Star Trek Hunter
Episode 15: A Stitch in Spacetime
Scene 2: Free Love Wes
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15.2
Free Love Wes
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Ensign Sun Ho Hui had recently found a number of excuses to spend more time in navigation/deflector control – a situation that his commanding officer, 2nd Lt. Moon Sun Salek, met with amused tolerance. Over the past few months he had come to really like Navigator Johanna Imex. Neither of them were particularly socially adept – they had both probably spent more time recently talking to each other than they had to everyone else on the Hunter during their entire service.
"…So did you actually know Wesley Crusher?" Imex asked.
"I only joined Dr. Carrera's team four years ago," Ensign Sun replied. "We're the same age – actually, his birthday is five days after mine. He was only 12 years old when he started working with Crusher. And Dr. Moon joined that team about that time – she was still working on her doctorate. They're the only two here who actually met him."
"Is it true he could just pop in and out of existence?"
"From what Dr. Moon told me, it's far more complicated than that," Sun replied. "Apparently Crusher told her he had to really maintain his concentration or a stray thought could carry him to the other side of the galaxy or millions of years into the past... Actually going where you want to go and arriving when you want to get there is really complicated – as is staying in any one place and time for very long…"
"And he learned all this from an alien?" Imex asked.
"I'm not really sure," Sun replied. "From what little I've heard, I think the alien kind of discovered accidentally that Crusher was capable of manipulating spacetime with his mind and then kind of mentored him in how to control it. Star Fleet records called the alien 'the Traveler'. They say that both of them could manipulate warp fields around an active warp engine with their minds…"
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A***A
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Dr. Sarekson Carrera had chosen to replicate the clothing he had worn on an expedition in the Andes to the Inca ruins of Machupijchu. Rugged khaki pants, a simple beige shirt with a high thread count over a white undershirt and a light brown leather flight jacket. An expedition helmet was slung by a lanyard over his shoulder. A pair of brown leather gloves were stored in a cargo pocket. He was wearing Star Fleet issue expedition boots. A Star Fleet issue utility belt held a phaser and an engineering tricorder.
He could tell immediately when walking into engineering which of his staff were going through the loop for the first time by their reactions to his clothing. Evidently, at some point he had reported to the captain that the impending implosion, which he had now experienced twice, was not due to his engines or to any abnormalities in local spacetime or subspace, but he was not about to take his own word for it.
Carrera was nearly startled out of his wits by a voice behind him – a voice he had not heard since he was a boy, but one he would always remember…
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"Hi Rekki! It's been a minute…"
Carrera turned around. "Wes?"
The man standing behind him was about 6'2" – but at least three inches of that came from the disco platform shoes he always wore. Long, unruly brown hair tumbled well below his shoulders and a massive beard covered half his chest – but failed to conceal the leather tassels on his blue jean jacket or the random maze of color of the tie-died shirt underneath, or the oversized peace-symbol medallion suspended from his neck by a length of twine. Just as he had been over a decade ago, Wesley Crusher was trim and fit, filling his bell-bottomed jeans precisely – exactly as Carrera remembered him.
Wesley tugged lightly on Carrera's leather flight jacket. "Man, I love the duds!" he enthused. "You totally look like you're about to go on an adventure of some sort…" He embraced Carrera warmly, then stepped back and regarded him carefully. "You look fantastic, Rekki, all grown up and it's clear you own this place." He looked around the engineering deck.
Dr. Carrera's staff had also recognized Crusher immediately – he was, right down to his hippie attire, the exact likeness of his statue at the Daystrom Institute central campus on New Eden, Mars (which bore the same inscription as the statue of his younger self on the grounds of Star Fleet Academy in San Francisco.) But only one of Carrera's engineers had been with the Hunter project long enough to have also met their unexpected interloper.
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"Wes? You don't look like you've aged a day!" exclaimed Dr. Moon. She hugged him enthusiastically, then stepped back.
"I haven't, Salek" Crusher explained. "You remember when I left?"
"How could I forget it? You just vanished in front of our eyes just over eleven years ago!"
"And where do you think I got off to?"
"Honestly, none of us had any clue…"
"Well, now you know. I stopped at a Klingon outpost fourteen years from now for a raktajino, then came straight here. So when I say it's been a minute… well… actually, it's been about twenty minutes…"
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"Well, you came just in time," Carrera said. "I need a professional consultation. I need to know why my engine keeps imploding…"
"I knew this day was coming," Wes replied. "So let's have a look at the engine that Rekki built!"
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After nearly twenty minutes reviewing the engine in detail and also reviewing sensor readings of local spacetime and subspace soundings, Wes turned to Carrera and said, "Well, there's nothing wrong with your engine, or with any of these readings, so there's no reason not to certify this vessel ready for recursive warp."
"Except that the last two times we did it, the engine imploded," Carrera replied.
"And we know it's going to do it again at least six more times from what you told me about Captain Irons," Wes said.
"Why do we have to keep going through this?" Carrera asked.
"We can figure that out next time," Wes replied. "It's time."
Carrera sighed and called to the bridge. "We are ready to go to recursive warp at warp 9. And we need to do it in exactly two minutes, 28 seconds…"
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On the bridge, at the pilot's station, Lt. Cmdr. Kenny Dolphin had set the timer to engage recursive warp drive at the precise time needed. He had gone through this enough times now to trust the situation. But he was not looking forward to his first time through the loop, when Justice Irons had to sternly order him to hit the switch even though they both knew it would lead to their destruction… again…
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The chronometer counted down, finally to zero.
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The U.S.S. Hunter promptly imploded, destroying the ship, killing all hands and taking a radius of nearly 110 light years of local spacetime, including several star systems, some of them populated, with it backward into oblivion…
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15.2
