Chapter 3 – We Few, We Happy Few
A few hours later, Jack and his officers were gathered around the table in the main conference room on deck one. They had just finished discussing their arrival at Yed Post IV, and how shore leave would be handled. Jack then turned to everyone.
“One of the officers at this table is going to be leaving us,” Jack said, turning to Melissa. “Commander Vargas has accepted an assignment as executive officer of the Morrison.”
Melissa was greeted by applause from those at the table.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “I'm going to miss you all.” Her eyes focused on Jack. “This ship has been my home for the last six years and it's going to be hard to leave, but I'm excited by this new adventure in my life.”
“You'll be great,” Loftus said. “If you need any pointers on how to deal with a headstrong captain,” she said, turning to Jack with a grin. “Just let me know.”
“Who's the CO?” Nakano asked.
“Isn't it Roland Ellis?” Kristen Bishop asked.
Melissa nodded. “You know him?”
“Oh yeah,” Bishop replied with a smile. “He's tough, but a good guy. You'll have fun on his ship.”
Melissa grinned.
“We should celebrate,” Doctor Taylor Preston said. Then he smiled. “Doctor's orders.”
Chuckles erupted from around the table.
“I guess we have no choice,” Jack said. “I'm not about to risk being relieved of my command for disregarding my chief medical officer's order.”
More laughter.
Jack's sense of dread at the thought of Melissa leaving was tempered by the camaraderie among his crew. He'd spent the last few years hoping they would bond into a real crew, and was happy to see if had finally happened.
***
Mei-Wan Lau looked at the clock next to her bed for the fourth time. It was still just a few minutes after two... in the morning.
She'd never had trouble sleeping on the Athena before. She couldn't imagine what was causing the difficulty this time. Sure, she was worried about the presentation her team was giving on Yed Post IV. Despite the galactic impact the presentation might have, she didn’t think that was the source of her anxiety. No, she had long ago reconciled herself to revealing the truth about the Ancient Progenitors.
She took a long breath, and decided she'd walk around for a bit to see if that might help her to wind down.
Mei-Wan stepped out of her quarters and began to stroll down the corridor. The ship was quiet except for the low throbbing of its engines. The thought of that led her to the pilot's section where she found Harold Pabodie checking various controls,
“Still up?” she asked.
He spun about and smiled. “Someone has to keep watch while the rest of you sleep.”
“I think the computer can do that,” she said, leaning against one of the other five seats in the large canopied forward section of the ship.
“The computer doesn't care about all of you the way I do,” he said, returning to his controls.
“No, it doesn't,” she said, glad that he was up. “Mind if I join you for a bit?”
“Not at all.”
Mei-Wan slid into the chair across from him.
“Why you up?”
“Anxious... I think.”
“About what?” he asked.
“That's the part I can't figure out.”
He turned back to her slowly. “How can you be anxious about something if you don't know what it is?” he asked. “Don't you have to know?”
“I used to think that.”
“A good drink would help.”
She laughed. “Don't let Nick hear you say that. He's got a thing about me self-medicating.”
“Yeah, he gave me a long lecture on that subject months ago.”
“That ear piece you gave me at the party?”
Harold nodded. “There were threats of bodily harm and damage to my baseball card collection.”
“You collect... baseball cards?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But only vintage stuff that's pre-twenty-first century.”
“No wonder you signed up for an archaeological team,” she said with chuckle.
“Unfortunately, nearly all of it is still within Earth's solar system,” he said. “Not much chance of finding any this far out, or in the Kel-j'na region.”
“Why did you take this job?”
He smiled. “I saw your talk on Yed Post six years ago, and it really intrigued me. When I heard you were looking for a physicist and a pilot, I knew I could do both, so I signed up.”
“I'm glad,” Mei-Wan said. “You're a real asset to this... family.”
He smiled. “That's why I've stayed... because it is a family.”
After a few minutes more chit chat with Harold, Mei-Wan returned to wandering the corridors of the Athena. Aside from the engines, it was quiet, something she hadn't really gravitated towards in the past, but she found she liked it here. Maybe this is home. But that teaching position at the Academy sounded so good. It would give her and Dani a chance to start a more stable life. However, this current life certainly had its attractions. Making this choice was going to require a lot of thought. Saselo wouldn’t wait forever. She’d eventually have to give him her decision.
She walked past one of the labs and found the door open, and Dani's blue form leaning over a display.
“Hey,” Mei-Wan said, walking into the lab. “I missed you.”
“Sorry,” Dani said, turning to Mei-Wan. “I was intrigued by something I found in the data we had discovered on Allatu Five-C and wanted to investigate.”
“You don't need sleep, do you?” Mei-Wan asked, leaning against a counter full of archaeological items they'd found on a world whose name she couldn't remember at the moment.
“Need? No.” Dani's white eyes stared at her. “But I do enjoy watching you sleep.”
“Why?”
“Your dreams seep out of your mind. I catch glimpses from time to time. Again, I am intrigued.”
Mei-Wan shook her head. “My dreams are usually a mess.”
“There are recurrent themes I have observed,” Dani said.
“Oh?”
“Of course, Jack McCall.”
“Of course,” Mei-Wan replied, rolling her eyes.
“And, more recently, Todd Nakano.”
“Meeting the Todd of this timeline several weeks ago was unnerving.”
“Why so?” Dani asked.
“He's not the Todd I knew, the one who loved me.”
“Is he that different?”
“No,” Mei-Wan said with a smile. “But he doesn't know me at all.”
“And that is painful.”
“Yes.” Mei-Wan looked down. “To love him so much, and to see a complete lack of recognition in his eyes hurts more than I had thought it might.”
“Why don't you tell him?” Dani asked.
“About meeting him in a different timeline?”
“Yes.”
“I can't,” Mei-Wan said. “We have rules about time travel, specifically about not talking about it.”
“But you have had interactions with a variety of versions of Jack McCall,” Dani said. “I assume he knows something of this.”
“Not really.” Mei-Wan remembered something Dani had told her before. “You said your people are aware when the timeline shifts.”
“It is an odd experience,” Dani said. “At the time it happens, I am not fully aware of what is happening. It isn't until it is over that I begin to understand.”
“Have you ever interacted with a different version of me?”
Dani stepped away from the display she was working at, and paced about the room for a minute. “I'm not sure I should mention this.”
“Why not?”
“It was extremely odd,” Dani said. “I felt myself drawn to seek you out even though in that timeline we had never met. It was nearly a full year before we first met here.”
“Now I'm the one who is intrigued.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” Mei-Wan smiled wide. The idea of hearing of someone else's experience in another timeline was more than curiosity. She always held onto the thought she was imagining all of it, that she was suffering from some odd sort of mental illness. To hear Dani talk about this would help ground her own experiences.
“I had a different form in that timeline,” Dani began. “It was a humanoid male body, and I was a pale white color instead, not blue. I do not retain enough memory of it to know why. And I remember traveling to Earth to seek you out. I remember there was no Federation. It is possible that the me of that timeline was aware of a temporal shift, and had located you as the focus of it.”
“That does trouble me,” Mei-Wan said. “Why would I be the focus of a timeline shift.”
“Again, I don't remember much of the thoughts of the me of that timeline,” Dani said. “How much do you remember of the timeline shifts?”
“I remember almost all that happens, and parts of the memories of the other Mei-Wans.”
“That is extraordinary,” Dani said. She picked up a tricorder and activated it toward Mei-Wan.
“What are you doing?”
“Remembering that much detail is rare,” Dani said. “We have communicated with many other species about their temporal experiences, and we have no record that I am aware where someone remembers details they themselves did not experience to the degree you are reporting.”
“What are you looking for?”
The tricorder spewed out a set of strange sounds. “You have a strong chroniton field surrounding you. The magnitude of the field indicates you have been involved in numerous temporal events.”
“I have experienced more than twenty shifts in the timeline.”
Dani lowered the tricorder and stared at Mei-Wan. “It is not surprising you were the focus of a timeline shift.” She took a step toward Mei-Wan. “Have you encountered other beings during these shifts who are aware of the change in time?”
“Yes,” Mei-Wan said. “One in particular.”
“Who?”
“John Thomas Belvedere,” Mei-Wan said. “He works for Temporal Investigations.”
Dani shook her head. “How could someone who is part of a Federation organization be aware of a timeline shift?”
“I think he may be a Temporal Engineer.”
Dani set down the tricorder. “You know far more than I would have expected.”
“You know of them?”
“We have heard rumors,” Dani said. “Other species have told us of a group which has been manipulating the timeline for millennia, perhaps far longer. It is assumed they are engineering time to a specific end, though what that is no one knows.”
“But why me?”
“You must be critical to certain events they wish to have occur,” Dani said. “Given your near obsession with the Ancient Progenitors, I suspect that may be part of it.”
“And my obsessions about Jack and Todd Nakano?” Mei-Wan could feel herself shaking. She was becoming very afraid of all of this.
“Most likely they are part of it as well.”
“Have they engineered the obsessions in me? And then used them to prod certain events into happening?” Mei-Wan's mind raced through hundreds of possibilities all at once.
“Either that, or these were interests you already had, and they have amplified them,” Dani said. “Or they could simply be byproducts of who you are and the events you experience.”
Mei-Wan found a chair and fell into it. “I should isolate myself. I should go off somewhere and hide myself away.”
“To what end?”
“Then I wouldn't influence anything!”
“But consider perhaps that is what they have been driving you toward,” Dani said. “To prevent you from doing something thus giving them the timeline they want.”
Mei-Wan took a long breath. “Or maybe I'm just a side effect of their manipulations. Perhaps the real target is something connected to me, but not me.”
“That is possible,” Dani said. “I would need to know more about your temporal experiences, but I still might not be able to tell especially if the modifications are very subtle.”
“But if they're manipulating me to do something, why is Jack...” Her mind drifted off with her words. Then her mind went into overdrive. “Jack...”
“What about him?” Dani asked.
“It's Jack, not me!”
“But you're the one who experiences the time shifts.”
“But aside from the timeline with Nakano, Jack has been in every one of them,” Mei-Wan said. “And in that one, the Temporal Engineers insisted I go get Jack and bring him back to reset the timeline.”
“You spoke directly with them?” Dani asked.
“One of them,” Mei-Wan replied. “A girl named Ahwi Dasari. She insisted Hank Evans and I go back and rescue Jack from the past.”
“He may be the key.”
Mei-Wan became excited as she always did when she uncovered something new. “After the war, Jack didn't just get any ship, he got the Chamberlain, the largest and most powerful ship Starfleet had ever constructed, and his first mission was to Hel'yra where the Ancient Progenitors had been defeated...” Mei-Wan's mind went to a dark place. “I had been sent there five billion years in the past,” Mei-Wan said, her mind still racing. “I occupied one of them, and one of them came forward into our time to inhabit my body.”
Dani nodded.
“They seemed to be preparing for the Volmvas to attack, but they didn’t act as a people defeated.”
“Do you think your transfer to the past was an error, or part of their plan?”
“I think it was intentional,” Mei-Wan said. “At first I thought it was to gather information from their future, but as time has passed, I don’t know if that was all there was to it.”
Dani turned away for a moment, then she sat in a chair. “Over time, many have questioned the so-called sacrifice of the Ancient Progenitors. They were never known for their altruism. What you have told me, only confirms this.” Dani looked away. “Perhaps their plans were more insidious than we imagined.”
“There was a Temporal Engineer with them on Hel’yra while I was there,” Mei-Wan said. “If there was a larger plan playing out…”
“Then it is likely that plan extends into our present,” Dani said. “And given their insistence that Jack McCall be returned to the twenty-fourth century, he is critical to that plan.”
Mei-Wan walked over to a panel and touched several controls. “Computer, please locate the Federation starship, Chamberlain.”
“Are you going to speak to McCall about this?” Dani asked.
“Not over a comm,” Mei-Wan replied. “Temporal Investigations might discover what I know, and if they know, Belvedere will know. I’ll see what the ship’s status is, and see if there’s a time in the next few months I can meet with Jack.”
The computer chimed.
Mei-Wan read through the display, and smiled. “This has to be more than a coincidence.”
“What?”
“The Chamberlain is on its way to Yed Post IV.”
Harold strolled into the lab. “Hey.”
Both Dani and Mei-Wan turned to him.
“Guess who else is coming to Yed Post IV,” Harold said with a grin.
“Jack McCall?” Mei-Wan asked.
Harold shook his head. “No, that nut, Forcas.”
Mei-Wan turned to Dani. “He's been behind the drive to put the Ancient Progenitors in the best possible light despite what we've been finding out about them.”
“Why would he travel all the way to Yed Post IV?” Dani asked.
“Probably to have some sort of rally,” Harold said. “He usually draws a crowd of thousands. He seems to have followers all over Federation space.”
For a moment, Mei-Wan wondered if they should be giving their presentation.
No, she told herself. They had the truth on their side. She believed in the end, the truth would win the day.
