My Photonic Friend
By
James Doyle
Chapter Four
Lilly sighed heavily as she took a seat, inviting the Doctor to do the same.
"It was that Freudian slip about the latinum, wasn't it?" guessed Lilly.
"That helped confirm my suspicions," acknowledged the Doctor. "But you must remember, I have superior visual acuity. I'm able to detect the remnants of a number of distinctive cranial features. Normally, I wouldn't have been able to tell without a proper scan, but they appear to have been removed using extremely crude instruments."
Lilly nodded. "They were filed down when I was a baby. This time around, that is."
"Would you care to elaborate?"
"I will," agreed Lilly. "I want you to help me tell the others."
"I'd like to," admitted the Doctor. "But my programming prohibits it."
"I understand," said Lilly. "EMH: Starfleet Command Temporal Prime Directive override. Authorization: Alpha-alpha-six-tango-foxtrot-two-one-niner."
"Override code accepted," responded the Doctor. "Thank you, Commander."
The next evening, Lilly and the Doctor waited with Rico and the Stewarts at their home for Oliver to arrive.
"Have you finished analyzing that blood sample?" asked Lilly.
"Yes," replied the Doctor. "Mr. Suave's primitive lab equipment notwithstanding."
"Hmph," reacted Rico, sticking his nose in the air.
"Hey, Lillypop," said Oliver, waltzing through the door like the rock star he fancied himself. "Sorry I'm late. I had a meeting about a possible book deal, and it ran overtime."
"Sit down, Oliver," snarked Lilly, not in the mood for his excuses.
"Alright, everyone," began Lilly. "I realize there's been a lot of surprises in the last few days. Bear with me, because I have one more for you. Before I begin, nothing I say I leaves this house. Agreed?"
The group nodded in agreement.
"Alright. You all know me as Lilly Truscott. And for the past seventeen years, that's who I've been. But that's not who I've always been. Doc?"
"I've extrapolated Miss Truscott's former appearance based upon her DNA profile," elaborated the Doctor as he brought up a holographic image. Before them stood a woman who bore a strong resemblance to the Lilly they knew, but with a number of difference. She appeared much older, and had black hair, pale skin with a slight gray tint to it, a series of small ridges on the bridge of her nose, and a minor indentation in her forehead that resembled a small spoon.
"As you can tell," continued Lilly. "I'm not entirely human."
"Sixty-two point five percent human, to be precise," elaborated the Doctor. "My analysis indicates ancestry from nearly a dozen races. Bajoran and Cardassian feature most prominently."
Lilly nodded. "In my time, racially-pure members of any species are pretty rare."
"Your time?" asked Miley in disbelief. "What do you mean 'your time?'"
"My last day in my own century was August 22, 2847, by the ancient calendar. In that time, I was Lieutenant Commander Lazura Lira, Second Officer of the Federation timeship Eternity."
"This is incredible," argued Robbie Ray.
"It's all true, Mr. Stewart," assured Lilly. "I need you to believe me."
"Of course we believe you Lazura...I mean Lira...Lieutenant...Commander?" said Miley, trying to find the right word.
"I still answer to 'Lilly,'" she offered.
Miley sighed in relief.
"How long have you been keeping this from us?" demanded Oliver.
"I haven't been keeping anything from you. I only started remembering things a few months ago. An image here; a name there. Seeing the Doctor jogged my memory, brought everything back...almost everything."
"How could you forget something like that?" wondered Robbie Ray.
"That's kind of a long story," began Lilly. "If you'll give me a few minutes, I'll tell you. Don't try and correct my tenses; it's all in the past to me.
"I was an officer in the Temporal Integrity Commission of Starfleet. Our mission was to minimize damage caused to the normal flow of time by anachronistic intruders."
Lilly saw the confused looks on their faces. "People from other times."
"Ah," they said in unison, nodding in understanding.
"Anyway, a figure who had become known for tampering with the timeline was Captain Kathryn Janeway, the twenty-fourth century commander of the starship Voyager, and our Doctor's commanding officer. Assigned to her case-file was Captain Braxton, commander of the timeship Aeon. As Braxton pursued the case, he became over-zealous, even obsessed. In the timeline I experienced, a temporal explosion occurred, destroying Earth's solar system."
Lilly paused for a moment when she saw the horrified look on her friends' faces. "Don't worry, it's not for another eight hundred years, and it was most likely averted, anyway."
Satisfied that her friends had been reassured, Lilly continued. "Our investigation concluded that the cause of the explosion was most likely a time shuttle with an improperly-calibrated temporal core. The only thing that didn't add up were hull fragments from Voyager. When the Board of Inquiry figured that these weren't enough to implicate Voyager in the explosion, Braxton took matters into his own hands. He made unauthorized use of a time shuttle from the Aeon and took it upon himself to travel back to the twenty-fourth century and destroy Voyager before she could do any damage. Near as we could tell, Voyager fought back, and created a temporal rift that sent both ships back to the twentieth century.
"Based on the evidence, we determined that it was Braxton's shuttle that had returned to the twenty-ninth century with bad temporal core and caused the explosion. Unfortunately, we couldn't stop the entire incident from happening, because as it turns out, Braxton's intrusion helped cause the technological revolution of the late twentieth century. Removing him would've caused serious and unpredictable changes to the timeline. Still, the temporal explosion had to be stopped. That's where I came in.
"I was dispatched to the year 1996 to destroy the time shuttle as it launched. I don't remember what happened next, but I'm guessing I didn't calculate for the instability caused by Braxton's shuttle, and my own temporal core started to destabilize. I'm sure my emergency transporter activated, and it's probable that transporting through that instability regressed my age by a number of years. Up until recently, my earliest memories were of waking up in a hospital room when I was two."
"I'm still curious as to how the doctors of your time reacted," pondered the Doctor.
"They probably thought I was some kind of mutant. They didn't want to see me dissected in some government lab, so they kept things quiet. I had third degree burns over most of my body, so their main concern was saving my life."
"That would make sense," added the Doctor. "The blood samples you gave me indicate that at one point, you had a nanoprobe-enhanced immune system. It undoubtedly took very well to the Terran skin grafts you received, giving you the appearance we're all enjoying today."
Lilly couldn't help but blush at the Doctor's compliment.
"Dan and Heather Truscott took me in and raised me as one of their own. They've always known I was different, so telling them shouldn't be too much of a shock."
"Well, it sure was a doosie for us," commented Robbie Ray. "But as far as I'm concerned, you're still Lilly, and you're still welcome here anytime."
"Miley?" asked Lilly, trying to read her best friend.
Miley looked over at the hologram. "It's you."
"It was me." Lilly placed her hands over her heart. "This is me."
Miley leaped up from her seat and threw her arms around her best friend.
"So how old are you really?" asked Jackson.
"That's kind of complicated," replied Lilly.
"Let's make it simple," suggested Robbie Ray. "How many miles on the odometer?"
"Well, I was thirty-nine when I left, and I just turned eighteen, subtract two years...I'm fifty-seven."
"Sweet niblets!" exclaimed Robbie. "Well, since you're older than I am, you can feel free to call me Robbie from now on."
"Thanks," Lilly said somewhat sarcastically as she hugged him.
"Well, I guess that means you're officially out of my league," deduced Rico.
Lilly shot him a dirty look. "You'd better believe it, gnome."
"You've been awfully quiet, Mr. Oken," observed the Doctor.
"Yeah," said Oliver with a certain indignation in his tone.
"Well, what are you thinking?" asked Lilly after a few minutes of silence.
"I don't know," barked Oliver. "I need to think."
With that, Oliver stomped out of the house.
"Oliver, wait!" cried Lilly, chasing after him. She had almost reached the end of the driveway when he drove off.
"Oliver!" yelled Lilly as she began to weep. Miley caught up to her and put her arms around her.
"Don't worry," assured Miley. "He'll come around eventually."
"Can I stay here tonight?" requested Lilly. "I don't think I'm ready to go home yet."
"Of course," agreed Miley.
Later that night, Jackson went downstairs for late-night snack, and spotted Lilly lounging out on the deck. He took the food with him and joined her.
"Mind if I join you?" asked Jackson.
"It's a free country," replied Lilly, not looking at him.
"Sandwich?" offered Jackson.
"No thanks," declined Lilly. "I'm not hungry."
"Suit yourself."
Jackson looked up at the stars with Lilly for several minutes, then broke the silence.
"Thinking about how many of those stars you've been to?" guessed Jackson.
"Good guess," confirmed Lilly. "You can't see too many in Malibu, unfortunately."
"Which one are you from?" asked Jackson.
"I was born on transport in the Beta Quadrant," answered Lilly. "From here, it should be somewhere in direction of Perseus." Lilly took Jackson's hand and used it to guide his eye. "It's that one there; the one shaped like a Y."
"How far is that from here?"
"About three thousand light-years, give or take a few billion kilometers."
"Is that part of that thing...what did you call it? The United Federation of Planets?"
"That's right," confirmed Lilly. "It covers about forty percent of the galaxy in my time. Only about ten percent in the Doctor's time, though."
Lilly sighed.
"What's wrong?" asked Jackson.
"My time," echoed Lilly. "I really should stop calling it that."
"Why? It's where you're from, isn't it?"
"It is, but it's not my home anymore. Haven't you wondered at all why they haven't come back for me?"
"Actually, I hadn't," admitted Jackson. "But now that you mention it, it does seem a little odd."
"Temporal enforcement isn't just a matter of going back and fixing things. It's a complex process that involves weighing and calculating consequences. Have you ever seen a temporal incursion histogram?"
"No, can't say that I have."
"We used to call this time period 'The Patchwork.' We called it that because a time graph of it looks like a really trippy patchwork quilt. That's because it's been tampered with so much. Any further tampering can cause major ripples in the timeline. The Commission weighs very carefully whether any mission to this time period is worth the risk. Stopping a temporal explosion caused by the negligence of our own officer? Totally worth it. Mounting a rescue mission for one lost officer who's having a minimal impact? Not so much. The twenty-first century is my home now. It's when I live, and it's when I'll die."
"Well, I'm guessing you just made an impact by telling me all that," surmised Jackson.
"Not really," argued Lilly. "It's all far enough in the future that you can't really do anything to change it. There are some things in the immediate future that I don't dare tell you about. It's hard enough to predict the consequences with the proper equipment. As it is, I can't imagine the havoc I'd cause. My place in the history books is at Hannah Montana's side. All I can do is ride that out, see where it leads."
"See where it leads?" asked Jackson. "You mean you don't already know?"
Lilly shook her head. "All that's left of Hannah in the twenty-ninth century are photographs, press clippings, a few MP3 files. We know that Hannah Montana was an alter-ego, but we have no idea who she really was."
Jackson sighed. "So I guess when we die, the secret dies with us."
Lilly perked up. "It doesn't have to."
"What do you mean?"
"We're trying to send the Doctor back to the future. What's the harm in sending some historical data with him?"
"That's an awesome idea," approved Jackson. "We'll talk with him and Rico in the morning. In the meantime, we should try to get some sleep."
Oliver remained silent for several days. Lilly neither saw nor heard from him until she stopped by the shack as Rico was closing up, and found Oliver there, filling out some paperwork.
"Ollie-pop?" greeted Lilly. Oliver gulped as he heard her voice.
"Well, I think I'll leave you two alone," said Rico as he took the papers and departed.
"What was that all about?" asked Lilly.
"If you must know, I was meeting with Rico to sign an NDA," informed Oliver.
"An NDA? Whatever for?"
"I'm done, Lilly," said Oliver. "I want out."
"Out of what?"
"All of this. This has gotten too weird for me. I can't handle this and a music career."
Lilly began to choke up as she put the pieces together. "Oliver, what does this mean for us?"
"There is no 'us,'" retorted Oliver. "It's over."
"What do you mean it's over?" demanded Lilly. "Oliver, I love you. And you love me."
"Love you? I don't even know you!"
"That's bullshit," argued Lilly. "You've known me for years."
"I thought I knew you. But you're not really the girl I fell in love with. You're a poser. An impostor. A freak."
"You asshole!" yelled Lilly, knocking Oliver to the ground with a swift right-hook. Oliver stumbled to his feet and began nursing what was sure to become a nasty black eye.
"You stay the hell away from me, Lilly!" ordered Oliver as he ran away.
"No problem," yelled Lilly after him. "I never want to see your self-centered, bigoted face again!"
The Doctor appeared a moment later, having heard the commotion.
"Commander," said the Doctor. "Are you alright? What happened?"
"Don't call me that!" yelled Lilly. The Doctor anticipated her next move and de-solidified his image so that her fists passed through him as she swung at him. Not expecting to miss, Lilly lost her balance and fell. The Doctor helped her to her feet, at which point she wailed and bawled with abandon. Though unaccustomed to physical affection, the Doctor held her close and allowed her to cry into his holographic uniform. As soon her crying had subsided to a dull sob, he offered her an arm and escorted her back to the Stewart house.
Miley heard the back door open, and immediately came downstairs to meet Lilly and the Doctor. He released Lilly into the custody of her best friend, and they plopped down upon the couch together, where Lilly continued to cry onto Miley's shoulder. Miley had suspected from the paperwork Rico had preparing that morning that Oliver might have been planning something like this, but didn't want to jump to conclusions. Nonetheless, she'd prepared herself for the worst, and the worst had come.
"Computer," instructed the Doctor, sensing that the girls needed some privacy. "Deactivate EMH."
End of Chapter Four
In case you're wondering, you won't see any more of Oliver in this story. Stay tuned!