* * *
Trujillo had decided not to beam down with the diplomatic team, given that the day’s negotiations agenda was devoid of any topics of substantive value. If the people of a crumbling planet wanted to try to negotiate long-term trade rights to their agricultural goods, that was their business. She did not have to participate in their tragic theatrics.
She was in her quarters, finalizing her report to Starfleet Command regarding the Romanii and their stumbling attempts at arranging some kind of evacuation of a small portion of their population to somewhere safe.
“The Klingons really like their knives, don’t they?” a voice asked innocently, startling her.
Trujillo came halfway out of her chair, inadvertently driving her left knee into the side of her desk and causing her to gasp in pain.
A human male clad in Romanii garb stood across from her, inspecting a Klingon d’k tagh knife that he held in one hand. He was dark complected, with curly black hair and bright brown eyes that seemed to radiate warmth and intelligence. He wore a simple tunic and shorts made from cotton, under a traditional Roman toga. His feet were bound with the crisscrossed leather straps of ancient Roman caligae sandals.
The commodore had discarded her heavier uniform tunic in favor of a vest worn over her white turtleneck divisional shirt. Thankfully, she’d remembered to transfer her combadge to her vest. Trujillo slapped at her communicator, shouting, “Trujillo to security!”
There was no response and the intruder simply looked at her, his expression unconcerned.
“Trujillo to bridge.”
There was still no answer.
“That’s not going to work, is it?” she asked finally.
“No,” said her uninvited guest. “I’ve arranged for our privacy. I assure you that I mean you no harm.”
“Says the person holding the knife. Are you going to stab me with that or are you just admiring it?” she asked, gesturing to the Klingon blade in his hand.
“Oh,” he said, acting as if he’d forgotten the weapon entirely. “Apologies.” He set the knife down on her desk. “Just admiring it.”
She bent over, rubbing her knee ruefully. “Is there a reason for your visit or do you just get your jollies by scaring the shit out of us poor, lesser life forms?”
He smiled disarmingly. “I thought we should speak. Again, I apologize for my sudden appearance. My corporeal social graces are a bit… rusty.”
“Apology accepted.” She gestured to the sitting area, a couch set against the outer bulkhead facing two comfortable chairs, separated by a low coffee table. “Make yourself comfortable. I need a drink. Medicinal, you understand. For my knee.”
He laughed lightly, taking a seat on the couch. “Of course. Could I bother you for some of your North American corn whiskey?”
“Any particular label?” she called back to him over her shoulder.
“The good stuff,” he said, flipping through a hard-copy photo album sitting atop the table. It contained numerous images of Trujillo throughout her career in a variety of different environments.
Trujillo obligingly poured two glasses and returned, handing one to the stranger before taking a seat in one of the chairs facing him. “What should I call you?”
“Something simple, I’d think. John, perhaps?”
“And what species do you represent, John?” she asked.
He sipped at his drink, holding it up to gaze appreciatively at it. “That’s quite good, thank you.” In response to her query he said, “Does it really matter? Naming a thing gives it a special kind of power, don’t you think? It sticks in the mind and causes unnecessary fixation. I’d rather you simply think of me and my people as just another of those quasi-deity-level races capable of all manner of miracles.”
“So, super-advanced aliens with the ability to manipulate matter, time, energy, and space without visible mechanical assistance. Got it.”
He gestured behind him to where a floating apparition mimicking his appearance took shape, wavering with ghost-like transparency. The figure asked in a booming, echoing voice, “Or would you prefer something more traditional?”
She surprised herself by laughing aloud. “No, thank you,” she said, gesturing to the figure seated across from her. “This will do just fine.”
The spectral figure vanished.
“First, I would like to apologize for this mess on behalf of my people.” John waved in the general direction of the planet they orbited.
“You’re the ones who flung this world into this system like a bocce ball?”
He winced in response, inclining his head. “An… indelicate description, but unfortunately rather apt.”
“May I ask why?”
He made a gesture with his hands, half plea, half shrug. “Please keep in mind that this was very long ago for us, far longer than the chronological time between the planet’s creation and the present. We have the ability to move beyond linear time, you see. I’m actually from several millennia from now, in what you would consider the far future.”
She nodded, prompting him to continue as she sampled her whiskey again.
“We were relatively young, just having evolved into our energy-state only centuries before, and some among us became fascinated with Earth and its colorful cultures and history. Now, we could have easily, and with far less destruction, I might add, have done all this via simulations in a dimensional multiform computational substrate.”
“Pardon?” she inquired with a quirked eyebrow.
“Basically, a supercomputer made from the fabric of space/time itself, established in series of linked pocket dimensions. You can create entire simulated multidimensional multiverses in there and let them run at whichever speed you desire.”
“And your friends thought creating all this chaotic mess and heartache was better?”
He sighed, appearing embarrassed. “As I said, we were young, newly god-like, and feeling our collective oats. Those of us responsible for Magna Roma wanted to fling planets about simply because they could. Keep in mind that our ascension to this higher state of being also came with the loss of our physical forms and nearly everything that had grounded us to reality as corporeal beings.”
He took a drink, savoring the liquid for a long moment before swallowing. “There was an unfortunate and unanticipated loss of empathy inherent in this process, at least there was for us. My fellows who created this world saw its people as little more than you might regard the bacteria in a Petri dish.”
Trujillo started to object, and John held up a mollifying hand. “I know, it’s terrible, and especially humiliating now that we’ve advanced beyond those early stages. Nevertheless, no one among us ever thought to come and clean up their mess after their little social experiment had run its course.”
“Too many other priorities?” she said, not bothering to mask her sarcasm.
“Far too many, honestly,” he conceded. “This isn’t the only universe, and entropy is a multi-universal constant. Things tend to go topsy-turvy with harrowing regularity out there, requiring the intervention of many of those ‘sublimed’ species, ours included.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that like you, we’re frequently putting out fires, only we’re doing it on a multitude of higher planes of existence.”
Trujillo finished her drink, setting the glass on the table separating them. She sat back in the chair, hands clasped in her lap.
“Who creates a populated planet with a three-millennia lifespan?”
“Beings with far too much curiosity and grossly insufficient empathy, as I said.”
She cocked her head, studying John closely. “May I infer from what you’ve said that you’re here now to help?”
“I would certainly like to, but I have arrived here only to discover that my hands are effectively tied.”
She issued an incredulous snort. “By whom?”
“That’s the issue at hand, Commodore. I don’t know. Whatever it is, it is significantly more powerful than I am.”
She shook her head; not certain she was hearing him correctly. “There’s something out there you can’t see that’s exerting an influence you can’t overcome?”
“Correct,” he affirmed. “I can travel to any point in space and time in your universe, except for the seventy-four years, four months, and seventeen days that were the mortal lifespan of the individual the Children of the Son call ‘The Mother.’”
“Their messiah?”
“Correct again.”
She sat forward, her eyes alight with intensity. “I’m still confused about this whole Mother and Son dynamic. Please explain.”
“It’s the highest secret of their faith. When their messiah was born, their church took the name of the Children of the Son as a grand deception. The Romanii, being a patriarchal society, never considered for an instant that the messiah might be a female, and so killed tens of thousands of boys and men, trying to snuff out an existential threat to their state monopoly on religion. All the while, the messiah hid in plain sight.”
“You said something, when you were inhabiting Ensign Ibragimova, about not being able to see her. What did that mean?”
John took another sip of his whiskey, dissecting its undertones before replying. “I can’t see her through any of my senses, which extend far beyond the six basic senses known to most humanoid species. Even when I was reviewing the memories of the old man Helvia sought out on the surface, I couldn’t see her. Just the shape of her, not her physical person, not her voice.”
“Hmm,” Trujillo said thoughtfully. “You’ve been out-goded.”
He finished his glass, smirking. “So it would seem. Also, and I hate to be pedantic, but that’s not a word.”
She dipped her head, yielding the point. “If you were not being held in check by this entity, what might you do on behalf of the Romanii?”
“I could transport them en mass to another life-sustaining planet, or simply repair the entropic damage to Magna Roma’s interior. This super-entity won’t allow me to do either.”
“It wants the destruction of the planet and the death of its six-billion inhabitants?”
“I can’t say. It certainly doesn’t appear to want me to stop the process that’s currently underway.”
“And you don’t know why?”
“It won’t communicate with me, or with others that I’ve enlisted to help. Some were members of my species; others were from some of the other Elder races. It steadfastly ignored us.”
“What is it?” Trujillo asked.
“Perhaps a member of one of the first peoples, from when the universe was young? The oldest of the Elders? Or… a god.”
She blinked, dumbstruck. “You’re not actually suggesting it’s an genuine deity?”
John shrugged. “What is a god? To you, I am a god. Perhaps relative to me, it is. Whatever this being really is, whatever its origin, it has rendered me powerless to assist the Romanii. I’m quite curious to see if your evacuation ships will be allowed to approach the planet.”
“You think it would object to a scant few thousands of the Romanii being relocated?”
“It might. Perhaps it feels some parental obligation to them, abandoned by us as they were."
Trujillo shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable with that notion. “I fail to see how something that feels a parental responsibility for a species could just sit by while they’re extinguished by their dying planet.”
John waggled a finger chidingly. “You’re applying human morality to a being that is likely profoundly different from your species. It might be so far removed from the corporeal that it no longer experiences humanoid emotions or thought patterns.”
“It just lived over seventy years as a human on Magna Roma. Wasn’t that the point?” she countered.
“I wouldn’t presume to know its motivations or its mindset,” John demurred. “Additionally, we don’t know that the woman was the embodiment of the entity, only that it doesn’t want me to encounter her or even experience people’s memories of her.”
“Fair point,” Trujillo admitted. She appeared lost in thought for a moment, and then set her gaze back upon her unexpected guest. “Not to rudely change the topic mid-stream, but I’ve had quite enough of you jumping into my people and manipulating their actions. It’s inappropriate, a fundamental violation of their free will and bodily agency.”
John’s head dropped again. “You’re right, of course. Again, I apologize. Sometimes I still go with the most expedient course without stopping to consider the ethical implications of my actions.” He looked at his hands, turning them over to inspect the fine lines and pores of his skin. “I really should do this more often. When I’m in my non-corporeal form, humanoids are so fundamentally woven into the fabric of space/time that you almost appear part of the scenery. It’s easy for us to forget that you’re sentient.”
Trujillo appeared taken aback at this admission. “You can’t be serious?”
His expression grew somber. “Very much so. You are so grounded in the material, so slow, so short-lived that to a being that spends most of its time on multiple levels of existence simultaneously, you look like…” he blanched, seemingly embarrassed at the admission. “…like meat.”
She winced at that, making John look all the more sheepish at the confession.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked, sensing that this unusual meeting was drawing to a close.
“Not at present,” John said, rising to his feet. He gestured to his now empty glass. “Thank you for the drink, and the conversation.”
Trujillo smiled every so slightly. “It’s a first for me, to be sure. I’ve never conversed with a god before, at least not that I know of.”
John appeared momentarily thoughtful. “Not true. You had a lovely chat with a Douwd once when you were six, at Jesuitas Park in Salamanca.”
Trujillo chuckled uncertainly. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“So you should,” he affirmed.
“How might I get in contact with you should that be required during the remainder of this mission?” Trujillo asked.
A clear, crystalline business card bearing the inscription ‘John – Divinity Consultant’ appeared in his hand and he extended it to her. “Just hold this up and call my name. That will suffice.”
She grew subdued suddenly. “I’ll admit to having my issues with the Romanii, but they’re human. Is there any hope for them?”
“There is always hope,” John answered. “They still have time, and our new ultra-god friend might change its mind. Believe me, I’ve seen more than you would believe, and anything is possible.”
“Bridge to Commodore Trujillo,” came Davula’s voice across the intraship.
“Go ahead, Commander,” Trujillo replied reflexively, only belatedly realizing that John had obviously restored the comms. She turned by habit towards the location of the overhead speaker in her cabin.
“Priority transmission coming in from the Koh Yor for you, sir.”
She turned back to say her farewells to John, only to find he had vanished. The card in her hand was the only evidence that she had not imagined the encounter.
“Pipe it through to me down here, XO.”
* * *
Trujillo had decided not to beam down with the diplomatic team, given that the day’s negotiations agenda was devoid of any topics of substantive value. If the people of a crumbling planet wanted to try to negotiate long-term trade rights to their agricultural goods, that was their business. She did not have to participate in their tragic theatrics.
She was in her quarters, finalizing her report to Starfleet Command regarding the Romanii and their stumbling attempts at arranging some kind of evacuation of a small portion of their population to somewhere safe.
“The Klingons really like their knives, don’t they?” a voice asked innocently, startling her.
Trujillo came halfway out of her chair, inadvertently driving her left knee into the side of her desk and causing her to gasp in pain.
A human male clad in Romanii garb stood across from her, inspecting a Klingon d’k tagh knife that he held in one hand. He was dark complected, with curly black hair and bright brown eyes that seemed to radiate warmth and intelligence. He wore a simple tunic and shorts made from cotton, under a traditional Roman toga. His feet were bound with the crisscrossed leather straps of ancient Roman caligae sandals.
The commodore had discarded her heavier uniform tunic in favor of a vest worn over her white turtleneck divisional shirt. Thankfully, she’d remembered to transfer her combadge to her vest. Trujillo slapped at her communicator, shouting, “Trujillo to security!”
There was no response and the intruder simply looked at her, his expression unconcerned.
“Trujillo to bridge.”
There was still no answer.
“That’s not going to work, is it?” she asked finally.
“No,” said her uninvited guest. “I’ve arranged for our privacy. I assure you that I mean you no harm.”
“Says the person holding the knife. Are you going to stab me with that or are you just admiring it?” she asked, gesturing to the Klingon blade in his hand.
“Oh,” he said, acting as if he’d forgotten the weapon entirely. “Apologies.” He set the knife down on her desk. “Just admiring it.”
She bent over, rubbing her knee ruefully. “Is there a reason for your visit or do you just get your jollies by scaring the shit out of us poor, lesser life forms?”
He smiled disarmingly. “I thought we should speak. Again, I apologize for my sudden appearance. My corporeal social graces are a bit… rusty.”
“Apology accepted.” She gestured to the sitting area, a couch set against the outer bulkhead facing two comfortable chairs, separated by a low coffee table. “Make yourself comfortable. I need a drink. Medicinal, you understand. For my knee.”
He laughed lightly, taking a seat on the couch. “Of course. Could I bother you for some of your North American corn whiskey?”
“Any particular label?” she called back to him over her shoulder.
“The good stuff,” he said, flipping through a hard-copy photo album sitting atop the table. It contained numerous images of Trujillo throughout her career in a variety of different environments.
Trujillo obligingly poured two glasses and returned, handing one to the stranger before taking a seat in one of the chairs facing him. “What should I call you?”
“Something simple, I’d think. John, perhaps?”
“And what species do you represent, John?” she asked.
He sipped at his drink, holding it up to gaze appreciatively at it. “That’s quite good, thank you.” In response to her query he said, “Does it really matter? Naming a thing gives it a special kind of power, don’t you think? It sticks in the mind and causes unnecessary fixation. I’d rather you simply think of me and my people as just another of those quasi-deity-level races capable of all manner of miracles.”
“So, super-advanced aliens with the ability to manipulate matter, time, energy, and space without visible mechanical assistance. Got it.”
He gestured behind him to where a floating apparition mimicking his appearance took shape, wavering with ghost-like transparency. The figure asked in a booming, echoing voice, “Or would you prefer something more traditional?”
She surprised herself by laughing aloud. “No, thank you,” she said, gesturing to the figure seated across from her. “This will do just fine.”
The spectral figure vanished.
“First, I would like to apologize for this mess on behalf of my people.” John waved in the general direction of the planet they orbited.
“You’re the ones who flung this world into this system like a bocce ball?”
He winced in response, inclining his head. “An… indelicate description, but unfortunately rather apt.”
“May I ask why?”
He made a gesture with his hands, half plea, half shrug. “Please keep in mind that this was very long ago for us, far longer than the chronological time between the planet’s creation and the present. We have the ability to move beyond linear time, you see. I’m actually from several millennia from now, in what you would consider the far future.”
She nodded, prompting him to continue as she sampled her whiskey again.
“We were relatively young, just having evolved into our energy-state only centuries before, and some among us became fascinated with Earth and its colorful cultures and history. Now, we could have easily, and with far less destruction, I might add, have done all this via simulations in a dimensional multiform computational substrate.”
“Pardon?” she inquired with a quirked eyebrow.
“Basically, a supercomputer made from the fabric of space/time itself, established in series of linked pocket dimensions. You can create entire simulated multidimensional multiverses in there and let them run at whichever speed you desire.”
“And your friends thought creating all this chaotic mess and heartache was better?”
He sighed, appearing embarrassed. “As I said, we were young, newly god-like, and feeling our collective oats. Those of us responsible for Magna Roma wanted to fling planets about simply because they could. Keep in mind that our ascension to this higher state of being also came with the loss of our physical forms and nearly everything that had grounded us to reality as corporeal beings.”
He took a drink, savoring the liquid for a long moment before swallowing. “There was an unfortunate and unanticipated loss of empathy inherent in this process, at least there was for us. My fellows who created this world saw its people as little more than you might regard the bacteria in a Petri dish.”
Trujillo started to object, and John held up a mollifying hand. “I know, it’s terrible, and especially humiliating now that we’ve advanced beyond those early stages. Nevertheless, no one among us ever thought to come and clean up their mess after their little social experiment had run its course.”
“Too many other priorities?” she said, not bothering to mask her sarcasm.
“Far too many, honestly,” he conceded. “This isn’t the only universe, and entropy is a multi-universal constant. Things tend to go topsy-turvy with harrowing regularity out there, requiring the intervention of many of those ‘sublimed’ species, ours included.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that like you, we’re frequently putting out fires, only we’re doing it on a multitude of higher planes of existence.”
Trujillo finished her drink, setting the glass on the table separating them. She sat back in the chair, hands clasped in her lap.
“Who creates a populated planet with a three-millennia lifespan?”
“Beings with far too much curiosity and grossly insufficient empathy, as I said.”
She cocked her head, studying John closely. “May I infer from what you’ve said that you’re here now to help?”
“I would certainly like to, but I have arrived here only to discover that my hands are effectively tied.”
She issued an incredulous snort. “By whom?”
“That’s the issue at hand, Commodore. I don’t know. Whatever it is, it is significantly more powerful than I am.”
She shook her head; not certain she was hearing him correctly. “There’s something out there you can’t see that’s exerting an influence you can’t overcome?”
“Correct,” he affirmed. “I can travel to any point in space and time in your universe, except for the seventy-four years, four months, and seventeen days that were the mortal lifespan of the individual the Children of the Son call ‘The Mother.’”
“Their messiah?”
“Correct again.”
She sat forward, her eyes alight with intensity. “I’m still confused about this whole Mother and Son dynamic. Please explain.”
“It’s the highest secret of their faith. When their messiah was born, their church took the name of the Children of the Son as a grand deception. The Romanii, being a patriarchal society, never considered for an instant that the messiah might be a female, and so killed tens of thousands of boys and men, trying to snuff out an existential threat to their state monopoly on religion. All the while, the messiah hid in plain sight.”
“You said something, when you were inhabiting Ensign Ibragimova, about not being able to see her. What did that mean?”
John took another sip of his whiskey, dissecting its undertones before replying. “I can’t see her through any of my senses, which extend far beyond the six basic senses known to most humanoid species. Even when I was reviewing the memories of the old man Helvia sought out on the surface, I couldn’t see her. Just the shape of her, not her physical person, not her voice.”
“Hmm,” Trujillo said thoughtfully. “You’ve been out-goded.”
He finished his glass, smirking. “So it would seem. Also, and I hate to be pedantic, but that’s not a word.”
She dipped her head, yielding the point. “If you were not being held in check by this entity, what might you do on behalf of the Romanii?”
“I could transport them en mass to another life-sustaining planet, or simply repair the entropic damage to Magna Roma’s interior. This super-entity won’t allow me to do either.”
“It wants the destruction of the planet and the death of its six-billion inhabitants?”
“I can’t say. It certainly doesn’t appear to want me to stop the process that’s currently underway.”
“And you don’t know why?”
“It won’t communicate with me, or with others that I’ve enlisted to help. Some were members of my species; others were from some of the other Elder races. It steadfastly ignored us.”
“What is it?” Trujillo asked.
“Perhaps a member of one of the first peoples, from when the universe was young? The oldest of the Elders? Or… a god.”
She blinked, dumbstruck. “You’re not actually suggesting it’s an genuine deity?”
John shrugged. “What is a god? To you, I am a god. Perhaps relative to me, it is. Whatever this being really is, whatever its origin, it has rendered me powerless to assist the Romanii. I’m quite curious to see if your evacuation ships will be allowed to approach the planet.”
“You think it would object to a scant few thousands of the Romanii being relocated?”
“It might. Perhaps it feels some parental obligation to them, abandoned by us as they were."
Trujillo shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable with that notion. “I fail to see how something that feels a parental responsibility for a species could just sit by while they’re extinguished by their dying planet.”
John waggled a finger chidingly. “You’re applying human morality to a being that is likely profoundly different from your species. It might be so far removed from the corporeal that it no longer experiences humanoid emotions or thought patterns.”
“It just lived over seventy years as a human on Magna Roma. Wasn’t that the point?” she countered.
“I wouldn’t presume to know its motivations or its mindset,” John demurred. “Additionally, we don’t know that the woman was the embodiment of the entity, only that it doesn’t want me to encounter her or even experience people’s memories of her.”
“Fair point,” Trujillo admitted. She appeared lost in thought for a moment, and then set her gaze back upon her unexpected guest. “Not to rudely change the topic mid-stream, but I’ve had quite enough of you jumping into my people and manipulating their actions. It’s inappropriate, a fundamental violation of their free will and bodily agency.”
John’s head dropped again. “You’re right, of course. Again, I apologize. Sometimes I still go with the most expedient course without stopping to consider the ethical implications of my actions.” He looked at his hands, turning them over to inspect the fine lines and pores of his skin. “I really should do this more often. When I’m in my non-corporeal form, humanoids are so fundamentally woven into the fabric of space/time that you almost appear part of the scenery. It’s easy for us to forget that you’re sentient.”
Trujillo appeared taken aback at this admission. “You can’t be serious?”
His expression grew somber. “Very much so. You are so grounded in the material, so slow, so short-lived that to a being that spends most of its time on multiple levels of existence simultaneously, you look like…” he blanched, seemingly embarrassed at the admission. “…like meat.”
She winced at that, making John look all the more sheepish at the confession.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked, sensing that this unusual meeting was drawing to a close.
“Not at present,” John said, rising to his feet. He gestured to his now empty glass. “Thank you for the drink, and the conversation.”
Trujillo smiled every so slightly. “It’s a first for me, to be sure. I’ve never conversed with a god before, at least not that I know of.”
John appeared momentarily thoughtful. “Not true. You had a lovely chat with a Douwd once when you were six, at Jesuitas Park in Salamanca.”
Trujillo chuckled uncertainly. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“So you should,” he affirmed.
“How might I get in contact with you should that be required during the remainder of this mission?” Trujillo asked.
A clear, crystalline business card bearing the inscription ‘John – Divinity Consultant’ appeared in his hand and he extended it to her. “Just hold this up and call my name. That will suffice.”
She grew subdued suddenly. “I’ll admit to having my issues with the Romanii, but they’re human. Is there any hope for them?”
“There is always hope,” John answered. “They still have time, and our new ultra-god friend might change its mind. Believe me, I’ve seen more than you would believe, and anything is possible.”
“Bridge to Commodore Trujillo,” came Davula’s voice across the intraship.
“Go ahead, Commander,” Trujillo replied reflexively, only belatedly realizing that John had obviously restored the comms. She turned by habit towards the location of the overhead speaker in her cabin.
“Priority transmission coming in from the Koh Yor for you, sir.”
She turned back to say her farewells to John, only to find he had vanished. The card in her hand was the only evidence that she had not imagined the encounter.
“Pipe it through to me down here, XO.”
* * *
Last edited:
