“For analysis?” Cambridge asked.
Janeway shrugged. “Maybe they detected something about us that attracted their interest.”
“So, you’re counseling prayer, Captain?” Farkas asked of Chakotay. “You believe if we supplicate ourselves, or find an acceptable offering, they might deign to give us our ship back?”
Chakotay shook his head. “We pose no threat to them. If they have taken our ship and analyzed it, they know that by now. And space is simply too big for a hard-target search. We need to reach them again, somehow, to establish communication. And for that, we need to find an example of their technology that is intact, like the planet was, and either use it, or break it. But this time, when they come back and try to speak with us, we need to be ready to answer them.”
11
GALEN
PERSONAL LOG: LIEUTENANT HARRY KIM
Hey there. It’s me again. Your dad.
Things are definitely looking up since the last time we talked. Your mom fixed the fusion reactor. Main power to most systems has been fully restored. You don’t know what that means yet, but trust me, it’s good news.
I’ve spent the last eighteen hours or so trying to solve a problem. It’s kind of a math problem and, also, kind of art. You should definitely do both, okay? Math is one of those things you just have to have. At first it might seem hard, but once you get…
Holy shit, what was that?
Sorry. I was just sitting here recording this log and I heard, plain as day, this skittering sound, like a small animal, maybe a dog, and the sound it makes when its little nails tap the floor. When the floor isn’t covered with synthetic fiber. When it’s solid, like our deck plates. I used to have a dog. I called him Trout. I don’t remember why. He was really my mom’s dog. Followed her everywhere. Jumped in her lap any time she sat down. He liked playing with me, but he loved her. Dogs can be like that.
There are no dogs on this ship. I don’t know what that sound was. I’m going to add it to my report tonight just in case ghost dogs are about to become a thing around here.
I wonder if you’re going to want a pet. Dogs are great. Tough on starships, but not impossible. Not that you’ll be living on a starship. I mean, maybe you will.
Sorry, my mind is wandering. I’m pretty tired.
But math. Art. Sometimes, especially with music, they’re the same thing. Both are about solutions and how you get to them. Sometimes in math it’s simple. One plus one is always two. Sometimes, like now, you know there is a solution but you just can’t see it. That’s when art helps. Art happens in the intuitive part of your brain. And spirit. We’ll talk at some point about what that is. Not everyone believes in them. I do. I always have. Because I feel mine when I do things like play music. It’s almost like it takes over and does the playing for me. It’s cool. Trust me.
But this math problem is a little bigger. Very long story short, your body is made up of cells and the nature of those cells is determined by something called DNA. Your DNA came from your mom and me. You got half of each of us. But whether you will look more like me or her or love the same foods or want a dog isn’t necessarily half me and half your mom. DNA blends in people in very interesting ways. You never quite know what you’re going to get.
There are molecules… groups of atoms that determine what a thing is by how they combine… that are sometimes present in cellular DNA that are different from your mom’s and mine. We’re human, so our DNA is made up of four types of molecules connected by hydrogen atoms. Other species have different DNA but most of them use the same basic molecules in different combinations. A few rare ones use some additional molecules and those life-forms don’t tend to look anything like you or me.
Okay, that was definitely a dog walking across the floor. Or my ears are hallucinating. Maybe I shouldn’t rule anything out just yet. Impossible stuff tends to happen out here more often than you’d think.
Did you hear that? Right, no ears yet. Sorry. Never mind.
One of the things your mom and I like to do is travel around space in a starship so we can meet new people. New species. Usually it’s great. Sometimes it’s scary. But the whole thing with new people, aliens or not, is that you can’t go in just looking at the ways you are different and decide you’ll never get along. You have to look for the ways you are the same. They can be hard to find but they are almost always there. And once you find a little common ground, that’s how you get to know each other better.
We just discovered a new alien species. We haven’t been able to say hello yet, but they’re out there, not far from our ship, and they have already sent us some messages. The problem is that the messages don’t tell me anything about who they are or what they want. They just tell me what their DNA contains. I know this because they’ve also clearly scanned us and have transmitted to us a complete record of the DNA of every person who is on this ship. Their DNA isn’t exactly like ours, so it’s impossible for me to tell how many of them are out there trying to introduce themselves. There’s a chance it’s only one. Could be a few hundred. Without
