The Dark Marrissa Stories
#1: The Master Builders

[1 - paint it black]
	"Clara, look!"
	Clarrissa Ann Sutter looked out the window of the escape pod and 
saw herself.  Simple optics: the lights were on in the rear chamber of 
the pod, outside was nothing but featureless space, so the glass became 
as reflective as a mirror.  As she looked at her face she didn't notice 
what most people noticed when they saw her, the skin clear and pale to 
the point of translucence, the hair black as the space that enveloped 
them.  No, all she noticed were her eyes, sunk in a latticework of lines 
and creases, witness to the torment and excruciating death of billions 
of souls.  They were eyes that spoke of more suffering than most could 
undergo in a dozen lifetimes.
	Clarrissa Ann Sutter was twenty-three years old.
	"Dim the lights," she said.
	"Oh, sorry," came the voice from the front chamber of the pod.  
The cockpit had to be kept dark, but the area behind the partition could 
be as bright or as dim as needed.  The lights flickered and went out, 
revealing... nothing.  They could have been miles underground.
	"What happened to the stars?" asked Shayna Sachs.
	"She must have extinguished them," Clara said.
	"All of them?" Shayna asked.
	"Do you see any?" Clara answered.  "She turned off the universe.  
It's over.  Alexander, turn the lights back on."
	The lights flickered back to life.  "That doesn't make any sense," 
said Rabob Qahira.  From a distance Rabob could easily have passed for a 
human woman; she was reasonably tall, in her early twenties, with deep 
golden-brown skin and dark, lustrous hair that cascaded to her shoulders 
from her white headdress.  But the pattern of five black dots on her 
left cheek revealed her for what she was: a Qudaydi, a member of a race 
that a few years before had been unknown to the Federation.  To the 
others she looked unspeakably alien.  "Think about it.  If she somehow 
made all the stars go nova or something, we wouldn't know it yet -- it 
takes years for their light to reach us.  If you argue that she wiped 
out all existence, light included, how do you explain the fact that 
we're still here?"
	"She left us here to torment us," she said.  "Let us limp along 
until we starve to death, or go mad and kill each other."
	"Come on, Clara," Rabob said.  "That's not Manat's style.  First 
of all, she wouldn't wipe out the universe.  Remember, she sees herself 
as an agent of Lat.  Besides, it'd leave her with nothing left to kill.  
In any event, you know she prefers slavery and torture to outright 
annihilation.  She only kills to strike fear into others or when she's 
feeling... saucy."
	"I know what I see," Clara said.
	"And what you see is darkness," Rabob said.  "Nothing more, 
nothing less.  We know Manat hasn't struck at us directly so chances are 
she can't.  I'm betting she somehow got our cloaking device to 
malfunction so that instead of people outside the pod being unable to 
see it, we can't see anything outside."
	"How could she do that?" Shayna asked.
	"That's just the way Manat works," Rabob said.  "The more 
ridiculous and illogical something is, the more likely that it'll 
happen."
	Clara rubbed her eyes.  "You're right, you're right," she said.  
"I'm sorry.  I've been finding it really hard to think lately."
	"Are you kidding?" Shayna said.  "You managed to rig the puny 
escape pod engine into a fully-functional warp drive, at least till 
Manat's thugs blasted it.  And even then you managed to get it 
operational again at sublight speeds.  Not to mention the fact that now 
it somehow runs without =fuel=.  How did you do that?"
	"The last thing I want to do right now is spout off about my 
accomplishments," Clara said.  "I've had enough of that to last me a 
lifetime.  And that's not what I meant anyway.  I meant that my 
=thinking= -- not engineering problems, but thinking logically about 
life in general -- has been getting cloudier and cloudier.  I can =feel= 
it."
	"Well, that's just one more thing the four of us will have to 
stop," Rabob said.  "In the end you can trace it all back to Manat."
	"In my day," Clara said, "we called her Marrissa."

[2 - farewell my concubine]
	Marrissa closed her eyes and bit her lip as she came.
	"Did I please you, Empress?" asked the man strapped to the bed.
	"You were adequate, I suppose," Marrissa said.  She lifted herself 
off his supine body and walked across the room to her bath, where the 
bathservant worked feverishly to keep the water at the specified 
temperature and full of fresh bubbles.  It was a job that could easily 
have been done by computer, but Marrissa preferred the personal touch 
only a servant could provide.  Of course, there was the problem of 
having another man in the room as she enjoyed her concubines, but that 
was easily remedied by having his eyelids glued shut and his eardrums 
removed.  Even his sense of smell had been chemically deadened.
	"I have the best Kobayashi Maru time in the entire harem," said 
the man strapped to the bed.
	"Oh, I have no complaints about your longevity," Marrissa said.  
"It's your vigor that could use some work."
	"I'll do better next time, Empress," the concubine said.
	"Next time?" Marrissa said.  "You seem to be laboring under a 
misconception.  Do you know what insects do after they mate with the 
queen?  They shudder and die.  And you =are= an insect, after all."  She 
walked back over to the bed.  The man didn't see her coming, of course --
his eyes had been gouged out upon his initiation into the harem.  No
one was allowed to see Marrissa's naked body, any more than they were 
allowed to have sex with her more than once.
	"You're... going to have me killed?" the concubine sputtered.
	"Of course not," Marrissa said.
	The concubine heaved a sigh of relief.  "You had me worried, 
Empress," he said.  "For a second there--"
        Marrissa hopped back up onto the bed, straddled his chest, took 
his head in her hands, and gave it a sharp twist.  The concubine writhed 
and convulsed in agony as Marrissa looked on with amused detachment.  
Then his arms began to flail and nearly clipped Marrissa in the head.  
Marrissa gave his head a violent twist in the other direction, and he 
shuddered and lay still.
	"=Have= him killed," Marrissa said, jumping off the bed again.  
"The drivel that comes out of these idiots' mouths.  I'd rip out their 
tongues if they weren't good for other things."
	She looked at herself in the mirrored wall as she tested the 
bathwater.  She'd never really gotten used to the body she'd grown into 
as she reached adulthood, so she'd de-aged herself back to thirteen some 
time before.  For a moment she almost wished she hadn't blinded the 
bathservant, since she knew for a fact that her body surpassed anything 
he could possibly have imagined, and there was little she enjoyed more 
than the admiration of others.  But the moment passed.  She stepped into 
the tub and gently slid underneath the bubbles.
	"Ahh," she murmured to herself.  "It's good to be the queen."

[3 - evasive patterns]
	Alexander climbed out of the pilot's seat of the escape pod and 
into the darkened rear chamber.  Clara sat looking glumly out the window 
at the endless blackness.
	"Are they both asleep?" Alexander asked quietly.
	Clara nodded.  "Who's flying the pod?" she asked.
	"Autopilot," Alexander said.  "I put it on Evasive Pattern Alpha 
Quantum Four."  He looked at the sleeping forms of Shayna and Rabob, 
barely visible in the dim light.  "You know, I remember when you used to 
brag about how you never slept," he said.
	"That was a lifetime ago," Clara said.  "I wouldn't even consider 
it me.  These days I'd do anything to be able to sleep for more than 
twenty minutes."  She blinked.  "So does this mean we're having a 
conversation about something other than staying alive?"
	"I guess so," Alexander said.  "I suppose it's been a while."
	"Yeah, well," Clara said.  She sighed.  "Look, I want you to know 
-- I'm sorry I cheated on you."
	"Clara," Alexander said, "I--"
	"Don't misunderstand me, though," Clara said.  "I don't regret for 
a second what I did.  What I regret is that what I did =constituted= 
cheating on you."  Confusion flickered across Alexander's face.  "I had 
no business making that big a commitment to you when I was that young 
and that stupid," Clara continued.  "What was I when I married you?  
Nineteen?  Twenty?  Not that that's what matters.  What matters is that 
I had all the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old."
	"That's not true," Alexander said.
	"You're right," Clara said.  "More like a ten-year-old.  I mean, 
do you realize I spent my entire childhood on a spaceship?  Growing up 
in a sterile environment, in a rigid military hierarchy, working twenty-
hour days designing warp core engines, surrounded only by a handful of 
equally twisted kids and a scattering of aloof adults?  That can't be 
healthy.  Psychologically, even physiologically... it's probably done 
all sorts of damage I don't even =know= about yet.  What was that 
Socrates said?  That the reason he was the wisest man on earth was 
because at least he knew he was ignorant?  I know I'm ignorant, but I 
don't even know what I'm ignorant about.  And I'm so angry all the time 
lately.  Do you realize how easy it'd be for me to become like her?  
Like Marrissa?"
	"Manat," Alexander said.  "Marrissa was... somebody else."
	"No she wasn't," Clara said.  "That's what you say, that's what 
Shayna says, but there's no discontinuity between Marrissa and 'Manat,' 
or whatever the hell it is she's calling herself this week.  The 
discontinuity's in =me=.  =I'm= the one who changed.  In Madison."
	"What was that like?" Alexander asked.  "The only thing you ever 
told me was about what you did with that... man... and I never bothered 
to ask about the rest."
	"Madison..." Clara murmured.

[4 - don't forget: you're here forever]
	It had only been a couple years before, shortly after the baby was 
born.  A member of her engineering team had stopped by to say that she'd 
be leaving the Enterprise in two days.  "I know this is short notice," 
she'd said, "but it's an opportunity I couldn't pass up... some friends 
of mine are joining this colony that's starting up, and they need people 
to design things..."
	"That ecological thing?" Clara had said, not looking up from the 
schematics on her monitor.  "Yeah, I heard some people talking about 
that.  You hardly strike me as the sandals-and-granola type."
	"Oh, it's not like that," the junior engineer said.  "We're not 
turning our backs on technology or modern culture.  We just want to live 
in a town that doesn't look like the inside of a starship."
	That got Clara to look up.
	She tried to put it out of her mind all the rest of the day, with 
little success.  How could she?  Every time she looked out the enormous 
window that comprised the side wall of her working quarters she saw 
streaks of light flashing by.  No sun, no sky, no clouds, no trees.  I'm 
no biologist, she thought, but you can't wipe out four and a half 
billion years of evolution in a century or two.  She could feel the 
unseen landscape tugging at her genes.
	She headed back to her sleeping quarters at 2200 hours, the 
earliest she'd left work since the time a few weeks earlier when she'd 
had to take a midafternoon break to deliver her child.  But it didn't 
feel especially early.  Nor did it felt especially late.  My sense of 
time has atrophied, she thought.  Without a sun to provide light cues, 
the feeling that time is passing just shrivels up and dies.  The door to 
her chamber opened to reveal an empty room full of sterilized air.  She 
stumbled into the back room and lay down on the bed.  But she couldn't 
sleep.  She never slept.
	Alexander came in five hours later.  "I just put in six straight 
shifts and I feel great!" he declared.
	"How nice for you," Clara said.  "This is probably going to sound 
sort of random, but I have a proposition for you.  What say we spend 
some time planetside?  I have a place all picked out."
	"A vacation?" Alexander said.  "I don't know... I suppose we might 
be able to get away for a day or two..."
	"I was thinking more like six months," Clara said.
	Alexander's eyes bugged out.  "Are you INSANE?" he asked.
	Marrissa's reaction the next morning was hardly any more 
understanding.  "Don't be ridiculous," she said.  "What are you going to 
do down there?"
	"That's just it -- I don't know," Clara said.  "Anything could 
happen.  That's kind of why I want to go.  Besides, you go to Essex all 
the time."
	"I'm =Princess= of Essex," Marrissa said.  "Just like I'm the 
Captain of the Enterprise and the Supreme Admiral of all Kids' Crews 
throughout Starfleet.  But if you went to that colony you wouldn't have 
a rank at all.  You'd be nothing."
	"I'd be me," Clara said.  "Whoever that is..."
	Martin Sussex, the ship's counselor, came to see her.  "Have you 
really thought this through?" he asked.  "What about your husband?"
	"Alexander's welcome to come," Clara said.  "It might help us 
cobble together at least a semblance of a marriage beyond quickies in a 
maintenance closet the two times a month we actually see each other.  We 
might as well live in Sparta."
	Then Jay Gordon, Marrissa's husband, came to see her.  "You can't 
do this, Clara," he said.  "What about your child?"
	"What about yours?" she asked.  "We use the same nanny you do.  It 
doesn't really make any difference.  The kid sees me so rarely as it is 
I might as well be gone already."
	"That's a terrible thing to say," Jay said.  "How can you be so 
uncaring?"
	"Maybe it's terrible," Clara said.  "Maybe it's wrong.  Maybe I'm 
a bad person.  But I've decided.  The shuttle's leaving tomorrow morning 
and I'm going to be on it."
	That evening Clara happened to be passing by Ten-Forward when she 
thought she heard the word "kidnap."  I'm probably just hearing things, 
she thought, but no sense taking chances.  She went to her working 
quarters, broke into the computer, erased her name from the records so 
they couldn't track her, and hid in the ventilation system.  At 0400 
hours she heard her door being forced open.  At 0730 hours she crawled 
to the shuttle bay and through the air vent saw half a dozen people 
milling around outside one of the shuttles.  One of them was the junior 
engineer she'd briefly spoken to.  She opened the vent and jumped down 
to the floor -- quite a drop, but the polymer in the soles of her boots 
absorbed most of the shock.  "What's the problem?" she asked.
	"The launch was cancelled," said one of the would-be colonists.  
"Order of the captain.  I don't get it."
	"I do," Clara said.  "Apparently yours truly managed to transgress 
one of the unwritten rules around here.  The guru always gets pissed off 
when you try to leave the cult."  She punched a few buttons on the 
shuttle's entry console.  "Computer!" she said.  "Override authorization 
code Australia Joshua Ramesses II!"
	The shuttle doors swung open, as did most of the jaws in the room.  
"You overrode =Marrissa=??" the junior engineer asked.  "How did you get 
the computer to do that?"
	"I built it," Clara said.  "Now let's get out of here before the 
shock troops get us."
	They hurried into the shuttle and launched just as the bay doors 
burst open and Marrissa's security force stormed in with phasers 
blasting.  But by then they were gone.  "Next stop: Madison," Clara 
said.  "Hey, what's your name again?" she asked.
	"Me?" the junior engineer asked.  "I'm Jennifer.  Jennifer 
Davenport."
	"Pleased to meet you," Clara said.  "Sorry I didn't remember it.  
I'm Clarrissa Ann Sutter."
	"I =know= who =you= are," Jennifer said.
	"That makes one of us," Clara said.

[5 - hate your enemies, save your friends, find your place]
	Clara nearly passed out as she stepped off the shuttle.  The warm 
air was so thick with unfamiliar scents that she could almost taste them 
and the sun beat down on her with an intensity she had never known.  
"Welcome to Madison!" called out a voice.
	Clara was squinting so hard she could barely make out who had said 
that.  It was a woman with thick, uncontrollable blond hair and a mild 
case of sunburn; she wore a fraying T-shirt, a pair of shorts and a 
wide-brimmed hat.  Her feet were bare.  Clara could feel herself 
beginning to cook in her black-and-mustard Starfleet uniform.
	"Hi, I'm Marie," said the woman.  "I'm here to show you all 
around.  I had no idea we'd be having a celebrity in our midst!"
	"Try not to spread it around," Clara said woozily.  "I should 
never have come here.  There'll probably be reprisals against your 
colony.  I'm sorry."
	"Don't worry about it," Marie said.  Clara was about to say 
something but Marie was already chatting with some of the others who had 
just stepped off the shuttle.  For a second she was angry -- I'm the one 
with rank around here! They're just plebes! What're you doing talking to 
=them=? -- but it occurred to her that that was exactly the kind of 
thinking she'd come here to get away from.
	They walked to a hovercar floating in the air a few meters away.  
It was one of the older designs, really nothing more than an overgrown 
bathtub with a retractable diamond top, and about as aerodynamic as a 
cow.  "Top up or down?" Marie asked as they all clambered in.
	"Up," Clara started to say just as the other half dozen voted 
"Down!"  Clara decided not to put her dissent on the record.  They rode 
into town with the top down as Marie updated them on the progress of the 
colony and filled them in on some basic facts: Madison straddled the 
Sahara River about ten kilometers from where it emptied into the ocean, 
and while a town plaza had been constructed on each bank of the river, 
at present there was neither any individual housing (just clusters of 
apartments comprising anywhere from eight to twenty-four households per 
cluster) nor any way across the river except for a transporter room in 
each plaza and, of course, the ferry.  "No bridges?" someone asked.  
"Why would you build on both sides of a river without having a bridge?"
	"Priorities," Marie said.  "We just finished putting in the 
plumbing and the sewage system.  We thought you'd prefer being forced to 
use ferries to being forced to use chamber pots.  Besides, we're still 
looking for bridge plans we can live with.  We're looking for something 
structurally sound that can handle an enormous amount of traffic but 
still looks like a natural part of the environment instead of an 
ostentatious piece of engineering."
        "Who exactly is this 'we'?" Clara asked.  "Who's running things?  
Who's in charge?"
	"We all are, really," Marie said.  "We've got a committee in 
charge of planning colony development, but who's on the committee 
depends on who feels like being on the committee that week.  It's kind 
of disorganized but we have the luxury of knowing that if the colony 
fails we can just go home.  We're not going to starve in the wilderness 
or get eaten by bears.  So we can do things the way we want."
	"Are you going to do something about the smell?" Clara asked.  
"It's kind of overpowering, don't you think?  What =is= it, anyway?"
	"Eucalyptus," Marie said.  "And yeah, we =are= going to do 
something about it.  We're going to appreciate it."
	The others continued to chatter excitedly but Clara wandered to 
the back of the hovercar and tuned it all out.  She couldn't bear the 
stifling heat or the wind against her face or the smell wafting from the 
lazily dozing trees.  They were right, this was a stupid idea, Clara 
thought.  They weren't trying to hurt me, they just wanted to stop me 
from making a big mistake.  How long did I spend thinking about this 
before I made my decision?  Fifteen seconds?  If that?  What have I 
gotten myself into?
	Clara was so lost in thought that she almost tumbled over the side 
of the hovercar when it suddenly came to a stop outside her new 
quarters.  To her dismay, it looked as if her new hosts were planning to 
lodge her in a melting greenhouse.  There were no edges to it -- every 
surface was curved, every corner rounded off -- and the entire thing was 
clear as glass.
	"Not glass," Marie said.  "Photodiamond.  A milligram of this 
stuff would've cost enough to power a small city for a year back in the 
days before replicators, but now all we had to do was figure out the 
formula and we can churn out as much as we want.  Here's how it works. 
Once your voice print is registered with the computer, you can change 
the properties of any given surface.  Watch.  Computer!  Turn the west 
wall of room 22 opaque, please."
	Right before their eyes, the wall in front of them clouded up and 
turned black.  At the point where it curved and became the side wall the 
black faded smoothly back to transparency.  "You can set any wall, 
inside or outside, to transparent, translucent, or opaque," Marie said, 
"though practically no one ever does opaque unless they want to put up 
pictures and need a dark background.  You can also turn a wall 
completely invisible so that not even the glassy reflections are left, 
but we haven't quite figured out how to keep birds and children from 
smacking into the walls."  She shrugged.  "I'll let you go ahead and 
register your suites.  There's a replicator in each one if you need 
anything but we also have a big fiesta every evening at sundown in West 
Plaza.  When you figure out what you want to do, come over to East Plaza 
and let us know.  Look for the sign that says 'Madison Multitasking'."
	A couple hours later Clara sat in the living room of her new suite 
feeling tired and alone and completely out of place.  She looked out the 
clear wall across from her and saw the sun filtering through the 
eucalyptus groves.  "Opaque opaque opaque opaque," she said.
	Clara spent the entirety of the next day in bed, staring at the 
ceiling.  Three or four times she heard people knock at her darkened 
door, but she didn't answer.
	The day after that she decided to head to East Plaza and see if 
she could get someone to hail the Enterprise to pick her back up.  She 
stumbled through the dark to the door, which opened.  The light that 
burst into the room was so brilliant that Clara felt like she'd been 
caught in a supernova.  She rubbed her eyes and, squinting as hard as 
she could, emerged into the common hall and made her way outside.
	Outside, of course, the heat was as oppressive as the light.  She 
looked over her shoulder and saw that she was the only one in the 
complex who had darkened her apartment, making it stand out like a 
discolored tooth.  She shook her head and plodded off to the transporter 
room in West Plaza.
	Even the courtyards, she noticed, were without edges: this one was 
vaguely circular, with clear and translucent buildings all around that 
made her feel like she was in the middle of a campsite rather than a 
growing town.  She found the transporter room, but the fellow running it 
seemed reluctant to beam her across the river.  "Can't you take the 
ferry?" he asked.  "This thing's mostly for freight."
	"Fine, whatever," Clara grumbled.  She turned around and ambled 
over to the river.  The banks rose up sharply from the water's edge; she 
envisioned boats floating through an arch adorned with spectacular 
voussoirs, with traffic bustling back and forth above...
	"Going across?" asked the woman at the helm of the ferry.
	"Hmm?" Clara said.  "Yeah, sure..."
	When she arrived on the east bank and climbed the steps back up to 
the colony, she took a look from the opposite angle.  A single archway 
or a multiple? she asked herself.  The single would be more aesthetic 
and cause less hassle for nautical travel, but it might not be 
practicable, even with an ogival... for a multiple I'd need to analyze 
the bed, see if I'd need a cofferdam...
	At East Plaza she found the communications building.  There were a 
couple people in front of her waiting to send messages to various 
starships in the area.  As Clara waited her eye was caught by a pair of 
blueprints tacked to a bulletin board on the wall; they were both of 
bridges and both, to Clara's mind, monstrosities.  They can have as many 
offbeat ideas for city planning as they want, she thought, but it 
doesn't mean anything if you follow it up with incompetent engineering.  
One's going to collapse, and the other uses about six times more 
material than it needs.  Haven't they worked out the points of tension 
and compression?
	"What are these for?" Clara asked the comm operator.  "Laughs, 
right?"
	"Those are the leading candidates for the bridge," he replied.  
"They're collecting votes in Multitasking if you want to vote."
	"I think I'll do that," Clara said.
	She walked across the plaza to the multitasking office, where a 
bunch of people were sitting around playing cards.  "Uh, hi," she said.  
"I'm--"
	"--Clarrissa Ann Sutter!" cried one of the cardplayers.  "From the 
Enterprise!  What's someone like =you= doing =here=?"
	"That's what I came to tell you," Clara said.  "It's beginning to 
look an awful lot like I'm here to build you folks a bridge."

[6 - like father like son]
	"Aren't you finished building that thing yet?"
	Two figures separated themselves from the thousands working on the 
tower and scurried down the scaffolding to where Marrissa stood.  Like 
nearly everyone else outside the city, they wore bulky radiation suits 
to protect them from the radioactive waste that comprised the surface of 
the planet.  The only one not wearing such a suit was, of course, 
Marrissa.  She was immune.
	The shorter of the two figures reached Marrissa first.  "Patterson 
Supra reporting for duty, Empress!" he cried, bowing down before her.
	The other arrived a second later and prostrated himself at her 
feet.  "Reginald Throwaway Jr. reporting for duty, Empress!" he cried.
	"Yeah, yeah, get up," she said.  "Why is this taking so long?  
You're nearly a month behind schedule!  You know I have no tolerance for 
lateness!"
	"There's a factor we didn't take into account, Empress," said 
Patterson Supra.  He hunched over as he stood, not because the suit was 
that heavy or even as an obsequy to Marrissa but rather because 
Patterson Supra was always sort of hunched over.  "Shrinking labor 
force.  Every day more and more slaves are falling off and plunging to 
their deaths.  Here comes one now."
	Marrissa looked up.  The tower stood in the middle of a triangle 
marked at each vertex by a pyramid, each constructed over the course of 
the past year by her team of slaves; they had made the bricks from the 
planet's abundant supply of radioactive clay, sledged them over to each 
site, done the entire job by hand.  The base of the tower was made of 
the same material, from the ground up to roughly twice the height of the 
pyramids; from there on up the tower became a naked iron spiral, 
disappearing into the toxic clouds.  As they watched, a black dot became 
visible against the sky.  It grew larger, its human shape suddenly 
becoming discernible; then, right before their eyes, the slave 
splattered on the ground like a grocery bag full of vegetable soup.
	Marrissa yawned.  "Well, I can't spare any more slaves," she said.  
"The city's practically deserted as it is.  Recommended course of 
action?"
	"Give us another two weeks," Throwaway said.
	Marrissa smirked.  With a quick flick of her wrist she detached 
his helmet from the rest of the suit and yanked it off.  Throwaway 
clutched his head and collapsed to the ground; his brain resisted frying 
just long enough to register the taste of the dirt in his mouth as he 
died.
	"Wrong answer," Marrissa said.  "How about you?"
	"Since we seem to be short on manpower," Patterson suggested, "I 
suggest you conquer another planet and relocate the hardier members of 
the population to work on the tower."
	Marrissa nodded thoughtfully.  "Very well.  Get back to work."
	Patterson Supra scurried back to the tower.  As he clambered up 
the scaffolding he passed the three enormous letters carved into each 
face of the tower's base: RAT.

[7 - the golden age]
	Back on the escape pod Clara was still lost in thought.
	It had only been a few days after she'd signed up for a whole new 
kind of bridge duty that she found herself hip-deep in the Sahara River.  
She'd met with the team already working on the project and had 
immediately been elected leader; she explained the kinds of measurements 
that needed to be taken on the river: breadth, depth, composition of the 
bottom, and so on.  They didn't have the necessary equipment -- still 
more evidence that this was a thoroughly amateurish operation they'd 
been running -- but she'd been able to jury-rig some out of a personal 
communicator and some silverware.
	She was taking some readings on the composition of the river bank 
when someone tapped her on the shoulder.  He looked to be maybe a year 
older than her and, like her, was hip-deep in the river.  In his arms he 
cradled half a dozen little jars full of water.
	"What are you all up to?" he asked.  "I didn't think anyone else 
would be out here."
	"We're surveying the river," Clara said.  "We're the bridge team.  
Who're you?"
	"I am Antonio," he said.  "Dance with me!"
	"What?" Clara said.
	"Sorry," he said.  "I just find it very hard to tell people that I 
am Antonio without shouting 'Dance with me!'  It won't happen again."
	"So what're the jars for?" Clara asked.
	"Oh, didn't you know?" Antonio said.  "We're in the middle of some 
pretty intense negotiations right now.  Our neighbors at the mouth of 
the river are complaining that we're polluting the river just because we 
recycle our water -- you know, filter it clean and release it back to 
the river -- so I'm taking some readings to present as evidence at the 
next meeting.  Then on top of that our neighbors at the =source= of the 
river want to divert half its flow to private investors.  It's a big 
mess.  I don't know how we'll ever resolve anything."
	"Have you considered locking all the diplomats in a room and 
threatening them with violence if they don't reach an agreement?" Clara 
asked.
	Antonio burst out laughing.  "Hey, that's a good one," he said.  
"Or we could go the other way and all head down to the ice cream shop 
and hash things out over a sundae."
	Clara was about to protest that she'd been serious when it 
suddenly hit her how ridiculous she must've sounded.  She decided to 
change the subject.  "So why do they call this river the Sahara?" she 
asked.
	"Oh, only we call it that," Antonio said.  "Its official name is 
River 59588-A.  They reason we call it the Sahara is because the colony 
was named after the founder's hometown in Wisconsin even though it's in 
the tropics.  So we figured if we had a tropical Wisconsin we could have 
a wet Sahara.  Ba-dum-bum.  I know, lame."
	"Who's the founder?" Clara asked.
	"Her name's Marie," Antonio said.  "You must've seen her around."
	"Marie?" Clara said.  "The same Marie that picked us up from the 
shuttle?  Doesn't she have better things to do?"
	"Nope," Antonio said.  "It's just life.  We do what we want.  So 
do I get to find out who =you= are at some point?"
	"Oh, I thought you knew," Clara said.  She realized it probably 
wasn't so obvious now that she'd changed out of her Starfleet uniform.  
"I'm Clara Sutter."
	"Hunh!" Antonio said.  "Well, you know what Sutter found in the 
river, right?"
	"Excuse me?" Clara said.
	"Sutter," Antonio said.  "You know, Sutter's Mill?  How can you 
pack up and move to the frontier without knowing about Sutter's Mill?"
	"I'm not much of a historian," Clara said.
	"Well, here's a hint," Antonio said.  "It's not worth much anymore 
thanks to the replicators, but it's all over the place."  He took a jar, 
scooped some mud from the river bottom, sifted through it, and handed 
what looked like a small rock to Clara.  "Well, I've got to get back to 
work.  Take it easy."
	"Sure," Clara said.  She put the rock in her pocket.
	When she got back to her quarters she took the rock back out of 
her pocket and took a look at it.  It was solid gold.

[8 - bridge over not particularly troubled water]
	At the end of each month there was a town meeting out in West 
Plaza after the fiesta.  It was as good an excuse as any for everyone to 
come out and enjoy the cool night air -- cool compared to the blazing 
hot days, but nowhere near so cool as to require long sleeves.  People 
brought blankets to sit on and watched as the emcee brought various 
people up to the makeshift stage to talk about what they'd been working 
on for the past month.  The last order of business was always to elect a 
new emcee.
	Even at her first town meeting, Clara had something to present.  
She had been working sixteen-hour days in her opaque but well-lit 
apartment sketching on a drawing pad, drafting designs on the computer, 
running simulations for everything from light traffic to catastrophic 
earthquakes.  The rest of her team had moved on to building the town a 
fleet of gliders, just for fun.
	Clara had put on her freshly-starched Starfleet uniform in 
anticipation of her presentation, but as she stepped up onstage, she 
felt a little silly being the only one wearing more than shorts and a T-
shirt -- quite a few in the audience were wearing less.  "Er, hi," she 
said.  "I'm Clara Sutter.  I've been working on this bridge for a while 
now, and I think you'll like what I've come up with."  With that, she 
started up the hologram.
	Up above their heads floated a three-dimensional image of the 
river, spanned by the beautiful bridge Clara had envisioned.  It was a 
classical stone arch with marble railings for the pedestrian traffic, 
though the inside was made of an ultralightweight material that could 
handle stresses that would have cracked the planet's crust.  The image 
rotated so the audience could see it from a number of angles: from a 
boat passing underneath, from a person crossing it, from a glider 
passing far overhead.  "What do you think?" she asked.
        Everyone in the audience had a personal microphone so they could 
access the public address system.  "It's perfect," one of them said, 
"for ancient Rome."  Another added, "It's beautiful, but it's just not 
right for Madison -- it's like a gorgeous pair of shoes that just don't 
go with your outfit."
	"You mean you don't like it?" Clara asked, stunned.
	"It's a little too artificial," someone said.  Clara thought she 
recognized the voice -- it was Jennifer Davenport, formerly of the USS 
Enterprise.
	For a brief fraction of a second Clara was on the verge of lashing 
out at the audience, that sea of ignorant philistines.  But she 
controlled herself.  "Okay," she said, "I'll try to come up with 
something a little more... natural."  She stepped down from the stage.  
"Cretins," she grumbled.
	For another month Clara locked herself in her suite working 
endless days, emerging only to check that the river hadn't suddenly 
changed course or composition.  She was beginning to notice familiar 
faces as she walked through the town, even given how rarely she went 
out: the town still numbered under a thousand.  But she had no names to 
attach to them.  One night as she was editing the holographic clip for 
her second presentation she heard a knock at her door.  She thought for 
a moment and then said, "Come in."
	It was a girl a couple years younger than her, with a coffee-
colored complexion and long curly hair as black as Clara's.  Clara 
recognized her from the bridge team, but she'd never learned their 
names.  "Who're you?" she asked.
	"Umm... I'm Jill," the girl said.  "We worked together, remember?  
Look, uh, our little group was planning on going swimming down at the 
spring in a few minutes, and I thought... I mean, I know it's been a 
while, but do you want to come?"
	"I don't have a swimsuit," Clara said.
	Jill rolled her eyes.  "Well, that's okay," she said, "cause 
neither does anybody else."
	"Oh," Clara said.  "Well, I don't think so.  I've got work to do."
	Jill shrugged.  "Just thought I'd ask.  Hey, why did Starfleet 
transfer you down here, anyway?"
	"They didn't transfer me," Clara said.  "I went AWOL.  Deserted.  
I was sick of living in a little cloister doing nothing but working on 
engineering projects."
	Jill didn't even have to say anything.  Clara realized right away 
that she'd just sucker-punched herself.
	"Let's go," she said.

[9 - nightswimming]
	The spring was located fairly deep in the forest; Clara lost track 
of where she was after the first of many twists and turns through the 
trees.  Jill walked gingerly so as not to step on any pointed twigs or 
trip over any tree roots.  Clara, wearing boots, felt about as graceful 
as a dump truck plodding alongside her.
	Soon they reached the spring.  There were about two dozen sets of 
heads and shoulders bobbing like rubber ducks in the water; Clara 
recognized a few of the faces from the bridge team, and a couple others 
from walking around town, but that was all.  Jill gleefully shed her 
clothes and jumped in.  Clara tested the water with her fingers: it was 
warm and bubbly like a jacuzzi.
	Very slowly she pulled her boots off.  She was well aware that in 
taking her time she was defeating her desire to stay inconspicuous, 
since it was lingering at the spring's edge that was drawing attention 
to herself; nevertheless, she felt more self-conscious than she'd ever 
felt before.  Finally she took a deep breath, slipped off her clothes, 
and threw herself into the water.
	She felt the water rushing all around her face and then she 
resurfaced.  "Hey there, groovy chick," she heard someone say.  She spun 
around in the water.  It was Antonio.
	She expected to see him leering at her but he didn't seem any 
different than he had at the river.  "You're here!" he said.  "If I 
hadn't seen you at the town meeting I'd've thought you'd left the 
planet.  Where've you been keeping yourself?"
	"Home," she said.  "Working.  What've you been up to?"
	"Playing," he said.
	"Hmm," she said.  "So... uhh... how are the negotiations coming?"
	"They aren't," Antonio said.  "The dispute's basically 
intractable.  No one expects anything to be resolved anymore.  We just 
meet every week, make a few biting comments at each other and have an 
enormous meal before going home.  We might as well be a supper club."
	"Oh..." Clara said.  "That's nice..."
	"You okay?" Antonio asked.  "You seem distracted."
	"I was just thinking that Marrissa'd probably have a cerebral 
hemorrhage if she knew what I was up to," Clara said.
	"You mean floating?" Antonio said.  "Has this Marrissa character 
cast aspersions on your buoyancy?"
	"No," Clara said, "I mean... just being here.  Swimming.  Naked.  
With all these people around."
	"Ah, yes," Antonio said.  "The shock!  The horror!  We actually 
have bodies!  And so do you.  Well, join the club.  So who's this 
Marrissa?"
	"You know, Marrissa," Clara said.  "Marrissa Amber Flores Picard, 
Captain of the Enterprise...?"
	"Nope, not ringing any bells," Antonio said.  "Hey, let me 
introduce you to some people."
	After a while they started to get overheated and took to the 
trees.  In this part of the forest the eucalyptus had given way to the 
grieg, a species of tree native to the planet Mkgurk.  Grieg trees were 
marked by a staggering array of branches that made climbing to the top 
as easy as walking up a staircase.  They nestled in the top limbs and 
looked up at the stars.
	"Who says evolution's a one-way street?" asked one of the people 
Clara had met, a girl named Bridget.  Clara smiled to herself.  She felt 
the cool air on her bare, glistening skin and looked out at the stars.  
Somewhere up there, she thought, Marrissa's in the middle of some 
battle, or arguing with Q, or browbeating a roomful of ambassadors, or 
accepting the latest in a string of promotions.
	And I wouldn't trade places with her for a second.

[10 - born under a bad sign]
	Fo-Fwif Ky-Kung-Pa sat at his station, feet on the console, 
reading a magazine.  Serving in the Alliance of Thi-Span Nations 
Starforce was nowhere near as glorious as it looked in the ads, he 
grumbled to himself.  If only I'd been born twenty years earlier, I 
could've been in the big war, been a hero.  Or, more likely, been blown 
to pieces by a grenade, but that's not the point.  The point is, now 
every country on Thi-Spa is suddenly at peace and the only place for 
adventure is up in space.  If you can call routing cargo ships into the 
docking bay "adventure."  Hoo-boy.
	He turned the page and unfolded the centerfold.  On second 
thought, maybe things are more exciting than I thought!  Check out the 
antennae on =her=!  Grrr-rowl!
	Suddenly there was a beep to signify that the satellite was being 
hailed by an unfamiliar ship.  "Onscreen," he said.
	The viewscreen lit up to show a thirteen-year-old human girl 
arranging her blonde hair into a ponytail.  "My, that was fast," she 
said.  "And who might you be?"
	"I'm Fo-Fwif Ky-Kung-Pa of the Satellite Figu-Fimu," Fo-Fwif said.  
"The Alliance of Thi-Span Nations welcomes you to our homeworld."  He 
put down the index card.  "Uh, who're you?"
	When Fo-Fwif heard the answer he did something he hadn't done 
since he'd been a toddler.  He wet himself.  For the answer the girl 
gave was short and to the point: "I'm Manat."
	Oh, =shit=.
	"Let me get my commanding officer," Fo-Fwif said.
	"No," Marrissa said.  "Make one move and I'll turn your satellite 
into a meteorite.  See, I have a policy.  It seems to me that =any= 
species can crank out one or two exceptional individuals per generation.  
Maybe not as exceptional as me, but you get the point.  The geniuses of 
a backward species can usually hold their own with those of an advanced 
one.  But the average, everyday individual?  Not a chance.  I believe in 
judging a species by its typical members, not its great ones.  So guess 
what, Fo-Fwif?  You're about to become the most important figure in Thi-
Span history.  Because you get to choose whether your planet is spared 
or destroyed."
	Fo-Fwif Ky-Kung-Pa nearly swallowed his tongue.
	"The question is simple," Marrissa asked.  "On behalf of your 
species, do you accept perpetual slavery starting now and continuing 
forever after?"
	Fo-Fwif wet himself again.
	Is it a trick? he thought.  Maybe if I say yes she'll say I've 
just proven that the Thi-Spans aren't noble and kill us all.  But if I 
say no I'm refusing Manat.  =Manat=!  Oh, why was I born?  Why was I 
BORN??  No, no time for that!  Think, =think=!  If I say no, that's 
pride.  If I say yes, that's weakness.  Strong but proud or cooperative 
but weak?  THINK!!
	"Time's up," Marrissa said.
	"Yes, YES!!" Fo-Fwif cried.  "Enslave us!  It's yours, 
everything's yours, the planet's yours!"
	"Congratulations!" Marrissa said.  "You've just ensured that your 
species will continue to exist beyond the balance of the hour.  I'm now 
going to send down some troops to the planet's surface.  I expect all 
your leaders to report for execution.  The remainder of the Thi-Span 
population will be placed in suspended animation.  Except for you, Fo-
Fwif."
	"M-me?" Fo-Fwif gulped.
	"That's right," Marrissa said.  "I've never had anyone with 
antennae in my harem before."  She smiled.  "I think you'll enjoy 
yourself."

[11 - the bridges of Madison Colony]
	At the next town meeting Clara unveiled her latest bridge 
proposal.  Structurally it was identical to her previous one, with one 
important difference: instead of being made of stone and marble, it was 
made of the same kind of rock that lined the riverbed.  There were no 
materials in the bridge that couldn't be found a few meters away from 
it, either in the banks or under the water.  What could be more natural?
	The audience response remained lackluster, though.  "It's nice," 
someone said, and as Clara was finally beginning to learn some names, 
she correctly identified that someone as Craig -- "but still, it's not 
really fooling anybody.  It's still a bridge."
	"Don't you want a bridge?" Clara asked.
	"Yes and no," said someone else -- Amy, this time.  "Yes in the 
sense that we'd like to be able to walk across the river, but no in the 
sense that if we're just passing by, we don't want to be able to see 
it."
	"I don't get it," Clara lamented to Antonio the next night, at the 
fiesta.  There were rows of tables, people hanging around playing 
guitar, and, of course, tables piled with food.  Just as Clara spent her 
days working on the bridge, there were quite a few people who spent all 
day cooking or practicing music -- until they felt like doing something 
else and roped someone into taking their place.  Like everything else in 
Madison, the food was free.  "They want to be able to cross the water 
but not see the bridge.  It's like a zen koan.  'If a tree falls in the 
forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?'  There's no answer."
	"Sure there is," Antonio said.  "The answer's no.  They figured it 
out in 2157."
	"Oh," Clara said.  "Well, like I said, I'm not much of a 
historian."  She took a bite out of the pastry in the basket next to her 
plate.  "Mer'aph!" she cried.  "What =is= this?  This is the BEST THING 
I've ever tasted!"
	"It's called a sopaipilla," Antonio said.  "Glad you like it.  
It's my mom's recipe."
	"You made this?" Clara asked.
	"Not personally," he replied.  "I made the first batch a few 
months ago, everyone else learned.  Now when the supply ship with the 
chiles on it arrives, =then= you'll see some cuisine."  The guitarists 
lurched into an aggressive flamenco rhythm.  Antonio jumped out of his 
seat.  "Dance with me!" he cried.
	"I thought you said that wouldn't happen again," Clara said.
	"No time to argue!" Antonio said.  "Dance with me!"
	"Umm... okay, you got it," Clara said.  She finished off her 
sopaipilla and stood up.  "I suppose you probably ought to know I have 
no idea how to dance."
	"Unimportant!" Antonio said.  "You will learn! Just follow my 
lead."
	Clara did more than that.  She closed her eyes and let her body 
whirl wherever it seemed to want to go; most of that was under Antonio's 
direction, but some of it was something she could only call abandon.  
Other couples joined them, which Clara didn't realize until it was over 
and she opened her eyes.  She did, however, pick up on the rhythmic 
clapping that seemed to coalesce out of nowhere.  At the end, she felt 
herself flying backward, caught in Antonio's arms just before she lost 
her balance: it was a dip.  She felt the urge to kiss him, but decided 
she didn't know him well enough.  She did, however, surreptitiously slip 
her wedding ring into her pocket.
	"Now ice cream!" Antonio said.  "And strawberries!"
	"No!" Clara said.  "No strawberries."
	The next set of bridge modifications took longer than Clara had 
expected, not because she was stumped on how to proceed, but because she 
couldn't devote as much time to the project.  Mornings were no problem, 
but every evening she found herself hanging out with one group of people 
or another.  Sometimes Antonio was there, sometimes he wasn't.  She had 
to admit to herself she missed him when he wasn't around.  But there was 
always Ingrid or Lars or Bridget or Jennifer or Paul or Kevin or Ramona 
or Hank or Amy or Alicia or Jill or Sunjay or all of them to keep her 
company.
	One evening they wanted to see the bridge plans in progress.  So 
Clara took them back to her place.  When they saw her suite they had to 
make a visible effort to keep from cracking up; in Ingrid's case, it 
didn't work.  "Feel anti-social much?" she asked.
	"It's like hiding under the covers with a flashlight," Craig 
remarked.
	"Huh?" Clara said.  Then she blushed.  "Oh.  I suppose I ought to 
fix that."  She let everyone in.  "Computer!" she said.  "Translucent, 
translucent, translucent, and--" (pointing at the exterior wall) 
"transparent."
	Everyone clapped.
	Such was not the case at the next meeting.  She'd figured out how 
to redistribute the weight of the bridge so she could build it from 
photodiamond and make it invisible.  She showed them the holographic 
simulation -- as people walked across it, it looked as if they were 
floating in midair.  There was no sign the bridge was there, but it held 
them up.
	"Problem," someone called out.  "What if you're afraid of 
heights?"
	"How are you supposed to keep from bumping into the railing?" 
someone else asked.
	"Do you want an invisible bridge or not?" Clara asked.
	"I think what everyone wants is a bridge you can't see unless 
you're on it," Antonio said, grinning.
	Clara ran her hand through her hair.  "Fine.  You guys trust me?"
	Everyone cheered.
	"Good.  I'll draw up the plans.  We'll start building in a week.  
You'll like it."
	Two weeks later Clara and Antonio were floating over the river in 
a glider.  Clara had picked up the knack of gliding in an instant and 
had made the trip down to the ocean and back a couple of days before.
	"Correct me if I'm wrong," Antonio said, "but are you sure you 
gave them the right plans?  It looks like they're building your first 
bridge.  You know, the stone one."
	"Trust me, I know what I'm doing," Clara said.  She looked down at 
the sunsplashed hills, dappled with shadows that flickered around as the 
breeze played through the eucalyptus trees.  It was still summer; it was 
always summer in Madison.  She smiled.  She seemed to be doing nothing 
but smiling these days.  "That's a sight you'll never see on Essex," she 
said.
	"Essex!" Antonio cried.  "I had a stopover there on the way to the 
colony last year.  Two of the worst months of my life.  What were you 
doing on that tiny, dingy, dank, dismal, tea-stained little planetoid?"
	Clara gave him an odd look.  "I've been wondering," she said.  "Do 
you know who I am?"
	"You're not Clara Sutter?" he asked.
	"I am," she said.  "Do you know who Clara Sutter is?  Or, should I 
say, Clarrissa Ann Sutter?"
	"You," he said.  "You're Clara, Clara's you.  Am I missing 
something here?"
	"You'd never heard of me before we met that day in the river?" she 
asked.
	"Okay, now you've got me all curious," Antonio said.  "Spill it."
	"The reason I've spent time on Essex," Clara said, "is that I'm 
Princess of Essex.  I'm also -- or at least I =was= -- Chief of 
Engineering on the USS Enterprise, flagship of Starfleet.  I've designed 
every warp core engine built in the past ten years.  And now that you 
know, I promise never to bring it up again."
	"Okay, now we're even," Antonio said.  "You're not much of a 
historian, and I'm totally oblivious to popular culture.  Now remind me 
of all the idiotic things I've said and done because I didn't know."
	"Antonio," Clara said, "if you didn't know I was anyone special, 
why did you pick me to hang out with?  Especially back when I was 
repressed, antisocial and basically dysfunctional?"
	Antonio thought for a moment.  "Okay, I think I'm going to have to 
go straight to the cornball answer on this one," he said.  "Clara, just 
because I didn't know you were a celebrity doesn't mean I couldn't see 
that you were =special=."
	Clara kissed him.  The glider almost went out of control, but it 
was worth it.

[12 - revisionist history]
	Work on the bridge continued.  It became manifestly apparent that 
attempt number four was identical to attempt number one.  People came up 
to Clara at the fiestas and asked her about it.  All she ever said in 
reply was, "Wait till it's done.  If you still hate it, you have my 
formal permission to punch me in the face."
	After the fiesta Clara and Antonio usually took a walk up into the 
hills.  They stayed up late into the night, watching the town and 
talking.  And generally that's all it was, just talking -- both of them 
seemed to agree that it'd be a shame to waste energy on making out when 
they could spend it getting to know each other.  Clara told Antonio all 
the stories of her childhood: crashlanding in enemy territory with the 
Trakce on their tail ("you don't mean to tell me there's actually a 
starfaring race that stupid, do you?" Antonio asked); the day all the 
adults vanished from the Enterprise and the Kids' Crew took over ("so 
you're telling me they field-promoted a twelve-year-old girl to fleet 
commander?  I know you're no historian, but have you ever heard of 
smoking crack?"); and then, of course, the Royal Wedding that those 
wacky Romulans crashed ("she blew up fleeing, unarmed vessels and 
received awards??")  Clara carefully left out her part in said wedding; 
indeed, she carefully edited out any mention of the romance between her 
and Alexander.  In looking back on it, it seemed so arbitrary and 
perfunctory, like a couple of kindergarteners kissing in the coat closet 
just to see what it was like.
	And she learned about Antonio and his home planet of Coyolxauhqui: 
she'd assumed he'd grown up in an environment just like this, but such 
was not the case.  "This is what I'd consider the tropics," he said.  
"But just being hot doesn't qualify a place as tropical.  My home 
planet's so hot that it's only habitable at altitude.  The oceans are 
hot enough to scald.  Even living up at three thousand meters it could 
get pretty unbearable.  And the entire planet was desert, scrub 
everywhere you looked.  Still, it had a certain charm."
	"Why would anyone choose to live there?" Clara asked.
	"Why would anyone choose to live on Essex?" Antonio replied.  "In 
the case of Coyolxauhqui it comes down to culture.  Tradition.  The 
calendar's sacred there.  One of the first things you learn in school -- 
or church, it's the same thing there -- is the significance of each day 
of the year, which portents each one holds, which gods you must be sure 
to honor.  But for some reason with me it didn't take.  Probably because 
I was a rich kid, in one of the noble families, and felt I was above it 
all.  And I felt like an outsider because of it.  I got really 
interested in Earth history, old Earth history, before spaceflight.  I 
liked pioneers, people living on the frontier, the Russians moving east, 
the Americans moving west, colonists from Britain and Spain moving to 
places like Australia and Peru.  They couldn't just hop on a starship 
and head back to the big city.  Once they were in the middle of nowhere, 
they were stuck.  And I felt stuck.  When I was nineteen I bribed a 
merchant ship captain to let me be a stowaway.  A couple years later I 
heard about this place and hopped on any ship that seemed to be heading 
in the right direction."
	"You're a drifter," Clara giggled.
	"Yup," Antonio said.  "A black stain on the House of Aguilera, 
that's me.  Now tell me about that whole Naklab negotiation again.  This 
kills me."
	Clara started spending her mornings tinkering with equipment, not 
alone in her room, but in the big electronics workshop.  Anyone who 
wanted to come along was welcome to come and listen to her explain what 
she was doing.  A couple people with a degree of natural engineering 
ability started picking things up right away, but everyone else was 
thoroughly baffled, even though Clara was a patient teacher and tried to 
explain things three or four different ways.  And no one understood why 
Clara suddenly seemed to need a giant hole dug into the ground on each 
end of the emerging bridge.
	"Could you repeat that last part?" someone asked.
	"Which part?" she said.  "The angular momentum conversion?  The 
reverse polarization?  The digging?"
	"Clarrissa," Kevin cracked, "I'm afraid you're going to have to 
explain it all."
	Clara had told Alexander she'd be gone for six months.  One night 
she was lying on her couch looking at the stars through the invisible 
ceiling when she realized that it was the six-month anniversary of her 
arrival in Madison.  She felt unbidden tears streaming down her cheeks.  
She tapped her communicator.  "Antonio," she said.
	A few seconds later came a mumbled reply.  "I'm not here right 
now, leave your name and number at the beep or something."
	"Antonio, it's Clara," she said.  "I don't want to go back, I 
don't."
	"I'll be right over," he said.
	Clara's face was puffy from crying as she opened the door for 
Antonio a few minutes later.  "I don't know what's wrong with me," she 
said.  "It's just -- I mean -- I feel like I'm on borrowed time, like 
this isn't real, like I'm going to wake up--"
	"Shhh," Antonio said.  "Look around.  You're here.  You're here.  
You're not going to wake up stuck on a ship with those twisted kids.  
You're here, you're safe."
	"I'm going to have to go back =some= time," she said, trying to 
keep from bawling.  "I don't even know why I'm crying.  It's totally 
irrational.  What's wrong with me?  It's like I opened an artery and I 
can't stop the blood--"
	Clara collapsed and lay on the ground, clutching her knees to her 
chest and sobbing uncontrollably.  Antonio carried her to her bed and 
found a chair for himself.  "Who says you have to go back?" he asked 
gently.
	"I do, I do, it's going to happen," she said.  "At =some= point 
I'm going to be back on that GOD-DAMNED SHIP.  I'm one of them, don't 
you see?  I'm a freak, I'm a freak."
	"Sure," Antonio said, "but you're a beautiful freak."
	Clara laughed and cried at the same time.  "I don't know how much 
time I have left," she said.  "Something terrible is going to happen to 
me.  I know it."
	"Maybe," Antonio said.  "But there's one good thing about terrible 
things happening in the future.  The future isn't now."
	"No," Clara said.  She tried to catch her breath.  It took a 
while.  She didn't know how long.  Maybe a couple minutes, maybe an 
hour.  When her tears had stopped and her breathing was back to normal, 
Antonio was still there.  He'd dozed off, but he hadn't left.
	"Psst!" she said.
	Antonio wake up with a start.  "Huh?  Wh-- oh, no, I'm sorry, I 
didn't mean to--"
	"It's okay," she said.  "Look, if you're tired, you can... you 
know... sleep... here... with me..."
	"Are you sure?" Antonio said.  "I mean, we've gotten to know each 
other pretty well over the last few months, but is this the kind of step 
you want to take right now, in this condi--"
	"You bet," Clara said.

[13 - how and kwai]
	Dawn.
	"You know," Antonio said, "I have to admit, when I arrived here I 
never exactly saw myself a year later making love to a princess."
	"Well, I hope you enjoyed it," Clara said, "because it isn't going 
to happen again."
	"What?" Antonio said.  "Aw, no.  I =knew= this was a bad idea!  
Look, Clara, I'm so sorry, I should've--"
	"Oh, no, no, no, no, no," Clara said, smiling.  "I just mean I 
hereby abdicate my place in line to the throne of Essex.  You're just 
going to have to get used to carrying on with a commoner."
	The morning sessions at the workshop were discontinued, as the 
person giving the lessons found herself oversleeping on a remarkably 
consistent basis.  Clara and Antonio would couple over and over again 
from the time the sun went down until they were completely worn out, 
just as the sun came up; they would drift off to sleep, wake up in the 
middle of the afternoon, and if she felt like it sometimes Clara would 
go to see how the bridge was coming along.
	Sex with Alexander had always been furtive, awkward and quick, 
Clara realized: furtive because they were constantly afraid of being 
caught; awkward because they didn't really know what they were doing; 
quick because... well, because, as Alexander had often explained, that 
was the Klingon way.  Always hovering over them was the sense that they 
were ducking their responsibilities, that if Marrissa caught them they'd 
be in trouble they couldn't even imagine, that their hurried sticky 
fumblings were breaking some sort of unwritten rule.  This was 
different.  This was the person she knew best in all the worlds there 
were, who knew her best, who hadn't shared her screwed-up childhood but 
understood it nonetheless and loved her the more for overcoming it.  
Their nights were fun, leisurely, comfortable; she never got the sense 
that Antonio was trying to score points off her the way Alexander 
sometimes seemed to.  They seemed to come up with the same ideas at the 
same time: trying it in the spring, trying it in a glider.  Clara's 
suite had a replicator, so they never needed to go out for anything: 
there were stretches of days that they didn't even bother to get 
dressed.  As for the other citizens of Madison -- well, when they saw 
the walls of Clara's place go opaque at night they knew it wasn't 
because she was being anti-social.
	The day came for the great bridge unveiling.  Not that there was 
any unveiling to be done -- they'd seen the thing go up piece by piece.  
But it looked exactly like the first one which the people of Madison, to 
put it charitably, hadn't particularly cared for.  Most everyone assumed 
there had to be some kind of trick, like Clara would push a button and 
the outer shell would crumble away, leaving exactly what they wanted, 
whatever that might be -- if they knew, they'd've built it already.
	"Hey," Clara said by way of greeting.  Since the bridge was 
already up, they were meeting by the river rather than in the plaza; 
that meant they'd had to drag out some PA equipment so Clara could be 
heard.  "I'm glad you all could make it.  What you see before you is 
what I envisioned the first time I took a serious look at the river 
before us.  I =still= think it's the best way to go.  But I seem to be 
outvoted."
	"Therefore," she continued, "since you all seem to think it's such 
an eyesore, I'll get rid of it."  She nodded at Jill, who went to the 
railing and threw a switch.  The bridge shimmered briefly and blinked 
out of existence.
	"We already saw the invisible one!" someone shouted.  "How're we 
supposed to get across?"
	"Glad you asked," Clara said.  "Why don't you try?  See the slabs 
on each bank?  They used to be just plain rocks, but now they're access 
ramps.  Hop on."
	"No thanks," the guy said.
	"I'll give it a shot," Marie said.  She stepped onto the ramp.  
"Hey!  The bridge is back.  Cool.  Isn't it going to get annoying, 
though, it blinking on and off all the time?"
	"Blinking?" Clara said.  "What do you mean?  Can anyone else see 
it?"
	Everyone shook their heads.  Kevin hopped around on one foot to 
see if he could catch a glimpse of it out the corner of his eye if he 
looked somewhere else.  It didn't work.
	"Go ahead, walk across," Clara said.  Marie shrugged and started 
across the river.  To everyone in the audience, she, too, seemed to 
blink out of existence.
	"Umm... you didn't just kill Marie, did you?" Bridget asked.
	"Get on the ramp and see," Clara said.
	Bridget started up the ramp.  Once her foot touched the slab she 
could see the bridge, could see Marie walking across it.  "It's magic," 
she said.  "When you're on the bridge, you see it.  When you're not, you 
don't.  Is that how it works?"
	"Pretty much," Clara said.  "Isn't that what you wanted?"
	The crowd erupted into applause.  Clara smiled.
	That evening everyone at the fiesta demanded to know the secret.  
"So what did you do?" Lars asked.  "Plant microchips in everyone's brain 
to edit it out, or what?"
	"Simple," Clara said.  "I just thought back to when I was 
designing starships.  When you turn on your cloaking device, the console 
doesn't suddenly turn invisible.  =You= can still see your ship as long 
as you're inside it.  I just applied the same principle."
	"Doesn't that take a massive amount of power, though?" Ramona 
asked.  "The entire =town= doesn't put out as much energy as even the 
tiniest warp drive engine."
	"No, but the planet does," Clara said.  "I'm just stealing 
rotational energy.  That's what all the buried equipment's for.  I have 
to warn you, the day's going to slow down by about a second every 
hundred thousand years."
	"That's... unbelievable," Hank sputtered.
	"Hey, when you've spent time with Marrissa's Kids' Crew, you learn 
to expect not just the unexpected but the laughably improbable," Clara 
said.  "Why do you all look so surprised?  I explained exactly what I 
was doing as I put the equipment together."
	Antonio coughed.
	"Sorry," Clara said.  "Slipped into Marrissa mode for a second 
there.  Won't happen again."
	Later as they sat at the table watching the dancing Antonio said, 
"Clara, you're glowing.  You're putting out as much light as a star.  A 
small star, maybe, but still."
	"You're just trying to be poetic," Clara said.  "But I have to 
admit, I've been =feeling= like I'm glowing all the time lately.  This 
put it over the top, though.  I feel like I've actually accomplished 
something.  It just hit me.  I mean, bridges tend to stick around for a 
while.  Our great-grandkids'll probably be using it in a hundred years.  
Isn't that something?"
	"=Our= great-grandkids?" Antonio asked.
	"You know what I mean," Clara said.  "Us the community.  But... 
why not ours?  It's something to think about."
	"Maybe in five years," Antonio said.  "I think we're a little 
young to be thinking about children, don't you?"
	Clara felt a cold thrill run through her.  That's right, she 
thought.  He doesn't know.
	She looked up.  Somewhere up there, she thought, =my= child is 
learning how to walk.  Or getting fed, or sleeping, or something.  I'm a 
mother.  I had a baby when I was a child.  She shivered.
	"I knew something bad was going to happen," she muttered.
	"Hmm?" Antonio said.
	"Nothing," Clara said.  "One more night.  We'll talk about it in 
the morning."

[14 - till death do us part]
	The next morning Clara gave Antonio her wedding ring.
	"What's this?" he asked.  He looked at it.  It was a thin golden 
ring with a sapphire pattern running through it.  Etched into the metal 
was the legend "C & A".
	"Does this mean what I think it does?" Antonio asked.
	"I think so," Clara said.
	"Clara," Antonio said, "this is very sweet, but... I'm not sure 
I'm ready to be married yet!  Maybe in a year or two--"
	"Oh, no, no," Clara said.  "The A isn't for you.  It's for 
Alexander.  My husband.  On the--"  The word caught in her throat.  "On 
the Enterprise."
	"Oh," Antonio said.  "That's... something."  He sat down, to the 
extent that collapsing into a chair can be called sitting.
	"You probably think I'm a terrible person," Clara said.
	"No!" he said immediately.  "How could you even think that?  
But... I mean, we've got to take care of this."
        "What do you mean, 'take care of it'?" Clara asked.
	"I mean, the situation as it stands isn't going to work," Antonio 
said.  "We can't be together if you're married to someone else.  So you 
can split up with what's-his-name--"
	"Alexander," Clara said.  "You know, the Klingon from the Kids' 
Crew?  Same guy."
	"Really!" Antonio said.  "Well, whatever.  Like I was saying, you 
can split up with Alexander, or you can split up with me, but you have 
to choose.  If you just don't want to deal with it -- don't want to get 
back in touch with him 'cause he's on the Enterprise -- I can understand 
that too, but we can't be involved if that's what you decide to do."
	"Why not?" Clara asked.
	"Because -- because look," Antonio said.  "What happens if we get 
married in a couple years and some guy comes along and sweeps you off 
your feet?"
	"I see," Clara said.  "You're big on property rights."
	"No, that's not what I mean!" Antonio said.  "Or maybe it is.  It 
just seems to me that if you get married, then you're acknowledging all 
the cultural baggage that comes with it.  If you don't believe in tying 
yourself down, don't get married!  If you want the freedom to go off 
with someone else while we're together, then don't marry me!  That's 
fine!  But you =did= marry him, and that =is= a promise that you'd never 
be with anyone else, and as that 'anyone else' I think you should either 
stick to the promise, or do away with it."  He sighed.  "At least you 
don't have any kids."
	"That's the other thing we have to talk about," Clara said.
	Antonio gave Clara a few days to think about it, but she only 
needed a few minutes.  She spent the rest of the time getting more and 
more depressed.
	"Okay, here's what I've decided," she finally told him.  "One.  I 
feel nothing for Alexander and I-- I mean, you know I love you.  Right?  
Okay, two.  If I can't be with you unless I break it off with Alexander, 
then I'll break it off with Alexander.  Three, I won't fight for custody 
since I don't deserve or even want it.  Four, no more marriage talk 
until I'm grown up.  I feel like the time I've been here I've gone from 
being emotionally a twelve-year-old to an eighteen-year-old, but I'm 
still stunted for my actual age and I realize that.  Five... well, there 
is no five.  I think that's it."
	"Okay, then," Antonio said.  "Let's send for him and clear this 
whole mess up."
	"No," Clara said.  "He'll never come here.  Not now, probably not 
ever.  I have to go back.  I knew it had to happen someday."
	"Are you sure?" Antonio said.
	"It'll only be for a day or two," Clara said.  "I'll be right 
back.  Then I don't ever have to think about the Enterprise again."
	Clara had been deliberately calm, calm to the point of parody, up 
till now, but her voice cracked on the word "Enterprise" and her lip
started to quiver.  Antonio held her close.  "Hey, don't cry," he
whispered.  "I have a story for you.  Once there was a king who asked
the most brilliant man in the kingdom to tell him something that would
make him sad if he were happy and happy if he were sad.  Do you know
what it is?"
	Clara shook her head.  Antonio whispered the answer in her ear.  
She smiled sadly.  "Thank you," she said.
	Clara hadn't brought anything with her to Madison except her 
wedding ring; she took only one other thing with her on the way back.  
She did bring a snack as she trudged across her bridge to the comm 
center in East Plaza.  She had almost finished it off when it hit her.  
Look at me, she thought.  I'm wearing sandals, and I'm eating granola.  
She collapsed in helpless laughter right there on the bridge.  Since it 
was cloaked, no one could see her.
	The laughter only lasted a minute; afterward she felt drained and 
empty.  There was no line at the comm station.  "Hail the Enterprise," 
she said.
	A minute later the screen flickered to life.  It was Patterson 
Supra.  "Finally ready to come crawling back, eh?" he sneered.
        "What?" Clara said.  "I haven't talked to any of you in nearly
a year!  You make it sound like I caved in on the second day."  She
paused.  "Anyway, I'm not caving.  Let me talk to Alexander."
	A couple minutes later Alexander appeared on the viewscreen.  
"You," he said.  "What do you want?"
	"I cheated on you," she said.  "I need a divorce.  I need to come 
back for a couple of days so we can hammer out the details.  I won't 
fight you on anything, I just need out.  Come pick me up.  If you're 
still in the area."
	"You... wh... very well," Alexander said.  "We're on the other 
side of the galaxy right now, but you're the one who located Warp 30.  
We'll be there in a matter of hours."
	Six hours later Clara Sutter beamed up to the Enterprise.  
Marrissa was waiting for her in the transporter room.  She looked 
younger than Clara remembered.  "You're out of uniform, Commander," she 
said.  "Regulations require that all officers be in uniform while on 
duty.  Your shift began sixty seconds ago.  Go change.  I have no 
tolerance for lateness."
	Clara remembered what Antonio had told her and smiled.  She smiled 
again as she looked out the window of the escape pod into the endless 
blackness.  "This too shall pass," she murmured.
	"Clara?" Alexander said.  "Are you okay?  You spaced out on me 
there for a minute.  I asked, what was Madison like?"
	Clara shook her head.  "I don't really feel like talking about it 
right now."

[15 - worlds in collision]
	Marrissa checked herself out in the mirror.  She wore the black-
and-crimson Starfleet uniform she'd dug out of storage the day she woke 
up and discovered that she was thirteen again.  She made sure all 
nineteen collar pips were in place.  She put her hair back in its usual 
ponytail and traded sultry pouts with her reflection.  Then she walked 
into Jay's quarters.
	"Hello, Jay," she said.  "How are you today?"
	Jay didn't say anything.
	"Patterson tells me the tower will go online tomorrow morning," 
Marrissa said.  "Aren't you excited?  I'm excited.  After all, it's not 
every day a girl becomes omnipotent."
	Jay didn't say anything.
	"Of course, there's always the chance that when we open the 
dimensional gateway the universes will annihilate each other," Marrissa 
said.  "But I figure you've got to take a few risks if you expect a 
reward.  And none of the extradimensional energy I've absorbed over the 
past few years has hurt me yet."
	She looked at Jay.  "Oh, I know what you're going to say.  You're 
going to say it's stunted my growth.  But I'm much better this way, 
don't you think?  I =know= you'd have picked me like this in a second 
over what you got on our wedding night.  But then, we can't change the 
past."  She put her finger to her lips.  "I take that back," she said.  
"It's entirely possible that once the RAT is operational I =will= be 
able to change the past.  I have =gone= back to the past, you know.  
Hung around on Capitol Hill, made the rounds in the Senate, shot the 
breeze with good ol' Bill.  Ah, those were the days, weren't they?  But 
I like these better."
	She walked over to look Jay in the face.  Of course, it wasn't the 
same with him hanging upside-down from a hook.  "Now you're going to say 
I'm rambling," she said. "Well, maybe you're right."  She picked up a 
pencil and a pad of paper with her mind and telekinetically jotted 
something down.  "There, objection noted.  But if I can't share these 
things with my loving husband, who can I share them with?"
	She sighed.  "It's almost anti-climactic, don't you think?" she 
said.  "Here I thought I was going to have to spend the next twenty 
years of my life conquering the universe and now it turns out that all I 
have to do is start up the tower tomorrow and I'll have the universe in 
my back pocket.  But I will not weep that I have no other worlds to 
conquer.  For there are other dimensions out there.  Maybe I'll start in 
on our parent dimension.  Or start up my own.  I may be a goddess now, 
but it might be fun to be a creator-goddess as well as a destroyer-
goddess.  Don't you think?"
	Jay didn't say anything.
	Marrissa checked her watch.  "Well, time's a-wasting.  Talk to you 
later, okay?"  She kissed him on the forehead and left.  A deep gurgle 
rose in Jay's throat.  It was the kind of gurgle that might have been a 
scream, back when he had a tongue.  And eyes, and a nose, and hands, and 
genitalia.  But those days were long gone.

[16 - Marrissa kicks ass]
	Rabob Qahira awoke with a start.  "I know where we are," she said.
      No one heard her.  Alexander and Shayna were asleep.  Clara was
nowhere to be seen.  Rabob climbed into the cockpit, where Clara was busy
studying the instrument panel.  "I think I can get these things working
again," she said.
	"Don't worry about it," Rabob said.  "I know where we are."
	"How?" Clara asked.
	Rabob tapped her right temple.  "Homing sense," she said.  "All us 
Qudaydis are born with it.  We sort of imprint on our birthplaces.  Kind 
of useless in the starforce.  But not today.  We're heading directly 
toward the place where I was born.  Qudayd."
	"You're sure of this?" Clara said.
	"Positive," Rabob said.
	"Great," Clara said.  She buried her eyes in her palms.  "If only 
I knew what to do.  We need a strategy and I can't think."
	"I'm feeling kind of fuzzy-headed myself," Rabob said.
	"Then how can you be sure your homing sense is working right?" 
Clara asked.
	"How can you work on the instrument panel?" Rabob countered.
	Clara sighed.  "You're right," she said.  "I forgot.  I =told= you 
my logic is shot.  It's weird.  I can't think about the future at all, 
but I can do this mechanical stuff.  And my =memory's= operating in 
overdrive.  I'm remembering all sorts of things..."
	Clara had had to go to the outfitting room to get a new uniform 
after Marrissa threw her little fit.  She'd taken her original one down 
to the laundry room in West Plaza in Madison and conveniently 
"forgotten" to pick it back up.
	"How many pips?" asked the tailor when she emerged from the 
dressing room.
	"Three," Clara said.  She looked in the mirror.  The old black-
and-mustard jumpsuit, the old boots, the old rank on the collar.  I'm in 
the military, Clara thought to herself miserably.  I'm in the fucking 
military.
	When she returned to the bridge she couldn't help but observe that 
yes, Marrissa was distinctly younger than she remembered.  It wasn't a 
change of perspective: Marrissa had been twenty-two when she'd left and 
now she looked all of seventeen.  "All kinds of weird stuff has been 
happening lately," Shayna whispered.  "On the way to pick you up we were 
attacked by a Romulan warbird.  It fired a couple photon torpedoes at 
us, Marrissa glared at it, it blew up.  Pfft.  Spontaneous combustion."
	"Quelle coincidence," Clara said.
	"Is someone talking about me behind my back?" Marrissa demanded, 
head snapping around to face them.  "I just =hate= it when people do 
that."
	"N-no, Marrissa," Shayna said.
	"Good," Marrissa said.  "Now, Clara, I don't suppose you'd care to 
explain what that Romulan warbird was doing waiting for us outside your 
little vacation spot's system?  Surely you could've arranged for a 
better ambush than that?"
	"Ambush?" Clara said.  "What are you talking about?  Look, I just 
want to talk to Alexander and go home."
	"You =are= home," Marrissa said.
	"Home to Madison," Clara said.  "You know what I meant."
	"I'm afraid that's out of the question," Marrissa said.  "We're 
already in the next system."
	"Probe on a course to intercept, Captain," said Patterson Supra.
	"Origin?" Marrissa said.
	"Seems to be a local planet," Patterson said.  "Qudayd.  They're 
not in the Federation yet.  Records indicate that they only achieved 
spaceflight a generation ago and wanted to get the hang of it before 
establishing any alliances."
	"Oh, I'm =sure=," Marrissa said.  "They just didn't feel like 
telling us they were already allied with the =Romulans=!  Just like 
Clara's little commune!"
	"Marrissa," Clara said, "you've been heading down this road for 
years now, but this is ludicrous.  You've completely lost it."
	"Patterson," Marrissa said, "destroy the probe.  Shayna, place 
Clara under arrest."
	"Don't you think that's a little extreme?" Jay asked.
	"Don't question me," Marrissa snapped.  "I want all officers on 
the bridge, this instant."
	It's the galaxy's most twisted family reunion, Clara thought.  
Marrissa, Jay, Shayna, Patterson, Martin Sussex, Jackson Johnson, 
Alexander, Clara herself.  "Where's Kathy Lockhard?" Clara asked.
	"Kathy... is no longer with us," Marrissa said.  "Don't ask about 
her again.  Shayna, have you cuffed Commander Sutter-Rozhenko yet?"
	"You still want me to do that?" Shayna asked.
	"Yes I still want you to do that, you imbecile," Marrissa said.  
"Did you hear me rescind the order?  The rest of you, I want you at 
battle stations.  We've got a rough day ahead of us."
	"What do you mean?" Martin asked.
	"These Qudaydis are clearly allied with the Romulans," Marrissa 
said.  "They've tried to attack us already.  We're going to strike 
back."
	"Marrissa, that wasn't an attack," Jay said.  "It was just a 
probe."
	"Are you sure?" Marrissa said.  "Should I have waited for it to 
blast the ship just to make sure?  Maybe when they launch a big wooden 
horse at us I ought to beam it aboard, huh?  These tenth-rate backwater 
planets are always trying to pull fast ones like this.  They don't have 
the power to take us on honestly so they use tricks!  They're savages 
and full of savage cunning!  But we know how to deal with savages!  We 
know how to deal with our enemies!  Alexander, bombard the planet of 
Qudayd with full-yield photon torpedoes!  We'll see how many 'probes' 
they feel like sending when their planet's been turned into a new 
asteroid belt!"
	"I refuse that order, Captain," Alexander said.  "This action has 
no honor."
	"Give the honor shtick a rest, okay?" Marrissa said.  "Shayna, 
place Lieutenant Commander Rozhenko under arrest."
	"N-no," Shayna said.  "I refuse."
	"Shayna, you're fired," Marrissa said.  "Patterson, place 
Lieutenant Commander Rozhenko and Lieutenant Sachs under arrest."
	"Aye, sir!" Patterson chirped.  He tapped his communicator.  
"Security, please send in a squadron to assist in a multiple arrest."
	"Why are you all just standing there?" Clara cried.  "Come on, 
we've got to stop her!"  She leapt over the railing and lunged at 
Marrissa.  Marrissa calmly drew her phaser and pistol-whipped her.
	"Doctor Johnson, I hope you have some dental expertise because 
Clara's going to needing some teeth fixed."  Marrissa looked down at 
Clara, writhing on the floor clutching her head.  "What say we add a 
little something for a jaw surgeon?" she said, and kicked Clara full in 
the face.
	Alexander and Shayna were too stunned to move.  A moment later the 
security team arrived and it was a moot point.  "Cuff these three," 
Patterson Supra said.  "Shall I have them removed to the brig, Captain?"
	"Why, no," Marrissa said.  "They'd miss all the excitement."
	"Marrissa," Martin Sussex said quietly, "I think we ought to take 
a step back and look at what we're doing.  Let's think this out, calmly 
and rationally..."
	"Okay," Marrissa said.  "Let's do that.  Hmmm.  I'm trying to 
defend us against a planet full of hostile savages, and you're trying to 
distract me.  I'd say, speaking calmly and rationally, that you're on 
the side of the Romulans."  She set her phaser to kill and shot him in 
the head.
	"Y'all done flipped!" Jackson Johnson yelped.
	"You know, I never could stand how your accent came and went," 
Marrissa said.  "I'm afraid you're just too =annoying= to live."  She 
shot him in the head as well.
	Clara, half-conscious and with a dull ringing echoing through her 
head, could only sit and watch as Martin and Jackson fell to the floor 
and quietly bled all over the carpet.  Her hands were clamped behind her 
back, her feet secured to the ground.  She tasted thick coppery blood in 
her throat.  I'm not going to get out of this alive, she thought.
	"How about you, Jay?" Marrissa asked.  "Do you have any problem 
with my chosen course of action?"
	"I-if you think it's best," Jay said.  "B-but... destroying a 
planet...?"
	"I don't do half measures," Marrissa said.  "Commander Supra!  You 
may launch torpedoes!"
	"Aye, sir!" Patterson cried.
	Three dozen flashes of light burst from the torpedo bay of the 
Enterprise.  A split-second later cataclysmic explosions erupted all 
over the planet's surface.
	"Again?" Patterson asked.
	"Never hesitate!" Marrissa barked.  "Continue the bombardment!  
Fend off any and all counterattacks!"
	There were no counterattacks.  Within the hour the surface of the 
planet Qudayd was radioactive dust.  "No lifesigns from the planet, 
Captain," Patterson said.  "Sensors detect the presence of a Qudaydi 
starbase on the planet's third satellite."
	"Interesting," Marrissa said.  "Hold fire.  I think I might enjoy 
chatting with them.  Do we have any figures on casualties?"
	"Coming right up," Patterson said.  "Population of the planet 
Qudayd two hours ago: nine-point-one billion.  Population at present: 
zero."
	"Jay, how can you just STAND THERE?" Clara cried.
	"I can't let my daughter grow up without a father," Jay mumbled.
	"No fraternizing with the prisoners, Number One," Marrissa said.  
"Patterson, set a course for the third satellite.  Security, escort the 
prisoners to Transporter Room Two.  Have the babies brought in, too."
	Patterson Supra whistled a cheerful tune as he punched the buttons 
on the console.  The rest of them walked, or were led, to the 
transporter room.
	Marrissa waited for the babies to be brought in.  Clara hadn't 
seen them in nearly a year.  She certainly didn't recognize them.  
Marrissa picked up her own daughter and cradled her in her arms.  "Hi 
there, Sara," she said.  "Guess what Mommy did today?"
	Sara Alara Gordon Picard started to wail.  "Everyone's a critic," 
Marrissa said.  She tapped her communicator.  "Commander Supra, please 
come to Transporter Room Two."
	As she waited she made a few prefatory remarks.  "A little while 
ago several of the people in this room disagreed with a tactical 
decision of mine," she said.  "You wanted me to hesitate, though a good 
captain never hesitates.  You wanted me to moderate my response to our 
enemies, though a good captain doesn't do half measures."
	Patterson Supra came in.  "Orbit around third satellite achieved, 
Captain," he said.
	Marrissa picked up Clara and Alexander's child and walked over to 
the platform.  "Commander Supra, one half to beam down."
	"Aye, sir," Patterson said.
	"I'll kill you, Marrissa," Clara said.  "You can shoot me in the 
head and I'll find some way to crawl back from hell and kill you."
	"Oh, don't be so melodramatic," Marrissa said.  She set the baby 
down on the edge of the platform.  "Activate," she said.
	One half of Clara's child turned sparkling blue and beamed down to 
the moon's surface.  The rest -- an arm, a leg, a hip, a shoulder, 
three-fifths of a head -- remained on the platform.  "Now =that=," 
Marrissa said, "is what I call a half-measure."
	Clara looked at Alexander.  He said nothing, just stared fiercely 
into the middle distance.  Well, Clara thought, that's two lives I've 
just ruined by having been born.  And here I'd managed to fool myself 
into thinking that maybe life =isn't= the sickest joke ever pulled.
	"One more to beam down," Marrissa said.  "We'll see what the 
Qudaydis have to say for themselves."  As Marrissa stepped onto the 
platform Clara realized she was younger than she'd been an hour before.  
Now she looked fifteen, sixteen tops.
	"Toodles!" Marrissa said.  And she was gone.

[17 - second coming]
	Clara didn't know for sure what had happened after that.  Rabob 
did.
	Rabob Qahira had just wrapped up her first year on the Qudaydi 
Starforce.  Having spent the previous twelve months training on the 
moonbase, she was scheduled to be transferred back down to Qudayd to get 
her assignment for the next year.  Unlike most of her classmates, she 
had no fear of being washed out -- her evaluations over the course of 
the year had been far too strong for that.  But it was entirely possible 
that instead of getting a plum spot on an exploration ship she'd end up 
reassigned to the base as a junior instructor.  A grad student, 
essentially.
	This she wanted to avoid.  Not just because she was sick of the 
moonbase, but because the entire place was beginning to fall prey to the 
political strife that had touched off a civil war in many regions of 
Qudayd.  Fully half of the planet's population had been swept into the 
ranks of the Church Militant of Holy Manat, an apocalyptic sect of the 
Manati faith.  It seemed like you couldn't go anywhere without 
evangelists coming up to you and saying, "Manat is coming soon" or "The 
Fateful One will judge us."  Rabob was pretty firmly against the 
Manatis, since they opposed spaceflight on the basis that it was 
sacrilege.  The Church Militant had sprung up specifically as a response 
to spaceflight, and had successfully blocked Qudayd's entry into the 
Federation, at least for the time being.
	Rabob had been clearing out her quarters in preparation for 
transfer when Maisoon Kharuf came bursting into the women's barracks.  
"It's happening!" she cried.  "The Rapture!  Manat is here!  Manat is 
judging us!  Come look!"
	Rabob and a hundred other cadets rushed out to see what was going 
on.  They looked through the clear dome of the moonbase at the planet 
looming above them.  The display of fireworks was entirely out of 
proportion to the photon torpedoes being fired at the planet.  "The 
stockades," Rabob gasped.  "The torpedoes are triggering the immolation 
devices!"
	"The what?" asked the cadet next to her.
	"The immolation devices!" Rabob said, breathless.  "Don't you 
remember, from history class?  After the Final War!  All the cities 
retrofit themselves with self-destruct devices so they couldn't be 
captured!  They were disarmed about a hundred years ago but the 
torpedoes must be triggering them anyway!"
	"Wouldn't that only apply to cities at least two hundred years 
old?" another cadet asked.  "That's one in fifty!"
	"Doesn't matter!" Rabob said.  "A couple dozen of those things'll 
make the planet uninhabitable for millennia!  We-- we're seeing the end 
of the world!"
	By now most of the people on the base were deep in prayer.  "I 
never believed," wailed a voice, "and now Manat is here!  She will 
condemn me for sure!  Forgive me, Fateful One, forgive me!"
	"It's just coincidence!" Rabob shouted.  "Coincidence and our own 
stupidity!  A self-fulfilling prophecy!  Of =course= if we turn the 
planet into a tinderbox the end of the world will follow!"
	"Silence, heretic!" shouted Basim Khayid, head of the local 
chapter of the Church Militant.  "Can you deny the evidence of your 
eyes?  Manat has come!  We cried out our warnings and you did not heed!  
The Fateful One has judged us and found us wanting!"
	"It is =not= Manat!" Rabob screamed.  She listened to her words 
ring in the air.  I've just seen my world go up in flames, and my mind 
isn't far behind, she reflected bitterly.  "There =is= no Manat!  If 
there =were=, she'd =be= here!  WHERE IS SHE??"
	There was a blue shimmer in the courtyard, and when the effect 
dwindled, Marrissa remained.  "It's the end of the world as you know it, 
Qudaydis," she said, "and I feel fine!"
	"Okay, I'm convinced," Rabob said, and like every surviving 
Qudaydi, bowed down before Marrissa.
	"Hey, you learn fast," Marrissa said.  "I like that."

[18 - Marrissa explains it all]
	A cursory glance through the moonbase's central computer was all 
Marrissa needed to piece things together.  She tapped her communicator.  
"Patterson, beam me up," she said.
	"Aye, Captain," said Patterson Supra.
	Marrissa materialized in Transporter Room Two.  "Patterson, escort 
the prisoners to the brig.  Jay, I'll meet you on the bridge.  And for 
God's sake," she added, looking at the remains of Clara's baby on the 
edge of the platform, "someone get that mess cleaned up."
	Little Sara wrapped her arms around Jay's neck as he carried her 
to the bridge.  He sat down in his usual chair and rested Sara on his 
lap.  You look like her, he thought.  It's like there's none of me in 
you at all, as if she cloned herself instead of having a child the 
natural way.  And... no one else has dared to mention it, but it's 
obvious -- she's getting younger.  And more powerful.  She blew up a 
ship with her mind.  How can any of us challenge her?  What can any of 
us do but go along and hope to soften her over time?
	Maybe you can do it, Jay thought, as Sara blinked in bewilderment.  
If anything can bring Marrissa back from the edge, it must be love.  As 
long as she loves her daughter there has to be some human element left 
inside her, something we can appeal to when the time is right and win 
her back from this... sickness, or curse, or whatever it is that's 
twisted her soul.
	Marrissa burst in, eyes shining.  "It's wonderful, Jay," she said.  
"It's all so clear now."
	"What's clear?" Jay asked quietly.
	"Have you ever felt that you didn't know who you are?" Marrissa 
asked.  "That your true origin, your true self, is a mystery, a lie?"
	"That sounds like what Clara was saying a year ago," Jay said.
	"Maybe," Marrissa said.  "She and I are much alike in a lot of 
ways.  But we're talking about me.  Me, me, me.  The veil has been 
lifted from my eyes, Jay.  I've discovered who I am.  I'm Manat."
	"You're not what?" Jay said.
      "Not 'I'm not,'" Marrissa said.  "I'm =Manat=.  When I beamed down 
to the moonbase the Qudaydis knew me to be Manat.  I didn't know what 
they meant, but now I do."
	"I don't understand," Jay said.
	"It's simple," Marrissa said.  She punched a few buttons on the 
console and the screen lit up to display a four dots in a diamond 
pattern.  "This is Lat," she said, pointing to the dot at the top of the 
screen.  "Lat is the Creator.  Not much is known of Lat, because Lat 
existed before the time of this universe.  Lat may have created other 
universes aside from this one, or there may be other Creators and Lat is 
merely one of many.  The evidence is inconclusive."
	She drew a line from the top dot to the bottom dot.  "This is 
Iblis, the Adversary," she said.  "Iblis has fought a neverending war 
against Lat since the dawn of time, battling for supremacy over this 
universe.  Iblis does not want to =destroy= the universe, far from it.  
Iblis wants to =usurp= Lat.  Their struggle for control manifests itself 
in the form of two entities that exist in this universe and only here, 
not outside it like Lat and Iblis."
	She drew a line from the bottom dot to the dot on the left side of 
the screen.  "This is Iblis's agent in this universe: Uzza, the Mighty 
One, the Protector.  See, Iblis is crafty.  Iblis does not destroy what 
Lat has created, but rather infects it with other creations.  These 
creations of Iblis spread like a cancer, and should they ever engulf the 
universe, Iblis will have won the battle.  To assist in this effort, 
Iblis created Uzza, whose base of operations is Nakhlah, a planet on the 
other side of the universe, the antipode of Qudayd.  Uzza serves to 
ensure that the cancer thrives and grows, protects it from the immune 
system Lat built into the universe."
	She drew a line from the left dot over to the right dot, and back 
to the top.  "That immune system is embodied in Manat of Qudayd, the 
Fateful One," Marrissa said.  "Manat's role is to ensure that the 
universe remains pure, that nothing exists that is not a direct creation 
of Lat.  She kills in order to cleanse.  See the reversal?  It's the 
Destroyer who is on the side of good and the Protector who is on the 
side of evil.  I =told= you that Iblis was crafty.  Now what do we know 
about Manat?  She is young, more than a child but not yet fully grown.  
Her skin is pale, though no one on her planet of Qudayd has skin lighter 
than a deep golden brown.  She has blonde hair and no diaxis.  She--"
	"What's a diaxis?" Jay asked.
	"It's the pattern of dots the Qudaydis have on their left cheeks," 
Marrissa said.  "The priests knew that Manat was coming soon.  They knew 
her first task would be to judge the people of Qudayd.  And they knew 
that the Qudaydis were doomed to fail, and Manat would devour her 
children.  And so I have."
	"How do you know that =you're= Manat?" Jay asked.
	"Because it all fits!" Marrissa said.  "The traits they ascribe to 
Manat are a description of me!  I accomplished Manat's first task before 
I even knew that's what I was doing!  And when I beamed down, the 
survivors knew me to be Manat!"  She grabbed Jay by the shoulder.  "I 
always knew my destiny was greater than anything I could envision!  Look 
at my origins!  For the first twelve years of my life I thought myself 
to be the daughter of the Floreses -- wholly unremarkable people, common 
stock.  Then I was adopted by Jean-Luc Picard, one of the central 
figures of recent history.  Did I miss my parents?  Not one bit -- 
within a few days I'd forgotten them entirely.  Because somehow, deep 
down, I knew they were beneath me, inconsonant with the greatness that 
is my birthright.  They were phony, constructs, creations of Iblis meant 
to shroud from me my dazzling place in the universe.  Even the second 
half of my life was little more than a daydream born from tedium -- 
piddling around in a starship, proving my superiority to my supposed 
fellows -- even then, I could feel the emptiness.  Does a god achieve 
fulfillment by besting the ant?  Ha!  Captain of the Enterprise -- how 
lowly an achievement for one who is the Fist of God!"
	"So... what are you going to do now?" Jay asked.
	"I'm going to sleep," Marrissa said.  "I'm plumb tuckered out.  
And who can blame me?  I've had a big day."

[19 - friends & family]
	Jay Gordon spent the next several hours on the phone.
	Telephones had long been obsolete, of course, but the remote 
hailing system functioned on much the same principle.  The first person 
he called after putting Sara to bed was Admiral Jean-Luc Picard.
	"What is it?" he asked.  "We're in the middle of breakfast here."
	Breakfast? Jay thought.  But then, if you can have different time 
zones on a single planet, who says starships on opposite sides of the 
galaxy have to be in sync?
	"It's a long story," Jay said.
	Jay wound up telling the long story so many times that he found 
himself just reciting the words, as if it were a poem he'd memorized 
instead of something that had happened mere hours ago.  He told it to 
Picard, to William Riker, to Data, to Worf, to Geordi LaForge, to Deanna 
Troi, to Guinan, to Benjamin Sisko, to Queen Victoria, to Wesley 
Crusher... finally, there was one person left to call: Clara's dad.  His 
response was the same as everyone else's.  "I'll be there as soon as I 
can," he said.  Then he added something no one else had: "Is Clara 
there?  Can I talk to her?  Is she all right?  You said Marrissa beat 
her?  Is anyone taking care of her?"
	"She's... being treated right now," Jay said.  "She's in sickbay 
as we speak.  That's why she can't talk.  You'll see her when you get 
here."  He cut the connection and tapped his communicator.  "Gordon to 
sickbay," he said.  "Send someone to the brig to treat Commander Sutter, 
stat."
	Jay rubbed his eyes and accessed the computer database to get the 
real story on Manat.  To his surprise, he found that Marrissa's account 
had been accurate, at least up to the point where she identified herself 
with Manat; he found the chart with the four gods on it, saw the 
pictures of thousands of Qudaydis marching through the streets waving 
signs declaring that "MANAT IS COMING" and "THE END IS NEAR", read about 
the Qudaydi scientists' search for the planet Nakhlah.  Qudayd, it 
turned out, had had a religion rich with all the elaboration of three 
thousand years which had nothing more than a passing resemblance to any 
religion on any other world ever known.  Now it was a radioactive 
wasteland.
	He sighed and went to the brig.
	Clara, Shayna and Alexander were each in a separate cell; Clara 
was the only one awake.  She sat rubbing her jaw.  "Did someone come to 
treat your face?" Jay asked.
	"Yeah," she said.  "Good as new."  She laughed, a dark laugh that 
sent a shiver down Jay's spine.  Please, he thought, let's not have 
=you= flip out on me too...
	"Can you get us out of here?" Clara asked.
	"I don't think so," Jay said.  "Marrissa wouldn't like it..."
	"Jay, come on," Clara hissed.  "Marrissa's going to kill us if you 
don't help us escape.  You know she is.  She's evil, Jay."
	"She's not evil," Jay said.  "She's sick.  She thinks she's God.  
She thinks she's =a= god, anyway."  He shook his head.  "Maybe she's 
right!  Maybe she =is= this, this Manat.  It'd explain a lot.  The ship 
blowing up I can buy as coincidence, but all the coincidence in the 
universe isn't going to make you younger.  Think about it.  Hasn't she 
always had a sort of celestial eye out for her?  Making the impossible 
and ridiculous happen on a routine basis?  Making otherwise rational 
people behave totally illogically just by entering the room?  I don't 
know what's going on, whether she's got some kind of mutant power or 
whether she's a god, but I'm not going to cross her."
	"Then you've just killed us," Clara said.
	"I saw nine-point-one billion people die today," Jay said.  "I 
care about you, Clara, but three more isn't going to make a difference."  
He left.
	Clara blinked back tears as she watched him go.  "Australia Joshua 
Ramesses II," she whispered, but nothing happened.  Marrissa must've 
changed the locks while I was gone, Clara thought.  Gone on Madison.  I 
wonder if anyone there suspects something's wrong?  Or maybe they think 
I'm having such a grand old time I decided to stay for a while.  Maybe 
if I click my heels three times I'll wake up in my little glass house.  
There's no place like home, there's no place like home...
	Jay woke up to find Marrissa in her uniform, though she'd added 
fifteen more pips to the collar.  She was sitting at the desk in their 
bedroom, munching on an odd-shaped biscuit with strawberry jam.  "It's a 
Qudaydi muffin," she said.  "It's really pretty good.  Would you like 
one?  I'll have them whip up another batch."
	"Whuh?" Jay said.  "Whip--?  Who?"
	"The Qudaydis," Marrissa said.  "I beamed them over from the 
moonbase.  They've agreed to do everything I say and in exchange I'll 
let their species continue to exist.  It may go against my mission as 
Manat, but I can't help it.  I've got a merciful streak a kilometer 
wide."
	"Slavery," Jay said.
	"Slavery gets such a bad rap, don't you think?" Marrissa said.  
"Come out in favor of slavery and all of a sudden you're politically 
incorrect.  Candy-ass liberals.  So I hear you've summoned all the 
grown-ups to come give me a stern talking-to."
	"How-- how did you know?" Jay asked.
	"Lat told me," Marrissa said.  "Lat and me, we're like this."  She 
held up a pair of crossed fingers.  "Don't worry, I'm not mad.  I 
would've done it myself if you hadn't.  It'll be great seeing the old 
gang again.  Except for maybe that Riker.  He always creeped me out with 
those wandering hands of his."
	The ships began arriving late that evening, to the extent that 
evening exists in orbit.  Geordi LaForge was the first to show up, then 
Data, then everyone else more or less en masse.  Marrissa was there to 
greet them in the transporter room.  "Hi, everyone!" she said as her 
family beamed aboard.  She rushed up to the platform and gave her sister 
Jackie a hug.  "I've missed you, kiddo!  You too, Nicky!" she added, 
hugging Nicholas.  "And Daddy, and Beverly, and Wesley, and... hmm."  
When she got to Wesley's wife Chelsea, she frowned.  "You are not of 
Lat," she said.  "But neither are you of Iblis.  I'm just going to have 
to return you to your own dimension."  With that, Chelsea Clinton-
Crusher blinked out of existence.
	"Chelsea!" Wesley cried.
	"Mommy!" wailed their daughter Kasey.
	"This is exactly the kind of thing we need to talk about," added 
Jean-Luc Picard sternly.
	"You're right," Marrissa said.  "It certainly is and we will soon.  
But you've come a long way.  Why don't you go to your quarters and rest 
for a while?  I'll have someone take you to your rooms right away."  On 
cue, half a dozen Qudaydis dressed in bellhop uniforms came in.  
"They'll take your luggage as well, if you have any.  Well, gotta run!  
I've got nineteen pips on my collar and I have no desire whatsoever to 
go into botany!"  She skipped out.
	"What's going on here?" Jean-Luc Picard demanded of Jay.
	"Where's Chelsea?" Wesley asked.
	"Look," Jay said, "Marrissa's somewhat less than stable right now.  
We went to pick Clara up from that hippie commune or whatever it was, we 
got ambushed by a Romulan rogue, Marrissa... overreacted... and I think 
this is just her way of coming to terms with what she's done."
	"Can we see our granddaughter?" Beverly Crusher-Picard asked.
	"Sure," Jay said.  "I'll take you to the nursery."
	"I, too, have a grandchild I wish to visit," Worf said.
	"Yeah," Mr. Sutter added.
	"That... could be a problem," Jay said.  "I'll explain later.  The 
rest of you, feel free to go to your quarters, or wander around the 
ship, whatever you like.  I'm sure Marrissa will be more than happy to 
explain everything in the morning."

[20 - run away! run away!]
	Data's self-preservation circuits booted him back up out of sleep 
mode.  He'd recently taken to spending a few hours a night in semi-
hibernation.  "I find it a very pleasing mode," he explained to anyone 
who asked.
	Once he was back up to full operational status, he scanned the 
environment.  "Hmm," he said.  "I appear to be enveloped in a cloud of 
mustard gas.  Correction: mustard gas combined with a powerful corrosive 
agent.  Estimated time to irrevocable cessation of life emulation 
functions: one-point-seven minutes."
	He walked to the door of his quarters, which did not slide open.  
"Computer," he said, "Open the door, please."
	"Overriden by order of the Captain," replied the computer.
	Data scratched his head.  "Open the door, please," he repeated.
	"I'm sorry, Data," giggled a voice, "I can't do that."  It was not 
Marrissa's voice, nor was it the computer's.  Data ran a quick analysis 
and ascertained that the voice belonged to Patterson Supra, but that 
information received a low priority.  He tapped his communicator.
	"Data to Admiral Picard," he said.  "Admiral Picard, I have an 
urgent message."
	There was no response.  "Computer," he said, "what is the 
condition of Admiral Jean-Luc Picard?"
	"Admiral Jean-Luc Picard has been dead for two minutes and 
seventeen seconds," the computer replied.
	"Of those who arrived on the ship in the past twelve hours, how 
many remain alive?" Data asked.
	"Including yourself," said the computer, "two."
	"Who is the other?"
	"Rear-Admiral William T. Riker," the computer said.
	Data tapped his communicator.  "Data to Rear-Admiral Riker," he 
said.
	A few minutes earlier, Riker had gone to the bar for a stiff 
drink.  "I'll take a double martini," he said, "and keep 'em coming till 
Ah says diffurnt."
	"Excuse me?" said the Qudaydi bartender.
	"A martini, please," Riker said.  "No one ever appreciates my 
forays into dialect.  Must be my delivery."  The bartender mixed up his 
drink and Riker took a long sip.  Marrissa certainly seems to be acting 
odd today, he thought, and that's saying something.  I haven't seen her 
that giddy since Quark got her drunk at her twelfth birthday party.  
Speaking of which, is it just me, or is she younger than she was the 
last time I saw her?  If so, it's certainly an improvement.  Grrr-rowl!
	But then, what have we here...?
	"Well," Riker said to the woman wiping off the tables.  "I can see 
Marrissa hasn't lost her knack for surrounding herself with lovely 
ladies."
	The woman turned around; it was Rabob Qahira.  "What?" she said.
	"The name's Riker," Riker said, "but you can call me Will.  I used 
to be the captain of this ship, before Marrissa took it off my hands.  
Marrissa.  The kid's got spunk, you've got to give her that.  I was 
sorry to hear about what she did to your planet, by the way.  A shame."
	"What she did to my planet?" Rabob said.  "You mean Manat?"
	"Marrissa," Riker said.  "Cute girl, about yea tall, blonde hair, 
ponytail, black-and-red uniform, kinda bossy from time to time, blew up 
your planet... you know who I mean?"
	"Wait... so she's not Manat?" Rabob said.  "She's just a regular 
two-bit worldbeater?"
	"Marrissa's hardly a regular anything," Riker said, "but I've 
never met this Manat you're talking about."
	"Data to Rear-Admiral Riker," interrupted Riker's communicator.  
"Urgent message for Rear-Admiral Riker."
	"Isn't that always the way?" Riker said.  He tapped his 
communicator.  "I'm kind of busy here, Data."
	"The computer informs me that I have fifty seconds until 
decomposition," Data said.  "You and I are the only members of the group 
invited here by Jay Gordon currently alive."
	"WHAT?!" Riker roared.
	"Everyone ranging from Jean-Luc Picard to Kasey Crusher has been 
gassed and killed," Data said.  "I calculate that there is a zero 
percent chance that you will be able to rescue me before I am corroded 
beyond repair.  I therefore suggest that you flee the ship at once.  I 
further suggest that you flee to Captain LaForge's ship, as it is 
equipped with a number of features that may well enable you to survive 
the next few minutes."
	"Data!" Riker shouted.  "Who's responsible for this?"
	"Patterson Supra has some involvement," Data said.  "It seems 
unlikely that Marrissa Picard is unaware of the plot.  I do not have the 
time to calculate the precise probability.  I can feel the onset of 
death.  Rear-Admiral Riker, I must stress that if you plan to stop 
Marrissa Picard, attacking her at this moment is a strategy doomed to 
failure.  You must flee.  Return to Starfleet Headquarters.  Assemble a 
force capable of stopping her."  There was a crash.  "My limbs have come 
detached from my body," Data said.  "It has been an honor to serve with 
you.  I wish you the best of luck.  Data out."
	Riker gulped down the rest of his martini.  "I'm out of here," he 
said.  He started for the exit.
	"Wait!" Rabob said.  "You're going the wrong way.  The transporter 
room's this way."
	"I was the captain of this ship," Riker said.  "I think I know 
where I'm going."
	"Manat's made some changes," Rabob said.
	"How would you know?" Riker asked.
	"Trust me," Rabob said.  "Come on!"
	Riker did some quick thinking.  Okay, if I go this way, I have a 
good chance of surviving.  If I go her way, I have a slightly reduced 
chance of surviving, but if I do survive, I'll probably get lucky.  
"Lead the way," he said.
	Rabob led him to the brig.  Shayna was the first to spot him.  
"Commander Riker!" she cried.  "Help us!"
	"Oh, hell," Riker said.  "I know you kids!  That's Rear-Admiral 
Riker now, though."
	"Listen," Clara said.  "Marrissa's going to kill us, Jay won't do 
anything, you're our only hope.  Can you get us out of here?"
	"Yeah, yeah," Riker said.  "I'll see if I can sync Geordi's 
transporter to the frequency of your cells."  He turned to Rabob.  "You 
led me way out of the way on purpose," he said.  "What's your game?"
	"If that's not really Manat," Rabob said, "and she's just a 
murderous tyrant, and these people are against her, then we need to save 
them."
        "'We'?" Riker said.
	"I'm sure as hell not sticking around," Rabob said.  "Now let's 
=go=!"
	They raced to the transporter room.  The computer hesitated when 
Riker tried to beam Rabob and himself out.  "Overridden by order of the 
Captain," it said.  "Processing new input.  Override overridden by 
remote vessel.  Commencing transport."
	"Bless Clara," Riker said as they arrived on Geordi's ship.  "This 
is an experimental design.  She built all kinds of goodies into it."  He 
fiddled with a few dials.  "This ought to override the brig security and 
beam them aboard.  Three to beam up."  A moment later there were five 
people in the room.
	"Jump pod," Clara said.  "Hurry!"
	"What's a jump pod?" Riker asked.
	Clara jumped off the platform and dashed to the console.  "See 
this lever?" she said.
	"Yeah," Riker said.
	"Here's what a jump pod does."  Clara yanked the lever.
	Space turned inside-out and upside-down.  They were on the other 
side of the galaxy.

[21 - realpolitik]
	Patterson Supra stood at the top of one of the pyramids and looked 
up at the tower bearing the inscription "RAT".  It was a cloudless 
morning, but the tower's iron spire disappeared out of view long before 
it reached the top.  The atmosphere was so thin at the top of the tower 
that the slaves' suits had had to be pressurized; Marrissa, on the other 
hand, was confident that she could survive the near-vacuum without any 
special protection just as she had no problem with the hard radiation on 
the ground.  Patterson tapped his communicator.  "Empress," he said, 
"the tower is complete.  We are ready to proceed."
	"Excellent," Marrissa replied.
	Marrissa hadn't been quite so pleased when she'd learned that 
Riker and the prisoners had escaped.  Instead, she'd grabbed him by the 
throat and hoisted him up in the air.  "They WHAT??" she spat.
	"It's all for the best," Patterson wheezed.  "It's like in the Old 
West!  You always leave one person alive to tell the tale!  Riker'll 
tell the Federation, and they'll be too scared to come after you!  
You'll have a free hand!"
	Marrissa licked her lips.  "Don't be absurd," she said.  "They'd 
have found out what happened soon enough when Picard and the rest never 
came back.  And the puny forces the Federation could pit against me are 
beneath my notice."  She squeezed tighter; Patterson's face turned 
bright crimson.  "On the other hand," she said, "that was a lot more 
creative than begging for your life.  And you've been useful so far.  
And Manat is nothing if not merciful."  She let go.  Patterson fell in a 
heap on the ground.
	Across the galaxy, Clara had taken some coordinates.  "We're less 
than a day away from Starfleet Headquarters," she told Riker.
	"Is this where the pod was programmed to go?" Riker asked.
	"Where the pod goes is completely random," Clara said.  "It's my 
first attempt at using Interdimensional Fatigue.  I wasn't even sure 
it'd work at all.  We'd better hail HQ and fill them in."
	Admiral Hayes's jaw nearly dropped into his lap when he answered 
the hail.  "Will Riker!" he cried.
	"Hank, good to see you," Riker said.  "Terrible news.  Admiral 
Picard, Admiral Sisko, everyone who went to Qudayd yesterday... they're 
all dead.  Marrissa had them killed as they slept."
	"Yesterday?" said Admiral Hayes.  "Will... we =know= all this 
already.  It happened seven months ago.  We assumed your escape craft 
had been destroyed."
	"Seven months?!" Riker sputtered.
	Alexander checked the ship's chronometer against the signal from 
Starfleet Headquarters.  "Confirmed," he said.  "They're two hundred 
twenty-one days ahead of us."
	"How did that happen?" Shayna asked.
	"The pod must've jumped us ahead in time as well as across space," 
Clara said.  She put her hand to her mouth.  "That means-- maybe we can 
go back!  Jump back in time, make it so Marrissa was never born--"
	"What measures have been taken against Marrissa while we've 
been... missing?" Riker asked.
	"Well," Admiral Hayes said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, 
"we currently have a peace accord with the Empire of Manat.  She's too 
powerful for us to take on, and besides, she's been decimating the 
Romulans for us--"
	"Too powerful?" Riker said.  "She's a deranged little girl!"
	"Who has conquered fourteen alien races and eliminated eight 
others," Admiral Hayes said.  "She's been busy."
	"This is madness," Riker said.  "You're just going to let her take 
over the universe?"
	"Oh, she won't do =that=," Admiral Hayes said.  "Manat assures us 
that she just needs some... Lebensraum."
	Riker cut the connection.  "You've got to get me there," he said.  
"I'll make the rounds, talk to people, get things moving."
	"Okay," Clara said.  "We'll drop you off.  But we can't stay.  Or 
at least I can't.  Places to go."
	"You're not going to go back there and take her on yourself, are 
you?" Riker asked.
	"Not on your life," Clara said.

[22 - homecoming]
	For two weeks Clara and Shayna and Alexander and Rabob rocketed 
through space in Geordi LaForge's ship.  They'd discovered much to their 
dismay that the jump pod had blown out the engine; it took Clara thirty-
two straight hours of work to get it capable of reaching Warp 3.  Most 
of the voyage took place in silence.  Alexander refused to talk to 
Clara; Shayna had nothing relevant to say; Rabob didn't know the others 
at all; and Clara was lost in thought the entire time.  Besides, it was 
a big ship.  Except for when Shayna and Alexander switched shifts 
monitoring their progress, they didn't even see each other.
	When they were a few hours from their destination, Clara became a 
permanent fixture on the bridge.  "We're almost there," she said.  "Just 
maintain the course."
	"What'll we do when we get there?" Shayna asked.
	"Do?" Clara said.  "We'll-- I mean, we--"  She sat down.  "It was 
all so clear a second ago.  I've lost my train of thought."
	"Oh, great," Shayna said.
	"We'll defeat Marrissa somehow," Clara said.  "There'll be people 
that'll help us figure something out.  And it's a good place for us to 
regroup, recharge, you might say... I'm pretty sure there was more to it 
than that, though... maybe if I sleep on it..."
	Clara could only sleep for a few minutes, though.  She'd never 
been much of a sleeper, of course, but the excitement made even the 
thought of slumber virtually impossible.  She got up, splashed some 
water on her face, pulled her uniform back on, and went to the bridge.  
On the screen was the brilliant sun that had greeted her every morning 
for ten months.  For the first time since she'd left Madison nearly 
eight months before -- though subjectively it was barely more than two 
weeks -- Clara smiled.  "I'm home," she murmured.
	"What?" Shayna said.
	"Nothing," Clara said.  "How long till we achieve orbit?"
	"Twenty minutes," Shayna said.
	Clara tapped her communicator.  "Alexander, Rabob, please come to 
the bridge," she said.  "I want you to see this."
	The four of them watched as the planet came into view, a beautiful 
blue-green bauble streaked with ribbons of white.  Clara blinked away 
tears.  "Other hemisphere," she said.  "I've already fed the computer 
the coordinates.  We'll be eating sopaipillas before you know it."
	"What's a sopaipilla?" Shayna asked.
	"You'll find out," Clara grinned.
	The ship circled around to the other side of the planet.  They 
passed over the Azure Ocean, and then, directly beneath them, the town 
of Madison.  That's what the map indicated, anyway.  The screen 
suggested otherwise.  Staring Clara in the face was an enormous crater.
	Clara's felt an icepick go through her heart.  "Scan for life 
signs," she said.
	Shayna ran the scan.  "Positive," she said.  "We're picking up 
microbial life, plants, animals ranging up to small mammals."
	"What about =people=?" Clara asked.
	Shayna shook her head.  "Negative," she said.  "No intelligent 
life down there."
	"They must have escaped," Clara whispered.
	"Sure they did," Shayna said, trying to be reassuring.  "Happens 
all the time.  You hear an invading fleet's coming, you evacuate the 
planet.  No big."
	"My bridge is still gone though," Clara said.
	"Uh, yeah," Shayna said.  "Whatev--"
      A shot smashed into the side of the ship and sent the four of
them flying across the bridge.  "Sneak attack!" Alexander shouted.
	"What tipped you off?" Clara said.  "Shayna, hail them."
	The viewscreen cut from the desolation on the planet below to the 
grinning face of a humanoid creature with a protruding brow and a sort 
of metal brace wired to its jaw.  "Huh huh!" it guffawed.  "You 
trespassing in space of Laktorn, most excellent thralls of Empire of 
Manat!  Manat say kill planet, kill anyone come to planet!  It been... 
uh... one... two... five... it been long time since anyone come to 
planet!  Laktorn looking forward to this!"
	"Look, uh, Laktorn, listen to me," Clara said.  "You say you're 
thralls of Manat, right?  Thralls, as in slaves!  Shouldn't Manat be 
your enemy?"
	"You talk a lot," the Laktorn said.  "You like doofus tried talk 
to us when Laktorn blew up little baby city.  He say, come down, talk 
things out over ice cream!  Haw!  Laktorn no eat puny ice cream!  
Laktorn lactose intolerant!  Now you die like all people in little baby 
city!"  He cut the connection.
	Clara's turned white and sank into her chair.  "You may fire when 
ready," she said.  "Blow their ship to scrap.  Then we find these 
cretins' homeworld and wipe these vermin off the face of the fucking 
galaxy."
	A salvo rocked the ship and the lights flickered out.  "Weapons 
offline," Alexander said.
	"Come on, we've got to get out of here," Shayna said.  "I saw an 
escape pod on the deck below."
	"No!" Clara said.  "We can't run!  We've got to kill them!  Make 
them pay!"
	"Three points," Rabob said.  "One, there's a little moral 
inconsistency here we probably ought to discuss before going ahead with 
the whole genocide idea.  Two, we don't seem to have any weapons at the 
moment.  Three--"  Another explosion ripped through the ship.  "Three, 
we seem to have a hull breach on the deck above and if we don't get out 
of here in the next few seconds we'll be dead before you can say 
'explosive decompression'!  So come on!"
	Rabob pulled Clara to her feet and they dashed to the escape pod.  
"What the--?" Shayna said.  "This thing has a warp drive engine!  How--?"
	"I thought we might need it," Clara said.  "I've been working on 
it the past couple of weeks.  Let's just go."
	They went.  Shayna fired up the escape pod and they cleared 
Geordi's ship mere seconds before the Laktorn delivered the coup de 
grace.  A piece of shrapnel ricocheted off the pod's engine just as they 
entered warp.  They bounced off hyperspace like a rock skipping across a 
pond.
	"Ow," Rabob said.  "Well, at least we cleared the system."
	"The engine isn't working," Alexander said from the cockpit.  
"Even at sublight.  We're just drifting."
	Clara said nothing.  She was staring at a rock she'd fished out of 
her pocket.  On closer inspection Shayna noticed that it seemed to be 
solid gold.  "Uh, Clara?" she said.  "We kind of need you to fix the 
engine..."
	"Why?" Clara said.  "What does it matter?  So we drift for a while 
and starve to death.  Or another gang of 'thralls' blows us to atoms.  
Who cares?"
	"That's not exactly the plucky spirit one usually looks for in a 
resistance leader," Rabob said.
	"Oh, shut up," Clara said.  "Everything and everyone I've ever 
loved is dead and gone.  How can you possibly understand that?"
	"Well," Rabob said, "last time I checked my entire planet was 
still a lifeless wasteland, so I think I might be able to relate just a 
little..."
	Clara buried her face in the crook of her arm.  "I'm sorry," she 
said.  "Forgive me, I'm being a narcissistic prick, it's just I-- I 
mean--"
	"Cockpit, Shayna," Rabob said.
	Shayna and Rabob opened the partition and climbed into the front 
of the pod.  "Hmm?" Alexander said.  "Hey, what--?"
	"Just keep quiet for a few minutes," Rabob said.  She shut the 
partition.
	Clara looked up.  She was alone.  She felt a knot in her throat 
and her fists were clenched so tight her nails drew blood from her 
palms.  She thought about everyone she had lost over the past few days: 
her father, her surrogate family from the Enterprise-D, her childhood 
companions, all her friends from Madison, the baby she'd carried for 
nine months, and the man with whom she'd hoped to one day have still 
more... and she thought about Marrissa, who had taken all these people 
from her... and in the front chamber of the pod, Shayna and Alexander 
and Rabob jumped.  For though they were in space, they had no problem 
hearing Clara scream.

[23 - ascension]
	And now, less than a week later, they were back in orbit around 
Qudayd.  They couldn't see it, or anything outside the pod, but they 
were nearly close enough to the top of the tower to touch it.
	Kilometers below, at the base of the tower, Marrissa was ready to 
seize her destiny.  "Hop in," Patterson Supra said.  "The elevator 
car'll take you to the top.  When it reaches the top the spire'll 
automatically begin to charge up.  When it's done, it'll open the 
dimensional gateway, and then..."
	"And then," Marrissa said, "what I want and what =is= will be 
indistinguishable.  As it should be."
	"Right," Patterson said.  He looked at her and jumped.  Is she 
younger again? he thought.  She can't be more than twelve...
	"Very well," Marrissa said.  "Return to the city.  Monitor the 
harnessing of the energy."  She wiped away a tear.  "This... I'm sorry.  
It's just... I can almost feel the end of the emptiness already."
	"Empress?" Patterson said.
	"Go," Marrissa said.  She turned and entered the elevator car that 
would carry her through the center of the spiral iron tube to the top of 
the tower.  When the doors closed the inscription emblazoned across them 
could finally be read.  It read: RAT-LIFT.
	"The stars are back!" Shayna cried.
	Rabob blinked.  "It-- I feel like the cotton's been taken out of 
my head.  Clara -- if Manat was behind all this, the reversed cloak, the 
mental interference -- what happened?  Is she dead?"
	"Wishful thinking," Clara said.  "Something may be shielding us 
from her, though.  Or her from us.  Or-- oh, hell.  Look down.  The 
city.  Marrissa's base of operations.  It's... it's..."
	It was the Enterprise.  All around it extended a suburban sprawl 
of slaves' quarters, made from the fleets Marrissa had conquered; the 
center of the city, though, was clearly the Enterprise.
	"Take us down," Clara said.
	"Instruments show radiation well beyond lethal levels on the 
planet's surface," Alexander said.
	"Swell," Clara said.  "Okay, let's hope Marrissa wasn't able to 
dig up all the override codes I built into that hunk of junk.  Transmit 
the following sequence and be ready to act fast."
	A docking bay swung open; a corresponding alarm went off on the 
bridge.  "Aw, no," Patterson Supra said.  "Of all the timing--"  He 
looked at the viewscreen just in time to see the RAT-Lift open and 
Marrissa step out onto the top of the tower.  Though she was standing in 
low space, she didn't seem especially inconvenienced by it.  "C'mon, 
activate," Patterson muttered.
	On cue, the iron spire started to glow.  Back on the escape pod, 
Shayna shrieked.  "Did you feel that?" she asked.
	"What?" Clara said.
	"You all blinked out for a second," Shayna said.  "You, the pod, 
the planet, the-- the universe.  I was floating, alone in... 
nothingness..."
	"We'll figure it out later," Clara said.  "We've got a hoop to 
jump through first."  Alexander put the escape pod into a steep dive and 
they swooped into the bay just before the doors reclosed.  "Phasers 
ready," Clara said.  "This probably isn't the safest place in the 
universe for us to be right now."
	"I swear, the universe was =gone=," Shayna mumbled.
	"Maybe you'd better come with me," Clara said.  "Alexander, head 
down to the bridge and see what you can find.  If you find Marrissa -- 
kill her.  Rabob, look around the lower decks and see if there's 
anything useful around.  If you find--"
	"Gotcha," Rabob said.  "Find Manat, kill her."
	"Why do you call her that?" Clara asked.  "You =know= she's not 
Manat."
	"Yeah, but she might as well be," Rabob said.  "To the extent that 
slaughtering the population of Quadyd is awfully Manat-like behavior, 
she's Manat.  See ya."
	Clara and Shayna headed down the corridor to where their quarters 
had been located back when they called the Enterprise their home.  "Set 
your phaser to stun," Clara said.  "If we run into any of Marrissa's 
slaves, zap 'em.  We don't want to hurt anyone but we've got to move 
fast."
	"What about you?" Shayna asked.
	"Mine's set to kill," Clara said.  "In case we run into any of 
those Laktorn bastards.  Or Marrissa."
	They came to Shayna's quarters.  "Anything in here that might help 
us?" Clara asked.
	"I doubt it," Shayna said.  "I've got some scrunchies..."
	"Call me crazy," Clara said, "but I think we just may be able to 
make do without the scrunchies.  My place'll be empty too.  So what do 
you say?  Do we try Marrissa's?"
	"Won't it be booby-trapped?" Shayna asked.  "Or at least heavily 
guarded?"
	"No doubt," Clara said.
	"Oh well, what the hell," Shayna said.  "You only live once, 
right?"
	"If that," Clara said.
	They came to the imposing double doors of what had been Marrissa's 
quarters.  "Locked," Shayna said.
	"But of course," Clara said.  "Computer!  Override code: Sesame!"
	The doors swung open.  "And to think I used to just shoot these 
things open," Clara said.
	Shayna stuck her head inside and nearly had it taken off by a 
barrage of phaser fire.  "Um, the antechamber's pretty well guarded," 
she said.
	"Laktorn?" Clara asked.
	"No, it's guys with antennae," Shayna said.
	"Oh," Clara said.  She sounded disappointed.  "Okay, well, let's 
take them out."
	Clara set her phaser to stun and they went in blasting.  Seconds 
later a dozen Thi-Span guards lay unconscious on the ground.  "Wow, they 
didn't even touch us," Shayna said.
	"Of course not," Clara said.  "Now, if we'd brought some nameless 
guy in a red shirt with us, he'd be Swiss cheese right about now.  Come 
on, we don't have much time."
	They tried the living room, the kitchenette, all the little 
chambers that came with the captain's quarters.  "Doesn't look like 
Marrissa lives here anymore," Clara said.  "She must've traded these 
digs in for a swinging bachelorette pad on the other side of the ship."
	"You're sounding awfully chipper," Shayna said.
	"Yeah, well, it's hard to brood on the injustices of life when 
you're busy convincing yourself not to run screaming back to the escape 
pod and get the hell out of here," Clara said.
	The sound of a footstep gave them just enough time to throw 
themselves to the ground before the second wave of guards came storming 
in, firing wildly.  Soon Clara and Shayna's body count was zero killed, 
eighty-five knocked out.
	"Let's try the bedroom," Clara said.
	Shayna went in first.  She cried out in horror.
	"Shayna!" Clara said.  "Are you hit?"
	"No, no guards," Shayna said.  "But... look..."
	Hanging upside-down from a hook was the mutilated body of Jay 
Gordon.  "Jay!" Clara said.  "Are you alive?"
	Jay gurgled.  "Let's get him down from there," Shayna said.  They 
lifted his bound feet of the hook and gently set him down on the bed.  
"Jay, it's Clara and Shayna," Shayna said.  "Are you okay?"
        "Yeah, other than the missing eyes, nose and hands I'm sure he's 
just spiffy," Clara said.
	"So your friends getting killed is tragedy but Jay getting 
tortured is comedy?" Shayna said.
	"I'm sorry," Clara said.  "I'm just bitter.  Jay, we don't have 
much time.  What can you tell us about Marrissa?  What was that tower?"
	Jay opened his mouth so they could see the stump of his tongue.  
"Oh, Jay," Clara said.  "Do you want us to just kill you?  Put you out 
of your misery?"
	Jay kicked the bedpost and flailed his arm around.  "Is that a 
no?" Clara asked.
	"No, look, he's spelling something!" Shayna said.  She watched the 
stump of his wrist trace letters in the air.  "E...N...C...Y..."
	"Encyclopedia?" Clara said.  Jay nodded emphatically and went back 
to spelling.
	"T...O...O...T...H...P..." Shayna said.
	"Toothpick!" Clara said.  Jay kicked the bedpost again, then a 
third time.  "The bedpost!" Clara said.  "You've got a toothpick 
encyclopedia in the bedpost!"
	"Say what?" Shayna said.
	"I'll explain later," Clara said.  "What's he spelling now?"
	"N...O...W...K...I...L...L...M...E," Shayna said.
	"Got it," Clara said.  "Jay, I don't know what's in that 
encyclopedia, but if it's good, you may have just saved the universe.  
Thanks.  We love you."  She put her phaser to his temple, set it to 
kill, and pulled the trigger.
        Shayna buried her face in her hands.  "Computer!" Clara said.
"Is subroutine Sutter Champollion Delta still on record?"
	"Access to that information denied," the computer said.
	"Override Dullea Lockwood Rain," Clara said.  "So is it still on 
record?"
	"Affirmative," the computer said.
	"Bingo," Clara said.  "Marrissa may have had a better Kobayashi 
Maru time than me, but I =always= beat her at Doom.  She always thought 
computers were just a fad.  That's going to come back to haunt her.  
C'mon, let's get this thing to a scanner."
	"What?" Shayna sniffed.
	"The bedpost," Clara said.  "It's an old puzzle.  How do you store 
an encyclopedia on a toothpick?"
	"I don't get it," Shayna said.
	"An encyclopedia," Clara said.  "You know, pages and pages of 
data.  And it's not a silicon toothpick, it's just a piece of wood.  How 
do you do it?"
	Shayna shrugged.  "It's easy," Clara said.  "You give each letter 
a numerical value, like A equals one, B equals two, and so on.  Then you 
convert your text into a series of numbers, so my name would equal 03-
12-01-18-01.  Then you take the toothpick and put a notch in it to 
represent the value.  So if the notch occurred 3.12011801% of the way 
down the toothpick, bang, you've stored my name on it."
	"You can't get that much precision," Shayna said.
	"Precision's just a hardware problem," Clara said.  "We've been 
able to store terabytes on toothpicks since the 22nd century.  There 
just hasn't been any reason to.  Unless you want a way of storing your 
diary without Marrissa reading it."
	Meanwhile, on the bridge, Patterson Supra was barking orders into 
his communicator.  "The =entire= second wave of guards is down?" he 
sputtered.  "Then send in more!  Five hundred!  Lock the doors!  Gas 
them!  It worked before!  Do something!"
	Right then Alexander burst onto the bridge.  "Prepare to die," he 
said.
	"Uh-oh," said Patterson Supra.

[24 - a modest interpretation]
	"Scanning," said the computer.  "Artificial microscopic crack 
located."
	Clara tapped her foot and glanced around warily.  "C'mon, c'mon," 
she said.
	"Analyzing," the computer said.  "No comprehensible data found."
	"Try another base," Clara said.  "Binary, octal, hexadecimal..."
	"Reanalyzing," the computer said.  "Comprehensible data discovered 
in base eight."
	"So what's it =say=?" Clara asked.
	"Message reads as follows," the computer began.  "The Last Record 
of Jay Gordon.
	"Every culture has at one time or another been obsessed by the 
question of the existence of God.  God, of course, has meant different 
things to different cultures at different times.  Some have envisioned 
God as an elderly humanoid, others as a transpersonal spirit of love 
animating the universe.  Some cultures have posited a host of gods with 
a rich and tangled web of interrelationships; others have concluded that 
not only is there only one God, but that we sentients are merely aspects 
of that God deluded into thinking of ourselves as separate individuals.  
But central to any conception of God has been the question: how did the 
universe come to be?  Did it just happen, or was it made?
	"We have been asking the wrong question.  For as we have long 
known, other universes exist -- parallel universes, alternate universes.  
Some of us have even travelled to them.  But not all universes are 
siblings, situated side by side; the omniverse is more complex than 
that.  Universes can nest inside others; a quark in one universe may be 
a universe itself, with galaxies, planets, atoms and quarks of its own, 
and yes, even life.  Our scientists have created universes in labs, 
pinched them off from the fabric of reality and sent them on their way, 
lightheartedly speculating that perhaps what to them was the morning's 
experiment would in five billion years' time be called the Big Bang by 
lifeforms in the sub-universe just created, that perhaps our universe 
was an experiment in some greater universe, cooked up to impress the 
grad students.
	"That, it turns out, would have been flattery.  For we have 
discovered that our universe =is= a construction, an idle creation of an 
intelligence in a universe greater than ours.  Was the omniverse 
created?  No one can say.  Was our =universe= created?  Most definitely.  
God exists.  And he has a crush on Marrissa.
	"Our parent universe, as far as we can determine, is called 
'Radford'.  Our 'God' is not some metaphysical 'Lat', but just another 
being, not unlike others in his own realm, but with absolute power here.  
What he says happens, happens.  And what he decided to have happen was a 
long string of absurd and illogical episodes engineered to win Marrissa's 
heart.  But he may have tipped his hand too blatantly.  For like the rest 
of us, Marrissa has noticed the way our Creator has been playing fast 
and loose with the rules of reality to curry her favor -- reversing her 
aging to match her mental conception of herself, dispensing with her 
enemies for her.  And once she knew he was out there, Marrissa decided 
his power must be hers.  One might almost think that the Creator =did= 
have an adversary, just as in Qudaydi mythology, who usurped his place 
for a while and deliberately overdid the reality manipulation in order 
to catch Marrissa's attention and steer it in the Creator's direction.  
But this is idle speculation.
	"Since then, Marrissa has been relentless in her pursuit of the 
Creator.  To this end, she is building the Radford Access Tower, or RAT, 
which will open up a gateway between our universe and Radford; Marrissa 
will drag the Creator through the gateway, and force him to cede her his 
power.  That is, if such a thing can be done.  For it seems rather more 
likely that the universes will be incapable of coexistence and 
annihilate each other.  Considering the alternative of an omnipotent 
Marrissa, this may well be the more desirable outcome.
	"I am recording this in the hope that someone will find it in time 
to stop Marrissa.  I aided her at first in hopes of steering her away 
from madness, but I have come to the conclusion that she is 
irredeemable.  Not because she has imprisoned me, blinded me, threatened 
to mutilate me further; that I could almost excuse.  But I must stop 
here.  I will instruct the computer to sense a service drone to place 
the 'notch' at exactly the right spot, and pray it makes a difference."
	"Hunh," Clara said.  "I wonder what could have made Jay change his 
mind about her?"
	The only one alive who knew the answer was Marrissa.
	It had been an evening like many others; Marrissa had spent the 
day cruising around one of the local systems casually picking off X'Ting 
ships.  The X'Ting were a species Marrissa had tried to subjugate a few 
days before.  Instead of surrendering or submitting to "cleansing," they 
had clambered into anything spaceworthy and blasted off in a million 
different directions; Marrissa had blown 95% of the ships to bits within 
a couple of hours, but some of the quicker ones had been hard to track 
down.  She hadn't gotten back until late that night, after Jay had gone 
to bed.  He was woken up by the sound of the door opening.  It was 
Marrissa.  "Don't get up," she said.  She went into the nursery and came 
out a moment later with Sara in her arms.
	"Where are you going?" Jay asked.
	"I'm just going to spend some quality time with my daughter," 
Marrissa said.  "Go back to sleep."
	Jay didn't really want to go back to sleep but his feeling of 
weariness was suddenly overpowering.  He finally forced himself awake 
again just as Marrissa was sliding into bed.  "Sara okay?" he asked.
	"Oh, much better than okay," Marrissa said.  "Delightful."
	"That's good," Jay said.  "She's really a sweet kid when you get 
to know her."
	"Really?" Marrissa said.  "I found her to have more of a tangy 
flavor, myself."
	"What?" Jay said.
	Marrissa giggled.  Jay jumped out of bed and ran to the dining 
room.  There on the table was a plate of picked-clean bones and a pile 
of baby clothes.  His throat tightened and his hands started to shake 
violently.  He stormed back into the bedroom.  "Marrissa," he said, 
"please tell me this is just a really sick and tasteless joke."
	"What?" she said.  "Look, it says in all the lore that when Manat 
comes back the first thing she's supposed to do is devour her children.  
Some people take that passage metaphorically, but me, I'm more of a 
fundamentali--"
	"You ATE the BABY??" Jay roared.
	"She was delicious," Marrissa said.  "Let's have some more."
	Jay screamed and threw himself on Marrissa.  "Oooh!" she said.  
"Looks like you really dug my suggestion, huh?  Wow, looks like you want 
it rough tonight!  Well, I'm certainly up for =that=!  I have to say--"
	"SHUT UP!" Jay screamed.  He found Marrissa's throat and wrapped 
his hands around it.  "SHUT UP SHUT UP!!"
	"Oooh, gonna strangle me in my bed?" Marrissa said.  "That just 
says all =kinds= of things about your psyche, dontcha think?"  She 
giggled.  "'Oh, but while I say one prayer!'"
	"DIE!" Jay screamed.  "DIE DIE DIE!!"
	"Say it, don't spray it," Marrissa said.  "How uncouth!  I-- 
aggkkh-- I-- hey, you really mean to go through with-- aggkkkhkh--"
	Jay held onto her throat and bashed her head against the 
headboard.  "DIE!  DIE!  DIIIEEEEE!!"
	For the briefest instant, Marrissa looked worried.  Then she 
glared at him and he flew across the room.  "You shouldn't have done 
that, Jay," she said.  "That was a big mistake.  See, somebody up there 
likes me.  Now I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to play nice."

[25 - she tampered in God's domain]
	"So what do we do now?" Shayna asked.
	"We find some way to knock down the tower before she uses it," 
Clara said.
	There was a sound behind them.  Clara dove behind a chair; Shayna 
turned around and fired a shot, which missed.  She didn't fire a second 
one, since it turned out to be Alexander.
	"Oh, it's you!" Shayna said.  "I thought--"
	Alexander fired a shot at Shayna that blew out half her chest.  
Shayna screamed, fell to the ground, and blinked out of existence.  Oh, 
=shit=, Clara thought.
	"Uh, Alex?" she called out.  "Any particular reason you just 
killed one of the good guys?"
	"Patterson Supra told me about the tower," Alexander said.
	"Supra?  That toad?" Clara said.  "Did he tell you the tower's 
going to make Marrissa =omnipotent=?"
	"Yes," Alexander said.
	"Oh," Clara said.  "I take it you don't have a problem with that?"
	"If Marrissa is omnipotent," Alexander said, "she can bring our 
child back.  Something you don't seem especially interested in.  But 
then, you never seemed to care very much.  You were more interested in 
jetting off to jungle planets and rutting in the grass with anyone who 
happened to wander by!  Harlot!"
	Clara tried to sneak a peek over the chair and nearly got plugged 
between the eyes for her efforts.  "This is what we get for skipping 
couples therapy," she muttered.
	Shayna popped back into existence behind Alexander.  "Hey, what's 
going on?" she asked.
	"Wha--??" Alexander yelped.  Clara took the opportunity to zap him 
into unconsciousness.
	"Okay, I give up," Clara said.  "I'm not going to believe 
=anything= I see anymore.  What just happened?"
	"Oh, I was dead," Shayna said.  "I went to the afterworld, which 
turns out to be Radford, and met my maker, who turns out to be me.  See, 
unlike the rest of you, it turns out I'm just an aspect of someone from 
the dimension our Creator's from.  So I can't die.  Pretty cool, huh?"
	"And I don't have a counterpart in Radford?" Clara asked.
	"Nope, you're just made up," Shayna said.
	"Swell," Clara said.  "And here I thought I might turn out to be a 
real boy.  Let's get Alexander to the brig."
	They'd just finished locking Alexander up when they ran into 
Rabob.  "Nothing much on the decks below," Rabob said.  "One of the 
escape pods took off while I was down there, though."
	"That'd be Patterson Supra," Clara said.  "C'mon, let's get to the 
bridge."
	On the bridge the found the viewscreen still tuned to the tower.  
"CHARGE: 96%," read the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
	"She's already started it up!" Clara cried.  "No time for anything 
fancy.  Shayna, two words.  Kami.  Kaze."
	"Gotcha," Shayna said.  "This'll be cool.  I've never killed 
myself in Japanese before."  She took off running down the hall.
	"Now what?" Rabob asked.
	"The fate of the universe is going to be decided in the next few 
seconds," Clara said.  "And it's on TV.  I say we watch it."
	"And me without my potato chips," Rabob said.
	The energy continued to arc up the iron spiral.  It had now 
reached the top.  She could feel the power of the universe pulsing all 
around her, enveloping her.  Marrissa Amber Flores Picard closed her 
eyes.
	"CHARGE: 100%," read the status bar on the viewscreen of the 
Enterprise.
	Shayna switched on the intercom of the escape pod.  "Hey, Rissa!" 
she yelled.  "Beep beep!"
	Marrissa opened her eyes.  Half a second later the escape pod hit 
her in the face.  She went flying out into the void.  Then, for good 
measure, the pod exploded.
	"That's it!" Rabob said.  "That =must= have finished her."
	"Don't be so sure," Clara said.  "I doubt we've seen the last of 
Marrissa.  She's probably not even defeated.  Just delayed."
	Shayna blinked back to life next to Clara.  "What'd I miss?" she 
asked.  "Did I nail her?"
	"Pretty much," Clara said.  "It was like taking out a fly with a 
wrecking ball."
	"Um, is it just me, or is the tower still glowing?" Rabob asked.
	Clara and Shayna looked back at the screen.  Sure enough, the iron 
spire was still glowing, and still in place, just bent a little.  "=Now= 
what?" Clara groaned.
	The tower pulsed a final time and spit out a burst of energy that 
rocketed up into space and exploded.  The fabric of space ripped apart.
	"This can't be good," Rabob said.
	A whirling maelstrom of energy crackled around the wormhole that'd 
just opened up.  Then hundreds of thousands of powder-blue bat-shaped 
ships came spilling out of it.
	"No, I'm pretty sure that's =not= good," Clara agreed.
	"We're being hailed," Shayna said.
	"Onscreen," Clara said.
	The picture of the wormhole was replaced by the image of a round 
green beaked creature with prehensile fins and gaping red gill-slits.  
It appeared to be immersed in some sort of bubbling solution.  "Jumping 
*peppers*!" it exclaimed.  "This is *smiley* time!  First is much the 
*dancing* and it is *frumple*!  Then Orz is *sliding* into *easy* space!  
It is too happy!"
	"Uh, Clara?" Rabob said.
	"I have a plan," Clara said.
	"Which is?" Shayna asked.
	"You know the jump pod?" Clara said.
	"*Silly cows* will like the *change*, but maybe not yet," the Orz 
continued.  "Shall Orz come to your *house* for *parties*?"
	"You don't have a jump pod hooked up to the Enterprise, do you?" 
Shayna asked, wincing.
	"Not exactly," Clara said.  "It's similar.  Something I was 
tinkering with when I was fourteen or so.  You might think of it as a 
primitive version of a jump pod..."
        "You mean what we took the first time =wasn't= the primitive
version?" Rabob asked.
	"Maybe we'd better take our chances with the million blue ships," 
Shayna said.
	The screen turned red and murky.  "*Nnnnngaaahhhhh*!" shrieked the 
Orz.  "I am *squeezing* the *juice*!  More and more *juice*!!"  The
viewscreen cut from the Orz captain to the Orz fleet, one million strong.
They all fired at once.
	"On second thought, hit it," Shayna said.
	Clara pulled the lever.  There was a bright flash.  A split second 
later, the Orz fusillade hit.  It wiped out the remains of Marrissa's 
city, the pyramids, and the Radford Access Tower from which Marrissa 
Picard had hoped to win her omnipotence.  The salvo ignited a chain 
reaction.  Qudayd shuddered, once, twice.  Then the entire planet
exploded like a grenade.
	But the Enterprise had already gone.

  -----
Written by Adam Cadre, October 1996.  May be freely distributed, but only
in its entirety, and only if this notice is intact.