“There are no other options, right?”
“No.”
“Then I’d be pretty stupid to dismiss this out of hand, wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t like calling my patients ‘stupid,’ but yes,” the Doctor agreed.
“Who else would have to know about this?”
“Lieutenant Barclay is already working on the construction of the holomatrix. Lieutenant Kim was present a few days ago when the idea was initially discussed and, as you might expect, was very supportive of any available measures meant to extend your life. And I am obliged to inform our captain, Commander Glenn. But otherwise, no one, for now. It will, however, become obvious to your fellow crew members once the transfer is complete. More important, this isn’t something I would suggest keeping secret. You will need a great deal of emotional support and your friends will be best able to provide that. You should prepare yourself to be as open and honest as possible.”
Conlon nodded. “How soon do I have to decide?”
“We’re not quite there yet. But depending upon how quickly your neurological degradation proceeds, it could reach a point where the transfer might not be possible.”
Conlon inhaled deeply. “Okay,” she said. “If you are asking for my permission to prepare for the transfer, you have it. Do what you need to do and let me know when you are ready.”
“May I ask,” the Doctor ventured, “why you are so amenable to the idea? It is a significant change, not without risk, and I would have thought you would require more time to consider it.”
Conlon shrugged. “None of us have time anymore for fear-based decisions. We are incredibly vulnerable out here. Mine is no longer the only life on board that could easily be measured in weeks. I just watched a good man die trying to help us restore our communications array. To do less, to risk less than that, would make his choice meaningless.”
“I understand,” the Doctor said. “And thank you.”
“For what?”
“For everything you have done to keep us alive and trusting me to help you keep doing it.”
A shadow of a smile crossed Conlon’s lips. “Don’t give me too much credit. Right now, the thought of being able to attack my to-do list without needing rest is tempting. I was just trying to imagine how I would be able to do all the things that need to be done once this little one is ready to join us out here. This might be a permanent solution,” she said, only half teasing.
“I wish to be clear, Lieutenant,” the Doctor said. “This is a temporary measure, at best. I will work diligently to resolve your DNA’s inability to repair itself. But should I fail…”
“I’ll take as much time as you can give me, in any form.”
The Doctor smiled uneasily. “Good. I’ll let you know as soon as the matrix is ready.”
“Do me a favor?” Conlon asked.
“If I can.”
“This is my decision. I understand that it isn’t meant to be a secret, but until it’s done, I don’t want to discuss it with anyone else. There are too many other things that require my attention. Can we keep this between us until then?”
“Of course.”
10
VOYAGER
Operations officer Lieutenant Kenth Lasren had burned through several duty shifts and cups of raktajino while attempting to translate the signals emitted from the Edrehmaia’s vessel. But the pieces of this particular puzzle had remained a jumbled mess until he heard “the scream.”
“You’ve heard this before?” Captain Chakotay asked.
“Yes, sir,” Lasren replied. Both Chakotay and Commander Paris had moved close to his station on Voyager’s bridge. “When Devi, Omar, Vincent, and I were exploring the caverns we found beneath the surface, one of the chambers, the one filled with what appeared to be biological experiments with the Edrehmaia substance, well, for want of a better word, screamed at us before it allowed us access.”
“And yet, you did not turn and run,” Paris observed.
“I wanted to,” Lasren admitted. “But now I’m glad we didn’t. At the time, I didn’t understand what was happening.”
“And you do now?” Chakotay asked.
“I think so. The similarity in the sound our translator defaults to with these signals made me begin to search for commonalities in the types of data they might contain. These signals all carry dense amounts of information on their waveforms. Separating it from the photonic emissions was the first challenge. Part of the problem is the volume of information being transmitted. It is so far beyond anything we normally process that it has to be broken down into incredibly small sections before it can be translated, but given the nature of the communication, that makes sense now.”
“To you. Not to us,” Paris reminded him.
“The initial transmissions were damn near impossible to translate, but about three minutes after they approached us, they shifted to a considerably less complicated form. The Edrehmaia scanned us shortly after they arrived. Once they did, the signal resolved into incredibly long chains of five distinct and identifiable terms.”
“Their language only has five words?” Chakotay asked.
“That’s the first part of the problem. There are no words in these transmissions. The five terms I was first able to translate are molecules: adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, and hydrogen.”
“DNA base pairs?” Paris asked.
“Perhaps they were searching for basic terms we share in common in order to begin to build a shared language,” Chakotay said. “It’s not that unusual and does suggest a desire to communicate with us.”
“I actually believe that they were identifying both themselves and us,” Lasren said.
Paris and Chakotay exchanged a confused glance.
“The terms in the first transmission I was able to decode are repeated a little over three billion times,” Lasren continued. “They weren’t simply sending data they expected us to be able to understand. With Doctor Sharak’s permission, I ran the first transmission against the genetic profiles of the entire crew.”
“Was there a match?” Paris asked.
“There was,” Lasren said. “The first message they sent was Lieutenant Devi Patel’s entire genome.”
“That’s… unexpected,” Paris ventured.
“Maybe not,” Lasren said. “She was aboard
