Penny Dreadful

Posted on Tue Oct 30th, 2018 @ 3:04pm by Lieutenant JG Jaya Maera Garlake & Qurban
Edited on on Sat Mar 9th, 2019 @ 7:21am

1,793 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: S1E2: Half Past Dead
Location: Station Lounge & Observation Deck (Deck 5)
Timeline: MD 3

The planetoid dominated the observation window. Plasma storms beyond cast their burning light against it, giving Tartarus a crimson hue marked with flickering scarlet highlights and shadows of indigo. Jaya had spent some weeks acclimating to Memory Theta's Overwatch station, and despite the familiar welcome of the holodecks or the natural beauty cultivated in the arboretum, Jaya preferred the Station Lounge. It offered refreshment, occasional company, and a view that couldn't be beat save for the full panorama of Deck 1's observation level.

As far as stations went, Overwatch wasn't half bad. It offered many of the amenities found in full-fledged starbases, yet still felt cozy enough that she wouldn't get lost. That seemed a very important design of architecture. Memory Theta was one of the places in the Federation where nothing and nobody should ever get lost. Despite its veiled horrors, Jaya saw a certain charm to the disavowed black site. There could have been worse places to be assigned. So long as the governing protocols which leashed the AI didn't fail, they would be safe here. Perhaps even safer than the Vindex had been.

The thought of their former assignment brought bittersweet memories to Jaya. It was there she had met Storr. Their marriage was originally intended to be one of convenience, as her forays into her people's latent empathic abilities had challenged her Oath of Celibacy which permitted her service to Starfleet. Had she broken it, then she would be discharged from Starfleet and exiled from her people. To her surprise, Storr rejected her proposal of a sham marriage, preferring instead to make an honest woman out of her. And then circumstances challenged it.

Of course the captain had approved their courtship. Ainscow was a classical romantic like that. But then the mutiny came, which changed the lives of everyone forever. Saalkan, a Consortium mastermind, had double-crossed both Starfleet and his rebel benefactors. Hundreds died in his mad pursuit for power and immortality. In a plot straight out of a holonovel, the V'tosh Katur called Saalkan had reassembled an ancient Vulcan superweapon that harnessed the gravitational field of an entire planet. Rather than using it as a destructive weapon, he envisioned using it to transcend space-time into... something else. Something more. It sounded insane, to be sure. To think that he had spent months on the Vindex's crew, all the while working his machinations and plotting their doom right underneath their very noses -- it grieved Jaya. As someone charged with monitoring the mental health and well-being for those placed in her charge, Saalkan stood out as Jaya's greatest failure. What haunted Jaya most was the question of what would have happened had he succeeded. Such thoughts had been squelched at the time when the Deltan Foreign Ministry tried to strike down her marriage. The protracted legal battle had taken everything the two of them possessed, leaving little left to contemplate other possibilities and what-if's.

Quiet moments of reflection, like now, brought those questions to the surface. Saalkan certainly wasn't the first madman the galaxy had seen. He wasn't the first one to come close to accomplishing his evil scheme. What were the odds that a madman, sometime, somewhere, would win? The thought prickled Jaya's skin with gooseflesh.

"Don't think I've seen you around here before," said a kindly, quiet voice. "Mind if I sit down?"

Jaya resisted the urge to jump at being startled. Had she been so withdrawn into her inner reverie that she had not felt the approach of another? She regarded the man -- by appearances, a nondescript human in a blue uniform -- and immediately noted something very different about him. There was an emptiness within him, though not of the standard clinical variety. Instead, it was more of an impression, like that of conversing with a hologram and reaching the boundaries of its programming.

"It would be my pleasure," Jaya said. She had fallen down the black hole of melancholy again. A pleasant distraction of a new, mysterious, and likely harmless face seemed like just what the doctor ordered. Yet another reminder that the Universe always righted itself.

"I thank you kindly." The man sat down at her side and looked around bewildered.

"There's no server on duty," Jaya said. "Everything is..."

She trailed off as a Borg drone brought a martini flute to the mysterious stranger on a silver platter.

"Automated?" The man offered a possible end to her sentence as he accepted the flute. "Yes. I am quite accustomed to the finer workings of Memory Theta."

The way his affable demeanor covered over an inner turmoil made Jaya feel distrustful yet intrigued. "You've been here awhile, then."

"Indeed I have," he swallowed the glass in one gulp, then shooed the Borg drone butler away. "I am perhaps Ferrofax's oldest friend." Extending his hand in greeting, he added, "They call me Qurban."

Jaya cautiously but firmly shook his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Qurban. My name is Jaya." Noting his uniform, she asked, "I haven't seen you around the med bay or the science labs. Did you just come up from Deep Storage?"

"Oh, no," Qurban chuckled. "I have never been planetside. I'm afraid that until Starfleet decides what to do with me, I will never see outside these walls."

The truth in his heart spoke a conviction that drowned out the wry humor in his voice. "I don't understand," Jaya said. "Lifetime assignments are strictly voluntary in Starfleet."

Nodding in agreement, Qurban gave her an amused look which invited her to continue her deduction. "That is because I'm not assigned here."

Jaya turned her head in askance skepticism. "Then you're... an artifact? I didn't realize that Memory Theta abducted people like slave traffickers."

Qurban laughed at that. "My dear, I will never forget you, of that I feel assured."

The complimentary nature of the statement was obvious to Jaya's empathy, but the meaning still eluded her. "Do you suffer from memory loss, Mister Qurban?"

"It would seem so," he replied, then chuckled again. "Ironic that I would be kept in a Federation 'Memory' facility. The Universe plays such odd jokes on its denizens, does it not?"

Another remark which made Jaya cock her head to the side. "There are few who would deny it. Which part of the Universe do you come from?"

"That is a very loaded question," Qurban said. "One to which I don't rightly know the answer."

"You've forgotten where you come from?" Jaya asked.

"Hardly," Qurban replied, "and yet precisely. Where I come from, 'where' is a subjective concept that does not translate easily."

Normally Jaya loved riddles, but this was something else. "Why, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were alluding to being an ultra-dimensional entity like the Q."

The way Qurban smiled reflected an inner humor as only an honest man could possess. Jaya flinched. "No... you... you aren't--"

Qurban shook his head. "No, I'm not, my dear. At least not for some 10 years or more. My omnipotence went the way of my omnipresence and omniscience. I was... killed? Exiled? I no longer recall the details. The knowledge of everything does not fit so well within humanoid neural pathways, and I was unable to choose what stayed and went."

"Did you truly know everything?" Jaya asked skeptically. A Borg drone butler returned with another platter. This one contained a steaming mug of Seyalian tea. "My..."

"Favorite," Qurban concluded with a knowing smile. "I have forgotten many a personal detail, but I will never forget your face. Just as I have never forgotten the moment where I would first look upon the face of the One Who Prevailed. The face of the one who stood against a blind-idiot god and did not shrink back." His face turned grave as a prophet of old. "The face of one who obstructed an aspiring rival to the Continuum that would have pillaged our gates and joined us at the table of eternity." Blinking away the recollection, Qurban quickly retreated back to the moment. "In every timeline that Saalkan had succeeded on Veloz Prime with his Vorl-tak device, he recalled the way you resisted his power and sought to make an example of you. In every death, you always resisted him and kept him from true ascension to the higher planes of existence, trapping him in the timeline that he had doomed for himself."

As he spoke, Jaya arched her eyebrow in disbelief. The more he continued, the more incredulous she felt, save for the burning conviction within him. It was tempting to write him off as insane, yet... his synapses did not flow with the same sensory patterns as a human his age. Through his emotional aura, Jaya could feel how he recalled experiences that were beyond--well, simply beyond.

"You are a marvel, Mister Qurban," Jaya said at length.

"And for that your colleagues mockingly refer to me as the Fortune Teller," Qurban quipped.

Jaya grinned along with him at the appellation, but her thoughts continued to flow along the river of curiosity. "Answer me this, though. If I was such a friend to the Q, why did they let me -- well, these other 'me's -- perish at the hands of Saalkan? The other Saalkans."

Qurban stiffened. "Of that I have no memory."

"You're lying," Jaya pressed.

"Well. True enough," Qurban said. "There was another enemy, one which has deadlocked the Q for aeons past and aeons to come. Singular threats such as Saalkan are beneath our notice, as when left to their devices they virtually always remove themselves."

There was a ring of truth. Though Qurban could not recall details, the context he gave rang true. "And you do not recall this enemy?" Jaya felt the emptiness within Qurban flare at the very mention of the unknown.

"No..." Qurban said, suddenly troubled. "I... I must beg your pardon, my dear." He stumbled to his feet and began to hurry away.

"Qurban?" Jaya called after him. "Qurban, I am sorry." The man did not respond, so she made to follow. "Qurban," she said, trotting to catch up.

The man turned around. Whatever had troubled him before had clearly left, as his face broke into smile. "Oh, I remember you. Would you care for a drink, my dear? Best taken at the bar. Except..." He looked around in mild confusion.

"We have already taken tea," Jaya said, "but I would love some more."

"Oh." The smile faded from Qurban's face. Morbid realization arose in its place. "No, my dear. I expect I should take my leave presently. It was... good meeting you."

Jaya gave him a wan smile. "And for me."

The two parted, each carrying away more questions than answers.

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