FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Which might have been the point
Ship of Fools: A Taylor Varga Omake (Complete)
- Thread starter Derek M
- Start date
- Crossover
Which might have been the point
Nano Soldier
Seeker of Freedom
- Location
- Stoke, England, United Kingdom
...Bloody autocorrect.
Yes I did mean Catch 22. Thank you for spotting that.
Jonn Wolfe
(Verified Sarcastic) (Not a Wolf)
- Location
- Beyond Sanity Since 1971
I tend to call that autocorrupt. Much more descriptive and accurate.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Bet you the original autocorrupt got corrected ...
- Location
- Maryland
Hopefully this isn't a case of it really backfiring. Breaking the fourth wall actually makes more sense in a World as Myth multiverse...
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
I tend to call that autocorrupt. Much more descriptive and accurate.
I've had it automatically 'fix' the correct spelling into "autocorrupt" before.
Jonn Wolfe
(Verified Sarcastic) (Not a Wolf)
- Location
- Beyond Sanity Since 1971
Unintentionally Ironic & Hilarious.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Unintentionally Ironic & Hilarious.
Well, yeah. Also it was unintentionally honest. How often does "Autocorrect" end up giving you the wrong word, after all.
- Location
- Somewhere, Maybe
I prefer to refer to that particular "feature" as "auto-co-WREKT". also as "do your own damn spellchecking". ^^:;;
Then again, I was "that kid" who was reading The Hobbit in first grade.... >.>
Then again, I was "that kid" who was reading The Hobbit in first grade.... >.>
Trek-ilogue
- Location
- Maryland
Trek-ilogue
Kasidy lined the SS Xhosa up with the wormhole entrance. She put her hand on her stomach, feeling the bump there. This would be her last trip through the wormhole before her pregnancy came to term. Even going now was risky. The war hadn't been over for long, and there was still some anti-Federation sentiment in the Gamma Quadrant. Even those species that weren't directly controlled by the Founders didn't appreciate the disruptive impact of a galactic war. When a cargo run from Bajor had come up for bid, however, she couldn't resist the temptation. Benjamin was supposed to be with the Prophets, and going through the wormhole was the closest she could get to visiting him.
Unfortunately for her, the passage through to the Gamma Quadrant had happened without anything unusual happening. There were no visions, visitations, or odd phenomena. Hell, even the trade delivery had been utterly mundane on the other side. Now, coming back, this was her last chance for something to happen. Benjamin had said he would be back...but he had been maddeningly vague as to the timing.
The wormhole opened like a flower in front of her, and she guided the ship into the opening. The wave-forms of energy lining the wormhole were as beautiful as always, but she was starting to lose hope that this trip would be any different. That was when there was a flash of light, and a voice said from behind her, "Are you looking for me?"
She turned to see her husband, looking much like when he had come to see her after his disappearance. "Always," she replied.
He stepped up to her, and reached out put his hand on her stomach. "She's growing bigger."
Kasidy per her head on his shoulder. "She is. This was my last chance for a while to go through the wormhole."
"Well, that won't be necessary anymore," he said into her hair.
She pushed back enough to look him in the eye. "What do you mean?" she asked, concerned.
"Chief O'Brien managed to stumble upon some friends...friends who had a surprising ability to make large-scale changes to our galaxy. The Prophets were...uncomfortable around them, but they appreciate the results," explained Sisko. "One of those results is that the future paths have shifted, which makes my involvement less necessary."
"They're letting you go?" she asked hopefully.
He frowned. "Not entirely. I can't guarantee they won't call on me again...but in the short term, I can return."
"When?"
"Look out the window," he prompted.
It was then that Kasidy noticed that they were clear of the wormhole and back in the Alpha Quadrant. More pressingly, the communications console was flashing at her as Deep Space Nine Operations tried to contact her. She rushed over and triggered the console. "DS9, this is Captain Yates of the Xhosa."
"Captain, are you all right? You haven't been responding to hails." said the voice from Operations.
"I'm fine, DS9...but I think I need to dock and speak with Colonel Kira," she said, looking back at where her husband was watching her with a fond look.
"Kasidy, this is Colonel Kira," said a different, familiar voice. "Did something happen on the other side of the wormhole? Is it the Dominion?"
"No...Nerys...Benjamin's come home again," she replied.
"Captain Sisko?" prompted the Bajoran woman.
The man in question stepped closer to the microphone. "This is he, Colonel. I expect we'll have an interesting debriefing."
There was a pause, then Kira said, "I expect so. It's good to hear your voice, sir."
Sisko smiled as he looked lovingly at his wife. "It's good to be back."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Scotty frowned down at the tablets in front of him. That idiot Kanten had made a total mess of Starfleet starship design. He seemed to completely misunderstand Starfleet's Charter in favor of his own pet theories, and the net result was that the latest designs were a complete mess of mismatched requirements and needless reliance on out-dated technology for the sake of "backwards compatibility." If the Dominion War and the Borg invasion hadn't happened, then Starfleet would be populated almost entirely with sub-par vessels.
"Admiral Scott?" said a voice off to his left. He turned and saw his assistant, Lal, coming to him with another stack of tablets.
He smiled and said, "Lass, I've told you that you can call me 'Scotty.' I hear 'Admiral Scott', and I start looking over me shoulder and getting ready to salute."
"You have to get used to your new rank sooner or later, Admiral," she replied.
He scoffed. "I would have refused to come out of retirement if I had known they planned on promoting me."
She laughed good naturedly. "I don't think I believe that."
He peered at her. "You're sharper than your da, then." Data had seemed like a good man, but far too literal at times.
"You've met father?" she asked.
"Oh aye," he said. "He was aboard the Enterprise when they rescued me from a sticky situation."
"After the Jenolan accident. I didn't know that you and father had had a chance to speak," she clarified.
"He poured me a glass of Aldebaran Whiskey and we talked for a bit," he reminisced. Of course, neither of them had known what was actually in the bottle when the drink was poured...just that it was strongly alcoholic. "What are those?" he said, pointing to the stack of tablets.
Lal handed the stack to him. "They're the initial results of the teams going through the ship that Miles O'Brien brought back from the Family."
Scotty set them down on the table and looked at the first one. "Those Lizards have got some good tech. Commander Watkins' report reads like he's ready to burst into song over their shielding systems."
"Neither of us would be here without them, Admiral," agreed Lal. They had helped her father fix the flaw in her positronic matrix, and their healing symbiotes were why Montgomery Scott was fit for active duty again.
"I can't argue with that." He began looking at the various tablets, looking at entries on weapons systems, drive systems, life support, matter transporters, and some reports on the hull material and spatial folding in the interiors that seemed to spend a lot of time describing the "what" and very little time explaining the "how." The means by which the Family stabilized electron degenerate matter was still a mystery, as was the apparently stable spatial warping that made the ship larger on the inside. "It's too bad we don't have one of them here to explain some of this to our officers."
"I can ask," said Lal.
Scotty stared at her for a moment, puzzled. "Ask who?"
"Whoever answers the call," she replied. She pulled a communication device out of her pocket, pressed one of the buttons on the front, then put it to her ear and listened for a response. "Hello, Metis, this is Lal...I'm doing well, it's not an emergency. Father is fine, too. I spoke to him yesterday...I'm working with Admiral Scott at the Starship Design Bureau, and he wanted to know if somebody could come and explain some of the things they found out about the Skipper you gave them." There was a longer pause. "All right. I'll let him know." She disconnected the call, and then said to Scotty, "Metis said she can come by whenever, but she suggested that you get together a bunch of your scientists and engineers so that she can talk to them all at once."
It took a few moments for Scotty to close his mouth. When he did, he said, "You're a bit of a miracle worker, aren't you?"
"I'm learning from the best," she answered.
Scotty just laughed.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Agent Dulmur of the Department of Temporal Investigations was reviewing files. The closed-door prosecutions of the active members of Section 31 had shaken loose a truly astonishing number of accounts of temporal displacements, many (though not all) involving the mirror universe of the Terran Empire. It was a little frustrating, because it highlighted just how much their department had been...well, manipulated by Section 31. The accounts did clarify some long-standing mysteries, however, like what really happened to the USS Discovery.
His partner, Agent Lucsly, came into his office and dropped a leather-bound book on his desk.
"What's that?" asked Dulmur.
"It's a book that somebody left on my desk. Look at the title," replied the agent.
Dulmur bent down, then reached over and turned the book around so that he could read the title right-side-up. It title read, Family Mathematics for Temporal Displacement: An Introductory Guide and Cautionary Tract. The book looked from the side to be less than a hundred pages long. "Is this a joke?" he asked his partner.
Lucsly shook his head. "I thought so at first, but then I began to read it. The title is an accurate description of the contents...though it starts to get really complicated around chapter ten." At Dulmur's skeptical look, he clarified, "The book actually has more than three-thousand pages. They seem to fold into some kind of extra-dimensional storage built into the cover." Lucsly held out a piece of paper. "This note came with the book."
Dulmur took the note. It said:
"What vids?" asked Dulmur.
Lucsly frowned. "There was a tablet pre-loaded with a 2D entertainment vid set in the twentieth century called The X-Files. I checked the archives, and we don't have any record of the show."
Dulmur considered the matter. "It's probably from an alternate reality. The Family are also the point of origin for that new ship that Starfleet R&D is examining. The ship has a wormhole drive."
His partner actually looked shocked at that. "Do we have agents involved in that investigation?"
"Assistant Director Merfoll is handling it himself," confirmed Dulmur. "Why don't you focus on these gifts while I finish off the Section 31 files. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's all related."
Lucsly shrugged. "All right. I'm sure the truth is out there somewhere. I'll let you know what I find."
Dulmur turned back to his work as his partner left. Next up was a file on a Starfleet officer named Philippa Georgiou. This was likely to take a while...and despite the commonly made joke, even the DTI didn't have infinite time.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Years later...
Miles piloted the shuttle over toward the USS McKinley. He glanced over at his daughter. "Are you sure you don't want to reconsider the Academy?"
The teen-aged Molly rolled her eyes again. "Yes, Papa. You know studying with Kisao on Vulcan is an amazing opportunity." The man was a legend among biologists in the Federation, and Molly's application was one of only four picked to work with him this year.
"You could study botany at the Academy, too, is all I'm saying," replied Miles.
"And I still can. It's not like they won't let me in after I finish this internship...IF I decide I want to..." she said insistently, as she had the last five times they had had this conversation.
"I'm just saying...Starfleet's done well by me," he replied quietly. He knew that the real reason for harping on this subject was that he was going to miss her, but he wasn't quite sure how to say that without sounding pathetic.
She paused and looked at him in a way that reminded him of how Keiko looked at him when she thought he was being stubborn for no reason. "It's been good and it hasn't...and besides, Yoshi is almost certainly going to head straight to the Academy when he's old enough." Her younger brother was every bit the engineering fanatic that their father was, if a bit more into the theory.
O'Brien regarded his oldest child. "You know it's kind of creepy when you look at me like that, like you're channeling your mother."
Molly giggled. "You know she makes the same comparison about you when I'm being stubborn."
"That's fair," he said. "Well, if you do get done with your internship and you're still not ready for the Academy, I was talking to Ianthe the other day, and she was saying they've got this guy in the Bioshapers' Guild whose really good with plants. She mentioned it because of your mother, but I could ask her if they do internships." The guy had had kind of a weird name for a human, but he trusted the Family.
Now Molly looked stunned. "Really? You would do that?"
"Of course I would! It's not like I don't want you to be successful, and you know the Bioshapers can do things that make Federation botanists' thumbs green with envy," he said with a grin at his own pun.
"That was bad, Papa," she said with a combined wince and grin. "Thank you, though."
Miles smiled. "Nothing's too good for you."
Molly smiled back, understanding him. "I love you too, Papa...and of course it has nothing to do with the fact staying with the Family makes it easy to come home on the weekends."
"Hadn't crossed my mind," said Miles innocently as he turned over shuttle control to the McKinley.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Even more years later...
The Operations Officer was a Soong-type android named Tiberius. He had chosen the name because he was interested in Federation history, and his parents had been of the opinion that children should be able to have full control over their identity. He also chose a completely human skin tone, though his eyes shared the golden look of his kind's progenitor, Data. Tiberius was on duty when the sensors detected an incoming vessel. "Captain, I'm reading a vessel of unknown type. Some of the technology reads as Borg, but the configuration isn't the typical geometric layout."
"Yellow alert," ordered the captain. "We haven't heard anything from the Borg in years. Are they powering weapons?"
Tiberius shook his head and said, "Not according to our sensors."
Lieutenant Ensos, their Romulan tactical officer, opined, "Captain, our shields should be relatively impervious to Borg weapons technology."
Commander Davis, the human First Officer, added, "That's assuming they haven't advanced. The Borg were always strong in the area of adaptation."
"We're being hailed," said Tiberius, cutting off additional debate.
"On screen," said the captain. An image appeared of a command center that appeared to be a mix of technologies, though the man sitting in the central command chair had a greenish cast to his skin and pointed ears. He also had clearly visible Borg implants. After a moment of silence, the captain said, "I'm Captain Charles Gunn of the Federation starship Cousteau. Please identify yourself."
"I am T'Kilk of Borg," said the man on the screen.
"You're Vulcan?" interjected Ensos in a surprised voice.
The man nodded. "I am. I also am of Borg."
Charles paused for a moment. This was not an expected response. Starfleet doctrine was to treat the Borg as implicitly hostile. Technically, he should have gone straight to red alert, but Gunn had a sense for the weird that had been honed by growing up fighting vampires in Los Angeles in another dimension. It sometimes frustrated his superiors, but it often made him a better captain when the unusual cropped up, like now. "Are you saying that you still consider yourself an individual?" he asked.
"I do," agreed T'Kilk, "but I am also a part of the Collective. Much has changed in the Collective since our last encounters with Starfleet."
"Changed how...and what prompted those changes?" asked Captain Gunn.
"That is a long story," replied the Vulcan Borg. "It started years ago, when the Collective was visited by a reptilian creature named Varga."
"That explains some things..." muttered Gunn. Davis looked questioningly at him, but he waved him off until later. "Why have you reached out to us now?" he asked the Borg.
"We have former members of the Collective who wish to be returned to the Federation. We also wish to open diplomatic talks in order to prevent any future incidents between the Collective and the Federation." The man's delivery was unemotional...but it was hard to tell if that was because he was Vulcan or because he was Borg.
"You know that there are many people in Starfleet who view the Borg as an enemy and have suffered at your hands?" asked Gunn, wanting to get the biggest issue out in the open first. It wasn't the most diplomatic thing to say, but then even the Academy hadn't been able to cure Gunn of a certain blunt directness.
The mouth of the Borg on screen appeared to twitch upward into the shade of a smile. "We are aware. We are willing to discuss reparations, and offer our regrets for previous hostile contacts. Our...perspective on matters was quite different at that time. Inefficient, ultimately self-defeating, and unfortunately tragic for those who came into contact with the Collective."
Gunn came to a decision. "You will have to wait while I contact my superiors," he told them, giving them the benefit of the doubt. They would be vulnerable, waiting in front of a Borg vessel, but something told him it was worth the risk.
T'Kilk nodded. "That is expected. We will wait at this position until we hear from you." The communication cut out immediately.
"Sir," said Ensos, "do you really think you can trust that the Borg have changed? My people suffered greatly during their incursions into our space."
"As did the Federation," commented Tiberius. Ensign Jaxl at the helm simply nodded in agreement. "It took many years to recover from the battle of Wolf 359, and it was only through the actions of the Enterprise under Captain Picard that we prevented the Borg from altering our timeline to one of Borg conquest," added the android.
Gunn regarded his command crew. Unlike some ships, he expected his officers to raise questions like this, much like the aforementioned Picard. "That's why I'm kicking this upstairs to the Admiralty. They mentioned Varga, though, which gives them credibility."
"Who or what is Varga?" asked Commander Davis.
"You've heard of the Family?" asked Gunn. Naturally, all of the officers present nodded. Even if most of them hadn't met the lizards personally, nearly everybody in Starfleet had heard the stories about them, and knew how much Federation technology owed to their largess. "Varga is part of that group...but more than just a member. I think of him as being similar in power levels, and in some ways attitude, to the Q."
"Captain," said Tiberius, "when I add together the known stories of the Family with our recorded interactions with the Q, the resulting impression I get is...disquieting."
"Which is why we shouldn't take anything about this situation for granted. I'll be in my ready room, talking to Starfleet headquarters. Mister Davis, you have the bridge," ordered Gunn as he got up and began to walk toward the captain's room at the back of the deck. Times were about to get interesting.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Many, many, MANY years later...from a certain point of view...
Ayelborne looked down on the beings gathered before him. The Organian Council of Elders was here to pass judgement. The spokesperson for the accused, a vile little creature named Proctor Tild, raged in front of them. "You have NO right to pass judgement on us!"
"Do you have any idea," replied Elder Trefayne, "how much effort we had to spend nullifying your petulant attempt at vengeance?"
"That is an internal matter of the Cereeshian Hierarchy!" blustered Tild.
Ayelborne scoffed. "You effectively declared war on the inhabitants of two entire galaxies. We Organians happen to live in one of those galaxies in our corporeal form."
"Not to mention," continued Trefayne, "some of the other beings you've irritated. You're lucky the Q Continuum is leaving this to us. They would have just handed your entire civilization over to Negilum." The slightly insane ascended being would have been more than happy to experiment until he found the limits of Cereeshian immortality.
Elder Claymare interrupted Tild before he could protest again, silencing him. "I think it clear," said Claymare, "that this society is not ready for a peaceful incorporeal coexistence. Are we all in agreement?"
The other four members of the Council of Elders all raised their hands in agreement. As soon as a decision was made, the defendants vanished. They would appear back on their original homeworld, banished from the higher realms and unable to ascend again without the agreement of their superiors. That is, all of the defendants vanished save one being.
Prosul looked at the Council of Elders, and a sense of finality hit him. "Am I to be punished separately for the creation of the weapon that attacked your galaxy?"
"That had been considered," answered Ayelborne. "However, holding one conspirator guilty for the whole would be exceedingly unfair, especially when their involvement was tinged with grief bordering on madness."
"We Organians dislike being needlessly cruel," added Trefayne.
"You are still here because one of the Q made an unusual request of us," continued Claymare. "We see no reason not to grant that request."
Prosul began to ask what they meant, when he disappeared in a flash. He found himself lying curled up on a cold metal floor, in a body seemingly identical to the one he had had prior to ascending. He could tell the floor was both cold and metal because he also happened to be naked and quite uncomfortable. The light around him was too bright as well, brighter than normal for his homeworld. He looked around, blinking, trying to clear his vision.
"Father?" asked a hauntingly familiar voice.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw the image of his daughter. "Kiva?" She was standing before him, wearing strange clothes and in an unfamiliar place, but it was definitely her.
Saurial watched as the girl ran to her father, embracing him. She couldn't help but smile at the reunion. There was a brief flash. Q appeared for just a moment, said, "You're welcome," with a smirk, and then disappeared again.
Kasidy lined the SS Xhosa up with the wormhole entrance. She put her hand on her stomach, feeling the bump there. This would be her last trip through the wormhole before her pregnancy came to term. Even going now was risky. The war hadn't been over for long, and there was still some anti-Federation sentiment in the Gamma Quadrant. Even those species that weren't directly controlled by the Founders didn't appreciate the disruptive impact of a galactic war. When a cargo run from Bajor had come up for bid, however, she couldn't resist the temptation. Benjamin was supposed to be with the Prophets, and going through the wormhole was the closest she could get to visiting him.
Unfortunately for her, the passage through to the Gamma Quadrant had happened without anything unusual happening. There were no visions, visitations, or odd phenomena. Hell, even the trade delivery had been utterly mundane on the other side. Now, coming back, this was her last chance for something to happen. Benjamin had said he would be back...but he had been maddeningly vague as to the timing.
The wormhole opened like a flower in front of her, and she guided the ship into the opening. The wave-forms of energy lining the wormhole were as beautiful as always, but she was starting to lose hope that this trip would be any different. That was when there was a flash of light, and a voice said from behind her, "Are you looking for me?"
She turned to see her husband, looking much like when he had come to see her after his disappearance. "Always," she replied.
He stepped up to her, and reached out put his hand on her stomach. "She's growing bigger."
Kasidy per her head on his shoulder. "She is. This was my last chance for a while to go through the wormhole."
"Well, that won't be necessary anymore," he said into her hair.
She pushed back enough to look him in the eye. "What do you mean?" she asked, concerned.
"Chief O'Brien managed to stumble upon some friends...friends who had a surprising ability to make large-scale changes to our galaxy. The Prophets were...uncomfortable around them, but they appreciate the results," explained Sisko. "One of those results is that the future paths have shifted, which makes my involvement less necessary."
"They're letting you go?" she asked hopefully.
He frowned. "Not entirely. I can't guarantee they won't call on me again...but in the short term, I can return."
"When?"
"Look out the window," he prompted.
It was then that Kasidy noticed that they were clear of the wormhole and back in the Alpha Quadrant. More pressingly, the communications console was flashing at her as Deep Space Nine Operations tried to contact her. She rushed over and triggered the console. "DS9, this is Captain Yates of the Xhosa."
"Captain, are you all right? You haven't been responding to hails." said the voice from Operations.
"I'm fine, DS9...but I think I need to dock and speak with Colonel Kira," she said, looking back at where her husband was watching her with a fond look.
"Kasidy, this is Colonel Kira," said a different, familiar voice. "Did something happen on the other side of the wormhole? Is it the Dominion?"
"No...Nerys...Benjamin's come home again," she replied.
"Captain Sisko?" prompted the Bajoran woman.
The man in question stepped closer to the microphone. "This is he, Colonel. I expect we'll have an interesting debriefing."
There was a pause, then Kira said, "I expect so. It's good to hear your voice, sir."
Sisko smiled as he looked lovingly at his wife. "It's good to be back."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Scotty frowned down at the tablets in front of him. That idiot Kanten had made a total mess of Starfleet starship design. He seemed to completely misunderstand Starfleet's Charter in favor of his own pet theories, and the net result was that the latest designs were a complete mess of mismatched requirements and needless reliance on out-dated technology for the sake of "backwards compatibility." If the Dominion War and the Borg invasion hadn't happened, then Starfleet would be populated almost entirely with sub-par vessels.
"Admiral Scott?" said a voice off to his left. He turned and saw his assistant, Lal, coming to him with another stack of tablets.
He smiled and said, "Lass, I've told you that you can call me 'Scotty.' I hear 'Admiral Scott', and I start looking over me shoulder and getting ready to salute."
"You have to get used to your new rank sooner or later, Admiral," she replied.
He scoffed. "I would have refused to come out of retirement if I had known they planned on promoting me."
She laughed good naturedly. "I don't think I believe that."
He peered at her. "You're sharper than your da, then." Data had seemed like a good man, but far too literal at times.
"You've met father?" she asked.
"Oh aye," he said. "He was aboard the Enterprise when they rescued me from a sticky situation."
"After the Jenolan accident. I didn't know that you and father had had a chance to speak," she clarified.
"He poured me a glass of Aldebaran Whiskey and we talked for a bit," he reminisced. Of course, neither of them had known what was actually in the bottle when the drink was poured...just that it was strongly alcoholic. "What are those?" he said, pointing to the stack of tablets.
Lal handed the stack to him. "They're the initial results of the teams going through the ship that Miles O'Brien brought back from the Family."
Scotty set them down on the table and looked at the first one. "Those Lizards have got some good tech. Commander Watkins' report reads like he's ready to burst into song over their shielding systems."
"Neither of us would be here without them, Admiral," agreed Lal. They had helped her father fix the flaw in her positronic matrix, and their healing symbiotes were why Montgomery Scott was fit for active duty again.
"I can't argue with that." He began looking at the various tablets, looking at entries on weapons systems, drive systems, life support, matter transporters, and some reports on the hull material and spatial folding in the interiors that seemed to spend a lot of time describing the "what" and very little time explaining the "how." The means by which the Family stabilized electron degenerate matter was still a mystery, as was the apparently stable spatial warping that made the ship larger on the inside. "It's too bad we don't have one of them here to explain some of this to our officers."
"I can ask," said Lal.
Scotty stared at her for a moment, puzzled. "Ask who?"
"Whoever answers the call," she replied. She pulled a communication device out of her pocket, pressed one of the buttons on the front, then put it to her ear and listened for a response. "Hello, Metis, this is Lal...I'm doing well, it's not an emergency. Father is fine, too. I spoke to him yesterday...I'm working with Admiral Scott at the Starship Design Bureau, and he wanted to know if somebody could come and explain some of the things they found out about the Skipper you gave them." There was a longer pause. "All right. I'll let him know." She disconnected the call, and then said to Scotty, "Metis said she can come by whenever, but she suggested that you get together a bunch of your scientists and engineers so that she can talk to them all at once."
It took a few moments for Scotty to close his mouth. When he did, he said, "You're a bit of a miracle worker, aren't you?"
"I'm learning from the best," she answered.
Scotty just laughed.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Agent Dulmur of the Department of Temporal Investigations was reviewing files. The closed-door prosecutions of the active members of Section 31 had shaken loose a truly astonishing number of accounts of temporal displacements, many (though not all) involving the mirror universe of the Terran Empire. It was a little frustrating, because it highlighted just how much their department had been...well, manipulated by Section 31. The accounts did clarify some long-standing mysteries, however, like what really happened to the USS Discovery.
His partner, Agent Lucsly, came into his office and dropped a leather-bound book on his desk.
"What's that?" asked Dulmur.
"It's a book that somebody left on my desk. Look at the title," replied the agent.
Dulmur bent down, then reached over and turned the book around so that he could read the title right-side-up. It title read, Family Mathematics for Temporal Displacement: An Introductory Guide and Cautionary Tract. The book looked from the side to be less than a hundred pages long. "Is this a joke?" he asked his partner.
Lucsly shook his head. "I thought so at first, but then I began to read it. The title is an accurate description of the contents...though it starts to get really complicated around chapter ten." At Dulmur's skeptical look, he clarified, "The book actually has more than three-thousand pages. They seem to fold into some kind of extra-dimensional storage built into the cover." Lucsly held out a piece of paper. "This note came with the book."
Dulmur took the note. It said:
| Agents of the DTI, We recently made some changes to your galaxy that should significantly lower the frequency of time travel incidents, in addition to fixing some other problems with your space-time continuum. Some of that may be a little confusing, so please accept this book. It should explain some of what you'll be seeing from now on. Varga and the Family P.S.: Enjoy the vids! |
"What vids?" asked Dulmur.
Lucsly frowned. "There was a tablet pre-loaded with a 2D entertainment vid set in the twentieth century called The X-Files. I checked the archives, and we don't have any record of the show."
Dulmur considered the matter. "It's probably from an alternate reality. The Family are also the point of origin for that new ship that Starfleet R&D is examining. The ship has a wormhole drive."
His partner actually looked shocked at that. "Do we have agents involved in that investigation?"
"Assistant Director Merfoll is handling it himself," confirmed Dulmur. "Why don't you focus on these gifts while I finish off the Section 31 files. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's all related."
Lucsly shrugged. "All right. I'm sure the truth is out there somewhere. I'll let you know what I find."
Dulmur turned back to his work as his partner left. Next up was a file on a Starfleet officer named Philippa Georgiou. This was likely to take a while...and despite the commonly made joke, even the DTI didn't have infinite time.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Years later...
Miles piloted the shuttle over toward the USS McKinley. He glanced over at his daughter. "Are you sure you don't want to reconsider the Academy?"
The teen-aged Molly rolled her eyes again. "Yes, Papa. You know studying with Kisao on Vulcan is an amazing opportunity." The man was a legend among biologists in the Federation, and Molly's application was one of only four picked to work with him this year.
"You could study botany at the Academy, too, is all I'm saying," replied Miles.
"And I still can. It's not like they won't let me in after I finish this internship...IF I decide I want to..." she said insistently, as she had the last five times they had had this conversation.
"I'm just saying...Starfleet's done well by me," he replied quietly. He knew that the real reason for harping on this subject was that he was going to miss her, but he wasn't quite sure how to say that without sounding pathetic.
She paused and looked at him in a way that reminded him of how Keiko looked at him when she thought he was being stubborn for no reason. "It's been good and it hasn't...and besides, Yoshi is almost certainly going to head straight to the Academy when he's old enough." Her younger brother was every bit the engineering fanatic that their father was, if a bit more into the theory.
O'Brien regarded his oldest child. "You know it's kind of creepy when you look at me like that, like you're channeling your mother."
Molly giggled. "You know she makes the same comparison about you when I'm being stubborn."
"That's fair," he said. "Well, if you do get done with your internship and you're still not ready for the Academy, I was talking to Ianthe the other day, and she was saying they've got this guy in the Bioshapers' Guild whose really good with plants. She mentioned it because of your mother, but I could ask her if they do internships." The guy had had kind of a weird name for a human, but he trusted the Family.
Now Molly looked stunned. "Really? You would do that?"
"Of course I would! It's not like I don't want you to be successful, and you know the Bioshapers can do things that make Federation botanists' thumbs green with envy," he said with a grin at his own pun.
"That was bad, Papa," she said with a combined wince and grin. "Thank you, though."
Miles smiled. "Nothing's too good for you."
Molly smiled back, understanding him. "I love you too, Papa...and of course it has nothing to do with the fact staying with the Family makes it easy to come home on the weekends."
"Hadn't crossed my mind," said Miles innocently as he turned over shuttle control to the McKinley.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Even more years later...
The Operations Officer was a Soong-type android named Tiberius. He had chosen the name because he was interested in Federation history, and his parents had been of the opinion that children should be able to have full control over their identity. He also chose a completely human skin tone, though his eyes shared the golden look of his kind's progenitor, Data. Tiberius was on duty when the sensors detected an incoming vessel. "Captain, I'm reading a vessel of unknown type. Some of the technology reads as Borg, but the configuration isn't the typical geometric layout."
"Yellow alert," ordered the captain. "We haven't heard anything from the Borg in years. Are they powering weapons?"
Tiberius shook his head and said, "Not according to our sensors."
Lieutenant Ensos, their Romulan tactical officer, opined, "Captain, our shields should be relatively impervious to Borg weapons technology."
Commander Davis, the human First Officer, added, "That's assuming they haven't advanced. The Borg were always strong in the area of adaptation."
"We're being hailed," said Tiberius, cutting off additional debate.
"On screen," said the captain. An image appeared of a command center that appeared to be a mix of technologies, though the man sitting in the central command chair had a greenish cast to his skin and pointed ears. He also had clearly visible Borg implants. After a moment of silence, the captain said, "I'm Captain Charles Gunn of the Federation starship Cousteau. Please identify yourself."
"I am T'Kilk of Borg," said the man on the screen.
"You're Vulcan?" interjected Ensos in a surprised voice.
The man nodded. "I am. I also am of Borg."
Charles paused for a moment. This was not an expected response. Starfleet doctrine was to treat the Borg as implicitly hostile. Technically, he should have gone straight to red alert, but Gunn had a sense for the weird that had been honed by growing up fighting vampires in Los Angeles in another dimension. It sometimes frustrated his superiors, but it often made him a better captain when the unusual cropped up, like now. "Are you saying that you still consider yourself an individual?" he asked.
"I do," agreed T'Kilk, "but I am also a part of the Collective. Much has changed in the Collective since our last encounters with Starfleet."
"Changed how...and what prompted those changes?" asked Captain Gunn.
"That is a long story," replied the Vulcan Borg. "It started years ago, when the Collective was visited by a reptilian creature named Varga."
"That explains some things..." muttered Gunn. Davis looked questioningly at him, but he waved him off until later. "Why have you reached out to us now?" he asked the Borg.
"We have former members of the Collective who wish to be returned to the Federation. We also wish to open diplomatic talks in order to prevent any future incidents between the Collective and the Federation." The man's delivery was unemotional...but it was hard to tell if that was because he was Vulcan or because he was Borg.
"You know that there are many people in Starfleet who view the Borg as an enemy and have suffered at your hands?" asked Gunn, wanting to get the biggest issue out in the open first. It wasn't the most diplomatic thing to say, but then even the Academy hadn't been able to cure Gunn of a certain blunt directness.
The mouth of the Borg on screen appeared to twitch upward into the shade of a smile. "We are aware. We are willing to discuss reparations, and offer our regrets for previous hostile contacts. Our...perspective on matters was quite different at that time. Inefficient, ultimately self-defeating, and unfortunately tragic for those who came into contact with the Collective."
Gunn came to a decision. "You will have to wait while I contact my superiors," he told them, giving them the benefit of the doubt. They would be vulnerable, waiting in front of a Borg vessel, but something told him it was worth the risk.
T'Kilk nodded. "That is expected. We will wait at this position until we hear from you." The communication cut out immediately.
"Sir," said Ensos, "do you really think you can trust that the Borg have changed? My people suffered greatly during their incursions into our space."
"As did the Federation," commented Tiberius. Ensign Jaxl at the helm simply nodded in agreement. "It took many years to recover from the battle of Wolf 359, and it was only through the actions of the Enterprise under Captain Picard that we prevented the Borg from altering our timeline to one of Borg conquest," added the android.
Gunn regarded his command crew. Unlike some ships, he expected his officers to raise questions like this, much like the aforementioned Picard. "That's why I'm kicking this upstairs to the Admiralty. They mentioned Varga, though, which gives them credibility."
"Who or what is Varga?" asked Commander Davis.
"You've heard of the Family?" asked Gunn. Naturally, all of the officers present nodded. Even if most of them hadn't met the lizards personally, nearly everybody in Starfleet had heard the stories about them, and knew how much Federation technology owed to their largess. "Varga is part of that group...but more than just a member. I think of him as being similar in power levels, and in some ways attitude, to the Q."
"Captain," said Tiberius, "when I add together the known stories of the Family with our recorded interactions with the Q, the resulting impression I get is...disquieting."
"Which is why we shouldn't take anything about this situation for granted. I'll be in my ready room, talking to Starfleet headquarters. Mister Davis, you have the bridge," ordered Gunn as he got up and began to walk toward the captain's room at the back of the deck. Times were about to get interesting.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Many, many, MANY years later...from a certain point of view...
Ayelborne looked down on the beings gathered before him. The Organian Council of Elders was here to pass judgement. The spokesperson for the accused, a vile little creature named Proctor Tild, raged in front of them. "You have NO right to pass judgement on us!"
"Do you have any idea," replied Elder Trefayne, "how much effort we had to spend nullifying your petulant attempt at vengeance?"
"That is an internal matter of the Cereeshian Hierarchy!" blustered Tild.
Ayelborne scoffed. "You effectively declared war on the inhabitants of two entire galaxies. We Organians happen to live in one of those galaxies in our corporeal form."
"Not to mention," continued Trefayne, "some of the other beings you've irritated. You're lucky the Q Continuum is leaving this to us. They would have just handed your entire civilization over to Negilum." The slightly insane ascended being would have been more than happy to experiment until he found the limits of Cereeshian immortality.
Elder Claymare interrupted Tild before he could protest again, silencing him. "I think it clear," said Claymare, "that this society is not ready for a peaceful incorporeal coexistence. Are we all in agreement?"
The other four members of the Council of Elders all raised their hands in agreement. As soon as a decision was made, the defendants vanished. They would appear back on their original homeworld, banished from the higher realms and unable to ascend again without the agreement of their superiors. That is, all of the defendants vanished save one being.
Prosul looked at the Council of Elders, and a sense of finality hit him. "Am I to be punished separately for the creation of the weapon that attacked your galaxy?"
"That had been considered," answered Ayelborne. "However, holding one conspirator guilty for the whole would be exceedingly unfair, especially when their involvement was tinged with grief bordering on madness."
"We Organians dislike being needlessly cruel," added Trefayne.
"You are still here because one of the Q made an unusual request of us," continued Claymare. "We see no reason not to grant that request."
Prosul began to ask what they meant, when he disappeared in a flash. He found himself lying curled up on a cold metal floor, in a body seemingly identical to the one he had had prior to ascending. He could tell the floor was both cold and metal because he also happened to be naked and quite uncomfortable. The light around him was too bright as well, brighter than normal for his homeworld. He looked around, blinking, trying to clear his vision.
"Father?" asked a hauntingly familiar voice.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw the image of his daughter. "Kiva?" She was standing before him, wearing strange clothes and in an unfamiliar place, but it was definitely her.
Saurial watched as the girl ran to her father, embracing him. She couldn't help but smile at the reunion. There was a brief flash. Q appeared for just a moment, said, "You're welcome," with a smirk, and then disappeared again.
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The Organian Council of Elders
- Location
- Canada
I always enjoy a Trek chapter.
which the Family
looking forward to more Epilogue.
which the Family
looking forward to more Epilogue.
Jonn Wolfe
(Verified Sarcastic) (Not a Wolf)
- Location
- Beyond Sanity Since 1971
That was nice.
The wormhole scene made me wonder something... If any of the Parahumans went through it, would their shards be going through it in a sideways dimension from them? Seems like that would make the Prophets nauseous...
The wormhole scene made me wonder something... If any of the Parahumans went through it, would their shards be going through it in a sideways dimension from them? Seems like that would make the Prophets nauseous...
I saw the same typo, then decided it was to reflect Scotty's speech patterns.
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- Location
- Maryland
Agents Dulmur and Lucsly?
"I'm sure the truth is out there somewhere."
By the way, those were the actual names of the DTI agents that spoke with the DS9 crew after they went back in time to Kirk's Enterprise, and yes, it was a deliberate reference.
- Location
- Maryland
Nope. Just my fumble-fingered typing.
- Location
- Bosnia
Longbottom perhaps?
JoshuaSweetvale
Insectovore
- Location
- NL, 65 Million Years Ago
That was nice.
The wormhole scene made me wonder something... If any of the Parahumans went through it, would their shards be going through it in a sideways dimension from them? Seems like that would make the Prophets nauseous...
Entities are multiversal travelers by nature. If they haven't they haven't anchored their powers to the user by instinct alone I'd be very surprised.
How that would affect the Prophets? No idea. It'd sure be interesting to them.
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- Location
- Seattle, Washington, USA
On the one hand, this has scary implications. On the other, given how nasty the Skrull government can be, a pacifist Skrull who efuses orders to infiltrate other species would also be considered a criminal by other Skrulls.
And arguably prevented the founding of he Terran Empire.
- Location
- Maryland
I can say that the intent is that the agent in question is, "the orc other orcs fear," not a pacifist with bad PR.
That would be a hard argument to win, because even the TV series vary in describing the point of divergence, and the novels and comics are all over the place. In Enterprise, Archer claims the Empire has existed for centuries, so that pre-dates first contact. On the other hand, time travel is totally a thing in the Trek-verse, so who knows? The Empire might have more than one founding date, but it would take a being like Q to figure it out.
One of the books did have Picard reading a copy of Merchant of Venice, and finding that in the mirror play, Shylock actually takes his owed pound of flesh, suggesting a much earlier point of divergence than meeting the Vulcans. I kind of like that one, personally, though the book came out prior to the DS9 episodes.
- Location
- Maryland
No...at least not yet...
- Location
- spokane wa
The book was Dark Mirror and the oldest change Picard found was in Homer's (c.750 BC) - The Iliad
the death of Hector and his father asking for his body. In our and Star Trek's universe the Greeks gave the body back to the city of Troy, in the Mirror universe they desecrated it.
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- Location
- Seattle, Washington, USA
Not hard to make the argument at all. Cochrane was a greedy, cynical bastard. His people weren't any different. How would they react to an alien landing without being prepped for it by Picard and company? Storming the ship and enslaving the crew aren't outside the realm of possibility.
- Location
- Canada
And a drunk. This looks plausible as if he had just woken up from celebrating breaking the Warp barrier and found there was no alcohol left for Hair of the Dog. Hung over human looking for Booze does not a diplomat make.