Chapter Ten: In Which A Meeting is Held
Alternatively Titled: In Which the Plot is taken by the ears and shaken until it begins to consider waking up...
"Boss, it just happened again!" Harper came charging through Dylan's office door.
Rhade and Beka, who had been in the middle of explaining the mess hall experience to him, both looked round. Dylan raised his eyebrows at the agitated seeming engineer. "Mr Harper?"
"Teseract!" Harper waved his arms, "right there! In the machine shop! Just now! I was… I was in the future… and… and I saw… I saw…" he stopped, as if the enormity of what he had witnessed had only just fully dawned on him, "I think I saw my son. I was teaching him to walk!"
"Okay…" Beka frowned, looking from Dylan to Harper and back, "Dylan, I don't know about you, but three teseracts in one day? This feels like a little more than the residual effects of a machine we built over two years ago."
"I know." Dylan pinched the bridge of his nose. Now seemed like a good time to have another little chat with Trance about that 'something big' she thought might be heading their way. "Alright. Andromeda!" The hologram appeared next to his desk.
"Yes, captain?"
"I want all the crew confined to their quarters until further notice. We don't want anyone being sucked into a future they can't escape from," Dylan ordered, "and have Rommie and Trance meat us in the briefing room. It's time to work out what's going on here."
"Aye, captain," the hologram disappeared again.
The atmosphere in the meeting room was nervous. Harper was still struggling to comprehend what he had seen in the machine shop. Beka was running a finger between her bracelet and her wrist, distracting herself, as Rhade tugged at the sleeves of his uniform. Even Dylan seemed uneasy, as he turned to Trance, sitting on his right.
"Alright, Trance, tell us what you know."
The others didn't seem surprised that Trance should know what was happening. After all, she always seemed to know something they didn't.
Trance spent the next ten minutes repeating what she had said to Dylan in the medical bay; how the teseracts seemed to be coming from the future; how it was likely that something from that future was attempting to affect the past; how these teseracts were likely the run-up to something much larger.
"So… what?" Harper spread his hands, "we wait for some psychotic weirdo with a chip on his shoulder to drop out of the future and start making 'altercations' with a rocket launcher?"
Trance shrugged. "I don't know how exactly whoever is try to effect the past is planning on going about doing so. It is very likely that whatever has to be done can be done through the teseracts from the future."
"Oh, great, so we just wont see the psychotic weirdo with the chip on his shoulder." Harper said.
Trance rolled her eyes, "as I have said, the teseracts are being controlled somehow. Anyone who has managed to create a device that can control teseracts to allow them to get to specific times and places will almost certainly have learned very early on that time is a very dangerous thing to mess with. Trying to alter something in history is like trying to… thread a needle. Only with really thick thread and a really tiny, tiny little needle. Whoever is doing this will be… meant to do this. They will know what they are doing."
"So no psychotic weirdoes." Harper realised.
"No." Trance agreed.
"Which leaves us… where?" Dylan asked.
Trance gave him her 'I'm-gonna-pretend-to-be-all-knowing-but-I'm-really-all-out-of-ideas' look, and said, "all we can do is keep doing what we normally do."
Almost on cue, an alert sounded from somewhere in the Andromeda's systems. Rommie frowned, her eyes flicking back and forth as her core AI relayed some information. "Captain, I…" she frowned, and suddenly a look of pure horror marred her features, "Magog! In the hangar decks!"