THE GENESIS FILE

Doppelgänger-B Orbit
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
Stardate 2261.26

- 0650 hours -

"Bridge to all decks, red alert. Weapons bay, stand by for immediate weapons release." The rising tone of the red alert claxon sounded next, joined by flashing lights and the sounds of pressure doors dropping to isolate independent sections of the ship. Back on a combat footing for the fifth time in two days, and judging by the sound of his voice, Lieutenant Sulu found it a lot less exciting than he had the first two times.

Kirk pushed his chair back from his desk terminal and snapped his communicator open. It found the bridge intercom immediately and he demanded, "Talk to me, Sulu."

"Same as before, Captain. Inbound torpedoes, bearing two eleven mark six. Impact trajectory in forty two minutes..." a long pause on the intercom circuit, and then Kirk heard the whistle of a power transfer and the distant reverberation of a torpedo launch, like the sounds of gigantic springs recoiling back and forth. Six torpedoes, from the sound of things, which meant the Gorn had fired a full spread as well. "Interception at z-minus twenty one minutes," Sulu added, "Second wave can intercept at z-minus eight. Phasers are standing ready and deflectors remain fully operational."

"Have we figured out yet why they haven't tried warp-charging their torpedoes again?"

"The warp charge was pretty effective, but it lacks accuracy. Weapons lab says it's more likely a planetary bombardment weapon and not an anti-ship one. When they used it on us, it was probably a desperation move."

Kirk grunted, "Make sure they haven't launched a second wave at us, and then downgrade to yellow alert. I want the ship ready to receive our Cardassian guests when they arrive."

"Aye, Sir."

In all the previous attacks, Kirk had come directly to the bridge to check on the situation in person, only to be told that Sulu or Spock had already taken appropriate counter measures, programming their photon torpedoes to intercept the incoming Gorn torpedoes halfway between Doppelgänger and Enterprise. The attack before last had seen the Francium launching their torpedoes in a staggered formation so the interceptors could only hit two of the four; the second wave torpedo strike had cleaned them up before they even got into phaser range. The leading opinion among the command staff was that the Gorn were determined to keep the Enterprise away from Doppelgänger and that these random torpedo attacks were kind of harassment strike meant to disrupt their scientific mission as much as humanly (Gornly?) possible.

Actually, it was working, if the report on his desk terminal was any indication. Captain Kirk got the planetologists' reports as part of his daily briefing, typically two hundred thousand words worth of memos, complaints, reports, announcements, mission logs of the department heads, and journal-style abstracts from every department of the ship, even the engineering section, each of which had the unnerving tendency to make otherwise terribly boring subjects seem both urgent and interesting. As Captain, it was Kirk's job to sign off on the daily digest and commit it to archives for transmission to Starfleet with their next upload. It wasn't necessary to read over every last detail of the reports; the department heads would handle that, and summarize any outstanding issues in the report summary. It wasn't even necessary for the Captain to read through every summary; that was the Science Officer's job, being ultimately responsible for the execution of the ship's mission.

But Spock had chosen to make the Captain personally aware of an official protest from the Enterprise' planetology department over the allocation of their resources for the course of this mission. The protest was strongly worded and unusually detailed, evidently the third such incident the department had logged in as many weeks, which probably meant that Lieutenant O'Grady had filed the protest in frustration rather than out of necessity. One detail in particular stood out: the fact that "the civilian meddlers," as O'Grady described them, continued to use the planetology lab's resources even under alert conditions, which O'Grady believed - Kirk knew, correctly - was in direct violation of Starfleet regulations.

Since Kirk had a pretty good idea who "the civilian meddlers" were, he decided to look into this personally.

Enterprise's single planetology lab was a large circular room built into one of the research modules in Compartment 105, five decks below and immediately aft of the bridge. Normally, the room was dedicated to the detailed analysis of alien worlds using combinations of probe readings and orbital scans to construct a perfect digital model of that planet and its manny natural features. The model itself dominated the center of the room as a six foot translucent sphere lined with forcefield diodes, host to a realtime dimensional image so detailed that one could pick out individual skyscrapers with a large enough magnifying glass. On his arrival, Captain Kirk saw the model of Doppelgänger flickering erratically as minute details were fed into the holographic matrix to alter its overall shape. The computer model wasn't just a recording tool, it was also a predictive tool that helped that planetologist refine the fidelity of their model against the real thing; every few hours, the sensors would take another detailed sweep of the planet in question and then compare those scans with the model, recording any differences and leaving the scientists to modify the equations and functions in their model until those differences vanished.

The source of their frustration was already evident. The fact that Doppelgänger was in a kind of chronological flux introduced so many random factors that the model was probably unacceptably randomized even under the best of circumstances; this alone would be tolerable to a team of dedicated Starfleet explorers who loved a challenge anyway, were it not for the presence of Doctor Carol Marcus and three other blue-shirted physicists who were, at this very moment, feeding variables into the simulation computer using an old Hesperian palmcomp with an old-fashioned fold out keyboard. A large crowd of red-uniformed paleontologists had congealed around a monitor station on the far side from the door, most of them muttering angrily to each other in quiet but furious protests. The arrival of the Captain changed their mood from one of resentment to one of hope, since there was little other reason he could have been here now except that Lieutenant O'Grady must have made good on his threat.

Doctor Marcus didn't even notice his arrival, though her two companions - Bates and McGreggor, if he remembered the names correctly - regarded his arrival with shrill terror and astonishment, like a couple of commuters watching a bengal tiger climb into their train. Kirk didn't mince words with any of them, his purpose here was much too specific. He simply cleared his throat, reached past Doctor Marcus and plucked the wire from the palmcomp out of the simulation computer.

Marcus whirled on him as if she was about to throw a punch. She very nearly did, even after she recognized exactly whose hand had unplugged her handset. "Why would you do that? Are you daft?!"

"Starfleet General Order Six," Kirk said slowly, "clearly states that all non-essential scientific and computer resources are to be secured during alert condition red."

"This is essential, Captain! This laboratory..."

"All exceptions to be handled at the discretion of Starfleet Command Division personnel."

Marcus rolled her eyes and plugged the computer back into the terminal, "Don't quote rules, Captain. This mission is too important to hide behind some bloody regula-"

"This ship is not your personal playground, Doctor," Kirk unplugged it again, and this time snatched the computer from her hand, "As long as you are aboard my ship, you will abide by those bloody regulations just like everyone else. Is that understood?"

"You of all people shouldn't be lecturing me about the following the rules!"

"I only break the rules when I have to. Not just because it's convenient."

"It's not a convenience! It's really just an inconvenience for small-minded people!" she shot a nod at O'Grady, who - along with the rest of her staff - was watching the scene with an increasingly satisfied grin.

"Look, I get it. You're the admiral's daughter, you're used to people letting you do whatever you want..."

"Oh, please..."

"But that's not gonna fly here, and I really think you're mature enough to know that. You gotta learn to play nice with the other kids, okay?"

Doctor Marcus took a deep breath, smoothed her hair back and breathed out slowly. "I'll try to be more accommodating in the future. But this simulator..." she started talking faster and more excitedly with every syllable, "it's the only computer on the ship that could handle the test parameters we're working on. With a conventional unit, even a supercomputer, it might have taken us years just to develop a suitable engine-"

"We have these regulations for a reason, Doctor. If you do not get proper authorization for the use of Enterprise's resources," Kirk cut her off, "Not only will you never again have access to this computer, but I'll see to it you never get access to any computer, ever again, anywhere on the ship."

She looked at the ceiling, drowning in frustration, "God..."

"It's pronounced 'Kirk'. And this is the only warning you get, Doctor."

Marcus shifted her weight angrily. As was her custom, she immediately assumed that Kirk's objection to her activities was in ignorance; like so many others, he must have misunderstood what she was doing here and couldn't grasp how important it really was.

Much as it demeaned her to do so, she would have to enlighten him. "Captain, my team has some working theories about how the transformation might occur. I'm working on a self-regulating phase-wave process, something a bit like the force-transfer fields in photon torpedoes. I think the timeslip anomalies aren't as random as we thought, they look to me like aftershocks, like standing waves left over from the planet's creation. It's an emergent property, so it's hard to analyze, but if we run the sequence in reverse," Marcus grabbed the wire and plugged it back into the computer, even without bothering to retrieve the actual handset from Kirk, "we can get a general process template for the planet's formation on macro-scale. Obviously this isn't very helpful in determining the causal mechanism, but it gives us a good paradigm to simulate the finer details of-"

Kirk pulled the wire again, just as Marcus' simulation started to load on the hologram. This time, he turned off the palmcomp and handed it to one of her subordinates, then walked slowly away from the modeling computer and gestured for Marcus to follow.

"Well don't you understand?" Marcus said as she followed him - it turned out - right through the door and out into the corridor, "Not only will this solve the paleontologists' collective headaches, it will help us unlock the secrets of this planet. This is, like, the bloody holy grail of modern terraforming! This is what humans have dreamed about since we invented the first telescopes."

"Terraforming." Kirk leaned on the corridor wall next to the door, "Right, that makes sense."

Marcus flinched, "What makes sense?"

"Your accent, the way you talk, that damned old computer in there... You're Hesperian aren't you?"

Marcus looked slightly offended. But only slightly. It was a trait of Martians in general and Hesperians in particular to be proud of their colonial heritage while at the same time profoundly ashamed to have it recognized by outsiders. "Is there something wrong with that?"

"Well Admiral Marcus was Californian. But you used your mother's name when you first came aboard last year, so..." come to think of it, there had always been something eerily familiar about Carol Marcus since the day she came on board. He'd thought it was simply the odd similarity she bore to his Aunt Betty (before she left for Tarsus IV; she was never the same again when she came back). But there was something more specific than that, something personally familiar that he associated with not just the person but the name too. And if Carol Marcus really was from Mars, he had a pretty good idea what it was. "That means you lied about your age to get into Oxford," he said, recalling her dossier, and then going on a hunch he added, "And you probably had Old Gil pull some strings for you too."

"Yeah, So what?" Marcus scowled at him, "This coming from the most inexperienced captain in the entire Starfleet... wait..." she flinched, "How do you know John Gil?"

"Because I sat three rows behind you in history class in college. University of Iowa, class of 52. I'm not surprised you don't remember me..."

"You were at Iowa? James... you're that James?"

Kirk smiled, "What James?"

"Gary Mitchel's friend James? The guy who used to hang out with Ruthie at that hick bar in the cornfields?" Marcus took a step back, stunned and surprised, but also overjoyed, "Shit... I thought you were in prison!"

"Breaking out of prisons is an old hobby of mine," Kirk said only half-jokingly, "Though I don't think I'll have to worry about that anymore with this new job. Still, you were only at Iowa for that one semester, right? Only reason I remember you is because you were constantly crabby and totally anti-social," and he refrained from the excessive honesty of adding, "and I had a huge crush on you the whole time" and simply went on, "So, still the same, more or less."

Marcus rolled her eyes, "I don't remember anything about you. Except that you had a big mouth and a bad sense of humor. That's probably why you were hanging out with a wanker like Gary Mitchell... what happened to him anyway? I figured he was probably in prison with you after the thing with that Suliban musician..."

"That wasn't us. Some Tandarians got in a fight with the guy, and they followed him home and tried to burn his house down. Anyway, I ended up convincing Gary to join Starfleet."

Marcus grinned, "I would have expected you'd have brought him on board with you the way you two used to hang out."

"I did bring Gary on board. He was killed in action on our first assignment together."

Marcus hesitated, struggled for words. Then she shrugged, "A hero's death. That's how he would have wanted it. Posthumous two-rank promotion too, right?"

"Why do you have such a chip on your shoulder, Carol?" Kirk folded his arms.

"What do you mean?"

"Ever since we left Earth, you've done nothing but stomp around this ship like everyone here is in your way. Like anything that isn't done specifically for you is a waste of time."

She shrugged, "I can't help it. I'm Hesperian."

"Don't give me that. You know good and damn well the data we're gathering from this planet could take generations just to process it all, let alone try to replicate the process. Why are you in such a hurry?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Marcus looked up and down the corridor as if the answer was some big secret. Whether personal conceit or long-developed reflex, it was hard even for her to tell, "I just told you, this technology is the holy grail of human terraforming. The first person who figures out how it works will have a place in history right next to Isaac Newton and Zephram Cochrane..."

"And there's nothing more personal than that?"

Marcus stared at him for a moment, "What are you asking me, exactly?"

"Forget it, it's not important. There's only one thing that is important: the Enterprise is a starship, not university science lab, and as long as you are a member of this crew, you will observe proper procedures for the allocation of resources and equipment. If I get any more reports about your team interfering with normal Starfleet operations, I'll strand you on Doppelgänger until its creators show up and give you the secret in person."

"Don't even joke about that..."

Kirk looked her dead in the eye, the kind of fierce penetrating look that a lion usually gives to its unsuspecting prey just before making a kill. With this, he said slowly, "Do I look like I'm joking?"

Doctor Marcus decided not to answer the question, since the rational part of her knew that he was, but another part - the primal, instinctual part that was still programmed to react to body language instead of intellectual discipline - wasn't so sure. "It... um... won't happen again, Captain. I'm sorry."

"That's good to know," but his expression didn't soften. And unbeknownst to Doctor Marcus, Kirk had actually spent most of his sophomore year at the academy perfecting this staredown, and had polished it so thoroughly that it ultimately earned him an honorary 'Best Poker Face Ever' award in the academy yearbook. He even managed to hold the expression when his communicator chirped and he answered the call in an official and regular, "Kirk here."

"Captain," Spock's voice said on the intercom, immediately indicating this page as some extreme importance, "A second wave of Gorn torpdoes has been intercepted and we are now standing down to yellow alert. Also, sensors have located the Cardassian starship Grazine approaching at warp five. Estimated time to orbital rendezvous is three hours, eighteen minutes."

"Almost seven hours ahead of schedule. It's almost as if they wanted to catch us off guard."

"Indeed." Not that Spock would ever admit it, but the amusement in his voice was almost detectable.

"Okay. Linguicode standard greeting, confirm their identity and rendezvous coordinates. Kirk out." He snapped the communicator closed and - still staring a hole in Doctor Marcus - said, "Duty calls. Stay out of trouble, Carol."

"I'll do my best, Jim..." she watched him turn on his heels like one of the generals in old war movies and march into the nearest turbolift, probably headed for the bridge. Once he was gone, she returned to the planetology lab were her defeated contingent was standing off to the side, watching the Starfleet team thoroughly enjoy being able to use their own equipment for the first time in four days. Marcus was annoyed, as there was still more work to be done and more data that needed modeling, but so far she was satisfied with what the computer had already shown her and she decided to process this little bit before coming back for the rest later. "Bates, McGreggor, let's compile the simulation with what we have so far. That'll give us some idea of how big the gaps are that need to be filled."

Both of them seemed to love this idea, since it meant removing themselves from the permanent stinkeye from the planetologists. He handed over the palmcomp to Doctor Marcus and then handed over three of its memory cards; Marcus plugged all three cards into the computer's data slot and then set the computer to translate the machine code from the simulation computer into object code for the imaging program on this palmcomp's more powerful big brother. Compiling the program took a handful of seconds, but it ground to a halt once the computer prompted her for a file name. "What the hell?"

"What?" Bates asked.

"It's asking for a file name. Didn't we already have a file name from the last batch?"

Bates shrugged dumbly. Hesperian computers were famous for excelling at complicated operations while totally failing to perform more basic tasks due to random and unpredictable hickups.

Marcus first tried the file name they'd been working with for the past several weeks already, typed in Project Marduk, and told the computer to save. Marduk, of course, being a reference to the Summerian creation myth, the deity that slew the monster Tiamat and created the world by forging order out of cosmic chaos.

Another dialog box and a synthesized feminine voice told her, "File already exists."

And why the hell did it go to voice command all of a sudden? Stupid machine. "So overwrite the existing file."

"Cannot overwrite. File name Project Marduk is being used by another application. Do you wish to save the compiled program under a different name?"

Marcus sighed, "There are not enough words in the English language to describe how much I hate this computer..."

"File name must be sixteen characters or less. Please choose another filename."

If this thing didn't contain information so priceless to her career, she would have smashed it against the wall right then and there. First, though, she swallowed her temper, gave it half a second thought, and rattled off a quick filename that was similar enough to the original that she could still find it and change it back once this stupid machine recovered from its temporary bought of electronic idiocy. "Save under 'Project Genesis.' And then port it to a memory card, universal format, so I can run the program on a set that isn't an outdated overpriced piece of shit."