If I Cannot Bring You Comfort ...

Posted on Sat 24th Nov, 2018 @ 5:14am by Commander Paul Graves PsyD & Lieutenant Commander Lanis Dhuro MD & Lieutenant Damion Ildaran & Lieutenant JG Kellian Michaels & Purulence Addams & Lieutenant Colonel Brooklyn Wellington
Edited on on Sat 1st Dec, 2018 @ 10:23am

1,839 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Oblivion
Location: Warehouse 13, Cargo Holding Space 780
Timeline: MD 21, 2300
Tags: Wellington

"Thank you all for coming," the old, old woman said. She nodded to Purulence to begin placing the candles around the chalked circle on the deck. "You don't know me, but you know my great-granddaughters. Most of you attended the seance at their home, or one of their other social events. You are Chlamydia's colleagues, and though she is an awkward child, I do hope she has good friends."

The hag looked around, peering dimly through her cataract clouded eyes. As no one volunteered the information they considered Chlamydia a friend, she pressed on. "I am going to tell you all a story. It is a true story. At the end of the story, I am going to ask for your assistance. If you choose to assist, know that it will be Chlamydia who benefits most."

She peered around again, and then, satisfied with the expressions she saw, she proceeded. "Once upon a time, a little boy coveted something a little girl had. The little boy stole from the little girl; not the thing he coveted, but something which might be a key to unlocking the bonds about the coveted item." The old woman glanced at her great-granddaughters, and left out the fact that the little boy in question was renowned within the Family for stealing from little girls' laundry.

"Aunt Agatha used to tell stories this very same way." Jasmine whispered to Adam as she waited for the tale to continue.

"I'm sure there are a lot of things your Aunt Agatha does in a similar fashion to the Addams sisters." He teased back under his breath.

"The boy grew up," Great-Grandmother Addams went on. "As boys are wont to do. He became a specialist in picking locks, and he opened Pandora's box with the key he had stolen. He received a piece of what he sought, and it cracked his pot -- he hadn't the resources to make use of what he'd worked so hard to get. So he conceived of a plan, a tool, to make the fullest possible use of the treasure. He needed resources, money, to make that tool. Some very unscrupulous people looked at his tool, and saw a weapon. So they backed him, and his project."

The hag licked her lips before going on. "The little boy was my great-grandson, Doctor Perverto Addams. The little girl was his cousin, your friend, Doctor Chlamydia Addams. And the key which was stolen was the key of Life, the molecule called DNA."

At the mention of DNA, the old woman's odd, meandering story suddenly had Damion's complete attention. He lost his puzzled expression and replayed her tale in his mind with intense concentration as he tried to decipher all the euphemisms, for she was trying to tell the truth very, very slant. He couldn't swear familiarity with the name of Perverto Addams--medical espionage was not his forte--but he had come across the name somewhere; it was the sort of name that invited jokes. Maybe in a research paper?

Alora had not heard the name before, not surprising as it was outside her fields of interest but she admired the way the story was told. Perhaps she was feeling dense but didn't quite follow why they could help with anything. She glanced at the others wondering if anyone else had a better idea.

"I think this is it," Captain Beck said. She put her ear next to the place where the door met the bulkhead, but she couldn't hear anything. Pulling back, she shrugged her shoulders, "It was worth a try, but I do think this is the right space. Shall we go in?" She turned to the Colonel, "Unless you'd rather not?"

Wellington chuckled and gestured to the doors. "After you, Rebecca." Brooklyn enjoyed some time with her friend. Her recent battle with her injury and recovery had placed some stress on that friendship.

"Sure, now you want to be my wingman," the Captain teased. She pushed on the door and it retracted into the wall. The room beyond was darkened, except for a light that shone on a trio of Addamses standing up front. Choosing a path that stayed in the darkness, Beck tiptoed around the edges of the room, eventually coming to the end of the filled rows of seats. She chose to lean against a wall and, while still aware of Brooklyn, turned her attention to the old woman whose soft voice was clear as birdsong.

"People experience time in a linear fashion," the hag continued after a moment, once the new arrivals were settled. "Tuesday is always followed by Wednesday, and so on. We number our years consecutively. Many of us believe that the very nature of time is linear. It is not. It's more of a 'Jeremy Bearimy' situation, a room full of yarn into which ferrets have been released. Time crosses itself, loops around, gets knotted. I'm here to ask your help in untangling a knot which may become quite troublesome, if left unaddressed."

Her rheumy, cataract obscured eyes roamed the group. "For the moment, let us follow the thread of our narrative, the way events unfolded the first time through. Perverto went to the Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies, and built his tool on the foundation of stolen keys -- not just the one stolen from Chlamydia, but those he had stolen from others with similar treasures, and pieced together to make the largest key he could imagine. He made from these keys a baby girl."

Privately, Caroline thought someone could make a great holo movie from the threads of the story, and time travel crossings were big right now. With whom could she connect this old woman to get something going?

Up until this point the room had been mostly filled with confusion, Paul thought. Now that confusion was giving way to feelings of concern. Someone was shocked, appalled. Someone else was paying close attention, and beside him--

"Lanis, what's wrong?" Paul whispered.

"Can't discuss it," the surgeon whispered back in a tight voice.

"When his backers discovered that the weapon was functional, but would need further tempering, they made a number of further copies," the Eldest Addams went on. "And, as scientists are wont to do, they wanted to be sure the experiment was repeatable. So they took the box of keys to someone else, and the other person made a little boy.

"And here, they began to run into trouble. The little girls were being trained to be the perfect spies and assassins. But it is difficult to train a child to do something you believe to be morally improper, when that child can read your mind with ease, and know that you believe your teachings to be tainted. So they created a holographic person who had the skills they needed to impart, and gave the girls into her keeping.

"And the boy... escaped. Into the hands of a Starfleet captain. The captain, as it happened, of the Starship Archimedes, upon which the Chief Medical Officer was Lieutenant Chlamydia Addams." Again, the old woman paused, surveying the group for reactions.

Archimedes? Now Paul leaned forward to listen more closely. Chlamydia had fainted during the first staff meeting they'd attended together on 109 when she'd mistakenly thought an elusive signal was from the missing Archimedes.

"The crew of Archimedes," the elder continued after a moment, "treated the boy like family. And slowly, they unpicked the mystery of his origin. They traced back to the Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies, and there they found the girls... the boy's sisters, if you will. They took the lot, accidentally blowing up the research station in the process. One of the girls was very clearly an Addams, and Chlamydia thought that Perverto had used his own genetics to create her. He had not -- he'd used hers. From a certain point of view, the child was her daughter... and she adopted the girl, began to raise her as her own child.

"The rest of this loop is predictable... the doctor called her sister, the attorney who specialized in sapient rights, the children were dispersed to good families, good homes, throughout the Federation. But Perverto's backers still knew the children existed, and made several rather ham-handed attempts to recover 'their property.'" The quotation marks were clearly audible, as was the old woman's disdain for anyone who would view a child as property.

"Doctor Chlamydia Addams brought her adopted child here, to this very Starbase. They lived together very comfortably in the same house where my granddaughters live now. The child blossomed... until the backers came for her. There was chaos. Many people died. The chaos affected the whole group of children, who called themselves 'Echos.'"

Paul and Lanis exchanged baffled glances. Chlamydia had never mentioned living on Starbase 109 before. She hadn't lived there during Lanis' previous residence on it--and she had no daughter now, not even an image of one on her desk.

Caroline wished for her cameraman about now. She didn't recall anything in the doctor's public record about being on 109 in the past. But wait. What had the old woman said about 'the first time' events played out? Was she saying ... well, what was she saying? The reporter was puzzled, and she wished she'd paid more attention in science classes. Was it possible to repeat a time line and change events?

"The Echos realized they no longer needed physical form, and so they shed it. Freed, they decided to erase themselves from history. They turned back time, altering conditions. Perverto's experiments did not work, this time; his specimens were not special, not weapons. His backers killed him and destroyed all traces of his work. The holographic personality crafted to care for the children held a grudge. She called a former researcher back -- Doctor Holly Day, known to some of you as Doctor Death, the Butcher of Clarvis. Between the two of them, they sterilized the station. It will remain deadly for the next rotation of the galaxy." The old woman sounded tired as she related this part of the story.

After a moment, she went on, "The Addams of the Echos took Chlamydia back, erasing her memories of what had happened. Placed her in an escape pod. The rest of Archimedes... I don't know what happened to it. Vanished in a temporal paradox, perhaps, or simply lost to the myriad dangers a ship of the star fleet faces. Chlamydia was recovered by USS Samurai, brought back here, debriefed, poked, prodded. She knew nothing. She knows nothing."

A question rose in Damion's mind. He told himself to keep quiet, but it niggled at him. At last he raised a hand. "Presuming all that happened as you say, Ma'am--and I believe it did--then how do you know of it? Should you not be as ignorant as the rest of us?"

"I am a witch, young man," the hag answered. "It's what I do. I brew potions, I heal children, and I know things."

 

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