WRONG THINKING

Talos-IV, Planet Surface
Talosian Menagerie
Stardate Unknown
Time Unknown

That familiar grinding sound caught Kirk's attention and the Captain woke slowly, keeping his mind blank and his emotions flat so the Talosians couldn't read him. Slowly, uncritically, he opened one eye and cataloged his surroundings, forcing himself not to make a judgement call on what he found there.

On first inspection, everything was where it should be. The transparency was still there, the stone walls and furniture were there. The girls were still there, sleeping in the cots the Talosians had given them two weeks ago. Kirk had ignored his cot and slept on a mat on the floor, realizing it would be easier to wake up slowly without being noticed, and a dozen times in the past month he'd used this trick to catch the Talosians sneaking things in and out of the cell through a false wall behind one of the stone panels.

Which brought him to his second inspection, looking at the false wall itself where deliveries seemed to appear without warning. The Talosians used their power of illusion to keep him from noticing when the door opened or closed, but they dispensed with the illusions when they thought they weren't necessary. At the moment, Kirk saw the false wall sliding slowly closed, the outline of a Talosian zoologist - he couldn't tell which one - retreating into the passageway. He had left something on the floor in front of that panel: three large beakers of some milky white liquid that the Talosians said was a nourishment drink but which Kirk had figured out also contained some kind of mild stimulant, probably an aphrodisiac. There was also a bundle of fabric on the floor that he assumed was fresh clothes for the three of them. These he eyed with a particular distaste; after the first week in this place their uniforms had become ragged and rancid from wear and tear and the replacements the Talosians had given them were uncomfortable at best.

And the black rock was still there. The black rock Kirk never touched, because it was clearly just a rock.

Kirk waited a few minutes longer, letting the Talosian scientist scuttle away to a safe distance before releasing the mental clench that kept his thoughts from flowing out of control. He sat up on his sleeping mat, crawled over towards the delivered clothes and unrolled them on the floor for his inspection. Same as before: those thin metallic minidresses for the women, knee-length pants for him. Never a shirt, never any underwear; it was little more than an accommodation of their lingering modesty. He guessed that these clothes were probably about as large as Talosian tailors (or machines?) knew how to make them, but on someone like Carol Marcus they couldn't help but look obnoxiously suggestive.

Or maybe that was the whole point? The garments were so uncomfortable that Doctor Marcus had simply washed and re-washed what was left of her uniform every time she bathed, although Vina didn't seem to mind and perhaps had even gotten used to them. Every time Marcus washed her uniform instead of surrendering it, the Talosians subjected her to an illusion of being eaten alive by regulan blood worms or drawn and quartered by Klingons; every time Kirk returned his too-small metallic pants without wearing them, the Talosians covered him with angry hornets, or fed him to a school of piranhas, or fed him the illusion of his enclosure filling up with boiling water until it finally drowned him.

Kirk picked up the milk bottle first. The Talosians could make it taste like just about anything, but for some reason it always hit his pallet like a broccoli and cheddar soup from the Enterprise cafeteria. To Carol Marcus it tasted like a chocolate malt from a corner shop in London, and to Vina it tasted like miso soup with plo'meek spices. It was the only thing he had eaten in this place in almost six weeks of captivity; he would have killed his own mother for a chicken sandwich.

He drank his "soup" without comment, then drank some water from the cistern in the corner of his cell while Marcus and Vina stirred awake and did the same, one at a time. Marcus waited until Vina had drunk from the cistern, then stepped into it and immersed herself up to her waist in the flowing waters, washing her clothes and herself at the same time. She'd been in the water all of fifteen seconds before she started screaming and thrashing, the pain of a thousand poisonous foot-long insects biting into her flesh and stripping her body to the bone. Even in this simulated hell she still managed to finish washing herself and her fabrics; it looked absolutely ridiculous, but it had stopped being funny at least four weeks ago.

Vina was being punished again for some minor thought crime, although this time she didn't scream. She simply closed her eyes, held herself and cried quietly but frantically for half an hour. Kirk, lastly, waited until Marcus was finished being punished, waited until she had climbed out of the cistern and dressed herself before following her lead and washing his own uniform in the water. As soon as he did, he became aware that the water was, in fact, molten steel, and that the heat of it had immediately stripped the flesh from his bones and lit his entire body on fire from head to toe. The pain was so intense that for a few moments it transcended pain itself and drove his mind to a state of borderline madness; screams mixed with laughter, curses, tears and gnashing of teeth until at last he thought he had done enough and pulled his arms and his uniform out of what suddenly became water again.

It had become a ritual for the three of them, and once it was concluded and all three were dressed they came together in a small circle in the center of the room, sat straight-legged with their feet in the center and focussed on their pinky toes. They sang childhood songs in their heads and practiced clearing their minds of any emotion at all, anything the Talosians could key on to stimulate their next set of illusions. Then Captain Kirk kicked his right foot, a signal for them to begin their routine. As planned, Vina tried to imagine a place while Doctor Marcus tried to imagine a person. Kirk himself filled his mind with images of bludgeoning the Talosians to death with various blunt instruments, thoughts so vicious and so primitive the Talosians would never begin to suspect the ongoing chess game the three of them were playing.

The first illusion began exactly as it always did. The cell, the hammocks and the cistern ceased to be real, as if they had never been there at all. They were sitting on a wooden pier over a lake somewhere, seagulls calling overhead, gliding in the warm summer air. Vina was now dressed in an overly-exotic two-piece bikini and Doctor Marcus was in a one-piece swimsuit that was at least two sizes too small. Captain Kirk found himself in a white bathrobe that he somehow knew had been a gift from one of the girls but he could not remember which one.

And when Doctor Marcus saw the robe, her face clenched into a mask of horror and disappointment in herself as she muttered, "Oh, bloody hell..."

"Problem, Doctor?" Kirk asked.

"My mind must have started wandering at the last minute. I'm sorry, Jim."

"Don't apologize. This is their illusion, not ours. We can run with it."

Marcus looked at him again and her cheeks turned bright red with embarrassment. Or shame. Or both, now that Kirk tried to put a name to her expression.

"Actually," Vina said, "This is my illusion. I think this is the boat scene from Vega's Pride."

Kirk stared at her blankly, and Marcus' face flashed in horror, "The holonovel?"

Vina nodded. Then puzzled as she asked, "What did you think it was?"

"Never mind that... so then he's supposed to be Vega?"

Kirk flinched, "I'm who?"

Marcus sighed awkwardly, "Vega's pride is an interactive about a Pashtun banker whose two wives are-"

"-it's not important what it's about," Vina cut her off. "It's a romance 'ractive I used to play it back on Earth. This scene is..." she cringes, "I always hated this scene. I usually kill program right before this part so I'm not really sure how it ends."

Marcus' face turned stony. "You mean this is going to be based on your imagination of the scene."

"I suppose so. Why does it matter?"

"Oh god..."

"What?" Kirk looked at the two of them now, suddenly very worried, "Don't tell me we're all gonna drown or something."

"No, Captain... Uh..." Vina winced, "This part of the 'ractive gets kind of... graphic."

"How graphic?"

Vina answered, "This is a scene where a rival tribe shows up and calls in Vega's debts. They're going to gang-rape one of your wives, and you have to decide which one."

Kirk grinned, "Is that all? Simple enough. Choose neither."

"They'll kill us all if you don't. You have to choose."

Before the Captain could offer his customary "so what?" Marcus jumped in, "No you don't. This whole situation is a trick by Vega. It's a test to see which of the two women will sacrifice herself to save him from having to make that choice. This 'ractive is played from the point of view of the wives. So, one of the wives offers herself in trade, and Vega watches the tribesman rip all her clothes off just to make sure she's serious about it. He intervenes at the last minute and says that she put her loyalty to him before her personal honor. If the player makes the sacrifice, he divorces the other wife and then there's this convoluted assassination subplot. If the player lets the other wife make the offer, Vega divorces the player, and she tries to murder the one he chooses. And you," Marcus shot a glance at Vina, "You knew that already. You chose this scene on purpose, didn't you?"

Vina laughed at this, shaking her head while at the same time looking at the sky as if she expected something to drop out of the heavens to draw their attention away from her.

Kirk also shook his head, sighing, "Keeper made you an offer?"

"That last punishment of theirs was..." she shuddered, "Creative. Guess they found my weakness."

An electronic, croaking, atonal voice from absolutely nowhere broke into their conversation before it could develop further, "We have come to understand your reluctance stems from certain human taboos regarding mating and procreation. We have now removed those inhibitions as an obstacle. Two of you will mate willingly and one will mate forcibly."

Vina closed her eyes and shook her head, silently mouthing the words Please no, please no...

"That's a new low even for you, Keeper," Kirk said to the disembodied voice in his head, "But what do I care? It's all an illusion anyway."

"Your concern has ceased to be a factor, Captain Kirk. We have observed that there are few experiences your species dreads more than humiliation, and that the female named Vina is particularly sensitive to this form of stimulus. We have also observed that the male of your species has an innate tendency to protect the reproductive integrity of the fem-"

"I'm going to sit right here," Kirk interrupted, "And I'm going to do nothing. You can play any scenarios you like in the mean time, but I won't be a part of it." He folded his arms and locked his knees straight, sitting stiff as a pike on the pier.

"Me either," Marcus said, folding her arms and locking up the same way.

"You really are some kind of masochist," Vina asked, looking at the two of them in bemusement. Kirk was slightly surprised by the break in her composure, and then a little disappointed. And then he hated himself for letting himself feel both of those emotions, knowing that now the Talosians could sense it too.

Vina had become the weak link in their chain. Or perhaps she had always been the weak link, just because the Talosians had had more time to work on her. And now they were going to...

His mind and his feelings had drifted. He forced those thoughts and reactions out of his mind, forced his emotions to a flat baseline. There was the plan, the interrogation, the means of escape. Nothing else mattered, no one else mattered...

"We can compel your cooperation," The Keeper's voice warned him, "We could plant in your mind a sensation of intense sexual arousal that would diminish your capacity for rational thought or even proper moral functioning."

"But if it was just a mating that you wanted, you would have done that by now. Or you could do it artificially with ordinary tissue samples..."

"At the risk of inflating your already enormous ego," Keeper cut him off, something like impatience in his translated voice, "I concede that exerting the long-term effort of directly manipulating your emotional states, both to install romantic infatuation with the female, genuine affection for your offspring, and the necessary diligence to ensure the proper care and development of both, would be an inefficient use of my time. It is proper that you, as sapient beings, should be conditioned to take responsibility for your own care and development under our careful guidance, not under our direct control."

"You'd rather train us to do it for you than micro-manage our lives..." Kirk caught a flash of inspiration and realized how relevant that line of thought really was: Train us to do your work for you. That's what this whole place is about, after all.

Marcus growled, "We're not animals, Keeper. You can't condition us like that if we know it's coming. The emotional response breeds resentment and anger. It'll have the opposite effect."

The pier and the beach disappeared, as did the racy swimsuits and the seagulls and summer sun. They were back in their cell, exactly where they had always been; they hadn't moved at all, in the illusion or in reality.

The Keeper was there, glaring at them from the other side of the transparency, his eyestalks flat against his head underneath his shell. He seemed visibly frustrated, rocking back and forth on his segmented legs as if he was preparing to pounce on something. Kirk could almost sympathize with the little crab-creature; he had so little control over his experiment and it was chipping away at his patience. "You have one last chance to breed one of the females."

Kirk closed his eyes and took a deep breath, "Starfleet officers know their duty. They'll die before they cooperate with terrorists."

"I'm not a Starfleet officer." Vina folded her arms across her stomach, breathing shallow. Kirk sensed a certain resentment beginning to spill into her but didn't let his mind comment on it. Logically, he knew that Vina had been here too long and been through too much to have that much resistance to their influence. That was good; he seized on that thought and let himself feel sympathy for her.

"I sense that you are convinced of this yourself, Captain, but this opinion is no longer unanimous. Vina, for example, has been comfortable in captivity for many years, and has begun to yearn for the simplicity of submission before the disruption caused by your presence."

Vina muttered, squeezing her eyes closed, "You don't know me at all."

"While Doctor Marcus," The Keeper went on, "harbors romantic fantasies of which you have increasingly become subject. Her participation in your plan of passive resistance is based on selfish motives, namely, the desire to keep those fantasies hidden from you while at the same time attempting to win your approval. During the Vega's Pride illusion, she exhibited feelings of arousal and anticipation at the prospect that you might finally chose her as a viable mate."

Kirk ignored the Keeper's exposition for what it was: an attempt to trigger an emotional response he could use and manipulate, rather than the naked hatred Kirk had forced himself to direct at his captors whenever they were within earshot. He hated the Keeper for what he had done to the three of them, for what he had already done to Vina, and especially for what he was trying to do to Carol...

"And now you let yourself believe that you can protect the women from our influence by focussing on primitive emotions," The Keeper went on, "As Doctor Marcus has come to understand, this effort is ultimately futile. We have several times planted in her mind vivid sexual fantasies involving you, Captain, and Doctor Marcus has responded positively ninety eight point five percent of the time."

"That's not true!" Marcus sat bolt upright and glared at the Keeper.

"It is from these experiences that Doctor Marcus has concluded that a forced mating with you is vastly preferable to the pointless continuation of her punishment."

"That's not true at all!" Marcus leapt to her feet, "Stop lying!"

"She has permitted these illusions because she enjoys them," the Keeper went on as if he couldn't hear her, "And it has now become her preferred vector of reward. Her deepest wish, at this time, is that you, Captain, would submit to our conditioning as fully as she and Vina have."

Kirk heard it, but didn't let himself believe it. Carol's stronger than that. "Sit down, Doctor," he said blandly, "Ignore him."

"He's lying, Captain! I've never had any kind of-"

"Doctor Marcus," Kirk said with more urgency, "Sit down." Where are you going with this, Carol? I can't play along if I don't know the script...

"Don't you believe me?" Marcus sounded as if she was pleading with him.

"Yes, I believe you."

"You..." she stared at him, then at the Keeper, then at the Captain again. "You do?"

"I sense that you do not believe Doctor Marcus' denial," The Keeper said, matter of factly, "Your earlier supposition was incorrect, Captain. Carol Marcus is the weak link of your party."

Kirk flinched at that reference, and then hated himself for letting it happen. The Keeper had either guessed this, or he was better at reading them than Kirk suspected. But then, this too was a good sign; they were back on script after all.

"Jim..." he heard a break in her voice and opened his eyes for the first time. Doctor Marcus was standing in her part of the broken circle, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Jim, won't you...?"

"Carol," Kirk looked up and tried to keep his expression neutral, "He's manipulating you. He's manipulating all of us. The only way they can win is if you let them. Now please, sit down."

"No."

"Carol..."

"No!" fast as a reflex, Marcus reached down and picked up the black rock from the floor, turning it in her hands. She seemed nervous and confused, like she wasn't sure what to do with an ordinary black rock that just happened to be on the floor for no reason. She looked up at Kirk pleadingly, "You would really rather die than be with me, Jim? Is it really that important?"

"It's not about that. If we give in to them, even a little-"

"What do you mean if?" Vina laughed, "We eat the food, we drink the water. We let them change the taste of those drinks. We give in alot, Jim."

"But you draw the line when it comes to me! Of all the women in all the world you fool around with, the one person you reject is me! Why?"

Kirk growled, "Carol, you're doing exactly what they want!"

"Maybe it isn't about what they want anymore?! What about what I want?!"

"What do you want Doctor?"

"Goddammit, Jim! I want to go home! Back to the Enterprise! Back to Earth! I want to get out of this place, away from these goddamn crab things and their mind games! I want to be anywhere else but here!"

"Carol..."

"He doesn't want you, Carol," Vina hissed, "He's already made his choice. You're weak and selfish and he sees it now."

Kirk considered this for a moment. It didn't seem quite right, maybe a little too obvious, but subtlety might not be called for at this point. "Vina's been here for years and hasn't broken yet. You, I see on the edge of nervous breakdown after just two weeks... what else can I say?"

"You can say that you love me! You can say that you want to get out of here so we can go back to the ship and be together again! You can say that you care!"

"Carol," He began slowly, "It's not like that at all. I'm your superior officer and you're a subordinate. I'm sorry if you misunderstood. But you and I don't have that kind of connection together..." he managed a significant glance at Vina and in his mind imbued it with the implication, Not like the two of us have, "And frankly I doubt that we ever will."

Somehow, in a whisper of perception, Kirk got the distinct impression that Doctor Marcus' hair was on fire and that laser beams were about to shoot from her eyeballs. It was an echo of an emotion so powerful that the Talosians couldn't help but pass it along; it was so strong it was probably overwhelming even to them.

Kirk's eyes widened in horror as he realized, Carol's not faking this!

"You son of a bitch!" Marcus glared at him, flames of hatred burning in her eyes, "How dare you! How dare you!"

The Keeper took a small step back from where he'd been quietly watching the scene, seemingly thoughtful. "Interesting..."

"Carol," Kirk said, trying to calm her, "Think about what you're doing..."

Marcus seemed to realize something, and she looked down at the black rock in her hands. The black rock that was, in fact, an old Kessler and Reed hand phaser from Columbia's arsenal. The hand phaser that was now clenched in Carol Marcus' sweating, shaking fist. She turned the knob to release the safety and pointed it directly at Vina with the look of murderous rage boiling from every pore.

Kirk and Vina were on their feet in an instant. Vina had both hands up in a calming if futile gesture. "Carol, don't!"

"You bastard!" Marcus said, "I should have known! James T. Kirk, grand womanizer of the galaxy! And I thought the damn Talosians were manipulative!"

Kirk swept Vina behind him, moving away from the cot, putting his back to the transparency so that any phaser blast wouldn't splash debris back at them if it missed. He shook his head slowly, "Carol, this isn't going to help. Think about what you're doing..."

"It's that woman, isn't it?" Her voice broke and fresh tears flowed down her cheeks, "Isn't it, Jim? You want her that badly?! Is she so bloody perfect?! She's not even human, Jim! She's some kind of alien monster manipulating your thoughts!"

The Keeper's voice registered again, like a distant breeze through a forest, "Captain Kirk has made his choice, Doctor. Eliminating the female will not change that."

"You sure about that?" Marcus turned all of her attention on Vina and dialed the phaser up to its maximum setting, "What do you think, Jim? Crab legs for dinner?"

"Stop it, Carol!" Kirk shouted, and turning to the Keeper said it again, "Fine, Goddammit, I'll choose! Just stop this!"

"Too late, Jim." Doctor Marcus raised her arm and aimed down the site, pointing her phaser directly at Vina. And she pulled the trigger.

The phaser pulse flashed with a horrifying brilliance, like a flaregun in a dark room. Kirk instantly recognized a phaser pulse at its highest disruption setting, enough power to reduce a human body to a cloud of ash with a single shot. But it took him just a bit longer to realize that the beam hadn't hit Vina at all, but had actually missed her by a handful of inches and hit the wall behind her, just inside of the transparency that enclosed them. The metal frame around the transparency flared, melted, crackled and then collapsed; the transparent aluminum barrier came crashing down, and in that instant there was nothing at all between the three of them and the utterly-startled Keeper.

The phaser fired a second time, this time a blue-white stun bolt through the thickest part of the Keeper's head. The blast knocked the little alien completely off his feet and sent him tumbling backwards, legs over shell, as if he'd been hit by a giant golf club. Marcus rushed to the edge of the destroyed transparency and looked in both directions down the corridor; she saw there two Talosians next to an adjacent cage, both looking startled and terrified at...

She saw there two human children next to an adjacent cage, both looking started and terrified at...

She saw there two human children next to an ice cream shop, both looking happy to see her as if...

"There's two..." she said, her voice almost dreamy. This was the limit of the information she could relay; her brain was still trying to decide just what it was seeing two of.

Kirk vaulted over the edge of the frame, snatching the phaser from her hand. He fired without slowing down or checking his targets, stun bolts through the center of mass. Both of the Talosians crumbled into a tangle of legs and the illusion they were generating faded from Marcus' mind just as quickly.

"How did you do that?!" Vina asked, breathless. She was edging over the top of the ruined enclosure now, climbing down after them, "You broke his conditioning! You must have-"

Kirk turned the phaser in one motion and shot Vina in the chest. She stiffened and doubled over as if she'd just been punched and then spun to the ground, already unconscious.

Marcus looked at him in surprise, "What did you do that for?"

"Because you might be right. She might not be what she appears to be."

Looking down at Vina and the fact that she was clearly not a Talosian, Marcus shook her head sadly, "Looks normal enough now."

"Wasn't talking about her species."

Marcus nodded, taking the hint. "So what do we do now? What's the plan?"

Kirk reached down and scooped Vina up from the floor, hoisting her over his shoulders in a fireman's carry. "First thing, we get to the surface," he said, handing the phaser to Marcus with his free hand, "If they let us get that far."