"Inge, Norman - The Complexity of the Situation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Inge Norman)

\par \tab "She was near the colony at Omicron Theta."
\par \tab Picard stood there before his crew with a dumbfounded expression on his face. Omicron Theta? The vision in his dream had been of the colony there; the force wave had been destined to hit the planet. What if the dream was a vision of the future? He hoped it wasn't.
\par \tab "Captain!" shouted the ensign at the helm, "the Buran has just exploded! Wait Captain, a giant shock wave has just formed around the Buran's last coordinates. Sir, its headed straight for the colony."
\par \tab "You mean a force wave." It was a statement rather than a question. The captain stood silent for a moment carefully weighing the options that were beginning to unfold before him. The dreams he had held for the past two weeks were beginning to come true in rapid sucession. He remembered the feeling of being on the bridge alone, and the helplessness he felt when the wave had crashed into the Stargazer. He saw the image of the admiral standing before him, speaking to him with an understanding that Picard did not yet comprehend.
\par \tab "Captain." The word brought Picard back to reality, back to the here and now.
\par \tab "The force wave is heading straight for the planet. At its present speed it will disrupt the atmosphere killing everyone on the planets surface. What should we do?" the ensign looked up at Picard, a lapse of fear flashed through his young eyes and was gone.
\par \tab "E.T.A. till it hits the planet?" asked Picard. He had to maintain his stoic look so as not to frighten his young crew.
\par \tab "26 mins"
\par \tab It was all too eerie, thought Picard. In his dream the wave had been 26 mins from colliding with the Stargazer, and now in reality, it was 26 mins from killing thousands at Omicron Theta. The irony of it all. Was it conceivable that a dreamer could forsee the future before it even happened? Throughout Earth history there had always been talk of seers and psychics that could see into the future, but nothing had been prooved. But then again, it was said that belief in space travel was for the insane.
\par \tab Jean-Luc brushed the thought away. He was above all of that. The thought of things in which he could not see had always spurned his way of thinking. If you couldn't see it or proove it, then why waste the time to ponder it? It was his brash way of thinking that brought him to be. He was still young, not by years, but by thinking. He outnumbered his crew in age by some ten to twelve years, but his thinking had been based on the scientific; the research had to be tested and then prooved. Something unexplainable was just thrown into the category of a "freak of nature," these were not even researched, simply forgotten.
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\par \tab "Raise shields, move us onto an intercept course with the wave. Divert all power to the shields and deflector array," ordered the captain.
\par \tab "What is it you intend to do sir?" asked his first officer.
\par \tab "If we can divert enough power to the shields and to the deflector array then it is conceivable to "deflect" the brunt of the shock wave. Its risky but we can't just let those colonists die," explained Picard, "if we have to give our own life for them then so be it."
\par \tab Captain Jean-Luc Picard sat down in his command chair as his crew prepared for the job at hand. All non-essential decks were evacuated and life support shut down so as to boost the energy reserves on the ship. Warp engines were taken off-line, as well as replicators, giving more power to the shields.
\par \tab "5 minutes till impact." The computers twangy voice rang out over the intercom system.
\par \tab Shield power had been boosted to 128%, far higher than it had ever gone before, and the forward deflector dish stood ready for the incoming wave of destruction.
\par \tab The minutes passes and the lighting on the bridge was turned to minimal and then set on emergency. The Stargazer lay quiet, almost as if it was a sitting duck in space, as the approaching force wave roared closer.
\par \tab The voice in Picard's dream of the past night flared to life once more. \plain\f4\fs20\i When will you humans ever understand the true complexitiy of the situation?\plain\f4\fs20 He looked around the bridge and found his crew staring at him for strength but no stranger appeared. Was it right to ask every crew-man and woman to give up their life for thousands of strangers? To risk your life for someone you don't know and probably will never know? Wasn't that what was happening?
\par \tab The answer came swift to the jumbled questions in Captain Picard's mind, Starfleet. Upon entering the academy, it was known to all that they were the defenders of the peace, that they would build a better tomorrow and if putting your life on the line for strangers was part of the job then they were all for it. Starfleet had given him his strength, Starfleet had given him the family he yearned to have.
\par \tab A few lives for the many. If only a few could save a thousand then let it be done, it was the human thing to do.
\par \tab "You humans have such poor thinking concepts, no wonder you are destined for extinction," spoke the voice from the dream yet it came from without his memory.
\par \tab Quickly Picard looked to his left and found the man in the admiral uniform seated beside him. He was smiling.
\par \tab "You would give your measley life for those among the planet and not think twice on it? Is your value for life that low, that intolerable?"
\par \tab Jean-Luc began to speak but the other held up his hand to silence him.
\par \tab "It wouldn't look good for a Starfleet Captain to be talking to himself on his bridge now would it? You see my old friend, only you can see me, only you can hear me. Just listen to what I have to say before this force wave tears apart your ship and scatters your worthless bodies across the galaxy.
\par \tab "In the coming years you will see wonders that you cannot begin to imagine or explain. Things straight out of a child's imagination could spawn them, but no, not from someone as prude as you. But in time even you will learn the evolution gap that has widened this generation from the one's past. I will make you a promise Jean-Luc Picard. By journey's end you will encounter so much that you will begin to question your own existence, your own purpose for being here. And in the end you will see..."
\par \tab "Captain, impact in thirty seconds!" shouted a crewman.
\par \tab "Who are you? What is it that you want?" shouted Picard as the force wave moved closer on the viewscreen. The end was near.
\par \tab "You will see, Picard, you will see," replied the mysterious man in the admiral's uniform, "but remember Jean-Luc...all good things must come to an end."
\par \tab With that the force wave crashed into the Stargazer sending her crew flying with the contact. The bluish wave engulfed the vessel, seeming to caress its every nook and cranny. Fires erupted all over the ship as alarms wailed in every corridor, every deck. The blast knocked out power to the lower half of the ship but the shields remained intact and the deflector array managed to deflect the magnitude of the forceful hit into the space beyond. In a flash of blue light, intermingled with red and green, the wave dissapated and was no more. The Stargazer would live to see another day and the colonist of Omicron Theta would live for the time being.
\par \tab The bridge crew of the Stargazer gathered around their fallen captain sprawled out on the floor. Droplets of blood ran from a gash in his forehead and burn marks scoured his ashen face.
\par \tab Cautiously, Picard opened his eyes and looked upon the faces of the men and women that would give their life for him.
\par \tab "He said his name was Q. He told me right before the wave hit, he said his name was Q," whispered the Captain.
\par \tab "Q? Who is Q?" replied the first lieutenant curiously.
\par \tab But before Jean-Luc could answer he slipped back into darkness and drifted off into the limbo between reality and fantasy. For two days the captain of the Stargazer lay in sickbay, motionless.
\par \tab At the end of the second day, he awoke with no memory of the events that had unfolded over the past few days. He even had no recollection of the dreams that plagued him over the weeks preceeding. He remembered nothing.
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\par \tab Three days later he recovered fully with no side-effects from his injuries and returned to active duty as captain of the U.S.S. Stargazer. The colony at Omicron Theta displayed their thanks with little attention to the matter and nothing more, it was almost as if they wanted nothing to do with the force wave that nearly destroyed them, and the ship that saved their lives.
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\par \tab Weeks later, the U.S.S. Tripoli was sent to a distress call emanating from Omicron Theta. It seemed that an unidentified ship had attacked the colonists leaving nothing behind except for an android of some sort. Records showed that a giant crystaline structure attacked the planet, destroying all in its sight. The purpose of the assault was unclear but it was definitely directed at the planet and its colonists, just as the wave, but this time there was no one there to save them.
\par \tab The irony of it all.
\par \tab As ironic as the complexity of human existence.
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\par \plain\f4\fs20\i (c) Norman Inge, Jr. 1996
\par All rights reserved.
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