“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell , and you can foresee the future, too.”

Marcus Aurelius, (AD 180)

Researcher V’Ren was lost in the Well of Souls.

Transfixed by the utter compulsion that came with communing with the lost repository of the Garsedi, it became difficult for even the horrors of the Hellworld to intrude upon the scientist’s thoughts as he engaged so completely with the long-dead souls that spoke to him across the widening gulf of ten thousand years.

Whilst his comrades perished around him one by one, victims of the inevitable horror of the world that Hecate#7b had become, V’Ren was heedless to their fate or even the issue of his own mortality. Where his mind walked he saw a not shattered necropolis full of dust and tragedy, when he looked up he saw a clear Ceridian – sky unblemished by the angry bloat of fallout and destruction.

When V’Ren cast his eyes around he saw the Girdle-city as it had once been, so vivid and full of promise. The equator – spanning megacity was alive with industry and intrigue, in the clear skies above the soaring spires of the Stratoscrapers reached for the heavens themselves as a swarm of flying – craft swarmed the air between them on invisible gravtic wings.

A sweeping line was transcribed between heaven and earth as the Orbital Elevator, that could be seen from half the planet away, formed an unbroken link between the Highport in orbit and carried passengers down to the terminus where they disembarked into the vital megopolis, each bringing distinction and a flood of different cultures to the thriving community that thronged the streets and overpasses that threaded this glittering jewel like pendants of precious metal looping throughout a majestic diamond diadem.

People were everywhere.

They thronged the streets. They argued good-naturedly over this and that in public spaces to no real end. They debated current affairs in stentorian assemblies, ate quick dinners with loved ones and dabbled in brief polyamorous affairs that were the fashion of the day.

Everywhere there was a profusion of life and culture, the populus seemed well – cared for and content, seemingly wanting for naught. True, here and there signs could be seen of some social inequality. In a system that was more capitalistic rather than utopian there will always be haves and have nots, but efficient and non – belligerent law enforcement mostly kept the peace and universal welfare services were supported by reasonable taxes.

V’Ren tore his gaze away from such ruminations and turned his attention back to his erstwhile host.

“I’m sorry, Pólen.” The Romulan Republic scientist smiled apologetically as he nodded to the Garsedi male with his warm age – lined face and twinkling violet eyes. “My mind was elsewhere. Please forgive me. This really is the most captivating place.”

For his part Pólen returned a wan smile that was tinged with a note of sadness.

“It was a place of wonderment and the embodiment of a dream made real.” The old man conceded as he carefully poured the Kailin – tea from its graceful pot with both hands, enjoying the ritual aspects of its preparation and serving for his guest. The steaming blue liquid smelled pleasantly of jasmine and the ozone tang of fresh sea air.

Pólen handed V’Ren the beautiful stoneware cup as the shadow of a megalifter briefly blocked out the glare of the twin suns and a sudden chill pervaded as their warmth was momentarily postponed.

“In hindsight, our hubris knew no bounds and we were blinded by the zenith of our achievements willfully ignoring  the true maladies that slowly undermined our culture from within.” The Garsedi spoke with genuine regret as he took up his own cup and watched the homeless man on the other side of the plaza being bundled into a flyer by law enforcement, whilst people pretended not to notice and carried on as before.

“The Fall.” Researcher V’Ren prompted gently.

“Yes, The Fall.” The Garsedi echoed with heavy regret.

Pólen was silent for so long that the Romulan though that he might not speak again.

When the old man did speak, tears were to be seen forming in his eyes and the man noticed and quickly brushed them away and smiled sadly.

“See what I mean? Hubris.” Pólen attempted a self – effacing smile as he let out a long breath and took a sip of the Kailin – tea, judging it as still-too-hot and setting the cup down on the café table once more. “What is more indicative of excessive pride than a ghost mourning the very overconfidence and complacency that brought about the absolute destruction of his world?”

Pólen looked out across the sprawling cityscape, so full of life and promise and his voice took on a far – away aspect.

“What happened here we brought upon ourselves, ultimately.” The old man whispered sadly as the twin suns began their grateful descent towards the horizon and the first few stars began to persist through the slowly building layers of sunset.

“How so?” V’Ren asked. As a Historical Anthropologist of note, the Romulan had never dreamed that he would be afforded such a unique research opportunity of such importance and magnitude. His only regret was, when standing on the threshold of  the defining professional magnus ops of his life’s work, that in a few short hours he too would be as dead as the man he now spoke to and  that the ruined city of millennia past would become his grave too.

“Oh, it’s a story that I am sure has played out in numerous places at other times.” Pólen looked around at the thriving city as the long shadows of the Stratoscrapers began to lengthen and stretch across their neighbors and the breeze freshened as the lights of the Girdle-city began to sparkle into a brilliance of community.

“All eyes were turned towards our glorious future. We ignored the cost that those achievements wrought upon the planet we were so sure we were the masters of.” Pólen explained. One of the reasons why V’Ren had selected the man from the Well of Souls was that, in his day, Pólen Ichirou had been one of the most venerated sociologists and social commentators of the time immediately before the schism that became to be known as “The Fall” and the war of annihilation that proceeded it.

“We couldn’t see and did not want to acknowledge that, raising this edifice to our enduring ingenuity, the material cost of doing so has caused irreparable harm to our environment and its ability to sustain us.”  Pólen sounded so sad as he related this folly.

A bird landed briefly on the table, then hopped lithely to underneath and began to explore the crumbs from their pastries with deft pecks of its bobbing blue-crested head.

Researcher V’Ren looked at the bird and had to remind himself to retain the professional perspicacity of his discipline and reminded himself that the bird, like the man and the city around him, were all a projection of things that had ceased to exist long ago.

“The advent of an age of scarcity.” The Romulan smiled in sympathy, taking note of every detail of the exchange and the experience of the Girdle-city around him.

“The effects weren’t so noticeable at first.” Pólen nodded and shooed the bird away with his foot. The avian chittered in indignation and with a clatter of wings, beat it’s way into the failing sky and was soon lost in the confusion of overpasses and roadways as the city persisted as before.

“First certain products became unavailable, but people were resourceful and there was still community spirit at that time. They made do and they carried on.” The old man related and took another sip of his tea, finding it more tepid and too his liking now.

“Then the interruptions in the power grid began and the cascade failure of critical infrastructure began and all of a sudden the state of emergency was declared and soon there was rioting in the streets. Lifelong friends came to blows over things as innocuous a loaf of Chaba and soon everyone was pitted against their neighbor and the government was so paralyzed by division and self–recrimination that law and order effectively broke down.”

V’Ren peered down at the napkin at the notes he had hastily scrawled there during their conversation. Whether it was the dimming light or the effects of the radiation exposure that was gradually killing him back in the real world, the words were hard to see now.

“The rise of factionalism?” V’Ren attempted to distract himself from the duality of his discomfort in both worlds by focusing on the work.

An ugly look passed over Pólen’s face at the mention of this pivotal and dour chapter in his peoples history.

“We were never a people that embraced militarization, beyond the practicalities of self – defense and self – determination but The Fall truly began as, into the vacuum of social unrest, what remained of our legislature fragmented into the Northern Compact and the Southern Alliance, laying  the foundations of factionalism that would derail any last vestige of democratic rule and the birth of the bipartisan factionalism that culminated in civil war.” Pólen Ichirou spoke with resolute bitterness as he recounted the events that had led to the destruction of his world.

V’Ren frowned and looked back at his notes.

Had he already been over this subject before, but from some different angle, so other conversation with the voices of the dead that the Researcher had conjured up from the Well of Souls?

With his body dying, it had seemed only logical that a scientist of his caliber should spend the last precious moments of his life pursuing the answers to things that made life precious for him.

When the survivors from the Selquar had happened upon the underground chamber that contained the repository and Professor Venrax had determined that the complicated apparatus was in fact some sort of ‘Doomsday-Vault’ that had been created to provide a sort of ‘Ark’ to store and archive the memory engrams of some of the billions of people that had perished during the war that had eradicated them, it was Researcher V’Ren that had recognised the significance of this most serendipitous discovery.

In the hour of his own death, he could commune with those long-dead people of this shattered world and maybe try to find some meaning in it all?

Along the way he had become addicted to the pursuit and spent longer and longer immersed in this virtual representation of the city in its heyday and became grateful divorced from the grim reality of being stranded in this hellish place with no prospect to look forward to other than a gruesomely painful death.

A wracking cough brought V’Ren back to the present. A lurid spray of phlegm tinged with his own green blood oozed down the cracked faceplate of his failing encounter – suit and the Researcher was suddenly again aware of the murky space that housed the repository and the miserable certainty of his demise.

He unplugged the neural interface from his suit’s jack-point and was about to close his eyes and work through the pain (his suit’s AutoMed unit had failed 5  days ago and could do nothing to stem the pain as radiation sickness slowly consumed him cell-by-cell) when he became dimly aware of lights shining in the darkness.

“Professor?” V’Ren called out hoarsely through cracked lips.

The radiation sickness had effected his sight as much here as it had in the simulation. He was about to make a mental note to investigate why such pleurisy of physical effects would play out within the virtual world, when the projection seemed to otherwise persist a world without such blemish, until he realized that he probably wouldn’t be alive when the diagnostic was completed.

“Professor Venrax?” Although he had lost track again of how long he had been immersed within the Well of Souls (his doing, a fanciful name for such a quotidian miracle of science, but he could afford such indulgences if his end was so near – who would be left to judge?), he had rather thought that the Theoretical Scientist and leader-by-default of their little band of diminishing survivors must have succumbed with the rest?

But no, there was Venrax (distinguishable from the others only by merit of having the least damaged encounter-suit) standing before him with understandable difficulty.

What Researcher V’Ren couldn’t fully comprehend was the identity of the three figures that flanked Venrax, the glare of their suit-lights making the forms indistinguishable as they flared and imagined the cracked and soiled faceplate of his own suit.

V’Ren thought that maybe the state of his decline had blurred the edges between the real and unreal, between the Hell of this place and transcendence to a state of afterlife that the scientist in him refused to believe in.

This state of confusion persisted until a voice called from the darkness and was heard in his helmet’s audio pickup…

=^= “My name is Lieutenant-Commander Lane Hanley, Captain of the Starfleet vessel, USS Kirk. Don’t be alarmed, we’re here to rescue you…”=^=