Boogeymen - Mel Gilden [31]
This was weird, Wesley thought. Here he was in his bed seeing Boogeymen, just as if he were a kid again and in the middle of a nightmare. The difference this time was that he was awake and the Boogeymen were real now, or as real as the computer could make them. He was still afraid of them, but not the way he’d been terrorized by them in his nightmares. As far as he was concerned, these Boogeymen were just wild and unpredictable enemies. Being afraid of them seemed pretty rational.
The Boogeyman at the foot of the bed clasped his hands over his head and cried, “We win, Captain Crusher!” Something gooey and greenish yellow dripped from his teeth and into his beard.
“Right,” Wesley said. “Congratulations. So the game is over. Return control of the holodeck to the computer.”
“Return control?” the Boogeyman said. “We win!” He raised his hands in victory again.
The Boogeymen sounded confused, and suddenly Wesley realized why. No matter how evil they acted, the Boogeymen were still only manifestations of a computer program, and they couldn’t do anything they hadn’t been programmed to do. They had been designed to win and that was all. Wesley had frankly never thought the game would develop into a kidnapping. As far as he’d been concerned either he or the Boogeymen would blow the other out of the sky and then the game would be over. He’d given no thought to what might come after that, and so the Boogeymen had no idea either. They just grinned at him, dripping awful stuff.
The Boogeymen took no notice when Wesley rolled to his feet. But when he started for the door they ganged up in front of him. “We win,” the one in the fedora said. Wesley had fought his share of Boogeymen by now, but he’d fought them only one at a time. He was not confident he could take on three at once. He’d probably give it a try after a while. He sat down on his bed and hoped that Picard and Data arrived before he was bored out of his mind.
Instinctively, Picard threw his hands over his eyes. When the glare was gone he blinked back tears and tried to look around through the gradually fading afterimage of sheet lightning.
“Captain,” Data said, “are you all right?”
“Fine, Mr. Data.” Except for the tearing and the blinking, it was true. “And you?”
“Undamaged, sir.”
“Wesley?” Picard said hopefully.
No answer.
By this time Picard could see pretty well. He and Data were standing on a blank holodeck. Wesley was not there.
“Have we somehow escaped back to the ship?” Picard said.
Data said, “You assume that we are standing on the holodeck of our real Enterprise. I suggest that this may be a simulation of a holodeck.”
Picard considered that. A holodeck simulation of a blank holodeck had its hilarious aspects, and Picard was certain that some other time he would be able to appreciate them. It was a nice complement to the wheels-within-wheels conundrum in which they found themselves—a fascinating philosophical problem, but practically, thinking about it would lead only to frustration. He shook his head. “If this is a blank holodeck, if it is the holodeek on which we played out the Dixon Hill scenario, then Wesley ought to be here.”
“Correct, Captain,” said Data, “which leads me to believe that we are not yet on a real holodeck. Wesley has merely been taken to another area of the simulation.”
Picard looked around at the grid lines on the walls of the holodeck, broken only by a single exit. The place looked so damned real. He said, “Might walking through another holodeck exit take us to a place where we would never be able to find Wesley? Or would it lead us back out into the real ship?”
“Possibly, sir. It is more likely that a holo exit from a simulated blank holodeck would leave us in the same simulation of Enterprise that we are in now.”
“Very well,” the captain said. “In any case, it is pointless to stay here. Exit holodeck.”
The doors slid open, showing an empty Enterprise corridor beyond. Picard and Data walked out, and the doors slid closed behind them. Picard said, “Exit holodeck,” and another door appeared not six feet away. “That