An Adventure in Might-Have-Beens

[Wing-of-no-Wing 0]

In all the horrible tortures that it had been subjected to, the rodent had never experienced anything quite like it.

 

The rodent had been forced to run through many labyrinths, remaining only one step ahead of starvation; it had been forced to run on a wheel until it felt ready to lay down and die; it had been imprisoned in a moving cage, attached to the armor of one of the large ones, and forced to hang on till it felt like its claws were going to rip from its limbs, in order not to be beaten to death against the sides of the enclosure. And there was the squeezing torture…the large one would make weird cooing noises and stroke the rodent’s fur, and then suddenly attempt to kill it by crushing its ribcage.

 

The rodent had long ago realized that it was being tested, forced time and again to the limits of its intelligence, endurance, and will to live, for the amusement of its captor. But it had proved more capable than the large one could ever have anticipated: during one of the squeezing sessions, it had escaped.

 

The rodent remembered running across a plain laden with pink globs, remembered finding a cage with wide bars that seemed to go back forever, remembered running through the cage, which branched off in all directions, a pleasant wind running through it…then it had found itself in the Kingdom of Monsters.

 

The rodent had seen others of its kind before, when it was young. It remembered growing up in a beautiful, clean cage with its brothers, rodents just like it. In the Kingdom of Monsters, it once again found others like it, but they had been…changed. Some of them were missing body parts; others of them had gone insane, running and twitching and biting without any reason. With growing dread, the rodent had realized that these were the brothers that had been kidnapped by the large one before it, made into something horrible by the torture. So it ran, ran as fast as it could away from the Kingdom of Monsters, through the many passages of the Very Long Cage, hoping to find its way home.

 

But the Very Long Cage was like an enormous labyrinth, too large for the rodent to keep track of the passages and turns. There was plenty to eat; that pink stuff that the large ones liked to play in tended to splash everywhere. Still, eventually the rodent found itself compelled to come out of the Cage; the fact of the matter is, the rodent was used to overcoming one challenge after another, and left on its own, it didn’t really know what to do with itself. The monotony of the Very Long Cage eventually became unbearable.

 

Thus, the rodent had found itself in a large chamber, wherein several of the large ones (including its former captor: a moment of panic!) were shouting at one another about something or other. There was some fighting; the rodent’s captor used one of its torture implements to kill several of the others. The rodent was about to turn and run when something incredible happened: God appeared.

 

The rodent remembered visions of God from when it was younger. God created the cages, created the food that the rodent and its brothers had eaten, had even created more of their kind by means of His incredible power. The rodent found itself trembling with awe as God entered the chamber and resurrected the large ones that the captor had killed. Truly, God was great! Under His direction, the army of God killed the captor with the same implement that the captor had used to fight against them. Then, in an incredible display of mercy, God resurrected the captor; but the captor was so changed by the beneficence of God that he made peace with the other large ones, and began living in harmony with them. God’s presence was so great, so beautiful, that the rodent had stealthily come out of its hiding place…

 

But God worked in mysterious ways. The rodent should have known that the chamber where the large ones fought was the place of the titans; it was wrong of him to intrude there. In His wrath, God declared Armageddon. The world began to shake; one of the titans was immediately struck down. In terror, the rodent tried to take shelter under the fallen titan’s ankle.

 

And that was when the rodent experienced something to which none of the tortures could ever hope to compare: the world ended.

 

Eventually, the rodent regained consciousness in the netherworld. The netherworld was much as the rodent had always expected that it would be: a dark, smoky place filled with strange smells and terrible creatures. Little hard-bodied bug things, much like what it had occasionally been forced to eat at the end of its labyrinth runs, but larger and more ferocious, were everywhere. There were large ones, too, plated in the same infinitely hard gray material as what made up the world itself. The world shook and clanged as they walked. The titans of the rodent’s home were nothing compared to these.

 

The rodent had escaped from its torture, but for what? For the first time in quite a while, the rodent felt not challenged, not pained, but genuinely terrified. And it ran.

 

The rodent saw several places that looked like entrances to the Very Long Cave, but myriad alien eyes peered out from them. There were demons in this netherworld, the rodent concluded. So the rodent kept running.

 

Eventually it found itself in a smallish chamber, and looked around…

 

A feeling of dread. Then panic. The rodent prayed.

 

For although the décor was different, the chamber was still recognizable to the rodent. It was the chamber in which its captor had kept it for all those weeks of agony. And over in the corner stood its captor, in demon-form: dark, with a shine in his eyes that the rodent recognized as demonic power. The captor’s body covered with gray world-stuff, and a death-device gleamed at its side.

 

That was when the rodent figured it out. For incurring God’s wrath, it had been sent to Hell.

 

* * *

 

Sargh looked up from the PADD of calculations that he had been working on. He had been up working for quite a while, and thought at first that the motion he’d seen out of the corner of his eyes was just an illusion, one of the tricks that his mind occasionally played on him when he was tired, as a result of his torture at the hands of the H’tiss. Just to put his mind at rest, though, he took a look over at the offending area of shadows.

 

There was something there! It was a small Terran rodent, a type that he had read about in books but never seen; a “hamster”, he if he recalled the name correctly.

 

“How did you get here, little one?” Sargh whispered. His curiosity took over; with a lightning-fast motion, he scooped up the creature. It was tiny, and quivered a bit in his hand as he inspected it. Its mouth worked, revealing a pair of small, razor-sharp teeth. Typically Terran: it doesn’t look like much, but it’s better armed than one would expect.

 

* * *

 

So this is my torment, the rodent thought. God put me with the captor as a test, and I failed. I ran away during one of the squeezing tests, and thus I shall be punished by being squeezed for all eternity. Oh, woe is me…

 

The hamster waited…but nothing happened. The demon-captor was not squeezing it…but why? Then a terrible thought occurred to it: Maybe the true torture is the constant anticipation of the squeeze: if it’s happening, I can try and cope, but this waiting…it’s unbearable! The rodent considered trying to jump from the demon-captor’s hand, on the unlikely chance that it would suffer a fatal injury in the fall and thus fall into Oblivion. But God would not have designed Hell so poorly…so the hamster stood its ground, and waited.

 

* * *

 

The rodent was interesting indeed: small and cuddly-looking, but potentially quite vicious. But Sargh had work to get back to, and he hadn’t eaten in many hours. He reached over with his other hand, and with a quick twist, broke the hamster’s neck.

 

The hamster proved to be mostly fur and bone, but in light of the circumstances, it was a satisfying snack nonetheless.

 

His hunger temporarily satiated, Sargh got back to work. As he settled into his chair, he rubbed the scar on the side of his head where a piece of twisted metal had hit him in a lab accident some years ago. He’d pulled the metal out himself; it was only much later that he learned how close that piece of metal had come to hitting his brain, which probably would have resulted in permanent brain damage. Brain damage was not a glorious wound; Sargh shuddered slightly at the thought of what might have been.

 

* * *

 

It has been said that true exploration is the study of possibilities: of what might have been, and what may yet be. The little hamster that met its end that day was an artifact of possibility, a might-have-been become flesh and blood, and ultimately food, by a quirk of science. In examining the origins of this most peculiar creature, we move out of the world of what is, and into the twilight realm of the compresent alternative. We move into a universe that by its very differentness, serves as a mirror, reflecting our own universe back to us, in the light of chances and reasons, for our consideration.

 

In our universe, the Klingons are a race of noble warriors, quick to fight for honor or glory. But what might we know about the personalities of particular Klingons if we controlled the species factor by observing them in a universe where Klingons were friendly and fun-loving? Back-tracking along the trail of our anomalous rodent’s tiny feet, we find that it emerged from just such a rabbit hole.

 

Were we to decide that we wanted to see how far said rabbit hole went, we might find ourselves in a ship much like the QoB, but with many differences that we would find shocking. On board this alternate ship, there is a room much like that in which the hamster met its untimely end at the hands of a hungry Klingon science officer. The walls are painted light blue, with fluffy white clouds on them, a smiley-faced yellow sun, and a rainbow that arcs across the ceiling. In this cheerful room, there lived a Klingon, who bore the same name as said science officer, Sargh, son of Ba’rakh, though in this universe, he is usually just called Sargh, or even Sarghie. Let us continue our inquiry by sitting in on a moment in this Sargh’s life, a moment that directly followed the hamster’s transportation from its home universe to our own…

 

* * *

 

Sargh sat at his desk, looking at the mazes that he has drawn further back than the limited span that he could easily remember, and that he had been sufficiently proud of to post on his wall. Sometimes he liked to look into the intricate patterns of lines and spaces, and not try to solve them (that was Marvel’s job), but rather to try and get a general feel for the pattern of the maze. Different mazes reminded him of different things. The one near Marvel’s cage reminded him of an electromagnetic wave centrifuge. There was one on the wall across from his bed that reminded him of a face. When he was tired, he would sometimes look at that one for a long time. Sargh couldn’t escape the feeling that he was missing some piece of information when he looked at that maze. Marvel is really smart. I bet he knows what’s wrong with the maze. Maybe it’s not possible, or maybe it has a really, exceptionally clever solution. Marvel has to know, though. He’s really smart. I know that he’s really smart because he’s little and can jump, and I can prove that being little and being able to jump constitutes wisdom:

 

1. Some mazes can be solved. Others can’t be solved.

2, Being smart means that you can solve hard problems easily.

3. In order to make it possible for a Klingon, human, or similar species to solve an impossible maze, it is necessary for them to remove one of the maze’s walls, or sometimes more than one.

4. For Marvel to solve the same impossible maze, it’s only necessary to make a small hole in one of the walls. Sometimes Marvel can solve the impossible mazes without having to make any changes, by jumping.

5. Therefore, it is easier for Marvel to solve the impossible mazes than it is for Klingonoid species to solve them.

6. The reason why it’s so easy for Marvel to solve the impossible mazes is because he is little and can jump.

7. By (2) and (6), wisdom is being really little and being able to jump.

 

This conclusion is borne out by observation. Children are really much smarter than grownups: when they fight, they usually make up without anyone being killed; they learn languages really quickly; they are able to enjoy the simplest things in life. The main difference between children and adults is that children are smaller, and can jump because their knees haven’t gone yet. Likewise, arthritis makes old people senile, because it takes away their ability to jump. And who would take instruction in combat from a man with no legs?

 

Sargh was happy with his argument. It seemed to make a lot of sense. Maybe now people will actually pay some attention to what I think, now that I have a good argument to give them. Maybe now they’ll…

 

They’d do what, exactly? Sargh though he had done well in figuring out the baking problem for TroNoQ’s neutrino cookies, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that things were not as they seemed. Why did the recipe make that guy (Sargh couldn’t remember his name) disappear? And how had he been able to figure out the neutrino problem in the first place? Sargh wondered whether his being shot might have had something to do with it. Sargh disliked being shot, just like he disliked when Random said…said that…

 

Sargh looked over at Marvel’s cage. There was his hamster, looking as cute and as fresh as always. Sargh wished his hair could do the same trick as Marvel’s fur, returning to perfect condition on its own once in a while. Sargh didn’t like having to brush his hair; it always hurt when he brushed the place where the Bad Metal had made him special. All Marvel had to do was wait, and eventually, it seemed, his hair would suddenly fix itself. Just like now…looking at the hamster, Sargh confirmed that its fur was, indeed, quite well groomed.

 

The pictures behind Marvel’s cage caught Sargh’s eye. Sargh didn’t look at the pictures very often; for reasons he couldn’t identify, they made him feel not so good. They were like the Glowing Cookie Award for Good Science that he still kept in his desk…things from before, things that he had to carry with him, that were part of him, for better or for worse.

 

The first picture was of a couple of old Klingons, and a little Klingon child. Sargh thought that the old Klingons might have looked a little bit like him, as did the child. The three Klingons stood on a grassy hill, a pink poodle curled at the child’s feet. Sargh had no idea who any of the people in the picture were, but apparently someone thought that they were important enough that he should have their picture in his quarters. Perhaps they were important historical figures…yes, that was obviously it! The three Klingons were important historical figures, and he had their picture in his quarters so that if he encountered a statue of one of them, he wouldn’t make a fool of himself by acting confused.

 

The other picture was different, though. This one was of a female Klingon, who looked very slightly like Kwalus, though sufficiently different that Sargh could be absolutely sure they were not one and the same. Sargh absent-mindedly rubbed one of his fingers whenever he looked at that particular picture, as if something was missing from the finger, but couldn’t for the life of him figure out the origin of that reaction. I must have had a really bad itch back then, and I still have the conditioned response of scratching when I think about it.

 

It was strange, though: remembering other past itches didn’t make his eyes water, or cause that strange tight feeling in his chest. Sargh took Marvel out of his cage, giving the hamster a friendly little squeeze, and nuzzled the creature’s back with his face. The hamster’s fur was very clean and soft, though as Sargh held him there, the fur started to feel a bit wet, as did his cheeks. Sargh realized with something of a start that he was crying, that he was crying and couldn’t figure out why, figure out what it was that was making him feel that way. None of it made sense; nothing made sense. Every time he tried to hold onto something, it would just disappear into the fog of forgetting, and even if he saw her (*it*; he corrected his pronoun) again, how would he even know? And what could he do about any of this? Any plan that he made was just going to be stupid, and if it wasn’t, either he’d forget it, or everyone else would simply assume that it was stupid, because he’d thought of it. That’s one of the things that the Bad Metal did: it made people not take him seriously, no matter how much he needed it. He certainly couldn’t talk to the counselor about it; after all, the counselor had just shot him, and might hurt him again. In fact, he was pretty sure that there was nobody he could talk to seriously anymore. Maybe one of the people in the pictures would be someone he could talk to, if he could only remember how to get in touch with one of them, or even a name…but possibilities came up and disappeared too fast for his brain to hold on to them.

 

Sargh couldn’t remember anything about his life from before the Bad Metal; one of his earliest memories was lying on a bed somewhere, and seeing that same face from the picture, moist and worry-lined, clearly very concerned and sad about something or other. He remembered that his head hurt; he remembered the bed being soft; He remembered the female asking him if he was all right, and that he had said that other than the pain in his head, he felt great; after all, he had pointed out, the bed was soft. He remembered the female asking him if he wanted to go home.

 

Sargh remembered being confused. Any way you looked at it, he was home. Perhaps it was true that “home is where the heart is”; Sargh knew, as he looked at the female, that he had a pulse, and that therefore his heart was in his body, and thus exactly where he was. By that reasoning, he was already home. Another way of looking at the whole “home” problem was to regard a home as a place where one goes after work, to eat and sleep. Well, Sargh had been eating and sleeping right there; so by that reasoning, also, he was home. He realized that some might define “home” on the basis of property ownership, but he couldn’t recall owning any property, and besides, he liked the bed enough that he wanted to claim it as his own right then and there.

 

So he’d taken his pillow in his arms, sat up, looked the female in the eyes, and asked her whyever in Kahless’ name he should go with her. Sargh had rather hoped for a rational reply of some sort, perhaps the discovery of some other definition that would allow him to make sense of going home with her, but he hadn’t gotten one; instead, the female had burst into tears, a reaction that was followed immediately by her turning and leaving the room, never to be seen again.

 

Sargh held the now-soggy hamster at arms’ length and looked it in the eyes. “Marvel, please help me…I don’t understand…” he whispered.