"Can we talk to you?" Mack asked Rick as Marty looked on.

"Of course."

"I mean some place private," she said. "Like my ship, I suppose. Captain, do you mind if I continue to borrow Marty – I mean, Commander Madden here?"

"By all means. We'll reconvene tomorrow at, say, 0900 hours? We'll have some breakfast and await the admiral's arrival."

"Thank you," she said. She engaged her communications bracelet. "Wes? Can I have you meet us at the Cookie?"

"When?"

"Soon as possible."

The three of them returned to the Cookie. Wes was already there, waiting. "What's going on, Coach?"

"Well, apart from figuring out how deep Yi'Imspi was with the Terran Empire, M'Belle was also hurt but she's gonna be okay."

"All right; I'll visit her in Sick Bay once I get the all-clear from Mom or Majira. Does Crita know?"

"Good idea." She engaged her bracelet again. "Majira? Could you please let the team know what's going on with M'Belle?"

"I already told them. They are working out what sort of a gift to give her. Confidentially, I'm voting for candy."

"Good going. And thank you. You've been amazing. Mack out." She turned to the men. "Okay, now that that's all settled. Wes, I want you here because I want to know exactly what is on this boat."

"Dana, I'm not so sure I should be telling you any of that."

"Richard," she said, a little exasperated, "I have a team member in custody and another who almost died today. And it was all about the technology on my little ship. Consider us sworn to secrecy. We won't tell a soul."

"Of course not," said Marty.

"You can count on us," Wes agreed.

"But let us know. Because I really want to know if anyone else might come knocking and want something else. Let us know what to look for. And right now, I'm not involving Crita and Daniya and Majira but I would like for them to be privy to this information as well."

"I thought you said you weren't going to tell anyone."

"You know what I mean. Those people are my innermost inner circle. I know they're trustworthy."

Rick tapped the back of his left ear, to engage his implanted communicator. "Yeah, Carmen? Join us on the Cookie, please."

Carmen materialized in front of them nearly immediately. "You got a pretty quick beam-in," Marty commented. "I suppose the folks in the transporter room weren't too busy."

"I didn't go through them. We've got our own little bag of tricks. Now, what the devil is going on?"

"I want to know everything that's on my ship. We'll keep quiet but for the inner circle but we really do need to know."

"I see," Carmen said.

"Can we tell them?" Rick asked his boss. "Or will that be against protocols?"

"Oh, screw the damned protocols. I think you're entitled to know – all of you," she said. "You've been through plenty already."

"Then let's go to Engineering," Wes suggested. "Because apart from the ionization diffuser, I am guessing anything of note would be in there."

They walked together, passing the diffuser. Carmen stopped and walked back after they had passed. "Richard, are you seeing what I am?" She pointed to a series of switches above the diffuser. If someone sat in the seat right by it, the switches would be just overhead.

"Ah, a communications booster."

"What's its range?" asked Wes.

"About a third of the way through a quadrant, going diagonally," Carmen said.

"I had no idea we had something like that," the engineer admitted.

"We didn't know, either," Carmen admitted. "By the time your ship becomes a part of the Temporal Integrity Commission's files and the Temporal Museum at Lafa II's exhibits, some of the technology is stripped out. I'm a bit surprised by this. We'll have to update our records."

"Temporal Museum?" asked Marty.

"Oh, that's right. It doesn't exist yet," Rick said. "My sister is a docent there. The place is built in the 2500s."

"Is the family involved somehow?" asked Mack.

"No, for once, they aren't. But a lot of the family will work there. And the old Hayes – I mean, Beckett – House is preserved for all eternity. The Reed House was added onto dozens of times and is where the offices are. My sister Eleanor's office is just off what was Lili and Malcolm's kitchen. They painted it yellow. So, she had her office painted the same shade."

"I do love our family," Mack said.

"I feel just a tiny bit left out," Wesley admitted.

"Your descendants will unite with the line. A few centuries and we're all family, more or less," Carmen said.

"Me and Lakeisha?"

"Oh, screw the protocols, again and again. In for a penny for the telling, in for a pound, I suppose. Yes, Mr. Crusher – you and Lakeisha Warren."

"Hot dog!"

"Don't, er, don't test it," Rick cautioned. "What I mean is, just because you know it's supposed to work out, don't go around trying to make it not work out, if you know what I mean."

"Of course not. I love her. I wouldn't go around hurting her deliberately and God knows I would never try to hurt her for fun or for some stupid experiment."

"Good," Carmen said. "Because we didn't confirm this just so you could cause that girl any pain."

They started to walk again, arriving at Engineering in a few minutes. "Wes," Rick said, "tell us what you know so we don't repeat it."

"Sure thing. Here is where the intermix ratio is monitored, and of course here are the twin engines themselves." He walked around, pointing, as he talked. "Over here are the override controls for the phaser banks, in case the Tactical station is damaged or the Tactical person is out of commission. It's also a way to take control of at least the external weapons in case we're ever boarded. Now over here we've got the dilithium chambers. I've never been on a ship before where there were two of them. Then again, I've also never before been on a ship with two engines. But that may be due to the fact that the nacelles are retracted, built straight into the design. Photon torpedo overrides are over here. Just like with the engines and the dilithium chambers, there are two of them. It's odd that there's only one phaser override station. Everything else seems to have redundancy built right into it." He stopped and looked at them all. "As for the rest of it, I'm just guessing."

"What are your guesses?" asked Carmen.

"This looks like an ancient phase cannon. And I recall trying to get it to fire but it just sort of – it's hard to describe this – but I got a small kinda a hole in the air, if that makes any sense. Then that hole just kinda dissipated. I get the feeling it needed more power, but I think if it'd given it more power, I would've damaged the ship."

"Were you planning to do anything with this piece of equipment?" Rick asked.

"I was going to fire it outside the ship, in order to see what would happen. Er, what would happen?"

Rick and Carmen glanced at each other. "This we really and truly cannot tell you," Carmen said.

"I thought you said, 'in for a penny' and all that," Marty pointed out.

"Well, this is apparently another bit of the technology that was stripped out before the Cookie got to the museum," explained Rick. "Let's just say it would do something that Old Man Doug would have been mortified by."

"Doug," Mack said softly. There was a slight memory on the tip of her tongue and the back of her brain, but she wasn't able to put it all together. "Uh, why?"

"Doug's from the Mirror," Marty said. "So, I bet a shot from this thing would open the door. Leonora's book said he had never wanted to go back there. He had made his home and his family here and he never wanted to return to where he was always in danger of being knifed."

"Should we destroy this tech?" asked Wes. "I mean, I normally wouldn't. But you said you don't have it. I take it you don't know how or why you don't have it, though. So why can't it be that it was taken out of commission here and now, and tossed on the ash heap?"

"You want to ruin my stuff now, Boy Wonder?" Mack asked.

He laughed a little at that but then caught himself. "Wouldn't that fix things, though?"

"Are we supposed to ever use this in the future?" asked Mack. "Because if we don't have to, then hey, sure, why not? But if we are gonna need it; I would rather not be missing it."

"Truth is," Rick said. "We have no idea. Understand that we simply don't have ever single nugget of information in the Master Time File. Otherwise, it would be time itself, impossible to manage."

"Then we should keep it," Mack decided. "Just in case. What's that?" she asked, gesturing at a silvery contraption attached to a panel.

"That's a very, very early prototype of a device which allows me to walk through certain kinds of walls," Rick explained. "I wouldn't recommend using it in its current state."

"You'll get no argument from me," Marty said. "And this?" It was a series of tubes attached to a panel bolted to another panel.

"Well, well, well," Carmen said, "It appears that Szish was experimenting with a form of a spore hub drive. But with no Prototaxites stellaviatori, the Cookie would be all dressed up but with no way of going. Of course, by this time period you're not using the mushroom drive anymore anyway."

"Do you know why?" asked Marty.

"It can really screw up the pilot," Rick explained. "And by pilot, I mean not the person at the helm, but the one injected with tardigrade DNA and holding the coordinates in his or her head. That person is more of a living navigational computer than a navigator. It's not really something our brains are designed to handle."

"Maybe we'll leave the mushrooms for soup and Beef Bourguignon," Marty suggested. "Anything else we should know about?"

"Probably not," Carmen said. "And that's not me being cagey or anything; I'm just doubtful there's anything else as we would have probably seen some form of evidence of it."

"All right," Mack said. "Just one more question."

"Oh?" asked Rick.

"What happens to us?"

"C'mon, we can't tell you that."

Carmen thought for a moment. "Here. It'll be one thing and one only." She nodded at Rick. "We'll throw you precisely one bone. And then, truly, we have got to be going."

"You're going to win," Rick said.

"Win what? Is it a game, or something?" Mack asked. "I'm, heh, mystified here."

"You'll see," Rick said. "Good-bye, Dana, Marty, Wes. It's been pretty damned amazing." He looked Mack in the eye and his eyes were shining a little. "I think I'm going to miss you."

"And that's a lot," Carmen said. "Richard here is a professional. He mostly just goes in, does his job, and then departs. But you're different."

"I guess we are," Mack said. "Will we ever see you again?"

"Never say never," Rick said. "May I?" He approached her as Marty looked on.

"Of course." They hugged. He kissed her forehead. "Go forth and win."

"Do our timeline proud," Carmen said, shaking hands with Wes and then Marty. "It's been our great pleasure to meet you and to get to know you."

Standing together, shoulder to shoulder, Rick and Carmen looked at Mack, Marty, and Wes one last time. Carmen engaged her implanted communicator. "Audrey, energize." And then they were gone.

=/\=

On the Audrey Niffeneger, Carmen and Rick rematerialized at the back of the Bridge and then walked to the piloting seats. "Prepare for time jump to 3101. Richard, I should like for you to go to 2763 next and get a handle on James Horan and Phillipa Green."

"Oh?"

"Not that kind of a handle, you old lecher, you! You will need to get them to stop tampering with the timeline. Or at least try to."

"Right." Rick thought for a moment and then flipped switches. "Just about ready to jump. Carmen, I hope they can be happy."

"Didn't you notice how they look at each other? That tells me one very important thing."

"Which is?"

"There is no way they could possibly not be happy together. They will be."

"Maybe they'll be like my parents; I don't think I have ever known a couple more in tune with one another."

"There's the spirit. Initiating jump… now!"

The Audrey took a few hours to jump when all was said and done. The time ship was slow and was in the process of being replaced by newer, better technology. But it could still get them where they wanted to go.

They skidded into the top secret headquarters of the Temporal Integrity Commission, where the rest of the Human Unit was waiting for them. There was Kevin O'Connor, part-human and part-Gorn; he was a descendant of Geordi's cousin Tina O'Connor. There was Otra D'Angelo, a Witannen like the athlete Adeel, but Otra could see temporal alternatives. There was Dr. Boris Yarin, part-human, part-Xindi sloth, and part-Klingon, a bundle of nerves and energy, married to Darragh Masterson's descendant, Darragh Stratton, who was also related to Rick's mother, Chloe Masterson Daniels. And lastly there was a squirrely adult ADHD-addled engineer, Levi Cavendish, a descendant of the Crushers.

"Welcome home," Kevin said, his accent betraying a youth spent in Wisconsin. "You kids done good."

"The timeline is completely restored," Otra said, chavecoi bouncing and turning shades of lavender, gold, peach, and seafoam, sure-fire signs of happiness, truth, and her innate kindness.

"When you get a chance, Carmen," Boris said, "I should like to go to a medical conference. It will be about treating nonhumanoid species such as Tholians."

"Good idea," Carmen said. "Feel free and make sure to expense everything to our HQ here, the USS Adrenaline."

"Now that you're back, can we get pumpkin pie?" Levi asked.

"Sure," Rick said. "Pie sounds like the best idea ever."