Something

Deep in the confines of the starship Arcadia, dreams drove a man to the brink of insanity.

Holowildom.  That was what he called it.  The holographic wild kingdom.  His holographic wild kingdom.  Maybe the term didn't make a lot of linguistic sense, but that didn't matter.  This wasn't about what made sense.  This wasn't about being logical.  This was about art.  This was about emotion.  This was about feeling.

He clenched his eyes shut, hands around the clay, and breathed.  Chills riddled his flesh.  He kept shivering.  Shivering with feeling.  With regret... missing her.  It was all he could do not to break down.

There was a part of him she had never understood.  He wasn't sure she ever really shared it.  Did anyone?  Did anyone ever truly, truly understand how he felt?  No... they didn't, and never would.  They couldn't.  He had a poet's soul... the chi of an artist.  They had to feel it, feel as he felt, and no one could feel as he did.  Nor did she.  But she had loved him.  Of that he was certain.  And he loved her.  That feeling was restricted to him alone, now.  And the memories... the memory of her.  It was all he had.  All that existed in this entire universe of her, was the fleeting memory, the impression of her, and his unrequited love, trapped in his mind and heart and soul.  Like so many he had loved, and lost, nothing remained, but the love, and the memories.

Her name was Jenna Starr.  She was a vampire.  Genetically engineered.  And she never existed in this universe... again, but in his memory.

"Oh, Jenna," he whispered to the clay, opened his eyes and looked at it.  She had touched his heart, once.  Deeply.  "I need you.  I need your guidance."

The lifeless clay stared at nothing, unresponsive.

He shook his head.  Tears threatened to come.  "If only you were real."

Holographic clay... holographic fantasy.  The hands that molded it, guided by the memory of her, her face, her body, were real... and the program remained, as he had left it, years ago, unfinished, in the ship's memory.  The holographic dilemmas and counteractive purges had not erased it.

In sculpting, did he make her real?  The black hair... pale skin... blood-red lips, parted ever so slightly, baring a hint of fangs, white and sharp...  That wasn't what made her beautiful.  She simply was beautiful.  Nature had given her looks.  She was one of the most beautiful women he'd ever had the pleasure to lay eyes on.  Such beauty... the kind impossible on the outside, unless it came from within.  An inner beauty to match the outer.  It deserved to be remembered.  She deserved it.  Deserved so much more.  It deserved to live.  He could see her, standing in sickbay, the other sickbay, on that other Arcadia, standing there facing him, the row of biobeds behind her back... face aglow, eyes full of light and happiness to see him....  He could smell her sweet scent.  He still remembered how it felt when they touched.  If only he could have that feeling again.

He understood Pygmalion's plight.  He wanted to embrace the holo-clay, breathe life and love into her with the warmth of his touch.  If he simply took the short route and programmed her, a full holographic version, she'd be more emotive.  It would be quick... easy.  But it would not really be her.  It would only be a facsimile of a memory.

The universe was a complex, shifting place.  There was so much more to it than anyone imagined.  He'd had the lesson taught to him by none other than one of the Klingons on this ship... the scientist, Sei'mossin.  Years ago, after they had met, April had caught him working on a project: An experiment in proving the existence of higher dimensions.  The details went right over his head.  Sei'mossin explained it to him.  April didn't get it.  He hadn't believed it possible.  Sei'mossin took him to a pond, where rocks poked through the surface of the water, speaking of what could not be seen, below the surface, and under the pond itself.  April politely dismissed the notion.  Sei'mossin stood in front of him, placed hands to both sides of his head, blocking his peripheral vision, and asked him to tell what he saw.  "I can't see anything," April had said.  "Exactly," was the Klingon's reply.  April saw: Just because he could not see it, did not mean it wasn't there.

And then came the journey, through universes and dimensions and indescribable realms, so many of them, and so bizarre, his brain struggled and failed to recall....

If he loved her hard enough, could he make her real?

He thought of Cadie.

He was full of love.  He had so, so much love to give.  It needed every outlet.  He could not find enough outlets through which to vent it.  Bottled up inside, it threatened to make his heart explode.  Was anything in this universe worth that much love?

He looked at the sculpture... thinking of Jenna... of his daughter... other women he loved, and had loved... the woman he married... and he thought of Cadie.  Who were they?  Where were they?  Even Brenda, on board, did not know she lived on the other side of an invisible wall, a wall which kept Stephen April in, and all others out.  Could even the woman who finally convinced him to break down and marry, after a life of resisting matrimony, ever understand him?  No... she was more handicapped than others, in that department.  She was simply his wife.  He gave her his vow and commitment and signature on a marriage contract... but his heart, soul, spirit... those belonged somewhere else.  To something else.

There was something missing, inside of him.  Always.  Brenda, nor Cadie, nor Jenna, nor anyone... not God Himself, when Stephen April believed in God... had been able to fill the hole.

There were no gods waiting in the wings to breathe life into his unresponsive Galatea.  Angrily, he knocked the head off the sculpture, flinging clumps of clay across the holographic 'studio'.  Damn it.  Damn it, damn it.  Not real.  Nothing was real.  What was real, but his memories?  And if the memories, if the love he felt could not make it real... then were they real either?  What was real, then?  What mattered?  Anything?  Anything at all?

"Computer.  End program and erase from the databank," Stephen April commanded.

"Confirmed."

The studio and the sculpture vanished, leaving the stark, bare black and silver grid-plates of Holodeck Two.

April closed his eyes again, unable to bear the hole tearing itself inside of his chest.  He left.

The wolf trotted along through the corridor, beside him.

My spirit is always restless, April returned.  Never happy... never content... never satisfied.  He needed to move.  To go... out, into the unknown, find it, discover it, explore it, then when he had, push on, to the next frontier.  Throughout his entire life, he had been that way.  He needed to move.  He was never really sure where it came from--the constant traveling, in the formative years of his youth, thanks to an equally restless and travel-happy mother, or if it was simply in his genetic code.

Or in his spirit.

He had accepted the wolf's presence.  His animal guide.  April suspected that he knew where it came from, and it was both an illusion and not.  It passed through other crew-members walking the corridor, disappeared and reappeared at will.  While the truth had yet to manifest, April accepted it.  He had to.  There it was, walking with him.

He had also given up on asking the question of why the wolf could not soothe his restless spirit.  If it could be done... if it was not simply impossible... then he alone had the power to do it.