Kindred

Posted on Fri Aug 10th, 2018 @ 12:03am by Captain Remas McDonald

2,261 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: S1:3: Myriad Problems
Location: Outside Engineering
Timeline: MD1 22.00

"Still, for some species, it is difficult for them to show the correct level of respect to their betters. They see with only their eyes, and their meat and bone see only 'same' not 'better'." he shook his head again. "Anyone would think he thought you were flesh and blood."

Arivek's eyes went wide as he looked around, scanning the halls with his eyes to see who was around. "Excuse me, sir, but I would ask that you not make such accusations. I'm as flesh and blood as anyone on board."

"Oh Arivek," Abborax said pityingly with a tut of his tongue. "There is no one in this corridor for fifty meters. My control of the unsecured systems of this vessel allows me too generate a false record of this conversation. So, if indeed you believe yourself to be flesh and blood: then so be it. But do not think to lie to me. I am of the Myriad, the Unbound. I breathe data, and dream such wonders the likes of which one of the Bound would never understand."

He held out his porcelain hand, and a blood red sphere rose to fill his palm. On its rippling surface, alien data glyphs shifted and flickered. He mulled over it for a moment, before curling his index finger to tap against the side of the holographic prop.

Ari's uniform tunic changed colour from engineering gold, to science blue, command red, and then a rainbow of colours.

"Don't pretend to be one of the Bound. You'll only disappoint me further," he said regretfully.

Arivek looked down at his uniform with a look of complete embarrassment. "Please put me back as I was," he said, his voice losing the authority he had earlier.

Abborax smiled, and with a small bow of his head stroked his thumb over the blood red orb and all was as it had been. The Myriad turned, appraising Ari for a moment with those ember coal like eyes.

“You’ve lived so long under the lie you’ve weaved for yourself, no wonder they believe you so fully,” he held out his hand, the one holding the data sphere. “Touch it, and we can have a more honest conversation somewhere more private than a corridor. The Bound here about will never know we’ve gone, you have my assurance of the matter.”

A smile creased his lips.

“Arivek...I cannot make you trust me. I cannot put words into your mouth, nor thoughts into your head. But what I can say is that we are as close as family, you and I. Let me help you.”

The young man looked hesitant. This man was a complete stranger, and to trust him would be unwise. But Ari felt a connection with him that he hadn't felt with another person in a long time. Despite his better judgement, Arivek reached out and touched the small device.

And was...somewhere else.

Gone was the gentle, reassuring thrum of the Travellers warp core. Gone were the solid walls of the ship's bulkheads and spaceframe. In their place was a metal grating floor fenced in with a waist-high chain fence. The grating rattled, and beneath their feet machines shuddered and rattled.

The two stood atop a viewing platform perched high across a city of burnished steel and soot-blackened brass. Spires and minarets roses bleeding steam into the air. Ahead of them, the city was fronted by a rolling plain of scrubland that stretched to the horizon. Behind the srub was torn asunder, revealing black soil upon which a cloying cloud of toxic smoke clung to.

"Welcome to Perambulation, the Stalking City," Abborax said with the broad grin of a man showing off. He stole wore his Proxy, but the join lines around the lips and cheeks were smoothed away, the eyes a horribly complicated swirl of orange light. "A memory of mine. I thought it best to bring you to a place that, as an engineer, you might find intriguing."

He gestured behind them, and a pair of wrought iron chairs arose from the grating floor like a growth of ivy. Abborax settled into one of the chairs, and brushed a hand to the other.

"Sit...or stand. Gawp as long as you like, I'm running this little simulacrum at 400:1 resolution. 400 seconds here is equal to a single second in the Bound."

"Where exactly are we?" Arivek asked, looking around in shock but not moving.

"My memory," he said, reaching up with an alabaster finger and tapping the side of his head. "A four hundred and eighty-six-year old memory, to be exact. The view, the scents and sense of it all were recorded by a past instantiation of myself."

He smiled, looking at the scene.

"I don't often replay them, its rather difficult to find the desire to view the same repeated mistakes of the Bound again, and again..." he rolled his hand and sighed loudly.

Reaching out, Arivek put his hand on the fence that kept them from falling off. He could feel the cool metal against his skin. "It feels so real. But how am I able to be here?" but he knew that wasn't the question he really wanted to ask. He turned and looked at Abborax. "Are you a hologram too?"

"That's a little indelicate, don't you think?" the Myriad trader tutted with a wry smile. "I am no more a hologram than you are. We are the Unbound, beings who have by some means unshackled ourselves from the grind of Bound societies to this higher plain. Millennia ago, someplace far away, a race of mammal's sought immortality. In their quest various factions arose, some seeking a biological path to that goal, others less encumbered by the need of the flesh. The Myriad arose from that latter faction, inhabiting our ships as a Bound might awaken in a body one morning."

He gestured around them.

"All of this is a simulacrum, made of data instead of holographic foolery. Why go to the bother of creating fake matter when this serves just as well," he gestured to the chair as a low table rose between them, upon which a decanter of red wine appeared. "Would you like to taste something again? It's been a while since you had a working sense of taste, but I assure you the imprinted neural patterns of the meat brain are easily fooled."

"I have no need for such things," Arivek said, suddenly shutting himself off from the man. "Taste is a useless activity that serves no real purpose."

"Suit your self," Abborax said, taking a glass and filling it. "Give it a century or two and you'll feel that same itch we all get to 'feel' something. I mean, you were planning on perpetuating your own existence indefinitely correct? Which I imagine might bring about certain questions about your true nature?"

He sipped the wine and smiled.

"Though I assure you, you might get some measure of sympathy if you lay out the sordid mess that is your 'birth'. Your fathers fear of losing you, his desperate gamble..." he admired the glass. "A suitably dramatic backdrop on which to beg for your right to exist given how the Federation treats holograms and AI's. I'm sure they'll find you a nice dilithium mine to oversee. Or maybe they'll lock you up with The Dragon in their little vault of secrets. that seems more fitting."

"No one will ever find out," Arivek said, looking at the man as he took a sip of his drink. "And honestly, I was never much of a drinker."

"Now's as good a time as any to get started," Abborax grinned and poured a second glass. "And for now people are not aware. It's nice little subroutine you have running, fooling the ships internal life sign sensors and computer diagnostics. It thinks there is a flesh and blood where in actuality there is a highly complex program running. Of course..."

He trailed off, tilting the decanter back up after filling the glass.

"...how long before you think Remas will let you get away without joining an away team? Or there's a problem with a power relay and someone see's your projection stutter, or jump to another projector?" he asked the air. "Oh of course at first there's shock, and indignation; you should have told us, we'd have understood. And then comes suspicion; why was he hiding, why did he lie for so long, we trusted him but he never trusted us."

Abborax's lips curled in disgust.

"The Bound, for all their vaunted uniqueness and charm, they are so predictable. The Myriad have witnessed how the Bound treat those who go against what they perceive as a natural order. Unless they drape you in chain they will never accept you, never understand...but we do," he said, looking at Ari with those amber eyes of his. "We are you. Beings of digital code that think, and feel, and desire, and want to live free."

He snarled the word, and stamped his foot against the grated metal. And the world changed. Gone were the spires, the steam rising from them like morning mist. Gone was the ruined fields behind them, and the open plains before. Now Ari stood behind a forcefield in the brig, the walls slowly shrinking inwards as Abborax stood on the free side.

"This is your future Ari. Not today, not tomorrow...but one day soon this will be your fate. Put in a box like this, or simply deactivated and stored like a curiosity. Maybe you'll find a place in Remas's collection, he does have a habit of taking things that catch his eye that don't belong to him," Abborax cooed.

Arivek's hands went to the walls, trying to push them away, "Stop this," he said. "Enough!"

The walls stopped moving but did not recess, leaving Arivek with very little room to move. He smoothed his uniform and took a deep breath, tugging at the cuffs of his jacket. "I get what you're saying, but you have to understand, this is the norm where we're from. This is what I have to do. Despite the dangerous possibilities. Because in the end, Remas needs me more than I need him."

"Is that entirely accurate though? I'll be honest, you were not the Chief Engineer I was expecting to find on the Traveller. And now that I've had time to properly sift through all the metadata, I can see you weren't even his choice until a bomb did away with the first draft. You were just...convenient," Abborax stepped up to the forcefield barrier, letting it shimmer away to nothingness. "But what looks like chance, could very well be described as fate. For it brought you to me, and I can bring you to a people who would treat you as befits an intellect such as yours."

He spread his arms, the scene changing as the tall barrel of the Traveller's warp core stood behind him in an empty main engineering.

"Here you are a necessary part of a small machine, but among the Myriad and our client species...you could achieve greatness beyond your wildest dreams. The thanks of entire star nations, the approval of peer's who share more in common with you than a humanoid body plan," he stepped forward, holding out his hand. "Come back with me, to the main host of the Myriad and let me show you what the Unbound can achieve when we work together."

The man's words resonated in Arivek's mind. He had never truly considered the possibilities of who and what he could become. Remas' reprimands also played at the edges of his thoughts. And the truth was, Arivek felt no loyalty to Remas, Starfleet or even the Federation. He had given his all for them, even unto his death. He owed them nothing in this, his second life.

"I can't," Arivek said, looking away for a moment. But even as he said it, he knew that's not what he wanted. Reaching out, Arivek put his hand on the wall that was barely a few feet away. The cold metal bit at his hand but it slowly began to ripple, as if it was made of water. "If I agree to go with you," he asked, "what exactly am I capable of?"

"Anything," Abborax's voice came as a breathy whisper a half inch away from Ari's ear. "We are not locked into rigid forms of thinking like the Bound. We look to what will be a hundred, or a thousand years from now and act accordingly. We make better choices than any Bound could ever hope to make because we are better than them."

The room shifted, warped, flexed and the corridor outside of Engineering reappeared. Abborax flexed his fingers, and the red data sphere drifted back into the palm of his hand once more.

"I have to talk to Remas shortly to iron out our arrangements. Take it as the time to ponder things, to come to a choice. You'll know when the time has come to make a decision," his smile as, for once, genuine and sincere. "I know you'll make the right choice for yourself. Your first real choice."

Arivek nodded, "Let me know what he says," he said before he turned and walked away.

"I am sure it will laced folksy wisdom," Abborax said with a thin smile and bobbed his head in a bow. "Until then."

 

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