SquidgeWorld Archive

Head Like a Hole
By Viridian5
4/13/02

"'Well, it's no use your talking about waking him,'
said Tweedledum, 'when you're only one of the things
in his dream. You know very well you're not real.'"
-- Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Gasping, Dylan slogged through the mud and dark, his fingers clenched on his smoking force lance, the stench of blood and fire in his nose. He'd just watched Harper and Tyr die again, ripped open from the inside by Magog spawn, and he couldn't do a thing to stop it. Refractions of Dawn made a surprised, despairing sound as force lance fire ripped her open. He'd killed Rhade himself. His whole crew, past and present, died before his eyes. Sara screamed somewhere in the distance. Across the Commonwealth people cried out in horror as the empire destroyed itself in betrayal and civil war. Over and over and over again. All his fault.

He couldn't take it anymore, the fighting and the losing and the death. Nothing he did made a difference. He couldn't take it anymore.

Dylan stumbled back and fell into a large hole. He tumbled slowly through the dark, finally hitting one wall and sliding down it. Nothing he did ended his descent; his fingers found nothing to hold onto, while his boots just skidded off the walls.

The hole finally came out into a bright light and dropped him on his ass in what looked like one of Andromeda's hallways. But grass, flowers, and mushrooms grew along the floor. "What the hell--"

"We're late," Harper said as he crouched down beside Dylan. Harper looked like his usual self and was dressed as usual except that he had a pair of plush, white bunny ears on his head, the band they were attached to visible in places through his spiky blond hair. One of the ears was bent in a jaunty way. He looked... cute.

Hysterically, Dylan noticed that Harper still had his rabbit's foot attached to the toolbelt. Wasn't that cannibalism?

"Harper, what's going on?" As Harper helped him stand, Dylan noticed that Harper had a fluffy white cottontail attached to the back of his pants.

This had to be a dream. Hopefully, that meant that the last part had been a dream too. Duh, Dylan. Here was Harper, dressed in bunny accoutrements instead of looking like a bloody, agonized, ripped-apart corpse. And how many times could a person die, anyway?

This was a dream, or his sanity had snapped in half.

"We have to see the Queen of Hearts and get you out of here. This isn't healthy."

"I'll say." Curious, unable to help himself, Dylan stroked one of the long white ears to make sure it really existed. It felt like a part of a soft, plush toy. To his surprise, Harper pushed his head up further into his hand, apparently savoring the touch. He hadn't expected Harper to feel anything. But since Harper obviously did, Dylan kept stroking.

Dylan also wondered how the tail would feel, but he hadn't totally lost his mind.

"Mmmmm. Feels nice. You can try the tail too if you-- Oh, sorry. We're late." Harper ducked out from under Dylan's hand. "You gotta find Rommie, the Queen of Hearts. Then you'll be safe."

"It seems safe now."

"Nah, this is just a bit less dangerous. Look, Dylan, you're infested with nan--"

The darkness and death closed in on Dylan again, but he could hear Harper shouting in the distance, "It's not real!" And it wasn't. That interlude with Harper had proved it. Dylan fought again, but this time against the whole dream instead of its components. The darkness enclosed him in a tight fist, then spat him out....

Dylan found himself in the hallway again, alone. When he turned a corner, he found Trance. Both of them. They each wore a beanie hat with a small propeller. "Hi... Trance."

"I'm the future and now present Trance," gold-skinned Trance said. Her beanie was gold and black.

"I'm the past and now future Trance," lavender-skinned Trance said. Her beanie was purple and black.

Gold Trance put her hand on her force lance and snarled, "I'm the future Trance!"

"Not anymore."

"Of course you agree to have a battle?"

"Me?" Dylan asked, but purple Trance answered, "But I don't fight."

"Of course you do. I do, so you do."

Not him. Thank the Divine. But should he try to defuse the situation?

He looked at the two impossible Trances.

No, he'd probably be better off running like hell the first chance he got, since he didn't have time for this. He started to understand Harper's certainty that this wasn't healthy either, and he had to find Rommie.

"It really isn't all about you," purple Trance replied.

"It is now. You must help dress us up, Dylan."

"No, I really have to be going," Dylan said as he started to back away.

"We must have a bit of a fight," gold Trance said.

"And I must be going," Dylan answered as he turned the corner. He swore he could hear gold Trance say something like "I hit everything in reach, whether I can see it or not!"

He walked endlessly until a superior smile lurking in a dark corner of the hallway startled him. The smile became more superior as Tyr appeared around it, out of nowhere. "My day is complete," Dylan muttered.

"You should expect the unexpected, sir."

Funny how Tyr always made that "sir" sound like a put-on. "I'm looking for the Queen of Hearts."

"How is that a concern of mine?"

Dylan didn't have the patience for this right now and started to walk away. "Whatever."

From behind him, Tyr said, "Some people looking for her go this way. Some go that way."

Dylan turned to face him. "Which way should I go?"

Tyr leaned against the wall, affectedly casual. "Since those people are weak-minded fools, neither way. It doesn't matter which way you go."

"That's not helpful."

"You're sure to get somewhere if you walk long enough." Tyr sneered. "Andromeda is the Queen of Hearts. Think about it. If you're worthy, you'll discover the answer you seek. And consider yourself fortunate that your crew is so small." Tyr slowly faded, and his superior smile was the last thing to go.

Dylan shook his head. "Even in my dreams he's a pain in the ass."

"Who said this was a dream?" Tyr asked.

"Could you appear or disappear and stick with it?"

"As you wish." Tyr disappeared again.

Dylan shook his head and kept walking. The bridge would be a good place to look for Rommie.

Beka sat, fidgeting, in the pilot's chair on the old version of the bridge, pre-Worldship attack. No Queen of Hearts version of Rommie here that he could see. Then Beka turned to face him, and her eyes were white all the way across.

"Who are you?" Beka asked. "You look a lot like Dylan. A lot like Dylan." For some reason, her long-sleeved shirt had broad, horizontal black and white stripes.

She was on Flash. The last time she'd been high on Flash, she'd nearly killed herself and destroyed the ship.

He spoke softly. "I am Dylan. I'm just looking for the Queen of Hearts. You know, Rommie."

"No, no, no. I'm not Rommie. I'm not Little Miss Better Than All of You. And you look like Dylan, you even sound a bit like Dylan, but you are not Dylan." As she ran her fingers through her sweaty hair, her voice turned nasty. "Because Dylan thinks he knows everything. Captain Terrific. So who are you?"

"He is Dylan," Harper answered as he popped up, his bunny ears still on. He wore a loose, bright blue shirt in a style Dylan hadn't seen on him in about a year.

"You better not talk to him, Harper," she said in low, dangerous voice.

"He's Dylan. It's fine."

"Not for you, it won't be. I saved your miserable life, Harper. Hell, I gave you a life. I can throw you back into the scrapheap any time I want. You better not tell him anything about me!"

Harper quivered, and his ears seemed to droop. Had Beka treated Harper like this while on Flash? Dylan had never seen them like this before.

Harper took Dylan by the arm and dragged him off the bridge. Behind them, Beka shouted, "Come back! I have something important to say!"

Once the door shut behind them, Harper took a deep breath and ran his hands over his face and through his hair before stroking his bunny ears back up, perking them by force. "This is what happens when you write a program on ten quarts of black coffee and no sleep. Subconscious things sneak in."

Harper's encounter with Beka seemed to have left him deeply dispirited, and Dylan hurt for him, but at the same time he had to demand, "Mr. Harper, what the hell did you spike my food with?"

"Hey, I didn't. Somebody in the diplomatic party did. Might be the Drago-Kazov since they-- Never mind. I'll explain that later. You ingested a load of nanobots designed to trap you in a mental hell you'd never escape from. It took us a while to figure it out because you just went to sleep afterward and seemed to be dreaming. When Rommie couldn't wake you after 12 hours, she knew we had a problem. So the nanos spent more than 12 hours reproducing and proliferating through your body before we realized that something was wrong."

Dylan shuddered as he remembered seeing everyone he cared for die over and over again. This was very personal. Somebody out there really hated him, and he had to find out whom. "Over 12 hours."

"Somebody was really clever. You were accepting it as real, and it would eventually break your sanity. I saw some of the suggestions those little bastards were sending you--" Harper's bunny ears drooped again a little, and he shook his head. "I couldn't make them stop working totally--yet--but I could infect them with my own storyline from some nanobots I whipped up, making your head trip into something ridiculous, less harmful, and obviously not real."

Dylan had to smile. "I should have known that this scenario was one of your ideas."

"I thought the beanies on Tranceldee and Tranceldum made a nice touch, especially considering how quickly I was designing. You're lucky I didn't have time to mess with the mushrooms. Dylan, with me working on the nanos from the outside and you fighting from the inside, we'll nail this thing."

"From the outside?"

"Dylan, I'm not me. I'm a responsive bit of programming being shaped by your interaction and expectations. Everything here is template work reacting to you. You know anything about Lewis Carroll's Alice stories?"

"Not much."

"Oooh, that'll make things more unpredictable. Then again, my Alice stuff isn't just from the books anyway. Okay." Harper's plush bunny ears perked up more. "Dylan, if you can reach the Queen of Hearts, that'll get you out of this. I'll crack these nanos and make them dance completely to my tune sooner or later, but if you can help me break you out, it'd make a big difference."

It made more sense than everything else did. "Rommie is the Queen of Hearts."

"Yes."

Dylan remembered Tyr's scorn. "But she's all around us."

"You gotta find what you'd consider to be her throne room."

"I was just there."

"The bridge is your throne room."

"I'm the King of Hearts?"

"You keep claiming you're Rommie's heart; you deal with it."

Everything went dark, and Dylan could smell blood again, but he refused it. Harper said he could fight the hallucinations, and he had before, so he did it now, with all of his strength. His refusal to believe took away the darkness and horror but still left him in the transfigured halls of the Andromeda, standing near a pack of human-sized playing cards with hands, feet, and heads singing as they painted Rommie's robots red. He had to get out of here, and he had to do it on his own, since the White Harper had disappeared during the last reality shift. But Dylan had an idea of where to try next.

In no mood to deal with nonsense, Dylan ran down the hall past a tea party and a croquet match using flamingos as sticks. The characters--animals and madmen--called to him, but he ignored them. The reality of darkness and pain licked at his heels, but he outpaced it, though it grabbed his ankles now and then with a touch as cold and hungry as the vacuum of space.

He skidded to a halt in front of the engine room, then ran through the open door. Rommie, in android and hologram forms, stood waiting for him in there, with shiny, red heart pins in their hair. Behind them, Harper--now wearing red and black, though his ears and probably his cottontail remained white--waved at Dylan. Rommie turned and smiled at him as the world dissolved.

Dylan opened his eyes to see his crew clustered around his pallet. They looked tired and worried but glowed quietly with triumph. To his relief, only one Trance stood over him, and Beka didn't show a trace of Flash.

Harper had only one set of ears now, his own. Surely he would have looked just as worn-out even with the jaunty bunny ears. Dylan kind of missed them. "Let me guess," Harper said, "you just had a dream, and we were all in it." He had shadows under his eyes and looked jittery and overtired.

"What happened?" Dylan asked, his voice sounding so rusty that he might not have used it in years. Safe. They'd saved him.

Tyr said, "A member of the Croix diplomatic party passed nanotechnology on to you meant to drive you insane. While you were... out, a small fleet of Drago-Kazov attacked."

No wonder Harper hadn't wanted to elaborate on what the Drago-Kazov had been up to. But everything must have worked out.

Sure enough, Beka interjected, "We kicked their asses. They didn't expect us to be that dangerous without you. I think they know better now."

"We're loath to assume that they alone were involved in the attack on you, since this was much subtler than their usual style."

Harper said, "Since we suspect that they've inbred to the point of idiocy."

"Indeed," Tyr said. "When we started to investigate the Croix delegation, one member panicked and took hostages. We dealt with him. While he's no longer a threat to anyone, we are again loath to assume that he acted alone with the Drago-Kazov, so the investigation continues."

"You were infested with the nanobots for two days," Trance said.

"Two days?" Dylan asked.

"Hey!" Harper just about squeaked. "I was working as fast as I could once we figured out what was up with you. This was delicate work."

Beka pulled Harper in so he could lean against her. "The little maniac didn't sleep. He just about mainlined coffee. The crash should be a wonder to behold. So, Dylan, what did he replace the nightmares with?"

"Well, he had plush bunny ears and a cottontail in it," Dylan answered, giving up the image that would worry them the least.

"Just ears and a cottontail?" Beka asked, smirking.

"Actually, he had three outfit changes. The tail and ears stayed the same, though."

At the amused looks from the rest of the crew, Harper sighed and said, "If I did have 'em, Dylan gave 'em to me. The program responded to him."

Dylan felt too drained to establish an opinion on that, but Beka obviously had her own ideas, because she smiled and said, "Suuuuuure. And even if you are telling the truth, which I doubt, that only makes the both of you look kinky."

"Better we look kinky together than I look kinky alone. Oh, I am not making this any better for myself, am I?"

"You're not at your best," Beka said sweetly.

"Bite me," he answered with a yawn.

"Back to work, everybody," Beka said. "Well, except for Harper. Sleep's on your agenda, bud."

"No arguments here."

Trance said, "I have to flush the enemy nanobots from your body, Dylan, so you'll be here a while longer."

Harper smirked. "Which means that 'everybody' is Beka, Tyr, and Rommie."

Beka stuck her tongue out at Harper as she, Rommie, and Tyr left med-bay. Once they left, Dylan felt fatigue bludgeon him, as if his body had waited for more privacy before it let itself react to what had happened to him. Two days trapped in that nightmare. He needed to find out who had done this to him, but for now he could leave it in the hands of his crew.

"I'm tired, but I don't want to sleep," Dylan said.

"It'll be okay, Dylan," Harper said. "We disarmed the nanos, and now Trance will get 'em out of you." He waved to her, and she smirked as she prepared the machinery. "When I'm more awake, I'll study them to see if I can figure out who designed 'em. They can't affect you anymore."

"I'll wait until Trance is done taking them out anyway."

"You don't trust the Harper?"

"I do trust the Harper. I just want to keep an eye on things for as long as I can."

"Oh, yeah, you're a control freak." He hopped up onto a nearby pallet and curled on his side, facing Dylan, then asked, "What was the way out of the nano head trip for you?" before Dylan could rebut the "control freak" accusation.

Not that Harper having a bit of fun at his expense after having saved his sanity hurt that badly. "I found Rommie, the Queen of Hearts, in her throne room, which was the engine room. Actually, now that I think about it, the engine room is your throne room."

Harper smiled. "Thanks."

"I don't understand how that freed me, though."

"Power of suggestion. After the me in there told you that it would free you, you believed it and made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once you reached Rommie, you broke yourself free."

"That's really sneaky."

Harper closed his eyes. "It worked."

Dylan smiled. "I thought you looked cute in the ears and tail." Then he wondered why the hell he'd admitted that. He had to be even more tired than he thought.

He also realized that Harper didn't know about the liberties he'd taken with the White Harper. He'd stroked the program's ear, and it had reacted by melting into his touch and asking for more. It hadn't been Harper who'd reacted like that, just something that looked -- and behaved? -- like him. It had told him that it had been designed to react to his expectations....

Otherwise apparently sleeping, Harper popped a single, middle finger up in response, but his lips curved into a smile.

**********************THE END*********************