Drug Lords of Arcadia

[Archie Phoenix 0]

Archie regarded the six hydroponic storage pods with a smile of satisfaction. All of them had been modified to mimic the chewana root’s deep-sea habitat, and a series of site to site transports was being initiated from the cargo bay observation station. It looked rather elegant -- a sample of chewana root beamed into pod 3, another beamed out of pod 5, a new sample arriving in pod 1 -- the back-and-forth transport shimmers reminiscent of the curious arrangements of twinkling lights that the humans so often displayed during holidays.

 

Yes, it helped to dwell on the beauty of it … rather than its purpose -- testing each root for the purity of its narcotic properties to determine its feasibility for distribution by the Axrekravians. Archie knew enough about Earth culture to know that quite a gulf existed between a Christmas tree and a drug lab. Though he did not share in all of the beliefs that a Christmas tree represented, he would much rather have one of those in his quarters. Christmas trees were not the object of quite as much legal scrutiny.

 

Captain Lo’Ami seemed to be perfectly aware of said legal scrutiny, but he seemed just as determined to deliver the chewana root to the Axrekravians. Was the absolution of the away team, which, admittedly, had violated both Axrekravian law and Starfleet protocol worth the damage that could be caused if the chewana root were distributed to buyers on Federation worlds? Archie wondered if the Captain had an answer that he himself could not see, some way of buying the away team’s freedom without handing over the narcotic perhaps, or a plan to develop an antitoxin that could later be distributed to potential buyers. Archie did not envy the Captain his job of having to contend with the far-reaching consequences of any political maneuver.

 

When Archie thought of the consequences, the thin veneer of beauty shattered before his eyes, leaving only the purpose. His own job was not entirely enviable here either. When he got past his satisfaction with the completeness and efficiency of the work, he had to consider his own role in the whole dubious operation. He’d set up a system that allowed a batch of potentially dangerous narcotics to be preserved for transit to Axrekrav and tested for potency; he was the head technician of the drug lab. It was so easy for him to produce justifications for himself -- I’m just doing my job, I’m just the operator of the system doing what I was told, the Captain is the decision maker and any consequences be on -his- head, an engineer just builds and cannot be responsible for the manner in which his constructs are used, one of the other engineers would have done it if I hadn‘t. They were only justifications, though, and embracing them would be giving in to a self-acquitting ‘chip-in-the-computer’ mentality that seemed to Archie to be somehow too … Renazian.

 

Contemplating issues of ethics and self-responsibility like this was decidedly un-Renazian.

 

Archie glanced at the Captain and recalled his training on Renazia, the mantras that were repeated ad infinitum -- You are Renazian. You will act like a Renazian at all times, even when you are among the others. You will do as they tell you. You will follow their orders. But you will keep your thoughts to yourself. You will keep your secrets to yourself. You will keep our secrets to yourself. You will not ask questions you do not need to. You will tell them nothing. Repeat these things to me now.

 

Archie dragged a hand over his face and sighed. He stared at the containment pods. Such an efficiently arranged system. A job well done. A beautiful sequence of twinkling transport shimmers.

 

‘Happy Christmas,’ he muttered to himself.