"Stop being dramatic," the voice said. "We know you"re awake."
Dahl opened his eyes.
Hester was standing over him, along with Duvall and Hanson.
Dahl smiled at Hester. "It worked," he said. "It"s you. It really worked."
"Of course it worked," Hester said. "Why wouldn"t it work?"
Dahl laughed weakly at this. He tried to get up but couldn"t.
"Stasis medical chair," Duvall said. "You"re regrowing a liver and a lot of burned skin and healing a broken rib cage. You wouldn"t like what you"d be feeling if you moved."
"How long have I been in this thing?" Dahl asked.
"Four days," Hanson said. "You were a mess."
"I thought I was dead," Dahl said.
"You would have been dead if someone hadn"t rescued you," Duvall said.
"Who rescued me?" Dahl asked.
Another face loomed into view.
"Jenkins," Dahl said.
"You were right outside a cargo tunnel," Jenkins said. "I figured, might as well."
"Thank you," Dahl said.
"No thanks necessary," Jenkins said. "I did it purely out of self-interest. If you died, I would never know if you ever delivered that message for me."
"I did," Dahl said.
"How did it go over?" Jenkins asked.
"It went over well," Dahl said. "I"m supposed to give you a kiss for her."
"Well, maybe some other time," Jenkins said.
"What are you two talking about?" Duvall asked.
"I"ll tell you later," Dahl said, and then looked back to Jenkins. "So you"re out of your hiding place, then."
"Yes," he said. "It was time."
"Good," Dahl said.
"And the great news is we"re all heroes," Hester said. "The "message" was extracted out of my body and broadcast by the Intrepid, ending the religious war on Forshan. How lucky is that."
"Amazing," Dahl said.
"Of course, none of it even begins to make sense if you think about it," Hester said.
"It never has," Dahl said.
Later in the day, after his friends had left, Dahl had another visitor.
"Science Officer Q"eeng," Dahl said.
"Ensign," Q"eeng said. "You are healing?"
"So I"ve been told," Dahl said.
"Lieutenant Kerensky tells me it was you who cracked the code, so the rightward schism leader"s last will and testament could be broadcast," Q"eeng said.
"I suppose it was," Dahl said, "although I can"t honestly take all the credit."
"Nevertheless, for your bravery and your sacrifice I have written you up for a commendation," Q"eeng said. "If it"s approved, which it will be, then you will also be advanced in rank. So let me be the first to say, Congratulations, Lieutenant."
"Thank you, sir," Dahl said.
"There"s one other thing," Q"eeng said. "Just a few minutes ago I received a highly cla.s.sified message from the Universal Union High Command. I was informed that I was to read it to you, and only to you, out loud."
"All right, sir," Dahl said. "I"m ready."
Q"eeng pulled out his phone, pressed the screen and read the words there. "Andy, I don"t know if these words will reach you. Nick wrote this scene and we filmed it, but obviously it won"t be shown on TV. I don"t know if just filming it will be enough, and I guess there is no way for you to tell us if it worked. But if it does work, I want you to know two things. One, I"m sorry for everything you just got put through-Nick felt we had to really push the action in this one or the audience would start to question what was going on. Maybe that"s not a great argument to you now, considering where you are. But it made sense at the time.
"Two, no words I can say will ever thank you, Jasper and all of you for what you have done for my family and for me. You gave me my son back, and by giving him back you have given us everything. We will stick to our end of the agreement. Everything we said we would do we will. I don"t know what else to say, except this: Thank you for letting us live happily ever after. We will do the same for you. In love and grat.i.tude, Charles Paulson."
"Thank you," Dahl said to Q"eeng, after a moment.
"You are welcome," Q"eeng said, putting away his phone. "A most curious message."
"I suppose you could say it"s in code, sir," Dahl said.
"Are you allowed to tell your superior officer what it"s about?" Q"eeng asked.
"It"s a message from G.o.d," Dahl said. "Or someone close enough to Him for our purposes."
Q"eeng looked at Dahl appraisingly. "I sometimes get the feeling there are things happening on the Intrepid that I"m not meant to know about," he said. "I suspect this is one of them."
"Sir, and with all due respect," Dahl said, "you don"t know how right you are."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.
"So what now?" Duvall asked. The four of them were in the mess, picking at their midday meal.
"What do you mean?" Hester asked.
"I mean, what now?" Duvall said. She pointed to Hester. "You"re transplanted into a new body"-her point changed to Dahl-"he"s back from the dead, we"ve all come back from an alternate reality to keep ourselves from being killed for dramatic purposes. We"ve won. What now?"
"I don"t think it works like that," Hanson said. "I don"t think we"ve won anything, other than being in control of our own lives."
"Right," Hester said. "After everything, what it all means is that if one day we slip in the bathroom and crack our head on the toilet, our last thoughts can be a satisfied, "Well, I and only I did this to myself.""
"When you put it that way, it hardly seems worth it," Duvall said.
"I don"t mind cracking my head on the toilet," Hester said. "As long as I do it at age one hundred and twenty."
"On your one hundred and twentieth birthday, I"ll come over with floor wax," Duvall promised.
"I can"t wait," Hester said.
"Andy? You okay?" Hanson asked.
"I"m fine," Dahl said, and smiled. "Sorry. Was just thinking. About being fictional, and all that."
"We"re over that now," Hester said. "That was the point of all of this."
"You"re right," Dahl said. "I know."
Duvall looked at her phone. "c.r.a.p, I"m going to be late," she said. "I"m breaking in a new crew member."
"Oh, the burdens of a promotion," Hester said.
"It"s hard, it really is," Duvall said, and got up.
"I"ll walk with you," Hester said. "You can tell me more of your woes."
"Excellent," Duvall said. The two of them left.
Hanson looked back at Dahl. "Still thinking about being fictional?" he said, after a minute.
"Sort of," Dahl said. "What I"ve been really thinking about is you, Jimmy."
"Me," Hanson said.
"Yeah," Dahl said. "Because while I was recuperating from our last adventure, something struck me about you. You don"t really fit."
"That"s interesting," Hanson said. "Tell me why."
"Think about it," Dahl said. "Think of the five of us who met that first day, the day we joined the crew of the Intrepid. Each of us turned out to be critical in some way. Hester, who didn"t seem to have a purpose, turned out to be the key to everything. Duvall had medical training and got close to Kerensky, which helped us when we needed it and made him part of our crew when we needed him. Finn gave us tools and information we needed and his loss galvanized us to take action. Jenkins gave us context for our situation and the means to do something about it."
"What about you?" Hanson asked. "Where do you fit in?"
"Well, that"s the one I had a hard time with," Dahl said. "I wondered what I brought to the party. I thought maybe I was just the man with the plan-the guy who came up with the basic ideas everyone else went along with. Logistics. But then I started thinking about Kerensky, and what he is to the show."
"He"s the guy who gets beat up to show that the main characters can get beat up," Hanson said.
"Right," Dahl said.
"But you can"t be Kerensky," Hanson said. "We have a Kerensky. It"s Kerensky."
"It"s not about Kerensky getting beat up," Dahl said. "It"s about Kerensky not dying."
"I"m not following you," Hanson said.
"Jimmy, how many times should I have died since we"ve been on the Intrepid?" Dahl asked. "I count at least three. The first time, when I was attacked at Eskridge colony, when Ca.s.saway and Mbeke died. Then in the Nantes interrogation room with Finn and Captain Abernathy. And then on deck six when we returned to the Intrepid with Hester. Three times I should have been dead, no ifs, ands or buts. I should be dead, three times over. But I"m not. I get hurt. I get hurt really badly. But I don"t die. That"s when I figured it out. I"m the protagonist."
"But you"re an extra," Hanson said. "We all are. Jenkins said it. Charles Paulson said it. Even the actor playing you said it."
"I"m an extra on the show," Dahl said. "I"m the protagonist somewhere else."
"Where?" Hanson said.
"That"s what I want you to tell me, Jimmy," Dahl said.
"What?" Hanson said. "What are you talking about?"
"It"s like I said: You don"t fit," Dahl said. "Everyone else served a strong purpose for the story. Everyone but you. For this, you were just around, Jimmy. You have a backstory, but it never really entered in to what we did. You did a few useful things-you looked into show trivia, and talked about people, and occasionally you reminded people to do things. You added just enough that it seemed like you were taking part. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that you don"t quite add up the way the rest of us do."
"Life is like that, Andy," Hanson said. "It"s messy. We don"t all add up that way."
"No," Dahl said. "We do. Everyone else does. Everyone else but you. The only way you fit is if the thing you"re supposed to do, you haven"t done yet. The only way you fit is if there"s something else going on here. We"re all supposed to think we were real people who found out they were extras on a television show. But I know that doesn"t begin to explain me. I should be dead several times over, like Kerensky or any of the show"s major characters are supposed to be dead, but aren"t, because the universe plays favorites with them. The universe plays favorites with me, too."
"Maybe you"re lucky," Hanson said.
"No one is that lucky, Jimmy," Dahl said. "So here"s what I think. I think there"s no television show. No real television show. I think that Charles Paulson and Marc Corey and Brian Abnett and everyone else over there are just as fictional as we were supposed to be. I think Captain Abernathy and Commander Q"eeng, Medical Officer Hartnell and Chief Engineer West are the bit players here, and that me and Maia and Finn and Jasper are the people who really count. And I think in the end, you really exist for just one reason."
"What reason is that, Andy?" Hanson said.
"To tell me that I"m right about this," Dahl said.
"My parents would be surprised by your conclusion," Hanson said.
"My parents would be surprised by all of this," Dahl said. "Our parents are not the point here."