Cathedral by Michael Mangels (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

the mountain pass. Then back to Sparta, either with our shields or on them.”

Bashir gently disengaged his hand from hers, rose, and crossed to Krissten and the medical display. He watched the chaotic rising and falling of the indicators.

And suddenly realized that he wasn’t at all certain how to interpret them. He felt a surge of panic, then reminded himself that this wasn’t the first time he’d seen peculiar readings. It would simply take a little time to figure them out.

Of course.

A deep frown creased Krissten’s brow as she evaluated the display. “I just overlaid your quantum signature scan onto the ones we took from everybody else who was on the Sagan.”

The readings didn’t look right, but he couldn’t quite say why. “There’s something else there,” he said.

“That’s an overlay of the quantum resonance scans that Ensign Tenmei took of the Sagan itself.”

“And your interpretation, Ensign?” Bashir said. Nothing was making sense.

“You can see it for yourself, Doctor,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him. “Look at the way the aberrant quantum profiles line up on each and every one of these scans.”

His heart raced. The lines still meant nothing to him. He wondered if this was what aphasia felt like.

“Of course,” Bashir said, unable to find any other words. “But…I’d like to hear some independent confirmation.” What the hell is wrong with me?

Krissten cleared her throat before speaking. “Julian, it seems pretty obvious that you, Nog, Ezri, and the symbiont are all exhibiting the very same weird quantum resonance pattern that Tenmei detected coming from the shuttle. And it’s getting more pronounced hour by hour.”

Bashir belatedly noticed that Ezri was standing beside him, also studying the indicators on the display. “So this has to be related to the shuttle’s having passed through that alien artifact’s interdimensional flux.”

“I’m no science officer,” Krissten said, “but it sure looks to me like your proverbial smoking gun. But that’s not all.”

Krissten touched the screen, which suddenly displayed two large, intertwined helical structures. Bashir immediately recognized it as a schematic representation of a strand of humanoid DNA. He was relieved to discover that he could still understand something.

“There’s a progressive change going on in the DNA patterns of every one of you,” Krissten said, sighing in frustration. “But I’ll be damned if I can figure out why it’s happening. Or what it’s ultimately going to do to all of you.”

“For starters,” Bashir said, “it seems to have grown Nog a new leg. As well as given Ezri and the symbiont mutual independence.”

“But what about you, Julian?” Ezri said, an edge of concern in her voice.

Krissten changed the display yet again, but Bashir couldn’t bring himself to look directly at it. He could no longer deny what was happening to him. On some visceral level, he knew without needing any confirmation from the instruments.

“Progressive neurological degeneration,” he said, studying the weave of the carpet near his right boot. It felt strangely liberating to voice aloud the thought he’d tried so hard to avoid for the past two days. “At the rate I’m declining, by tomorrow I’ll probably no longer be able to function as this ship’s chief medical officer.”

“You don’t know that,” Ezri said.

“I can feel it, Ezri.”

“I think we need to run some more tests,” Krissten said, but Bashir couldn’t hear any hope underlying her words. She knew he was right.

Fatigue once again crept up on him. His eyes ached, and when he spoke there was more acid in his words than he had intended. “Ensign, I’ve already been scanned down to the Planck scale.”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you see a clear pattern of neural degeneration?” he said. “A systematic collapse of synaptic pathways?” In his mind’s eye, he saw the windows of the Hagia Sophia, in which hundreds of small candles were slowly guttering and flickering out, one by one. The image chilled him to the marrow.

Krissten nodded silently, though with obvious reluctance.

“Then we already have the essential picture, at least in broad strokes. Call in Ensign Juarez and Lieutenant Candlewood. They’ll be able to help you further interpret the data you’ve already collected. I want to know how long I have left.” Feeling a sudden leaden weariness, he turned and strode toward the door and entered the corridor.

“Julian,” Ezri said, dogging his heels.

He stopped and put his hands on her shoulders, in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture. “Ezri, I need to be alone. To rest.”

“Well, it’s good to hear you admit that every once in a while. But there’s obviously more to it than that. So tell me.” Her voice had none of the steel he’d become accustomed to over the last several months. She sounded every bit as frightened and vulnerable as he felt.

He decided that now wasn’t an occasion that called for a stiff upper lip. “I believe I’m…reverting, Ezri. Regressing to what I was before Adigeon Prime.”

Her eyes widened with sudden understanding. “Before you were genetically enhanced.”

“I can’t begin to explain it,” he said, nodding. “But somehow our encounter with the alien artifact has begun…undoing my genetic resequencing.”

She seemed to mull that over for a moment before responding. “It sounds crazy, but it fits. Nog and I are reverting, too, if you think about it. He’s become the two-legged Ferengi he used to be. I’ve been turned into the unjoined Trill I was before the Destiny brought me together with Dax. And you’re becoming…” She trailed off.

Slow, plodding, uncoordinated, dumb Jules Bashir, he thought. The little boy who was such a grave disappointment to his oh-so-doting, upwardly mobile parents.

“Maybe this isn’t such a great time to rest, Julian. If you’re really slipping as fast as you think you are, then our best chance to find a cure might be sooner rather than—”

He cut her off. “Ezri, I don’t know if I could find a cure for this even if I were at the top of my game.”

She folded her arms before her, donning a smile that he sensed was purely for his benefit. “It’s not like you to just