Chapter 14: The Still Point

Timur called Burnham into the ready room one day to discuss tactics, but instead of doing so immediately she glared at the computer.

"Your former captain really did a number on this thing," said the admiral. "It took me hours to hunt down the video files that were slowing this down."

"But I fixed it!" Said Burnham. "He must have downloaded a bunch of junk during that one week."

"Look at this. Here's a folder with video files that a spy drone took of a Klingon dilithium mine. One of these files, which is labeled in the same manner as the others and even has the right date, turns out to be an episode from the fourth season of 'Bleep My Dad Says!'"

"Lorca's revenge is still trickling in. Look what I picked up from my PO Box on Starbase 10 when we were there last week."

Burnham held a fake mustache to her upper lip. It was tawny and curled up at the ends. Timur shook her head.

"It's a monthly subscription," added Burnham. "There is actually a group of people who design and make different fake mustaches every month."

They got to the task at hand and tried to figure out the Klingons' next moves. Just about everybody felt divided on the issue of whether or not to finally take the offensive and push into Klingon space instead of just defending the border. The Federation was no empire but people died every time the Klingons got past the border patrols. Perhaps it was time to hit them hard, like in old Earth wars.

"We are not old Earth anymore," said Burnham, thoroughly against the idea. "If we push them back we will just prove them right. I'm sure there is a better solution than just following the tactics of the past."

"Perhaps so," said Timur. "In the meantime, a freighter next to the Binary Stars has picked up snatches of Klingon communications, though they're not sure from how far away. The other admirals told us to assist if necessary. Make sure Stamets is ready for the jump. Or do you think you can do it?"

Burnham had done several jumps but she decided not to test her abilities with this long one. Timur did not feel there was any rush and they took another 20 minutes to jump to the location of the freighter, which bore aid to war-impacted communities.

Something happened the moment they appeared. Everybody was confused but there were three photon torpedoes heading for them out of nowhere and they had to act fast. Stamets seemed nauseous and scatterbrained so Burnham got in the spore drive chamber and took them out of there seconds before the photon torpedoes hit.

"What the hell happened?" Asked Timur on the bridge once they were safe.

Nobody knew. Saru didn't even have time to scan the area. The freighter was destroyed. It couldn't have been a cloaked Klingon ship, could it? They couldn't cloak and fire, right? At the distance at which the photon torpedoes appeared, they should have been able to see the ship that fired at them from the window. Stamets said something felt wrong with everything for a short period of time, but since he wanted to throw up when this happened, he couldn't be more specific.

Everybody was on edge. Most people suspected something went wrong with the spore drive. They did a few jumps, navigated by Burnham or Stamets, to safe locations and didn't notice anything unusual. They assisted with a few minor skirmishes and nothing happened out of the ordinary. But then the situation occurred again. This time they were called to help a damaged ship that was being battered. Stamets did the jump and again he went woozy while several photon torpedoes appeared out of nowhere, closer this time. Burnham got them out again. The damaged ship did not send any messages before it was destroyed.

Naturally the blame fell on Stamets. He must have overworked himself and messed something up. Timur forced him to take a few days off, which he spent reading the scientific literature in his room. Burnham took over with Tilly to encourage her. They kind of enjoyed being sans Stamets for a bit, though neither admitted it.

They got a distress call from a planet and Burnham navigated them to the location. Once out of the mycelial network, she felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. Everything seemed to freeze as the pain spread through her body. There was no way she could navigate them back, no way Stamets could get there from his room in time before the torpedoes hit…

Except he did arrive in time because he was hiding in the room with the spore plantation. He made it into the spore drive chamber in time and shoved a puking Burnham out of the way. He took them to a safe location. The ship was all astir as people tried to figure out what happened. The community on the planet was wiped out. Their communications equipment got destroyed. This made Burnham think the aberrations were not due to the spore drive. The Klingons killed the witnesses, which means they had something to hide.

Burnham spent hours going over all the data from the three events. Finally, she noticed something. They arrived at the planet at 22:38:14. They jumped out of there at 22:46:31. But during that time, the clock was reset! The ship's clock was always tuned to universal time. If the clock lagged due to technical reasons, it automatically reset when it received subspace signals opposing its incorrect time. Spore drive jumps sometimes caused the clock to reset, but not always. During each of the three events, which were progressively shorter, the clock reset when they jumped to a safe location.

"Tilly, did that first incident with the freighter feel like six minutes?" Asked Burnham.

Tilly did not think so. It had only felt like one minute. To Stamets, who hadn't been feeling well, it had felt longer. Burnham also felt that when she took them to the planet, she'd been gagging for longer than a minute. A ship-wide survey revealed that everybody felt they had only been in those places for a minute. So where did the time go?

The admirals decided not to send Discovey anywhere by spore drive until they figured out the problem. Burnham and Stamets brainstormed together a lot. Come to think of it, during the two times that Stamets jumped, it had felt longer to Burnham as well, like a blurry daydream. She had only snapped out of it when she heard about the torpedoes coming at them. And Stamets could have sworn that when he was in the plantation room, he'd spent a few minutes idly staring at swaying fungus right after they jumped. It had been so beautiful, like a glittering angel…

"We all know the effects of mushrooms, Paul," said Burnham.

Finally they brashly concluded that the Klingons had found a way of locally stopping time. They caught Discovery in a time field of some sort and shot torpedoes from a distance that would otherwise have given the Federation vessel plenty of time to escape. Frozen in time, however, Discovery waited helplessly for the torpedoes to arrive. Presumably, the torpedoes froze in time as well when they entered the field but the Klingons were getting better, tightening the net a little more each time, until eventually there would be no time to escape.

"But where did they get this technology?" Wondered Burnham. She expected Timur to call them crazy but the admiral was not surprised.

"Klingons are familiar with time manipulation," she said. "The planet Boreth is the source of time crystals. The monks of Boreth have sworn to defend the crystals and prevent their misuse but there are some in circulation."

After much debate with the other admirals, Timur got permission to visit Boreth, if the monks would allow them in. They jumped to the location without incident and contacted the surface. The monks didn't respond for 16 hours, then gave permission to beam down. They didn't specify how many could come so Timur took Burnham and Saru. Three seemed like a good number. They beamed down into a cold cave and crossed a bridge into the monastery, like Christopher Pike in another universe, but for different reasons.

Several Klingons with bat'leths waited for them in a large chamber. One Klingon came forward and said, "Greetings to the slaves of time. What do you seek from us?"

Timur introduced them and let Burnham explain the situation. The lead Klingon seemed slightly amused. When she was done he indicated for a Klingon to approach them with a giant bat'leth. They pulled out phasers but did not get attacked.

"Do you see the indentation in the Glaive of Temporal Truth?" Asked the lead Klingon. "Some time ago, it does not matter how long, we were attacked by our own kind. They took the time crystal from the Glaive, knowing full well that a true time crystal is beyond their reach."

"What is that time crystal capable of doing?" Asked Timur.

"What you described," said the lead Klingon.

"Who were they? Did you get any idea of their plans?" Demanded Timur.

The lead monk smiled mysteriously and didn't answer.

"Why do you say a true time crystal is beyond their reach?" Asked Saru.

"A time crystal only reveals itself to the Chosen Ones, and even then, very few are strong enough to accept the price."

The crew pondered this for a moment. The Federation needed their help. They could not provide it while some bastards were freezing them in time. Burnham and Stamets had some resistance to time manipulation, but they needed practice to operate under those conditions. They needed a time crystal to counteract the enemy's moves.

"What is your name?" Asked Saru of the lead monk.

"Tenavik," he said with a smile.

"Well, Tenavik, is there anything we can do to obtain a time crystal?" Asked Burnham.

"Only time will tell," he said.

The three exchanged puzzled glances, but it seemed that Tenavik made a joke. He continued, "Chosen Ones rarely step through our doors but I received an inkling that this may be such an occasion. However, you must determine which among your crew is the Chosen One. All I can tell you is that this person must be One Who is One."

"One Who is One?" Repeated Timur.

They discussed who it could be. Maybe Stamets? He was quite unusual. But so was Burnham. Maybe Saru, because of all his identity issues from leaving Kaminar? Maybe the statement referred to somebody who was at peace with him or herself, somebody who'd attained a high level of spiritual enlightenment. Eh…

"It must be Yana," said Saru.

"I wouldn't say that hopeless prankster has achieved spiritual enlightenment," said Timur.

"She is the only one of her kind," said Saru. "She has no counterpart in other universes."

"I do not want to put all our money on a girl who probably helped your captain pollute my computer with ridiculous shows," said Timur.

"And about 120 hours of Kaseelian opera," added Burnham.

"Five minutes is enough," muttered Timur, but she had to concede that Yana seemed to be the answer to the riddle.

They called for her to beam down and cross the bridge. Tenavik wordlessly indicated for her to follow him without letting Timur give her any admonitions. They went down a hallway and passed some open doors. Yana saw young Klingon monks gathered around a table on which stood a chicken. Time went backwards and the chicken shrank into a chick, then clambered into an egg, but Yana hurried after Tenavik and didn't see if it went up another chicken's butt.

"Why do you guys do this stuff? How does it help you understand the mysteries of the universe? Are you just screwing around?" She asked.

Tenavik smiled secretively.

"Yeah, you're just screwing around," said Yana.

They went out onto another bridge, past a pillar called the Pillar of the Past, and paused near the Pillar of the Present. Tenavik inserted a time crystal key into a keyhole.

"When the future becomes the past, the present will be unlocked," he said.

"Thanks for the words of wisdom," said Yana sarcastically.

"Aren't you afraid?" Asked Tenavik. "Most leave this place in tears, unable to accept a future they did not expect."

"Is it always a bad future? Don't some get a happily ever after?"

Naturally, Tenavik did not respond and Yana rolled her eyes. They went into a cave with stalactites and stalagmites of time crystals. Yana wandered around for a few minutes until she sensed one that called out to her. Despite her sarcasm, she felt worried. She felt she knew how this worked. She'd have to take the crystal, even if it predicted a future where she and her closest friends died. It was for the greater good. The lives of many outweigh the lives of the few. It was what she had signed up for.

She took the crystal.

She put it back.

Yana wordlessly went onto the bridge. Tenavik followed her. She stopped by the Pillar of the Present and sank to her knees, shuddering. Tenavik helped her up and took her to a small room, where he offered her a raktajino. They drank Klingon coffee until Yana felt well enough to speak.

"I was ready to see myself dying, or my father, or Lorenza and the others. But…everybody? Why? I can't be responsible for that. I refuse to believe that Discovery's current situation can lead to something worse than what I saw."

"The light of Kahless shines, but it does not always illuminate everything," said Tenavik.

"Is the Federation doomed?" Asked Yana.

"I was born in another universe that faced an even darker situation. They succeeded against the odds and they surprised me. Or perhaps they have yet to surprise me. Maybe the same is true for you and your crew, many of whom are very similar people."

"You are also One Who is One, aren't you?" Asked Yana.[1]

Tenavik smiled and took their mugs. Yana eyed him.

"You're kind of cute-looking, you know that?" She said. "Do you want to go out sometime?"

The Klingon monk stared at her, surprised after all.

"I am much too…," he began, but realized he could not say "too old for you."

"Are you joking?" He asked.

"No, I'm seriously into you!" Said Yana. "You've got this wise, calm, mysterious know-it-all thing going on and it's pretty attractive. We should have dinner and see a movie."

"I do not leave Boreth."

"I can bring some stuff. Dude, have you ever even…"

"I do not form romantic interpersonal relationships," interrupted Tenavik. "Please, this discussion is over. You must return to your people."

Yana followed him down a hallway but in one of the rooms, she spotted something interesting and dashed inside before Tenavik could stop her.

"Maybe you're not interested in romantic relationships," she said, "but I bet he is."

She looked down at a younger Tenavik. He barely glanced at her, absorbed in trying to make a plant grow from a seed to a tree in a matter of minutes.

"Look, you have plenty of time to get that to work," said Yana. "Probably, like, millions of years. But I'm here now and I think you should practice something else."

She put her hand on his knee. The young Klingon monk finally looked at her. The older Tenavik flinched. Yana pulled the younger one to his feet and they went over to a window. Older Tenavik looked really uncomfortable. Yana put her arms around his younger self.

"You know you want to," she whispered seductively.

Older Tenavik suddenly ran off. He was back in time to pull them off each other before anything serious happened.

"You just caused me a failing grade on some important examinations," he said.

"Why do you still care?" Asked Yana.

"It took me years to get over this incident."

"You need to get out more."

"Here, this is for you, to make you go away," said Tenavik, handing her a blue time crystal. "It has been modified to only counteract the effects of the crystal from the Glaive of Temporal Truth. You do not need to do anything, just have it on the ship."

"Aw, that's so nice of you!" Said Yana. "Our connection has lasted all these years!"

Just before they reached the entrance hall, Yana asked, "Don't you think we should rekindle our love?"

"Go," said Tenavik with finality.

It should have been easy, right? Now they couldn't be frozen in time! But when they answered a call for help and confronted the time crystal thieves, they discovered these were not the same Klingons whom they'd been fighting for over a year. The ship was not Klingon design and the insignia on the hull did not match any known house. The new Klingons' phasers took down half the shields in one blast. Detmer performed some complex evasive maneuvers to avoid another hit. After Discovery completed some jumps around this new ship, delivering a number of attacks, the Klingons went to warp.

Timur spoke with the captain of the Federation ship they'd rescued. He hadn't communicated with the enemy. Timur hit the books and located an insignia that matched the one they'd seen on the newcomers. It matched that of Hurgh'hov,[2] an apocryphal 25th Klingon House. She couldn't find any useful information. They seemed to have shown up from the very far end of Klingon space. She asked Silrek about his new allies for lack of any other leads and he just wrote, "They are true Klingons who will smite you and help us establish a new order!" Great…

There didn't seem to be a lot of them, at least. Just that one ship for now and they didn't participate much in battles. Though they had better weapons, they always ran when Discovery showed up. True Klingons? True Klingons did not run with their tail between their legs. This suggested that for some reason, Hurgh'hov really did not want to be caught. Timur and Burnham spent a while coming up with plans to capture and interrogate them but the admirals disregarded this anomaly from the past.

Meanwhile, Yana told Lorca about her adventure on Boreth.

"You hit on two generations of the same Klingon monk?" He said. "That's my girl!"

Osgood came out of the bathroom wearing a dress uniform. Captain Higgs, the Starfleet overseer of Starbase 5, was in for one of her infrequent visits and Ginfas organized a formal dinner. Lorca sat on his bed, not dressed up, reading a book. He had no intention of going to some stuck-up formal event where he had to make nice and act normal.

"Gabe, she is the one," said Osgood about Captain Higgs. "She will be the new Mrs. Osgood—Captain Osgood."

"How many times have you met?"

"This is the first time. But she is the one. I just know. I've made a deal with Anderson. He's sure to hit on her and I promised I'd introduce him to my niece in exchange for leaving Captain Higgs to me."

"You don't have a niece."

"Nope! But I showed him a photo of a former postdoc of mine that got him pretty excited. That Anderson, he should become a gigolo. Ha, ha, such a funny word, gigolo. We really don't use it enough. So how do I look?"

"The way everybody looks in a dress uniform. Like a douche."

"Be that way. I'll bring you back a snack anyway."

But Osgood came back at 3 AM and collapsed on his bed. Too much night owl partying. Lorca woke him up at 5:30 AM to see if he wanted to go for a jog. Osgood stared at him from wide, crazy eyes. Lorca laughed and ran around the starbase, trying to recover the time he'd had when he was still on Discovery. When he saw that he wasn't doing the same time, he pushed himself too hard and had to stop at a crossroads, panting.

"Getting old, huh? Beats being dead," Said Lorca50 from where he hovered on a pink cloud with one arm lazily hanging over the edge.

"What are you supposed to be, a dumb genie that doesn't grant wishes?" Asked Lorca.

"Maybe I do, but you just haven't made me happy. You look so hot, why don't you take off your shirt?"

"Oh, go away!"

Lorca kept walking. The vision on the pink cloud followed, complaining about stuff.

"I'm bored!" He said. "I can't do anything fun!"

"Read a book!" Said Lorca. "Learn something new. Broaden your horizons. Maybe you'll finally figure something out."

"Will that make you like me more?"

Lorca stopped and wiped his forehead.

"I don't know! Yes, maybe?" he said.

"All right, I will read a book!" Said Lorca50. "Also, I suggest you go that way."

The hallucination vanished in a whorl of pink cloud. Lorca shook his head. Honestly, he'd seen enough movies where a character was plagued by his mirror image or something of the sort. Oftentimes the mirror image tried to convince the character he was no good and goad him into doing something he'd regret. It wasn't anything new.

"I'm a cliché!" Lorca said out loud.

A random patient sat in a small lounge, already up at this hour, and turned to look at him. The patient said, in his best "I can do you one better" voice, "Oh yeah? Well I'm a parallelogram!"

Lorca50 had indicated the isolation ward. Lorca went down there, wondering what his creepy crazy hallucination had in mind. A couple of doctors came out of one of the rooms, wheeling a medical cart.

"Kahless, help me! Kahless, help me!" Somebody yelled from inside.

Lorca guessed who it was immediately. The doctors didn't let him in without permission but Ginfas gave it to him later that day, after some skepticism. He came with Lorca to make sure the former captain didn't mean any harm to the man/Klingon who'd murdered Culber. Lorca felt he was past that anger. He later often sat with Ash Tyler, who sometimes had moments of lucidity. When he first recognized Lorca, he started to cry.

"Captain, Captain, I didn't mean it!" He said. "I'm so sorry, so sorry."

He often just repeated the same thing, like "so sorry." Any desire for vengeance that Lorca might have had toward this man evaporated after listening to him beg for forgiveness, not just from him but from Burnham, Tyler's mother, Stamets, and Kahless. The latter was mentioned often, as if Kahless was the be-all, end-all, and cure-all.

"You should study religion and philosophy," said Lorca.

Without L'Rell to negate Voq's personality using her Klingon technique, the doctors had mapped Tyler's brain, noting the areas that lit up when he was in Voq's thrall. Psychology did not help him and he got more and more violent, hurting himself and sometimes the staff, if he somehow got his hands on them. Finally they performed a sort of "prefrontal lobotomy," hoping it wouldn't affect Tyler's own personality too much. It succeeded in decreasing the violence but Tyler was still anxious, delirious, and a shadow of his former self.

Lorca read things to Tyler and told him about Discovery's adventures. Tyler finally got over his repentant zeal and began responding, even laughing at some of the scenes from the Terran Universe.

"I wish I had been there with you all," he said.

"It was a nerve-wracking experience," said Lorca.

Tyler asked a lot about Burnham. He was completely flummoxed when Lorca told him she married Saru. He let Tyler be shocked for a few moments, then revealed the truth.

"Captain, that was terrible of you!" Said Tyler.

He refused to call Lorca anything other than Captain and sometimes didn't really comprehend reality. Lorca told him dozens of times that they were both patients on a starbase but Tyler often said he could hear engines, or birds out the window, or a chorus. Well, perhaps he was better off that way. Reality was a tough cookie.

Lorca50 sometimes sat in on Lorca's "sessions" with Tyler and reminisced about the other Tyler. Lorca repeated what he said to this Tyler, who began to feel that the deceased lieutenant had been a sort of spirit brother. Lorca asked Anderson if Lorca50's stories about Tyler were true but Anderson didn't know, he'd never been on Lorca50's ship or questioned him much about his missions. So, no clue as to Lorca50's true nature.

One day, during a chat with Yana, Lorca learned about this mysterious House Hurgh'hov. Its origins puzzled Lorca but what he found even more peculiar was that Timur was the one who identified it. Then he recalled that Timur also knew about time crystals and Boreth. Sure, she was a Klingon expert with plenty of old books, but what if it was more than that?

Lorca told these things to Tyler. They discussed everything they knew about Timur. Later, Lorca pondered all this some more. Somehow, perhaps he'd just spent too much time with Tyler, he came up with a crazy theory. He even admitted it was crazy, at first. He didn't tell Tyler about it because it may have upset him but he did tell Osgood. Again, it started off as a joke. What if Admiral Timur was a Klingon-human like Tyler? That would explain how she knew things about Klingons that most people didn't. But how did she get that way? Why, it must have been when she was held on that slave ship. It was probably just a front for what the Klingons were really up to, a plan to infiltrate the very heart of Starfleet.

Lorca did a lot of research and found that the information added up. Timur really could be a Klingon spy, without even knowing it! Perhaps the procedure was a lot more seamless when performed on a child. How awful, doing such a thing to child! But how Klingon. Lorca believed his theory more and more. Osgood either humored him or didn't care but he helped find news articles about Timur. He refused to try hacking her medical records. Lorca didn't tell Yana about this because he was afraid of the lines being tapped. He kept it mostly to himself but worried more and more. Discovery wasn't just in the hands of a madwoman but an unknowing traitor! What was he supposed to do?

He didn't do anything, though, still having some doubt that he was right. Tyler got well enough to be allowed out of his room with a nurse attendant. Lorca didn't take any credit for this though Ginfas gave it to him. They made a funny crowd, Perkins always asking what just happened, Danvers glowering at her plate, Anderson coming over sometimes to discuss his latest booty call, Tyler speaking Klingon and earning a punch from Danvers, Sully telling them to go water the pumpkin when she really meant "start acting like adults," and Lorca worrying about fantasies. A funny crowd indeed, and a sad one.

Footnotes

[1] Tenavik has no counterparts in the 52 universes. Clearly, L'Rell and Voq didn't hit it off that much in most of them. I'm not going to speculate on how Tenavik can move between these universes—it's creepy Klingon monk stuff, beyond understanding.

[2] Don't say I never make an effort for you. I looked this up in a Klingon dictionary. A bit clichéd but I deserve points for trying.