Chapter 4
"Somewhere in a lonely hotel room
There's a guy starting to realize
That eternal fate has turned its back on him
It's two a.m.
It's two a.m. the fear has gone
I'm sitting here waitin' the gun still warm
Maybe my connection is tired of taken chances
Yeah there's a storm on the loose sirens in my head
I'm wrapped up in silence all circuits are dead
I cannot decode
My whole life spins into a frenzy
Help I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
This is a madhouse
Feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go
Now that I've gone too far?
Help I'm steppin' into the twilight zone
This is a madhouse
Feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go
Now that I've gone too far?
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone"
Golden Earring – Twilight Zone
=/\=
"Any more ideas?" asked Geordi.
"I don't know," Wesley admitted.
"Perhaps contacting this Traveler would be a fruitful exercise," Data offered.
"I'm not really sure how to contact him. He just kind of appears, it seems," said Wes.
"But he was here before," Geordi stated.
"But Mom was in real danger," Wes said, "and it was of my own doing and not something external, like, like the Federation-Cardassian War."
"Well, you didn't mean it," Geordi said.
"True. But I still get the feeling this is something I'm supposed to figure out on my own," replied the younger man.
"Then let us continue to search through historical records. I believe we were going to look at the records of the NX-02 Columbia next," stated the android.
=/\=
In Dachau, the five of them stood together, a little unsure of what to do with themselves. They saw Nazi guards being led out and roughly handled. "Hey, Sarge!" O'Shaughnessy yelled, "Whadda we do until the trucks get back?"
Sergeant McCoy gave him a look but continued on his way. He was pushing a young German guard in front of him and frowning. "I wonder what that was all about," Martinelli said.
"I dunno," replied Shapiro, "but I got a funny feeling about all of this. I mean, those men are supposed to be arrested, right?"
"Right," Kuzawa said, "but I don't see nothing that looks like no arrest or nothin'."
They waited a little longer and then heard shots. "That's coming from the direction Sarge went in!" yelled Martinelli.
With nothing else to do, Tucker followed the other four as they ran toward the sounds of gunfire.
=/\=
On the NX-01, José Torres stared at the display on the warp engine. "This is not exactly how I wanted to be promoted and get some supervisory experience," he mused.
"Huh?" asked Mara Brodsky, who was standing nearby and monitoring levels in the warp containment field.
"Uh, nothing. I just wish Commander Tucker were here. Hey, Kate, Meredith?" Crewman Shelton and Crewman Porter turned around. "Help me with this, okay? We all gotta pull together with Tucker out."
They checked the levels together. "When do you think he'll be back?" asked Meredith.
"I dunno," said José, "Yanno, it's funny. It's November first. My ole Portuguese Catholic mother used to celebrate it."
"Celebrate what?" asked Kate.
"The Day of the Dead."
=/\=
They ran over toward the sounds of the gunfire. And that's when they saw.
There were squat, concrete buildings – Bauhaus style if any of them had known such a thing, and they didn't – and there was already a small pile of uniformed male bodies. There was a spattered stain of blood on one of the walls, and more men were being herded to where the blood and the bodies were. "What's the hell's going on?" yelled Kuzawa.
"Sarge!" called out Martinelli. McCoy turned briefly. "Sarge, what're you doin'?"
McCoy ignored him and shouldered a rifle. He and six other men stood in front of a set of five Nazi guards. Some of the guards were young, as if the Third Reich had run out of grown men to guard and run Dachau in the waning days of the war, and had instead plucked from its youth. Hitler Youth. "Ready!" came a voice. "Aim!" A pause. "Fire!"
The five Nazi guards, who had, it seemed, not seen their twentieth birthdays yet, crumpled as one as more shots rang out.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God," Tripp said. He could hear, next to him, O'Shaughnessy heaving.
Shapiro stood there, trembling. "I, I know it, it serves 'em right. But, God, it's, this is, it's a war crime, ain't it?"
"Keep your voice down," Kuzawa cautioned him. "That's Sarge there."
"It don't mean this is right," Martinelli said.
"I don't wanna, I, I shouldn't be here," Tucker again said.
"But you are," insisted Shapiro. "If you ever wanna get promoted, you gotta, you know, you gotta take it, Florida. You don't get to sit this one out."
"Fellas," Tripp said, shepherding them over to a side, "I don't know how to explain this. And this, this feller McBride? He seems like he's some sort of a joker. So I wouldn't blame you if you didn't believe me."
"Believe what, Florida?" asked Kuzawa.
"Believe that before I woke up, I was somewhere else. And it was, God, I'm not even named McBride. I am Charles Tucker III. I am an engineer. And I'm a commander on the USS Enterprise."
"We ain't nowhere near an ocean, McBride," said O'Shaughnessy.
""I wasn't on an ocean," Tripp said.
"You is cuckoo," Kuzawa concluded. "He's cuckoo, right? And maybe it's from what we done seen here today. But he's talkin' loony."
Martinelli looked at Tucker closely. "It's 'cause of that Dear John letter from your girl, right? It ain't right what she did – they just don't understand what we do here, yanno what I mean? But there's other girls. Even for an ugly mug like you, McBride."
"I don't belong here," Tripp repeated, as another volley of shots rang out and they all flinched.
"Where do you think you belong?" Kuzawa asked. O'Shaughnessy gave him a look, so he added, "I'm playin' along. That's what they say you're s'posed to do with a loon, see?"
"I am," Tucker explained, peeved, "supposed to be on the Enterprise. I don't know how or why I got here, but I gotta try to find a way to get back. And I could use your help."
"And us help youse go AWOL?" Kuzawa asked. "I don't think so, Bub."
There was another volley. "I'm telling you, I don't belong here," Tripp insisted.
Shapiro turned to him. "Listen to me, and you better listen good. I don't care. I don't. I do not care. Today, you are here. And you are now. You saddle up and you ride with us today, Florida."
"But I don't even know why I'm here. I was watchin' the 1978 Halloween movie."
"Over thirty years from now?" asked Martinelli. "Man, oh, man, you are messed up."
"Whatever you're tryin', McBride," Shapiro said, "I don't wanna hear it. No more, ya hear me? You wanna know why those girls, Noemy and Milena, you wanna know why their eyes were so big? It's not just on account that they been starving. It's 'cause they are witnesses. And that is what we are today. We are witnesses. You, me and, and Brendan, Tony, Stan, ever'body. We are witnesses to what them Nazis did. And we are witnesses to, to what Sarge is doin', and them others. We, we know it's wrong," he whispered, and it was hard to hear him over the din of shots and tramping feet and screaming, dying youth and spent shell casings hitting the ground.
"Yet we allow it," said Tucker.
"No," Martinelli said, "we gotta follow orders. We can't be protestin' too much. We gotta do what Sarge says, right?"
"And those kids?" O'Shaughnessy asked, "Did they have to do what their, their version of Sarge said to do? And they are just, they are gettin' gunned down today 'cause, uh, 'cause they couldn't refuse an order? Is that it?"
"Our orders is different," Kuzawa said.
"But the result, ain't it the same?" asked Martinelli. "Herbie, whadda you think?"
Shapiro took off his glasses and wiped his brow with a ratty old handkerchief. "I dunno what to think anymore. I used to think I knew what right and wrong were, yanno? But it don't seem like the lines are so, so sharp between 'em anymore. Know what I'm sayin'? It's, it's a horror. But it ain't no Frankenstein picture. It's, it's so much worse. It's, God, it is witnessing. I don't know if my life's got a purpose. Maybe this is my purpose. Maybe it's that I'm the guy who can say he was there. I saw it. It was real. Them stories you're hearing, if you don't believe 'em, well, I can't make you believe nothin', but I know because I was there. And you was, and you, and you, too, McBride, no matter how much of a jerk you can be, you's here, too. You can't deny that."
There was another volley. Tucker looked up. "I, uh, I dunno. Maybe this is, maybe it's my purpose, too. And I'm sorry. I dunno why I was saying what I was. Maybe to be the witness, maybe you're right. Maybe that's the reason behind all of this. War is, it shouldn't be easy. It should not be sterile, and clean, and remote. It shouldn't be buttons pushed, and, and faraway explosions. Because then, like, like a horror movie, we might start to think it's unreal. But, it, it is real. And when we forget that, when we are able to, kinda, like, set all of our bad experiences aside, and pretend like somehow they're not terrible, we should, we should remember this day. And we should recognize that fictional horrors are no substitute for the real thing. And we, we shouldn't be getting any pleasure out of simulations of violence and mayhem."
"There's always somebody who'll be a widow, or an orphan," Martinelli said, "Those kids, I'm not sayin' they're innocent. I mean, they did stuff. I'm sure they did! But tonight, or tomorrow, or somethin' like that, their mothers are gonna realize that they ain't comin' home no more."
"And what about all the people who were kept in here?" Shapiro asked. "Those two teenaged girls, they gotta go home, somehow, and live. How are they gonna trust their neighbors? How are they gonna be able to, to have a home? They ain't got parents. They ain't got husbands. That old lady with 'em, I don't think she was no relation. What're their lives gonna be like?"
"That's why there's war brides," Kuzawa said, "You shoulda chatted 'em up, McBride. Nice young girls, maybe too young, but you bring 'em to the states, and they learn English, and they get jobs like, like secretaries or somethin'. Or they marry some guy like, like Herbie here."
"I got me a girl," Herbie said, "But I know what you mean. It ain't even for love. It's for human decency. To take them girls, and people like 'em, away from here. They ain't never gonna forget. But maybe they can have new memories. Good ones, yanno?"
Martinelli looked over. "I think Sarge is, I think he's done. He's comin' over here. Act natural."
=/\=
"I have found an interesting log entry," said Data.
"Oh?" asked Geordi.
"There is an entry from one Tactical Ensign Aidan MacKenzie, of the NX-01. It is dated November the first of 2161. It states, 'T'Pol and I scanned the Movie Room for Commander Tucker, and we could not find him. We can't figure out what happened. No one wants to bother Lieutenant Reed while he's away for the birth of his son, but maybe we should. If the Romulans have some sort of new transporter technology, then it'll be a major tactical issue.' And that is all."
"Let's look at all logs, sensor readings, anything we can get from the old NX-01 that covers, I dunno, a few days before and a few afterwards," Geordi suggested.
"You know a lot of those records are gone," Wesley pointed out.
"That is true," replied the android, "The chances of locating complete NX-01 records are less than fourteen percent."
"Are there any other records from this MacKenzie guy?" asked Geordi.
"Starfleet personnel records state," said Data, "that he was promoted to Lieutenant on the next ship, the USS Zefram Cochrane and then he worked for one Captain Malcolm Reed as a full Commander on a ship called the USS Bluebird. MacKenzie rose to the rank of Captain of the Bluebird and retired at that rank. I cannot locate any other log entries or information."
"What about from this T'Pol? I take it that's a Vulcan woman," Geordi stated.
"Maybe there are Vulcan records," Wesley said. He began clicking around on a computer console.
All three of them silently worked. "It's a pity those old records aren't available," Geordi sighed.
"The NX-01's records were compromised less than fifty years after that ship was retired," Data stated. "There are holographic simulations and there are speculations about what happened. There are even some books about some of the crew. But most of the actual records are not retrievable at this time."
Wesley looked up. "I might have something."
"Oh?" asked Geordi. "Let's hear it."
"It's not from T'Pol. It's from a descendant. Apparently this descendant was familiar with the NCC-1701. That ship encountered a species called the Eminians." Wesley read off a screen.
"Who are the Eminians?" Geordi inquired.
"Their planet is in the NGC 321 star cluster," Data replied. "On star date 3192.1, Captain James T. Kirk and the NCC-1701 encountered the Eminians, and learned they had been fighting a centuries-long war with computers. Casualties were precisely calculated in the campaign. The inhabitants, evidently, went willingly to their own deaths."
"That's insane," Wesley said, aghast.
"Why would anyone do that?" Geordi asked.
"It was," the android read off a screen, "seen as preferable to the waging of an all-out, real war. The Enterprise destroyed the war computers and the Eminians were convinced to sue for peace."
"How is this related, I wonder," speculated the engineer.
Wesley clicked around some more. "I think I found it. It says, 'Foremother T'Pol has begun confiding things to me in her dotage. One was of a human she knew when she was young. They had a bond, and that did not seem possible. This human spoke to her of his emotions – fears and desires. We received word that a human ship had encountered a species, the Eminians, who played at war and made it sterile and unfeeling and almost comfortable. When I spoke to Foremother T'Pol about this, she stated that, when he was gone for a few days in 2161, the human Charles Tucker told her that he had been out to a real war and had come to realize that, as a species, humans were becoming too remote from it. The human stated that war was becoming too easy and had lost many of its horrors. He admitted that he had substituted false horrors from art – Foremother T'Pol referred to it as something called 'horror movies'. But after his return, Commander Tucker ceased watching said films up until his death. He confided to Foremother T'Pol that cinematic horror was nothing compared to the real thing, and that he felt compelled to bear witness to the realities of conflict. Foremother T'Pol did not have details or perhaps did not remember them, but she stated that the Commander's confession was troubling and that his brief absence affected him very deeply. She was reminded of this when we discussed the Eminians, and she stated that the reaction of Captain Kirk and his crew was to be expected from humans. While it was an emotional reaction, she indicated that it was not to be dismissed as inferior and, in particular, that this was one of the many things that we could learn from humans.' And that's all it says; the remainder is marked confidential by the Vulcan government."
"So this Tucker is – maybe – abducted or something and he witnesses what he refers to as a real war," Geordi said. "Data, do you think that our missing warp bubble could have been responsible for bringing him to whatever real war he was talking about?"
"And now we've got the Federation-Cardassian War going on," Wesley mused.
"At least it seems to be ending," Geordi pointed out.
"True," stated the android, "but it has been waged for a while. It is a century after the Eminians ended their conflict. Yet conflicts continue. Philosophically speaking, perhaps we should be questioning why violence persists in human society."
Wesley looked up. "I, I think this is what I was supposed to figure out. It's not about the warp bubble so much as it is about war itself. It's far away, but that doesn't make it any less real. I shouldn't have to be right in the thick of it to be, to be affected by it. And here I am, conducting experiments and all when there's so much suffering going on."
"It's not like you can do too much about it where we are, Wes," Geordi said understandingly. "You can't fix that problem."
"But forgetting about it and not facing it as a very real issue – I can't do that, either. There are guys who aren't too much older than me, and they're out there, fighting and, and dying! And if the Enterprise were closer, we would be in the middle of it as well. If we were in the thick of it, there wouldn't be time for warp bubbles and experiments. It feels a little like life has been a, a lark. Like I haven't taken things as seriously as maybe I should be taking them," Wesley said, becoming more animated.
"You can't put the weight of the world on your shoulders, Wes," Geordi remarked.
"But I shouldn't forget what's happening, either, right? It's just like that guy Tucker. He figured out that he was being kinda, I dunno, protected from it or at least he was far removed – just like I am. And I'm not saying I want to be fired upon or anything like that. What I'm saying is that I have been forgetting it and shunting it aside for far too long. I should not just up and forget that it's happening."
=/\=
"It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes
You're paralyzed."
Michael Jackson - Thriller