Chapter 8: Glimmers in the Twilight Kingdom[1]
"So you're not gay?" Asked Stamets51.
"Of course not! I'm worried, miserable, and somehow I'm hungry!" Stamets50.
"I mean, you're not homosexual?"
"No, that's an outdated sexual orientation from before the 21st century. Everybody is pansexual now. A lot more fun that way."
Burnham showed up. They exchanged greetings and introductions, though Burnham also wanted to strangle Stamets50 when she found out he dragged them into this universe. The man in the hat disappeared like a wisp of smoke when she arrived, though this may have been a coincidence. In any case, Stamets50 kind of sucked at telling useful information ahead of time so when something like a big furry wall of fungus came at them, he just yelled, "It's the corrupted network," and ran without further explanation.
The area around them suddenly turned into a building and they ran down a hall. Burnham recognized it as Vulcan Academy and suggested they hide in the cafeteria. They slammed the door shut and this seemed to keep the corrupted network at bay.
"What the hell was that?" Demanded Stamets51.
"I don't really know," said Stamets50. "This is what I was trying to solve when I got sucked into the network. It's some sort of anomaly. It doesn't behave like the regular mycelial network, it destroys everything in its path or changes things. I once touched it and I wasn't myself for days."
"When did it start?" Asked Burnham.
"A few months after we set up the spore power generator," said Stamets50.
He'd explained a little about the power generator to Stamets51, but they kept getting distracted. Finally he described the giant ball of spores that powered the Charon, pulling massive amounts of energy from the mycelial network to fly, shoot down entire planets, etc.
"Didn't it occur to you that this is too much for the network to handle?" Asked Burnham.
"I tried to convince Lorca and Georgiou but they didn't care! They just wanted the power to bust up the rebels faster."
"Why are we in Vulcan Academy?" Asked Stamets51.
"The network is connected to our thoughts and emotions," said Stamets50. "It conjures up places that are familiar to us. To some extent these places obey real world rules, like the door we just used to shut out the corruption."
"Can we use this information to get back?" Asked Burnham.
"How exactly did you get in here?" Asked Stamets51.
She explained about the unusual fungal strain. Stamets51 tried to work out a solution, then started arguing with Stamets50 about something irrelevant.
Tilly started talking immediately once they were in a hidden, reinforced room and Burnham hit her a few times, then tied her up and gagged her. Georgiou called up a map of the Charon and sent messages to her officers. Lorca50's people were all over the palace. Georgiou wasn't sure how many more traitors were pretending to work for her. It looked like the battle to take control of the palace could last a while.
Tilly untied herself and removed the gag. She tried not to say anything but finally caved in and said, "Even though you're really mean in this universe, I'm so excited to meet you, Emperor Georgiou. Captain Georgiou was one of the all-time best Starfleet officers and Michael told me so much about her."
"What happened to her?" Asked Georgiou.
Resigned to Tilly's incessant chatter, they asked her to tell them about their counterparts. The Emperor wanted to know if Federation Georgiou had been involved with Lorca51 in any way. Tilly remembered some random story Lorca51 once told them about how he took a vacation his second year as captain and Georgiou gave him a ride to a beach planet. She was there to stop a rare animal fighting ring and Lorca51 ended up spending his entire vacation helping her out, and hitting on her. But she always said no.[2]
"She was wiser than me," said the Emperor.
Burnham didn't understand why Captain Georgiou and Lorca51 were trying to stop a rare animal fighting ring. Tilly tried to explain that it was illegal.
"Why?" Asked Burnham.
Tilly got into a long discussion with them about the law and discovered that perhaps she wasn't as well-versed in it as she thought.[3] She showed them various recordings of the news from her communicator. She demonstrated the Universal Translator, which didn't impress them. Why would you want to translate all these languages when you can just kill all the people? Somehow or other, even though it was a universe away from whatever GPS it used, her version of Pokémon Go still suggested there was a Snorlax a hundred feet away.
"Are we going to starve here?" Tilly asked.
Georgiou had a food synthesizer in the hideout (and a bathroom too, in case you were wondering.) They could last weeks of siege in there. Tilly made some ice cream. Burnham and Georgiou looked at her condescendingly.
"I wonder how my captain is doing with your Lorca," said Tilly.
"I suspect they are all over each other by now," said Georgiou. "Gabriel is quite hard to resist."
Lorca50 ordered the people that came with him to release his followers from the agonizer booths. He called up a map of the Charon too and got a metal stick from somewhere that he used to color in locations occupied by him or the Emperor. There was a battle for surveillance. Georgiou had more control of the cameras from her room than he did, but he could shoot them out. He directed somebody to try and hack the cameras. Georgiou's officers had control of the throne room and he sent people to try and take them out.
"I'm so clever, mirror image," he said to Lorca51, whom he didn't seem to want to call by his name. "You see, there was a big Klingon uprising a while back and I took on the challenge of putting it down. I decided to promise them amnesty just for a little bit to see what they could offer me in exchange. Some Klingon with a silly name, though of course they're all silly, gave me a cloaking device, the last one they had. But of course I blasted them all out of existence. I didn't tell Pippa or Michael about the cloaking device, which is how I could be so close to the palace but undetected!"
"Was the Klingon named F'Rog?" Asked Lorca51.
"Frog, toad, what does it matter? They're all just nasty things, sub-human really. Ah, here is my loyal First Officer! Landry, dear, come here. I'm so sorry you were in the booth for a month but I had to make it look realistic."
Lorca51 averted his gaze when Lorca50 hugged Landry. Lorca50 noticed and asked, "Is she your First Officer too? Is she just as smart, tough, and ever so fun?"
Lorca51 did not respond.
"But you haven't really been introduced," said Lorca50. "Shweta, this is my copy from a parallel universe. They got here somehow, I haven't heard the full story yet. Little…little um…Gabe here thought he could pretend to be me while a hilarious Tilly look-alike stole some data that turned out to be useless. Shweta, do you think anyone could possibly pretend to be me convincingly?"
"Probably not, Captain, you're one of a kind," said Landry.
"Of course not!" Said Lorca50. "So this fellow came here oh so bravely and honorably, ready to take on my punishment in order to rescue his crew. I don't really know what to say about that except…how cute!"
Lorca50 left Lorca51 alone for a bit to check on the map and give out orders. Some shooting was heard in the hall. He checked quickly, yelled at some people, and went back to the table, unconcerned. But he couldn't keep away from Lorca51 for long and was soon back.
"So you were screwing Landry but how about Burnham? Landry's nowhere near as fascinating as Burnham. No offense, Landry!"
"None taken!" She said. "I'd rather be useful than fascinating."
"I never said I was doing that with Landry!" Said Lorca51. "And I certainly never even considered sleeping with Burnham!"
"But why not?"
"It's inappropriate! And I don't like her that way."
"What kind of universe do you live in?"
"The kind where…all this does not happen."
Lorca50 looked around skeptically, as if for a moment he saw what Lorca51 meant, but then he skipped off back to the drawing board. He gathered around the map with a group of people, some of whom had been in the agonizer booths. Lorca51 was very tired and tried to focus, any little detail could be important to help them escape, but he just started to doze a little. Lorca50 couldn't let that happen and jumped over to smack his stick against a table by Lorca51's face.
"You can't take a nap! Nobody else is napping! This isn't pre-school. Come on, get up and pay attention!"
He dragged his counterpart over to the operations table. Landry asked if he was going to let Lorca51 lead any battles, with a wry smirk on her face.
"Considering what a mess he made of the mission he had here," said Lorca50, "I'm not sure I could let him deliver messages."
He communicated with a team that had engaged the Emperor's forces in battle somewhere near the shuttle bay. Suddenly, something flashed. Lorca50 moved quickly and knocked a little disk to the floor with a large metal bracelet on his arm. He shot a phaser blast at the disk to destroy it completely. The man who'd released the disk backed away but Landry and another person grabbed him. Lorca50 jumped onto the table and walked through the holographic map toward this man.
"Oh my, so she got through to you," said Lorca50. "I really thought I could trust you, Reynolds. But I don't trust anybody, which is why I'm still alive."
"What was that thing?" Asked Lorca51.
"One of the Emperor's toys," said Lorca50. "A little flying disk that cleaves people's brains like a knife going through butter. She must have convinced Reynolds to sit in an agonizer booth for a month, or however long it took, for me to come and release them so he could try to assassinate me. Such loyalty to your Emperor, Reynolds, but why not for me?"
He obviously didn't care about the answer because he suddenly plunged his stick through the man's eye.
"Get this garbage out of here," he said.
Landry dragged away the body. Lorca50 strolled back and forth along the table.
"This back-stabbing is so tiresome," he said. "Are all of you loyal to me? Or at least, do you see what will happen if you aren't?"
The Terrans saluted him and said, "Heil, Emperor!"
"Bit premature," said Lorca50. "You'll call me Emperor when that bitch is dead. And what about you, reflection, are you disappointed in me? I know I can't expect you to be loyal to me, not when you believe in nonsense like equal rights for all."
He pointed the bloody stick at Lorca51 and let the tip touch his cheek. Lorca51 swatted the stick away, not willing to show how upset he really was.
"Enough with the hackneyed power plays," he said.
"Oh, he has some bite after all," said Lorca50.
He sent Landry off to try and take the throne room. The fighting stalled. Both sides were hunkered down in various locations. Lorca50 found Ash Tyler, who survived the earlier melee (he got stuck back into an agonizer booth), and pumped his arm up and down happily. Tyler told Lorca50 what happened and the Terran captain was thrilled. He rushed over to Lorca51 and hugged him painfully.
"You saved poor Tyler by risking your own life!" He exclaimed. "I didn't think people did that except in fairy tales. Tyler's had a hard time. The Emperor suspected him of betraying her and sent him to Admiral Lorenza for some special treatment. I found him in one of her cells and decided to keep him even though he's got a few screws loose. He was so grateful to me for getting him out that he's been my most faithful officer."
Lorca51 hoped Lorca50 would not touch him again. The guy creeped him out. Lorca51 didn't know what to say or how to act or what to do. Perhaps…perhaps he should take a page out of Saru's book and practice sympathy and understanding? But that had never worked on him, why the hell should it work on Lorca50? The Terran captain brought him a glass of water.
"I thought you might be thirsty."
"I suppose I am. Thank you."
"You seem so…nice. I just want to sit around and chat with you. I bet you'll understand everything. Do you know how great it feels not to have to lie anymore? I spent years sucking up to that madwoman. I can't even relate how awful it was. Do you know what it's like to pretend all the time? Have you pretended to be something you are not?"
"I pretended that I was OK for a long time."
"Hmm, sounds kind of boring. My stories are more interesting. I'm sure you didn't jump in and out of bed with any emperors."
"No, I haven't had the pleasure. What is your nickname for Burnham, by the way? She asked me that, as a way to figure out I'm not you."
"Destiny! It is my destiny to take over and make the Terran Empire great again!"
Lorca51 said that his Burnham had the nickname Sherlock.
"Sherlock? I suppose it fits her," said Lorca50. "Except it's not exactly what you want to shout during orgasm."
Lorca50 walked around the map for a bit, then suddenly decided he wanted to see Lorca51's ship. A group of his people had just infiltrated a command center and turned off the shield that prevented beaming onto and off the Charon. The last thing Lorca51 wanted was a maniac on his ship. He refused. Bad idea. Lorca50 immediately had him against the wall with the stick at his throat.
"I don't like it when people say no to me," said Lorca50.
"I got that," gasped Lorca51. "May I please warn them we're coming?"
"May you please? Oh, you're so polite and grammatically correct! Of course!"
Lorca50 swung between creepy sweet and crazy violent with alarming rapidity. He let Lorca51 go and gave him a communicator. Saru picked up. Lorca51 had never been so happy to hear his First Officer's voice before.
"Saru, everything has gone to crap badly! They figured out who we are, they have Tilly, and Terran Lorca wants to check out Discovery. Be ready, he's completely nuts!"
"Completely nuts," repeated Lorca50, but he seemed amused.
Saru, who badly missed Burnham already, imagined her next to him saying, "Oh, so we won't notice any difference." He did not say that, though.
"And dim the lights throughout the entire ship," said Lorca51. "Terrans are light-sensitive for some reason."
"How thoughtful of you!" Yelled Lorca50 and embraced Lorca51 suddenly, such that he dropped the communicator.
Saru gave the order to beam them, as well as a few of Lorca50's armed guards, onto Discovery. They appeared on the bridge. Lorca50 stared at Saru, not believing his eyes.
"Why do you have dinner dressed up in uniform?" He asked.
Saru's expression did not change.
"Saru is my First Officer and a very respectable, honorable, and talented individual who is in every manner equal to me," said Lorca51.
"That is just so precious!" Said Lorca50. "Look at all of you, you're like little baby ducklings or something. You're much too cute to be fighting wars and facing danger. But just because you are cute does not mean you should expect kindness from me. In fact, let's get things straight. I am not here to help you go home and would prefer it if you didn't, because I can find some use for you."
He looked meaningfully at Saru for a while, then added, "I think I'd like some medium rare Kelpian steak today. Or perhaps we could make a brisket out of you."
"I demand that you stop talking about Saru like that immediately," said Lorca51.
"Or what?"
"Or…"
Lorca50 knocked Lorca51 to the floor and kicked him a few times.
"You're not the captain here anymore," he said. "I think I've finally come up with the perfect name for you. I needed something to do with reflections or mirrors so Mirabelle! Yes, I will call you Mira from now on and all of you must too."
Lorca51 painfully sat up and said, "I thought I asked you to stop with the hackneyed power plays."
"I never said I'd stop."
Lorca50 indicated the guards that came with him and said, "Just in case any of you get the idea to jump me, they have a bioweapon that we developed a while back. Most Terrans have been inoculated against this one but you haven't. So one wrong move and everybody on this ship will be screaming and dying!"
They showed him around the ship. Lorca50 seemed like a kid in a candy store but nobody trusted his good mood to last. They finally went to Engineering. Lorca50 ran over to the spore drive chamber and pressed his head against the glass to look at Burnham. Saru had already briefed them on Burnham's experiment, and Lorca50 told them some information about the spore generator on the Charon. The engineers were trying to grow more of the fungal species that took her into the network, but it proliferated very slowly.
"Isn't she beautiful?" Said Lorca50. "And she injected herself with that junk to try and save her crew. It's really too much! Of course, you've got another crappy Stamets too. Ours got his ass stuck in the mycelial network six weeks ago. Georgiou keeps thinking of taking him off life support."
"To get stuck in the network, he must have been injected with the DNA mixture," said Lorca51. "But why did he do it? You don't use your spore generator to travel."
"He didn't. Georgiou got pissed at him and injected him with it one day because she hoped to watch him turn into a mushroom and die painfully."
"Think you could stop drooling over Burnham? It's creepy and gross," said Lorenza, who'd just shown up.
Lorca50 did a double take when he saw her, then realized it wasn't the dreaded Terran admiral. He looked curiously at her badge.
"How can you only be a lieutenant in your universe?"
"I'm not ambitious," she said.
Yana rushed in and nearly careened into an engineer. She wanted to hug Lorca51 and never let go but she obeyed decorum and sank into a chair, more relieved than she'd ever been in her life. Then, suddenly, she felt old.
"Another Tilly?" Said Lorca50.
"A cousin," said Lorca51, and to distract Lorca50 from Yana he asked what the Terran captain thought they should do about the people stuck in the mycelial network.
Lorca50 perched himself on top of a console. The console hadn't been turned off and he jumbled some data, deleted some files, and started a program that activated part of the maintenance system for the spore drive chamber that really shouldn't have been activated at that moment. Lorenza had gotten used to being smart-alecky with Lorca51 and blithely assumed Lorca50 was similar.
"Look what you did!" She said. "No ass has ever caused so many problems at once!"
Lorca50 tossed a knife at her. Saru caught it, which only pissed off Lorca50 even more.
"Do you think you can treat me like your idiot captain?" He said. "In a few hours I will be Emperor and I deserve respect! You're all used to a soft, luxurious lifestyle where your leaders don't consider you garbage. Welcome to the real world! You better get used to darkness and pain. In fact, let me give you a proper introduction to my world. Who should go first? Brisket, let's just get this over with!"
Lorca50 reached for his phaser and Lorca51, seeing calamity approaching, grabbed his hands.
"We never did you any harm!" He cried. "Please, we'll treat you like an emperor, we'll do anything for you, just don't hurt anybody!"
"Don't distract me, Mira, I need to teach you all a lesson!" Said Lorca50.
Lorca51 sensed a great improv moment and sank to his knees. He held out a hand in supplication.
"Please, be generous," he said. "We're soft and stupid and don't know how to act around a soon-to-be Emperor."
Lorca50 seemed uncomfortable and pulled Lorca51 to his feet, saying, "Get up! Lorcas don't beg! Fine, I'll leave them alone. I feel like you're manipulating me but I just can't say no to you. Never let a narcissist meet his mirror image!"
Then he paused, smiled, tilted his head, and added, "And that is not how I want you on your knees for me."
Lorca50 remembered that Stamets50 had developed a rapid spore replication machine that should work even for the rare species that sent Burnham into the network. Lorca50 decided they should go use it at once, and check on the battle on the Charon. Though he was familiar with some of Stamets' science, he asked if another engineer could operate the machine.
Yana didn't want to let Lorca51 out of her sight again so she volunteered, even though that was the last thing he wanted. Lorca50 didn't let them argue about it and demanded that they be transported to Charon's Engineering room. Saru complied. They appeared next to the bed with Stamets50. Lorca50 found the spore replication machine. He knew enough about how to operate it to insert the spores they brought and open up some programs, but then he let Yana take over. Lorca51 was kind of impressed.
"I took a lot of chemical and biological engineering at the Academy," said Lorca50. "What sort of classes did you take?"
"There was this one creative writing class where I made a musical adaptation of 'Back to the Future,'" said Lorca51. "I lost a lot of points for lack of originality but everybody said the songs were good."
Lorca50 talked to Landry for a while on the progress of the battle. Both sides were evenly matched and there wasn't much headway in either direction. Lorca50 complained that it was so boring. He spoke too soon, for a group of Georgiou's officers attacked Engineering. Lorca50 offered Lorca51 a phaser as a sign of goodwill.
"Can you shoot or do you only know how to compromise?" He said mockingly, but he clearly trusted that Lorca51 would not shoot him.
They made short work of the enemy, though Lorca50 whacked Lorca51 with his phaser for not setting it to kill.
"Why do you make me clean up after you?" He asked, and finished off the people Lorca51 had stunned. One of them was Terran Owosekun.
They went back toward Yana and the spore replication machine. It needed another 20 minutes to fill up the containers they'd brought with spores. Lorca50 spotted a DNA sequencer and figured they should compare the genomes of Terrans and Federation humans.
"Perhaps Stamets could isolate the genes coding for light sensitivity and come up with a better treatment than what we currently have, which is, dark rooms. Going to the beach during the day is such a pain! We have to wear wraparound sunglasses and a sort of beekeeper's hat with a black veil! We prefer to go to the beach at night. Wouldn't you like to go to the beach with me, Mira dearest?"
"Preferable to shooting up people who look like my friends."
"You have a way of turning fun suggestions unpleasant."
Lorca51 wandered around the room and looked out the window.
"How is it that we are all here?" He wondered. "How could different histories produce the same assortment of people at the same time?"
Lorca50 just shrugged but Yana said, "I believe paired universes move in and out of sync, kind of like paramagnetic materials. Usually the dipoles are oriented wherever but in a magnetic field, they all orient with the field."
"What is the field?" Asked Lorca51.
Lorca50 yawned loudly, bored again apparently. The two Lorcas questioned each other about their histories. Lorca50 had not gone to the University of St. Louis (there was no St. Louis anymore). He just went to the Academy, though he didn't immediately join Starfleet. He vaguely described his activities before he met Georgiou but he wasn't very talkative about that. It hadn't been interesting. The fun really began after he caught the Emperor's eye but Lorca51 didn't want to hear about that, and he didn't want Yana to hear it either. He asked about Lorca50's family.
"They were wonderful," said Lorca50. "My father owned Missouri."
"My father was an abusive bastard," said Lorca51.
"Mine was great! He spoiled me and Nathaniel so much, especially after mother disappeared. Dad let us have anything we wanted. Then one day we took his antique Ferrari for a drive. There wasn't any traffic anymore. We just had miles of open road with no other people. I'd driven the car plenty of times before. Father was in an excellent mood and the three of us got kind of wasted. I crashed the car. The accident killed my brother and injured my father. My father's servant had followed us. He hated and envied my father. He threatened to shoot us if he wasn't given a bunch of money. A proud man and easily angered, my father reached for his own phaser and the servant shot him instead. I wrestled the phaser away from him and killed him. I had to rely on myself after that."
"I'm sorry," said Lorca51.
"Are you really?" Said Lorca50 so quietly that it didn't seem as though he expected a response, and Lorca51 wasn't even sure he'd heard.
The spores were done. Lorca50 decided to take Stamets50 back to Discovery.
"I bet they've met in the mycelial network and hate each other tremendously by now," he said. "The last thing they'll want to see when they wake will be each other!"
They gathered around Stamets50.
"He's such a little shit, really," said Lorca50. "He ratted me out to the Emperor! If that hadn't been part of my plan, I'd stab the bastard right now."
"Perhaps you should draw on his face?" Suggested Yana.
"I don't have a marker but this may do," said Lorca50 and pulled out a knife.
Lorca51 stepped in front of Yana just in case and said there was no need for violence.
"Fine, it's not like he can feel it anyway," said Lorca50. "Philippa tried already."
They beamed back to Discovery. Dr. Pollard checked up on Stamets50. Lorca50 got the fantastic idea of having Burnham guess which Lorca was which when she woke up (and he was pretty confident the sleepers would wake).
"You look like shit, Mira," he said. "Clean him up, doctor, he needs to look exactly like me."
Dr. Pollard finally finished healing the injuries Terran Burnham hadn't gotten to. Yana and some biophysical engineers put the spores into the chamber with Burnham and Stamets51. Nothing happened immediately.
"This may take a while," said Lorca50. "Your Burnham is probably teaching my Stamets about love or something. Let's go make you a new uniform, Mira."
"Go where?"
"Your room, silly."
Lorca51 thought Saru looked at him judgmentally as Lorca50 pushed him into the hall. But what was he supposed to do? They were at the mercy of this lunatic. He led Lorca50 to his room and re-synthesized another Terran uniform. Lorca50 ambled around the area, somewhat surprised at how frugally Lorca51 lived.
"Such a dinky room, Mira," he said. "How do you manage without a Jacuzzi?"
"I don't think we got this collar right," said Lorca51. "Will you check the specs?"
While Lorca50 examined the design of the collar, Lorca51 retreated to the bathroom and changed into the new shirt and jacket. Lorca50 came over with the collar and a bunch of other gold-plated bits and pieces the Terrans attached all over their uniform.
"Let me help you with this stuff," he said. "It takes a bit of practice."
Lorca51 didn't like how Lorca50 was smiling, didn't like how close he got, and most certainly didn't like the Terran's hands on his neck.
Oh no, have I made people feel like this? He thought.
"You haven't buttoned this up quite right," said Lorca50. "Let me do it properly."
Lorca51 couldn't let that happen and hit a light switch over the mirror. Lorca50 cried out and stumbled back into the bedroom. He was furious. He threw three knives but missed because he was still blinded by the light. He broke the mirror. Out of knives, he looked around for something else to throw while Lorca51 dropped behind the bed. Lorca50 picked one of the only objects Lorca51 had, the box set of The Lord of the Rings. In proper psychopath fashion, Lorca50 examined the object and completely abandoned the hostility of half a second ago.
"Aw, my mother got me this when I was seven!" He said.
He took out the first book and read the note inscribed by Lorca51's friend at the Academy, "To my precious Gabriel. Best wishes, Charlie." The word "precious" was underlined five times to underscore that Charlie was being sarcastic.
"I didn't finish reading this," said Lorca50 a bit sadly. "I skipped a lot of the first book and just couldn't get past the talking trees."
"What happened to your mother?"
"She was kidnapped and murdered by somebody that tried to extort my father. I don't know, Mira, it's all a blur. What does it matter?"
"I think it matters. Lorca, when did your world change? Was it World War II? I've heard Nazi phrases and I think I saw swastikas around the palace. How did Germany win WWII?"
"I don't know any history, don't bug me about it. History has been rewritten at least three times since I started school. It's all propaganda now. You can't trust any textbooks, though I suppose you could find some paper ones if you look hard enough."
"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
"Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!"
"You must know something! You're going to be Emperor."
Lorca50 groaned and went to sit on the couch. Slowly, with some prodding, he revealed the few bits of history he'd learned, if it was even true. Humans killed the first Vulcans to visit Earth and stole their technology. They made Vulcans and other species their slaves, but uprisings caused them to switch to a purely xenophobic mission of killing all other creatures. Lorca50 really wasn't sure how Germany won WWII, or if it really did, and he didn't care. Most literature from that period was lost now, deemed dangerous by the propaganda bureau.
"You've made me so bored," said Lorca50, "that I haven't even thought about anything sexy in fifteen minutes."
"Better that way."
"You know why our uniforms are so hard to take on and off? It's to dissuade people from having orgies on the job. That was a big problem we had. Can you imagine, I was just patrolling the halls of the palace when I heard shuffling, opened a closet, and a bunch of half-naked people fell out? First of all, they missed some rebel ships going by! Second of all, why wasn't I invited? And this just kept happening. So, we asked some sadist to design these uniforms."
Lorca51 shook his head slowly.
"I've been such a blabbermouth, though," said Lorca50. "Why don't you tell me about yourself, Mira dearest?"
"Are you uncomfortable calling me by my real name?"
"Of course not! It's just that there can only be one Gabriel Lorca, and that's me. So, go on, tell me everything."
Lorca51 didn't go too far back, they'd already covered that stuff. He told Lorca50 a little about his early days on the Resilience with Malek.
"Oh! I knew a Vulcan named Malek!" Interrupted Lorca50. "He had that weird ability, the one where he could feel people's emotions just by touching. He was a big resistance leader. But I caught up to him and when I choked him to death, I made sure he felt all my anger and hatred!"
Lorca51 told about the Buran, its untimely demise, and how he came to lead Discovery. He described some of their battles in the Klingon War, which at least occupied Lorca50 for a moment ("This war is your own fault, for being soft on vermin," he said), and told his counterpart about the bribery issue. It took a while for Lorca50 to understand that bribery was illegal. Lorca51 tried to explain the law to him just like Tilly did to Georgiou and Burnham.
"That's all so stupid, Mira," said Lorca50. "Why are you so upset about this nonsense? So you lost a ship, big deal! It was dumb of you to get attached to people in the first place. Do you think I care about Michael, or you? Of course not! If you were half the man I am you would have killed me already and taken my place in a universe where something as minor as bribery isn't considered a crime."
Lorca51 felt surprisingly hurt at this dismissal of his problems and turned away from Lorca50. An uncomfortable silence settled upon them, but Lorca50 couldn't shut up for long. He drew a long breath.
"OK, OK, I will admit that your limited experience is different from mine," he said. "And I will also admit that your pain is real. In my opinion, you chose this pain, which seems silly to me considering that most of the time, somebody else chooses it for you."
"You're talking about different kinds of pain. Yes, I choose to feel pain over the loss of my ship, the hardships of my friends, and even the tragedy of this accursed universe. It helps me remember what is important."
"Well, I think I know of something that can help with your pain," said Lorca50.
He pinned Lorca51 to the couch and kissed him. Lorca51's first response was to knock him away but the Terran had him pinned good. So he didn't resist. He gently put his hands on Lorca50's head and back. Sympathy and understanding. Unfortunately for his own soul, he understood. He could see it now, a desolate landscape stretching out into nothingness and a broken car with the bodies of the few people who had ever loved him. And then, a life of lies, murder, treachery, torture, hopelessness. He understood. Would he have done it any differently?
Saru came in. There was little that could have surprised him less than seeing the two Lorcas making out. Lorca50 sat up quickly and snapped, "This better be important, Brisket."
"Commander Burnham and the two Stametses are reviving, sir."
Lorca51 sat up slowly, still consumed by a kaleidoscopic vision of his and Lorca50's lives. Then he felt guilty. He'd just been making out with a murderer who considered Saru a food item.
They went to the turboshaft. Lorca50 poked Lorca51. Saru ignored them.
"What?" Said Lorca51.
"Why are you upset? I can tell you're upset."
Lorca51 didn't want to say it with Saru there but Lorca50 shook him until he finally said, "I enjoyed kissing you."
"And why does that make you upset? I think that's great."
"Because you are a monster."
Lorca50 clammed up and looked away, but as they were leaving the turboshaft he muttered, "I think you continue to manipulate me and that's just not right. That's my job."
He returned to his usual annoying manner by the time they were in Engineering, though he tried to keep still so it wouldn't be too easy for Burnham to guess which was which. She was already awake and talking to the Stametses (who really weren't happy to still be together) about the big problem they'd uncovered regarding the mycelial network. However, the appearance of the two Lorcas distracted her. Without a second of hesitation, she grabbed Lorca51 by the neck and demanded to know, "Where's Tilly?"
Saru explained while Lorca50 asked, "How did you know which of us was which so quickly?"
"I picked the one that looks like he's swallowed a spoonful of salt," she said.
She shoved Lorca51 away from her and turned back to the Stametses.
"Choke him some more, that was pretty hot," said Lorca50.
"Seriously?" Said Burnham. "Why are you here? But I don't care, we have much bigger problems."
Stamets51 explained that the corruption in the mycelial network they'd experienced was going to spread exponentially unless they could destroy the spore power generator in the palace. And by "spread exponentially" he meant "wipe out all life throughout the universes."
"Really?" Said Lorca50. "Just one big flying palace and it's going to end the world?"
"Don't you understand anything about sustainability?" Asked Burnham.
"Sustainability…how do you spell that?" He said.
"You're a complete idiot," said Burnham. "You can't just expect something organic to endlessly replenish itself."
"Hey, my Burnham and Georgiou were OK with this too!" Said Lorca50. "It was really up to Georgiou, blame her."
"Fine, I'll be fair. You are all morons!" Said Burnham.
Lorca50 looked from her to Lorca51 and said, "Isn't she spunky? I just can't believe you two are not sleeping together."
"Oh my god, it's like the words 'end of the world' are just not getting through to him," muttered Burnham.
"According to my calculations," said Stamets50, and Stamets51 glared at him because Stamets50 had just copied his calculations and finished them a bit faster, "it's not just one spore power generator. There need to be at least ten to cause such widespread damage. Tilly's cousin seems to believe there are quite a bit more than ten of these things, throughout what she calls the Supraverse. I guess if there's one parallel universe, we can assume there are others, but either way energy fluctuations from the spore cluster in the palace show that it will reach a critical level in about five hours, after that the corruption will be irreversible."
"How do we stop it?" Asked Lorca51.
"We're still working on that," said Stamets51.
They retreated to computers. Burnham exclaimed about the console Lorca50 had sat on. He stood by Lorca51 and toyed with his communicator.
"End of the world, huh?" Lorca50 finally said. "Suddenly makes everything else unimportant, even plans to take over the Empire. How do you want to spend your last hours? Do you want to…stay with me?"
Lorca51 looked at Lorca50 with sadness and derision. He was quite tired of Lorca50 but he felt bad for him. On some level he knew that the tables had turned and if he wanted to, he could easily hurt Lorca50 now with just a few words, such as, "go away already," or, "I'd rather experience the end with people I actually care about who aren't deplorable murderers." Somehow Lorca51 swallowed down this bitterness and managed to bring back the kindness he'd felt earlier.
"Of course, I'll be with you," he said and embraced Lorca50.
"Yana, stop staring at those weirdoes canoodling and help me with this," said Burnham. "You are such a poor substitute for Tilly."
After a bit, the Stametses and Burnham thought they had a solution, but they wanted to run some simulations. Lorca50 suddenly shoved Lorca51 aside, asked where the bathroom was and went off without waiting for a response. The three guards that he'd left outside Engineering asked him something and he yelled at them to fuck off.
"Should somebody go after him?" Wondered Stamets51.
"He can find the bathroom by himself," said Lorca51.
Yana entered some incorrect code and Stamets51 snapped at her, then wondered, "Didn't you say that the world will end in 22 billion years? So we must be successful today, then, right?"
"The corruption of the mycelial network will only destroy organic life," said Burnham. "I don't think Yana's old friends, the Ys and Zs or whatever, count. The world could end thousands of times and they won't even notice that all of us little people are gone."
"And spring herself when she woke at dawn would scarcely know that we were gone," said Lorca51, quoting Ray Bradbury.
"I would have noticed!" Said Yana.
"You're speaking as a human now," said Stamets51.
Lorca51 sat down on the steps, sighed, and said of his counterpart, "He tasks me."
"Welcome to my world," said Burnham.
"And I feel like an idiot in this uniform now that I know what it's for," he added.
Stamets50 laughed loudly and said, "There was such a row when they first introduced those uniforms but I think productivity really did increase."
When Saru entered with a few other people, Yana slipped out and checked some bathrooms until she found Lorca50. She suspected Lorca51 would not have approved of her talking to a psychopath so she didn't tell him. Lorca50 leaned on a sink, lost in thought, but not enough to be startled by her appearance.
"Ah, Tilly's cousin," he said.
"Yeah, hi. Are you OK?"
"You came here to ask if I'm OK?"
"Captain Lorca is my favorite person in the world, probably in the entire Supraverse, and I'm really glad you brought him back to our ship. You really like him too, don't you?"
"He's all right," said Lorca50.
"He's absolutely the best and I was so worried about him."
"Are you really Tilly's cousin? You seem like you may be Lorca's daughter. Did he knock up Tilly's mother?"
"Oh, if you ever met Tilly's mother, you'd know that's about as likely as the proton spontaneously decaying. But I'm flattered you think I seem like his daughter!"
Lorca50 asked who she really was so she told him. He looked rather confused.
"So you, a higher dimensional being, allowed some nasty Vulcan to do a mind meld on you as if he were your equal?"
"I wasn't really thinking about it like that. The Qs don't see much value in people. They told me eons ago that mortals need to be tricked, impressed, or bribed and I tried to do that to some extent. I knew that mortals were not capable of everything I could do but I still believed they deserved respect."
"More fool you. Here you are, stuck with us and probably about to die like a dog."
"Michael and Stamets will figure it out! They always do, and you and the captain will do all kinds of brave things to save us."
Lorca50 suggested they go for a walk around the ship. They went down the hallway. Lorca50 rambled on about his philosophy of the world, if you can call it that.
"I've always thought that life is too absurd to be anything serious. It's got to be a game of some sort, and I've decided that I'm going to win. But then again, on the other hand, I refuse to be told what to do and hate following the rules. So how can I reconcile my desire to win and my need to break the rules? What do you think, little goddess? Are you some sort of messiah, sent by the omnipotent QYZ Continuum to provide us poor contestants with advice?"
"Uh…from what little I remember, the Qs are way too lazy to maintain the entire Supraverse as some sort of giant game. They may focus on a small group of people but even then they lose interest. They can be fickle. It's pretty common for a Q to show up at a meeting and say, 'Sorry for being 300 years late, what did I miss?' And the others tell him, 'Oh, not much at all, the speaker is still just clearing her throat.'"
Lorca50 laughed at the joke but he wasn't convinced that the world was not a game.
"But maybe you created everything as a game and then made yourself forget that it is so to see how you'd behave in it," he said.
Yana scratched her head and made a noncommittal sound.
"Maybe the QYZs are not even the biggest fish around," continued Lorca50. "Do you remember if there are other entities more powerful?"
"Possibly."
"So it probably is a stupid game. Sometimes I get so tired of playing by the rules that I pick up a phaser and put it to my head, but I figure I should write a note first and then go off and get distracted by something."
"That's quite sad."
"Oh, most people will rejoice if I ever get into a dark enough mood to actually do it."
"But staying alive is not a rule of the game, if this is all a game. It's more of a guiding principle."
"I know that!" He said. "The only rules we really have here in the Terran Empire are never to give in to weak, compromising emotions and to only look out for yourself."
They passed a window that reflected them and Lorca50 wondered, "So how do you all fit in? You're clearly from a different game where you haven't figured out those rules yet. Tell me, Great Prophet, why were you sent here? How does your presence affect my destiny?"
"I'm really not a prophet, goddess, or messiah. But just to humor you, I think us being here is a glitch. We should just go home."
"No, it's more than that. It has to be. Pitting myself against another version of me seems like a very intentional move on the part of whoever's in charge. It must be that Mira and I will have some sort of confrontation where it will be either me or him."
"Oh, come on! You can't seriously believe this!"
"I'm telling you, it's no accident he's here. It must be me or him."
He looked grim and determined so Yana got worried and said, "I won't let you hurt him!"
"Oh, what could you do to stop me?" Said Lorca50. "I'd cut you down like a blade of grass. Why would you pointlessly die for someone?"
Yana wasn't sure if their conversation had been serious. He seemed to be in a humorous mood for most of their exchange, even when he spoke of killing himself, but now he appeared to be more focused. She refused to believe he could be all that bad or all that different from her captain and told him the truth as she saw it.
"I love him so it wouldn't really be pointless."
Lorca50 threw his head back and laughed.
"It wouldn't be pointless?" He repeated. "If I was going to shoot Mira and you stood in the way and died for him, it wouldn't be pointless? But I'd just shoot him next! How does your idiotic love change any of that?"
Yana didn't really have an answer, and Lorca50 scoffed at her. Then he smiled cunningly and said, "So you love your daddy, huh? I don't believe in platonic relationships with older people who aren't biologically related. How do you love him?"
"How?" Asked Yana, confused, but before she knew what was happening he pushed her into the closest room and kissed her. Yana was extremely surprised and didn't move a muscle. While she had certainly given the matter of her first kiss some thought, she read too much shojo manga and expected it to be preceded by a while of dewy-eyed yearning. Lorca50 obviously hadn't read any shojo manga. Yana continued to stay as still as possible, hoping that would dissuade him. He did draw back for a moment.
"I always suspected divinity would be rather stiff," he said.
He kissed her neck and Yana panicked. What would Lorca51 do? Well, he just gave in! What would Burnham do? Which one? Finally, what would Captain Nara do? Yana shoved Lorca50 aside and slapped him.
"You would know all about platonic relationships going weird, wouldn't you?" She said.
"You call that a slap?" He said. "My Burnham gives such a slap that it stings for days."
Yana went back into the hallway and tried to hide her face, which was really red. Lorca50 followed, cheerful enough.
"Oh, did I make the wee Prophet uncomfortable?" He said. "Get used to it! Your friendship with Mira won't remain platonic. Sooner or later you'll start to look at him differently, just like Michael did with me. And it's downhill from there, not that you won't have some fun along the way. He is like me, after all! I remember the first time Michael and I slept together. It was at a banquet. The food looked great but it was all poisoned, as we realized when the guys that tasted it first dropped dead. Georgiou left, disgusted, but Burnham and I stayed and chatted. One thing led to another and believe it or not, she started it! It was really not in my best interest to screw my boss's adopted daughter but she put the moves on me! So we did it on the table except we forgot the food was poisoned and rolled into it and it entered through skin so we woke in sickbay, started puking. But it was still really hot!"
"Who poisoned the food?"
"Admiral Lorenza, we believe. Georgiou could never prove it, though. She took away a quarter of Lorenza's fleet as a warning."
He sat on a windowsill and said, "But that's ancient history. How about someday soon, when your daddy isn't looking, we look for transcendence together?"
"Oh, quit it already!" Said Yana. "Instead, why don't you tell me what it was that made you run off to the bathroom earlier?"
Lorca50 didn't immediately reply and suddenly looked like he was the one who'd swallowed a spoonful of salt. Then he shrugged and turned to the window.
"It was nothing," he said. "Nothing important. Just some un-Terran thoughts that somehow crept into my head."
"You don't really think it's you or him, do you?"
"As long as Mira doesn't stand in the way of me becoming Emperor, he can remain my lovely, pretty, silly plaything."
Back in Engineering, Burnham insisted Lorca51 go search for Lorca50 because, "we can't have another maniac running loose on the ship like we've had for the past twelve months."
"You've made your point already!" Snapped Lorca51.
He found them quickly enough. Yana watched Lorca50's face when he saw Lorca51 at the end of the hallway. She thought he almost looked kind for a moment. She finally came up with an answer to his earlier question.
"It wouldn't be pointless," she said, "because if you saw me die for the captain, you wouldn't kill him after all."
"Why's that?"
"Because you'd change your mind. You wouldn't want me to have died for nothing. And you'd understand that my love was real and had value and you wouldn't think this is all a game anymore."
"Oh, shut up, you pitiful Prophet of Lost Causes!"
Lorca51 reached them and asked what they'd been talking about. Lorca50 checked his messages while Yana told Lorca51 about Lorca50's idea of the world being a game. She didn't mention what else they'd talked about, or done.
"You're a feather-brained nincompoop if you believe that!" Said Lorca51. "Ruining people's lives is not a game!"
The floor lurched. Wondering what the hell that was, Yana and the Lorcas ran back to Engineering. Saru said over a speaker that they almost got hit by a blast from a ship of unknown designation, but now this ship and others were attacking the palace.
"Rebels, damn it!" Said Lorca50. "They must have followed you from Harlak."
"They need to put the shields up on the Charon," said Stamets51. "The blasting could disrupt the spore cluster and cause the corruption to spread even faster."
Lorca50 called his people and ordered the shields to be raised, but there had been a battle in the control center and half the consoles were busted. They only managed to raise one shield. Georgiou couldn't raise the shields from her bunker though she certainly saw the need to do so. The only other console that could raise the shields quickly was in the throne room. Landry almost got control of it when she threw a bomb in there, but she got ambushed by a bunch of Georgiou's officers before she could get inside. Now the throne room was empty with people fighting outside.
"I'll beam to the Buran and destroy the rebels myself," said Lorca50.
"Wait, I can talk to them," said Burnham. "I can make them understand that this is bigger than all of us and they need to leave."
"Are you insane?" Said Lorca50. "You think they'll just helpfully go away if you ask them to? You look exactly like the woman who murdered thousands of them!"
"I can do this! You go back to the Charon and get access to the throne room. You need to take down the containment field around the spore power generator. We've come up with a way of halting the corruption to the network but that field is blocking us."
"Mira, she's telling me what to do!" Whined Lorca50.
"She's got a point. Come on, I'll help you," said Lorca51.
Stamets51 almost said something but Burnham gripped his arm to make him stop. She didn't want the Lorcas to know the entire situation, and the exigency of the rebel attack made it easier to avoid telling the whole thing. Lorca50 probably still wanted to keep them all as pets and it wouldn't do for him to know that once the spore generator was down, they'd either be dead or going home. They needed to shoot their entire spore supply into the core to cause a chain reaction that would destroy it, make a big explosion, and hopefully activate their spore drive to send them home.
The Lorcas beamed onto the Charon. Yana sneakily followed them. Burnham contacted the rebels, who let her beam onto their ship. That interaction proceeded much as it did in the original Discovery universe. The rebel leader was Voq and one of his aides was Sarek. The Vulcan did a mind meld on Burnham and concluded that she meant them no harm. She told them about her universe and asked for some tips on the Klingon war. The rebels stopped blasting the palace and agreed to go away as fast as possible. Voq mentioned the "funny name of her ship" and Burnham looked out the window at Discovery and noticed for the first time that Lorca51 had forgotten to change the second word. The name on the hull was ISS Discovery Falcon. None of the Terrans had noticed.
When Landry met up with the Lorcas, she didn't say the obvious to Lorca50, such as, "So are you finally going to fight your own battle?" Instead she led him over to Tyler, who lay on the ground from a bad phaser hit and was hanging on just to say goodbye to Lorca50. The Terran captain knelt over him.
"You did good, soldier," he said to Tyler.
"Thank you, captain," said Tyler.
He passed away. Lorca50 went off toward the sound of shooting without another word. Landry and Lorca51 followed at a distance. They hid behind some columns and shot at the enemy. The entrance to the throne room was halfway between them.
"Make yourself useful, Mirabelle," said Lorca50. "I'm going to throw a light bomb. You will tolerate it completely or recover faster so you need to get inside the throne room. Turn on a containment field right outside the doors to block those guys."
He tossed the light bomb, not giving Lorca51 much time to get ready. Lorca51 heard screams from the end of the hall and ran across to the door. He got inside and went to the controls. He did as Lorca50 asked, though for a moment he had full control of the palace and could have done whatever he wanted. He didn't turn on all the shields as they had planned because the lack of loud blasting noises meant Burnham's negotiations were successful.
Lorca50 and his forces came inside. He was back to his usual demeanor, talking crap and yelling at people. He pushed Lorca51 aside from the throne.
"We have to turn off the containment field around the spore generator," said Lorca51.
"You'll do that once Georgiou's dead," said Lorca50.
"We don't have time for your schemes! This is the fate of the universe that's at stake!"
"And it's the best opportunity I'll ever have to become Emperor. So calm down, dear, we still have several hours before the big bad fungus turns us to rot. And if you dare touch these controls without my permission, I'll skewer your little ex-goddess girlfriend."
He indicated his three guards, who had just dragged in Yana. She was lucky to get spotted by the three guys that knew her by sight; the others would have just shot her. One guy stayed with her in a corner just in case Lorca50 gave the order to skewer her.
"I won't touch the controls, you jackass," said Lorca51. "Now try to get this over with as soon as possible. I still need Tilly back."
Lorca50 opened up a channel with Georgiou.
"Look, I'm on your throne! Or rather, my throne. Why don't you leave that musty room and come on over? Mira and I were thinking of having a ball!"
"Who?" Asked Burnham.
"Do you really think you've won?" Asked Georgiou.
"Um…yeah?" Said Lorca50. "Here, let me show you."
He turned off life support to the area with the largest number of Georgiou's officers. He opened an airlock next to another group and sent them into space. He made his point. Georgiou and Burnham agreed to surrender and be led to the throne room.
"That was a bit too easy," said Lorca51.
"Of course it was!" Said Lorca50. "They plan to trick me into getting too close and then jump me. But I won't let them. Come dance with me, Mira, today I become Emperor!"
He grabbed Lorca51 and spun him around the ballroom. Landry rolled her eyes.
"So you'll become Emperor, and what then?" Asked Lorca51. "You said you wanted to stop pretending but the Emperor can never reveal who he really is. You'll spend the rest of your short life waiting for the next upstart to put a knife through your back."
"And what do you suggest? Freedom and equality? Peace? These people wouldn't know what to do with it! And do you honestly think the rebels would forgive us and make friends? You're an idealist. I'll have to keep an eye on you."
"What about Burnham? You're going to kill her mother. Do you plan to keep her in chains?"
"I'll kill her if necessary. Though of course, that would interfere with my dream…you, me, and the two Burnhams. How hot would that be?"
"And you call me an idealist."
They stopped in the center of the room when Georgiou, Burnham, and Tilly were led inside. Lorca50 didn't give them a chance to speak. He fired at Georgiou. She was blasted back and knocked out, but she wore a vest that dampened the blow. Lorca50 ordered his people to search Burnham and Tilly for weapons. They found a bomb attached to Tilly. Yana ran over and disabled it.
"I'm not waking her up for a farewell speech," said Lorca50 and aimed a phaser at Georgiou's head.
Lorca51 liked the Emperor very little (she'd really busted his chops) but his nature quailed at the prospect of all this murder. He'd seen enough.
"Gabriel, wasn't she your friend?" He said.
The look Lorca50 gave his mirror image was the same look Lorca51 had on his face a week ago when he realized the game was up. He didn't say anything for a good long while, long enough for Lorca51 to figure out what was on his mind.
"It was too good to be true," said Lorca50 finally. "Here I find you, the perfect friend, on the day I should become Emperor. This was supposed to be my greatest achievement, the result of many long years of effort. I thought you were just icing on top of the cake. But I see now that you're a test. You will never support me. You will constantly try to turn the Empire into the Federation, getting us killed in the process. I will never be able to beat those weak-minded ideals out of your head. So you must die. That's my destiny. I really like you and I don't want to do it but nobody ever said the job of an Emperor was easy."
"It doesn't have to be this way!" Said Lorca51.
"Don't start, you'll only make this harder. But I'll give you a chance. No phasers."
He threw his weapon aside and attacked Lorca51. They were, predictably, very well-matched. They hardly touched each other at first, anticipating the other's moves. Lorca51 knew Vulcan martial arts but Lorca50 had killed a lot of Vulcans. They struck at each other over and over, neither landing any hard blows. But Lorca51 had been in an agonizer booth all night and he tired earlier. Lorca50 knocked him to the floor and he barely rolled away from the Terran's boots. Lorca51 noticed Yana behind the throne, making some sort of motion. Ah, of course. Really, enough was enough! Lorca51 got up and kicked at Lorca50, driving him toward the throne. Lorca50 hit him hard on the face. Lorca51 slammed into him and pushed him onto the throne.
"It's a bit too early for a pleasurable sit down," said Lorca50, and tried to get up except…he couldn't. Making exasperated noises, he pushed off from the ground and the armrests, but he was stuck fast. He started trying to cut through his pants with one of the sharp golden pieces from his uniform. Lorca51 knocked it out of his hand.
"Quit that, nobody wants to be exposed to your naked ass!" He said.
Lorca50 looked around the room and said, "Actually, just about everybody here has already been exposed to it…and I daresay they enjoyed every moment of it."
Then he glared at Yana and Lorca51.
"Stuck, aren't you?" Said Lorca51. "You're stuck in many more ways than that. You're a hypocrite, a warmonger, a nihilist, and a coward. You're afraid to face the truth about this world and you wouldn't mind if it all ended, because you consider it all a stupid game! Or you just don't understand. I don't know. But you can change and I really don't believe these people would be so hard to convince that you can't go on like this. I mean, look, Gabriel, is it really worthwhile to be ruled by terror, to have a life expectancy of at most 50 years, and to brainlessly screw around with anybody and everybody as the only vague way of connecting with people? And worst of all, you constantly have to pretend that you don't care, that the meaningless deaths of your entire family, and poor Ash Tyler, don't affect you! But you do care, you care! I refuse to believe otherwise!"
Lorca50 looked at him kind of sadly and said, "You're so full of shit, Mira. But you're very beautiful when you get all angry and rhetorical."
"Fine, ignore me. Keep this up, kill your friends, die alone. What does it matter to me? Just let us go. The Federation is in danger and it is my job to protect it."
"Not for much longer."
"Forever!" Said Lorca51. "Even if I'm not captain, even if the Federation crumbles, I will uphold its mission and values. I think I lost my way for a while, but seeing you destroying everything in your path reminded me of why I signed up for Starfleet in the first place."
"Ugh! Honestly, how are you not embarrassed to say such twaddle? Bollocks to mission and values! But fine, I will let you go if you get that spore drive working again. That Burnham of yours probably has it up and running already, I bet she just didn't tell us."
"Most decent of you. I promise, I'll think of you often."
"Will you think of me naked?"
"Oh, you can be certain of it."
"Yeah, right. Now help me out of this chair."
"A few more comments while I have you stuck here."
"Oh no…," groaned Lorca50. "I thought it was the Prophet who was supposed to preach!"
Yana just shrugged.
"You have to abandon the xenophobia," said Lorca51. "Just drop it! You're wasting time and energy and I think you fail to understand that other species can be very…interesting, if you get my point. I mean, Bajoran women! I once spent the night with this couple and man, I thought I'd die but I wouldn't have given it up for the world! And don't even get me started on species whose basic anatomy isn't the same as ours! If we ever make peace with the Klingons, I'm going to try to get better acquainted."
"You've screwed hell knows what and you were disgusted by me?"
Lorca51 felt a wave of righteousness and bent over Lorca50.
"Maybe at first, but I know what you're capable of! You're so talented and clever, you have to realize that your way of life is flawed. You keep calling me nice and sweet and beautiful, qualities that you are clearly attracted to, and you have the ability to be that and so much more!"
Yana moved a little and a ray of light from the window fell on Lorca50's face. He winced and dropped his head to the side. Except he looked as if he was in more pain than the light warranted.
"You and the Prophet keep ascribing qualities to me that are just not there," he said. "They're not there! And somebody cover that window!"
"Those qualities are there," said Lorca51 firmly. "But you can't be expected to understand considering that you never even learned the rules of the game. Let's entertain the notion that our universes were set in motion by some greater power to watch us play a stupid game. Well, the moment you accept it as a game is the moment you lose! You lose when you treat others like disposable players, you lose when you ignore your own better emotions, and you lose when you laugh it off and don't take anything seriously. It's by respecting other people and striving for a better society, even if we may not see it in our lifetime, that we win."
Lorca50 shook his head sadly and said, "Oh, I shouldn't have given you a fighting chance. I should have shot you before you could open your mouth. You and the Prophet, I don't know why, but your indomitable belief in all kinds of stupidity just drives me to despair!"
Lorca50 put his head in his hand. He sighed and looked at Yana, and barely, just barely, smiled. Nothing could have compelled him to confess what he was really thinking, though his following action spoke for itself.
Lorca50 looked around his counterpart's back and suddenly shoved him to the floor. Georgiou had woken up, used some device on her boot to break her handcuffs, grabbed a dagger from somebody, and threw it. She would have hit Lorca51 if the Terran captain had not pushed him aside, taking the blow. Lorca51 sat up and stared at the dagger sticking out of Lorca50's chest, shocked.
"No, no…why?" He asked, taking Lorca50 by the hand.
"Maybe you're right about me, Gabriel," said Lorca50. "But I couldn't do it. You're the only one of us worth saving."
He reached for Lorca51's face and whispered his last words: "I've broken the rules for you, my better version."
"One down, one to go," said Georgiou.
Lorca51 was too stunned and upset to move but Burnham stepped between them and said, "Stop, mother. He saved your life while you were knocked out. Then Lorca died to save Lorca. At least let his death have some meaning."
"Lorca died to save Lorca," repeated Georgiou. "Doesn't that just say it all! But who knew he had a scrap of decency in him? I could have exploited that years ago."
"The containment field," said Yana.
Lorca, sans numerical identifier, sans mirror counterpart, stood up to turn off the containment field. Georgiou demanded to know what he was doing. He explained about the spore power generator.
"You're going to blow up my palace?" She said.
Tilly was next to them by now and said, "That's really the least of your problems."
Landry got over her own shock and came toward them aggressively.
"This isn't over," she said. "We have to finish what Lorca started. This bitch will slaughter us for treason if we don't stop her first."
"Oh, blast," said Lorca. "Listen, Shweta, do you trust me? I had a friend who wasn't much like you but she looked the same and if I could do anything to…"
"Please don't say any more sentimental shit!" Said Landry. "It was bad enough listening to you talking to Lorca, I can't believe he didn't throw up."
"But do you trust me?" Insisted Lorca.
"Sure, but I don't respect you!"
"Then get out of here now. We're going to blow this place up! The explosion will be massive but we'll give you all time to get away. Take all of Lorca's people, get on the Buran, and go away."
"I'll still chase them down to the ends of the galaxy," said Georgiou.
"See?" Said Landry. "We've got targets on our backs. We have to kill her now while we have the advantage."
"I'd like to see you try," said Georgiou.
"No you don't!" Yelled Lorca. "Right now, we all leave and fix the stupid problem that your greed created! Everybody out now!"
Who knows, perhaps an echo of a distant explosion in another universe where Landry and her forces perished reached the ears of this Landry, but she indicated for the others to follow her out of the throne room.
Lorca told Yana to contact Discovery and beam them all onboard. He locked the settings on the control panel. Burnham51 couldn't seem to get a lock onto them. The energy fluctuations from the spore generator were wreaking havoc on the transporter. Burnham50 shrugged and suggested they go to a different part of the palace that wasn't directly over the core.
"I've got a lock on them," said Saru. Somehow or other, ironically, the bio-tracer he'd stuck onto Lorca a few days ago provided a good lock.
They all beamed onto Discovery, to Engineering, where the last preparations were being made to blow up the spore generator. The ISS Buran warped off. Burnham50's ship, the ISS Shenzhou, flew over to pick up her and the Emperor.
Georgiou wanted to take Stamets50 back but he was the only one that knew the way to the Federation universe. He threw himself at Lorca's feet.
"Please, please, please, take me with you!" He wailed. "It's so crappy here!"
"Seems like we need you anyway," said Lorca.
"You're taking my scientist, destroying my palace, and you've let rebels and traitors escape," said Georgiou. "What do I get in return?"
"You get to live," said Burnham51.
She stared at Georgiou. The Emperor glared back. This continued for a bit.
"What do you want?" Asked Georgiou. "Redemption? Find it for yourself somewhere else. You're nobody to me."
"She's not quite nobody," said Burnham50. "Meow! Am I really this hot?"
She spanked Burnham51 on the bottom.
Burnham51 just sputtered, then said, "Inappropriate!"
"That's another word they can't spell," said Lorca.
"Kind of a shame Lorca's dead," said Burnham50. "I could see the four of us in a hot tub.[4] So, you two really aren't sleeping together?"
Burnham51 went back to her console without another word, though she continued to peek at the Emperor who finally relented at one point and gave her a hug. Burnham50 seemed to want to say something to Lorca, but she couldn't make up her mind.
"For the record, I think he really loved you," said Lorca.
"Nah. He only ever loved one person," she said. She looked him up and down critically and added, "Maybe one and a half."
"Perhaps you could convince Georgiou to give amnesty to Landry and the others?"
"I don't know. She may decide to kill me tomorrow. I really don't know. He died for you, when he was so close to obtaining everything he wanted. Why?"
"Maybe he realized he didn't want any of it. Maybe he discovered that doing something for somebody else, selflessly, was the best thing he had ever felt, even if it was the last."
"Again, I don't know. I do know that he's gone and I'll miss him and since you're leaving, I'll never be able to do this again."
She kissed him, for quite a while too. Then they had to go. Georgiou wanted to coddle Tilly once more but the young engineer moved away from her.
"You strapped a bomb to me!" She said.
"That doesn't change how I feel about you," said Georgiou.
Burnham50 and the Emperor beamed over to the Shenzhou and warped away. Lorca scanned the palace for life signs and found four that remained.
"Saru, you're getting a girlfriend or boyfriend," he said, and beamed over the remaining Kelpian slaves.
Burnham came over and punched Lorca on the arm.
"Ow! What was that for?" He asked.
"For making out with her and enjoying it."
"She's not you! And she's a very attractive woman. Ow, ow!"
"I should have asked her to take you with them!"
Once they figured the Terran ships were far enough away, they flew through the center of the palace and shot photon torpedoes filled with spores at the core. It blew up, kicked the spore drive active, and the two Stametses navigated them home without the help of any weird ghosts in the network.
Footnotes
[1] I could also call this chapter "Double Trouble" but I don't want to be taken in by the Cliché Police.
[2] Lorca51 liked to proudly tell his crew that he'd hit on and been rejected by just about every Starfleet captain. He tried particularly hard with Christopher Pike, who kept saying that he wasn't interested in men and definitely wasn't interested in Lorca.
[3] If anybody thought I could get through 100 pages of a fan fiction without inserting a possibly irrelevant and definitely pedantic quotation, you were wrong. Here's one from Balzac's Lost Illusions: "One might digress endlessly at this point, and still not cover the complexities of the situation; and ninety-nine readers out of a hundred will devour the details that follow as most exciting and novel—which all goes to show the truth of the axiom that the subject about which least is known is the one that everybody is supposed to know—the Law!"
[4] Unfortunately, this fantastic four-way was not to be in any of the universes!