Reality Is Fluid, Part I

And the battle's just begun
There's many lost, but tell me who has won
The trench is dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters
Torn apart

Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday

How long...
How long must we sing this song
How long, how long...

— "Sunday Bloody Sunday", U2

"This project ushers in a new era of cooperation between Cardassia and Bajor. We are healing the wounds of the Occupation and the Dominion War, blah blah blah." Okay, that last part was me.

I hate this. I hate having to wear my dress whites. I hate having to sit still for pompous, overweight, overpaid politicos like First Minister Arvel Selan when the Bajor Cup is going on. (Seriously, I've got a hundred credits on Tomis Lee in the quarter-finals and they're playing right now!) I hate getting pulled off more important duties like the Jenolan patrol to listen to these verbosities. I hate this insane idea for invasive scans of the Celestial Temple. Actually, I'm not alone on that last one: the Vedek Assembly, Kai Kira, and Captain Kurland and Admiral Marconi all filed formal protests all the way up to the Federation Council. One or two of the more conservative vedeks actually threatened Arvel with excommunication if he let the project go forward (although that was vetoed, unfortunately).

Most of all, I hate being forced to choose between being Bajoran and being a Starfleet officer. I've been ordered by my legal chain of command to take part in this thing, because it'll supposedly look good for the Federation to have a Bajoran captain with a fifteen percent-Bajoran crew, commanding a ship named USS Bajor, testing out this new trans-temporal/planar sensor array, and though I've protested to as many people as I can think of, at this point it's basically either do it or resign.

Supposedly I'm representative of some overpaid analyst's idea of the "new Bajor" since I'm part of the post-Dominion War generation, and it's in my file that I'm not particularly religious (a "Christmas and Easter Christian", Warragul calls it, although I think that's exaggerating). But though I may not put much stock in all the prophecies and other gibberish I'm still Bajoran and I still worship the Prophets. At the same time, objectively I know these people know what they're doing and that therefore it's not really important enough to resign my commission over. So I'm stuck.

Oh, good, that damn windbag's finally shut up. I make a mental note to vote for, well, whoever the phekk is running against him in the next election, and force myself to pay attention to Admiral Marconi, commander of the Beta Ursae Fleet Area. Poor man looks about as pleased to see the Cardassians here as the rest of Bajor who listen to the news. "… We are, ahem, very pleased to have with us Professor Atani Dukat, representing the Cardassian Science Ministry, who will be providing the briefing."

What, Castellan Lang couldn't be bothered to attend in person? Shows how important this stupidity really is to Cardassian-Bajoran reconciliation. "Thank you, Admiral. I'm honored to be here on Deep Space 9, where so many momentous events during my childhood took place." Yeah, I just bet you are. Then I realize she's looking at me. "And I'm humbled to be able to meet a Bajoran in a Federation uniform, look her in the eye, and be able to tell her, I'm sorry. For everything my people, and especially my father, the late, unlamented Gul Skrain Dukat, did to both your peoples."

Oh. That Dukat. Then the rest of the sentence percolates through my brain. "Um. Uh, thank you, I guess."

"Small consolation, I'm sure. It's going to take a lot longer than forty years to heal those wounds. I'm just hoping to contribute a little."

The briefing doesn't tell me anything I don't already know. The project, codenamed Schrödinger's Butterfly for some reason, came out of a couple of incursions by the Terran Empire in the so-called mirror universe last year. As best I understand it it's an attempt to detect and observe alternate realities close enough to us that the Celestial Temple, what everyone else calls the Bajoran wormhole, can connect to them. My eyes pretty much glazed over after that. All I know is, they want my ship, specifically, for political reasons as previously noted, and they're making modifications to the deflector dish to do it. Apparently the existing sensor arrays weren't powerful enough or something. Yeah, on a Galaxy-class starship. That's Starfleet Science for you: a nav deflector is for generating weird particles, not for pushing crap out of your way when you're at warp.

Captain Kurland elbows me. "Kanril, we're done."

"What? Oh. Sorry, must've dozed off." I stand and head to the door. Maybe I can catch the tail end of the springball match at Quark's.

I got lucky, managed to get to the bar in time to see Tomis Lee, a cute redhead from my home province of Kendra, body-check Ahanu Terel clean out of the ring. Part of the bar erupts in cheers and I join in. I grab barman Hadron's shirt sleeve and tell him, "Hathon hammer."

"What?"

"Hathon hammer!" I shout at him.

"Okay!"

I turn back to the game on the screen hung from the second floor railing over the dabo table, which has been shut down for the duration. Ahanu, who's a quarter Cardassian and looks it, is rubbing his shoulder and looks pissed at Tomis.

Somebody touches my shoulder. "Is this seat taken?"

I turn. It's Gaarra. "Really? You use that line on me, again?"

"It worked the first time, didn't it?"

I laugh and point a finger at him. "Don't think that just because I'm not saying 'no' that you get lucky tonight. I'm still your captain."

"Look, Eleya? Right now I just want to watch the game and get good and plastered so I don't have to think about what they're doing to my deflector dish or what the Prophets are going to think about us poking around in the Temple."

I snort. "Don't remind me. Hell, I heard Marconi went all the way up to SecDef about it. HEY! That's a foul! Y'trel bo tava tu san yc'fel, Dakhur'etil va'yaputal!"

"You wanna come over here and say that?" somebody from the Ahanu cheering section hollers.

"No fighting! No fighting!" Hadron yells, panicking.

"Relax, Hadron, just an honest insult match between folk. I would but I'm busy drinking over here!" I yell back at the tough guy. I hear somebody in that direction burst out laughing and Gaarra sniggers next to me.

"Is this seat taken?"

This time it's that Cardassian woman, Atani Dukat. "That seems to be a popular line around here. Go ahead. He's got some kanar."

"Thanks, but no thanks. I've never liked it much. Bartender, Samarian sunset please."

I sneak a closer look at her as she sits down to my right. Graying black hair tied back with a dark red ribbon, hooked nose, scale ridge around the eyes isn't too prominent. The eyes are the right color for that monster but everything else is way off. "I take after my mother, if that's what you're wondering, Captain," she says without looking at me.

"Didn't mean to stare."

"It's all right. Not every day you meet someone who's related to an infamous war criminal."

"I didn't—"

She sighs and rests her head in her left hand, looking at me askance. "You didn't have to. I know that look. Captain Kanril, I'm sure you won't believe me but I really did mean what I said during the briefing."

"Look, Professor," Gaarra says, "I get what you're trying to do, but you're focused on the political aspects of this and missing the religious side."

"No, I'm not, actually." She sits up and turns to face us as Hadron comes back with our drinks. "You're worried about the wormhole aliens, the Prophets. I don't agree with your beliefs but I have the utmost respect for them. I actually argued against Schrödinger's Butterfly to the Ministry for months but I was ignored." She takes a sip of her drink. "I finally volunteered to run the project when it became clear it was going to happen whether I liked it or not, so best to do it myself so I know it gets done right. I imagine that's sort of why you two are staying on."

"Partly," I admit.

"See? We can agree that it's a bad idea, at least." The Cardassian raises her glass. "Truce?"

"Yeah, all right. Truce." The three of us clink glasses and drink.

She turns to look at the springball match. "So who's winning?" she asks, changing the subject.

"Ahanu's up one because the referee's going blind," Gaarra answers, "but Tomis has time to close it up. Yep, there he goes, wow!" The bar erupts in cheers again.

Then the buzzer sounds. Tie game, meaning sudden death. Ahanu serves, Tomis returns, Ahanu rams him and sends it high, Tomis jumps and swats it down, Ahanu rushes forward but his return is out of the ring and the match is over! The cheering is deafening and I grab Gaarra's head and kiss him.

"Everything ready?" I ask Gaarra. It's 1032 hours and he's supervising the last of the installation.

"One more connection, the stress test, and then we get to the scanning," he answers. "Hey, be careful with that!" he yells at one of the Bajorans from the Center for Science who dropped something that looked expensive.

"Sorry, Lieutenant."

"Commander," one of Gaarra's petty officers corrects him.

"Commander, sorry. Look, no damage. No harm, no foul, right?"

"Get it stowed, Mr. Ameno." Gaarra turns back to me with an exasperated look on his face. "Civilians."

"Don't I know it," I say with a chuckle. "Bellevue, you ready?"

"Aye, Captain," the petty responds. "Stress test coming out green across the board. We're good to go."

"Okay. Be careful, Commander."

"Hey. It's me."

I head for the turbolift and the bridge while Gaarra stays behind to monitor the deflector in person. I plop down in The Chair. "Ensign Esplin, we're ready to roll. Request clearance for departure."

"Aye, ma'am," the Saurian confirms. "DS9 Flight Control, this is USS Bajor, requesting clearance to launch."

"Kurland here. You're cleared to launch, Bajor."

"Lieutenant Park, you may begin undocking."

"Aye, Captain. Docking tube disengaged," the conn officer reports. "Umbilicals disengaged. Docking clamps retracted. We are detached. Firing starboard thrusters." The ship slides sideways ten meters. "Firing aft thrusters." The ship begins to slowly accelerate. "We are clear of the station."

"Let's hope the rest of the day goes this smoothly. Move us to the coordinates. Master Chief, is there anything coming through the wormhole?"

"Not for another three days," Master Chief Wiggin answers. "Our listening posts on the far side all read negative for ship traffic."

"Professor Dukat, your team ready?"

"We're ready," the Cardassian woman confirms from one of the secondary consoles. "By the way, Captain Kanril, can I compliment you on your science officer? Commander Riyannis really knows her astrophysics. I had a good time talking n-dimensional subspace mechanics with her earlier."

"Ma'am, I have no idea what you just said but I'll accept the compliment."

"Captain," Park says, "we're in position."

"All stop. Thrusters to station-keeping. Professor, you have sensor control."

"I have sensor control," she confirms. "Um, no, I don't."

"Master Chief?"

"Hang on. There, try it now."

"Thank you." She presses her intercom key. "Schrödinger's team, this is Professor Dukat. Let's do this by the book. I'm going to start with a low power scan and slowly ramp it up. Let's give it a three-second pulse, default settings. Mark." There's a faint hum through the floor as the deflector powers up. "Okay, got a good return on that one. Hm, interesting. I'm picking up a station in the same position as our Deep Space 9, but it's a Federation configuration. Okay, let's go again. 2.8 gigahertz, amplitude 12, two seconds. Mark." Hum. "That's a … Dominion alloy signature, big enough to be a Jem'Hadar battle squadron transiting the wormhole. That may be an alternate timeline where the alliance lost the war."

"Any chance they picked up the pulse?" Wiggin asks. He's getting at Rule #1 of active sensors: if you can see them, they can see you.

"There's always a chance but it's likely they wouldn't know what to do with it if they did. At least in our timeline, we know the Founders place the same restrictions on temporal research as the rest of us."

"How many more scans left in the program?" I ask.

"Six, Captain. Today's mainly for proof of concept, just to confirm that the theory works and maybe get us some hints on how to control which timeline we're looking at. Test three, 2.9 gigahertz, amplitude 13, four seconds. Mark."

And all Hell breaks loose. Sirens start shrieking and a faint jolt is conducted through the floor. "Status!" I bark.

"EPS conduit failure in Deflector Control!" an ops noncom answers. "Picking up a power surge! Controls nonresponsive!"

"Medical and damage control teams to Deflector Control!" Tess orders into her intercom. "What in the—"

On the viewscreen my worst fears are realized as a coruscating beam of golden light erupts from beneath the saucer, lancing straight out at the Celestial Temple. The wormhole erupts, blue swirl now tinged with gold. I hear Biri yell something about the wormhole's event horizon expanding but all I can do is sit there. "Prophets, what have we done?"

There's an instant of blinding light and the bridge is empty but for me. "Hello?" I stand and look around. The viewscreen is blank and snowed over with static.

"Hello," a warm voice comes from behind me.

I turn. It's a human in an old '70s-era uniform, dark skin, goatee, shaved bald. "Ni'dal," I breathe. "Emissary."

"The answer to your question is, nothing that wasn't intended. The Prophets play the long game, always have. You didn't do any damage to the wormhole that it won't recover from easily." He looks me up and down. "A Bajoran in a Starfleet command uniform, with captain's insignia. I didn't know if I'd ever see the day."

"I'm not the first, Emissary." It's the truth. There's been at least thirty other Bajoran COs in Starfleet by now. One of them, Kel Nola, class of '87, even died commanding a Galaxy-class.

"Call me Ben. No, Captain Kanril, you're not the first, but you're important to the Prophets. You, more than any of the others, are important to them. I guess they would say, 'You are of Bajor,' and it's true in more ways than one."

"Okay, so I'm important. What now?"

"Well, now you're going to fulfill Emer Dareloth's Second Prophecy. I believe it reads, 'The sky turns to water. The daughter of the valley travels in the sky. Enemies become allies to stem the coming tide.'"

Oh, lovely. "I've never put much stock in the prophecies, Emis—Captain. Even when they do come true, they never come true the way anyone predicts. Hell, you yourself ran into that with Trakor's Third, or so I read. Kind of makes them hard to use as a guide to anything."

"You may not put much stock in the prophecies but the prophecies put stock in you." Sisko turns and waves a hand at the viewscreen, which shifts to show the springball match I was watching earlier. "The Prophets play the long game, as I said, but they also have to allow for free will or the game breaks down. They're also not the only player in the springball match: this universe of ours is littered with entities of similar power."

"Are you talking about Q?"

"Q is one example. The Organians are another."

"Refresh my memory, please?"

"They enforced a peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire in the 2260s that led directly to the signing of the Khitomer Accords in 2293. They haven't been active in our area of space for a long while but that could always change. But you don't need to worry about that. You need to worry about your duty to your crew. You mostly have the right idea about the prophecies: they either get fulfilled or they don't, in the course of sapient beings acting on their own. Don't try to be a great person. Just be a good person, and let history make its own judgments. I'm close to out of time here—"

"'Time'? Really?"

"Unavoidable pun, I'm afraid. As I was saying, the only specific guidance I'm allowed to give you is a warning: You have a saboteur aboard."

"The Cardassians?"

"I've said as much as I'm allowed to. The Prophets piggy-backed on his plan, which compared to other attempts to destroy this place was rather pathetic. All he did was temporarily redirect the Idran system side."

"To where?"

"You'll figure it out on your own quickly enough. He's still dangerous to you and your crew, which endangers the prophecy and the Alpha Quadrant. Watch your back, Kanril Eleya."

END OF PART ONE

Author's Notes: This story was written for Literary Challenge #64 on the Star Trek Online forums. The gist of the challenge was that your ship is being used as a testbed for a sensor array jointly developed by the Federation, Bajorans, and Cardassians, with the test site being the Bajoran wormhole. Something goes pear-shaped and gets you thrown into some unusual form of space. I get the feeling that when Captain Smirk picked that topic, s/he didn't account for the fact that one of the forum regulars has a Bajoran, Prophet-worshiping POV character, which is where the sociopolitical miniplot comes from.

I've decided from this challenge that it's fun writing Eleya when she's pissed off at the universe in general, as in the start of this chapter, and that I need to find more excuses to do it.

The other authors in the challenge thought my handling of Ben Sisko was pretty good. It's always tricky to write other people's characters and I'm glad I pulled it off, especially since Sisko's my favorite of the five captains.

I've been on a Babylon 5 tear lately, and Professor Dukat was inspired by the episode "The Coming of Shadows", where Emperor Turhan of the Centauri Republic tries to mend fences with the Narns by giving G'Kar a formal apology for the Centauri occupation of the Narn homeworld. It doesn't go nearly as well as Dukat's attempt, unfortunately.

The universe they detect where there's a Federation station in place of Deep Space 9 is supposed to be the novelverse timeline, where DS9 got blown up by the Typhon Pact in 2384 and replaced.

The Kel Nola that Eleya mentions was the captain of the USS Musashi, a GCS that the player blows up in the Klingon tutorial.