Star Trek: Erin

Part 32: Meanwhile the Dreamers

     I gasped awake. My hands instinctively shot towards my head, and I felt needles of pain shoot up from my wrists, nearly overshadowed by sharper lines tracing my forearms. Faint light filtered through the red film in front of my face. I'm alive. How do I stay that way? I moved my hand downward, trying to reach my hip. Each tiny movement was excruciating, but my hand finally wrapped around my phaser.

     I squeezed the trigger.

     A high-pitched scree seemed to echo from everywhere. With a wet hiss, a slit in the film opened, and I fell forward into the air. I tried to turn the fall into a graceful roll, but my legs were weaker than normal, and I ended up sprawled on the floor.

     Glancing up, I saw I'd come from one of the bright red bulbs. The area was low-ceilinged and roughly circular, its walls lined with more bulbs. From the shadows within, none of the others were occupied. I breathed a sigh and picked myself up from the floor. Well, that was... My hand touched my forehead, where I remembered an impact. And then here.

     I died. Did Gabriel? Long scrapes ran down my forearms; while they should've been bleeding, there was a pale green film over them that looked very unhealthy. So I'm the me that fell with Gabriel in the atrium. That's good, right? I frowned. Was all of that real?

     "Ah, did they shoot you? I got tossed off the satellite." I had my phaser pointed at the voice in half a second. In front of me, a messy-haired thirty-something in a very dirty lab coat partially held together by tape raised his hands tentatively. "Don't shoot?" he said nasally.

     I squinted at his name tag. "Acker?"

     Oh.

     So it was real.

     I holstered my phaser and stuck out a hand. "Junior Lieutenant Cobos. What's going on?"

     He shook my hand. Kind of regretted it because his was covered in what was probably dried plant matter, but I wasn't sure. Either way, it made a crunching noise. Acker nodded. "Pleased to meet you, and it's a long story."

     "Do you have somewhere to be?"

     "Yeah, actually." He glanced at his wrist, which didn't have a watch. "We have time for a couple questions before we have to go to the daily meeting."

     "Uh, sure." He's admin. "Are there any other Starfleet here?"

     "No."

     Thank god. Although, this might be a bit... traumatic for Gabriel. She basically saw me get shot in the head. I winced and rubbed my forehead. If she's smart enough to not start a phaserfight, Tetra and soon the Enterprise will know about my death, and they'll try to resolve this as cleanly as possible.

     I need to make sure they don't leave me behind when the terraforming field drops. In less than forty minutes.

     Shit.

     First things first. Information.

     "So if all—" I gestured at the ceiling. "—that was real, how am I here?"

     "Not sure. The memories of the other 'you' seem to be given by the plants somehow. Technically it was a perfect copy of you walking around, and you could've basically spoken to yourself if you weren't trapped down here. Would've been fascinating, eh?" He made a fidgety movement. "I suppose that means you didn't get a copy of anyone... else's memories?"

     "Huh?"

     "When your clone dies its memories are sent to anyone still in a pod. It's a strange experience, I can attest. I just wanted to know because—" He scuffed a foot. "Because I think there might be more people like us. I've done my best to account for everyone, but it's a big facility. Staff kept to their own departments before."