A Very Merry Unbirthday to You

Posted on Sat 26th Sep, 2020 @ 2:32am by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran

992 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Section 49A; the Chamber of Horrors
Timeline: MD3, Evening

Previously, on Starbase 109:

"And that goal is what?" Damion asked. "For all the years this has been going on--these workstations look at least twenty years old--the payoff has got to be staggering."

And now...

Addams stood. "Ponder that question, and follow me." She walked back into the medical bay she'd called the Chamber of Horrors. "Computer, run program 'Addams unbirthday six-oh-four." The computer chirped, and the room's lights dimmed. Lit only by the displays from the monitors, ghostly shapes flickered into being on top of the biobeds, and the empty station filled.

"This," Addams said, gesturing about, "was what we saw when we first entered this compartment."

She was saying they'd entered this room--but he saw people lying on beds, hooked up by tubes and leads to the wall-inset monitoring devices--in darkness. "There were people in the beds? How long ago did you discover this room?" he asked.

"All was as you see, on that day, two years ago. We recorded it holographically to preserve evidence. Walk around; examine. When you have seen all you can stand, ask your questions." Addams walked to the reproduction of the formerly-missing biobed and gazed down on the figure there.

The math was irrational: twenty-year-old equipment, two-years-ago discovery of people in biobeds. Damion gave Addams a curt nod and went to examine the person lying in the first biobed in the row opposite to where Addams was.

Damion looked about the now-darkened room and shuddered as he squinted in the dim light and got a better idea of what he was seeing. Each biobed was occupied by a body. He couldn't bring himself to say 'person' because all of the bodies seemed shrunken, collapsed in on themselves, curled up tightly into fetal positions, more like lifeless husks, really, than bodies. If they weren't dead already, then they were surely waiting to die. No blanket or sheet covered them; they hadn't even been given that much consideration. A ventilator tube went into the mouth, a nasogastric tube into the nose, and nothing concealed the tubes meant to remove bodily wastes.

"Computer, increase lighting over this biobed to 250 lumens at a rate of five lumens per second."

Even that lighting showed Damion more than he wanted to see. "Bloody hell," he muttered under his breath as the lighting increased enough to show colors and give the shape form. Some sort of--plating?--grew out from the biobed occupant's face, covering half of it from hairline to under the chin. Was it of Borg origin? He'd never encountered one to be able to say.

Damion took out his PADD and began making a swift sketch of the room's layout and numbering the test subjects. He was certain that Addams had made comprehensive notes when she'd first found the room, so he didn't describe the bodies in detail. Instead, he concentrated on his overall impression of the room itself.

He'd never before seen or imagined such a callous disregard for sapient life--not even among his own people, for whom life was cheap. The fingernails and toenails of each person, he noticed, resembled snakes, so long had they grown. Their skin was desiccated, and dead skin lay on all the biobeds in flakes. That, Damion thought, sickened him the worst. These people had been lying in this dark room for--he didn't even want to guess how long it took for fingernails to grow to such a gnarled, twisted length or for skin to slough off like that.

Every occupant looked the same--emaciated, atrophied, hair and beards grown long and tangled. Each body bore some indication of Borg-like tampering. But Borg would have at least properly assimilated them, Damion thought with gallows irony. Borg would not have just left them to rot in a darkened room.

At last, he reached the biobed that Addams stood by. Damion studied its occupant, too. This one looked in slightly better condition than the others; maybe this person had been the last to join the other five.

"'All you can stand' was right. What was different about this one?" Damion asked Addams. "This bed was removed."

"As far as I am aware, what was different about this one was that he was the one closest to Colonel Drake when he gave the order to attempt resuscitation," the Doctor answered. She placed a gentle hand on the contracted arm of the holographic figure. "This was Lieutenant Commander Scott Allen Breaux. Commander Breaux departed USS Ranger on liberty the evening of stardate 55755.36 and was not seen again for nearly fifteen years."

Damion stared at her, horrified. "Fifteen years?" A string of fluent Gaelic followed, of which the politest words were, "You vile--!"

After a moment, he composed himself. "I'm sorry; that wasn't professional." He let out a breath. "So you found this place dark. Meaning no one was working in here, tending to these people? How is it they didn't die of bedsores and infection?"

Addams moved her left hand dismissively. "I'll give you access to the autopsy reports. The short answer is 'nanites.' Think back twenty years, Lieutenant. I was studying literature at Columbia University when The Borg became a household name. Implacable enemies who seemed invincible and unstoppable. They were the antithesis of Federation culture and philosophy, the many fused into one."

"I didn't know a thing about the Borg until--sometime in 2377, I think," Damion said. "Nanites, though, that makes sense. They could strengthen the immune system, make repairs, possibly even make a body impervious to what causes pressure sores." He gave the room one last look around, shaking his head. "I think I've seen all I need to see here, and I'm sorry you had to subject yourself to it again to tell me of it. People tell me you've nerves of steel, but this cannot be easy."

 

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