Cybersong by S. N. Lewitt

even fewer people could actually run the ship than there were stations.
    That would be terribly lonely, Paris thought. Such a huge ship with immense open space hauling gigantic cargos, and only five people on the bridge. Say they had three shifts, though there was no reason to assume that, Paris reminded himself. He was working within his own paradigm. Still, there was nothing wrong with the number three, either. It even made a great deal of sense for six-limbed creatures.
    That would make a maximum of fifteen people aboard. Fifteen people.
    That wasn’t many to spend months, maybe even years of a contract with.
    The isolation they must have felt …
    Tom Paris shook himself as if to rid himself of a bad dream. Why was he thinking this way? He had always been much better at machines than people. This was not at all the way he generally approached a problem.
    Not even when a difference in culture and the misunderstanding was at the core.
    The forward screen brightened and the image of the indigo-skinned angel appeared again. The tree that had been burned by the phaser appeared intact. Although he knew it was a hologram, the picture disturbed him.
    There should be some sign that they had already been through that holodeck in person.
    “Please help us,” the hologram said. “We are in trouble and we will die if you do not come to our aid. We have been trapped here alone for longer than we can remember, and we are starting to lose our oxygen supply. Please help us repair our ship.”
    “They’re transmitting that,” Harry Kim said. “Like we had never even been there.”
    Paris glanced at the captain’s face. Her mouth was set in a grim line, and her eyes were hard in the light of the transmission on the screen.
    He’d seen that expression before. He never wanted to see that expression directed at him. She was angry, beyond angry, and she was going to do something about it. And the people who made her that angry were going to be very, very sorry.
    Then Chakotay’s face appeared in reply.
    “That’s strange,” the captain muttered.
    “Where is our captain and our away team?” the second in command demanded. “They came to help you, and they should be aboard your vessel now.”
    A tachyon burst filled the system with static. When it cleared they saw the holograms again.
    “Why are they projecting this on their own screens?” Paris wondered aloud. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Oh yes, it does, Mr. Paris,” the captain said. “It makes a lot of sense if they know where we are. And given this little display, I’m fairly certain that someone is staging this whole show.”
    “And they’re all holograms,” Harry Kim said. “It reminds me of the Caretaker and the Array.”
    For a moment Paris’s heart lifted. The idea that they might have found the Caretaker’s companion, the only being they knew had the ability to send them home, was thrilling. And too good to be true, Paris told himself.
    “No,” the captain said. “The Caretaker created a hologram of things to put us at ease and created an environment that we could survive in.
    No, this is much less sophisticated. There are only casual similarities.”
    Something exploded in Tom Paris’s brain. He could almost taste the answer, the sweetness of home. “It’s like the Caretaker, but not quite up to specs,” he said slowly, letting the words develop carefully as the ideas formed ferociously in his head. “Maybe whatever or whoever is doing this learned from the Caretaker’s companion. Maybe the companion has come this way. Maybe somewhere in this computer there’s a record of contact, of learning from this technological being that would set us on the right track.”
    Both the captain and Kim turned to him. “That could be,” Janeway agreed, sense fighting hope in her face. “Mr. Kim, can you download the computer log?” she asked briskly.
    “I don’t know, Captain,” Harry said. “It would help if I knew how to access it, or what the