Tahmid
leaned back in his chair and looked up at me. “What’s your birthdate?” he asked
cheerfully.
“September
13, 1985.” On a Friday. I’d never been superstitious about it, but now I was
beginning to wonder.
“Explain,”
he said.
Explain what? I wondered, but
didn’t dare ask. “I was born on September 13, 1985,” I answered.
“Is
that a date?”
Back
to the obvious questions, again, or else he was just badgering me. “Yes.”
“By
what calendar?”
“I
think it’s called the Julian calendar,” I answered, getting sick of these
obscure historical questions, “or possibly Gregorian? I’m sorry; I don’t know
much about calendars.”
Tahmid
had something on his desk that looked like a game controller, and he touched a
button on it. A rod began to come down from the ceiling. It was nearly directly
above me and pointing straight down like the rod the fan had been on in the
restaurant. But there was no fan on this one. I tried to back up a step, in
case it came down too low, but the guards held my arms. It kept coming, six
inches in front of my face, and finally stopped when it was about at the level
of my chin.
As
soon as it stopped the guards grabbed my forearms and raised them, fitting the
end of the rod into a small hole in the middle of the handcuffs. They locked
together with a metallic click. Then the one on my left pulled my shoes and
socks off and the one on my right made five quick cuts with his knife, and I
was naked.
“I hope we’ve been able to come to an understanding,” he said in a friendly tone.
“Think back to the last thing you remember before Terra Knorr. You got out of
the cab, and then what?”
“I
paid the driver…No, I paid the driver before I got out. Then I got out, and I
walked. I had had him stop in front of the wrong building, so I had to walk a
little.”
“Go
on.”
“I
got to my building and I was just about to go up the steps.”
“Your
building?”
“The
building I was staying at.”
“And
then what?”
“That’s
all I remember. I was turning to go up the steps.”
“And
your next memory is of being on this station?”
“That’s
correct.”
“Tell
me about that.”
 |
| Photo: MemoryAlpha.org |
“I
was lying on the floor, and I saw a lot of people.”
“What
were they doing?”
“Just
walking around, I guess. I didn’t have a lot of time to watch them.”
“Go
on.”
“Well,
then the people started crowding around me, looking at me.”
“What
species were these people?”
Oh,
no, back to that game again! “Human.”
“They
were human?”
“Yes.”
“They
looked like you?”
“Pretty
much, yeah.”
“Did
you scan them?”
I
wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t matter because he didn’t wait for an
answer anyway.
“Did
you bring a tricorder?” he asked.
“No.”
Whatever that was, I didn’t bring one.
“What
did these humans look like?”
“They
had scars on their noses.”
“So
you came this station and saw humans with scars on their noses,” he mused.
“What species am I?”
“Human,”
I answered, with a little hesitation. The last time we’d talked about his
origins, he’d had one of his guards give me a bloody nose. And the stakes were
higher now.
“Have
you heard of a people called the Kardashians?” he asked. Only he pronounced it
‘Kardassians.’
“Yes.”
“Tell
me about them.”
“They’re
a family. Three beautiful women who got famous on reality TV.”
“What
is TV?”
“Television.”
He
shook his head. “That word’s not translating. But are you telling me you think
that the Kardassians are three beautiful women?”
“Yes.
Well, they’re a whole family. But the famous ones are three women.”
He
touched the scar above his left eye. “What is this?” he asked.
“I’m
not sure.”
“What
do you think it is? Give me your best guess.”
“A
scar?”
He
touched the scar below his right eye. “And this?”
“Another
scar?”
He
touched the fin-thing on the right side of his neck. “And this? Is this a scar,
too?”
“I…don’t
know what that’s called.”
“What
happened after you saw the people with the scars on their noses?”
“They
left, and two other guys showed up.”
“What
species were the two other guys?”
“Human.”
I was getting used to this bizarre question, and I wasn’t sure that was a good
thing.
“Did
they look like you?”
“Not
really.”
“Go
on.”
“They
looked like you.”
“Oh,”
he said, “did they have three beautiful women with them?”
“No.”
He
took his eyes off me again and looked at something behind me. I didn’t turn and
follow his gaze this time because my wrists hurt and my hands ached. I’d been
moving my fingers a lot to keep the blood flowing, and it had worked to some
extent, but it hurt, too.
“How
old are you?” he asked after a long pause.
“Thirty.”
“Do
you know today’s date?”
“September
18, 2015.”
“So
you turned thirty, five days ago. Happy birthday.”
“Thank
you.”
“I
have no more questions for you at the moment,” he said, getting up and coming
toward me with the controller in his hand. He touched the controller to the
handcuffs and immediately my wrists were free. The handcuffs remained locked to
the rod. “You’re welcome to have a seat,” he offered politely, and went back to
his own chair.
We
must have sat for about ten minutes, while I rubbed the feeling back into my
hands and he busied himself with a couple of off-brand iPads. Finally he said,
“We’re about done here. The gull wants to see you.”
I
wondered what the chances were that he was referring to a shore bird. Not very
good, I figured, but anything was possible.
He
must have read my face again, because he asked, “Do you know what a gull is?”
“A
bird?” I ventured.
“Perhaps
in your universe, where Kardassians are all beautiful women, gulls are birds,”
he conceded. “But in our reality, Gul is a military rank. There is only one Gul
assigned to this station, and he is its commander. I know it doesn’t come
naturally to your people, but if I were you…” He paused and drilled me with his
gaze. “…I would be very respectful.”
