What the heck happened to Data between the end of Part II and the Special Preview I put up over at Skin Deep: Part I? Well, it's time to start finding out. Here is:
Chapter Two
Data squeezed and climbed his way through the collapsed tunnel beneath the ruined Stairway, his boots and clothing scraping against uneven rocks and rubble. Dust and sand rained down in choking clouds, sticking to the sweat beading on his synthetic skin as he moved through the near-pitch darkness. He panted and coughed, his newly sensitive respiratory system fighting to keep his throat and lungs clear and his internal temperature steady despite the stifling heat. But he kept going, kept pushing forward, his drive to find and stop the Suliban intruder overriding his caution…the terror of being crushed, trapped, buried alive beneath the sands of Nineveh IV…
"Shut-up," the android told his turbulent thoughts, efficiently filing and locking away the awful scenarios his fears sent flashing through his positronic mind: losing his chance to build a future…to keep his promises to Ishta and the other children he'd rescued…to grow the warm connection he'd found with the Klingon scientist Kurak… "Concentrate. Remember why you are here. If the Suliban mercenary who infiltrated our compound should manage to deliver the Stairway's energy source into enemy hands, if the Romulans or Cardassians should learn to operate the Preservers' quantum tunnel, the established timeline – all of history – could be vulnerable to their self-serving manipulations. The Federation, everything we are, could be wiped from existence…as if we had never been…"
Fallen debris from the recent ground quake had blocked Data's access to the cavern housing the opalescent wall that had shielded the Stairway's mysterious energy source for thousands upon thousands of years. But the android could hear movement beyond the rubble, his sensitive ears picking up a woman's frustrated grunts, hisses and swears.
That confirmed the Suliban had survived, that she was still there, inside the cavern. He had to find a way through to her, without collapsing what remained of the tunnel.
Data stepped back and tilted his head from side to side, running his optic sensors through the entire electromagnetic spectrum as he analyzed the best way to approach the blockage. Determining it would be fastest to melt the loose rock into a new arch, then vaporize the rubble near the center of the obstruction, Data pulled out his phaser and got to work. A dampening field was in operation in the tunnel and the chamber beyond, indicating the ancient energy source was still in place and functioning. Unfortunately, its effects reduced the strength of his phaser beam and left Data feeling distressingly weak and headachy. Still, he kept working, kept listening, dividing his attention between acoustically tracking the Suliban's movements and the task at hand until slowly, slowly, he began to break through…
"I told you," he overheard the Suliban say, "I'm in the cavern right now. The energy thing you want is right in front of me. I just need more time to find the frequency—"
A male voice sounded through a crackle of comm unit static, low and snake-like. "I'm not interested in your excuses, Silarra. Only in what you can deliver."
"Then get off the damn comm and let me work!" the Suliban snapped. "There's crazy interference in here, you have no idea. I'm going to try the transporter again, and I'll get back to you when I'm good and ready. Until then, consider this channel blocked!" She cut communications and growled, "…bastard…"
"Transporter…" Data repeated, his amber eyes widening as his brain's computer-quick calculations prompted a terrible realization. "Silarra, no!" he exclaimed and burst through the narrow opening he'd carved, ducking low to avoid contact with the glowing rock above his head. "Do not attempt to activate your transporter! You may inadvertently trigger—"
The Suliban turned and shot a super-heated plasma beam straight at him. Faster than human thought, Data ducked and rolled out of the way, staring in aghast amazement at the branching pattern of molten glass the beam had left in the sand where he'd just been standing.
"Stay out of my way, android," she snapped. "Or my next shot brings the ceiling down on your head!"
Realizing the high probability that she might actually carry out that threat, Data slapped his combadge, hoping the dampening field would allow some word, some record of events to get through to his colleagues…the friends he had left waiting outside…
"The energy source cannot be dislodged from its housing," he told the Suliban, keeping his voice as steady and forceful as he could manage. "You must not try to approach it again."
"I know what I'm doing," Silarra snapped, keeping her plasma weapon trained on the dangerously fissured concrete just above him as she inched through the narrow opening in the opalescent Preserver wall. Streaks and flashes of crackling energy lit the darkened space beyond, twisting and braiding into complex colored patterns that branched and faded far too quickly for the naked eye to follow.
"You do not know, or you wouldn't be doing this!" Data countered, his growing fear for her safety injecting his shouts with tangible desperation. "Silarra, please listen to me! You will destabilize—"
A violent blast of colored light forced the android to blink and shield his eyes. Silarra shrieked, and Data dashed after her into the crackling space, hunching his shoulders against the onslaught of hissing, sizzling energy closing in all around him. The air in there was difficult to breathe, he felt his hair rise all over his body, his skin begin prickle and itch, but he didn't have time to analyze these uncomfortable new sensations. Squinting through the branching, braiding light, he focused in on Silarra's silhouetted form, saw her crawling beneath the energy arches, reaching through the snapping whips of electricity—
"No!" he gasped, struggling to force his way through the swirling storm of power and light, to get to her before she could make contact with the energy source. Ducking low, he could just see it, pulsing like a living heart at the center of the rising maelstrom. "Silarra!" he yelled, barely able to hear his own cries over the humming, crackling turbulence. "Silarra! Don't touch the—!"
A bolt of blue lightning struck the Suliban mercenary, engulfing her in its blazing heat. For a fleeting instant, Data saw her flash-charred body, still a coherent whole, until the wind increased and her form disintegrated into wild swirls of dust.
Choked by a surge of horror, Data tried to back away, covering his nose and mouth with the collar of his jacket. But, something held him in place; an overwhelming force he could feel but couldn't see. A dark vortex opened above the pulsing energy source, the wind twisting, forming into a whirring funnel suffused with braiding, crackling arcs of color that closed tight around him, entrapping the android like a fish in a net, binding his limbs, squeezing the air from his lungs until he couldn't breathe, he couldn't scream…
Data jolted back to conscious awareness in a totally unfamiliar environment. Lurching into a sitting position, he blinked and rose slowly to his feet, his mouth falling open as he scanned his eyes over his surroundings.
The readout from his internal diagnostics claimed everything was normal which, given the circumstances, might have sent him into a spate of incredulous giggles…if not for the unnerving silence all around him.
He seemed to be standing on one of perhaps infinite steps. The steps seemed to be floating, unattached and unsettlingly translucent, yet together they formed a vast, spiraling stairway. There was no clear edge to these stairs, no railing, no sense of beginning or end. And, though the stair he was on seemed firmly stationary, there was a sense of movement around him…odd, undefined swirls and eddies that glittered and fizzed through a dim haze of sourceless light.
Looking down at himself, Data saw the dirt from the collapsed tunnel still clung to his clothes, his skin. He ran a hand through his hair, wiped the sweat and grit from his face, noting that he still seemed solid, the various rhythms of his android systems still pulsing away, just as they should.
"I don't think that I am dead," Data mused, his soft whisper like a thunderclap in this strange place. "Could I have been pulled into the Preservers' Stairway? Is this peculiar landscape my mind's attempt to interpret their quantum tunnel? And if so…how the hell do I get back?"
Data pulled out his tricorder, but the readings were hopelessly scrambled. Frustrated, he slipped the device back into its holster and looked around, weighing his options. Options that basically boiled down to a choice between staying put and attempting to climb the Stairway.
Data chose to climb.
The smooth, glass-like stairs all looked exactly the same. To make sure he'd be able to identify the one he'd been standing on should he need to return, Data moved his combadge to his shirt, took off his dusty jacket, folded it neatly, and set it down beside him. Then, cautiously, he climbed up to the next step.
An odd sensation rippled through him the moment he began to move. He looked up to see a row of ghostly figures had telescoped out in front of him, one on each step, each frozen in a slightly different pose like a collection of paper dolls. Turning around, Data saw a similar effect stretching out behind him, only this time he could see the figures' faces.
Or rather, face. A face that changed in appearance from realistically human; to metallic with red, green and yellow blinking lights; to pale, white-gold the further back he looked.
"A time-snake," he realized with a startled gasp. "My time-snake. These images must represent slices of time, illustrating my own movements from past to present to future."
Looking around, he realized the flashing, fizzing swirls and eddies had changed as well, intensifying to the point where he could just make out faint impressions of other spiraling stairways, each with dozens, hundreds, millions of branches appearing and fading all around him, all sporting their own telescoping time-snakes.
"Might this be a representation of alternate timelines? Visions of probability…of choices I have made, or am yet to make?"
There was no answer, but the longer he looked, the more braids and branches he saw until he began to feel uncomfortably insubstantial and light-headed. Focusing back on his own stairway, Data climbed to the next step, then the next…taking the place of, then passing through, the hazy images he found there. As he climbed, he noticed a soft glow limning the edge of each step he passed. A glow remarkably similar to a transporter pad at the very beginning of a transport cycle.
"Hm. I wonder…"
Data edged cautiously closer to the edge of the next stair, hoping it wouldn't tip or unbalance as he shifted his weight away from the center. Fortunately, the translucent strip remained firmly flat. But as he reached the edge, the glow seemed to intensify, rising like a misty haze to reveal a series of dream-like apparitions. He saw his pet cat, Spot, being stroked and fed by his best friend, Geordi La Forge; Captain Picard and Counselor Troi standing in his quarters aboard the Enterprise-E, looking at the display case where he kept his medals. They seemed to be talking, but the images were fading and he couldn't see, couldn't hear…
"Oh, god…" the android gasped, his emotions reeling as he rushed back through his ghostly doubles down to the step where he'd left his jacket. As he fought to calm himself, to slow his breathing, his mind went to a play he'd performed once for the captain, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and the words Ebenezer Scrooge had spoken to the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.
"'Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of the things that May be only?'" he quoted. "And if they are real…is there a way to pass through? Could these steps be portals back to reality? Each leading to a different point along my own timeline? Or, are they merely mirages, impressions of my own fears reflecting back at me…?"
Without his tricorder, there was no way to gather the data he required, no way to test his shaky hypotheses. Not without actually attempting to walk off the edge of the step and into the haze beyond.
"No. No way. That is not something I am prepared to do. Not yet," he said, an involuntary shiver raising goosebumps on his arms. He rubbed them and turned a full, frustrated circle on the step, turning his gaze straight up…
Something was watching him. Something nebulous and insubstantial, but very definitely real. Data blinked and staggered in alarm, but managed to keep his balance on the step.
"Who are you?" he queried the barely visible something. "How long have you been observing me?"
The something pulsed and glimmered and Data felt an odd impression down deep in his brain…a wordless sense of intense curiosity he found he could somehow translate.
"No," he answered out loud. "I am not one of your children. Though…I suppose you might say, I am the child of your children's ingenuity." He snorted a very slight laugh. "Might that make me your grandchild?"
The something glimmered in delighted amusement, and Data had to smile.
"Did your people create this quantum tunnel?" he asked.
A host of nonverbal sensations flooded his brain, and Data clapped his hands to his head, struggling to make sense of the onslaught. As he did he made a mental note to ask Deanna if this intensely invasive contact was anything like the experience of Betazoid telepathy.
The something seemed to realize its approach was too strong and quickly pulled away. Suddenly terrified that he'd be left alone, Data reached out, desperate to call it back.
"Do not leave me! Please!" he cried. "If you are a descendant of the Preserver species, if you do indeed represent what they have since evolved to become, then you know that I do not belong here. If you could please assist me – tell me what I must do to return to my own place in time—"
A surge of fond pity washed through his mind, and the glimmering something sank down to envelop him. As it faded, Data realized he knew what he had to do. Slipping on his jacket, he dashed up several steps, strode off the Stairway's glowing edge…
And stepped onto the busy, bustling bridge of what appeared to be a Federation starship.
"Captain!" the security officer alerted, her phaser already trained on the unexpected newcomer.
"What the—" The captain scowled. "Just who the hell are you, mister, and what are you doing on my bridge?"
Data blinked helplessly, staring from one unfamiliar face to another, noting the strange cut and colors of their uniforms, the sleek shape of the security officer's weapon…
"Oh my…oh, god..." the operations officer stammered, standing and moving closer on slightly shaky legs. "Oh my god…Data? Data, is that really you? But…but how…!"
"Commander, do you know this man?" the captain demanded, and the officer nodded, his awed gaze turning from his scanner's unmistakable readings to the android's dust-streaked clothes and hair, his wide amber eyes…
"Yes, sir. I believe so," he told her. "It would seem…utterly impossible! But, if I'm right, this man – this officer – has been missing for over thirty years."
A rippling murmur broke out among the bridge crew. Data shook his head in incomprehension, feeling a chilling lurch in his digestive tract, as though the deck had suddenly vanished beneath his feet.
"Thirty…?" He swallowed hard, fighting to stay calm, to keep control… "No… But...how… Who…?"
The operations officer hurried to support the swaying android, placing a strong hand on his shoulder.
"I wouldn't expect you to recognize me," the man said kindly. "But, you saved my life, Commander. My name is Mikey. Lt. Commander Michael Sean Applewood."
To Be Continued...
References include - TNG: Time's Arrow I/II; Devil's Due; The Measure of a Man; Justice; the TNG novel Metamorphosis; Star Trek: First Contact; TOS: All Our Yesterdays; A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please let me know what you think! :D
Thanks so much for your comments and reviews! :D
