“Progressive Neurological Degeneration,” Bashir Said.

It felt strangely liberating to voice aloud the thought he’d tried so hard to avoid for the past two days. “At the rate I’m declining, by tomorrow I’ll probably no longer be able to function as the ship’s chief medical officer.”

“You don’t know that,” Ezri said.

“I can feelit, Ezri.” He decided that now wasn’t an occasion that called for a stiff upper lip. “I believe I’m… reverting.Regressing to what I was before Adigeon Prime.”

Her eyes widened with sudden understanding. “Before you were genetically enhanced.”

“I can’t begin to explain it,” he said, nodding. “But somehow our encounter with the alien artifact has begun… undoingmy genetic resequencing.”

She seemed to mull that over for a moment before responding. “It sounds crazy, but it fits. Nog and I are reverting, too, if you think about it. He’s become the two-legged Ferengi he used to be. I’ve been turned into the unjoined Trill I was before the Destinybrought me together with Dax. And you’re becoming…” She trailed off.

Slow, plodding, uncoordinated,dumb Jules Bashir.

Jules. He had repudiated that name during his childhood, after his parents had, in effect, repudiated him—when they’d had his DNA illegally rewritten when he was only six years old. Whatever Jules might eventually have accomplished left to his own devices had been rendered moot from that point on, forever after consigned to the shadow-world of roads not taken. Inaccessible mirror universes.

He vividly recalled the day, three short years ago, when he had taken his parents to task over this. Facing the very real possibility of dismissal from Starfleet because of his illegal genetic alterations, he had wished that Richard and Amsha Bashir had never taken him to Adigeon Prime, that they’d instead simply allowed nature to take its course with young Jules, for better or for worse.

That errant wish now appeared to be coming true—and the brutal reality of it horrified him. He realized now that it meant the loss of abilities and talents which he had come to take for granted over the better part of three decades. The loss of what he sometimes feared were the only things that gave him value as a human being.

The loss of self.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

An OriginalPublication of POCKET BOOKS

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Copyright © 2002 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

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POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Cover art by Cliff Nielsen

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To my wife, Jennifer Dottery, whose patience approaches the asymptotic infinite

—M.A.M.

For Tim Tuohy, our past editor on the

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comics at

Marvel. Thanks for giving us an assignment with Starfleet!

—A.M.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge that the poem quoted in Chapter 23 comprises the closing lines of Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found Thereby Lewis Carroll—a book much beloved by young Jules Bashir, as well as by many previous generations of youthful adventurers.

We also owe a debt of gratitude to our editor, Marco Palmieri, whose patient efforts made this a much better book than it otherwise would have been.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move…

—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON,

“ULYSSES”