Redshirts

CHAPTER NINE

“Come on,” Jenkins said, and pounded on the display table. Above the table, a holographic image flickered and then died. Jenkins pounded the table again. Dahl looked over to Duvall, who with Hanson, Finn and Hester was jammed into Jenkins’ tiny living space. She rolled her eyes.

“Sorry,” Jenkins muttered, ostensibly to the five crewmen jammed into his living space, but mostly to himself. “I get equipment when everyone else throws it out. The carts bring it to me. Then I have to repair it. It’s a little buggy sometimes.”

“It’s all right,” Dahl said. His eyes took a visual tour of his surroundings. Along with Jenkins and the five of them, the delivery cart storage area was jammed with Jenkins’ possessions: the large holographic table, situated between him and the five crew members, a thin cot, a small wardrobe with boxes of hygienic wash wipes piled on it, a pallet of Universal Union away team rations and a portable toilet. Dahl wondered how the toilet was emptied and serviced. He wasn’t sure that he really wanted to know.

“Is this going to start anytime soon?” asked Hester. “I thought we’d be done by now, and I kind of have to pee.”

Jenkins motioned to the toilet. “Be my guest,” he said.

“I’d rather not,” Hester said.

“You can just tell us what you want us to know,” Dahl suggested. “We don’t have to have a slide show presentation.”

“Oh, but you do,” Jenkins said. “If I just tell you, it’ll sound crazy. Graphs and images make it … well, less crazy, anyway.”

“Swell,” Finn said, and looked over at Dahl, as if to say Thanks for getting us into this. Dahl shrugged.

Another table pound by Jenkins, and the holographic image stabilized. “Ha!” Jenkins said. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“Thank God,” Hester said.

Jenkins fiddled his hands over the table, accessing a display of flat images parallel to the top of the display table. He found one he wanted and flipped it up into the view of the rest of them.

“This is the Intrepid,” Jenkins said, motioning to the rotating graphic that now hovered atop the holographic table. “The flagship of the Universal Union Space Fleet, and one of the fleet’s largest ships. But for all that, one of just thousands of ships in the fleet. For the first nine years of its existence, aside from being appointed the flagship, there was nothing particularly special about it, from a statistical point of view.”

The Intrepid shrank and was replaced by a graph showing two closely conforming lines plotted across time, one representing the ship, the other representing the fleet as a whole.

“It had a general mission of exploration and from time to time engaged in military actions, and in both scenarios suffered crew losses consistent with Dub U average, if slightly lower, because the Dub U sees the flagship as a symbol, and generally gave it less strenuous missions. But then, five years ago, this.”

The graph scrolled to include the last five years. The Intrepid’s line spiked violently and then plateaued at a substantially higher level than the rest of the fleet.

“Whoa,” Hanson said.

“‘Whoa’ is right,” Jenkins said.

“What happened?” Dahl asked.

“Captain Abernathy is what happened,” Duvall said. “He took command of the Intrepid five years ago.”

“Close but wrong,” Jenkins said, and waved his hands over the table, rooting through visual elements to find the one he wanted. “Abernathy did take command of the Intrepid five years ago. Before that he was captain of the Griffin for four years, where he developed a reputation of being an unconventional and risk-taking but effective leader.”

“‘Risk-taking’ could be a euphemism for ‘getting crew killed,’” Hester said.

“Could be but isn’t,” Jenkins said, and threw an image of a battle cruiser into the view. “Here’s the Griffin,” he said. A graph scrolled out behind it, like the one that scrolled out behind the Intrepid earlier. “And as you can see, despite Abernathy’s ‘risk-taking’ reputation, the crew fatality rate is on average no worse than any other ship in the line. That’s impressive considering the Griffin is a battle cruiser—a Dub U warship. It’s not until Abernathy gets to the Intrepid that fatalities for crew under his command spike so massively.”

“Maybe he’s gone nuts,” Finn said.

“His psychological reviews for the last five years are clean,” Jenkins said.

“How do you know—” Finn stopped and held up his hand. “You know, never mind. Dumb question.”

“He’s not insane and he’s not purposefully putting his crew at risk, is what you’re saying,” Dahl said. “But I remember Lieutenant Collins saying to me that when people complained about the high crew death rate on the Intrepid, they were told that as the flagship it engaged in riskier missions.” He pointed at the screen. “You’re telling us that it’s not true.”

“It’s true that away missions result in higher deaths now,” Jenkins said. “But it’s not because the missions themselves are inherently more risky.” He fiddled and threw several ship images up on the screen. “These are some of our combat and infiltration ships,” he said. “They routinely take on high-risk missions. Here are their average crew fatalities over time.” Graphs spewed out behind their images. “You can see their fatalities are higher than the Dub U baseline. But”—Jenkins dragged over the image of the Intrepid—“their crew fatalities are still substantially lower than the Intrepid’s, whose missions are generally classified as having far less risk.”

“So why do people keep dying?” Duvall asked.

“The missions themselves are generally not risky,” Jenkins said. “It’s just that something always goes wrong on them.”

“So it’s a competence issue,” Dahl said.

Jenkins tossed up a scrolling image featuring the Intrepid’s officers and section heads and their various citations and awards. “This is the flagship of the Dub U,” he said. “You don’t get to be on it if you’re an incompetent.”

“Then it’s bad luck,” Finn said. “The Intrepid has the worst karma in the known universe.”

“That second part might be true,” Jenkins said. “But I don’t think luck has anything to do with it.”

Dahl blinked and remembered saying the same thing, after he dragged Kerensky into the shuttle. “There’s something going on with the officers here,” he said.

“Five of them, yes,” Jenkins said. “Abernathy, Q’eeng, Kerensky, West and Hartnell. Statistically speaking there’s something highly aberrant about them. When they’re on an away mission, the chance of the mission experiencing a critical failure increases. When two or more of them are on the same away mission, the chance of a critical failure increases exponentially. If three or more are on the mission, it’s almost certain someone is going to die.”

“But never any of them,” Hanson said.

“That’s right,” Jenkins said. “Sure, Kerensky gets the shit kicked out of him on a regular basis. Even the other four are occasionally knocked around. But death? Not for them. Never for them.”

“And none of this is normal,” Dahl prompted.

“Of course not!” Jenkins said. He flipped up pictures of the five officers, with graphs behind them. “Each of them has experienced exponentially higher fatality rates on away missions than any other officers in the same positions on other ships. That’s across the entire fleet, and across the entire existence of the fleet, back to the formation of the Dub U nearly two hundred years ago. You have to go back to the blue water fleets for the same types of fatalities, and even the officers themselves didn’t escape mortality. Captains and senior officers were dropping dead all the time.”

“That’s what scurvy and plague will do,” Hester said.

“It’s not just scurvy,” Jenkins said, and waved at the officers’ pictures. “Officers die today too, you know. Having rank changes mortality patterns somewhat but doesn’t eliminate them. Statistically speaking, all five of these guys should be dead two or three times over. Maybe one or two of them would have survived all the experiences they’ve had so far. But all five of them? The odds are better that one of them would get struck by lightning.”

“Which they would survive,” Finn said.

“But not the crewman next to him,” Duvall said.

“Now you’re getting it,” Jenkins said.

“So what you’re saying is all this is impossible,” Dahl said.

Jenkins shook his head. “Nothing’s impossible,” he said. “But some things are pretty damned unlikely. This is one of them.”

“How unlikely?” Dahl asked.

“In all my research there’s only one spaceship I’ve found that has even remotely the same sort of statistical patterns for away missions,” Jenkins said. He rummaged through the graphic elements again, and then threw one onto the screen. They all stared at it.

Duvall frowned. “I don’t recognize this ship,” she said. “And I thought I knew every type of ship we had. Is this a Dub U ship?”

“Not exactly,” Jenkins said. “It’s from the United Federation of Planets.”

Duvall blinked and focused her attention back at Jenkins. “Who are they?” she asked.

“They don’t exist,” Jenkins said, and pointed back at the ship. “And neither does this. This is the starship Enterprise. It’s fictional. It was on a science fictional drama series. And so are we.”

“Okay,” Finn said, after a moment. “I don’t know about anyone else here, but I’m ready to label this guy officially completely fucking insane.”

Jenkins looked over to Dahl. “I told you it would sound insane,” he said. He waved at the display. “But here are the stats.”

“The stats show that there’s something screwed up with this ship,” Finn said. “It doesn’t suggest we’re stars in a fucked-up science fiction show.”

“I never said you were the stars,” Jenkins said. He pointed at the floating images of Abernathy, Q’eeng, Kerensky, West and Hartnell. “They’re the stars. You’re extras.”

“Perfect,” Finn said, and stood up. “Thank you so much for wasting my time. I’m going to get some sleep now.”

“Wait,” Dahl said.

“‘Wait’? Seriously, Andy?” Finn said. “I know you’ve been obsessed with this for a while now, but there’s being on the edge and then there’s going all the way over the edge, and our hairy friend here is so far over the edge that the edge doesn’t even know him anymore.”

“You know how I hate to agree with Finn,” Hester said. “But I do. This isn’t right. It’s not even wrong.”

Dahl looked at Duvall. “I’m voting for nuts, too, Andy,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Jimmy?” Dahl asked, looking at Hanson.

“Well, he’s definitely nuts,” Hanson said. “But he thinks he’s telling the truth.”

“Of course he does! That’s why he’s nuts,” Finn said.

“That’s not what I mean,” Hanson said. “When you’re nuts, your reasoning is consistent with your own internal logic, but it’s internal logic, which doesn’t make any sort of sense outside your own head.” He pointed at Jenkins. “His logic is external and reasonable enough.”

“Except the part where we’re all fictional,” Finn sneered.

“I never said that,” Jenkins said.

“Gaaah,” Finn said, and pointed to the Enterprise. “Fictional, you unmitigated asshole.”

“It’s fictional,” Jenkins said. “You’re real. But a fictional television show intrudes on our reality and warps it.”

“Wait,” Finn said, waving his hands in disbelief. “Television? Are you fucking kidding me? There hasn’t been television in hundreds of years.”

“Television got its start in 1928,” Jenkins said. “The last use of the medium for entertainment purposes was in 2105. Sometime between those two dates there’s a television series following the adventures of the crew of the Intrepid.”

“I really want to know what you’re smoking,” Finn said. “Because whatever it is, I’m betting I can make a hell of a profit on it.”

Jenkins looked back at Dahl again. “I can’t work like this,” he said.

“Everyone shut up for a minute,” Dahl said. Finn and Jenkins calmed themselves. “Look. I agree it sounds crazy. Even he admits it sounds crazy.” Dahl pointed at Jenkins. “But think about what we’ve seen go on in this ship. Think of how people act here. What’s messed up here isn’t that this guy thinks we’re on a television show. What’s messed up here is that as far as I can tell, at this point, it’s the most rational explanation for what’s going on. Tell me that I’m wrong.”

Dahl looked around at his friends. Everyone was silent. Finn looked like he was barely holding his tongue.

“Right,” Dahl said. “So at least let’s hear the rest of what he has to say. Maybe it gets more nuts from here. Maybe it starts to make more sense. Either way, it’s better than what we have now, which is nothing.”

“Fine,” Finn said, finally. “But you owe us all handjobs.” He sat back down.

“Handjobs?” Jenkins asked Dahl.

“Long story,” Dahl said.

“Well, anyway,” Jenkins said. “You’re right about one thing. It’s messed up that the most rational explanation for what does go on in this ship is that a television show intrudes on our reality and warps it. But that’s not the worst thing about it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Finn said. “If that’s not the worst thing, what is?”

“That as far as I can tell,” Jenkins said, “it’s not actually a very good show.”