I don't own Star Trek at any point in the franchise.
This chapter is the start of a sequel to my other time travel related story "Is this Meant to be Happening?" Enjoy. Oh, and be warned the rest of this chapter is confusing because of the myriad time travel possibilities, and it references the many-worlds interpretation which describes time travel into the past as moving into a new universe to ensure paradoxes do not occur in the main universe.
A Different Future Unfolds.
Commander Trip Tucker was yawning when he walked into the captain's cabin, but he quickly stopped when he saw the cabin was full of the rest of the staff.
"What're we all doin' here?" He asked around although he knew some of them likely didn't know the answer any more than he did.
But nobody had the chance to answer the question. Archer was relieved that the rest of his senior officers had got here and were waiting, decided to get to the point. "I brought you all here because I've just discovered some truly disturbing news," Archer, who was sitting on his bed turned and leaned over his bed and pulled out the Temporal Observatory from under his pillow.
Reed stiffened at the sight of the Observatory. "Why did you take that out of the cabin Daniels was using, sir?"
Archer bit his lip. He knew this was a risk, but it was one he was willing to take. His crew had been witnesses of the 22nd-century battles and the war of nerves which seemed to make up the Temporal Cold War. "You'll see in a moment," he said, laying it down on the bed's surface while he rubbed his eyes. The others could clearly see the fatigue on his face, and they wondered what he had been doing.
"Last night, I was thinking of our engagement with the Borg-."
"The what?"
Archer was not surprised by the interruption. "The Borg, Hoshi. The cybernetic creatures call themselves the Borg, or the Borg Collective. The Temporal Observatory which Daniels left on Enterprise contains extensive files on the Borg; their biologies, the species they've conquered, their entire history, strengths and weaknesses… I wish I had bothered to think about using the Observatory. That way their attack on us would have gone differently. They occupy a large territory in the Delta Quadrant, and they assimilate races into their collective. As you discovered, Doctor," he lifted his head and stared solemnly at Phlox, "they use their nanoprobes to infect their victims. Technology is added and their brain is uploaded into a hive mind. And they knew where to find Earth. They've communicated that with the others in a subspace transmission."
Phlox nodded solemnly. "The number sequence I passed onto you and Subcommander T'Pol."
"The spatial coordinates?" Travis asked sharply, making Phlox nod.
"A numerical sequence, I heard it repeated over and over again," Phlox said.
"Yes. With those pulsar frequencies and geometric light year measurements, the Borg will be able to assimilate Earth and pose a major threat to every known world. But that's not why I went to the Observatory. I told you, T'Pol, about how Zefram Cochrane announced how the Borg had tried to stop his first warp flight while he was living in Montana, only to be stopped by a group of humans from the same period," Archer explained and he activated the Observatory, "but I wanted to know what the Borg had been doing to history as well. This is what I found, and believe me, it goes beyond the Borg."
For the next hour, Archer showed his senior staff what he had discovered. He showed them how history had diverged as a result of the Borg Sphere's attack on Earth, the arrival of the Enterprise E and the resulting battle on the futuristic starship as well as the interactions on Earth between Cochrane and the crew of the future Enterprise. But what he had also done was show them the two contrasting histories, how in one reality Earth's first contact with Vulcan had gone well, but research into warp fields and increasing their speed and range was ongoing and more and more pioneers were leaving Earth, blissfully unaware of the dangers and truly unconcerned that they would not be going too fast.
In comparison, the timeline Archer and his crew lived in seemed almost bare, although Trip and the rest of the warp field specialists amongst his team had made up for the lost time. The implication time travellers had both helped and hindered the development of the warp engine design was both intriguing and frightening; they had known for a while now Silik, the Suliban Cabal and his benefactor along with several others were interested in delaying or stopping Earth's expansion into interstellar space. But the idea of it happening so many years before…
"This is not proof," T'Pol said calmly.
"No, but it makes sense," Trip interrupted, nodding at the holographic screen grimly. "According to that Observatory, several of the long-range early warp flights that happened, that was meant to have happened in our timeline, didn't. And, looking at the other timeline for a comparison… so much of our early work on warp fields and subspace theory was never done until much later causing dozens of delays to the space exploration programs. Those early discoveries really did advance Earth's growth in warp theory. It looks like a band of time travellers changed history so then the leading forces behind those missions, organised them and gained funding either died in an accident or got them reassigned so the missions never happened. Someone, or someone's, went to a lot of trouble to stop us getting out into space."
Travis looked closely at the information, his expression showing he was both intrigued and worried. "Yeah, and some of the ships which were built for those research flights were destroyed, weren't they? My dad told me stories about them. Some of them had been in development for years, prepared with stasis pods for the long-duration flights while they conducted experiments on the warp engines. And then they were destroyed."
"Yeah, there was a lot of thought the disasters were down to the Vulcans," Trip added, sending an apologetic look towards T'Pol. Now he was inwardly wondering if the lack of real knowledge of subspace and experience with warp travel was one of the main reasons behind the Vulcans saying they weren't ready. He was ready to bet it was. And it explained a lot.
"What I can't get is that history changed, and the crew of that future Enterprise didn't notice? They even showed Cochrane the shape of their ship, but why didn't they notice history was changed regardless?" Hoshi questioned.
"That's a good point. They went back in time to events which never even happened in their timeline, and yet as soon as they arrived the timelines changed," Travis agreed.
"I've been studying some of the temporal theories ever since we began hearing 'bout this damn Temporal Cold War. A lot of it doesn't make any sense, but from what I've gathered, some time travel methods work only because the machine was activated at a certain time. Say we turned Enterprise into a time machine on the first of January next year. Once we do begin travelling through time, we cannot go back in time before the activation of the time machine. But suppose we could travel back. But here's the thing, would we be travelling back in time to our past, or into a new past, the past of an alternate universe? Some of the temporal theories point to backward time travellers creating new alternate timelines as they travel back," Trip said suddenly.
"Do you think that's what's been happening here with us?" Hoshi asked interestedly. "Each time we meet someone from the future, they created a past in another universe, an alternate universe we're living in?"
"Maybe, or they already have a means of travelling into our timeline, and their actions are changing events while it doesn't affect their own timeline, but they're trying to ensure no long term serious changes are happening or they are for the sake of their war. Maybe Daniels and his people are fighting a temporal war in our universe because the dangers in their own universe are too great, or they can't reach their past; many time travel theories hold up with that. I don't get it, and the ideas are mind-boggling and it gives me a hell of a headache each time. It's a scary possibility, but it fits with what we've just learnt 'bout that Temporal Observatory. If it's true then it raises a few questions 'bout Daniels and his organisation," Trip shrugged. "I honestly dunno for sure, but I think while Daniels and his bunch have access to time travel to the future, whenever one of them travel back in time, they create a new universe if they don't have a ready-made way of travelling back into a different timeline, although we may be meeting different versions of Daniels who are coming back, which explains why we've seen him alive even though we saw him be killed in engineering.
"That's the Many Worlds Interpretation, it follows that time travellers going back in time create new universes. The many-world interpretation is complex, so it's hard for me to really explain how it works, but many scientists believe it to be the answer to making backwards time travel work. I looked it up when Daniels came back when we knew he was dead, but I dunno enough about the mechanics of time travel to form a good hypothesis for how it works, but what I have checked up on points to that possibility."
"The Science Directorate has come up with similar theories, Mr Tucker, but they never found any evidence of alternate universes in the case of time travel," T'Pol pointed out.
Trip turned to her. "But it makes sense, and besides you can't deny the evidence with your own eyes. You saw the holographic stream from the Observatory."
"That isn't evidence," T'Pol argued.
"But you can't deny Daniels wasn't unusual," Hoshi joined in.
"No, I cannot-," T'Pol agreed.
"He passed through a wall, don't forget," Trip smiled at the Vulcan, "if it were any of us, we'd never be able to do that. We don't have the technology, never mind the scientific understanding, and neither does the Vulcan Science Directorate."
"What was all of that about Daniels?" Archer interrupted, not really in the mood for a full-on debate or needling the Vulcan Science Directorate. "What was that about Daniels and his organisation?"
Trip blew out a breath. "One of the theories of time travel is time travelling back in time means the machine will split history in two, creating a new universe. If they wanted, the time traveller would be able to change history in the new universe without any side effect to their own reality. Many time travel theories involve finding loopholes in what we know of the universe, but the many-world idea basically sidesteps that by simply stepping into another universe and time travelling from there. It would make sense, considering how the time travellers we've met don't seem to care about changing history, and even Daniels seems indifferent to a point so I think he comes from a different universe. Yeah, he has an interest in our history unfolding, but who's to say his lot haven't already mapped out our history and they recognise that it was their own fault it changed in the first place so they're trying to prevent even more changes from happening? That would explain why they're appearing to us and giving us clues to undoing the damage done by other time travellers. But it hasn't worked out that way. History for them has not changed, but it's become history for us, so there's nothing they can do about it. Daniels has given us knowledge of technologies we shouldn't even have."
"So you think Daniels, the one we originally met, is dead, and the one we've been meeting recently comes from another universe?"
"I dunno, but it's only a theory. Daniels is the only one who can tell us."
Archer didn't know what was scarier. The fact that there was a chance Trip was right, and that they were living in an alternate universe created by the Borg and the unwitting crew of the Enterprise from the future, or the fact the time travellers were having such an easy time fighting their damn Temporal Cold War.
But what was scary was how much sense Trip was making.
While he hadn't really paid much attention to it at the time, now Archer was beginning to get the idea the universe he and his crew, and his Earth were living in was not the same world Daniels was living in.
Or was it? Daniels seemed to have a vested interest in Archer and his crew, and more than once, he felt Daniels was shaping Archer's time for his own ends.
Was that what Daniels was doing? Archer wasn't sure, but he knew the time agent had knowledge of this Federation and he'd hinted more than once about Archer's importance. But if this was an alternate universe, why was he even caring? Or was it he and his organisation were trying to shape the outcome the way they wanted?
Deciding to voice his thoughts, Archer took a deep breath before he spoke so then he could come up with the right words, but before he could speak Phlox spoke up before he had the chance. The Denobulan doctor had been silent for a while now, but he had something he definitely wanted to say.
"While I don't claim to be an expert in temporal mechanics, what we've seen and heard today and on the other occasions we've met time travellers seems to point this is what's happened, but I find it disturbing anyone would seek to create alternate universes in a Temporal Cold War. What is the desired outcome if the alternate universes not a threat to their home timeline?" Phlox asked.
That was a good question, and as they continued to debate they came up with four possible and plausible explanations.
Four answers sprang to the minds of the more open-minded people at the table who was accepting of the whole idea.
One, the time travellers involved in the Temporal Cold War simply did not know what they had done, and assumed they were merely changing little parts of their past, but how they could not know or even realise the truth the crew of the NX-01 crew didn't know.
Two, the time travellers were aware but they were using the universe that had been created as a battleground for something bigger and more complex.
Three, perhaps Daniels and his people were from their universe, and they had decided not to care too much about changing history since it always created new universes.
Four… maybe Daniels and his people were fighting a more complex Time War across dozens of realities and they were creating dozens more while they watched and monitored from an alternate universe they couldn't access, and they had set up guidelines to make sure they didn't create new ones.
Somehow the fourth option made more sense than the others, but unless Daniels reappeared they could not say for certain what the answer was.
Hoshi shook her head, but it made her headache worse. As the crew neared that realisation, Archer and Trip worked on the Observatory and they checked.
The first timeline split with 2063 was ignored. But as they moved up through the timelines, they saw that the Temporal Agents were travelling to new alternate universes, stopping rogue time travellers from changing history, but as they perused the Observatory they discovered to their annoyance there was no way of being sure which option it was, but they had a feeling it was option four. It seemed much more likely.
"Okay, while all of this guesswork is good what are we going to do about it?" She asked. "If we are living in an alternate universe, then what do we do?"
"Nothing. We can't do anything 'bout that," Trip pointed out. "We don't have time travel, but while we've got this observatory we can make sure rogue time travellers can't do too much damage."
"Okay, but now we know we're likely in an alternate universe, what do we do for the future?" Travis asked. "I mean, do we take this back to Starfleet? This is too big for us."
"Yes," Archer's reply was instant. "We're going to take the Temporal Observatory with us, and we're going to give it to Starfleet."
"Is that a good idea?" Hoshi asked uncertainly. "I mean you have made it clear you don't want time travellers to meddle in our past-."
"I know. But it's likely too late for that, and I don't like the idea of time travellers interfering in our affairs anymore, so we need to be prepared and ready in case they do meddle too much," Archer sighed and he turned to Travis. "Travis, get to the bridge. Set a course for Earth, warp four."
I'm sorry its complicated and confusing, but the many-worlds interpretation is one of the most plausible time travel theories out there since it side steps paradoxes because they're not taking effect in our universe.