A little TK might be useful for maneuvering right now,Keru thought as he stumbled onto the generator node at last. “Onto” was indeed the word, for he stood on the curving surface of the node, a seven-meter-wide sphere which glowed a warm red as the intense energies swirling within it shone out through its fleshy surface. The respiratory passages were wide and open here. The effect was something like being a giant standing on the surface of an ember-hot brown dwarf, though fortunately the node’s surface was only warm. Keru started to walk along it in search of fellow crew members, and tried not to stumble as he went. To his eyes, it looked as though any step he took would take him downhill, and he reflexively adjusted to compensate; but the gravity field shifted with each step so that he was constantly on the “top” of the imagined hill. The conflict between expectation and reality made it hard to adjust. The red-on-red lighting scheme didn’t help much either.
Soon enough, another crew member came into view around the curvature of the node. It was not Chamish, though, but Torvig. The cyborg cadet was traipsing along easily, no doubt using his bionic enhancements to compensate for the bizarre environment. “Oh, hello, Commander Keru! Am I in trouble for something again?” he asked, though his tone was affably inquisitive.
“Uhh, no. I was looking for Lieutenant Chamish, actually.”
“Oh. He’s on the other side of the node.”
“All right.” He paused. “What are you doing here, Cadet? I wasn’t aware you were assigned here.”
“I had some ideas I wanted to share with the star-jellies. Ways they could enhance their distortion generators to accelerate their warp field initiation cycle. Shielding enhancements for combat scenarios. Ways of reallocating interior space to accommodate larger populations. It seems to me they have a number of body parts they could do without, or simply materialize on an as-needed basis.”
Keru frowned. “Well. How did the jellies take your…suggestions?”
“Mr. Chamish says they’re wary, but curious to learn more. I’ve got the schematics running as a subroutine in my brain so they can review them in depth while I work on other things.”
“I see. Very well,” Keru said with a harrumph. “Carry on, then.”
Torvig blinked at him. “Commander, your tone of voice conveys disapproval. Do you now think I’m doing something wrong?”
“No. No, Cadet, it’s not that.”
“May I ask what it is, then?”
At least Torvig was learning to couch his relentless nosiness in slightly more polite terms. Keru sighed. “I just…don’t like seeing this done to the jellies, that’s all. Having their bodies altered to serve another species’ purpose. It feels like…”
“Like Borg assimilation?” Torvig’s gaze on him held steady.
“Frankly, yes. It just doesn’t feel right to me.”
“We know the jellies have probably been upgraded by others before. We are standing on one of the components added to their design.”
“Yes, but if that’s so, whoever did that to them isn’t around anymore. And the jellies have been living free for as long as they can remember, which is probably millions of years. So I think if they were used by others, they probably weren’t very happy about it. I think they decided they’d rather be free. Do we have the right to change that?”
Torvig looked surprised. “I don’t follow your logic. Just because the Great Builders didn’t stay with them doesn’t mean they weren’t wanted. They just moved on to other projects—the way they did after the Great Upgrade of my people.”
Keru stared. “You mean…you assume this was done to them by the same race that made you into cyborgs?”
Torvig lowered his cervine head. “Apologies, sir, I should’ve couched that as a hypothesis rather than an axiom. I’m aware that the Federation doesn’t share our belief in the Great Builders as the creators of all things.”
“I thought Choblik didn’t believe in anything that wasn’t supported by empirical evidence.”
“It is empirical that we were Upgraded to our current state millenia ago by some technological agency. It is also empirical that the galaxy contains many other life forms, worlds and phenomena that could not have come into being without technological intervention. And many of the fundamental mysteries of the universe can be resolved by postulating it as a construct of some entity or civilization existing on a transcendent plane. Given the power and pervasiveness that such a creative agency would require, it’s logical to interpret all lesser creative agencies in the universe as aspects of the ultimate Builders.”
Keru absorbed his words. “You mean…engineering is like a religion to you?”
“As I understand the term, I suppose so, although most religions seem to have less empirical bases and are hard for me to grasp yet. But yes, it’s how I serve the legacy of the Great Builders.”
“All right. But if you don’t mind an…empirical question…”
“Not at all, sir.”
“How do you know these Builders had benevolent intentions when they ‘Upgraded’ you? How do you know they didn’t intend to use you as slave labor, or just as some kind of experiment that they abandoned when they’d learned what they needed?”
Torvig looked up at him and spoke softly. His synthesized voice was far more expressive than Keru had realized at first. “I can’t see any logic in that hypothesis, sir. We owe everything we are to the Builders. In our native form, we are not fully sentient—simply relatively bright animals, small and weak herbivores who roamed the forests of Choblav, trying to avoid being eaten by various large predatory species. We had no speech, no arms, nothing but a simple prehensile tail.” He waved his tail forward and flexed the bionic hand on its end, a smaller counter-part of the intricate, versatile grippers on his bionic forearms. “The Great Upgrade gave us language and reason, plus the ability to build and create, to protect ourselves, and to improve our lives. And the Builders stayed with us long enough to establish the infrastructure that lets our civilization continue, that lets us pass on these gifts to our young.”
Keru suddenly realized he was curious about that. “How does that work, anyway? How can bionics be hereditary?”
“We have nanotech chromosomes which are passed on in our gametes and allow the self-replication of many of our internal components. Further enhancements are surgically installed in our young as soon as they are ready. We receive several successive suites of upgrades as we grow toward maturity.”
Keru shuddered. “Sounds unpleasant.”
“Oh, no, sir! It’s a wonderful experience, to gain new intelligence and abilities, to metamorphose into a new phase of being. These are celebrated rites of passage among my people.”
The feeling in his voice surprised Keru. “I…didn’t think you were the sentimental type.”
“Less so than most, sir. But this is who we are. Is it sentimental to cherish the core of one’s existence?”
“Hm.” He was silent for a moment. “Even so, you can’t assume that other species will have the same reaction to the idea of being…upgraded.”
“Of course, sir. I understand. It’s much like the Trill people’s concerns about how symbiosis would be perceived. The fear that it would lead to rejection or persecution of the symbionts if other humanoids learned of them.”
“Uh, that’s not really what I meant. And it didn’t turn out that way after all.”
“Didn’t it? Maybe not among other humanoids, but it seems that there was some serious intolerance toward the symbionts on Trill itself. I mean, considering the attempt to exterminate them and all.” He paused. “That was about the time I entered Starfleet Academy, in fact. My family was reluctant to let me join, because they were afraid I might face persecution. We had only recently been contacted by the Federation, and their response to us had been…mixed. When the news about Trill came, many of us feared a similar genocide. But my studies of the Federation convinced me that you were better than that. Well, most of the time.”