AUTHOR'S NOTE: The Gilded Age, a term invented by authors Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, was roughly from 1877 to 1893 in the United States. A time of rapid innovation, it also was an era of serious social problems. A few historical figures are mentioned or play small roles in this story; their involvement is totally a figment of the author's imagination. Some minor liberties have been taken with the timing of certain events to fit the plot of the story. Takes place in the second season after the episode, "The Communicator." Beta'd by Kylie Lee & EntAllat.

There was no logical explanation for what Subcommander T'Pol was seeing. The setting was as it had been, but the details were different. Most startling was the glass in her hand. Originally full of a greenish liquid, the beverage was now pale gold in color and infused with bubbles.

She heard Captain Jonathan Archer suck in his breath. Next to him, Commander Charles Tucker muttered, "What the hell?"

Of everything around her, only the two men had not changed. Both were in dress uniform, as they had been when they had set foot on the planet of Tlibrednav several hours ago. The captain and the engineer appeared confused, matching her own mental perplexity.

A glance down at herself showed that her traditional Vulcan robe was as it should be, the folds of the brown fabric hanging neatly and the script embroidered perfectly in silver thread down the front opening. Formal attire had been deemed appropriate, as they had come here under the guise of a diplomatic first-contact meeting. The conical straw hat, tied under her chin with ribbons that covered her ears, however, was not part of Vulcan fashion. How it had been come to be on her head she did not know.

"Are you two seeing what I'm seeing?" Jon asked. He held up his glass to examine the liquid in it which, like in T'Pol's, was now a sparkling, golden color.

"I think so," Trip answered. "That was one hell of a demonstration, but I'm not sure this is where we were supposed to wind up."

"This resembles the place we were," T'Pol said carefully, "but it is not the same."

"I didn't want to believe it was possible, but..." Jon trailed off as he slowly turned in a circle. "Where's Eigenrac?"

Eigenrac, a minister in the Tlibrednav government, had met them when they had stepped out of the shuttlepod upon landing. He had accompanied them to this reception, introduced them to some of his fellow Tlibrednav, and procured refreshments for them from food and drink set out on tables along one side of the vast room. Now, Eigenrac was nowhere to be seen in the mingling groups of people.

"I swear he was right here beside me," Trip said. He took a sip from the glass in his hand, only to stare at it in surprise. "When did this change into champagne?"

Before either Jon or T'Pol could answer, a white-haired man with a mustache and beard approached them. "Captain Archer," he said with a polite smile, "I hope you are enjoying yourself."

The man was dressed in a dark suit, which wasn't so different from what most of the Tlibrednav had been wearing. His eyes, however, were the color of a clear blue sky; all the Tlibrednav they had met had had eyes of yellow.

T'Pol saw the captain register this fact. Before he could speak, she said, "Captain Archer is fatigued."

Jon shook his head. "I'm not-"

She cut Jon off to address the man who had spoken to them. "Perhaps there is some place we could rest?" She saw a group of people walking toward them. "Privately, for a few minutes?"

"Of course," the man replied. "I should have realized you are tired. Almost a year in the Orient..." He bowed slightly toward T'Pol before looking back at Jon. "… and then losing your ship in that terrible storm just a few days ago. Follow me, please."

He led them out of the room and into a wide hall. T'Pol, her hand on Jon's arm as if she were assisting him, stumbled slightly as they crossed the threshold out of the room. She quickly regained her balance and glanced at the others. No one seemed to have noticed her misstep.

Their footsteps were loud on the marble floor as they followed the man to a set of double doors farther down the long hall.

"You can rest in here," he said. He threw open the doors, indicating that they should enter. "If there's anything you need, just use the bell pull, and a servant will come."

"Thank you," Jon said.

The man closed the doors, leaving them alone to gaze at their surroundings.

The room was a library. Two stories high, bookcases lined the walls. A balcony ran around an upper level, which was accessed by a circular staircase. Richly bound volumes filled the shelves on both levels; T'Pol could smell the leather bindings. On the main floor, upholstered chairs and small tables were arranged on rugs. The crowning piece of furniture was a large desk in front of a set of curved windows at the far end of the room.

Jon pulled his communicator from his pocket as he turned to T'Pol. "Why did you interrupt me like that?"

T'Pol realized she might be hallucinating. The Vulcan Science Directorate had determined that the only other explanation was not possible, but she had been forced to accept it since joining Enterprise. In this particular instance, she had not yet seen enough evidence to decide if that was the case, so she said, "It seemed prudent to confer among ourselves to ascertain the situation."

Jon tried to contact Enterprise on his communicator, but there was no response. Trip and T'Pol had no better luck. They all stowed their devices after several futile attempts to contact the ship.

"Tlibrednav's new application for their transport system worked, didn't it?" Jon said. "I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. I didn't think they would have the technology for time travel. They haven't even left their own planet yet."

"That does not mean their technology is primitive," T'Pol said. "Not all species have the same curiosity for space exploration as do humans."

Jon held up his hand. "Let's back up here a moment and sort things out. Our purpose in contacting the Tlibrednav was to find out if they knew anything about a rash of spatial disruptions in this sector."

Trip nodded, rocking up on his toes. "Eigenrac told us about their planetary transport system, which sounded an awful lot like our transporter, but they use something called 'time displacement' to make it work."

"And then," Jon said, "Eigenrac told us about a new use for it. They can go back in time. That fits with Starfleet's reports that time slows down or reverses for a few minutes when a ship gets caught in one of the spatial disruptions." He strode across the room to peer out the windows before turning back to face his officers. "This place doesn't look too different from where we were. There's a party going on. A lot of well-dressed people..."

"Overdressed," Trip said as Jon trailed off. "I've never seen so much jewelry in one place."

Jon looked at T'Pol. "How many parties of this size could be going on at one time on one planet?"

The question was evidence of the captain's confusion. "You are focusing on similarities, when perhaps we should concentrate on the differences," T'Pol told him.

Jon took a deep breath. "The people here look human, not Tlibrednav."

"They were humanoid to begin with," Trip said, "but now their eyes aren't yellow, and they don't have earlobes down to their shoulders like the first Tlibrednav we met."

T'Pol made her way across the room as the men talked. The furniture was of antique design by Earth standards, but well crafted of quality materials. The large windows at the end of the room let in bright sunlight, which was welcome as the only sources of artificial lighting were large candelabras and oil lamps, none of which were lit.

"According to our hosts," Trip said, "their time transport system was only supposed to work for their planet's history."

"Something had to have gone wrong when Eigenrac demonstrated it for us," Jon said. "This is our history, not Tlibrednav's." At T'Pol's sharp look, he amended, "Mine and Trip's."

T'Pol stopped in front of a pedestal with an open book near the desk. "The furnishings in this room appear to be from nineteenth- or early twentieth-century Earth." She put her hand on the tome. "And this is printed in English."

Jon joined her. "The Complete Works of Shakespeare," he said, reading the title on the top of the pages.

Trip's attention had been caught by a globe stand on the other side of the desk. "Look at this!" He touched the sphere, making it spin. "It's Earth!"

From across the span of the desk, T'Pol could see the shapes of Earth's continents on the globe, although they were subdivided into political divisions of several centuries ago.

"There's no way the Tlibrednav could have fixed all this up to fool us in the short time we've been here," Jon said. "It's too accurate a representation of Earth." He gazed around the room. "Well, an older version of Earth." He looked back at the others. "They sent us back in time, but instead of Tlibrednav, we're on Earth."

"Appearances can be deceiving," T'Pol warned the captain, not willing to admit to the possibility of time travel until she had more proof. "There could be another explanation."

Trip snorted. "Maybe you came along with us to Earth because Vulcans don't believe in time travel."

"We've debated the possibility of time travel before," Jon said, setting his champagne glass on a nearby end table so that he could use both hands to rub his forehead. "We're not getting into that argument again right now. I'm going to go on the assumption that we've been transported to Earth's past. So what do we do to get back to where we belong?"

"I don't know," Trip said. He gestured at the oil lamp on the desk. "This is old technology for Earth's time, and I assume Tlibrednav's, too. Should we even tell these people we're from their future?"

"There is too great a risk of changing Earth's history if we do," T'Pol said. "That is, if we are on Earth several centuries ago."

Trip shook his head. "I'm with the captain on this. We're on Earth." He grinned at her. "Nice hat, by the way."

T'Pol snatched at the ribbons under her chin and took the hat from her head, placing it on the desk. Now that she could see more than the underside of its brim, the hat appeared to be of an Asian style that came to a point on top.

Jon gave the bickering pair a stern glance. "We need to find out exactly when and where we are."

They spread out around the room. Trip looked at the titles of books until he came across one that made him smile. Pulling it off the shelf, he said, "Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain." He opened it. "This is a first edition, signed by the author and published in 1885, so it's got to be after that, right?"

T'Pol picked up a newspaper on the desk. "This appears to be a New York City newspaper dated January 27, 1890." She glanced at the front-page articles. One in particular caught her interest. "A woman named Nellie Bly has successfully completed an around-the-world journey in seventy-two days."

"Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days came out in the second half of the 1800s," Jon said. "It was one of the first widely read science fiction novels."

The double doors opened, interrupting their conversation. A servant, to judge by his tailored livery, took one measured step into the room. Ensign Travis Mayweather, dressed in a standard duty uniform, brushed past the servant and hurried toward them. He was frowning but he prudently waited until the servant had left to ask the captain, "What's going on, sir?"

"We're trying to figure that out," Jon told him. "What happened after we left you with the shuttlepod?"

"I was running scans for spatial distortions like you ordered," Travis said. "I had just recorded one, and the next thing I know, I'm in some sort of barn or stable." At Trip's inquisitive look, he added, "There were horses there."

"The shuttlepod's gone?" Jon asked.

"I didn't see it," Travis said. "I must have looked like I was lost, because a guy working there asked if I was all right. I didn't know what to do, so I asked if he knew where you were." He looked at Jon with wide eyes. "He didn't look like a Tlibrednav. He looked human."

"That's because they are," Trip said.

"The Tlibrednav sent us back in time on Earth," Jon told Travis.

Although they had not established that fact to T'Pol's satisfaction, she realized that the captain and engineer had made up their minds. She held her tongue, heeding the captain's desire not to argue about time travel, much less about what appeared to be transport over a greater distance than was technologically possible.

"How did that happen?" Travis asked.

A faint buzzing sound filled the room. "Captain Archer?"

Jon narrowed his eyes at the familiar voice. "I should have known."

A shimmer appeared near the circular staircase, resolving into the form of a person, although without any real substance. "Believe me, Captain, I had nothing to do with your current situation except for trying to keep it from becoming worse than it is." The figure wavered, losing solidity, accompanied by a surge in the buzzing.

"You seem to be havin' some trouble there, Daniels," Trip said dryly.

The image stabilized. "The Tlibrednav's time displacement system isn't refined. It's interfering with the technology of my time. Hence, the resolution problem. I can only communicate with you like this for a brief period."

"So we're on Earth?" Jon asked.

"Yes," Daniels replied, adding disapprovingly, "You just had to ask the Tlibrednav to demonstrate their time transport system, didn't you?"

"We were trying to find the source of spatial disruptions-," Jon told him.

"I know," Daniels said. "The Tlibrednav are causing them, just as you surmised. But if you would have left well enough alone, they would have figured it out on their own and corrected it."

Trip crossed his arms. "So we're supposed to check with you any time anything concerning time travel comes along?"

The image cleared enough for them to see Daniels' hurt expression. "Mister Tucker, one of the worst offenses of the thirty-first century is altering the natural outcome of any time line. I'm trying to repair this one," he said, gesturing in their direction. "It's quite complicated. And if it isn't corrected, the future of Earth will be quite different than it's supposed to be. So please, I beg you, be careful with your interactions where you're at until I can extract you safely."

T'Pol suppressed a sigh as she admitted to herself that the impossible had happened again. The appearance of Daniels, who at one time had masqueraded as an Enterprise crewman in order to foil an alleged Suliban plot in the Temporal Cold War, always heralded a disruption that could have dire consequences. This time would most likely be no different.