ROLLERCOASTER
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Yesterday Is History
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It was getting late, and Guinan's bar was largely empty. The few remaining patrons congregated around four tables in a corner of the room, some distance from the bar itself. They had already invited Guinan to sit with them several times, only to be politely refused. The barkeeper stood alone; a diminutive, elegant oasis of calm meditation, her fingertips pressed splayed against the bar's surface, her dark, ancient eyes fixed on the infinite void outside the window. Very occasionally, she would mutter a contemplative 'hmm' to herself. It was as though she was anticipating something.
Little did the drinkers know, it was not so much that Guinan was waiting for something to happen, as considering the causes and consequences of something very particular not happening.
The door to the bar swished open, and a young, blonde officer stepped inside. Guinan smiled to herself. Just the person she was thinking of. Tasha had seen it too – she could tell that from the troubled, confused expression of the young woman as she walked up to the bar. How or why Tasha had seen it, however, Guinan couldn't be certain. All Guinan knew was that the criss-crossing pathways of destiny had passed a little too close for comfort recently, and out here that could sometimes yield strange results. If she was to be honest with herself, Guinan didn't particularly like looking too hard into the endless web of the what-might-have-been - to acknowledge the simultaneous existence of millions… billions of Guinans, all living slightly different lives, based on slightly different decisions, and billions more realities where she was already dead, and countless more where she had never even been born… it gave her a terrible headache. Now Tasha had been given a peek into that dizzying infinity of possibilities. No wonder she looked so perturbed. She offered the other woman a friendly smile as she leaned against the bar.
'You know what really gets to me, Guinan?' Tasha asked suddenly.
Guinan barely blinked. It wasn't the first time she'd been thrown blind in to the middle of a conversation and it wouldn't be the last. 'No. What?'
'That he locks me out in the first place,' Tasha replied.
Guinan nodded, sympathetically, hoping to gleam at some point soon a more coherent idea of what it was she was supposed to be so sympathetic about.
'I mean,' continued the young Lieutenant Commander, 'issues of our supposed mutual trust aside, I'm the Chief of Security on this ship, for pity's sake… how am I supposed to do my job if anybody who outranks me by just a gnat's breath is going to be allowed to keep me locked out of significant areas for days on end…'
Guinan gave a smooth nod of understanding. She might have known. 'Data still hidden away in that Cybernetics Lab…?'
'Constantly!' Tasha complained. 'What is he doing in there?'
Guinan shrugged. 'Beats me.'
'I only wanted to talk with him,' continued Tasha, with a sigh. 'Would that have hurt? A ten minute talk? I mean, he was there when it happened, he knows how strange today's been for me. But, no. He is incommunicado. Not To Be Disturbed…'
'Don't you have other people you could talk with instead?'
'Deanna says I've just been working too hard,' Tasha replied with a faint frown. 'She thinks my mind's playing tricks on me. Why am I the only one who remembers? Everybody saw it! Everybody!'
Guinan opened her mouth to reply, but Tasha carried on talking, lost in her furze of confusion and irritation.
'She's off having dinner with Will now, anyway, even if I did want to discuss it further with her… which I don't. Geordi's taken an early night, Wes' studying, Beverley and the Captain are engrossed in some new Holodeck programme… and Worf's in one of his Worf Moods, so I'm giving him a wide berth whenever I can 'til he works his way through it… and I know, I know, that sounds uncharitable, but I work with the guy all day long, and when he's in one of his funks he can be simply unbearable. If I hear another mention of honour, ancestors or Klingon customs today I swear, I'll scream.' Tasha shook her head with a fond, despairing tut. 'That man.'
Guinan furrowed her brow. 'And your boyfriend…?'
Tasha gazed at her, blankly, for a moment. 'Hmm?'
'Rocco…?' prompted Guinan.
'Oh. Yes. Him.' Tasha blinked. 'Rocco. Of course. Lovely Rocco.'
'So why can't you talk with Lovely Rocco about it?'
'Oh,' Tasha waved a hand with a careless air of dismissal. 'He's working.'
'You sure?'
'Pretty sure.'
'You checked?'
Tasha paused for a moment before replying. 'It isn't exactly the sort of thing I'd talk to Rocco about, anyway.'
'Why not? You saw another Enterprise appear out of nowhere. And then, it was simply gone again, along with everybody else's memory of seeing it. Isn't that the sort of thing you should share with your boyfriend?'
'He'd only worry about me.' Her expression darkened a little. 'He always worries about me.' She paused again, realising what Guinan had just said. 'I didn't tell you what I saw.'
'Let me get you a drink,' Guinan replied. 'White coffee, right?'
'You saw it too, didn't you?' Tasha demanded, her eyes alight.
'After a fashion,' Guinan told her quietly, passing a coffee cup over the bar. 'I knew it was there.'
'Do you know what it could mean?' Tasha continued. 'Do you know what it was doing there?'
'It was going,' replied Guinan, pouring the coffee.
'Going where?'
'Someplace else.'
'I don't understand.'
'You're not supposed to.' Guinan smiled, gently. 'I don't completely understand it myself – not enough for me to adequately explain it to you.' She thought for a moment. 'You ever been on an underground train?'
Tasha shook her head.
'There aren't many of them still in operation these days,' Guinan continued, 'but, time was, nearly every major city had an underground network – certainly the Terran ones. You'd whiz along these narrow, black tunnels in the ground… the carriages all had windows, but all you'd be able to see would be the close, dark walls of the tunnel, pretty much all the time. Only, very occasionally, there'd be a point where two railways met – they'd intersect, or they'd run next to each other in the same tunnel for a short way, and you'd see this other train, full of all these other people whooshing past into the darkness.'
'So… this was just a glimpse through some sort of window into another world… another reality? How does that even happen?'
'Guess we passed through an intersection,' Guinan mused. 'We were lucky to stay on track – I can't imagine that everybody did.'
'By "everybody", you mean…'
'I mean, that we should be very grateful that we're still in the right time and place. You don't want to start slipping through parallel dimensions – you never know where you're gonna end up. There are an awful lot of them.'
'So, why is it that you and I are the only ones who remember it happening?'
'Well,' replied Guinan, 'I remember it because it's the sort of thing I would remember. As for you…? Now, I honestly can't say. Maybe that ship was looking for you… another you. Maybe not. Maybe it's just something that you need to remember, too.'
'Why?'
'All those people on that ship you saw flick in and out of existence,' Guinan told her, softly, 'they were all living a separate life to us due to different decisions made. They made their destiny unique. As do you. Maybe right now you need a reminder that destiny is never set in stone. Maybe you need to take a good look at your life and see whether you truly are making the best decisions for it.'
Tasha shook her head. 'I'm doing fine. I'm a Lieutenant Commander; Security Chief to Starfleet's flagship, third year running… pretty good going for lady not yet thirty, wouldn't you say…?'
'Whoever said I was talking about your career?'
'But even my personal life's the best it's ever been. I've got more close friends than I've ever had before… for the first time in my life I feel like I've truly found a Family…'
Guinan held her hands up, amiably. 'I'm just saying, is all. Perhaps you feel you should look at the decisions in life that feel smaller, but may actually mean something bigger.'
'Such as…?'
Guinan shrugged. 'Such as, why it is that your first port of call this evening wasn't to see if Nurse DiMaggio was free to talk, but to work yourself into an indignant fury at the locked door of the Cybernetics Lab?'
Tasha stared at Guinan for a moment, then shifted her gaze away, uncomfortably. 'You overheard what Q was saying when he was here, didn't you?'
'Maybe I did.'
Tasha steeled herself to meet eyes once more with the serene Barkeep. 'And…?'
'And,' replied Guinan with a faint smile, 'if Q wanted to shock me, he should've tried telling me something I don't know.'
Tasha's response of 'what?' was not one of startled horror. If anything, her 'what?' had a certain air of already-resigned exasperation about it.
'Sorry,' replied Guinan. 'I've been watching people interact with one another for a very, very long time. I'm good at picking up on these things.'
'Great.' Tasha deflated, gloomily. 'This has to be one of the worst kept secret liaisons since… Since Oscar Wilde was Outed.'
Guinan nodded with a sympathetic sigh. 'Poor old Oscar.'
'Well, apart from trying to behave more discreetly, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do differently about Data and me,' Tasha continued. 'I mean… it's Over…'
'Is it?'
'It wasn't even anything like that in the first place,' Tasha continued, 'not really.'
'Then how can it be Over?'
'I've got Rocco now! Rocco's nice. I'm… I'm perfectly content with Rocco.'
'Content…' Guinan echoed.
'Contentment is important,' Tasha insisted. 'I never have contentment with Data. It's like our friendship and our physical relationship are always at odds with one another… and even when we do strike something akin to a happy balance, there's still always something missing, because this is Data, y'know…? He's… incomplete.' Tasha paused, her resolution slowly crumbling under Guinan's steadfast gaze. 'Not that I'm suggesting I'm "complete", as such… or anybody, I suppose…' she paused again. 'You think I'm being unfair on him, don't you? But, what would really be unfair would be if I was stringing it out, and I'm not. I'm not. I only wanted to speak to him tonight because I saw something I couldn't explain, and he's smart, and he's sympathetic, and… well… maybe "sympathetic" is the wrong term, but you know what I mean…'
'Not really,' Guinan admitted.
Tasha shot Guinan a small, self-mocking smile. 'Sorry. Rambling a little. That's his influence rubbing off, I guess…'
'Guess so,' agreed Guinan.
'So, what do I do?' Tasha asked her. 'If this really is a crossroads, which road should I take…?' Tasha stopped herself, and smiled again. 'Let me guess – it isn't for you to say. What's important is not which path I choose so much as that I choose a path. Right?'
'Your paths are always changing,' replied Guinan; 'you are always changing, as are the people around you. Just because somebody's patient and easy-going with you at this moment in time, it doesn't necessarily mean that they always will be. Could be that what you think is just water being swept under the bridge is actually building up and up against a huge dam someplace you can't yet see. But when that dam breaks…' Guinan cleared her throat. 'Now you got me rambling, too. But you get my point…'
'I do,' Tasha replied. 'You're right. You're completely right.' She drank up. 'Thanks, Guinan.'
'Leaving, so soon?'
'I know what I have to do. It's a decision I've made before, and I stuck to it back then for a good long time… took me about a year to falter from the right path last time. Looks like that's what I'm doing again. I'm making the same mistakes. But not for long.'
'You know,' Guinan added, 'there's only so many times one can make the same "mistake".'
'Precisely.' Tasha took a step back from the bar. 'Computer? Please state the whereabouts of Nurse DiMaggio.'
She nodded peacefully at the Computer's announcement that DiMaggio was in his quarters. 'See you around, Guinan.'
'What I mean,' persisted Guinan, 'is that there's a point where something stops being an accident and starts to have a deliberate reason…' Tasha wasn't listening. She tried another tack. 'If Commander Data surfaces at any point, do you want me to tell him you were waiting to speak with him?'
'Don't bother,' Tasha replied as she left the bar. 'I've changed my plans.'
