[Fic] Remember Econtra
((Written after Bones left Econtra in May 2008. The second half is set in my ultra-mega crossover fiction of doom story, of which Bones and all the characters mentioned are a part.))
Bones blinked.
The familiar noises spluttered into reality, the gentle beeps and clicks of the computer system, the quiet thrum of the distant engines. Hadn’t he been walking a moment ago?
The office looked as it always had, the book he had been reading was flopped there on his desk. He stood up, almost shakily. He looked down, he was in his battered uniform, his coat was gone.
Things were knocked to the floor as he lunged for the computer. “What’s the date?” he asked it.
“It is currently Stardate 5630.3.” Replied the computer.
The date he had left.
Bones’ hand shook as he slowly straightened and walked to the door, peering out into the brightly lit hallway.
He saw the tall figure even as he rounded the corner and all sanity left him, he lunged forward and seized the Vulcan by the shoulders. “Spock!” he cried, elated. “Spock, it’s you, you green-blooded son of a bitch!”
Spock raised an eyebrow. “We picked up an unusual energy reading in sick bay. I was coming to investigate. Have you been affected, Doctor?”
“I was away, Spock! I was pulled away! I just spent five months in a military encampment in…” how could he explain the other universe to his companions?
“We should call the Captain,” said Spock.
Bones only nodded dazedly as Spock led him back towards Kirk’s room, where he was dropped in a chair and handed a brandy.
The spry young captain sat on the edge of the desk. “Where were you now?” He asked.
“You remember the parallel universe we dealt with, with our reverse selves?”
“Of course.”
“Well, what if there was a power strong enough to pull people from multiple parallel universes into once place? That’s what happened, Jim. I was in a military encampment called Econtra, where they kept pulling in people from other universes to do their fighting for them. It’s…it’s already fading from memory, like a dream. Make sure this is being recorded.”
“It is,” said Spock. “The power necessary to achieve such a result would be nearly impossible to obtain and harness.”
“The people who brought us, the Entropi, they are pure energy. I’m sure they have the power to do it.” He sat back. “Dammit. We had just lost Hawkeye, too.”
“Hawkeye?” Kirk asked with a slow smile.
“Hawkeye Pierce, a doctor from the Korean War.”
Spock walked over and tapped the computer, for a few minutes. “Doctor,” he said finally. “The only records of such a name belong to a fictional character.”
“Was he a doctor in the Korean War?”
“Yes.”
Kirk looked between them, eyes narrowed.
“Then that was him. I’m not surprised, really. They kept bringing in all sorts of strange folks. And kids. Young ones, some from worlds where…there was this one boy, he was a young Khan, genetically engineered from the ground up. It was like examining concrete. It sounds insane,” he said suddenly, falling back into the chair. “I’d be examining my brain right about now.”
“If you say you experienced something you experienced something,” said Kirk, looking to Spock.
“There was an energy signature, and we do know these other universes exist. There is a theory that every fiction is fact in another universe.”
“That’s what it was like,” said Bones. “I had just examined a beautiful hermaphrodite who was attacked and his child ripped from his abdomen. We had a magical healer who kept him alive, but he was in bad shape. And I had consulted with a talking hedgehog about a friend of his who appears to be suffering from MS. Come on, I’m not that creative a person!” he exclaimed. “I couldn’t have made all this up!”
“He has a point,” said Kirk.
Spock nodded slowly. “Who else?”
“There were over three-hundred of us. King Leonidas of Sparta, Solomon Kane, a clever little medical student named Miss Chiba. A strange girl named Mercury, who was still finding herself. There were these boy pilots, just amazing kids. They flew these big robots called…gundams, they called ‘em. The engineered boy was one of those. Heero,” he said the name gently, fondly. “And the Maxwells, and the Winner boys too. I surely hope Quatre takes better care of himself. Tamaki, with the puppy ears. Samus Aran, bless her heart, and that fool Ton Phanan. Riza Hawkeye and that Roy Mustang, who reminded me of you a bit, Jim. The Mello boys, with their poor burned faces,” he sighed. “And the Matts…the boy was killed in an attack,” he sighed. “There were goddesses and animals…ducks and hedgehogs and other things I don’t even recognize. And there were some real bad eggs. Dark wizards and this one fellow named Giovanni who could just rip minds apart from the inside out,” he murmured. “And then we had the vampires. Some of them were fine enough, Kurogane’s little friend was a gentleman, but that Angelus, just biting people for the heck of it… And another one had just bit a couple people right before I came back.”
Kirk and Spock stared at him with wide eyes all through this, now Kirk stood and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Sounds amazing,” he said. “Unbelievable. No one else from our universe?”
“From our future,” Bones replied instantly. “Another doctor, but he was a hologram, made for medical emergencies when an on-board doctor was unavailable. And a young lady who called herself a…um…what was it she said she was?” He was silent, tapping his chin. “I must be losing it already. But I don’t want to, dammit!” he pounded the arm of his chair. “Those kids still need help!”
“Calm down, Bones. Why do you think they sent you back?”
“I…don’t know. I don’t know why they let me go.” He shook his head. “They were good kids, Jim. They don’t deserve to be there, ripped out of their worlds. Some of them died, some will never go home.”
Kirk looked at Spock with a helpless expression.
“Borg!” shouted Bones. “That was what she was. Seven, of the Borg or something like that.”
“Never heard of them,” said Kirk.
“Well, we haven’t discovered them yet.”
“I suggest this conversation never leave this room,” said Spock quietly.
“I want a recording. I don’t want these memories lost forever. They deserve better than that. They were my patients. They were my friends. Five months, I lived with them. I don’t ever want to forget them. I hope I ain’t crazy,” he muttered suddenly.
Kirk knelt by him. “You’re not,” he told him with calm assurance. “I know you and I can see this was real for you.”
“It is entirely plausible, with the right amount of energy,” said Spock. “You are a rational man…at times…and I doubt you would make such a story up out of thin air.”
“You think you could analyze the energy signature? They could sure use our help if we could get back to them.”
“I will look at it,” Spock promised. “But chances are it is impossible for us to power a return.”
Bones nodded slowly, finishing off the brandy before standing up. “Well, it’s been a rough few months. I’m going to go reacquaint myself with the sick bay and then my bed.”
“A good idea,” chuckled Kirk.
He stopped at the door and looked back. “It’s good to see you both again,” he said quietly. “You just don’t know how much.”
Spock quirked and eyebrow and said nothing. Kirk smiled. “I’m glad you’re here,” he replied.
Bones nodded, and stepped into the hall, passing a hand across his eyes. “I’ll miss you all something fierce,” he murmured. “Be safe, everybody.” After a moment he straightened, and hurried on towards sick bay.
***
There was silence in the small hospital room.
The ancient Vulcan’s hand shook as he shut off the recording. “Taken over a hundred years ago,” he mumbled.
A woman in a long dark coat stood beside him, staring at the blank screen. “How is…how is that possible, what you just showed me?”
Spock straightened as best he could. “I don’t know. I suppose we were lucky, that the rift never touched that universe.”
“Probably on a different plane of existence, like the one Fai was originally from,” she replied. “But he mentions Kurogane and Heero and Quatre by name. That’s impossible. None of them have ever reported such an experience.”
“Seven of Nine, and Roy Mustang as well,” Spock added.
“He certainly had no experience with other worlds. And if he was like Jim Kirk, I really do pity you.”
“He was a good man.”
She shrugged. “He did okay for us.”
Spock looked up at her. “You understand this, as a military commander. You understand what these Keepers hoped to accomplish. You would have done the same thing, had you been able.”
“I did do the same thing,” she replied. “I forced everyone to fight, even the ones brought back from other worlds.” She leaned a head on her hand. “They hate me for it now.”
“It was the logical course of action.”
“Is logic always right?”
“It is not always compassionate. You chose to defend our home and defeat the enemy by any means possible, and that’s what you did, just as these Entropi did, all those years ago.”
“Do you think they won?”
“I don’t know.”
“Another version of Heero, and he said plural Winners and Maxwells. What did that mean?”
“It was implied that parallel versions of people could be brought there, so there may have been more than one Quatre Winner and Duo Maxwell.”
“More than one Duo? That’s a scary thought. But why show me this?”
“I’m dying,” said Spock, “And McCoy never wanted to forget his patients there. He forgot many details rather soon after this was made, but he said he never forgot that he had been, and said he retained ‘glimmers of memory,’ I believe were his words. He would review the recording from time to time to remind himself. When he was dying, he gave it to me, knowing that I had shared his memories, and asked that I remember for him. Now I am dying, I am giving it to you, as well as the memories I retained, and ask that you take up the task of remembering for him. Remember Econtra, my friend.” He reached up and touched her face.
He had captured the fleeting memories when sharing Bones’ mind so long ago, and now gave them to the cybernetic woman who leaned over him. After a long moment, he dropped his hand. “Not much left,” he admitted.
“I see them,” she murmured. “It is fleeting but I can see them. I’ll remember, I promise.”
Spock nodded and closed his eyes. She sighed and slipped the recording into an inner pocket and laid her hand over it. She would pass it on herself one day.
Econtra would be remembered forever.
Bones blinked.
The familiar noises spluttered into reality, the gentle beeps and clicks of the computer system, the quiet thrum of the distant engines. Hadn’t he been walking a moment ago?
The office looked as it always had, the book he had been reading was flopped there on his desk. He stood up, almost shakily. He looked down, he was in his battered uniform, his coat was gone.
Things were knocked to the floor as he lunged for the computer. “What’s the date?” he asked it.
“It is currently Stardate 5630.3.” Replied the computer.
The date he had left.
Bones’ hand shook as he slowly straightened and walked to the door, peering out into the brightly lit hallway.
He saw the tall figure even as he rounded the corner and all sanity left him, he lunged forward and seized the Vulcan by the shoulders. “Spock!” he cried, elated. “Spock, it’s you, you green-blooded son of a bitch!”
Spock raised an eyebrow. “We picked up an unusual energy reading in sick bay. I was coming to investigate. Have you been affected, Doctor?”
“I was away, Spock! I was pulled away! I just spent five months in a military encampment in…” how could he explain the other universe to his companions?
“We should call the Captain,” said Spock.
Bones only nodded dazedly as Spock led him back towards Kirk’s room, where he was dropped in a chair and handed a brandy.
The spry young captain sat on the edge of the desk. “Where were you now?” He asked.
“You remember the parallel universe we dealt with, with our reverse selves?”
“Of course.”
“Well, what if there was a power strong enough to pull people from multiple parallel universes into once place? That’s what happened, Jim. I was in a military encampment called Econtra, where they kept pulling in people from other universes to do their fighting for them. It’s…it’s already fading from memory, like a dream. Make sure this is being recorded.”
“It is,” said Spock. “The power necessary to achieve such a result would be nearly impossible to obtain and harness.”
“The people who brought us, the Entropi, they are pure energy. I’m sure they have the power to do it.” He sat back. “Dammit. We had just lost Hawkeye, too.”
“Hawkeye?” Kirk asked with a slow smile.
“Hawkeye Pierce, a doctor from the Korean War.”
Spock walked over and tapped the computer, for a few minutes. “Doctor,” he said finally. “The only records of such a name belong to a fictional character.”
“Was he a doctor in the Korean War?”
“Yes.”
Kirk looked between them, eyes narrowed.
“Then that was him. I’m not surprised, really. They kept bringing in all sorts of strange folks. And kids. Young ones, some from worlds where…there was this one boy, he was a young Khan, genetically engineered from the ground up. It was like examining concrete. It sounds insane,” he said suddenly, falling back into the chair. “I’d be examining my brain right about now.”
“If you say you experienced something you experienced something,” said Kirk, looking to Spock.
“There was an energy signature, and we do know these other universes exist. There is a theory that every fiction is fact in another universe.”
“That’s what it was like,” said Bones. “I had just examined a beautiful hermaphrodite who was attacked and his child ripped from his abdomen. We had a magical healer who kept him alive, but he was in bad shape. And I had consulted with a talking hedgehog about a friend of his who appears to be suffering from MS. Come on, I’m not that creative a person!” he exclaimed. “I couldn’t have made all this up!”
“He has a point,” said Kirk.
Spock nodded slowly. “Who else?”
“There were over three-hundred of us. King Leonidas of Sparta, Solomon Kane, a clever little medical student named Miss Chiba. A strange girl named Mercury, who was still finding herself. There were these boy pilots, just amazing kids. They flew these big robots called…gundams, they called ‘em. The engineered boy was one of those. Heero,” he said the name gently, fondly. “And the Maxwells, and the Winner boys too. I surely hope Quatre takes better care of himself. Tamaki, with the puppy ears. Samus Aran, bless her heart, and that fool Ton Phanan. Riza Hawkeye and that Roy Mustang, who reminded me of you a bit, Jim. The Mello boys, with their poor burned faces,” he sighed. “And the Matts…the boy was killed in an attack,” he sighed. “There were goddesses and animals…ducks and hedgehogs and other things I don’t even recognize. And there were some real bad eggs. Dark wizards and this one fellow named Giovanni who could just rip minds apart from the inside out,” he murmured. “And then we had the vampires. Some of them were fine enough, Kurogane’s little friend was a gentleman, but that Angelus, just biting people for the heck of it… And another one had just bit a couple people right before I came back.”
Kirk and Spock stared at him with wide eyes all through this, now Kirk stood and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Sounds amazing,” he said. “Unbelievable. No one else from our universe?”
“From our future,” Bones replied instantly. “Another doctor, but he was a hologram, made for medical emergencies when an on-board doctor was unavailable. And a young lady who called herself a…um…what was it she said she was?” He was silent, tapping his chin. “I must be losing it already. But I don’t want to, dammit!” he pounded the arm of his chair. “Those kids still need help!”
“Calm down, Bones. Why do you think they sent you back?”
“I…don’t know. I don’t know why they let me go.” He shook his head. “They were good kids, Jim. They don’t deserve to be there, ripped out of their worlds. Some of them died, some will never go home.”
Kirk looked at Spock with a helpless expression.
“Borg!” shouted Bones. “That was what she was. Seven, of the Borg or something like that.”
“Never heard of them,” said Kirk.
“Well, we haven’t discovered them yet.”
“I suggest this conversation never leave this room,” said Spock quietly.
“I want a recording. I don’t want these memories lost forever. They deserve better than that. They were my patients. They were my friends. Five months, I lived with them. I don’t ever want to forget them. I hope I ain’t crazy,” he muttered suddenly.
Kirk knelt by him. “You’re not,” he told him with calm assurance. “I know you and I can see this was real for you.”
“It is entirely plausible, with the right amount of energy,” said Spock. “You are a rational man…at times…and I doubt you would make such a story up out of thin air.”
“You think you could analyze the energy signature? They could sure use our help if we could get back to them.”
“I will look at it,” Spock promised. “But chances are it is impossible for us to power a return.”
Bones nodded slowly, finishing off the brandy before standing up. “Well, it’s been a rough few months. I’m going to go reacquaint myself with the sick bay and then my bed.”
“A good idea,” chuckled Kirk.
He stopped at the door and looked back. “It’s good to see you both again,” he said quietly. “You just don’t know how much.”
Spock quirked and eyebrow and said nothing. Kirk smiled. “I’m glad you’re here,” he replied.
Bones nodded, and stepped into the hall, passing a hand across his eyes. “I’ll miss you all something fierce,” he murmured. “Be safe, everybody.” After a moment he straightened, and hurried on towards sick bay.
***
There was silence in the small hospital room.
The ancient Vulcan’s hand shook as he shut off the recording. “Taken over a hundred years ago,” he mumbled.
A woman in a long dark coat stood beside him, staring at the blank screen. “How is…how is that possible, what you just showed me?”
Spock straightened as best he could. “I don’t know. I suppose we were lucky, that the rift never touched that universe.”
“Probably on a different plane of existence, like the one Fai was originally from,” she replied. “But he mentions Kurogane and Heero and Quatre by name. That’s impossible. None of them have ever reported such an experience.”
“Seven of Nine, and Roy Mustang as well,” Spock added.
“He certainly had no experience with other worlds. And if he was like Jim Kirk, I really do pity you.”
“He was a good man.”
She shrugged. “He did okay for us.”
Spock looked up at her. “You understand this, as a military commander. You understand what these Keepers hoped to accomplish. You would have done the same thing, had you been able.”
“I did do the same thing,” she replied. “I forced everyone to fight, even the ones brought back from other worlds.” She leaned a head on her hand. “They hate me for it now.”
“It was the logical course of action.”
“Is logic always right?”
“It is not always compassionate. You chose to defend our home and defeat the enemy by any means possible, and that’s what you did, just as these Entropi did, all those years ago.”
“Do you think they won?”
“I don’t know.”
“Another version of Heero, and he said plural Winners and Maxwells. What did that mean?”
“It was implied that parallel versions of people could be brought there, so there may have been more than one Quatre Winner and Duo Maxwell.”
“More than one Duo? That’s a scary thought. But why show me this?”
“I’m dying,” said Spock, “And McCoy never wanted to forget his patients there. He forgot many details rather soon after this was made, but he said he never forgot that he had been, and said he retained ‘glimmers of memory,’ I believe were his words. He would review the recording from time to time to remind himself. When he was dying, he gave it to me, knowing that I had shared his memories, and asked that I remember for him. Now I am dying, I am giving it to you, as well as the memories I retained, and ask that you take up the task of remembering for him. Remember Econtra, my friend.” He reached up and touched her face.
He had captured the fleeting memories when sharing Bones’ mind so long ago, and now gave them to the cybernetic woman who leaned over him. After a long moment, he dropped his hand. “Not much left,” he admitted.
“I see them,” she murmured. “It is fleeting but I can see them. I’ll remember, I promise.”
Spock nodded and closed his eyes. She sighed and slipped the recording into an inner pocket and laid her hand over it. She would pass it on herself one day.
Econtra would be remembered forever.