Ibn Qirtaiba, as you may have gathered by now, is an SF magazine. "SF" is the preferred abbreviation for "science fiction" amongst most fans, largely because it encompasses a wider variety of sub-genres than "sci-fi" and possesses less of a derogatory ring to it. The sub-genres or related genres of science fiction I usually refer to as being subsumed within SF are speculative fiction and science fantasy, but numerous other genres can also tortuously be described using words with the same initials.
Fantasy per se, although it shares a similar fan base to science fiction, is not properly referred to as SF. As Isaac Asimov once noted, fantasy represents a wider field than science fiction because it "deals with all the events, past, present and future, that might arise in any possible society with only the exception of the one which actually exists." Should Ibn Qirtaiba become a magazine of fantasy as well? This is a question I now have to consider, having recently received a number of submissions that fall more easily into the category of fantasy than SF. I have no particular objection to broadening the scope of the magazine, but I would like to hear readers' comments first.
An author who could never be accused of writing fantasy is hard SF author Greg Egan, who is interviewed exclusively by Ibn Qirtaiba in this issue. He discusses each of his four published novels, his upcoming Diaspora, the state of the genre and much more. The interview is followed by a short story from Tobias Barzydlo based on the computer simulation game Stars!. Finally, and continuing the melding of media in fiction, is the fourth installment of Of Kings and Pawns. Please enjoy.
Interview with Greg
Egan
Greg Egan is probably Australia's most successful and critically acclaimed contemporary science fiction author. A scientist by training, Egan made his name as a science fiction writer with his short stories in Interzone and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (many of which have recently appeared in the collections Axiomatic and Our Lady of Chernobyl). His novels Quarantine, Permutation City and Distress have consolidated his critical and popular success, with their philosophical explorations of cosmological themes from a no-compromise scientific standpoint. Egan's next novel, Diaspora, is due for release in Australia in May or June 1997 (February 1997 in the UK, and Spring 1998 in the USA). Greg Egan recently spoke with Ibn Qirtaiba about his work, the science fiction genre and the future.
IQ: To begin with, a question about each of your published novels. First comes An Unusual Angle. You are no longer especially fond of this novel, although hints of your future direction can be found in it (for instance you revisit the idea of a movie camera implanted in a character's body in your latest novel Distress). The novel's protagonist shows a notable propensity for scientific metaphor (there are references to wave functions, energy states, parsecs and mass spectrometers) and he seems to be a science fiction fan to boot (with references to Daleks, 2001, Star Wars, Altered States and Mad Max II). He also shares the interest in film-making you held at his age. To what extent is the novel autobiographical?
GE: I wrote An Unusual Angle when I was in high school, and basically I just applied a slight SF/surrealist distortion to my own situation at the time. The whole book is really the extended daydream of a bored schoolkid staring out the window and constructing a layer of fantasy to superimpose over everything, but the daydream's always anchored by the fact that the reality's still there. Shades of Billy Liar and Walter Mitty, I suppose. It's autobiographical to the extent that the basic circumstances and attitude of the narrator were pretty much my own, and I think it does capture a certain way of responding to tedium and petty authority, which is what most novels of school life are ultimately about. But for a book-length daydream to work, it would either have to be a lot more structured, or a lot more inventive, than this.
IQ: Ibn Qirtaiba's review of Quarantine in issue 12 states "Although Quarantine is not a cyberpunk novel, its future is similar to the cyberpunk vision in many ways." Do you regard your brand of hard science fiction as cyberpunk, and if not, what are the principal respects in which it differs from that sub-genre?
GE: Quarantine does have quite a few of the canonical cyberpunk features: a dense urban setting, body-computer dataflow, brain modifications, corporate intrigue. But the core of Quarantine is speculative physics, and that's not a cyberpunk theme. I suppose you could distinguish between books with "cyberpunk settings" like Quarantine and books with "cyberpunk themes" like Neuromancer, but theme alone isn't enough, either. Permutation City is all about AI and VR, but it's a very un-cyberpunk novel; the mood, the style, the characters, and the way the exploration of AI leads into speculative physics are all completely foreign to cyberpunk.
IQ: Permutation City is the middle volume in your "Subjective Cosmology" cycle, dealing as it does with consciousness and evolution in a self-sustaining artificial universe. But what exactly do you mean by "subjective cosmology", and how do Quarantine, Permutation City and Distress form a cycle?
GE: By "subjective cosmology", I mean the
premise that what we experience as "the universe"
depends significantly on the structure of our own bodies and
minds. There's a sense in which this is just obvious: prior to
the invention of the microscope and telescope, and the means to
detect radiation other than visible photons, we had a very narrow
window of scale and luminosity and wavelength through which we
saw everything. These days, ideas like picking up an atom with a
Scanning Tunnelling Microscope, or seeing in the dark with
infrared, or looking at quasars billions of years old, seem
perfectly straightforward, but a couple of centuries ago most of
this would have verged on metaphysical fantasy, if it was
comprehensible at all.
Okay, so now we can detect a vast range of wavelengths and so on, but there are subtler ways in which our view of the universe might still be filtered, or even shaped, by our own nature. That's what I'm exploring in these three books. In Quarantine, the brain plays a crucial role in the link between quantum mechanics and macroscopic reality. In Permutation City, subjective experience pieces all of reality together as the pattern in an intrinsically random cloud of events. And in Distress there's a variation on the theme that I don't want to give away yet, since a lot of people won't have had a chance to read the book. I suppose you could just as easily call them "objective cosmology" novels, because they're really about seeing through some subjective aspect of our ordinary picture of the universe, and catching a glimpse of a more objective reality behind it.
I do think there's a possibility that something like this is going on in real physics. For example, in the Many Worlds version of quantum mechanics, objective reality contains a vast number of "parallel" histories, but the subjective universe we seem to inhabit consists of just one, except on the atomic scale. This lack of interaction across histories would apply to all macroscopic objects, not just us, but it'd still be fair to say that we're only seeing a limited, subjective view.
When I said in an Eidolon interview that Distress was "my third, and probably last, subjective cosmology novel", I was just acknowledging that those three books all dealt with the same broad idea. There is no other connection between them.
IQ: As in most of your other work (and much other modern SF) consumer biotechnology plays a large role in Distress. Are you more entranced with the possibilities of melding mind and machine, or revulsed at the invasion of the human body this represents?
GE: I suppose I'm entranced by the hope that it might eventually be done well, but somewhat squeamish about the potential for mistakes. I doubt I'll live to see anything like the nanoware-rewiring of the brain in Quarantine, but the optic nerve tap in Distress isn't far-fetched at all, and personally I'd have no trouble with that kind of device so long as the manufacturer's knowledge of the relevant neurology and biochemistry, and the level of quality control, were both good enough to avoid any unpleasant side-effects. I know there's a slightly gruesome scene in Distress involving that implant, but it wasn't meant to imply anything negative or "invasive" about the technology itself.
When it comes to deep self-modification of the personality, though - either while remaining in our bodies, as in Quarantine, or once we're uploaded as software, as in Permutation City - that's a very complex issue, which you could say the majority of my work is trying to address in various ways. It might take 50 years, or it might take 500, but eventually we're going to have unlimited control over whatever physical substrate is "executing" our own minds, and I'm trying to map out some of the benefits and some of the dangers of that.
IQ: Tell me about your next novel.
GE: Diaspora begins in the 30th century, and it opens with the growth of the protagonist from a "mind seed", a kind of digital genome. There are uploaded people and their descendants in both fixed computers and robots, and a few organic people as well. The story concerns an astrophysical disaster which ends up driving part of this civilisation into space, in an attempt to fill the gaps in their knowledge that kept them from predicting the event. Along the way, they encounter some fairly bizarre aliens, and have their cosmology shaken up considerably. In a sense, the novel is a long "zoom out" from a string of bits to what might well be the largest structure in science fiction.
IQ: A standard question I ask interviewees concerns the stylistic and thematic gulf between the written and visual ("media") forms of science fiction. Do you perceive this gulf as resulting simply from the different marketing considerations applicable to each medium, or are there in your view certain sub-genres of SF that can only effectively be realised in one medium or the other?
GE: I think both effects apply. What disappoints me is that most SF filmmakers aren't even aiming for more sophisticated themes or a higher level of logical consistency, let alone real-world scientific plausibility. The science in, say, Lorenzo's Oil wasn't perfect - from what I've read, the oil prevented the formation of one marker for the disease, but has little or no clinical benefit - but by merely putting some simple biochemistry on screen and discussing it logically, that film beat 99% of Hollywood SF into the ground. So as well as all the mood-driven movies like Alien and Blade Runner, and the futuristic action movies like Terminator, I think there's room for a few SF analogues of Lorenzo's Oil.
IQ: It seems to me that most of your fiction is too densely-written and intellectual to translate easily to a visual medium without being excessively simplified. But would you like to write for film or television, and if so, what movies or TV series would you like to write or write for?
GE: A Sydney film producer optioned three of my
short stories ("The Caress", "Axiomatic" and
"The Hundred Light-Year Diary") about a year ago, as
part of a series of six short SF telemovies, but so far he hasn't
got the project off the ground. He did offer me the chance to
write the scripts myself, but I was too tied up with Diaspora
then to contemplate doing it. And a French company is currently
negotiating an option for a short film of "Our Lady of
Chernobyl"; they haven't asked me to write the script, but
if it does go ahead it'll be interesting to see what they make of
it.
Maybe I'll write an original screenplay one day, but it's hard to get motivated when you know there's only something like a 1-in-10 chance it would ever get made. It's taken me 20 years to reach the point where 90% of what I write gets into print, so it's difficult to imagine slaving away at anything where the odds are so poor that it will ever reach an audience.
IQ: Who are some of your favourite authors, and why?
GE: I've read so few novels recently that I'm going to pick a couple of non-fiction authors, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. They both understand how the universe really works, and they're not afraid to map out all the consequences. There are precious few SF writers as intellectually honest as that.
IQ: The "bad guys" in Greg Egan fiction, such as they are, commonly fall into one of two distinct categories: amoral scientists on the one hand, and moralistic irrationalists (usually members of cult groups) on the other. As a scientist raised in a Christian household, do you believe that science or rationality can provide answers to moral or ethical questions? If not, on what basis do you criticize the "bad guys" I've mentioned?
GE: It's a truism that science "merely" reveals the nature of the world, as opposed to how we should act, but what it reveals does include some of the reasons why we feel the way we do about our own actions, and other peoples'. There's an evolutionary, biological context for moral impulses and emotions, and it's important to acknowledge that - while at the same time utterly resisting the "naturalistic fallacy": the notion that whatever we've evolved instincts or drives or predispositions to do is automatically the only right choice. The fact is, we have drives for selfishness and drives for compassion and drives for all kinds of things, and now that we're capable of reflecting on all of them, we'd be stupid not to spend a great deal of time thinking about how they arose, the conflicts between them, and which ones we most want to satisfy in the long run.
But even putting aside the evolutionary context, on a purely practical level "science and rationality" are just a matter of determining the truth about issues of fact, and applying honest, consistent reasoning. You can't conjure up all of ethics with them out of thin air, but taking the moral instinct for granted, you have to understand the actual, physical situation to which you're applying it, and you have to apply it consistently. The whole notion of justice and fairness revolves around getting the facts straight, and applying principles consistently; you don't have to look to moral philosophers or legal treatises for that, it's just part of everyone's gut feeling for justice.
The "bad guys" in my fiction tend to be dishonest, wilfully ignorant, hypocritical, or inconsistent. That's the basis on which I criticise them. Some of them also suffer from the delusion that morality is impossible without superstition. One of the main concerns of Distress is dealing with the notion that honesty about the world will send us screaming into insanity or amorality, and the only thing that's holding up civilisation and ethics is religion. This is a load of bollocks. Morality predates religion; religion was only invented when humans became sophisticated enough to start asking questions about the morality they already practised instinctively. Religion is not a fundamental human impulse; asking questions about our nature and origins is, and the desire for justice is, but religion will turn out to be a very transient response to those impulses, lasting no more than ten or twenty thousand years.
IQ: Edmund Crispin once said that an SF story is a landscape with figures, in which the idea is the hero. Is this true or false for you?
GE: Often it's true. One thing that can be interesting about ideas is the effect they have on characters, but there ought to be room in SF for the direct effect of the idea on the reader to be paramount. In a story like "Axiomatic", it's probably 50/50; the reader is as much concerned with pondering the psychological effects of the morality-altering implant on the narrator as he or she is with pondering the philosophy directly. In "The Infinite Assassin", though, the character and plot are there largely to drag the reader into contact with the idea itself, and I don't see that as a problem or a flaw at all. Anyone who insists that SF has to be about people first and ideas second is just mouthing a slogan. Sometimes the only people required are the reader and the writer.
Ibn Qirtaiba thanks Greg Egan for his time. For more information about Egan and his work, see the Greg Egan Fan Page.
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The Bishop Battleship swept ponderously through the shifting probabilities of jumpspace, leading its swarm of accompanying frigates like a great killer whale leading a school of tuna. Dodging the gravity waves and other strange phenomenon caused by quantum fluctuations in 'normal' space-time, the fleet streaked towards its chosen targets at nearly fifty times the speed of light. The predators closed in.
Orbiting the once-inhabited planet of Mamie, the VekTor fleet patiently waited. The rain of bombs had ceased, for there was no longer any life on the planet to destroy. No living beings were present in the entire solar system, in fact, for the VekTors employed unmanned bombing ships. Sentient beings often felt compassion. Sometimes they refused the orders to drop bombs on an inhabited planet. The tortured, smoking continents gazed accusingly up at the orbiting ships with cratered eyes. For the Green Hand population, the Bishop relief fleet would come much, much too late. The automated bombers completed another orbit. Their prey was dead, and so now the bombers awaited orders that would send them out to 'disinfect' another planet.
Between predator and predator, between ship-killers and planet-killers, lay light-years of empty space. Empty, cold, dark, lifeless... lifeless, that is, except for the small malicious spark of menace, the cold calculator of probabilities and paths, that lay waiting. A tiny fragment of machine intelligence, an A.I. floating in the void, the Renshai command sub-center woke from its long electronic slumber. Sensors had finally picked up the tell-tale traces of a fleet in jump-space. It was time for the minefield to perform its function. The prey was in the web, and now the spider had roused itself. It was killing time.
On the bridge of the B.R.N.* ship God's Warrior, Cardinal Grant sat, lost in the pure and holy sounds of Fenguati IV's native population performing ancient Gregorian chants rumored to have originated on Old Earth itself. He wiped a single tear from the corner of his eye before the rest of the bridge crew could notice, and sat up straighter in his chair. "All right, end music. Second shift, you may enter the bridge." The second shift began to file reverently into the airy, cathedral-like bridge as Grant stood, ran his hand across the arm of his chair in a ritual gesture, and turned to leave.
In the emptiness, flares of light showed as single-use warp drives brought the spider's tools in for the kill. Dozens of bomb-pumped lasers** and Hawking Singularity Generators*** warped in, positioning themselves in the path of the oncoming fleet.
The nav and sensor operators were both out of their chairs with their replacements getting ready to sit down when the boards lit up. Grant froze two steps from his command chair as the second-shift sensor tech leaped to his place, fingers moving across the controls even before his feet had stopped moving. "Sir! We've got multiple anomalous gravity wells at 8 light-minutes! Warp drop-out in nine seconds!" A shout came from navigation, "Minefield! We've got a minefield! Plotting avoidance course! SIR! We aren't going to make it!"
With a flash of blinding light, God's Warrior slammed back into normal space, dragged out of jumpspace by the temporary black holes created by the Hawking Generators. Dozens of smaller frigates popped out on the battleship's tail, lighting the small objects waiting for them with a rapid-fire strobe effect. For a moment, stillness returned. The aiming thrusters on the mines spun them to orient on their assigned targets. The Renshai sub-processor gave the signal with electronic glee.
Reverend Tully of the Persephone held the arms of his command chair in a death-grip as his frigate made the transition from jumpspace to normal-space. "Get close to the battleship!" he screamed to his nav officer. "They'll shield..."
The first 1-megaton bomb-pumped laser detonated approximately 50 meters from Persephone's bow. The beam wasn't aimed at her. It didn't matter. On board St. Valentine, Reverend Valentine (the XIIth) calmly watched the transition on his viewscreen. "God's Will", he thought, just before the laser beam from the Persephone's killer pierced his ship lengthwise, converting the interior bulkheads to superheated plasma. The beam exited her stern, barely even dimmed by the energy expended in gutting the ship.
Tree of Life's commander, Willson, didn't even have time to register that transition was complete, as his ship dropped out of jumpspace just in time to meet the same laser beam that had killed St. Valentine. The frigate's weak armor had no more hope of stopping the beam than the first had. Tree of Life blew apart as the laser penetrated the warp drive mechanisms.
God Warrior spun end-for-end as she skimmed the gravity well of one of the tiny artificial singularities that had pulled the fleet out of jumpspace. The singularity was white-hot, radiating in the X-ray and ultraviolet spectrums as its tiny mass obeyed the laws of quantum physics. As the larger mass of the battleship slipped by, the singularity was accelerated back towards the frigates.
Seconds later, it reached its critical 'minimum mass' and radiated the remainder of its mass in a violent burst. The other three detonated as well, too far away to do any more harm. They did not need to, however. The frigates were already all dead.
The Renshai's spider was efficient.
God Warrior shuddered under the impact of the front half of a frigate on her shields. The wreck slid off to the side, spinning, and continued to fragment and spew atmosphere into space.
"How bad are we hurt?" Grant spoke with a grim resignation.
"Sir... nothing penetrated our shielding. But... sir... Sir, all the frigates are... gone."
Cardinal Grant froze, his hand on the arm of his command chair, still one step away from safety, one step away from the place where he had commanded a fleet of sixty-five ships only minutes before. "Gone? All of them?"
The sensor tech nodded, wordlessly, fighting back tears.
The spider laughed soundlessly.
And went back to waiting.
* Bishop Righteous Navy
** A nuclear device inside a reflective ball attached to a lens arrangement, a bomb-pumped laser is a good one-shot weapon for space battles. While the actual detonation is ineffectual at anything greater than point-blank range (there is no atmosphere to transmit a shock wave, and the radiation and heat are too diffuse to bother most shielded spaceships), the lens mechanism holds together just long enough to transform a significant portion of the explosion's radiated energy into a very strong laser beam. The credit for this version of missile tech in space warfare goes to the Honor Harrington book series by David Webber. Very good books. Try 'em.
*** Stephen Hawking provided the first strong theories postulating that "black holes" were not -quite - black, due to quantum-mechanical effects. Black holes radiate at a rate inverse to their current mass, ie. a very large (massive) black hole will radiate very little (less than the 3-Kelvin background radiation that permeates the known universe), while a very small black hole (such as those created by my imaginary Hawking Generators) will radiate at a very high rate, losing mass as they do so, until they are no longer stable and explode. Here I am taking liberties with this minimum mass, which should be roughly one and one-half times the mass of the Earth's Sun, but I am assuming that the high-tech equipment that the Renshai minefields employ can create smaller singularities than this by folding space around a mass with modified "warp field" generators, and can sustain these smaller black holes for just long enough to ensure "snaring" a fleet. The whole "destruction sequence" where the lasers wreak havok with the lightly-armored frigates takes approximately seven seconds, by the way, which is why the singularities last long enough to punctuate the end of the encounter and not the middle of it.
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Last time, on Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Master attempts to hypnotise Picard, but instead the Captain is put on his guard and he alerts the crew to be wary of Diplomat Strame. Meanwhile Geordi is unable to penetrate the cloaking device of Strame's ship, and Data notes that all the Larian ships ever encountered by the Federation have been identical. As the Doctor and Ace leave Sickbay, the Master seizes his opportunity to place Dr Crusher under his control. And now, the continuation...
[Beginning of Act III]
(Another shot of the Enterprise flying through space. The scene changes to Ten Forward. Riker is sitting alone at a table, drinking a blue beverage. Someone suddenly stands in front of his table.)
Person: "May I join you, Commander?"
Riker: "Diplomat. Yes, you may."
("Strame" sits.)
Strame: "I must apologize once again for my telepathic prompting with your captain. It was purely unintentional."
Riker: "Throughout my years in Starfleet, I have seen many races with unique abilities."
Strame: "Then you believe me?"
Riker: "I think it is possible, yes."
Strame: "But you do not trust me?"
Riker: "At this point, I'm not willing to judge anyone."
Strame: "I see."
(Troi enters through the doors to Ten Forward.)
Strame <slightly raising his voice>: "Counsellor."
(Troi walks over to Strame and Riker's table.)
Troi: "It is good to see Commander Riker and you talking."
Strame: "Yes, it is. Would you care to join us? You don't mind, do you, Commander?"
Riker: "Not at all." (He gets up and brings another chair.)
(Troi sits down.)
Strame: "The Commander and I were just discussing trust. I have a suggestion that might help increase our trust of one another. You do trust Counsellor Troi, don't you, Commander?"
Riker: "Yes."
Strame: "Then if she monitors our discussion, there should be no danger of hypnosis due to telepathic contact. Is that correct Counsellor?"
Troi: "Yes, if there is any I could sense it. However, there is no need to do it if you feel it is too much of a danger, Will."
Riker: "No, I think Strame has a point. Very well, Strame." (He looks directly into Strame's eyes.)
Strame: "Good. My people are the kind to stand up to the challenges of life, as I can tell are you."
Riker: "I face the challenges that I come into contact with as best I can. Deanna?"
Troi: "He is not using any telepathic abilities currently."
Strame: "I would not dream of doing such a thing. I only wish for peace for Taurus XIII, as I do with you. I find eye contact, such as this, increases the chances of success dramatically. Wouldn't you agree, Commander?"
Riker: "The idea seems sound enough." (He appears to be a bit groggy.)
Strame: "Of course, if I were to use eye contact for hypnosis, that would be using it for control. Do you feel controlled?"
Riker: "Y-yes." (His eyes seem distant.) "I am at your disposal, diplomat."
Strame: "Good, now there are other places you need to be right now. I will contact you soon, in private, with specific orders." (Troi and Riker get up and Strame smiles.) "Farewell, Commander, Counsellor, I enjoyed our talk." (Riker and Troi leave.)
(Strame takes another sip of his drink. He is only
to be slightly startled by a voice from behind.)
Voice: "You're new here."
(Strame turns to see Guinan.)
Strame: "Yes, madam...?"
Guinan: "I'm Guinan, the bartender here."
Strame: "Ah, it's a pleasure to meet you."
Guinan: "I noticed you were talking to Commander Riker and Counsellor Troi."
Strame: "Yes, I'm a diplomat. I must be familiar with the crew, if I am to work properly with them."
Guinan: "I'd imagine." (Strame starts to look concerned, for some reason.)
Strame: "I really must be going." (He abruptly stands and leaves.)
(Guinan raises her hand to her chin.)
Guinan: "I wonder..."
(The scene changes to the bridge. The TARDIS is now gone.)
Data: "I have discovered an anomaly in the readings from Cargo Bay 4."
Picard: (He gets up from his chair and walks over to the Ops console to stand beside Data.) "Where we stored the Doctor's police box?"
Data: "As well as the equipment Diplomat Strame wished brought aboard."
Picard: "He was insistent about bringing it aboard by shuttle, too. Could it be another time machine?"
Data: "That is unknown. At this point, the readings can not be determined to be separate. If it is another time machine, it is too close to the other to get a clear reading."
Picard: "Continue monitoring it."
Data: "Aye, sir."
(Worf's communicator chirps.)
Crusher <voice>: "Crusher to Worf."
(Worf taps his communicator.)
Worf: "Worf here."
Crusher: "I've discovered some things about the Larians that you might be interested in seeing."
(Picard, sitting in the captain's chair, taps his communicator.)
Picard: "Anything that I should be concerned about, Doctor?"
Crusher: "No, not at present. However, I still would like Worf to go over these readings."
Picard: "Very well."
(Worf heads for the turbolift. The scene changes to sickbay, as Worf enters.)
Crusher: "The information I think you'll find interesting is in here." (Crusher leads Worf into the back part of sickbay, into a laboratory. The door closes behind them. She pushes something on a terminal and words appear on the screen.)
(Worf scans the information.)
Worf: "There is nothing unusual about these readings."
Crusher: "Yes there is, right here." (She points at something on the screen with her left hand and rests her right on Worf's shoulder. As she does so, a hiss can be heard.)
(Worf's eyes widen and he instinctually turns, grabbing Crusher's right hand. A hypospray is forced to fall out of her hand.)
Worf: "Doctor, what..." (He collapses.)
(Crusher picks up the hypospray and puts it in her pocket. She then leaves the room, and walks up to one of the nurses.)
Crusher: "Lieutenant Worf will be busy for some time. He's not to be disturbed."
Nurse: "Aye, Doctor."
(The scene changes to a private quarters. The Doctor and Ace are there. The Doctor is fiddling with a panel beside the door, with much of it taken apart. Ace is sitting on the couch across the room.)
Doctor: "Imagine, locking us in and posting a guard. As if we were prisoners."
Ace: "If you would've let me keep the Nitro-9, we wouldn't be stuck here now."
Doctor: "Nonsense. Do you realize the damage you could cause on a ship like this?"
(Ignoring the Doctor's question, Ace stands and walks to stand beside him.)
Ace: "What do you think you can accomplish with the door anyway, Professor?"
Doctor: "I'll have it open any moment now."
Ace: "How can you be so sure?"
Doctor: "My past."
Ace: "What about your past?"
Doctor: "My past which is in the future."
(Ace shrugs and rolls her eyes. Suddenly the door open.)
Doctor: "There!"
(A security officer walks in, phaser drawn.)
Security officer: "I am sorry. Lieutenant Worf has ordered you to stay in these quarters."
Doctor: "So he did." (Walks up to the security officer.) "I realize how this must seem, but it really isn't as it seems." (Ace, who has snuck around behind the security officer, hits him over the head with an panel the Doctor removed to access the door control. The security officer collapses.) "Ace! I'm sure that was unnecessary."
Ace: (She shrugs.) "You wanted us to get out of here, right?"
Doctor: (He sighs.) "All right, then. First, we'd better find where the Master is."
(The Doctor and Ace exit through the door. Once in the corridor, the Doctor presses a button on the control panel to the door, causing it to close. He and Ace walk on down the corridor. The scene changes to the bridge again. Crusher and Troi walk onto the bridge from the turbolift and stand before Picard.)
Picard: "Doctor, Counsellor."
Crusher: "We have to talk, Jean-Luc."
Picard: "Have you discovered anything about those readings?"
Crusher: "Worf is still looking into that."
Troi: "I think we should talk in private, Captain."
Picard: "Very well." (He gets up, doing the "Picard maneuver" as he does so, and walks to his ready room. Crusher and Troi follow.)
Troi: "Doctor Crusher and I are concerned."
Picard: "About this time travelling Doctor or Diplomat Strame?"
Crusher: (She leans on his table slightly.) "About neither, actually. We're concerned about you, Jean-Luc."
Picard: (He raises an eyebrow.) "Me?"
Troi: "The Doctor and Strame both seem deceptive. And if they are of the same race and have the ability to control others, there is no reason to think you would be immune to both."
Picard: "You think I might be controlled. You would be able to sense that, would you not?"
Troi: (She starts walking around one side of Picard's desk.) "Perhaps. In fact, there is a definite sense of inner conflict in you."
Picard: (He stands.) "Nonsense. I would know if I was being controlled."
Crusher: (She walks around the other side of Picard's desk.) "You would tell us the that even if you were being controlled." (She removes a hypospray from her pocket.) "I must relieve you of command."
Picard: (He reaches up and taps his communicator.) "Picard to Worf." (There is no answer.)
(Picard tries to reach for his communicator again, but Troi stops him. Before he can break her hold, Crusher pushes the hypospray into his shoulder. He collapses. She then steps back and crouches down by Picard's unconscious body, tapping her communicator as she does so.)
Crusher: "Crusher to Data."
Data <voice>: "Yes, Doctor?"
Crusher: "Counsellor Troi and I require your assistance."
Data <voice>: "On my way." (The door opens within seconds. He immediately sees Picard.) "The Captain?"
Crusher: "Troi determined he was being controlled."
Data: "By whom?"
Troi: "I wasn't able to determine that."
Crusher: "Needless to say, I had to relieve him of command."
Data: "That would be the standard process. He resisted?"
Crusher: "Yes, I had to sedate him." (She raises the hypospray.) "If you would take him to sickbay, I'll notify Commander Riker."
Data: (He goes over to Picard and easily lifts him.) "I shall make sure the Captain will not harm anyone and that he, himself, will not come to harm." (He leaves.)
Crusher: (She taps her communicator.) "Crusher to Riker."
Riker: "Riker here."
Crusher: "The plan was successful."
(The voice of the Master then comes through the communicator, from Riker's end.)
Master: "Excellent."
[End of Act III]