Chapter 13

THE DOCTOR HUMMED to himself as he polished Chapter Three of Photons, Claim Justice. While he had absolutely no desire to be actively involved in a revolution, he had to admit, Baines’s passion had stirred the creative juices. His sequel had been going nowhere, meandering around with many false starts. Now the Doctor had an exciting plotline—his photonic main character, whom of course anyone experiencing the novel would portray, would be a key player in a peaceful revolt.

Naturally, there would be some hard parts. Nothing worth winning came without cost. And there would be someone who would try to lead Our Hero astray, promising that they shared the same goals when in reality this villain was after violence and bloodshed. Our Hero would be seduced at first, but along about [155] Chapter Five would realize the villain’s true destructive nature and be instrumental in both bringing the villain to justice and obtaining rights for all sentient photonic beings.

He reread a section and nodded his head. “Magnificent,” he said. “This one is Pulitzer-worthy.” He couldn’t wait to play it, but that would have to wait until he had access to a larger facility. Tom Paris had fitted only enough holoemitters to enable the Doctor to move about freely. They’d need many more to re-create the lovingly detailed city and the other richly developed characters the Doctor envisioned.

The door chimed. The Doctor frowned. Tom hadn’t given him any express orders as to what to do about visitors, so he glanced up to see who it was. He saw three uniformed Starfleet officers, so of course he immediately called, “Come in.”

The door hissed open. The three men were all of a sort: similar height, gray, mustard-and-black uniforms, black-brown hair, solemn expressions.

“Starfleet security,” one of them said.

“Is there a problem?” the Doctor asked politely.

“That remains to be seen,” the officer said cryptically. They came in and one of them pulled out a tricorder and began to take readings. “May I assume you are the holographic Doctor who served on Voyager?”

The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back and stood on his toes once or twice. “You may,” he said airily.

“I’m Commander Antonio Juarez. These are Lieutenant Commanders Branson and Young. We have some questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

[156]  “Not at all. Always delighted to serve Starfleet.” He indicated a chair, but they all remained standing. One of them went over to look at his computer. “Do please be careful,” he called. “I’ve just entered some information and would be quite chagrined if anything happened to it. I detest rewriting.”

Juarez’s head whipped around. “What sort of information?”

“Work on my next holonovel,” the Doctor answered. “It’s a sequel to my first book. You might have heard of it—it’s called Photons Be Free.”

“I have indeed heard of it, Doctor, and it’s part of the reason we’re here. Do you recognize this man?” He handed him a holophotograph.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “Indeed I do,” he said. “That’s Oliver Baines. He came to see me a few days ago.”

“What did you discuss?”

The Doctor hesitated. He didn’t want to get Baines into any trouble. After all, in theory, the man and he were comrades.

“We discussed my novel,” he said. Which was true. “I’ve apparently got quite the following.”

“Readers are one thing, fanatics are another,” Juarez said. He seemed about to say something else but Young interrupted.

“Sir, you’d better come take a look at this.”

Juarez went over to the computer. His brown eyes scanned it, and he frowned.

“Download it to the tricorder and then delete it from the computer,” he said.

[157] “Excuse me,” said the Doctor sharply, “that is private property.”

“Not when it deals with treason,” Juarez replied. “You’re under arrest, Doctor, for possible conspiracy in a holographic revolution. Your pal Baines has staged a Federation-wide strike of all sentient holograms. Things have come to a grinding halt, and it’s part of my job to get things up and running again.”

“What happened?” cried the Doctor.

“You’ll find out in time. Please put on your portable emitter and come with us.”

“If I refuse?” The Doctor didn’t know the finer points of Starfleet law, but he suspected that he was not being treated the same way that a flesh person would be. He didn’t think their actions were legal.

Juarez sighed. “That’s the trouble with you holograms, always getting above your programming. Let me put it to you this way. If you don’t accompany us voluntarily, we can download you and take you with us by force.”

The Doctor stared, shocked. He couldn’t believe it. He was a Starfleet officer! But Juarez looked like he meant what he said. Slowly, the Doctor reached for his portable emitter and put it on his arm.

It soon became apparent that there was much worse in store for Janeway and the other diners at Spanish Moss than having their dinners spoiled. There was a huge, milling throng of people at the transport station, and Janeway had to push her way through. Someone yelled at her, “Wait your turn!,” but she ignored Mm. She soon realized what the holdup was: There was no [158] one operating the transporters. The holograms whose duty it usually was were standing back from their stations, their arms folded, stubborn looks on their faces. First the restaurant and its building and staff, and now the transporter operators. How many holographic programs had Baines broken into?

She refused to allow herself to follow that train of thought and kept shoving through the crowd. She almost ran into one of the holograms and glared angrily at him. He glowered back at her.

“Are you doing this of your own free will or has your program been tampered with?” she asked.

He said airily, “You’re not going to find out.”

“If you’re striking voluntarily, you’ll be deleted or reprogrammed, you know,” she said.

“We accept our fate.”

Janeway sighed. “You know, this sort of thing is annoying enough when humans do it. Stand aside, then.”

For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to obey her. She drew herself up to her full height and gave him stare for stare. Slowly, he stepped back, and she slipped up to the transporter console.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” she cried, striving to be heard over the din. “Does anyone here have a familiarity with transporter systems?”

No one answered.

“All right, does anyone here want to learn?” No one moved; then Mark shoved his way through the crowd. Kathryn felt pride swell in her. He never let her down.

“It’s quite simple,” she told him, and gave him a crash course in how to program the transporter. He [159] followed her instructions easily. “Can I trust you to get these people safely home?”

“I think so,” he said.

“The worst that can happen is that it won’t work and people will have to find alternative arrangements. There are all kinds of built-in safety precautions, so you won’t lose anyone’s molecules.”

He went a little paler and forced a smile. To show her confidence, she told him the coordinates and strode to the transport area.

“Energize,” she said.

She materialized in Tom Paris’s apartment to find it crawling with Starfleet officers, several of whom were pointing phasers at her. One of them was carting off the computer, while two of them were grilling Tom. Still others were taking tricorder readings. When they saw who it was, they relaxed. Slightly.

“Where’s the Doctor?” she demanded without preamble.

“They took him, Admiral,” said Tom. The man who seemed to be leading the investigation, if you could call it that, gave Paris a dark look, then rose and went to Janeway.

“Admiral Janeway, I’m Commander Martin Cagiao,” he said, extending his hand. Janeway didn’t shake it. Cagiao had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Commander, what’s going on here? Why have you taken the Doctor?”

“No doubt you’ve heard about the holographic strike,” Cagiao said.

“I was dining at a restaurant when it happened,” [160] Janeway replied. “No tables, no plates, no servers serving, no walls or ceiling, and no way to get home. I had to stick a civilian friend of mine with the unpleasant duty of transporting about eighty people.”

“It’s much worse than that,” Cagiao said grimly. “This isn’t a localized event. Think about what we entrust to holograms every day. Maintenance checks and cleaning for equipment of every sort, from buildings to starships. Transporters of every variety. All manner of dangerous but mundane assignments.”

“Like mining on Lyndarik Prime,” Janeway said.

“Exactly,” he said, not hearing the warning in her words. “Somehow this Baines fellow has found a way to crack almost all of our computer systems with a virus that makes the holograms refuse to perform the very duties for which they were programmed.”

“Is it a programming that they can choose to override?”

“Some can, some can’t. You’ll forgive us if we haven’t taken the time to find out the finer points of this computer virus,” Cagiao said.

“I would think that would be precisely what you’d be taking the time to do,” Janeway snapped. As Cagiao was about to retort, she held up a hand. “I want to hear what’s going on in a moment, and I’ll offer what aid I can. But first I want to know what has happened to my crewman.”

“He’s not your crewman any longer, Admiral,” Cagiao said. “You don’t have a crew.”

The comment was not intended to hurt, but Janeway was surprised at how it stung. He was right. She had no crew anymore. They were all scattered, all individuals, [161] each pursuing his own destiny apart from her, apart from Voyager, apart from the great adventure they had all shared.

“What did you do?” she said, through clenched teeth.

“He was taken away for questioning,” Cagiao said.

“Surely you don’t believe he was involved in this,” Janeway said.

Cagiao smiled darkly. “It sounds like you came here immediately from your interrupted dinner,” he replied. “It would appear that you yourself thought he might be involved.”

She did not reply, for he was right. “The Doctor is the author of a holonovel called—”

“Photons Be Free, we are quite familiar with it. Which is why a team came by earlier. The Doctor confessed freely to having met with Oliver Baines, and we found on his computer the beginnings of another novel in which the protagonist becomes involved in a holographic revolution.”

His voice was still crisp, but his eyes betrayed his sympathy at her surprise. “We also found a padd that Baines left for the Doctor to read. It’s chock full of rhetoric about the changing times that lie ahead when photons are finally free, and some of those changes put organics, as they call them, at the bottom and holograms as their masters. Surely you agree there was sufficient cause to take him in for further questioning.”

“I don’t believe the Doc had any part in this!” Paris said loudly.

Cagiao turned to glare at Tom, and Janeway guessed that Paris was trying his patience. Quickly, she said, [162] “Tom, answer their questions, and we’ll find out what’s behind this as soon as possible. That’s an order,” she said, when he opened his mouth to protest. From another room came a loud wail.

“That’s my daughter,” Tom said. “Let me go to her.”

Cagiao nodded, and Tom was permitted to rise. But a Starfleet security officer accompanied him.

“Commander, it does sound like the Doctor might be able to give you some valuable information about Baines,” Janeway said. “But I’m afraid I have to agree with Mr. Paris. I don’t think the Doctor would do anything to put human lives in jeopardy.”

“They’re not, not at the moment at any rate,” Cagiao said, “although who knows what kind of riots we’ll get once people realize the full extent of this thing.”

“May I speak to him?”

Cagiao shook his head. “I’m afraid not, ma’am. Our orders were quite clear.”

Janeway set her shoulders. “I outrank you, Mr. Cagiao, and I probably outrank anyone involved in this, so I think you had better—”

“No, ma’am,” said Cagiao firmly, “you do not, and as I said my orders were very clear. The Doctor is not allowed to speak to anyone until he is released.”

“May I ask the name of the person who issued this order?”

“Admiral Kenneth Montgomery.”