Is this meant to be happening?
With everything related to time travel, Archer was always left reeling and thinking.
In the aftermath of the attack of the cybernetic creatures while the repairs from the attack were underway, the same creatures who had tried to stop Cochrane's warp flight, only for them to be defeated by a group of humans from the future as well, Archer was left unable to sleep and unable to focus.
When he had been a kid, Zefram Cochrane had been one of the biggest icons which had inspired and shaped Archer into the man, now captain of Earth's first warp five ship, and when he had been growing up as a kid he had studied Cochrane's life (Archer wouldn't deny learning how frequently the man had drunk himself almost to the point he could barely walk was disheartening, but when he had listened to the man's so-called taste in music…Archer was just grateful he had not gotten into it), and he had stumbled across the account of what Cochrane had supposedly been a part of.
Cybernetic creatures from the future?
Yeah, right.
Their ultimate goal was to enslave the human race?
No chance!
They were stopped by a group of humans, who came from the same time as the aliens.
Insanity!
Archer hadn't believed it any more than the public at Princeton had when he had made the speech, and Cochrane had later recanted it a few years later, but he would always remember it. And for a hundred years, people had either not paid the scientist any attention or they did know, but just kept silent about it.
Archer himself hadn't bothered paying much attention to the story. To him at the time, it was a nonsensical tale from an eccentric icon who was as crazy at times as a hippy. He'd had his own life to concern himself with. He'd had to watch as his father suddenly became terribly ill, and then died without getting the chance to see the first warp five ship leave Earth. But, somewhere, deep inside Archer's mind, he would never forget that little tale spun by Cochrane.
Those encounters with Daniels and the discovery of the Temporal Cold War and their meddling in history had made him remember the story Cochrane had told in Princeton, but he hadn't paid any attention to it.
Until now, he was forced to accept the facts.
Cochrane had been telling the truth. It had happened; those cybernetic creatures had attacked Montana in 2063, shortly before First Contact with the Vulcans. They had wanted to take over Earth and enslave, or assimilate humanity, as they'd claimed during that chilling hail they'd sent when they'd hailed Enterprise.
Cochrane was telling the truth!
He was really telling the truth.
As he lay in bed, Archer wasn't entirely sure what to think. Ever since that mess with the Suliban when they'd tried to start a civil war in the Klingon Empire, news of the Temporal Cold War always made him think.
And all that time, the truth was buried in the arctic. In the ice, were bodies and pieces of wreckage, undisturbed until… The moment he received word from Starfleet Command what had happened to those researchers and saw the cybernetic creatures' profiles for the first time and the account stamped in the report stating they had been there for a century, that little part of his mind clanged like a distant bell.
T'Pol had been sceptical, of course; her attitude of how the Vulcan Science Directorate's stance on time travel was always known and she was always determined to prove it right, and Archer had long since worked out the only way to truly make the Vulcan accept the reality of time travel, despite everything they had been through, was for her to take a trip through time. Past or future, it didn't matter. In this case, Archer wasn't surprised, and he hadn't wanted to admit to her he'd been sceptical once, just like the audience at Princeton had been. All he had needed to do was to point out the parts which rang a chord even today.
Their goal to enslave the human race.
Cybernetics.
But, as he lay in his bed, Archer reflected on everything that had happened, everything he knew.
The aliens had not been like any of the threats they'd encountered, even the Cabal and the Klingons paled in comparison to them. Archer shuddered as he remembered the effect they'd had on those Tarkaeleans they'd rescued and then later been forced to eject from Enterprise when their cybernetic systems had kicked in, destroying or burying their personalities until they lost everything that had made them what they were, and the visible effect the nanoprobes had had on Phlox after he was infected with them himself.
But what had chilled him the most, shortly after the aliens had transmitted the activation signal to the cybernetic circuitry onboard Enterprise, was their message.
"You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."
Archer and his crew had been threatened in the past, but there was something cold, evil, about that voice that had sounded like a number of people speaking at the same time only for every emotional inflexion to have been sucked out. When he and Malcolm had boarded the ship to damage it to free the hopeless Enterprise, and give Trip a chance to restore the plasma network, Archer had seen for himself the hopelessness in their decision to free the arctic researchers.
There had been nothing to save.
Their transformation into cybernetic zombies had become complete, and lord knew when that had been. Their bodies had been cybernetically enhanced and considering what he had seen from the other victims on that ship and the biometric data provided by Starfleet when they had been given this assignment, it was done with the same kind of sadism you'd expect to find in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre blended with a Hannibal Lecter movie. But their minds… All Archer knew was everything they had once been was either erased from their minds, or it was there but it was buried under tonnes and tonnes of programming. And he wasn't sure which. That was perhaps one of the most difficult tragedies of this whole mess.
Those scientists who hadn't even known of the dangers facing them had lost everything that made them the people they were. And there was nothing that could be done for them. It was just too late for them.
But he was sure these aliens would be back. They had transmitted a signal to their homeworld, telling them where to find Earth. Phlox might not have had a full transformation, but what had happened to him had been more than enough to pick up the aliens' communications which was some kind of technical telepathy.
Archer sighed as he tried to force himself to sleep, ignoring Porthos' whine of concern. Archer spared a smile towards his beloved dog. He wanted to get to sleep as much as Porthos did. But no matter what he tried, he just could not fall asleep. So many things were going on his mind now he knew what Cochrane had meant by what he had said about humanity being enslaved by those cybernetic aliens. He had not given it any thought, believing it to be the ravings of an alcoholic.
But no.
Cochrane had been telling the truth about the aliens.
He had been telling the truth about people from the future journeying back into the past. His mind was focused on everything they'd learnt about Cochrane's revelations, the threat that was so clear… And he also thought about the realisation this whole mess was just another example he and his crew had been forced to deal with ever since they'd learnt of the existence of the Temporal Cold War. And then something struck him. Something that worried him completely.
The whole mess was caused by time travel, and ever since he had learnt what the factions within the Temporal Cold War were doing to history and twisting events up like a pretzel and even forcing their desired events to take place in history, Archer had begun seeing not everything was as it seemed to be.
But had history been changed, yet again? They'd already seen and experienced moments that were not meant to happen. Who knew what kind of effect it would have, how many lives it would affect?
Suddenly Archer sat upright, his fatigue dropping away as a new horrifying thought occurred to him. He looked around his quarters, thinking about everything he and his crew had seen and done on Enterprise, thought about his mission and what they had discovered….
Suddenly he was asking himself a question that chilled him to the bone as he remembered the lengths some of the factions of the whole damned Temporal Cold War were willing to go.
He turned worried eyes downwards towards Porthos. "Is this meant to be happening, buddy?"
Porthos whined; he was either catching the mood of his friend and master, or he knew what he was talking about. Archer was willing to bet it was a mix of both. But his mind was too busy worrying about what he had just thought about to really care.
Cochrane had been affected. He had known it was happening, but what else had happened? What else had changed?
He had to know.
Getting up and slipping on his uniform because he had no to little idea how long he would be gone, Archer left his quarters and headed for the one place in the whole ship where he could get an answer. Ever since Daniels' so-called supposed 'death' he had ordered nobody was to step foot into the time agents' shared quarters. Daniels bunkmate had been moved to another part of the ship, and the lock placed outside prevented anyone barring Archer and Malcolm from getting inside.
As he reached the cabin door, Archer paused outside. He had tried to push aside what was inside the cabin out of his mind, believing it had no place in this time and place. Sure, there had been a few exceptions, but otherwise, he had gone out of his way to avoid it. With a sigh, Archer tapped in the access code known only to himself and his tactical officer, knowing Reed had never accessed this cabin.
Once inside Archer headed for the locker containing the Temporal Observatory and he took it out of its box while he sat down on the bunk. Taking the flat circular device out of its box, Archer activated it. And then he paused while the holographic screen displaying hieroglyphs, and streams of data about dates, times, places and activities of this point in the 22nd century as the device calibrated itself to the current time and place activated, but he had no idea what to do next.
How could he look for information where he wasn't certain where to look while history had been like a piece of cheese prepared as a treat for Porthos and careless time travellers knocked hole after hole in it. And then he had a good idea. Archer had learnt how to manipulate the Observatory thanks to previous visits; while it was user friendly, it did cause him a few problems in the past, but now all he had to do was scroll upwards and he found the date of First Contact.
Taking a deep breath, Archer tapped that part of the holographic stream as if he was touching a touch-sensitive computer padd. Instantly the Observatory zeroed in on that point of history. And he instantly frowned. Displayed on the holographic screen which streamed the historical data was the heading he had not expected and yet dreaded at the same time.
Temporal Points Diverged.
Archer had no idea what it meant by temporal points, but for the next hour, he began checking on what the Observatory had on these divergence points. There were two main points, although it seemed as if the Observatory or the people who had programmed its database had knowledge of alternate timelines where history had diverged in ways Archer had never even considered possible. In one timeline there had been the possibility of Cochrane dying by accident before the Phoenix was even launched, thereby missing the T'Plana Hath, the Vulcan science vessel which was travelling close to the solar system at the time of the launch, and had detected the warp signature of the Phoenix and realised humanity had cracked faster-than-light's riddle, which began the rebuilding of Earth and the launch of the starships the newly united humanity would then use to explore the galaxy.
The shocking possibility of Cochrane dying before the First Contact was so….shocking, so unthinkable that Archer had a truly hard time digesting it but as he finally came to terms with it, the reality that a timeline or two existed which showed Cochrane was dead. After pushing aside the chill he was feeling, he went on. He made it a special point not to even look through any of the potential what-ifs that could have happened. He instead checked the two main timelines.
As he opened them, Archer realised he was looking straight at his own timeline. At last, he had something that made sense to him, and all the dates and information were there, but as he opened the second timeline, he could see there were dozens of differences. There had been a rumour long ago that the space exploration agencies that had rebuilt after the Third World War had experimented with the same ring nacelle configuration of Vulcan starships. But it had never happened in Archer's reality.
In this one it had.
At the same time, many of the things Enterprise had done had happened, but with different people and the ships used had travelled at warp two or warp three, and as he checked the dates of the discoveries made by those ships and checked them all against his own memories, Archer realised that those ships had made the discoveries far earlier than his own ship although some of them were being made now. Warp five was not achieved until 2157. Henry Archer had existed but the decision to focus on the research of constructing a ship whose maximum warp speed was warp five was not made here. Instead, it was decided to despatch ships in waves while Earth was in the process of rebuilding after the devastation of World War Three. The ships were underpowered compared to his own ship, capable of cruising at warp one much as the cargo freighters were, but these were exploration vessels and they sent back huge amounts of data gathered over a period of thirty years.
Unlike in this reality, this other timeline was more patient than the one Archer and the others currently lived in. For instance, in Archer's reality, Earth had despatched only a token number of exploration vessels since the drawbacks of only having warp one grade engines was clear. In the other reality, the reality Archer was beginning to realise could be the prime timeline, it was all a part of a long-term plan. Earth's space exploration agencies wanted to develop their warp technology while the planet recovered both in environment and population following the Third World War. Scientists and engineers ran experiments on the engines and studied the slight increases in speed and sent the message back to the homeworld.
The Great Experiment with Terra Nova occurred, yes, but this time it was different.
Instead of sending just the one colonist ship out into the galaxy, Earth prepared over a dozen thanks to the long-range (for the time considering the drawbacks of warp one) probes and ships that had documented dozens of star systems within a twenty-year range. Terra Nova was colonised, but so to were three other planets. Archer was beginning to ask himself which timeline was the best. It was becoming obvious that Starfleet when it had been established in his reality, had only developed a small fraction of the ships described in the observatory. Looking at the Temporal Observatory's record of Earth's development into a galactic power, slow as it was, but considerably faster than his own timelines' history.
Okay, granted, his father had received a lot of the results of the experiments aimed at improving warp field construction in the 22nd century, but one of the reasons for the advances in the other timeline was because there were dozens of experimental ships continually running experiment after experiment. But now he was seeing for himself how history had changed, Archer was beginning to get scared.
It got worse.
One of the greatest advances had been the experimental warp ship, the Enterprise XCV, a ship that was designed along the lines of a ship with a ring-shaped warp nacelle identical to those used by the Vulcans. Ships like that allowed Earth to go much further, and the experiments which came out of that ship formed the backbone of Earth's warp development. Zefram Cochrane himself worked extensively with the newer generations of warp specialists like he had in Archer's timeline, but he'd focused on dozens of different programs aimed at getting humanity to go faster.
So what the hell was happening?
What was causing all these changes?
The moment he learnt of the XCV reminded Archer how some scientists wanted to experiment with the different shapes of warp nacelles, but Cochrane had put his foot down. He showed them that nacelles held away from the body on struts were safer, although truthfully he guilt-tripped everyone by telling them the Phoenix should be honoured.
But there had to be more than that.
Archer rubbed his eyes in order to check the nausea he was currently feeling.
This could not be happening.
The time meddling was worse than he'd first expected.
One of the only good things that came out of this mess was how, according to his timeline's history, was ships that travelled at warp two to four were mass-produced and travelled further than Enterprise did, so they carried out the same experiments described in the history of the original timeline.
But then he saw it.
It was faint and he almost missed it. There was some kind of symbol marked with a phrase that worried Archer, who realised rather quickly the phrase was actually quite common in his own timeline. There were dozens of them, and as he checked back through the historical record, kicking himself mentally harder and harder for not bothering to really see it properly, Archer found himself staring at it and feeling absolutely scared.
Historical Change due to Temporal Cold War Faction.
When he had read that phrase time and time again so then the full horror of this whole thing sank into his mind as he tried to think about what he knew of the factions of the whole damn Temporal Cold War, Archer leaned back a second, wondering to himself what the point of this whole mess was.
But he was getting nowhere. He even doubted if he confronted Daniels with what he was picking up so far, Archer doubted the Temporal Agent would tell him anything.
With a sigh, Archer rewound the stream of data away from the two contrasting histories, and then he caught sight of something especially when he spotted his own history and the way it contradicting with the other history.
Suddenly he saw it. At the dates, key launches of probes and space exploration expeditions which were described to be key advancement stages of the previous timeline, the factions would ensure the ships were not constructed although the Terra Nova experiment had taken place. Archer knew from Daniels many of the factions wanted to prevent this 'Federation' did not exist but was this one of the ways they were doing it?
But at the same time, he had to admit some of the acts of meddling were beneficial.
A few of them showed how information about warp mechanics and subspace field theory made its way to the scientists involved as hints and tips rather than the results of a warp field experiment. Archer highlighted one of those moments, seeing for himself that one of Daniels' people had given warp scientists access to the knowledge they had needed although they hadn't been able to put history back on track.
But how the hell had all of this happened?
Archer went back to 2063. He watched the stream as it linked a distant point in the 24th century to the 21st century, and he looked on horror as a spherical ship leaden grey in colour appeared out of some kind of vortex appeared, taking position above Earth and began opening fire.
The cybernetic creatures, this must be when they'd appeared from the future and they attacked Earth. Those blasts must be aimed in Montana, just where the missile complex where the Phoenix is currently berthed before her maiden launch which changed the course of human history for good… and those soulless bastards almost destroyed it for good. The group of humans, who were also from the future and vaguely touched upon by Cochrane in that Princeton speech must be appearing any moment now.
He was right. A massive, sleek, white-silver ship emerged from the vortex and soon after opened fire on the sphere. For the rest of the night, Archer watched as the crew of the future Enterprise (he was glad the name of his beloved ship would live on in future ships, but he was not happy with how they made small changes to history without likely realising it; the telescope thing where the chief engineer of the Enterprise E did some good in proving to Cochrane the 24th-century Starfleet officers were authentic, but at the same time it also pushed him down a direction of starship design which should have come out of decades of experimentation and scientific reasoning) interacted with Cochrane, and helped him with the repairs of the Phoenix for the warp flight. Granted, Picard's desire for revenge against the Borg - it was nice having an idea who the cybernetic aliens were - was frightening to look at, but overall, the crew of the Enterprise E were genuinely innocent of time meddling; much of the changes they had made were pathetically minor in comparison to what the Borg had done.
Archer shut off the Temporal Observatory, tired of looking at the holographic screen and tired because his eyes were beginning to ache. He knew now the point of divergence. Somehow the Borg's travelling back in time had caused history to change, and while the crew of the Enterprise E had not really meddled with time barring one or two points, it had been more than enough to make sure there were changes to the timeline.
Was this divergence what the factions in the Cold War needed?
Were they just waiting for a chance to really change history, and the Borg had given him the inspiration on a plate?
Archer wished he could summon Daniels and confront him over what he had just found out, but a part of him did not want to lose the Observatory. There was no doubt in his mind Daniels would take it if he knew the Enterprise crew had it; Archer had once seen the piece of future technology as a curse, but now he wasn't so sure. Perhaps the Temporal Observatory would be their greatest weapon in helping them pinpoint moments that had been changed so radically that it made no difference anymore if his earlier beliefs history would be changed applied.
He would keep the Observatory, perhaps even share it with Starfleet and tell them of what he had found. He had no doubt they would be as scared as he was, but other than that, he didn't know how they would react.
Finding out history had been changed so drastically was bad enough, but now he didn't know what else to do. He felt like a pawn on a chessboard while other time travellers pulled the strings.
Now he needed to figure out a way of cutting the strings for good. The only question was how.
As I look at Star Trek now, knowing that time travel has changed history more than once, and it makes you wonder if some of the franchises' shows are meant to happen. I found it interesting that a starship with a ring-nacelle named Enterprise was used by Earth, and yet the NX-01 was missed.
Oh, In Star Trek Memory Beta, the Enterprise XCV did exist. However, in this timeline, Cochrane had made sure all starships resembled the Enterprise E; saucer, secondary hull, nacelles, etc.