"What have I gotten myself into?" Dylan asked himself rhetorically as he stared at the glass of liquor that he held. Perhaps if he had not just been attacked by his best friend, frozen in time, and woken up three centuries too late to a completely alien universe, he might have been more surprised at the familiar voice that answered.
"Well, you've always been good at that."
As it was, the shock barely registered in comparison to all the other traumas. Instead, he replied easily. "Oh, thanks."
"Come on, don't sulk, you know I love that about you."
"I've got plenty to sulk about besides that," he said, though he smiled at her.
"So really, what flood has the wonderful Captain Hunt in over his head? What have you gotten into that you're so worried about?"
Dylan gestured around him, his voice choked with frustration. "This. Just—all of this."
"All of what?" she asked, in that half-joking, half-serious tone she so often used to draw him out. Well, technically, had used to draw him out. But details like that didn't matter, obviously, or he wouldn't be having this conversation right now anyway.
He sighed. Opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. His feelings weren't clear even in his own head; it wasn't in his nature to impose them on anybody else. Then again, it was his wife. She was from his time, and more importantly, they understood each other. They loved each other. They talked to each other. "The whole… it's been three hundred years, Sara! The universe is a wreck!"
"The universe has always had its problems, love."
"But it's everywhere! I can't even imagine what's happened since the fall. I looked at some of the Eureka Maru's news broadcast database. There's violence everywhere, Sara. I've seen nothing about peace, no treaties being signed, no… glimmers of hope at all. Not a single hint that anyone is capable of hoping, or getting along."
"That's hardly fair; after all, you're out of that wormhole, and nobody's killed you yet."
"Not for lack of trying," Dylan grumbled. "And that's another thing! It's—all the—all corruption"—he felt a twinge of guilt at using the word, but to Sara, he was honest—"It's even in my crew! I mean, they're not even really a crew! Have you seen the warrants for them? Petty theft, grand theft spaceship, aiding and abetting, resistance to the law, unlawful scavenging"—for good reason, that one rankled most. "Every one of the Eureka Maru's crew! And then there's Tyr. Hell, I saw the names Valentine and Harper show up in random police broadcasts when I wasn't even running searches for them!" His feelings were rising, his anger, his disgust with the universe he landed in—at the moment he could barely even recognize it, let alone accept it, as his own universe—rising. His view of the glass blurred, but his view of his long-deceased wife grew clearer. "Sara, this universe is insane! Everyone steals and loots and murders—and nobody is even willing to stop it. Nobody cares. You saw the crew, they're not staying because they give a damn about the commonwealth or doing any good, they're staying because they want the showers."
Sara frowned at him, concerned. "Calm down," she said. "Relax, love." He was agitated, the most agitated she, or anyone, ever saw him. "Relax, have some food, we can order that vintage from Murina that you love."
He blinked; they were sitting in the restaurant on Tarn Vedra that he most loved. The one that he and Sara had celebrated their last anniversary at. Instead of the silence of the once-bustling Andromeda, he heard the hum of polite conversations in many languages, and saw glimpses of Vedran blue at nearby tables. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
"I just don't get it," he said finally, eyes still shut. "I don't understand what's happened while I was gone, or how it happened, or why. It makes no sense how people could have grown so backwards, or lost all meaning in their lives like that."
"Nice sentiments, babe, but my name ain't Sara, it's Jeannie, right there on the name tag if you can read, and I ain't really interested in your deepest secrets, just your order."
Dylan opened his eyes. They were still in the restaurant, but Sara was fading. "No," he whispered. "No, what are you doing? Don't leave. Don't leave me here. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" the last was directed at the waitress in high volume. He turned to look at her, and fell silent. She could have been from any number of humanoid races too localized for him to know of, and she had a cocky smile. What shocked him was the rash spreading across the ample skin above her neckline. A rash that he only recognized because he had just seen it. But that—but he had seen it in the real world, in the new universe, not here! He looked at Sara. This was in the past, or in his head, or—
she was gone. He suppressed the desperation that surged within him, and a second later, the waitress was gone, and the restaurant, and the Vedrans and everything else he knew.
"You know it was too good to be true," Sara's voice echoed in his ears.
He swallowed, though he would have preferred to scream. The filth and crime and desperation of this new universe was even getting to his memories of Sara, an unfamiliar note of sadness in her voice. "Far too nice for this universe, right?" he said bitterly.
"What was that, boss?"
Dylan looked towards the voice. Where the waitress had been stood Harper, Captain Valentine's short engineer. Dylan's gaze was drawn to the rash not yet healed on the young man's neck.
"How much did you hear?"
"Uh, something like 'that's far too nice for this universe,' and while I heartily approve of your quick uptake in regards to the status of, well, everything, I'm slightly worried that your observation came right after I asked if you were gonna have any food with that, in case you're implying that there's none on this ship? 'Cause if you are, you know, I'm gonna have to leave on the Maru right away."
Dylan blinked. "No, there's food. What's that rash called, again?"
"Well, according to your freaking gorgeous ship, Triangulum Measles."
"'According to my ship?'"
"Well, yeah, we didn't know a thing about it—what it would do, heck, even where I got it." (Dylan tried to figure out if that was an exceptionally bad attempt at being sexual, something the young man seemed to try often, but decided that it wasn't.) "It didn't seem important, really, I get sick all the time, it usually blows over. And now, if you don't mind, of course, Boss, I'm off to find some of that food."
I get sick all the time. People get sick all the time. A new plague has struck Mebaran IV. Dylan sighed.
Triangulum measles. What were the odds that a near-extinct disease would rear its head again?
Well, technically, the odds were very good. He could thank the universe for that. The universe was really the only one he could blame for this. It appeared to have become quite unforgiving.
He sighed again, something he guessed he would be doing rather often in this new life of his.
It'll be a lot harder making fate behave than people, I supposed.
But he was Captain Dylan Hunt of the High Guard, and he fought evil at its source. So he would whip that universe into shape if it was the last thing he did.