30 Days of Prodigy, Day 21: Zero
Zero had never expected to be a weapon. The thought never even crossed their mind, until they were captured by the Kazon. They had never imagined that their mere presence might be used by another to control the minds of innocents, until they met the Diviner.
This was no way for an intelligent, compassionate being such as Zero to live. They needed to escape. But how? Even if they could break out of their containment unit, there were too many people around for them to just leave. The number of innocents who would have to view them in their pure form would be numerous and the effects catastrophic. Zero had never wanted to be a weapon, but to escape unprotected would turn them into not just any weapon, but a weapon of mass destruction. There had to be another way.
Aha! A mystery! This was their wheelhouse, so to speak. Zero had loved solving mysteries their whole life. Curiosity fueled their every action. That was why they had ventured off of their homeworld in the first place, and why they had become distanced from the hivemind long enough to be captured. Curiosity may have been their downfall then, but now it would be their salvation.
Now, how to protect everyone else from going insane at the sight of them? The red glasses appeared to help. And telepaths like the Diviner seemed to have an easier time of it. So how to get red glasses on everyone on Tars Lamora… or to make them all telepathic somehow? That sounded very complicated and in Zero's experience, mysteries often have a simple, elegant solution. There must be another way…
It wasn’t until the Diviner opened Zero’s containment unit again that an idea began to form. While the Diviner used Zero’s visage to brainwash the newest captive, they tried to disassociate, to focus on anything else but the weapon they had become.
Zero regarded the robotic creatures that flanked the newest recruit. The Drednoks were artificial intelligence, so they had no telepathic signature and had mostly escaped Zero’s notice until now. But, of course, they were not affected by seeing the Medusan’s form. They did not have minds, in the traditional sense, and so they could not go mad! But maybe, if Zero tried, they could communicate with the Drednoks much in the same way that Medusans communicated with the artificial intelligence that flew their ships.
Zero focused on the Drednok standing to their left. See what it sees, look through its eyes, they coached themselves. Suddenly, Zero was looking at, well, themself! The incandescent swirl of energy pulsed through the room and Zero felt the new arrival struggling against their - or, rather, the Drednok’s - grip. Zero had not expected to feel what the Drednok felt; had not even been sure that the Drednok could feel anything at all. But it could and they did.
Zero wondered if they could take it a step further and force the Drednok to move. They concentrated on the feeling of the arm struggling against them, the feel of the mechanical fingers as they imagined loosening their grip. A twinge in the thumb indicated the beginning of a movement… but then Zero felt their mind slammed back into their body as they were roughly shoved back into the containment unit, its opaque aluminum alloy sides cutting off the connection with the Drednok.
But this was a start. There would be an indefinite amount of time before Zero was let out again. But when that time came, they would be ready.
In their mind, Zero began to design a portable shield. One that would carry them out of this place, just as the Drednok’s metal skeleton carried them from place to place. The red glasses could be repurposed to make a viewport so that they could see out and the rest could easily be built from the scraps that lay all over the ground on Tars Lamora.
And Zero knew just the Drednok to build it.
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Happy DALentine's Day, friends! 😘
At the end of his first week aboard the USS Voyager-A, Dal R’El decided that it was a lot more exhausting being an actual Starfleet warrant officer than it was being a fake Starfleet captain. There were a lot more people on a ship this size (many of whom wouldn’t give the ‘weird augment kid’ the time of day), and so much for him to learn, and way less time for fun… and, he had to admit to himself, no Gwyn.
He was used to back-breaking physical labor from his time on Tars Lamora, but he was unaccustomed to standing up so straight all the time. His back and neck were sore from upholding proper Starfleet posture all day long and it was with a profound sense of relief that he finally slumped into his desk chair at the end of the day. Lying down on his bed would result in his missing dinner, as Dal had learned earlier in the week. So he leaned back in the chair, threw his feet up on the desk, and stretched his arms into the air before settling them behind his head as a sort of pillow.
He gazed into the near distance as he started to daydream about what Gwyn might be doing at that moment when something on the desk caught his eye. Something small, yellow, and shaped like a heart. “Hey, Z!” Dal called to his roommate who was busily writing something at their own desk, “where did this come from?”
“Where did what come from?” Zero asked without looking up from their work.
Dal’s feet swung back to the floor and he leaned in to get a closer look. “This little heart thingy. Hey, it has writing on it… ‘U R COOL’,” he read slowly. “I am cool,” Dal said confidently, “but what’s with the tiny message?”
Intrigued by the mystery, Zero had abandoned their work to come in for a closer look. They picked up the little yellow heart and examined it carefully before handing it back to Dal and declaring: “It’s just candy.”
“But where did it come from? Why the message?” Dal asked, exasperated.
“I don’t know, Murf was here earlier - maybe he dropped it,” Zero said with a shrug and went back to their desk.
“Candy, huh?” Dal pondered it for another moment. It didn’t smell sweet, but it’s not like he had a whole lot of experience with candy, so he popped it in his mouth and bit down. The candy crunched between his teeth like chalk and didn’t taste much better. “Yech,” Dal spat it back into his hand. “I don’t think this is candy, Z.”
“I don’t know, why don’t you go find Murf and ask him?” Zero said with an annoyed sigh.
“Maybe I will!” Dal said petulantly, standing up from his chair. “I have to go wash this junk off my hands anyway,” he grumbled to himself.
Dal never made it to the washroom though, because he found another tiny heart on the floor right outside of his quarters. He knew better than to try eating it this time, but he picked it up to get a closer look. This one was orange and said BE MINE. “Huh? Be whose?” Dal asked, searching up and down the empty hallway.
A few feet away was another heart — pink: MY STAR.
“OK, what’s the big idea? Murf are you hiding somewhere?” Dal looked all around, even checked the ceiling, but there was no Murf to be found nor anyone else for that matter.
Only… another heart. And another. And another. U GOT THIS, XOXO, CALL ME.
It was beginning to feel like someone was sending him a message, but who? Literally everyone he knew in this universe was on this ship except for Gwyn, and she was way far out of communication range… wasn’t she? Still, the thought caused Dal to pick up speed as he continued to follow the trail of tiny hearts.
Some of the messages were vague, others seemed very specific, but each one drove him forward…
MISS YOU
MY HERO
HUGS
PURR FECT
until finally, he stood in front of the holodeck with a pocketful of hearts, looking at the last two, sitting on the floor next to each other.
Dal’s stomach flipped as he bent down to pick them up. One was purple and had the phrase IN CAT BOOTS etched into it. The other was a light blue that reminded him of Gwyn’s eyes and it simply said ENTER.
Dal walked through the doors and into a planetarium, much like the one he and Gwyn had spent so much time in on Earth. And there she was, standing in the middle of the room waiting for him.
“Gwyn!” Dal cried, his voice cracking with excitement as he ran up to embrace her. Of course, it wasn’t really her. He knew that. The real Gwyn was off on another ship trying to save her world. But she looked real and she felt real and at that moment, Dal was more than happy to have even a holographic version of her.
HoloGwyn returned the hug and giggled lightly. “I see the others gave you my messages,” she said, smiling into Dal’s neck. She pulled away and took his hand, leading him to sit on their favorite bench.
They sat, leaning on one another, while Dal told Gwyn about his week and Gwyn pointed out her approximate location on the starmap above. The hour passed quickly and before he knew it, the computer was warning Dal that his time would be up in two minutes.
HoloGwyn kissed him on the cheek and stood in front of him, her ice-blue eyes piercing right through to his soul. “You’ve got to go now,” she told him. “But this program is yours. I’ll be here waiting, if you need me.”
Dal smiled back at her and stood to wrap his arms around her one more time.
“The program’s name is Cat Boots,’ Gwyn whispered in his ear, and he squeezed her tighter and kissed her softly.
“Thanks, Gwyn. For everything,” Dal whispered as the program began to fade away into the holodeck’s grey, gridded walls.
Dal left the holodeck feeling much lighter and with a bounce in his step. He greeted everyone with a smile on his way to the mess hall and his hands rested casually in his pockets.
He was in such a good mood that he pulled out a candy heart that said QT PIE, and flipped it into the air, catching it in his mouth without thinking. He managed not to spit it out this time (he was in public, after all), but he grimaced as he choked down the dry, chalky candy.
Yep, still gross, he thought. But then he smiled to himself. I’ll have to remember to tell Gwyn next time I see her.
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