Chapter Text
VOYAGER VIRTUAL SEASON 7.5--episode 37a
Sanctuary
A Prelude to "Altruistic Motives" by jamelia
Ocampa Caverns: Earthdate March 31, 2380/Stardate 56246.3
Kes closed her eyes, took a breath and reached outward with her entire being.
Swirls of color, like planets, suns, and exploding stars, coalesced into galaxies--and then into glittering crystals threaded along the faults cracked through rock formations dating back to ancient times. In that far distant past, Ocampa's surface sparkled with shallow azure seas and darker blue depths that were filled with abundant sea life. Continents and islands clothed in vibrant greenery sported an array of animal life that galloped and slithered and burrowed, while avian species flew through the air. Drifts of fluffy white clouds floated by, occasionally supplanted by towering thunderheads flashing bolts of lightning, pouring precious, life-giving rains on land and sea alike.
Ocampa had been a fair world once, before the visitors came.
The planet was still there, orbiting its sun as it had for millennia, but now, what little water remained had been locked away deep beneath the surface of a sandy, arid world. The plant species which survived were those that had been transplanted into the same underground caverns in which the pools of water now resided. And the animal life that had once cavorted on the land and in the air? Except for some bacterial, fungal, and insect life which had been scooped up along with the plants--they were nothing but a fading memory, and perhaps not even that; it had been so long since the Ocampa had seen any larger living creature. The Ocampa people themselves had lived underground for so many generations that life on the surface was the stuff of mythology. The sporocystian life forms who styled themselves "Caretakers" of the Ocampa had hidden them there, after they'd blundered and ruined the world they'd come to study. The Caretakers knew the Ocampa needed to be protected from the marauders from other planets who would love to destroy them--if they believed the old legends of the people living deep underground. Not many did.
Did those sporocystian life forms realize they had been the marauders? In a few short years, they may have caused more devastation than any Trabe or Kazon sect could have accomplished in centuries. Few of the of bad actors Kes had met during her travels on Voyager could have managed to destroy her planet any more thoroughly than the Caretaker and his wayward mate--of this, Kes was certain. By stripping the planet's atmosphere of the particles which precipitation needed for the life-giving clouds to form, the Caretakers had turned the entire planet into a vast, empty desert. A Federation scientific team would be hard-pressed to classify it as anything other than H-Class now.
However, the Caretakers had failed to strip the planet of one of its resources. The rocks were still here, much of them threaded with veins of precious minerals and elements, some more valuable than others. And Kes knew how to find them.
Her perceptions were sharp. Today she could taste the tang of copper, catch a whiff of the precious, time-fracturing, quartz-like dilithium crystals sprinkled through a far-off vein of amethyst. Only when she was prepared to give up her search did she recognize what she had been seeking: the chiming-bell sound of paragithium, flowing like an underground river, deep within the bowels of Ocampa.
Bright light reflected from bouncing molecules of air almost blinded her when she finally emerged from the rock wall and gradually took on a ghostly, misty form. The young man standing before the stony wall stepped back involuntarily as he saw the mist coalescing into the form of an elderly Ocampa female. As she emerged, Kes could feel the vibrations emanating from his shivering body. Slowly, Kes pieced myriad bits of subatomic particles back together until her transformation into a material being was complete.
They stood across from each other for several seconds of silence. Then he raised his left hand into the air and waved it close to her shoulder. It was as if he wanted to pat her on her back to comfort her, but he wasn't quite sure she was solid enough yet for him to do so. Instead, he lowered his hand to his side, and asked solicitously, "Does it hurt?"
"No, not really," Kes replied, her voice croaking with the effort of speech. "Some days it just takes a little longer to get myself together." A flicker of amusement crossed over her face as she recalled a certain tall human who once spoke about "getting himself together"--which he'd finally accomplished, but not until after she'd left Voyager to explore the galaxy in her own unique way. In truth, on some mornings it took almost as much work to "get herself together," even though she'd remained perfectly solid all night long. 'You're not the dewy-eyed young thing you were when you first climbed to the surface of Ocampa to see the sun, Kes,' she thought to herself.
Shaking her head as if to clear it of the vestiges of its other, less than subatomic state, she gave him the information she'd seeped through the rock to discover. "The vein of paragithium runs deep. It widens within the rock face at an eighty-five degree angle to the right, sloping down at a twenty-five degree angle first, then more steeply after fifty-seven meters to a forty-five degree angle."
He pulled a small computerized recording device from out of his pocket and punched in the figures. "You're amazing. How do you know so precisely when you're just flowing through it like that?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know how I know, Josan. I just do."
"Well, I know enough to believe you. Whenever we dig into a wall, you're always right! "
Kes smiled wearily at the young metallurgist. "So far, anyway."
"Are you ready to walk back now?" Josan asked.
"I think I can manage, as long as you're willing to lend me a hand if I get a little shaky. I am an old lady now, you know!"
"You don't seem to be an old lady to me," Josan said graciously, bowing slightly before offering his arm to her with an exaggerated and fanciful gesture.
Kes tucked her hand beneath his elbow and smiled up at him, but she didn't respond to his compliment. She knew very well what she looked like; at least once every day she looked into the mirror and could see for herself. Tired as she was at the moment, she must look positively ancient.
The pair walked slowly down a dimly-lit corridor that had been cut into the rock during Kes's long absence from Ocampa. Originally, it had been excavated by the Ocampa seeking to expand their habitat. At first, the location had seemed promising. When the geologists had recommended that the configuration of anything built in that area needed to be quite narrow-- to insure the walls would be able to support the ceilings of the apartments -- the leaders lost their enthusiasm for the site. Kes accepted the reasons underlying the scientists’ reasoning, but she also understood the reluctance of her people to build homes here.
Space, like everything else in the Ocampa caves, was growing scarce. Living underground wasn't that bad when the alternatives were considered. Still, continuing to burrow into solid rock and to fashion tiny, warren-like caves didn't seem to be a good option in the long run. To Kes, the proposed homes had seemed more like tombs that could collapse at any time. Of course, the presence of the corridor had made it easier to explore for the paragithium Josan was extolling as they walked back to the central cavern complex.
"....since you've found so much, we'll be in really good shape for years. Filaments for light and the hard wiring for devices will be so much more efficient. In fact, I think the resonance of the mineral may increase our energy efficiency to 99.6%. That's just shy of perpetual motion."
"Yes, but it's still shy of perpetual motion," Kes agreed. "I wish we could achieve that level of efficiency somehow. We need all the power we can get. What will we do when our current supply runs out?"
Josan ignored Kes's last question and replied, "At least the mining operation here may provide more apartments."
Kes smiled at the young man's echo of her own musings. "That's what they were supposed to be, remember? But no one wanted to live there."
"Well, no, but if we strengthen the walls with the rock we have to move while we're mining the paragithium, we may be able to create sufficient supports so that the apartments would be a good size. Maybe they'd be more attractive."
"Perhaps," sighed Kes. "At the rate the population is exploding, our people may not be able to be so picky about how big their apartments are in the future. It's not as if they're so big now anyway." Her brow furrowed as a thought came to mind, one she'd previously considered but had rejected. Now the idea didn't seem so absurd, even if it was risky; but it still seemed too iffy for her to want to pursue it.
As they walked, Josan commented casually, "You know, when you come out of the rock like that, you look the way I imagine you're one of those jennies you told us about."
"Jennies?" Kes said in a puzzled tone as she turned her attention back to their conversation. A vision of the Delaney twins came to mind, but Josan knew nothing of them.
"Yes, you know. The jennies in the bottle. From the Earth stories you shared with us when you first came back."
"Oh! You mean genies in a bottle, from the 'Arabian Nights.' I'd forgotten all about that." She smiled slightly, reminiscing about her welcome home a year earlier, when she was pumped for every memory she had of her life traveling through space on Voyager, and all the people and cultures she'd met "on the outside."
Just before they exited the corridor, Josan stopped short. The murmur of many voices working in the hydroponics gardens in the cavern beyond was the sign that their ability to speak privately would soon be at an end. Facing her, Josan asked solemnly, "Kes, how are you, really? Our crew has been working you very hard lately. You look so tired and..." He paused, apparently reluctant to complete his thought.
Kes completed it for him. "Old. I do look old, don't I? Like I'm twenty years old, instead of only ten?"
Her companion shuddered. "I can't imagine anyone that old."
"You will soon," Kes said, smiling enigmatically at the impossibly young man before her. He could easily be her grandson. Had she ever really been so young and green? Yes, she had been--far younger, when she'd first met Neelix and the crew of Voyager so many years ago on the surface of Ocampa. Giving his arm a squeeze she reassured him, "The time will come when we'll reach the natural life span ordained for us by our genetics, not the brief one the Caretaker imposed upon us by providing his 'sustenance,' laced with the compounds to suppress our fertility and life span."
"Those theories haven't been accepted by the Council yet," he observed quietly.
"They haven't met the Ocampa on the other Caretaker's space station. Their leader claimed they often reach the ages of fifteen or sixteen. A few were approaching twenty. Look at our own people. Quite a few have lived past twelve since the Caretaker died. And multiple births are the rule now, rather than the exception. I'm sure he had the best of intentions. Maybe he just tried to stabilize the population and overdid it, but..."
Their conversation was interrupted by the shouts of a young woman bursting out of the hydroponics cavern and into the corridor.
"Kes! Josan! I expected you back long ago!" Lyrial gasped as she reached them. "Your sister Tyeris just had her triplets. A little boy and identical twin girls. She wants their Uncle Josan to be one of the first to meet them."
"That's wonderful! Is she all right? Are they all right?" he asked.
"They're all just fine, Josan. And Kes, can you come see them, too? Tyeris wants to show them off to everyone, I think, but especially to you."
"Tell her I'll come by later. Right now I need to rest. I'm too tired to 'oo' and 'ah' over them as much as they deserve."
"Do you need help getting home? See, I knew turning into a jennie and sifting yourself through rocks would be too hard on you," Josan said, in some alarm.
"I'm not so tired I can't get home under my own power. I just need a nap, that's all! Now go, 'Uncle Josan!' Shoo!"
At Kes's urging, and only after she reassured the couple she would be able to return home just fine without them, Josan left with Lyrial to pay homage to the most perfect nephew and nieces ever born. Kes walked slowly back to her apartment, taking a short detour to pass through the potting shed where, as a child, she had spent many happy hours helping her mother and father grow plants to supplement the food the Caretaker dispensed.
Life had been so different then. Predictable. Confining. As much as she had chafed at those restrictions, Kes was sure that had her parents lived longer, she never would have become so dissatisfied by life here to risk everything by climbing to the surface to see for herself if the stories about its lifelessness were really true. And if she hadn't done that, where would she be right now? Dead, possibly. Probably! Without the intervention of Species 8472, or Tuvok's help, Kes would never have developed the ability to control her mind and physical being to the extent she now could. And without that ability, how could she help her people find what was necessary to extend the power supplies bequeathed them by the Caretaker. Where would the Ocampa be? On the verge of extinction--or, more likely, they’d all be dead and gone already; without her aid, the energy supplies would have been exhausted by now, and food supplies as well.
Knowing that wasn't enough to satisfy her, however. While she was pleased to be of service to her people, Kes knew there was more she could do. She even knew what that "more" was. She simply needed to gather her courage and do it.
*
What Kes laughingly called her "quarters" was actually a small alcove carved into one wall of the dwelling that she shared with Josan and Lyrial. Kes's share was barely big enough to contain a sleeping shelf suspended from the wall, a small desk, and a chair. A couple of small trunks tucked beneath the shelf stored her meager possessions, including the box of PADDs she'd retrieved from Voyager on her last visit, when Captain Janeway gave her the little shuttle which carried her back here. Small as her present home was, she was happy to have it. Many three-generation--and even some four-generation families--made do with little more. Since she'd never had a husband or children, Kes had no family members who could offer her a place to live, one of the bitter side-effects of the "one Elogium/one child per couple" days, when the only relatives one could expect to have were parents, direct descendants, or in-laws.
Kes lay down on the bed without bothering to cover herself with a blanket or changing her clothes, even though she knew she probably should. During the last few seconds of her passage through the mineral deposits, when she began to reassemble into solid form, her garments caught particles of dust. Sometimes she wondered if some of them remained inside of her body after she was totally herself again. Was she heavier after she transformed back into Kes than she was before she began? In her lower moments, she felt as if the accumulation of minute foreign atoms made her feel her age more, but when her spirits rose, she doubted that made any difference. Besides, if she really wanted to, Kes could dematerialize and coalesce her body anew, reconstituting her clothing at the same time. She'd be fresh and clean inside or out then, but if she chose to do that, she'd have to do it later. She didn't have the energy to spare at the moment.
If she really tried, Kes could even take away most (but not all) of the lines on her face, replace faded gray hair, and create a younger version of herself, although the young, dewy-eyed Kes who'd first encountered Neelix was gone forever. When she took that form again, she couldn't maintain it for long. Since Kes wasn't particularly vain about her looks, she had come to the conclusion that it was hardly worth the trouble.
It was just as well. She no longer was that Kes. She was another kind of Ocampa female, one who knew what the Morilogium felt like and had learned to control it. Moving from one state of matter to another took so much out of her, though, she only did it when it was absolutely necessary. Energy conservation, she thought ruefully, wasn't something only the Ocampa people had to practice--it was something she herself needed to keep in mind, lest one day she dissipate into the air, unable to reassemble her body because of sheer fatigue.
As she rested, her thoughts turned to her daughter Linnis--or rather, to the daughter she would have had with Tom Paris if things had turned out differently. B'Elanna hadn't died when the Krenim attacked Voyager. In this time line, Kes wasn't sure they'd ever encountered that people, as they had in the one in which she'd lived her life backwards.
The pang she usually felt whenever her lost future came to mind wasn't as unbearable as it used to be. Hailed as the marvel of her people, revered as the savior who was helping them stretch their energy resources, Kes had learned to deal with the pain of never having borne a child of her own. Kes's true Elogium had been spent so far from Ocampa, no compatible mate was nearby when her time finally came. Her memories of Linnis, and of Andrew Kim, who would have been Kes's grandson, would have to suffice.
Since the death of the Caretaker, the Ocampa had been forced to provide their own food from natural plant sources they grew beneath artificial light. Kes was convinced the food dispensed by the Caretaker had contained all the nutrients a nice little Ocampa required to sustain life - along with a fertility suppressant and aging accelerator that would have ensured the Ocampa would have died out within the next few dozen generations, had the Caretaker survived as long as he'd thought he would. Since the change in their diet, Ocampa women were still limited to just one Elogium in their lifetime, but twins, triplets--even the occasional set of quadruplets--were being born to parents who were living longer and longer all the time. Although Kes hadn't yet taught anyone else how to manipulate the energy and matter of their own bodies to "come back" from the Morilogium the way she herself could, she was sure they would discover it for themselves eventually, as long as she lived long enough to guide them through it.
Until then, Kes could tolerate being called "Auntie" by her people. Perhaps someday she might be considered an Ocampa version of Earth's Eve, once they accepted what she had learned about the true nature of her people's life spans. Or perhaps Eve wasn't the right reference. Maybe she was a Prometheus, bringing to the Ocampa the knowledge that the Morilogium brought not death, but transformation into a different form of life, a non-corporeal state, which could be reversed back to the corporeal when one was properly prepared to use the proper mental techniques to accomplish it.
Yes, if she were to delve into her memories of Earth mythology, Prometheus was the better reference. After all, she'd never found an Adam on her journeys, or even experienced a bond like the one Tuvok had with his T'Pel. Kes supposed it really had been too much for her to expect to find a love like that. She had been so passionate about traveling, her probability of meeting a person who could have been the great love of her life had been greatly reduced. Although she cherished her memories of her time with Neelix, he had loved her jealously--almost too well. Despite this, her relationship with him was the only time in her life she had been truly intimate with another person. Although her recollections of building a family with Tom Paris were of a time line which had never really happened, she treasured them, too.
Kes shook herself, resolving to quit moping over past romantic liaisons. That phase of her life was over. She had a new role, a new vocation, which she took very seriously. Since she still felt shame over the way she'd once lost her way, this was something she had to do. There was no time for bitterness over lost histories.
After tossing and turning a few more times, she rose from her bed and retrieved her meditation lamp from the shelf above her desk. She sat on her chair and placed the lamp centered upon the desktop. Kes concentrated upon the wick for a moment, and it burst into flame. She smiled a little and adjusted the degree of brightness downward to the right level to serve as an aid to meditation. Staring into the dancing bit of fire, Kes sent her spirit outwards, expanding her mind until she felt its velocity stretch towards what she always thought of as a psychic warp 10. Unlike the time Tom Paris had experienced that phenomenon traveling in one of Voyager's shuttles, Kes had no fear of evolving into a lizard (unless she chose, for some inexplicable reason, to assume that sort of body instead of her usual humanoid form).
Her mind sped along, accelerating until, Q-like, she felt as one with the entire galaxy. Kes wasn't concerned with most of the Milky Way, of course, nor did she ever attempt to sense what was going on in the rest of the universe. All she cared about was the corner of the Milky Way Galaxy located approximately 70,000 light years from Ocampa, very near the Sol System, where a warm, dry planet circled around the star 40 Eridani A, the planet upon which a close friend now dwelt. She touched his mind lightly, gaining strength from the knowledge that he was finally home, back within the circle of his spouse and family, and content with his life.
Kes realized that her journeying days were not truly over. That was her belief after she'd traveled the rest of her way back to her own home planet. The task facing her now required that she leave it once again. Her life, and that of everyone living beneath the barren crust, the dry shell that was Ocampa, would change radically if she acted as she should in this matter; but it was, quite literally, a matter of life or death for her people. No matter how efficiently the existing power supplies were used in this underground sanctuary, eventually they would run out. Without power, the lights would go out. The food plants could not grow. The air filtration and water purification systems would fail. Her people would die. For the Ocampa to have a future, the responsibility for locating an alternative place to live would rest firmly on Kes's small shoulders. Kes thought about it and decided the appropriate literary reference to describe her might not be Eve or Prometheus. Instead, Kes might actually be the Atlas of her people.