy psychosocial narrative."

Ezri frowned remembering Bashir was a doctor, not a counselor, he didn't deal with the cases that didn't have cures and when they didn't he sent them to the counselor, so that to him it must be frustrating to deal with such hardship of knowing a condition could be fully treated but not get better, "That would be nice wouldn't it. To just wave a magic wand or shut our eyes to make peoples problems go away." "That isn't quite what I said." "I know. But it's a bit frustrating sometimes to not be able to cure someone like you said. It can make us feel so powerless. It perhaps helps all of us to feel like something being done is better than feeling powerless."

Bashir sighed nodding looking up to her holding her hand, "I am going to miss you. A lot." "Now that we finished our afternoon lunch. Now what?" Ezri and Bashir smiled as they gazed into eachother's eyes.

It had been a long trip back to Earth but Bashir awoke from a nap to see the blue marble as it was affectionately called in his window. Stretching he gazed at it a bit taken back by Earth's stunning beauty. He grabbed his bag walking to the transport bay to go to the surface. A civilian transporter operator saw him walk in, Bashir handed him his pad that had his travel information, after looking across it the operator tapped across the screen. "Alright Doctor if you just step onto the pad I will set you down in Starfleet Academy. Do you get back to Earth often?"

"No. Afraid not." "I've just got your permission to beam down. Ready?" "Go ahead."

Bashir felt the transporter engage as he could feel his body lose cohesion here and re-materializing there which also felt like here. He looked around and saw that the campus was a bit unpopulated obviously for the Thanks Giving holiday that Americans celebrated here in San Fransico. Odd that it wasn't an Earth custom. Halloween Earth-wide was but Thanks Giving not. It was a pleasant custom that Starfleet encouraged in their students, to bond with friends and family, going back home to spend time with family. He never took advantage of that he just stayed with whoever it was he was dating at the time.

Bashir made his way across the compound to the faculty offices where he found O'Brian buried in pads as well, reading what appeared to be papers and designs from students.

"Hello professor!" O'Brian didn't have to look up he dropped his pads standing up arms raised for a handshake and half-hug, "Bashir! You are a sight for sore eyes. Its so good to see you! I wasn't expecting you for a few days. I was rushing through all of this work so I could spend the time with you free."
"Oh we never let work get in the way of our time together."

"We were working?" Bashir and O'Brian laughed. O'Brian retorted back, "Oh it is good. I've missed you friend." O'Brian looked around seeing that there was no place to sit in the mess, "They keep me pretty busy here." "That's okay. Uh. Maybe there is someplace we could go for some coffee or a drink?" "Now you are talking. Lets get going."

Bashir looked at the mess. O'Brian waved his hand, "Oh don't think anything of it. Its all mostly done. These young cadets don't like me a non-comp telling them to write papers on theory and having to demonstrate ability in a sort of hands-on-workshop I have talked the Academy into seting up. I push them hard even put them to work around campus and ships in orbit. And the Academy loves it!" "We aren't all meant to be engineers you know." "They don't have to be engineers. But it wouldn't hurt if they understood how all the blinking machinery and computers worked around them. Maybe even how to fix it themselves time to time. Well lets go. Like I said. Time for my leave to start too."

As they walked O'Brian continued. "I've tracked down Sloan's grave site for us. Also I have a way that might be able to let you look at the body in the grave site." Bashir stopped for a moment, "How… how did you know that I was going to ask about that?" "I've gotten to know you far too well and frankly if you didn't I was going to ask you to."

Bashir and O'Brian made their way to a pub near the Academy grounds having an Irish-American theme to it as they made their way to the bar for a drink. Bashir smiled taking a drink setting it down with a bit of foam on his upper lip, "Its almost like ole times." "Almost. Except you smell that in the air? The beautiful sent of salt in the air." Bashir sniffed, "Are you sure you smell salt?" "All that station air. Its so sterile. Here the air is air. It is wonderful."

Bashir gazed in his mug, "Do you really think we will find something with Sloan's body?" "If Section 31 did their job right I think not. But maybe its what we won't find that will be the biggest clue… So any word on Captain Sisko?" "Not yet. Colonel Kira tells us to be ready for him to walk back into his office any day because its still his office, his station, his command." "I can understand that. I wonder what those wormhole aliens are doing with him. What do you think?" Bashir sipped more of his beer in the tall glass mug, "I haven't the foggiest."

O'Brian continued, "What I don't understand is why Sisko anyways? Hes not even Bajorian." Bashir agreed nodding, "Frankly I've never understood why the wormhole aliens wanted to be Prophets to the Bajorian people." "Yeah. But don't let the Bajorians hear you saying that. They say it is disrespectful to refer to them as wormhole aliens. That its not 'our business'." O'Brian doing air quotes. "Earth had a lot of religions but I don't know if any of those religions actually had something like the wormhole aliens behind it. Maybe its just because we didn't develop culturally or as species that we don't relate to the symbiotic relationship."

O'Brian shook his head, "No. There isn't anything symbiotic about them. Starfleet used to be in the business of taking down false gods and now we respect them as apart of their religious and cultural heritage." "Well it doesn't seem we can stop the wormhole aliens and they are at least somewhat god-like? They saved the Federation and Bajor." "When Sisko talked them into it."

Bashir answered back, "Do you think we could of won the dominion war without the wormhole aliens?" "I try not to think about it."

O'Brian drinking a bit more to change topics a bit, "You know since I've been back on Earth and the news here has been talking about these concessions from the Dominion, war reparations, and the construction of memorial monuments and cemeteries has had me thinking a lot about that paper you wrote. Your conclusions was that we couldn't defeat the founders because the dominion was too powerful which would eventually lead to a drawn out war. Do you think Section 31 used that in their plans against the founders?" "Isn't that still classified? The attempted genocide and the holding back of a cure?" "Its all known. Just a few details redacted from news reports. Its hard to imagine anyone can't speculate that we had the cure that Odo delivered to them." Bashir answered, "When I hear the news services they make it sound like we offered them a cure to help end the war." "Well that is sort of what happened."
Bashir shook his head, "I don't like sort of and I don't like the idea that Section 31 got any help or ideas from me." "So what do we do now? The Klingons and Romulans say they will need at least a decade to rebuild themselves from the war. The Dominion promises to not enter the Alpha quadrant and to allow some humanitarian and exploration missions through their space. The Cardassians are rebuilding. The wormhole aliens…" "I think we are getting a bit tipsy." Good!"