Something Wrong

His hands worked the runabout controls with practiced ease.  He had flown enough in his time.  He learned the operational layouts of each new class.  He was an admiral; it was his business to know.  It was the mark of a good commander, to know how to do everything he expected of subordinates.  He worked the controls with hands and arms that were strong and healthy.  He could see; his eyes were fine.

In the main viewport, The Loop seemed made of light, a shimmering golden belt of brilliant intensity, stretching across the black heavens.

The wolf snapped at him.  He saw the rush of fur, white and black and gray, felt its hot breath – the subtle click as its jaws clamped shut on open air.  April yanked his hand away just in time.  It had darted between the chairs by the console, then retreated.

"You're not real," April heard himself say.  "Nothing's real!  No one!  None of you are real."

The Loop grew larger, brighter, blinding.  The distant stars faded into the haze.

He yanked off the blankets and crawled out of bed.  Muscles ached where he didn't know he had them – his legs, back, especially in his hips.  Over-exertion?  At his age, and considering how little real exercise he had these last few months... had to be.  Tab warned him the malfunctioning nanomods might account for such effects.  An urge to curl up and sleep tugged at him, threatening to draw April back to bed.  He inhaled deeply, swinging his arms, lifting his feet, stretching, legs bending hard at the knees.  Movement eased the stiffness, and he began thinking little more of it.  It was age.  Growing older.  Normal, he told himself.  Tab Brisk would figure out a treatment, as she promised, and he would be fine.

His attention turned to work.  An admiral's was never done.  Brenda took the first shower; he could dent his work-load a fraction, while he waited.  Cueing a holodisplay, he spun datablocks with the fingers of one hand, as though spinning a dial, searching his itinerary.  The skin seemed to smoothen with action.  A blue-white chunk of text caught his attention and he stopped, eyes scanning a list of names.

Starfleet had decided to expand the Quantum line.  The Federation was growing; they needed more slipstream ships to explore the galaxy.  By year's end, fifty would be ready to roll off the docks, pristine and brand new, with sleek gamma-welded tritanium hulls and state of the art technology – more advanced than even Arcadia.  As head of the Exploratory Division, he sat on the naming selection panel.

Looking over the list of proposed names, April felt a pang of dismay.  Some he liked, and would approve.  But others... What got into some people's minds, in Starfleet?  Where did they receive their schooling?  Names like Cortez... Pizarro... Balboa... Ponce de Leon... Vasco da Gama.  He knew the argument: They were explorers.  Their names carried prominence in medieval Earth history.

First of all, Earth was not the Federation – maybe once, at least the center of it, but in these times, they had to start showing all of their planetary members the respect they deserved.  Individuals in their own cultures had also made significant contributions, worthy of some ships named after them.

Second and perhaps more importantly... Cortez, Drake and the like, were bloodthirsty savages from an uncivilized era.  The only reason they gained prominence was for the boldness of their actions – bold, but morally reprehensible.  They committed unspeakable atrocities, murdering natives in the lands they explored, warring with each other.  Human history once painted them in a favorable light, as heroes, pioneers, adventurers – despite a contrary negative stigma.  Temporal observers had seen the proof with their own eyes – they were the butchers history made them out to be, in the pre-enlightened age.  It made no sense to name ships in honor of men who had no honor.  It was the last thing they deserved – and an unfortunate slice of humanity's past, of which humans did not need to be reminded.  Did no one read the histories of such individuals before submitting their names?  And yet, there had been Starfleet vessels with such names in the past.  In fact, Eve Ordalani commanded a ship named after one of those barbarians, the USS DeSoto.

But then, there was the name of his own ship.  Arcadia was not a completely civilized state in ancient Greece.  Yet, he hadn't named her.

He had difficulty, again, focusing.  The lines and text of the holographic display faded and blurred; a fog clouded his vision.  His eyes thinned, before he realized he was squinting.  Maybe he needed to change his photocomtacts.  But, wait, they were nanobonded... They were supposed to be resistant to infection...

He felt a tingle, muscles and tendons tightening suddenly, inexplicably, at the lower end of his right arm, started to look, lifted and held his hand close, noticing the discoloration – the warm flesh shifting waxy, gray and brown, pock-marked with age spots.  Before his eyes, his fingers twisted at odd angles, of their own accord.  April envisioned gears with wires attached, those wires severed... and the digits they latched, his fingers, now askew, crooked twigs, bent, deformed, unnatural.

His heart skipped a beat and an alarmed chill stabbed through him.  He sat on the end of the bed.

Fifteen years ago, there was a Starfleet officer from Earth.  His name was Chakotay.  He came from a native tribe with a long and ancient history, in the Centram region of Noram – what was once Central America – known as the Rubber Tree People.  They engaged in meditative practices, rites of passage called 'vision quests', involving hallucinogenic drugs.  The drugs they used as catalysts had been deemed risky, until safer, technological alternatives were found.  Serving on the USS Voyager in the Delta Quadrant at the time, this man, Chakotay, used a tricorder to duplicate the drugs' effects for his own vision quests.  A fellow, Vulcan officer named Tuvok extrapolated a similar approach to initiating Vulcan mind melds.  Their developments were partially what led to the modern complants every Starfleet officer carried.

So it was, with a simple tricorder to enhance the link, Brenda linked hers and Stephen's minds... a way to heighten the sexual experience, to share more than just their bodies: A way to share their minds, to sense how each felt, through the other.  Not words, but more than words, flowed between them: Feelings, impressions, the mind-numbing ecstasy of orgasm.  It allowed them to become, for a brief moment, One.

In the sonic shower, she sensed something troubling.  Internal comlinks and quickly overlaid numerical data pinpointed the source: She was still receiving latent transmissions... thoughts, jumbled so that they made little structural sense in terms of sentences, but enough to realize that it was Stephen, and his mind was in disarray, chaotic.  Was he even aware that she was receiving?  She left the sonic shower to see what was wrong.  Eyeing the tricorder on the stand beside the bed, she realized they had forgotten to deactivate it.  The transmissions were still emanating... letting her feel him, inside, although she could not read the words in his thoughts; those were too chaotic.

Her green eyes scrambled, searching for her husband.

"Stephen?"

And then she spotted him, heaped at the foot of the bed.  Her hand flew to her mouth.

"All I can do is flush the nanites," Tabatha Brisk explained to 'Captain April', as she had explained to Admiral April once before.

Brenda held Stephen's hand tight in hers, standing alongside his biobed in the Arcadia's sickbay.  She leaned close, forehead to forehead.  He still had his complant.  Brenda had tried getting a mental response, but got none.  She sent to him, hoping he could hear on some subconscious level: Stephen... you're the best thing in my life.  I've never been so in love.  Don't go.  Don't leave me.

On the other side, the ship's doctor, Tabatha Brisk, hammered furiously at a medical padd, linked to the bio-diagnostic sensors beneath him.  "Captain—"

"Brenda."

"Brenda... I need to concentrate if I'm going to help him."  She wanted Brenda to leave.

"Well it would help if you tell me what's wrong with—"

"I don't know yet.  That's why I need to work."

"You'll consult with me before you do anything."  It was half a question, half a reminder of the rank between the two women.

Tabatha stopped and looked at her.

"He is my husband, remember," Brenda said.

April remembered, when he was young, taking one of the public classes in school.  Though based in Noram, the continent once known as North America, the Orchard Ridge Education Center was an interactive experience, conducted remotely, rather than inside a single building in one city.  Many Federation schools were so designed, out of necessity: They were a society 'on the go'.  Having to get up, go to another building or a city (or planet), sit for several hours then return, on a daily basis, was absurd when one could cut the trip.  Separate interaction centers took care of social development.  Students participated from the comfort of their homes, or ships, or space-stations, wherever they happened to be, via satellites and subspace communications.  It was 'just' learning; parents had the responsibility of providing the social interaction, skills kids would need as adults.  But some schools, including Orchard Ridge, offered supplemental courses to those in proximity, where they could get some of that interaction in on-site classrooms.  When Lorraine April wasn't warping around the galaxy, staying still long enough for it to make sense, she sent her children to those classes.

April had stayed late one day, in one of Noram's winter periods.  Dark came early.  Finally leaving the building, he noticed the stars coming out, peeking through the tattered cotton swaths of clouds, stopped on the steps and stared.  Every time he looked up at the sky... every time... he felt humbled, awed... and inspired.

In little ways, at times, and, less often, very much so, he felt as if he were the lone eye of a Cyclopean universe, open unto itself.  He could do nothing but sprawl, arms and legs and mind wide open, as the light hit him like a billion-ton starship, pouring in, rushing through, and weathered its blistering intensity... sucking it up to the very last portion, a humanoid-shaped black hole, then pushing it out – to be seen, by.... who?  Who alone, but him?

He had wished then, as he did always, that he could share that feeling with others.  If only one other person felt as he did... just one... it would have been a welcome relief – if he could not have more than one.  Surely, there were those who did feel the same, in the world.  But he didn't know them, at the time, who they were, or where they were to be found.  And so it was a bittersweet, melancholy thing.  A feeling of being alone.

Feelings of emptiness teased him, clawing at him inside.  Why... Why this angst, again?  Why did it keep returning to torment him...?

It was lonely, being who he was.  He supposed, deep down, he had no one else to blame.  No, truly he didn't.  Who built this wall around him, which he continually tore down, yet always found springing up again?  Who else, but him?  Which forced the question: Why?  To protect himself.  But to protect himself from... what?  Why did he always plague himself with this incessant questioning?

Whatever the reason, he was holed up, away from the world.  He walked through it.  He interacted with it.  But it did not touch him, anymore, like it once did.  He was always meant for bigger and better things.  He was meant to grow.  But this was not 'always' reaching them.  He kept returning to the same old thing: The worn path, always part of him; he could never let it go.  The higher dimensions of meaning eluded him... always tantalizingly there, at the periphery of perception, where he could imagine them and sensed, knew, they existed... yet they sat forever beyond his reach.  He was Tantalus, bound.  Out of touch.

How he longed to climb back up to the bridge, and just sit down in his chair.  Everything seemed simpler there.

It was suiting up to be one of those days... when everything happened, and there were so many things to think about, and it would sure give her a headache to have to think about them.  Tabatha Brisk was no brainiac.  That was all right; she knew her limitations, and prized them in fact.  Leave the deep stuff for Stephen or somebody who liked thinking and dealing with deeper matters.  But at times there was no escaping it.  She wanted to be the ship's doctor.  She had accepted a promotion to full commander; she must have wanted that too.  Days like today, she wished she could give it back, but that was pointless to wish.  She was here, and she had to deal with it.

Of course, it started with Stephen.  Automatic bioreadings, filtered by internal sensors, presented a new development in his condition.  Her nanoflush treatments had not worked.  Or, they did, just not as she expected.  A small percentage of a possibility existed in Starfleet Medical projections, where nanomods caused unplanned or adverse effects.  Leave it to Stephen April's nervous system to find the percentage and exploit it.

Tab hovered over the form of her long-time friend and commanding officer – she did not do it often, but enough that it seemed she did it too often – examining the results of his medical scans, again, his latest.  She eyed the biomonitor, looked at the med-padd, studied the monitor again.  She just didn't understand.

She was worried.  She hadn't thought about it, but Layla, her friend and nurse who had served beside her all these years, brought up a valid point in conversation, as they walked the corridors after their previous duty shifts.  Arcadia's biosensors were equipped to monitor for any sign of medical concern among the crew – including Stephen April.  Medical should have been notified automatically when his condition suffered a setback, en route to Memiklon.  Tab spoke with Davalos, monitoring the board in sickbay, and Gabria'zan, watching the bridge station.  Neither had noticed anything amiss – which was to say, nothing appeared wrong.  As if the sensors read 'all normal'.

"Don't keep me in suspense," April said.

"The nanites I prescribed are working," Tab said.  "Doing what they're supposed to do... what they think they should be doing.  But... what they're doing..."  Tab paused, utterly baffled.  April stared, waiting.  She lingered on the bioreadings, lost for words.  Losing patience, April sat up and yanked the medical tricorder from her.  Tab jumped, startled, then glared at him.  "Are you suddenly a doctor now?"

Staring at the device's holodisplay, April struggled to grasp what he was seeing.  With a sigh he returned it to her.  "Just tell me what's going on."

Tab understood his impatience; Stephen had a quick, instinctive intuition, and most of the time it served him well.  He wanted things fast; when he wanted something, he wanted it right now.  But Tab didn't think like that.  Intuitive imagination wasn't her strong suit, and sometimes it was just better to slow down, take things one step at a time – especially in her line of work, where a rush to judgment could have fatal consquences, literally.  This sparked questions of metaphor, morality; of philosophy.  She wasn't – didn't feel – qualified to make those calls.  She worked with things as they were.  But this required a new way of thinking, and time to develop it – time April didn't have.

She pocketed the tricorder with a sigh.  "Stephen, there's a war going on inside your body.  The nanites I prescribed are trying to save you.  The nanites which were already in your system, from previous injections up to three years ago... they're trying to 'un-make' you – turn you into something nature intended, not science.  Your body is... according to these readings... in the condition that it should be, for your age.  But your physiology... Your health doesn't compare to anyone on record in the same age group.  Do you remember needing eye-glasses, during the Wenga mission?  That's what I mean.  It's..."  She paused again, trying to find the words to describe.  "It's as if none of our medical science has made any difference.  Not even the treatments I've prescribed for you in the past.  It's like centuries of progress never happened for you... like... like you're out of date."  Tab stopped; her mouth fell, her face went blank and her eyes widened.  "I think that's it."

April shook his head.  "What?!"

"Stephen... think about this for a minute.  Follow along with me.  Medical science is geared towards extending the life of the individual.  If not for the state of Federation technology, humans, and a lot of other species, would live naturally shorter life spans.  Our cells and thus our health would deteriorate sooner, and more quickly.  It's in our genes.  Nature made it that way; we try to beat it.  But the nanites... erased it.  They've restored you to your natural condition, following the instructions written in your genes – as your body tells them it's supposed to be.  You're literally turning into an old man."

"I'm only fifty."

"Nature doesn't know better – and neither do nanites in this case.  Nor do your cells.  Before doctors started extending life-spans with external aids, the average life span for human males was around seventy.  Since you've been in good health, you may have longer, but the problems associated with aging are setting in, as would happen without medical prevention.  Your cellular deterioration, heart condition, failing eyesight...  Your forgetfulness was a condition known on Earth as Alzheimer's disease."  She hesitated; really hesitated.  Breaking bad news was something no doctor relished.  "Stephen... You could lose this battle."

"Lose...?  What does that mean...?"

"We don't... that is, I don't have the equipment, or the training, or the know-how, to deal with this.  All I can do is flush your system entirely.  But it can't undo what's done."

"Why not?  So why are you standing there telling me about it?  Why aren't you doing something?"

Tab turned to Amanda.  "I need a hypo; ten CC's, tetrovaline."  The nurse went to get the requested medicine.

"Tetrovaline?" April protested.  "That'll lower my immune response!"

"Yes, but it should also help the modified nanites trying to fight the previous nanomods."  Amanda returned, walking over, holding out the hypo.  Noting April's agitated state, Tab checked the med-cart, pulled an extra cartridge and inserted it – a dose of melorazine, a standard sedative.  "This will help you relax," she said, and injected him with the hypo.  "Make him comfortable," she told Amanda.  "Captain April—"  She spoke the term with an odd note.  "—can see him now.  I'll be in my office.  I have to make some calls."

"Yes, doctor."  Amanda turned and looked at April.

He looked at her, then down the length of the bed.  "So here we are again."

Whatever Amanda said to him, if anything, he did not hear right away, as Cadie spoke to him, through his complant: