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Work in Progress. If you like this story, check out my other stories on the Fanfiction Net, Twisting the Hellmouth, and Fonts of Wisdom websites.
I'm British, so's my spelling. Live with it.
By Marcus L. Rowland
III
"I'm going nuts in here," said Dawn, looking around the spacious guest cabin she'd been assigned. "No printed books and I just don't like these PADD things, you won't let me look at most of the recent stuff on your network and most of the material on the twentieth century you've let me see is flat-out wrong."
"From what you've told me I'd guess that the history of your world and our Earth diverged in the nineteen-sixties," said Ezri, spooning some ice-cream into her mouth and chewing it thoughtfully, "your world seems to have had an easier time of it in many ways, apart from the monsters you've mentioned. As for the more recent material, much of it would violate the prime directive to some extent. What did you call this stuff again?"
"Peanut butter cookie ice cream."
"It's delicious."
"It'd be about a thousand calories a spoonful in my world, but your replicator can make it sugar and fat-free and still taste good."
"You were saying something about being driven insane?"
"Oh, there are compensations, the clothes and food are pretty good, I liked the holodeck game stuff Julian showed me and Worf's kinda cool once you show him you know something about weapons and metallurgy, but I've been here three days now and I've only got about another week before my sister will start to look for me. Always assuming that time runs at the same speed in this dimension, for all I know I've been here twenty years."
"How would she follow you?"
"Willow's good at a lot of things, but keeping a secret isn't one of them. If Buffy asks enough questions she'll spill the beans... sorry, slang again, she'll tell her where I went, then Buffy'll get Willow messing with the dark mojo to come after me."
"Why would that be a problem?"
"First, I don't know that I left a trail they could follow and they might get lost trying to find me. Second, I kinda promised Buffy I'd finish college before trying anything like this. And third, if Buffy and Willow do find their way here and you're still insisting I can't leave you'll be lucky if you still have a space-station left by the time they've finished."
"You have to understand that this isn't a joke to us," said Ezri. "This is an important military base and it's out of contact with the Federation, we're missing eight ships, and we have several hundred very anxious transients who expected to be en route to other systems by now."
"I know all that, but I just don't have anything to tell you. If I did do you think I'd be sitting here? I want to help, I just don't know how."
Ezri's comm badge beeped, and she said "Go ahead."
"Odo here. The Captain wants to see Miss Summers in his office."
"I'm with her now, we'll be right along."
"Finally," said Dawn. "Let's move it, maybe he's going to admit that I can't help."
"I doubt it," said Ezri, "but let's go and find out."
Captain Sisko stood with his back to his desk, looking out into space. As Dawn came in he said "We're in a mess. Please take a seat."
Dawn nervously sat down and picked up a baseball that seemed to have pride of place on the desk. Ezri sat to one side. There was a long pause, then Odo and Julian arrived.
"You like baseball, Miss Summers?" asked Sisko.
"Some, but I'm no expert."
"Effectively this system is completely isolated from the rest of the universe. The World Series began on Earth a couple of days ago, but unless we can solve this problem I'll never know the scores. That's a minor problem. Let me tell you about some of the major ones we're likely to encounter." He turned a monitor on his desk to face her and a hologram of the local star group appeared, a sphere centred on Bajor gradually growing and engulfing the system.
"All of the Bajor system is now enclosed by this... whatever it is. The miners and scientists on the outer worlds tell us that all communications with this station were lost at the moment you arrived. Unfortunately most communications from this system are relayed through this station, so they were unable to contact Starfleet and explain what's happening. So far we have no explanation for the missing ships. This is somewhat of a problem for us. There was one ship orbiting Bajor nine when this... thing... passed it, they reported no unusual problems so there seems no obvious reason why ships aren't entering the system. Given that this system has huge strategic importance we'd expect at least a token Federation force to investigate once we dropped out of contact. There's been nothing." He pressed a stud and the scale changed, showing more stars and a time scale of years.
"Assuming that this zone of.. whatever.. spreads at the speed of light and that no other ships enter it, it will be nineteen years before another Federation world enters it, several centuries before Earth is engulfed. Even in the short term we have a few problems, because the Cardassians smashed or looted Bajor's industries during the occupation and our current technological level is dependent on imports."
"I thought you replicated stuff," said Dawn.
"Replicators can't do everything. In particular, we can't replicate dilithium and this system has no has no natural sources, which means that most of our ships and the antimatter synthesis plant on this station will be out of action in the next three to four years. Doctor, have you prepared the medical report I requested?"
"Fourteen residents of this station are dependent on medication that can't be replicated and has to be imported from other parts of the Federation," said Julian, "Another thirty or so require diet supplements that can't be replicated and don't occur in Bajoran foods. Our records show medical imports that imply another two hundred to two hundred and fifty patients using offworld drugs elsewhere in the Bajoran system, maybe three times as many using diet supplements. Unless the Federation resumes supplies roughly a quarter will be dead or seriously ill within a year, the others will have their quality of life impaired to a greater or lesser extent."
"Ezri?"
"Assuming that nothing changes, most of the non-Bajorans in this system will be out of contact with their families for the rest of their lives. I guess I'm lucky, I'm not involved with anyone off-station, but if I die of old age before returning home Dax will die with me, a few hundred years before his time."
"Odo?"
"News of the problem has reached Bajor, of course, and the Bajoran isolationist movement is rapidly gaining strength; Kira is working with pro-Federation factions on Bajor, but there is a very real chance that the isolationists will force a referendum and that if they do so all Bajoran support for this station will be withdrawn. That means, amongst other things, that Bajor will be wide open to attack through the wormhole within six months, since the defensive fleet in place can't be maintained without the facilities that do exist on Bajor."
"How do you know that this isn't happening on the far side of the wormhole too?" asked Dawn.
"That's a very good point," said Sisko, "and it brings me to the matter I wished to raise with you. Miss Summers, we're running out of options here. If we take you to the wormhole, do you think that there is any chance that you might be able to fix things, or at least contact the Prophets and find out what's going on."
"I guess I can try."
"Are you prepared to give me your word that you won't leave before this problem is resolved?"
"If it can be resolved. If it can't, if there's nothing to be done, then I can't see what good staying here will do."
"Very well, will you give me your word that you won't leave before this problem is solved or we agree that it's insoluble?"
"I guess."
"Your word please, not just a guess."
"Yeah. You have my word."
"Very well then, let's visit the Prophets."
"We'll be travelling aboard Defiant," said Sisko, leading the way towards the turbolift, "she's powerful enough to fight off Jem'Hadar fighters or anything else the Dominion might throw at us and stealthy enough to get by if the odds are too high."
"Do you think that's likely?" Dawn asked nervously.
"We'll have to transit the wormhole, you can't just stop in the middle and go back the way you came unless the Prophets take a hand. We know a little about the deployment of Dominion forces on the far side, if you're right and they're having the same problems there will be no heavy units inside the affected zone." The lift opened at one of the docking bays, where Worf was waiting for them. "Even if you're wrong, if we simply check that idea then head straight back to the wormhole they shouldn't have time to throw any heavy units at us."
"Unless they're preparing for an attack anyway," Worf said cheerfully, leading the way towards the air lock. The massive door rolled to one side, and he ushered them into the docking tube that led to the Defiant.
"You don't sound too worried about it," said Dawn.
"The Dominion's leaders are over-cautious; they already have forces this side of the wormhole, they would rely on them for any attack. We may assume that they are also sealed out from the Bajoran system, or they would have attacked by now. As the Captain has said, we probably have nothing more to worry about than the slim chance of an encounter with a random patrol. They haven't deployed defences on anything like our scale." They came out of the tube into one of the starship's corridors. "Welcome aboard the Defiant, Miss Summers. I don't think you saw much of her last time, would you like the guided tour?"
"I've kinda got the idea that one metal corridor look pretty much like another metal corridor, and wouldn't you have to keep all of the cool stuff out of sight anyway?"
"Because of the prime directive? True. In any event, the journey should take less than an hour, it's probably best that we get started. Captain Sisko, would you care to join me on the bridge?"
"Of course. Miss Summers, you might as well come along too."
"Captain?" Worf asked with a note of surprise.
"If Miss Summers is right about the accuracy of the dramas she's seen we won't be giving away anything that endangers the prime directive. Even if she's wrong, the whole purpose of this flight is to get her to the Prophets. If she's worthy of their attention she should be treated appropriately."
"And if I'm not?"
"Then we lock you in the brig and throw the key away... A joke, Miss Summers, a joke."
"Har de har."
Worf led them to the bridge and Dawn looked around, shrugged, and said "okay, no chance of me learning anything useful from this stuff."
"Take this seat," said Worf, leading her to the relief navigator's console, "it won't be in use on such a short flight. Just don't touch any controls."
"What happens if I do?" she asked nervously.
"The ship will explode."
"It what?"
"Don't worry," said Sisko, sitting next to her. "It isn't active, you can't do any harm."
"Everyone's a comedian."
"You shouldn't have made those tribble jokes in Quark's last night," said Worf, then turned to the helmsman. "Take us out on thrusters, then quarter warp to the holding position on the edge of the minefield."
There was a hum of engines and on the viewscreen the station rapidly dropped away before the ship turned and headed towards the wormhole.
"You know," said Dawn, "I guess this is the first time I really realised we're in space. Wow..."
"The trip through the wormhole is more or less instantaneous," said Sisko, "but if the Prophets take an interest it will seem to last much longer. When I've met them they appeared to me as people I know, my parents and others, in familiar settings."
"Dead people?"
"Often."
"Sounds like the First Evil. Not a happy memory."
"Usually what I see is dreamlike and non-linear with scenes out of sequence, for example I might experience the end of a conversation before the beginning. Do you think you can handle that?"
"Only one way to find out."
"Coming up on the holding position," said the navigator. "Deactivation scheduled in one hundred seconds... ninety..."
Dawn felt the rising tension on the bridge, and began to grip the armrests of her seat so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
"...twenty ...ten ...deactivation confirmed."
"Shields up, full thrusters, take us through, we have thirty seconds."
The Defiant sprang forward, Dawn braced for acceleration but felt almost nothing, a tiny surge that probably owed more to imagination than to reality. Twice she thought she saw something metallic flash past, but the mines were gone before she could get a clear idea of their shape.
"And we're through," said the navigator, "wormhole in ten seconds... five.. four.. three.. two.. one..."
The stars seemed to streak past as a white mist, then there was a sudden stillness. Dawn and Sisko were standing on a ramshackle-looking steel gantry, high above the lights of a city. From below came the sounds of a fight. Dawn was tied to something, a metal frame, and wearing a long dress. Sisko moved towards her, but couldn't seem to get close. The green glow of the Key was overwhelmingly bright, almost blinding him to the girl.
"This isn't good," said Dawn.
"What is this place?"
"Sunnydale, the time they tried to sacrifice me."
"Scared?" asked a woman's voice from behind Sisko. "Sweetie, you should be."
"This isn't real," said Sisko, turning to face the blonde who stood behind him, "and neither is she."
"Hi Glory," said Dawn. "Back from the dead? Bet it's about as real as the First's little puppet show."
"Being alive?" said Glory "Or dead? It's like a phase girls like you and me go through. Being something else, that's the reality"
"So what's the else?"
"It's not the key. Key's only part of the word."
"It's all about power." Suddenly a different woman was standing there, younger and more attractive, wearing a leather jacket and cream trousers and holding a sword, and they were in a graveyard.
"Buffy..."
"You have it, you just don't know how to use it."
"Thanks, kinda knew that already."
"Can you help us learn?" asked Sisko.
"Maybe, if you can answer a question."
"What's the question?" asked Dawn.
There was another woman there, nearer to Sisko's age, and they were in some sort of house. To Sisko it looked primitive, but Dawn said "Mommy?"
"Was there a button on the first pumpkin?"
"Come on, mom."
"It's a question, you need to be able to answer it," said another woman, a blonde standing on stairs behind her.
"Tara... I guess I just don't understand."
"Lots of people gave it a lot of thought. You're the one that can answer it. You've just got to give the word."
"It's all Greek to me," said someone standing beside Sisko, a dark-haired young man wearing an eye patch.
And suddenly they were back on the bridge of the Defiant, new stars were on the screen, and someone was shouting "Enemy ship heading 330 by 114 range twenty-five thousand and closing."
"Active sensors!" said Worf.
"Fighter, Jem'Hadar type three on an attack run."
"Engage."
"Start making notes on your vision," said Sisko, "get it written down while it's fresh." He produced a PADD and began to write. Dawn shrugged, tried to ignore the flurry of orders and occasional lurches as the Defiant's shields soaked up enemy fire, and did her best to follow suit.
"The situation's exactly the same on the other side of the Wormhole," summarised Sisko, "a spherical region of space approximately eight light-days across expanding at the speed of light. As on this side it's impossible to exceed light speed at the boundary. The good news is that there are no heavy Dominion units inside the boundary so far; we were attacked by one Jem'Hadar fighter, there may have been others but even with active sensors we were unable to find any larger vessels."
"That isn't surprising," said Odo, "The Dominion always seems to rely on defence in depth, not a massive point defence as we're using here. Any heavy ships would be kept further back, ready to pounce once an attacking fleet was committed. It's usually a reasonably good tactic, for once it's worked in our favour."
"What about the visions you experienced," asked Ezri, "Did you really both see the same things? I thought every one was different."
"Exactly the same and much more coherent than usual, I think. Which suggests that it is extremely important. As to what it means... Miss Summers, would you like to talk us through."
"The first thing we saw was Glory, the god my sister fought, at the place where she tried to have me sacrificed to open a portal. She kinda confirmed that I'm more than just a girl, which isn't exactly news, then said that being the Key was only part of it. 'Only part of the word', whatever that means."
"Not much," said Odo.
"The next thing was Buffy, she said that it's all about power, that I have it and don't know how to use it. Again, not news. Then we got my mom and something that made no sense, something about was there a button on the first pumpkin."
"The first pumpkin..." mused Sisko, "does that ring any bells at all?"
"Well, we used to have hollow pumpkins with candles inside at Halloween, there was the Great Pumpkin in Peanuts, there was..."
"The great pumpkin in what?" asked Ezri.
"Peanuts. A comic strip, a kid in the story thought that there was a pumpkin god called the Great Pumpkin and wanted to worship it at Halloween. What else..? Harry Potter used to drink pumpkin juice, that's about it."
"Is Potter someone you know?" asked Julian.
"Another fictional character, I guess the books weren't published in your world."
"Any personal associations?" asked Ezri. "Did pumpkins mean something to you or you sister or mother?"
"No... wait a minute, yes. When I was little mom always used to call me her pumpkin belly."
"Which would explain the button reference," said Sisko, "belly button, an old term for the navel."
"So we have the navel. The first navel, does that make any sense?"
"That's not quite it," said Julian, "Go on, this is beginning to ring some sort of bell. I just wish I could remember what. Was anything else said?"
"Tara said something about a lot of people giving it a lot of thought and that I just had to give the word, then Xander.. Xander said it was all Greek to him. And that was it, doesn't help much."
There was a long baffled silence, then Julian said "Dawn, does the word Omphalos mean anything to you?"
"It sounds like it might be Greek, but I don't know what it means."
"I do. It means 'Navel'".
"And?"
"It's something that came up in the History of Science course when I was at university. On Earth the early Christian church had a long religious argument about whether or not God created Adam with a navel. Eventually the church ruled that even to discuss the idea was heresy."
"Why would that be heresy?" asked Sisko.
"The bible claimed that God had created Man in his own image, which by definition would be perfect. But since Adam was created, not born, he would have had no functional use for a navel. So God either created Adam with a navel, and thus functionally imperfect, or without a navel, and thus by definition all other men were not created in God's image."
"It sounds like you couldn't win," said Ezri.
"Exactly, that's why even discussing the idea was considered heretical."
"I don't get it." said Dawn, "What's this got to do with me?"
"That idea was known as Omphalos, and the word was eventually used as the title for a work of anti-evolutionary philosophy in the mid-nineteenth century. It was a ridiculous argument, or at least I used to think so. The idea was that God would have had to create the Earth as a fully-functional world, and that a fully-functional world would have all evidence that it had always existed; fossils, evidence of continuing geological processes, and so forth. Taken to its logical conclusion, God could have created the universe five minutes ago, complete with our memories and all evidence that it had existed since the big bang, and we wouldn't know any better."
"That's silly," said Dawn.
"I know," said Julian. "I think it may have happened a little less than four days ago."
They stared at him.
"Imagine that the universe was created with all evidence that it had existed for billions of years at the moment that Dawn arrived. Except that the creation isn't instantaneous; it begins where she arrived, inside the wormhole, and spreads from both ends at the speed of light. That would be fine if we were limited by lightspeed, we'd never know it was happening. Since we're not we're seeing things that seem odd. We can't get past the boundary because the universe doesn't exist outside the boundary. The ships we were expecting haven't arrived because they would have been a few light years away at the moment creation began and don't exist yet. I'm not sure what'll happen about that, my guess is that when creation over-runs those points we'll find evidence that they were destroyed in transit or diverted to another destination. There'll be some good reason why the Bajoran system has been isolated."
"It would explain why we look like the characters in your entertainments," Ezri said slowly, "and how you came to visit Oz."
"But I didn't know you!" protested Dawn.
"Are you absolutely sure you never saw any story set after Jadzia's death? I think that you said it was shown several years ago."
"No... no, I'm not sure."
"It feels... right somehow," said Sisko. "Do you know the bible at all, Miss Summers?"
"A little."
"How does it begin?"
"Uh... 'In the beginning was the..' Oh crap."
"'In the beginning was the word,' Miss Summers. Glory, or whichever Prophet took that role, said that the Key was only part of the word. Tara said that you just had to give the word. What if they were speaking literally?"
TBC
Author's note: The anti-evolutionary theory described above was proposed by the naturalist and philosopher Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888) in his book Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot [1857]. It's inherently unprovable and from the outset was disliked even by creationists; by definition it leaves the world looking exactly like a world in which evolution has taken place and implies an elaborate hoax perpetrated by God.
The idea is occasionally used in science fiction and fantasy; see especially Robert A. Heinlein's They [1941] and Job: A Comedy Of Justice [1984], Philip Jose Farmer's The Maker Of Universes [1965], and Terry Pratchett's Strata [1981].