“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

Sinclair Lewis. (1935)

 

Monsters are Real.

Of course, when we talk about Monsters, we’re not referring to the anthropomorphic – evils that are the stuff of myth and fairytale. Cursory lessons given form and function to scare our children and impart important moral lessons to ensure compliance with societies norms.

 

“Go to sleep Kiddo, or the Boogieman will getcha!”

 “Be good, Mishka, or the Baba Yaga will carry you away”

 “Krampusnacht is coming mien Liebling, so you’d better behave!”

 

These are merely folklore and a means to scare our children into submission.

No, I’m talking about the kind of Monsters that are as Real as you and I and walk amongst us every day.

When mankind conjured up the Monsters in their collective cupboard, they painted protagonists that emphasized the ‘other’, drawing upon physiognomy and features that were non – human. Conjuring up the visceral fear of the unknown that is at the very heart of the mammalian ‘fight – or – flight’ instinct at the core of our sense of self preservation.

Disappointingly Mankind seemed to have a recidivistic – tendency to fear what it did not understand and, as they plumbed the depths of their worlds oceans, what they encountered in the endless dark of its crushing depths were species that performed the task of bringing form to their nightmares admirably.

Even in the Prime Universe, when Man finally attained the stars with the advent of the Warp – 5 project and began to encounter a myriad of diverse alien lifeforms and cultures, there was often situations of First Contact that went disastrously wrong because Humanity held the social norms and customs of an alien society ‘Monstrous’ (I’m looking at you Gorn breeding – fleets!) and that existential mis-alignments led to scapegoating and conflict.

But those are not True Monsters.

Yes, in both the Prime Universe and the Terra Prime Universe where Captain Samantha Hyland and the crew of the USS Vigilant currently find themselves, both realities have had their share of Real Monsters.

The Nazi regime in WW2, whose evil was roundly denounced by the peoples of the free world. Individuals like Colonel Phillip Green, whose Genocidal extermination of radiation – sick survivors of World War that came next, who was castigated in the Prime yet lauded in the Terra Prime.

The twisted genius of Khan Noonien Sing in any dimension you’d care to name.

And here we come to the real crux of the matter, the locus where what we define the qualities of a Monsters to truly be, the  entry – criteria in the category of Monstrosity.

Monsters are not defined by how ugly, different or scary they are.

Monsters are made by the actions they took.

The things that they did that were outrageously evil and wrong were the hallmark of the Monster. Now, many could argue “But Hitler was only doing what he thought was good for Germany!”, or “Phillip Green was a patriot, he wanted to ensure the human genome remained untainted by mutation!”, and therein lies the intrinsic problem.

This common type of Monstrosity is not wholly unassailable, as it pivots upon perspective. One side can argue that something is Monstrous and another can lodge the counter argument that this is not so, even though most right – minded people would consider the act as evil. Societal rules are norms, are the constructs of man and the mind and hence assailable by rhetoric and discourse.

The thrust of History and of right is ever decided by the victor and the vanquished much concede.

The main problem with this convention is that over time the original protagonists pass away and memories fade. A new generation rises and the hard – fought lessons of the past are forgotten and that evil rises again and created Monsters anew.

But, as repugnant as these protagonists are, they are still not True Monsters.

True Monsters exist, because they have always existed. They do what they do, not for hunger, not for gain, not for hatred, not for dominion over others. They do things that every sentiment being would find repugnant and alien to the condition of life, because that is what they have evolved to do. It is their form. It is their purpose. It is their meaning for existence.

Species like ‘The Loom.’

A trans – dimensional species, whose origins and intent were shrouded in mystery, the loom existed to feed upon the inhabitants of dimensions suffering from temporal paradoxes. Where the fabric of reality was torn, inevitably these predators of the timeline would worm their way through and commence a single – minded pursuit of any interlopers in Space/Time.

In this respect they were the perfect organism for such a task.

Able to slow the observable passage of time to trap and pinion their prey, the creatures of The Loom would satisfy their voracious hunger, wrapping their flagellating tentacles around the unfortunate traveler from another dimension and erasing them in their entirety from reality in that timeline or any other.

Wiped from existence. Wiped from memory. It was as if they had never existed.

What mandate The Loom followed or what imagined authority they acted under, no one was every able to establish. The Loom acted with impunity and their judgement was always unassailable and final.

Yet the did just not stop at the annihilation of any person unfortunate to be Displaced in Space/Time.

An other person from the ‘home’ dimension that came into contact with the trans-dimensional interloper was either wiped from existence, purely for the ‘crime’ of proximity, or at the very least had their memories effectively wiped of the encounter – so that no recollection of that person or their actions remained to taint the weave of Space/Time.

Whole civilizations could be erased in this manner.

In their omnipotent hubris, if The Loom considered the contagion to great to contain, they invariably went for the ‘nuclear’ option and decided to cauterize the canker at its source and would erase the whole parallel universe. A gigacrime that would never go punished, for there was seemingly no authority that presided over the autonomy of The Loom.

Here were the True Monsters.

Captain Samantha Hyland sat awkwardly in the tiny, cramped confines of the Captain’s ready room aboard the SS Challenger and ruminated on those Monsters as she gazed out of the narrow slit of the viewport that punctured the battered hull of the NX-03.

Sam had been warned that any action she took in this alternate 22^nd century risked not only damage to the timeline in respect to the normal evolution and sequence of events in the Terra – Prime universe, but each infraction risked the attention of the Loom and exposure to their untender mercies.

By revealing her true identity as a Captain of the United Federation of Planets Starfleet, to her historical contemporary of the United Earth Starfleet, Sam had the creeping impression that she had just placed a large, strobing billboard that said “Welcome. Last good eats & fuel for the next 600 parsecs!” out on their metaphorical roadside.

“Coffee, Captain?” Her reverie was broken by Captain Roy Dunsel, her reluctant host & owner of the ready room.

Sam looked up. Roy Dunsel was a Caucasian man in his late 40’s, slightly older than Sam in some ways, if you put aside the 300-year age gap. He was lean –  built but wiry, with careworn age lines beginning to crinkle the corners of his eyes when he smiled (which considering the heft and impact of recent events, was a mannerism that Sam had yet to see Captain Dunsel demonstrate much). His hair was starting to diversify into salt & pepper territory at the sides, but was currently matted with a crust of dried blood, where someone had obviously struck him from behind with some force using a blunt object.

“I’m Sorry? What?” Sam blinked. The hectic events of the last few hours and their helterskelter dive into the blazing heart of a Sun had left the CO of the USS Vigilant more than a little shaken herself.

Roy Dunsel frowned teasingly.

“Coffee. Comes from the Coffee Bean? Cup of Joe? Good for kickstarting your day? You do have Coffee from where you come from, don’t you Captain?”

A tired smile creased Sam’s fine features. She nodded thankfully.

“Coffee. Yes, yes we most certainly do have that and I could really use a cup right now. Thanks.”

Roy smiled.

“Attagirl. It’s only instant, I’m afraid” The CO of the Challenger added apologetically.

Sam cocked her head to one side, confused by the term.

“Instant?” Samantha wondered aloud, from best memory ships of the 22^nd century didn’t have access to replicator technology, so she was confused by what Captain Dunsel meant.

Roy laughed ruefully and held up a sealed package and waggled it suggestively.

“The freeze – dried stuff tastes like self – vulcanizing rubber, if I am being honest.” Dunsel tore open the packet and measured two amounts of dark brown granules into two mugs. “But it’s still a whole lot better than the shit that comes out of the protein resequencers! This is a brand-new ship and you’d think the boffins would have got their shit together and got those damned things working properly, but I swear half the time they deliver something that you’d be hard pressed to say, hand on heart, whether it was chicken, pork or fish!”

Roy chuckled to himself and activated a spigot on the bulkhead which issued hot water and Samantha looked on in wonder as the Captain reconstituted the beverage. It occurred to her, watching Roy Dunsel go through this strange ritual, that there were so many common place things that she , as an inhabitant of the 25^th century took for granted.

“Cream and sugar?” Roy called over his shoulder. Sam considered the freeze – dried nature of the coffee and shuddered to think what form the accompaniments came in and politely declined.

“I’ll take it as is, if its all the same to you.” She smiled diplomatically.

Roy winced as he turned and deposited a cup before her, before taking his seat behind the tiny desk and taking a sip from his own much ang grimacing.

“The lady is made of stern stuff I see.” Roy smiled and set his mug down.

“Seems like they make you tough in the future?” Captain Dunsel said pointedly and Sam squirmed uncomfortably in her own chair.

“Captain Dunsel I…” She began, but Roy held up his hand to stop her.

“Captain Hyland. Don’t think for a moment that I am in any way ungrateful to you and your crew for the actions that were taken to save this ship. The initiative and bravery that were displayed are exemplary and you will forever have my thanks.” Roy nodded, but before Samantha could reply, he continued.

“But you’re not the first travelers from the 25^th century that we have encountered and something tells me, from the events that followed that discovery that your being here, fortuitous as that proved to be, are only the beginning of my troubles. Would that be a fair assessment of the current situation?”

Sam sighed. Part of her fervently wished that she had not revealed the unvarnished truth to Captain Dunsel, but the immediacy of their imminent death had left her little choice. She now faced another choice. Should she deepen the paradox forming around her current actions by continuing to share the truth with the 22^nd century Captain, or should she filter that truth and tell the man only what she needed him to know and potentially safeguard him from further peril.

In the end, there was only one thing to do.

“The people you refer to. They would be a human male in his mid – 50s and a younger Russian woman who would appear as a Cyborg to you?” Sam ventured, trying to test the waters and see how much Roy Dunsel really knew about the Displaced.

Roy sat back in his chair and massaged his eyes with the tips of his fingers, whatever had caused the wound to his head, it had clearly given him a headache in more than one sense.

“You mean Captain Hansen and Lieutenant Commander Petrovna, I take it?” Dunsel said pointedly and Sam nodded in the affirmative.

“We encountered a distress signal from a small moon with a habitable biosphere nearly three weeks ago. Our communication specialist, Ensign Deveraux, noted certain similarities with the signal – encoding protocols that Starfleet uses, so we diverted our course and took a shuttle down to investigate” The skipper of the Challenger recounted, keeping an intensive eye on his guest to read her reaction to his tale.

“We found your Captain Hansen and his companion and brought them back onboard. That’s where the trouble really started. At first neither of them were forthcoming, just the usual name, rank and serial – number bullshit. That and the uniforms they worse said Starfleet, yet they were obviously not from any unit that I could name and so we had the MACO’s put them under guard and decided to interrogate them separately.”

Samantha frowned.

“Interrogate? What do you mean by that?” She challenged the CO of the Challenger.

Roy held up his hands defensively.

“Now cool your jets there, Captain! We’ve only just come out of the other end of the Xindi– war, tensions and tempers are still running hot and there’s more than enough suspicion going around at the moment. It’s standard protocol to interrogate any person whose identity cannot be confirmed or refuse to be forthcoming about who they are and their intentions, which is exactly the case with your two friends”

“Are they still aboard? Can I see them?” Sam persisted urgently, but Roy shook his head.

“No, they are not and, I have to say, considering what followed, I’m kind of glad that they’re not still aboard, although in Captain Hansen’s case, that’s a sentiment not without some regret.”

Sam was confused, but pressed.

“Then you’d better tell me the rest.”

Roy nodded and carried on.

“Our guests caused no end of interest, you know how scuttlebutt can be aboard a ship this small right? Unfortunately, the most poignant interest came from our First Contact Officer, Lieutenant Ella Slater.” Roy pronounced the title and name like it left a bad taste in his mouth, his features puckering like he had ate a pickle.

“First Contact Officer?” Sam prompted. In her own space and time, First Contact with alien races was the primary mission of Starfleet and considered the highest calling for people in her career. The way that Captain Dunsel framed it, suggested that it might be otherwise in this dimension.

Roy shrugged diffidently, noting her confusion he explained.

“A political appointee really. Think of a political officer or a commissar. Lieutenant Slater and those like her are card carrying members of Terra Prime and jokers like John Fredrick Paxton have pressured the United Earth Assembly to place them aboard Starfleet vessels to ensure that First Contact with new species and civilizations are limited to ‘reconnaissance – only’ affairs. Heaven forbid that we should fulfil our mandate and seek out new civilizations and extend a hand in peace. People like Paxton don’t want the human experience ‘tainted’ by such interactions, if you can believe that bullshit!”

Roy sounded far from happy about this arrangement and it ran so contrary to the ideals and mission of Starfleet that Sam was forced to ask.

“Terra Prime? But aren’t they a terrorist organization?”

In her own dimension Terra Prime and their leader, John Fredrick Paxton, had been a radical group of xenophobes that had advocated for a Human – centric worldview and had tried to derail the process that had seen United Earth go on to form the Coalition of Planets, the forerunner of the United Federation of Planets that she somewhat reluctantly served.

Dunsel laughed ruefully and shook his head in disappointment.

“That’s just about the best definition of that pack of deplorables.” Roy frowned and continued.

“But no, Terra Prime are a minority party and have several elected delegates that hold seats in the United Earth Assembly. John Paxton is a racist and xenophobe, but unfortunately there are too many people in our society that respond to his ‘dog-whistle’ politics and are ready to rally to his cause. In some ways you can’t blame them. People suffered long and hard after the Eugenics War and the recent conflict with the Xindi has left the average person afraid.”

“People like Paxton exploit those fears and paint alien cultures as the root of their problems. People are happy to have somewhere to focus their frustrations and don’t want to look to closely for their own answers when they are presented with what they want to hear. I wish I could say it’s only a minority, but Terra Prime’s market share has been growing steadily over recent years.”

Samantha definitely didn’t like the sound of that. In the universe she knew, reason and tolerance had won the day and the violent rhetoric and division that Terra Prime had sown in her own reality had been replaced with a utopia of civilized and genteel politics…well, mostly.

“So, Lieutenant Slater’s presence aboard was not exactly a welcome one?” Sam prompted, thankful for the history lesson and the context it provided, but driven by a desired to learn the fate of the Displaced people she had been tasked to locate and retrieve.”

Roy sat back in his seat, the trauma of recent events were evident and a lesser man would have been in sickbay by now, but he pressed on.

“She was more of an annoyance than anything else, to be honest.” The CO admitted. “We’ve only just started to scratch the surface of the galaxy and genuine First Contact situations don’t really present themselves on a daily basis, but its what Spears and her kind represent that is more concerning. Starfleet was formed to further the interests of humanity through peaceful exploration and diplomacy. If Paxton and his people continue to grow in popularity, that will influence the United Earth Assembly’s policies and soon mankind’s growth will be hobbled by small – minded xenophobia, fear and hatred.”

Roy banged his fist down on the table in obvious frustration.

“That’s not the Starfleet I signed up for!”

“So where is Slater now?” Sam persisted, “What happened here and where is the rest of the crew? I must have seen maybe, what? 10 or 15 people the entire time I’ve been aboard?”

Captain Dunsel’s face darkened and Sam felt a strange sense of foreboding begin to form.

“The problem’s began when Dr Alvarez wanted to perform a routine medical checkup on our guests. The Russian woman, Petrovna, resisted at first and by the time she was compelled to comply, the reasons for her reticence became clear.”

Roy fixed Samantha with an accusing stare.

“You haven’t been entirely straight with me, have you Captain?” Roy accused levelly. “It seems that Lieutenant Commander Petrovna isn’t just a run – of – the – mill cyborg after all, is she? She’s something else entirely.”

Now it was Samantha’s turn to sit back regretfully in her chair as she nodded.

“She’s what we call ‘Borg’, or rather she used to be.” Sam confessed. “I’m sorry to have kept that from you Captain Dunsel, but you must understand that there are certain things about the future that I come from, that I am unable to share with you for fear that it may unduly influence and determine a change in the natural evolution of your own timeline.”

Roy frowned and shook his head sadly.

“As much as I can sympathize with the ideal, that kind of compartmentalization has already cost me many members of my crew and almost doomed my ship. I’ll speak plainly here Captain, if this relationship is to progress any further then it must do so on the basis of mutual trust and the understanding that what is shared is the truth. If you can’t concede to that, you can get the hell off my ship and haul ass back to wherever it is that you claim to have come from!”

Samantha winced, she kind of deserved that and nodded tentatively.

“Noted. I can agree only insofar that anything that I do omit to tell you is only done if there is evidence that it presents a clear and present danger to your ship or my own?” She countered.

Roy Dunsel held her gaze for a long, hard moment, then nodded.

“Then that’ll have to do. Agreed.” He said curtly, clearly not happy with the compromise. He held his counsel.

“In my universe, the Borg Collective were encountered in the early 24^th century and that encounter nearly eradicated the United Federation of Planets and all other races in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.” Sam explained.

“The Borg are a machine intelligence that use invasive nanotechnology to assimilate countless civilizations to their hegemony. They rob people of their individuality and transform them into ’Drones’. Vanya Petrovna (Six of Eleven as the Borg numbered her) was one such individual, but she was rescued from the collective. The nanites in her body are now mostly inert and deprogrammed. The cybernetic augments you noted are the outward remains of her servitude to the Borg.”

On balance, Roy took the news quite well. The 22^nd century was a more robust era and engendered a hardy frontiersman attitude to First Contact.

“Well, that would explain why Slater was so interested in the Lieutenant – Commander.” Roy concluded darkly. “The Chaos you encountered when you came aboard is all down to the actions of Lieutenant Spears, in one way of another.”

Realization found a home on Sam’s face.

“Slater is the saboteur!” She gasped.

“A fact that I realized only too late.” Roy grimaced and self-consciously ran a hand gingerly through his blood – matted hair.

“I came upon Slater in Main Engineering and, when I discovered that she was sabotaging the systems there, she clocked me a good one round the back of the head with a Number#9 lug-wrench.” Dunsel muttered gloweringly.

“She took Six of Eleven.” Sam completed the tale.

Roy nodded regretfully.

“She took off with your Borg and left with our only functioning shuttle. She must have signaled her compatriots in Terra Prime when our guests first came aboard , because there was a ship waiting for her and it jumped away soon after she rendezvoused with it.” Dunsel confirmed.

“What would compel her to do such a thing?” Sam wondered aloud. “What would Slater see in Six, that would be so important that she would risk murdering her CO and scuttling her own ship? That just doesn’t make sense?!”

Roy shook his head.

“It makes perfect sense.” Dunsel warned. “I’ve had a little time to put two and two together since I came to and I think I know why Slater did what she did.” He stated firmly.

“The United Earth Assembly is scheduled to commence a vote shortly, to ratify a proposal to forma unified body, the Collation of Planets, that would see the people of Earth come together with the Vulcans, Andorans, Tellarite’s and other races to form a mutual – defense alliance. The balance of the vote is precarious and could go either way.”

Roy’s face was grave.

“ I’ll bet everything I own and more that John Fredrick Paxton and his cronies are just looking for the magic bullet that will upset that applecart and see the resolute to form a charter shot down in flames. I think that your Lieutenant – Commander Petrovna, or ‘Six of Eleven’, or whatever you call her is that Bullet. If Paxton can introduce the existence of this “Borg Collective”, he may just be able to convince the public that closer ties to aliens will just lead to more threat and uncertainty.”

“He could kill the vote and stop the formation of the Coalition of Planets in its tracks!” Samantha realized with growing dread. Without the Coalition, the Federation would never come to be and the future that she enjoyed would be lost to the people of this universe.

To accept that would be unconcealed.

“But that doesn’t explain what happened to Captain Hansen and to your crew?” Sam prompted, this was a day for dark revelations and she just knew she wouldn’t like the answer.

Roy hung his head, obviously struggling with a sense of loss that only another starship captain, like Sam, could understand. He activated the terminal on his desk and brought up a recording from the security cameras onboard.

“I was out for a while and when I came to, the Challenger was already being sucked into the Sun. I was unconscious when what happened next happened, maybe that’s why I survived and seem to be the only person onboard that has an active memory of what happened before this.”

Sam watched the security feed with a growing sense of horror.

It showed a scene from the ships brig. A man that she recognised from his file image as being Captain Arthur Hansen, was sat answering questions posed from a man in a United Earth Starfleet blue uniform. Two watchful MACO guards stood sentinel at the doorway.

At first nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Captain Hansen’s body language was guarded, his arms were crossed and he seemed to be doing his best not to cooperate with his questioners. He went to take a drink from the cup of water on the table, when the strangest thing happened. The feed onscreen seemed to slow down, even though the time stamp continued to scroll on normally.

Hansen was in the process of lifting the vessel to his lips, but was now doing so in slow motion. Sam frowned, her stomach sinking as she watched a tear in reality suddenly form, as if the very air of the room was being torn asunder by an invisible knife and from that wrent in reality, flailing tentacles violently burst forth, a nightmare from another reality made real.

The Loom.

Samantha watched in horror as, where the tentacles lashed and probed, searching for a target, they entwined themselves around the two MACO marines, who had barely begun to react and enveloped the soldiers before they could even draw their sidearms. What followed was gruesome to behold.

Trapped within those infernal coils, the MACO’s began to scream in torment and the inter-dimensional predators steadily drained them of their essence, their writhing, tormented bodies becoming gradually more incorporeal and indistinct, so that Sam could begin to see the bulkhead through what remained of their tortured forms.

More tentacles lashed out of the fissure between dimensions and grasped the interrogator and Captain Hansen and then the feed abruptly cut – out.

Sam found she was breathing hard, her mind racing and recoiling at the horrors she had just witnessed.

“The same thing happened all over the ship. Most people didn’t stand a chance.” Roy Dunsel whispered quietly, his face an unreadable mask.

“For reasons that I can’t fathom, some were spared, but they were….different…changed somehow. They couldn’t remember the attack. Couldn’t even remember that their shipmates had ever existed!” The CO hung his head heavily.

“I just couldn’t countenance such a thing. To those that survived, it was just normal that there were so few people aboard ship. That was why we were in such dire straits before you and your people turned up, Captain, there were just so many tasks that need to be done to save us from Spear’s treachery and not enough hands to get them done!”

Samantha was overwhelmed by what she was learning. What had seemed an impossible task had no metaphorized into a near – impossible one. In some respects, the importance of retrieving Six of Eleven had not changed, if anything the sad demise of Captain Hansen simplified her mission somewhat. Yet learning that Vanya had been abducted by an agent of Terra Prime and could very well be the determining factor in a plot to kill the Federation before if was ever born was almost too much to comprehend.

“I think I need a drink.” She stated flatly.

Roy sighed heavily and rose from his chair and made his way to the small refectory bar, where he had made both coffee earlier.

“If there’s ever a moment to “Irish” a cup of Joe, I reckon this is it.” The 22^nd century Starfleet Captain agreed somberly.

He reached into a cupboard and his fingers closed around the bottle of Jamison’s Irish there and he began to draw it out.

Sam realized in abject horror that, as he did so, Roy Dunsel’s motions and words began to slow and slur like the man had suddenly been doused in treacle. She tried to raise her own hand and warn the Captain, but her own freedom of motion seemed similarly mired!!!

That could only mean one thing.

One Monstrous thing…

 

… The Loom had returned to finish feeding!!!