Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to 15 Minute Ficlets' Challenge #92.

He dreams....

He is part of a primitive tribe, dark-skinned, possibly Melanesian; he knows this in the back of his dream even as the forefront doesn’t know what Melanesian means. And they are being rounded up to be branded, to be marked.

He hides, because he is afraid, and does a poor job of hiding, but it is evidently enough, even as the rest of the tribe is removed to some place out of sight but not out of hearing. The screams echo, the women and children in fear and pain, while the men (he knows this somehow) try to bear it with stoicism, to show strength even as the enemy burns them.

He doesn’t want to be marked, can’t face the pain, which is why he’s hiding just at the edge of the village with its huts and the terraced gardens on the far side, against the hill. The chickens and pigs are gone, scattered into the jungle, and the dogs were slaughtered by the enemy.

The first tribespeople come straggling back in, burn marks on their chests and faces, children wailing and screaming, mothers trying to soothe their offspring through their own haze of misery, and he realizes that if he’s caught without a brand, they’re going to wonder about him, where he was… so he rubs ash on his forehead and loosely throws a bark-cloth poncho (again, the back of his dream recognizes this as anachronistic) over his head, so that no one will see his cowardice....

Dean wakes uneasily, sore and stiff, lifting his head from his arms on the desktop. He’s fairly sure he knows what the dream means, although there are at least two possible interpretations that come to his mind. Unfortunately, he thinks as he rubs his eyes, neither one does him much good.

He’s fallen asleep at his desk, again. He knows Nick is worried about him, but Nick doesn’t know what he’s been spending all his free time on. The mara-disease didn’t go away with the arrival of the Ur-Quan, but the alien conquest became much more important to most Androsynth. Dean had questions about the disease, and with the disruption caused by the Hierarchy’s arrival, he appears to be the only one still concerned with it.

It’s taken time, because he’s a splicer by training, not a biowarfare specialist or even a microbiologist, but he’s at least been teasing apart the various bits of disease that make up this thing, and by now he knows something about it: that it is not native to Eta Vulpeculae 2. That it comes from Earth, as much as the Androsynth do. That it’s a smashed-together mix of virulent organisms that on Earth would eat people for breakfast and spit out the remains by lunchtime.

Which made the whole thing more curious, he thinks, as he looks for a rag to mop up the drool from his inadvertent nap. This stuff should’ve killed everyone it infected. The planet should’ve been wiped clean of all Androsynth life. Even granted that Androsynth are healthier and stronger than Earthlings as a whole, they couldn’t’ve held out against this "mara-disease."

Unless....

Unless it was a vaccine....

In which case it did its job well, with no fatalities, just a comparatively mild sickness, and probably immunized the hell out of everyone, because by now it was estimated every Androsynth had experienced it.

But if it was a vaccine, he thinks, that implies that someone had a reason to immunize the entire population. As far as he can tell, nobody knew the Ur-Quan were coming, so that can’t be it. Therefore it must’ve been a plan against the Earthlings. But was it in preparation for an invasion? And if so, what kind? All they’d have to do is drop this stuff in a major scramjet airport or big city, and Earth’s population would crash. In which case, the Androsynth could conceivably return to Earth and live there instead. Of course, there might be a few surviving Earthlings, just because no disease is 100% fatal.

Or was it planned as a threat, or purely for terror purposes? Dean doesn’t know.

He also doesn’t know if this was authorized. If so, he might get in trouble for mentioning it. So he’ll have to wait a bit and find out a bit more.

He does, however, have some ideas about who might’ve come up with this. There aren’t many who could put this beast together, and one of them just happens to be a roommate of Patient Zero. It seems almost too easy to figure out, which is why Dean is nervous about announcing his findings just yet.

So what does he do in the meantime?

In the short run, the mara-disease hasn’t done any major harm to the Androsynth, and possibly is meant as protection for them. He has nothing to gain by accusing anyone of trying to poison (or inoculate) people. He has something to risk.

Better to wait, to see if this was planned by one of the Consuls or Advisors. If it was, he might want to keep his mouth shut. If not... then he might say something.

For now, it’s late, and he’s hungry, and still tired, despite his unplanned nap. And Nick is probably wondering where he is. So Dean figures he’s done enough for the day – he’s discovered quite a bit, really – locks up the lab, and heads home.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com