Time travel - blessing or a curse ?
Temporal Agent Daniels lay on the biobed close to the imaging chamber of Starfleet's first true Warp exploration vessel, the NX 01. USS Enterprise.
That was the true beauty of time travel, really. Being able to see things; ships, people that had existed long before he and his generation had been born.
Like Enterprise, time agencies had been set up to explore time, similar to the 23rd century missions when a basic time travel technique had been discovered by the Enterprise of the 23rd century. The time explorers wished to return to the old days, where humans explored, trying to make something better.
For a long time, it worked. The disaster with Rasmussen aside, the induction of time travel into exploratory research was successful. Then again, it started to sour. Time travel became more and more dangerous as people started manipulating the past for their own ends. Rasmussen was only the beginning. Others followed in his wake.
Factions sprouted up, each with their own ideas and ideals for how time travel should and could be, as a consequence they started manipulating certain key events of one of their rival factions.
Daniels wished Archer would be more open minded and less insular; did he really think that the 22nd century was the only one where humanity would have an effect like an avalanche ?
It had been an honour meeting him, Daniels wished that it was under far different circumstances. He'd often wished to visit Archer after he'd signed the charter which eventually gave rise to the Federation, asking him questions about the 10 year mission.
Daniels closed his eyes as he remembered the events which shouldn't have happened, the Xindi mission. That hadn't been in recorded history. The Enterprise would've continued as it had for 2 years, encountering new worlds and planets.
The Xindi were never to have attacked Earth, let alone plan its destruction thanks to the manipulations of a time travelling species.
But now it was. Due to his temporal nature Daniels wouldn't remember it whilst it did happen, sometimes the paradoxes of time travel baffled even the temporal agent.
Was it a blessing, or was it a curse ?
Either way, time travel needed to be used responsibly.
A/N Trek time travel occurred to me when I was planning this story. The time war, the temporal cold war, whatever you wish to call it, has some consequences.