At first, it was obvious what Captain Leithe needed to do. Dr. Holmes lied
to her, claiming that she was trying to help her fix her memory problem when
really she was the cause of it, at least part of the time. She had to go.
People had to know that she was bad news so the dismissal process could be
completed. It was going to be neither easy, nor simple, but it simply had to
be done. As Kaiora pondered the proceedings that would follow should she
choose to put this on the agenda, however, she had to acknowledge a big
issue. Nearly everything would come out about her practice. Every procedure
she performed, every medication she prescribed; it would all be out in the
open. This information would not be attached to any names, of course, but it
had to become evidence, because while it wasn’t all relevant, any of
it could be relevant, and it was going to take a specially formed
committee time to sort through it. At the very least, this was needlessly
humiliating to a well-respected medical professional whose motives Kaiora
was not fully cognizant of, and at worst, it placed Olindse in more danger,
which defeated the whole purpose.
As it turned out, Kaiora didn’t know that much about what happened to
Admiral Olindse Belo. She circumvented a direct order from her Captain to
jump into a portal to the future. That’s really all she knew. She didn’t
know why she had to go, or when she would arrive. Best practices suggested
the best way to handle the situation, since the memory wipe didn’t really
take, was to ignore the topic as much as possible. Throwing Dr. Holmes under
the bus was not ignoring it, and it was not discreet. Temporal theory
states that doubt about the path to reach a known future is tantamount to an
unknown future. That is, Kaiora doesn’t know what the timeline is like when
Olindse shows up in it, which means she has to assume that every choice she
and the people around her make will lead to that future, rather than some
random alternative. She’s not free to make any decision she would like, but
she’s pretty safe making the reasonable ones since she has no reason to
believe they would go against her hypothetical fate.
Still, trying to get rid of Dr. Holmes was a risky move by any standard, so
she decided to let it go. The two of them didn’t talk about it for almost
three years after that. When they passed in the corridors, or sat across
from each other in the executive crew meetings, they exchanged knowing
glances, but they did not address the elephant in the room, which they could
both see. It was in both of their best interests to pretend it never
happened, so that’s what they did. Unfortunately, as the time since has
illustrated, it has not been that easy. The tension between them has proved
to be a lot more obvious to everyone else. Apparently, there have been two
elephants in the same room all along, with neither being mutually visible.
It’s affected their work. Surely without coordinating, they’ve both begun to
delegate a lot more work that they would traditionally do themselves,
worrying their fellow crew members and friends. They never staged an
intervention, but independently of each other, the head of surgery spoke
with Dr. Holmes, and the Second Lieutenant spoke with Kaiora. That’s when
the latter knew she was at her lowest, because if Lars Callaghan thinks
there’s something wrong with you, there’s something wrong with you.
Something has to change about this dynamic, and if Kaiora isn’t going to
step away from the captain’s seat, there is only one other option. They’re
in a meeting now to discuss the future of this crew, and their respective
responsibilities on it.
“I’m not going to do it,” Dr. Holmes says before Kaiora has a chance to
speak.
“You’re not going to do what?”
“I’m not going to retire.”
While Hock Watcher can effectively be a lifetime appointment, Chief Medical
Officer actually is. Dr. Holmes would have to do something pretty bad to
lose her job. Premature retirement is even harder. If Kaiora wants to do
this, she has to be careful. She has to convince her to make this decision
for herself. “I never said that.”
“You were going to suggest it.”
“And how would you know that?” Kaiora questions. “Are you aware of future
events in the timeline to which the likes of me are not privy?”
“Oh, here we go again.”
“What do you mean, here we go again? We’ve never talked about this!”
“I see the way you look at me.”
“I see the way you look at me!”
“Are you just going to echo everything that I say?”
“Are you not going to explain yourself? I want to know why you did it. Why
did you fuck with my memories?”
“Why did you not question me before?”
Kaiora takes a moment before responding. She sips her tea in the meantime.
“Do you know what this room is?”
Dr. Holmes looks over at the walls. “I’ve never been here before. I stay
mostly in the medical section.”
Kaiora nods. She places a headband over her forehead. Then she reaches over
to a gadget on a table next to her, and flips a switch. Everything changes.
They’re still in the same room, but they’re joined by infinite copies of it
now, along with infinite copies of Dr. Holmes herself. Kaiora is safe as
she’s wearing the headband, but the doctor can see her own duplicates,
sitting around her, above her on the ceiling, and below her under the now
transparent floor. They’re all looking around at each other too, equally as
confused, but each reacting differently to an infinitesimal degree. As time
goes on, they begin to pop out of existence, only to be replaced by new
copies.
“What is this?” Dr. Holmes asks, and as she does so, an infinite number of
others do the same, each in their own special way, at slightly different
times, tones, and speeds. The sound echoes unbearably throughout the
infinite cosmic expanse. They continue to disappear.
Kaiora clears her throat, and switches off the machine. “This. is the
Infinitorium. It’s sometimes known as the quantum duplication room, but to
some, that implies the ability to cross dimensional barriers where that
function does not exist. You can see and hear your alternates, but only one
of you will survive any given moment. The rest are constantly being
destroyed. You are dying an infinite number of times every moment of your
life. This is the fact of reality, and what this chamber does is show you
that, whereas most of the time, you’re free to move on with your life,
blissfully ignorant of all the versions of you that didn’t make it. This was
an experiment of Old Man’s. He thought the criminals on this ship might find
it unenjoyable to be tortured in. See, now you’ve seen. You’ve watched
yourself be wiped from existence over and over again, but here’s the catch.”
Kaiora leans in. “That’s not what you learned today. What you
really saw...is that the next possible version of you to
die...could be you.”
Dr. Holmes shifts uncomfortably. “What do you want?”
“I want the goddamn truth. What did you do to my memories? This has been a
long time coming.”
Dr. Holmes takes a breath, and does everything to recover from her recent
traumatic experience, recognizing that she’ll probably need therapy after
this regardless. “I did it to protect the Admiral. You came to me, and told
me what happened, and together, we pieced together what you were missing.
The memory drops were perfectly fine when they were manufactured. They’re a
prescription drug, and I don’t know where Olindse got them, but like any
consumable, they go bad. It was expired, Captain Leithe, and you should not
have taken it. I keep telling my patients, read the label. Analgesic doesn’t
mean what you think it means! Anyway, what your videos don’t mention is that
the drug was having a negative impact on other parts of your memory, not
just episodic. They were interfering with your ability to walk, and to
remember words. You were making yourself look like an idiot, and people were
strongly considering recalling you as the captain.
“I found myself incapable of fixing you permanently. The best I could do was
give you that nose spray. What it does is sort of consolidate the apparently
reproductive memory solution in your system, so it does what it was supposed
to do, and only erase your episodic memories. It was a temporary solution,
obviously. I never meant to keep you like that. I was working on something
that could flush all of it from your body, but that was proving to be more
difficult than I thought it would. I delegated my duties, and focused solely
on the permanent solution.”
“I didn’t need you to synthesize a system flush,” Kaiora argues. “All I
needed to do was stop taking the nose spray.”
“Yeah, I see that now, but since we kept having the same conversation every
other day, and the same other conversation every other day,
that didn’t occur to me!”
Kaiora took another beat before responding. “Once you realized I was back to
normal three years ago, why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because you didn’t say anything. Your past self was trying to
protect the Admiral, and I wanted to do the same. Yeah, it sucked that you
kept erasing the day you just lived, but I believed you would agree that to
be the lesser of two evils. I still don’t know what you know; what you
remember about it. You never came to me to run tests, and I didn’t want
to...do any more damage to your psyche.”
Kaiora reaches up to massage her forehead, only now realizing that the
control headband is still there. She pulls it off, and carelessly throws it
across the room. “Shit,” she says loudly, but voicelessly.
“What was that a reaction to, the headband?”
“No,” Kaiora contends. “I messed up. I assumed the worst, and I didn’t talk
to you about it.”
“I nearly retired because of what happened, Captain. I’ve never made a
mistake like that. I’ve never been so reckless with someone’s neurology;
someone’s life. I didn’t wanna say anything because...I was afraid to lose
my job, and my reputation. As soon as they posted this position for the
Extremus mission, I dreamed of dying at my desk. I wanted to outlast
everybody, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a doctor it’s that
patients benefit from continuity. What I did to you...and what I
didn’t do, it threatened all of that. It threatened my legacy, and
I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Kaiora echoes. “I jumped to conclusions, and that’s not
the sign of a good leader. Halan Yenant would never have done that.”
“Yenant is not without his faults. I mean, he’s the one in hock.”
“He shouldn’t be.”
“Yes, he should, and not because he broke the law—his actions saved the
lives of thousands on board, and tens of thousands of our ship’s
descendants, and countless generations beyond the realization of our
mission. But the next guy won’t have such good intentions, and we can’t let
that guy think that we’ll just forgive and forget. That was Halan’s true
sacrifice, and we can’t rob him of it. I know you and Olindse have always
wanted to get him out, but it can’t be done. He’ll die in there, just like
I’ll die at my desk...assuming you aren’t still trying to get me out.”
“No, doctor. I was wrong.”
“Welcome to the club.”
While they’re sitting in silence, the doorbell rings. It’s excruciatingly
annoying, and needlessly echoey. Kaiora stands up, and looks at the screen.
It’s Lieutenant Seelen. “What is it, Corinna?”
“If you’re done with, uh..whatever it is you’re doing in there, the resupply
team found something.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Thanks, Captain, for understanding.”
“Thanks for protecting the timeline. That’s what I was trying to do too.”
They both teleport out of the room, but go to different places. Kaiora lands
in the cargo bay. Nearly three decades ago, this team’s predecessors sent
the first drones out to nearby planets in the past to mine precious
resources, and return them to the Extremus. They’ve continued to do this on
an as-needed basis, but the process has become more difficult since Halan
sent them into the intergalactic void. There are worlds out here, but
they’re incredibly dispersed, and hard to find, which makes every mission
that much more important than before. If they run out, the mission will be a
bust, and they will probably all die.
“I was told you found something.”
“Yes, Captain,” the cargomaster tells her. He escorts her over to a stack of
raw materials that were in the middle of being sorted. He points down at a
block of metallic hydrogen. On top of it is a clear box, not larger than a
tall man’s fist. There is a life inside of it, which Kaiora has to lean in
and squint to make out.
“Oh my God.”
“That’s what we were thinking.”
