So You Picked Me, The Future Captain Of The Enterprise, And Brought Me Back Through Time To Help Prevent Her Destruction Because You Thought I'd Be More Helpful Than, Say, Somebody You Could Find For The Job Who's Already In This Time Period?
No. Not . . . Really. But To Save Time, Please First Listen, Then Question. Now The Last 5 Years, Or The Next 5, Depending, Saw Humanity Begin An Almost Inexplicable Downward Spiral. Even Accounting For The Beta 5 Snobbery And Its Low Regard For The Resilience Of "Lesser Civilizations," Our Computer Projections For Earth Along This Future Timeline Look Rather Grim. There's A Growing Dissatisfaction With Starfleet And The Federation Because Of Its Recent Multiple Failures, Many Of Which Stem From The Loss Of The Enterprise. After That Tragic Loss, There Began A New, Strong, And Growing Trend Back Toward Isolationism. Most Long Term Projections From There Foresee Humanity Eventually Losing Its Warp Capability Entirely, Without Which, The Risk Of Complete Subjugation Or Total Destruction In This Region Of The Quadrant Becomes Overwhelmingly High.
Without StarFleet, Or Worse, Without Federation Membership, I'd Have To Concur.
So I Sure Won't Turn Down Your Assistance, Captain. In Fact, I Almost Couldn't Believe My Luck When I Saw You Standing There Next To The Ship's Second Officer. However, Technically You're Presence Here Is More Of A Side Effect Of Our Mission Than A Deliberate, Calculated Choice.
Explain.
Isis Can Travel Through Time At Most A Few Decades To Or Fro By Herself. It's A Natural Ability Of Her Race, Though Mostly She's Limited To Only Observing Events. But To Take A Temporally Challenged Individual Like You Or Me Through Time For Any Appreciable Interval, She Must First . . . Warp Time Around A Future Anchor Point - Someone She Has Already Marked - Establishing A Link To An Anchor Point In The Present - In This Case, Me In 2250. This Creates A Temporal . . . Closed Loop Under . . . Tension. I Guess That Tension Is A Form Of Temporal Potential Energy. To Be Perfectly Honest, I Don't Really Fully Appreciate The Mechanics Of It All, But In Order To Garner Sufficient Temporal Potential Energy To Do The Job Of Pushing Me Back 5 Years From 2250 To 2245, And For A Duration Sufficient For The Mission, This Required Finding A Temporal Anchor 3, 4, maybe 5 Times Farther Along In Any Adjacent Time Stream Than Whatever Distance Or Interval We Needed To Travel Back In Time.
A Temporal Anchor? Me?
Yes, And For Me To Go Back 5 Years And Have Time For The Mission, Isis Had To Find A Future Anchor 15, 20, Maybe 25 Years From 2250. She Might Be Able To Reach A Little Farther Than That, But The Danger Is So Great, The Most Likely Result Would Almost Certainly Be Death. By Happenstance, She Found You, So She Must Have Marked You At Some Point, Probably When We First Met You In 1968.
Alright, I'm Here More By Chance Than Design, And What You're Doing Is Dangerous.
Extremely. Now Since You Were One Of Her Limited Number Of Markers In Time, And Close Enough To 2250 As Well As Close Enough To Earth, She Found You. By Looping Around Me And Then You, Enough Temporal Tension Is Within The Loop To Stretch Me Back From 2250 To 2245, As Well As You From Sometime Past 2268, To Now.
Please Limit Anything You Tell Me About You're Future. It's Simply Much Better All Around That I Don't Know Too Many Future Details.
You Do Know All Of That Doesn't Make A Lick Of Sense, Right?
I Know It's Hard To Wrap Your Head Around It Sometimes, But If It Helps, Think Of It As All Three Of Us In A Closed Time Loop Of Potential Temporal Energy That Allows A Traveler Controlling The Loop To Utilize That Potential To Slide Anchors . . . "Back And Forth" . . . Along The Timeline And Into Various . . .
Hyper Topological Quantum . . . Configurations. The Farther The Anchors Are Initially Apart In Time, The Greater The Interval The Anchors Can Traverse, Both Forwards Or Backwards In Time From The Present - Isis's Present - But Not Greater Than The Initial Interval Between The Anchors. But The Farther We Go, The Greater The Danger, The Higher The Cost In Energy, The Shorter The Duration. Depending On Distance And Duration Spent Away From the Present Anchor, The Energy Will Be Depleted From The Temporal Loop At A Varying Rate Until It Is Voluntarily Released, Or Unexpectedly Snaps.
A Deliberate Release Is Best - That's Safer. But If It Breaks, Hopefully All The Travelers Will Still Safely Return To When They Started - If Not Always Exactly Where They Started. That's Assuming They Survive. If Not, The Time Stream Will Tear Their Remains Asunder And Stretch Their Constituent Particles Across The Temporal Void, Losing Them In The Corridors Of Time And Space, Perhaps Causing Them To Even Disappear From What You'd Call History, Which Is Kind Of Like A Big Ball Of
Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey, Stretchy-Fetchy . . . Stuff. Do You Understand All That?
What? Oh, I'm Sorry. I'm Still Marveling At That Last Bit Of Technical Jargon. But Since It Appears To Be Working, I'll Take Your Word For It. So, You Can Choose To Move To Any Time In This Finite Loop When You . . .
No, No, No. Not Me. Isis. She's The Real Time Traveler - Not Me. We Might Initially Agree When I Need To Be Somewhere And She Can Arrange It, But She Controls Our Subsequent Movements In Time. She Constantly Positions And Repositions Herself And Her Anchors As Time Shifts And Flows About Us. Some Configurations Are More Favorable And Burn Less Energy. In A Loop, We Two On Either Side Of An Anchor Point Act As Counter Weights To Each Other, So We're Hanging Together Since That Often Is One Of The More Favorable Configurations. Some Other Configurations Are Not And Could Disastrously Deplete The Loop's Entire Potential. Doing This Is Always Difficult And Dangerous, With The Fluidity Of Unexpected Time Currents And Unforeseen Events, Against All Of Which She Must Maintain Constant Vigilance. Even Right Now She's Struggling To Allow Us Both To Remain Here As Long As She Can, So We Should Hurry.
You Mentioned Duration? How Long Do We Have?
Typically, Not Very Long. But The Enterprise Is Scheduled To Break Orbit In Six Hours, So Whatever Happens Will Occur Before Then. Isis Can Hold Our Position At Least That Long, But We Should Still Hurry. The Sooner We're Done, The More Likely Our Survival And Safe Return.
That's Cutting It Close. And It Could Take Much Longer Than Six Hours To Search This Entire Ship By Ourselves.
We Can't Really Enlist Additional Help Without Altering The Timeline, So It's Do Or Die, Captain, Literally. If We Fail To Restore Time To Its Original Shape Here And Now, Then We're Probably Dead Men. And A Dead Cat. One Way Or The Other, I'm Sure Doctor Schrödinger Would Agree. But For What It's Worth, Though I'm Very Sorry You Were Nonconsensually Volunteered For This Dangerous Mission, Now That You're Here, I'm Very Glad To Have You On The Team. From What I've Learned Since Last We Met, Starship Captains Are Very Capable People. I Couldn't Ask For Better.
Well That's Just . . . Wonderful. Once Again I'm Roped Into A Dangerous Time Travel Mission Without So Much As A By-Your Leave, Which Is Just . . .Typical. And I Still Haven't Had My Morning Coffee.
