From: Kenneth Field (envision_at_fidalgo.net)
Date: Sun Jun 24 2007 - 20:58:11 PDT
"Divergence"
(continues from "When the Abyss Looks Back")
Location: GS-2
Stardate: 2.706?
Scene: Unknown
The knife's edge was so sharp, Gene did not even feel it cut.
But he felt the blood. It streamed warm and coppery on his skin. There were mere seconds ahead of him now. The ticking of an ancient timepiece sounding in his ear like some phantom passage of time. Ranjen Kemal Roh straightened up, his hand bloody from the incision, and he watched Gene's eyes, listened for anything the Bajoran/Scot might have to say in his last moments.
Gene said nothing.
And in his last act, he chose defiance.
He closed his eyes so that Kemal could not see the thing he most wanted to see ... what Gene saw as he died.
The funny thing was, Gene thought with his last heart beat, was there wasn't anything to see anyway.
-------------------- =/\=
Scene: Unknown, an alternate universe
The knife's edge was so sharp, Gene did not even feel it cut.
As blood ran warm across his skin, the darkness was shattered by a concussion and a flash of light. A door he hadn't even seen blew open and an avenging angel burst through.
Kemal straightened up, partially blinded by the sudden light, the scalpel in his hand red with Gene's blood.
"No!" he screamed. "Not yet!"
He dropped the scalpel, his bloody hand reaching for a weapon within his clerical robes. He never even cleared the handgun from its holster. Xana ran him through with a sliver of metal so bright it hurt Gene's eyes. It was his katana, the one that had hung on their wall forever, the one Tim Layne had made for him with his very own hands.
Kemal Roh died, his heart pierced and shredded, and he twitched his last bits of life out on the floor at Xana's feet. She turned, saw what was left of her husband, saw the blood, and a cry of such anguish escaped her that she would be unable to speak for days to come.
She slapped her hand over the gaping wound at Gene's throat, but blood seeped through anyway.
"O gods!" she gasped. "O gods, o gods o gods."
"Love you, Xana," Gene managed the barest hint of a smile.
And then he died.
-------------------- =/\=
Scene: Unknown, another alternate universe
The knife's edge was so sharp, Gene did not even feel it cut.
As blood ran warm across his skin, the darkness was shattered by a concussion and a flash of light. A door he hadn't even seen blew open and an avenging angel burst through.
Kemal straightened up, partially blinded by the sudden light, the scalpel in his hand red with Gene's blood.
"No!" he screamed. "Not yet!"
Xana plunged the blade of Gene's own katana through Kemal Roh's heart, but it caught on a rib, and as she struggled to pull it free, the thing Kemal had become slashed at her with his bloody scalpel ... and got lucky.
She stumbled back and fell next to her husband, blue blood mixing with red.
-------------------- =/\=
Scene: Unknown, another alternate universe
The knife's edge was so sharp, Gene did not even feel it cut.
As blood ran warm across his skin, the darkness was shattered by a concussion and a flash of light. A door he hadn't even seen blew open and an avenging angel burst through.
Kemal straightened up, partially blinded by the sudden light, the scalpel in his hand red with Gene's blood.
"No!" he screamed. "Not yet!"
Xana took the renegade priest's arm off with a single stroke. Eileann, who had burst in with her caught the man's hand as he reached for a second weapon beneath his robes. Xana dropped the katana on the floor next to the dying Ranjen, slapped a combadge on Gene's quivering form and screamed "Medical emergency! Sickbay! Two to transport!"
They vanished in a blue swirling haze and reappeared scant seconds later on the table before Dr. Jeff Gorman who cried when he could not save his friend.
-------------------- =/\=
Scene: Unknown, another alternate universe
Hannibal placed phased charges on the door, stepped back and triggered them. The door blew inwards with surprising light and sound, and he shouldered Xana and Eileann aside as he dived through the door.
"No!" screamed the killer, "Not yet!"
And Hannibal shot him, point-blank, the phaser on heavy stun. Ranjen Kemal Roh, for that was who had faced them with his bloody knife, slammed against a bulkhead and slid down to the floor. Xana and Eileann came through the door together behind the Suliban hybrid. Xana went directly to her husband, dropping the katana on the floor, her hands pressed against the wound that threatened his life.
"Medical emergency!" she shouted. "Two to beam directly to Sickbay!"
They vanished in a swirl of blue light.
Eileann lunged suddenly past Hannibal as he stood there watching the last of McInnis and Bonviva dematerialize. Instinctively, he turned, raising an arm in a defensive gesture. He found Eileann standing face to face with Ranjen Roh, a scalpel embedded in her body armor, her own blade buried to the hilt in his neck. Roh shuddered as Eileann stared into his eyes.
Then he died.
-------------------- =/\=
Location: BAJOR
Scene: campfire in the Tinuviel Valley
"How did they find you, Grampa?" his oldest grandchild prompted him when he fell silent, the cup of warm liquid forgotten in his hand.
McInnis Eugene stirred himself, smiled out of a face gone wrinkled with age.
"There was a pilot on the GATE who'd been touched by the Prophets. It took him awhile to sort out what they were trying to tell him. But he led them to me. And just in time."
"What happened to the bad man?" another grandchild asked, hugging herself against the darkness.
"He was caught and brought to justice," McInnis Eugene replied, telling only part of the truth.
"I'm glad you didn't die," the smallest grandchild said, climbing into his lap as they sat around the fire.
"Aye, lass," he conjured up the brogue for the little one, "Me, too."
-------------------- =/\=
Location: GS-2
Scene: Sickbay
"Clear!" Gorman shouted just before triggering the defibrillators built into the biobed. "Goddammit, Gene, don't you quit on me now!"
There was blood everywhere he looked. It was the thing Jeff feared more than any other, that a friend would lie on his table, and he wouldn't be able to work fast enough, think quickly enough, be "right" enough to save them.
He knew that Xana was waiting outside, pacing. He could almost hear her out there. Voices carried here in Sickbay. Xana talking with her bodyguard, that Xenxenian woman, Eileann. He couldn't bear to face them if he didn't do what Gene needed done.
"I've got a pulse," his surgical nurse reported.
It wasn't the end of the fight for Gene McInnis's life. But at least it was a fight.
-------------------- =/\=
Scene: Sickbay
Xana was right where he thought she'd be, standing at the door to surgery, waiting for him. Eileann stood behind her. He noticed a horrendous gash in her body armor, but when he pointed it out, she shook her head.
"Didn't penetrate. Tholian make," was all she'd say.
"Gene?" Xana demanded.
"Alive," Jeff breathed out loudly, "but that bastard bled him. We're transfusing him, but he went into shock, cardiac arrest. It's still touch and go."
"My blood," Xana said. "Bolian blood."
"Yes, I know you're universal donors," Jeff shook it off, "but we have no shortage of blood for him. We're just having trouble keeping him alive long enough to get it in him."
"Let me help," Xana said. "Let me do *something*!"
He nodded to himself. "All right. Nurse!" Jeff bellowed back over his shoulder. "Prep the ambassador for blood transfusion."
-------------------- =/\=
Scene: the abbatoir
"You had to kill him?" Kane growled, standing over the body of Ranjen Kemal Roh.
"Not me," Hannibal grimaced right back. "Ambassador's bodyguard did for him. I just shot him."
"Point blank on heavy stun. You don't think that killed him?"
"Nope. He tried to cut me with that damned knife of his."
Kane bent down, wrapped a cloth napkin about the blade and examined it more closely. Razor sharp.
"Looks medical."
"It is. Bajorans used it for centuries. Their equivalent of a scalpel."
"And McInnis?"
"Didn't make it," the man turned away.
"Damn."
-------------------- =/\=
Location: The Celestial Temple
Scene: Unknown
"You are the McInnis."
Gene opened his eyes and found himself lying on the table, with Ranjen Roh bending over him. But the other man straightened when Gene sat up. He was not bound; he was not injured.
He was just as suddenly on the operating table in Sickbay, one of his best friends standing nearby, gowned for surgery.
"You are the McInnis," Dr. Jeff Gorman said, selecting a tissue regenerator.
"Where am I?" Gene asked.
"You are here," Kane told him, examining a Bajoran scalpel covered with blood.
"Where is here?" Gene asked.
"Where you are," replied Ensign Hannibal O'Patterson as he holstered a phaser and turned away.
"It's hard for them to explain," said another voice.
Gene turned to find Flight Officer Nick Cannon standing next to him.
"No kidding," Gene agreed. "What the hell's going on?"
"You're sort of dead or alive. I'm not sure which."
"Who are they?" he asked, nodding toward the small crowd of people who just happened to look like his friends and family and colleagues.
"You don't know?" Nick asked incredulously. "They're the Prophets."
"Oh, crap," Gene sighed.
-------------------- =/\=
Location: GS-2
Xana saw her husband open his eyes for the first time since they'd recovered him two days earlier. She'd stayed with him nearly the whole time, letting Kat and Jeff care for Dahlia while she stood vigil over him. Gene McInnis was far from stable during those early hours. He'd undergone massive exterior trauma, and Jeff had submerged him in a rejuv tank while his skin grew back. It prevented infections and sped the replacement rate phenomenally. There would be scarring, of course. Some of that could be removed cosmetically, according to Jeff, but it was not his main concern.
It was the man's mental status that worried Gorman now. He'd consulted with Mowree Nurunyon down the hall in the CNS Center, and had already established a lengthy therapy treatment for the man once he recovered enough to be ambulatory.
"Gene," Xana whispered, when he opened his eyes.
"Are you them?" he croaked.
"Them?" she placed a straw between his lips and he took a single sip, then more.
"Prophets? Are you them?"
"No, love. It's me. Have you ... seen ... the Prophets?"
Gene blinked. Xana took that for a 'yes.'
Nick Cannon dropped into a chair beside her, startled her. He was freshly shaved and showered. Dressed in a clean uniform. His eyes were no longer troubled.
"He's been to see them," Cannon told her. "They tried to explain the universe to him. It was hard for him," he laughed ruefully. "Hell, it was hard for me, too. But we're both a little clearer now on what's involved."
"Not ... linear," Gene whispered.
"They're not bound by time as we understand it," Nick explained to Xana. "Actually nothing in the universe is. They just know it, and we don't."
"Not just one ... thing," Gene tried again.
Nick nodded. "Just as it's always now for them, it's also always everywhere for them, too."
"This is making my head hurt," Xana said, taking Gene's hand in hers.
"Think how we feel," Cannon chuckled.
"You've met them, too?"
"Yes. Apparently so. Though I didn't see things he saw. I didn't have the choices he had."
"Choices?"
Nick nodded. "He saw everything there was to see, every possibility focussed on this place and time. I can only describe it using our limited vocabulary. For them it's not a place or a time, it is an event that they choose or not. Higher dimensional beings, I guess. They appear to us, the way we'd appear to two-dimensional beings. We only see parts of them that happen to intersect with the existence we've chosen."
"We chose this?" Xana couldn't quite get a handle on this.
"No, he did," Nick nodded toward Gene in bed, holding her hand.
"Choice ... moves ... everything," Gene said, then closed his eyes.
"He saw every possibility in this event," Nick smiled.
"I ... chose ... you," Gene squeezed her hand.
-------------------- =/\=
NRPG: A little mind-bender for you all. Hope you like it. It really made me work, trying to explain higher dimensional beings. Have any of you read "Flatland"? Feel free to play variations on my theme. That's pretty much what I was doing here. Some of you might want to fill in the blanks.
-------------------- =/\=
Kenneth Field
envision_at_fidalgo.net
aka Commander Gene McInnis
CNS/GS-2
aka Lt. JG Mowree Nurunyon
aCNS/GS-2
aka Tomas' Alexei Vukovic
Former Chief of Staff to Ambassador Xana Bonviva
currently with the BORG
aka Maury R. Tee
Professor of English (Retired)
Proprietor of "Impulse Drives,"
a little shop of horrors
GS-2, Promenade
"I start fighting a war, you're definitely gonna see something new." Malcolm Reynolds -- "Serenity"
The Prophets appear to Gene and explain that the universe is not one thing,
nor is it one linear direction or time. It is a series of choices made when
necessary. Each choice moves the universe. He must make the choice.
What will he choose?
From HyperNews_at_youth.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Feb 17 2008 - 03:10:16 PST