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It was from that planet, maybe. McCoy wasn't sure. He was equally unsure what it was exactly, a contagion, or a virus, something in the fucking water, even though there was nothing in the water - there was nothing in their blood, there was nothing in the air or in the vents or in the food. Scotty got it first, he came to McCoy one day and said, "Listen, I think I'm not me. I was brushing my teeth before I went to bed and I looked at the mirror and I was thinking maybe I should cut my hair or something I feel it's a bit long now, don't you? And then I realized I didn't know who that person staring back at me was? It was, what's that word. An epiphany?" He paused and scratched at his chin thoughtfully. "But then I just felt sad, so here I am, Doc."
McCoy said something about stress and high pressure positions and wrote him a script before he scanned him, just to reassure them both, "There's nothing wrong with you, there - you see?"
Except the computer spat out, cheerful as anything: Subject: Unidentifiable.
And McCoy said, "What do you mean unidentife-" He tried the PADD again, tried scanning again, and at some point the controls just went silent and refused to respond, and how did that even work, it wasn't supposed to do that.
So there he was, standing with a useless tricorder in his hand and a broken down network of computers, and Scotty started crying, fat, hysterical tears. "I told you," he said, wiping his sleeve with the back of his hand. "I don't know who I am anymore. I'm not me."
*
They held briefings, and then even more briefings. McCoy put Scotty in the brig, he was useless anyway, at some point he'd just curled up upon himself and refused to speak. "I do not understand, Dr. McCoy," Spock said. "That certainly looks like Lieutenant Scott. How do we know it's not a mere computer malfunction coupled with Scott's rather paranoid tendencies."
"How the fuck should I know," McCoy said, and thrust the PADD at him. "Look at the readings, tell me what it says."
"It says, Unidenti-"
"Yes, precisely. But not what. It won't tell me anything else." He'd drawn blood at some point. Examined hair follicles, DNA sequences. Every single time the computer spat back: Scott, Montgomery. Except when it came to his body as a whole. Then it just shut up.
"Perhaps we might try communicating with it. If it really is an imposter, it might be using Lieutenant Scott's body as an attempt to contact us."
"But it's not." They both turned to Scotty, standing up with his blanket wrapped around him and a tissue clutched in one of his hands. "I'm me, except I'm not. It's all very weird you know. I feel a bit ill now. I think I shall lie down again."
"That's -" Spock shut his mouth abruptly, and Kirk finished for him -
"Fucking weird."
"Yeah, that about covers it," McCoy said.
*
Of course, Spock was the second to go down, followed closely by Uhura. He shut himself up in the brig, sat cross-legged on the floor and, if possible, was even more strange than Scotty.
It spread fast after that, and eventually they just had people barricade themselves in their quarters. There wasn't enough room in the brig for them all.
*
They had conferences, Kirk telling Starfleet urgently, "No, I don't know precisely what's going on, Sir. But it's bad. No they're not dying. No there's no outward physical change. But they're not them. How do I know? Because they said so."
Ship-wide cabin fever, maybe, was posited as a possible explanation, but that didn't explain the computer.
McCoy kept asking, "Computer, identify me, please?"
"Lieutenant Commander Leonard McCoy, Chief Medical Officer, USS Enterprise."
"Thank you."
*
He took to drinking, a bottle of Romulan ale he wasn't supposed to have permanantly within reach. Someone came in, said, "I don't know who I am anymore. What do I do?"
"Here, son. Have a drink. Then you can go back to your quarters, stay there. It'll help to minimize the chances of you spreading it elsewhere."
"But where's the cure? Surely you're working on one?"
"Yes, of course." Of course they were, around the clock, but it never went anywhere, was the problem. There was nothing wrong with anyone. Except for the part where they didn't exist anymore.
*
"Are you going to tell me you don't feel like yourself," he asked Sulu, who had come into his office, pale and shaken.
"No, but some of the crew have been whispering about suicide. I see it in their eyes. We have to stop it, McCoy."
McCoy spread his hands out wide. "We're doing our best, I assure you."
"What's your best?"
"Do you believe in an afterlife?"
"Fuck."
*
The last planet they were at, where it was assumed the whatever-it-was originated from, even though Scotty hadn't even been on the away team and so far only one of the crew that had been down to the planet was infected, revealed absolutely nothing at all. Barren rock and a barely habitable atmosphere, not even the remotest hint of life.
But then again, maybe all the lifeforms on it just didn't know what they were either, and the computer couldn't identify them.
McCoy started laughing, poured himself another drink.
*
There were more infected than non-infected at this point, but McCoy knew everyone had been exposed, so the quarantine was useless. They wandered around like ghosts, randomly bursting into tears or staring at the walls, having conversations with themselves. Still managed to get themselves bathed and changed though, feed themselves when required. Force of habit, perhaps. McCoy asked one of them, "If you can do that, maybe you could go back to your duties. You still look like you. Talk like you. Are you capable of functioning as you were trained to?"
"But I'm not me."
"Yes but -"
"But I'm not."
"Okay," McCoy said. "You can go."
*
At some point Kirk set the ship to auto-destruct; it was still listening to him at this point, which meant he was still himself, or perhaps he wasn't, McCoy didn't know anymore. But it was done, there was no turning back. He clutched at McCoy's shirt and said fiercely: "We can't let this spread outside of the ship. We need to protect the Federation. We need to protect Earth. What if I get infected as well? It's coming, Bones. You know it is."
McCoy said nothing. He was coming to terms with death. It seemed better than waking up to not be himself, whatever that was. He said though, "At this point, Jim, I feel they'll blow us out of the sky before we can even come near a populated area."
The official word from Starfleet was: they were up shit creek without a paddle, and no-one knew fuck all what to do about it.
In space, you were your own expert on everything.
*
"Do you want a drink," he asked Kirk, and Kirk blinked mournfully at him.
"No, I don't. I don't feel well. I'm not -"
"Let me guess. You don't feel like yourself? Yeah, that's been going around recently."
Of them all, perhaps he missed Kirk the most.
*
T-minus something, something. Close enough to boomtime that it didn't matter much. Mere seconds.
"Computer, identify me, please."
"Subject: Unidentifiable," the computer said, cheerfully.
Strange, but he felt exactly like himself.