Trying To Untangle The Gordian Knot - Part 1

Posted on Sun Jan 24th, 2016 @ 1:29am by Commander Louie Rousseau & Céline Valois
Edited on on Sun Jan 24th, 2016 @ 2:05am

Mission: Further Challenges
Location: Louie's Quarters

* * Deck 17 - Louie’s Quarters * *

After the talk with Helena, Celine felt that she had enough courage to go and speak to Louie to explain to him what she’d found out from her parents. It wasn’t exactly a conversation she wanted to have, but it was a conversation that had to happen, no matter how she felt about it. So, with Louie’s wedding photo in hand, she found the location of his quarters and made her way there. However, when she got to the door, she found it hard to press the chime.

She stood there almost ten minutes, walking back and forth along the corridor close to his room, trying to figure out how to broach the subject. Finally deciding on the band-aid method, just putting it out there quickly instead of drawing it out, she took a deep breath and pressed the button.

The doors opened immediately and Louie stood there, dressed in a pair of jeans and casual shirt, his feet bare. Somehow he didn’t look surprised to see her. “I wondered when you would stop pacing and ring the bell.” He gave her a hesitant smile but turned away quickly. “Come on in.”

She stepped in. “A man out of time and a psychic?” she asked. “You’re a man of many talents.”

Standing just in the doorway, she felt a bit awkward and wasn’t sure where to go. Pointing to the couch she said, “Mind if I sit?”

‘Please,” he answered. “Coffee? I hear you and I had similar nights and I thought it might come in handy to make a big pot.”

“Sure, thanks. Black, please.” She sat on the couch and placed the framed photo on the coffee table, facing toward where he would be seated when he came back. Taking the time to look around his quarters, she saw more images of both he and her DNA donor around the place. It wasn’t exactly a shrine, but it was obvious he had really loved her.

Louie returned with two mugs and passed her one, then sat down in the chair by the sofa. “Helena came by here after she left you,” he began. “To pick up Cy and check on me I suppose. I have to confess I got a little...liquid last night. It didn’t solve anything but it kept coherent thought at bay for a little while.”

She smiled a bit before sipping at the coffee. “Sometimes that’s a good thing.”

They sat in silence a few moments, mostly focusing on their coffees. Celine finally touched the photo on the table and announced, “Well, I have some good news. We don’t have to do a bunch of sleuthing to figure out...this.” She pointed back and forth between the picture and her face a few times. “I’ve already sorted it all out.”

“Oh?” Louie sipped his coffee, then placed his mug on the table. He had a feeling he didn’t want to be holding hot liquid when she delivered her news. “There’s some things I want to say to you, but I am uncertain if before you tell me or after is better.”

“I guess I should probably go first since my news is what we’ve been so concerned about,” Celine said, placing her own mug on the table. “The other night I put a call through to my parents. They were obviously hiding something and it really made me very angry. Since they wouldn’t tell me anything, I put a call into the adoption agency they had always told me they found me, and they had no record of me at all.” She paused, her hand starting to quiver a bit with anxiety, but she knew she had to tell him. “When I contacted my parents again they came clean.” The words were right there, but she almost felt woozy trying to actually form and say them. She closed her eyes and spoke. “I’m a clone. Of your Celine.”

“A clone,” he repeated. “Of Celine. Oh my god.” He covered his eyes a moment, trying to get a mental grip on what she just said and it wasn’t happening. “A clone. I see.” He reached for his mug, then thought better of it. Looking, instead, at Celine, he caught the shake of her hand and reached out, closing his own over hers.

She had opened her eyes but closed them again and was facing her own lap after he’d repeated clone again. She wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but some part of her actually thought that he might be angry with her. His hand on hers, however, surprised her and she jumped slightly. Almost yanking her hand away, she relaxed when she realized how gentle he was being. It wasn’t anger, it was comfort.

Opening her eyes she looked up at him. “I’m sorry, Louie,” she said. “It obviously wasn’t my plan, but I’m here and I’m sure it’s causing you pain.”

“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t but I can’t imagine what effect this is having on you. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with how you came to be. That isn’t it at all. But this is certainly not what you grew up believing is it?”

She shook her head. “No. My parents told me I was adopted when I was young. Technically, it’s not a lie, but it’s not what they told me.” She sighed, but decided he needed to know everything. “They’re both scientists, my parents. Whatever company they had worked for retrieved some old equipment and supplies from the 2200’s, part of which was cloning equipment that had never been able to work along with some DNA samples. One of the samples had my, well, her name on it. Their company updated the process and tried again. Not many survived, only a handful, but since I had survived, they named me after the name on the sample.” She smiled, but it was half-hearted and lasted only a moment. “Was your wife a scientist, or prone to donate DNA to potential cloning experiments?”

Louie nodded. “Yes. She was Starfleet too, you know, in science. Which raises an interesting question.” He rose and moved around behind his chair, needing to move. “Your parents may have known how you were born, but that doesn’t explain how Celine’s samples came to be in their lab. It seems to me to be the beginning of the mystery, not the end of it.” He paced slowly around the living room, pausing here and there to look at the pictures of Celine. It was only now that he truly realized how many he had on display. Cy had commented on it once and he’d ignored it. He turned back to face this Celine finally. “I need to tell you a story,” he said.

Celine picked up the cup of coffee, holding it with both hands to warm herself. She had turned quite cold rather quickly as she retold the story of her beginnings. “I’m all ears,” she said, trying to be chipper. It fell flat.

“Celine was a scientist, specializing in microcellular structures. At one time, she was involved in a project on cloning back in the early days. From what she told me, nothing much ever came of it, at least not before her research was interrupted.” He pursed his lips and reached for his mug. “A moment, please.” He hurried back into the kitchen.

Celine’s eyebrows popped up, wondering what he was off to. Maybe he needed a moment to collect himself away from her? That seemed sensible. But at least now she knew how her sample came to be. Those scientists were probably just using what DNA they had on hand to try and make viable clones.

She drank the last of her coffee and looked up to find Louie. He wasn’t back yet and she’d hoped for some water. “Won’t hurt to help myself,” she said to herself and stood, crossing over to the replicator.

“It was her last big project before I lost her,” he said quietly. He was standing in the doorway that led from the kitchen, watching her. Something in the way she was standing was painfully familiar and he looked away and out the portal.

The replicator had reclaimed the coffee mug but before she ordered a water, she picked up on what was happening. “Louie, it might be best if I left. It’s obvious that my being here is hard on you. We can talk about this later...or I can transfer to another school somewhere. But this doesn’t seem to be working for you at all.”

“No, it’s not that. It is hard, yes, but not for the reasons you may be thinking. I don’t want you to go and that is also not for the reason you think.” He crossed the room and took her hands in his. “Let me explain?”

She looked him in the eye, hoping he was being honest. “Okay, but if it does start wearing on you, I don’t mind leaving.”

“First, I should tell you what happened, then I’ll explain the rest of what I said.” He led her back to the sofa and sat beside her. “As I said, that genome project was the last one she was working on when we were on the Lakota. I was the Executive Officer there and she was in the science department. That year, she was put on a science team bound for the Lantaru sector. The official orders stated that it was an investigatory mission to examine a potentially new species that had been seen on one of the planets there.” Louie paused and cleared his throat.

“She departed, promising to call once she got there and got settled in. She sent word that she had arrived but that they were going to be out in the field for the next several days.” He continued, his voice now noticeably rougher. “I didn’t expect to hear anything till she got back. A few days later, I was in the lounge after a shift. The place was busy as usual and the bartender turned on the news. They were reporting on a massive explosion...in the Lantaru sector. I felt as if my blood had turned to ice water. The newsman was saying that it was some unusual natural phenomena and whatever it was had damaged subspace to such a degree that warp travel in the area was impossible. The rescuers couldn’t get in. He said that a research team had been there, practically at ground zero, and were all killed. The lounge was silent and I knew they were all watching me. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up in sickbay several hours later.”

Celine didn’t know what to say. She had, during the explanation, taken his hand and squeezed it a few times for reassurance. “I’m so sorry, Louie,” she whispered. “That’s horrible.”

“I’ve thought a lot about that report on the news, and the official one I received, since then. Does it strike you as odd that a naturally caused explosion, given what we knew in 2259, would destroy subspace to such a degree and in so large an area? The report was vague on the specific natural cause and no one else ever had an answer.” He looked at their joined hands, then into her eyes. “You’re a science teacher. What does your instinct tell you?”

“Instinct and facts are two different things,” she replied. “I want to call shenanigans on the whole explanation, however, as a scientist raised by crazy-smart, mad scientists, I know that there are things out there, that we have yet discovered, that can do exactly that.” She pulled her hand back from his and smiled, trying to help. “It does seem strange that Starfleet never got around to figuring out what it was. I’d think by now they would know exactly what caused it--I mean, that’s what they do.”

You’d think so.” There was more than a hint of skepticism in his voice. “What’s strange also is that her project was immediately ended, even though the rest of her team was still on the ship. Two officers from Starfleet Command came to debrief them and everything was packed up and taken away. That would include all her notes and such, which apparently ended up eventually with your parents. You want a mystery? There’s one for us to figure out.”

Celine had already figured out her mystery. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to get tied up in this one with Louie. But for some reason, and other than the obvious one, she did feel drawn to him. Maybe it was just because she was the living embodiment of his long dead wife, and the absurdity of that ordeal made her want to find out more about his life. After a brief back and forth in her mind of the pros and cons, she decided, “Yeah. We could look into that. It is very strange.”

“It raises the question as to why that research was sealed so fast and why didn’t her team finish it? Why did it matter that she was gone?” Louie shrugged, then finally smiled at Celine. “Leaving that aside for now though, we come to the rest of this. Why I don’t want you to leave and why this isn’t exactly easy. You may be in for a surprise.”

“Yay,” she said deadpan. “More surprises.”

“Good ones, or at least ones that may help put your mind at ease on something that is sorta the elephant in the room.” He looked across the living room, taking in once again all the pictures of Celine scattered around. “Cy has said repeatedly that he thinks I’ve been...stuck in the past. I always argued that with him, and yet I wondered how he could just jump into life again with such enthusiasm. He adjusted much better than I, obviously. I never really looked too closely at how I was reacting to the here and now. Not until I watched you here in this room, moving from one photograph to the next. I never thought about how many are here. When I said this wasn’t easy, that is why. I realized he was right. You saw it immediately.”

She looked around the room, then back at Louie. “So...you’re getting rid of some of the pictures?” she asked, a bit confused. Hearing that he was still hung up on his dead wife was not even remotely a surprise. “I guess that would be surprising.”

“I think it’s well past time, don’t you? There’s nothing wrong with remembering, but when it becomes a barrier to living the life you have before you, then it has become the problem Cy said it was. Perhaps part of it was being afraid I would forget, now that I’ve been given a second life. Does that make sense?”

“Are you saying that you’ve finally moved on from your Celine?” she asked. “Because, I have to admit that the timing is a bit weird. We find out that I’m an exact copy of her and you’re now moving on?”

“Maybe it took something like this to shake me out of my complacency.” He leaned back into the sofa and ran his hand through his hair. “All of this has really blown open the tightly closed emotional bundle that is Louie.” He smiled for a moment. “That’s a good thing, by the way.”

Celine forced a weak smile and nodded slowly. “Okay. Well, let’s hope the emotional bundle doesn’t decide to snap or anything after being released so quickly.” She was very concerned that finding all of this out, and seeing her in front of him, was messing with his head a bit. The clone of his dead wife is here with him, and suddenly he’s over her and all hunky-dory? Especially considering he’d been living in what was essentially a shrine for his wife since he’d arrived in this time.

She stood. “This has definitely given us something to think about, right? And that is a big mystery to work on.” She was backing toward the door, thinking now was the time to exit, in case he was suddenly going to lose his mind and propose to her, or something. “But I really need to get going. I had a meeting scheduled with Captain Hawke,” she said, lying. She had wanted to speak to her, but hadn’t scheduled a meeting yet.

He studied her a moment, picking up on her sudden change of mood, and replayed the last few minutes in his mind. A light dawned.

“Celine wait a moment? I think you misunderstood.”

“I can’t, Louie. I need to get going,” she said, finally at the door to his quarters. “Can’t keep the station XO waiting, right?” She opened the door and backed out into the corridor. “I’m, uh, I’m sure we’ll talk soon.”

The doors closed and she fast-walked to the closest turbolift. Should she actually go try and speak to Captain Hawke about her predicament, or maybe go see a shrink first? She stood in the empty lift, pondering that question. “Computer,” she said, “where is Captain Hawke’s office located?”

“Deck 6.”

“Take me there, then.”

To Be Continued….

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Lt. Commander Louie Rousseau
Celine Valois