Shadow

Shoreleave The crew had left the ship of their own free will. Not on a mission, and not forced, they simply left for what they termed shoreleave, yet there was no shore nor had they anything to leave. The situation left Shadow perplexed, but the situation did not baffle him as much as the subtle changes he felt in their life energy patterns and the emotions they evoked in him. Shadow had come to know the crew not so much by their names but by their life energy signatures. Each being he encountered emitted distinct variances in energy, markers if you will, that distinguished one from the other. He recognized these differences much as a biological being would recognize the face or voice of a friend. During times of stress, elation, rest, etc., the energy signatures changed, and up to now the signatures had been predictable and recognizable. What disturbed him was the change he felt as they left for shoreleave. On previous occasions they had left on missions, and he had sensed their desire to return and their firm resolve to do so. This time, however, he sensed a distinct reluctance to return, a longing to stay, and, in some, a distinct recalcitrance when it came to decorum. It frightened him. Torn from his home by Agnicourt as it ripped the space-time continuum and snatched him from his dimension, the ship had ironically become his haven in a totally alien universe. It was all he knew of this universe and the crew were his only contacts. If the crew were to leave the ship and never return, what would he have? Nothing. No other point of safety but the empty ship, and what could he do with it, where could he go? What could he do? What could he do? {{Come with me,}} called Dr. Levy through the ether. But he could not. His fear froze him to the spot, overpowered all reason and threw him into a near catatonic state. Even with his closest "friend" he could not leave his one point of safety: the place they called Agincourt. So he remained, wrapped in the comfort of the energy from a power junction buried in a Jeffries tube just outside main engineering.

To Be A Seeker Their energy was impure. Impure. Shadow struggled to explain what he meant to Kairi. Adding to his problem, the biological method of communication was also impure, primitive, and required so much expulsion of energy (much of which was wasted in the process), and was so inexact it defied Shadow’s efforts to convey ideas. To communicate with his own species or with a telepath, Shadow expended one wave of thought, its complexity varying with the complexity of the thought being conveyed. For him to communicate with a non-telepathic biological it required that same energy wave to pass through various systems throughout the biological body, only to be converted into sound and propelled through an atmosphere cluttered with other energies – the energy of the communications network, the energy in every console, every illuminating device, even the very energy that powered the various systems which enabled the ship to keep the biologicals alive in the alien environment they called space. They were, in essence, Renaissance characters maneuvering their elaborately costumed panniers awkwardly around a cluttered stage. As a consequence, Shadow spent much time in the environs of the holodeck, where he could simultaneously absorb energy and interact with various programs that taught him to relate to and interact with these strange biological beings. The Harper had required him to assist the engineers with insuring that those who stole the three crewmen from Agincourt would not be able to steal more. But Shadow was a seeker, not an engineer. And so he sat, face to face – figuratively speaking – with a conundrum. He considered the warp core and how, when it produced energy, it traveled through so many conduits to so many systems that by the end of its travels a mere 10% was left that actually produced the warp bubble that propelled the ship. He considered the shields that protected the ship from attack but did not protect the one from being stolen. The skin of the ship was all wrong. Instead of protecting the ship its metallic content acted as a conductor, allowing the pure energy of the others to penetrate the shields and steal the three. But how to explain this? Packets of holodeck information flew around him. To solve the other problems he must communicate. He had tried to approximate his own biological form, but it did not work effectively; in a word, it was awkward. In the beginning he had received a likeness from the thoughts of The Levy and had appeared as her grandmother. It frightened her and blocked communication. Therefore a form that had no kindred to any of the crew, perhaps one from the holodeck collection, should be used. A classic seeker, what the crew called a science officer, was what he needed, and within seconds he found what he was looking for.

Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day. ~Andrew Marvel, To His Coy Mistress World. Time. Shadow, merged with the holographic energy, absorbed bits and pieces of biological species' knowledge and cultures, but only the concepts. The meanings eluded him, like fleeting bits of nebula brushing him as he passed. Shadow knew not world. He knew not time. He simply was. And yet these concepts seemed to be the basis of much interaction among these new beings with which he found himself, and so he found he must strive to understand, as futile as his efforts might be. Viciously ripped from his Bond by Agincourt's slip from one universe to another, he was doomed to coexist with them until he found a way to rejoin the Bond. But here he was trapped in world. In time. He was known, among his own, as a Seeker. And now he sought those among these new beings who were also known as Seekers, though they were called scientists. In this resolve he had fixed on one known as Odlie, a scientist, a fellow Seeker, who would surely understand and aid him in his dilemma. He sought aid in understanding the beings around him, in understanding the full meaning of time and world and place. Beset with boundaries which, until now, he knew not, he resolved to dissolve some of those boundaries in the name of understanding. However, instead of dissolving the boundaries he found a new one -- the boundary between belief and unbelief. This Seeker, Odile, believed he was not real, and to convince her of his reality is quite a different dilemma than to convince her of his desire to learn. And he began to wonder, and his wondering took him back to the holodeck and the words of Andrew Marvel, had we but world enough and time. He stepped back to the familiar, to the words he spoke in his panic during first contact with this entrapping universe. Friend, he said. The most simple word seemed to have the same translation for every being. And in his speaking of it, Odile understood, and she replied in kind. Friend.