Disclaimer: star trek dos not belong to me, nor do any of its characters. All I own is the humble plot below and the delightful characters from my fevered brain. : )





A cold wind blew across her cheek loosening her hair from its clip. She shivered slightly and hugged herself to try to preserve what little warmth her body still possessed. She clenched her jaws together to keep from chattering, who knew what was in the area that might hear the infernal noise that seemed to bounce off the nearby mountains.

This of course was all his fault.

'Window my butt' she cursed to herself. She remembered the argument bitterly, and in no way could what he said be translated to 'hey Maggie I'm gunna send you to some unknown place and time and you can try and figure out where you are before you get hypothermia'

She wasn't sure she even had feet anymore, it was possible but also one of those things you have to take on faith, cause she certainly couldn't prove it.

All she had to do was keep herself awake till she got to the peaks then maybe she could find a cave and build a fire. Yea that was optimistic. She had never walked five miles under the best of circumstances and these certainly weren't them.

Maggie's mind began to drift back to how she got in this predicament in the first place.

It all started with Mark.

Maggie walked by Marks office on the second sub floor of the research department of, Corner Station, Utah. It was about two miles south east of Fillmore and not far from Sevier Lake, and just about 165 people even knew it existed and they all lived and worked there.

She was used to hearing banging and popping and bubbling and any number of other odd but easily explained scientific noises. But tonight she heard nothing, not even his fevered mumblings when he was jotting quick notes on paper. These days with everything in the developmental stages every discovery was something to shout about, something to be proud of, something to stand up and be honored for. At least that's what they all hoped. Sometimes things didn't work out quite the way they wanted, like their resent holographic simulations, that's something you keep to yourself, like forever.

She hoped he wasn't dabbling in that again.

She was just going to shrug it off and keep going till she got to her office around the corner, but then she heard Jim coming. Jim was not someone you ran in to in a hallway alone, not if you wanted to get any work done ever. How one man under 80 could have that many grandchildren, be able to hold pictures of each in his wallet and tell you what they each had for breakfast and not remember telling you the same thing two hours before. Half the time the guy couldn't even find his office, but there was always time for pictures.

She ducked in to Marks office as quick as she could. She shut the door quietly behind her and waited for the heavy footsteps to pass before sighing with relief.

"I was just coming to get you, you'll never believe this!"

Maggie almost screamed out loud.

"Shesh Mark don't do that." She grabbed her chest trying to slow her heartbeat by mere force of will. Mark was standing on the other side of the lab in his standard white lab coat and pop bottle glasses. Today he was wearing a large smile that was almost boyish in its size. His tie was crooked and his socks didn't match, he was a typical genius.

"Your never gunna believe this Maggie, never, never." He was staring down at some notes now reading them again and again as if they were about to spontaneously combust and he had to memorize them as soon as possible.

"Well what is it." She finally said, growing a bit impatient. She had work of her own to get to. She was going to develop an engine that allowed people to travel faster then light, it involved warping space-time; it was in its final stages. Oh who was she kidding at the rate she was going, her children would have to finish it for her. Not that she had children; she couldn't even find time to date. But that was beside the point.

Mark was scratching his head and wandering aimlessly around the lab looking for something or another, it was a common sight around these parts, one of the prices paid for genius.

" I found a window Mag, a window."

Maggie looked at him puzzled for a moment.

"A window?" she asked, testing the water.

"Exactly." He exclaimed looking up from his shuffle of paperwork long enough to smile at her before resuming his search.

"I'm sorry mark I don't understand. There are window everywhere, this is not a new discovery." Maybe someone had finally pushed the poor guy over the edge.

"That's just it Mag they are everywhere, we just never saw them before. We never saw them but they were there as sure as the glass ones are. And I found one, I've seen it. Its amazing, Mag amazing." He was at the desk now looking through yet another pile of paperwork and folders and frighteningly old food remains.

"Mark I'm trying to follow you here I really am, but you're going to have to give me more then windows, what kind of windows mark?"

"Aha!" he yelled holding up a ratted folder that looked like it had seen better days, along with a cup of coffee and something greasy shaped like a pizza slice, which is probably what it was.

"Its all in here, Mag. I found a window. But not a normal one, not one through space and not one through time, but one through both, one through space time. We can stand right here and look anywhere any when. It wasn't a matter of acceleration or of atoms or of location. None of that mattered. It was simply a matter of sound and light."

Her head was spinning, she couldn't keep up. She knew he was working on some crazy time travel theory, but no one really took him seriously, not really. They indulged him. The government had taken on Mark Dater mainly as a cover story for the press. Should the installation be found out they would point to Mark as an example of what they were attempting to achieve. Should, by some miracle, one of his theories actually prove true, well that was just a bonus, one more thing their government would take credit for finding first. There was just no way he could have found what he was claiming, it wasn't possible, was it, no it wasn't.

" Mark it's not possible" she said it allowed reassuring her she wasn't being unreasonable.

"Your just saying that because you don't understand that it is, but it is and I did it. All I needed was the right frequency and then the right light, and bingo I'm able to look at any time anywhere that happens to be passing by here."

"Whoa what do you mean passing by mark?"

"Well light travels, so dose sound, so dose time, and when they come together you can see them all, but only the ones that have reached here. I cant yet pick a time and place. Its to poliminary. But ill figure it out… soon we can see whatever we want when we want. Imagine."

"I'm sorry I can't mark. It's to science fiction. And I didn't understand your equations even when they weren't this strange. Its really not my field though." She tried to let him down easy when inside she was sorry the stress had got to him and made him snap. It was sad really but it was known to happen occasionally.

"I'm gunna show you, you don't have to understand, I just want someone else to see it. It too amazing to keep to myself."

A little warning light went off in her brain, this could not be good it seemed to tell her… but like her other voices she just ignored it.

"Yea you're going to have to show me for me to understand Mark. Why don't you let me know when you find another one." She turned and started to leave again, thinking to make her way as inconspicuously to her office and not think about windows again until she was forced to.

"Oh I never lost the first one. Its still here, its always here, I just have to bring it in to focus, wait a minute Maggie and you'll understand, its amazing." He walked over to a large projector with a boom box sitting onto of it.

"One minute just one minute Maggie"

Maggie bit her tongue. She decided she would nod and pretend awe and then get out to there in the least painful way possible.

"So you found a way to time travel."

"Oh no, no. Oh no wonder you have that look, of course I didn't find time travel." He chuckled to himself as he made a few more adjustments to the projector and then turned it on. It shot a blue purple light across the room. "No just a window Mag not a door. Just a window."

"So you can what just observe the different time?"

"And a different place, not even necessarily earth, could be anywhere, any planet or stretch of space." He was playing with the dials on the boom box now.

"So how do you know it's a different time then if you don't even know where it happens to be?"

He paused for a minute. He stared off as if contemplating the cost of cheese last Tuesday. Then he seemed to simply shrug it off.

"Well its all in the formula, its all in the numbers you see. I can even tell you when and were, its all in the numbers."

Maggie nodded and wished he would just get on with it so she could go, his number talk was giving her ideas for her engine. Maybe the problem she was having was all in her numbers and had nothing to do with the hardware. Hardware she had a head for, formulas and theories she was ok at it was math that was her pothole in everything. Yes it had to be the numbers she was sure of it. Maybe she could just have Glen go over them for her. He was nothing if not a math wiz.

"Ok Mag, step over here, away form the window." He motioned for her to move behind him.

She moved to do as he asked and stand by him so he looked down and flipped the switch on the boom box.

They were the noises she was constantly hearing from his lab, the bubbling and everything. She stopped walking to listen; it was like there was pipe music under it all or something. She looked at Mark again and he was waving his arms about for her to keep coming toward him. She sighed, well if she must she must.

She suddenly felt a cold wind against her legs and could not immediacy place where it could be coming form. And then something seemed to grab her around the middle, but when she looked down there was nothing, just her coat in that weird blue purple color since she was standing in front of the projector. She heard Mark yell something, become vaguely aware of a backward motion, and landed face first in a snow bank.

And here she was. Hearing Marks mocking voice in her head as she headed for cover only god knows where. 'It isn't a door dear stupid Maggie, its just a window, I'm just going to show you the complex problems you'll never be able to solve, wont that be fun?'

She kicked some snow, only succeeding in getting more burning flakes in her eyes, what a lovely day this was turning out to be. And of course, not knowing she was going to be thrown through the space-time continuum she had not dressed appropriately. She wore only her gray slacks white shirt and annoyingly thin lab coat with an iron on moon patch on the breast pocket. And had she known where she would end up before lunch she certainly would have worn her contacts. As it was she was doing good to see the peaks, and she wasn't about to take her hands from her armpits to wipe them off. Not gunna happen. Course she couldn't be completely sure she still had hands. This is when all the times she told people she would rather be at the Alaska research station came back and bit her in the butt. She was going to die in the snow near the mountains of some planet not her own, if the two moons where any indication, and no one would even know.

The least she could do was name the planet of her doom right. She just hated that horse with no name song, haven forbid she die on a planet with no name, the final insult. Lets see cold, bleak, and painful. 'I dub they algebra.' She thought to herself with a smile on the inside, since she was fairly sure her lips where frozen to her teeth by this time.

She felt the wind start to pick up behind her.

'Oh great just what I need, a blizzard, wont this be fun.' She tried not to cry knowing that it would just freeze and fuse her eyes shut, and that thought just added to her sarcastic misery. She just tried to assure herself that she was still dreaming soundlessly in her cozy featherbed. 'That's it Maggie Claims just let her explosive imagination get away with her again.' Why if she thought back far enough and hard enough surly there was another dream she could remember having an internal dialogue with herself in. sure there was.

Oh it was hopeless.

She suddenly realized she had stopped. The wind behind her had piled the snow against the back of her legs, and it was really too painful to move anyways. The wind was gone now though so that was a good sign. But now she was sure she heard voices. She was really losing it. Not long now before she started to feel that tell tale warmth of impending death. Well warmth was warmth, however she could get it.

She tried to ignore them but the voices were getting louder and seemed to be coming from behind her.

She slowly forced herself to turn around and see for herself that nothing was there. Through her frozen glasses she thought she saw fuzzy forms moving toward her.

Oh goodie now she was going to be eaten be the large strangely formed indigenous alien. Joy of joys. She just had to stay sarcastic until she woke up then she would allow herself a good scream. She tried to turn and start running in the opposite direction, but succeeded only in landing again face first in the icy snow.

She started to black out, which was weird because she couldn't remember a single time in her life were she had ever blacked out, ever. She shook her head to stay awake and also gained little wooziness for her troubles.

Maggie heard the crunching of footsteps approaching in the snow and suddenly wished she had passed out. She really didn't want to be awake for this. Something grabbed her from behind and hulled her to her feet. By this time though her glasses where completely frozen and nothing was visible but white.

"Its ok just hang in there." A male, (and human?) voice yelled close to her ear.

And that's when she passed out.





Maggie woke slowly with a decidedly painful headache. Her foggy mind screamed at her to explain its last known memories. Snow and peaks and pain and cold. A dream, she answered her frantic subconscious, only a caffeine induced nightmare from too many late hours with only the Ho-Hos to keep her company. She really needed to get out of this Utah office and someplace more conducive to working. And at least one good thing came out of her dream she wasn't moving to Alaska. Numbers. Also the numbers, she had to remember to have Glen check her calculations, maybe that was all that was wrong with her poor little engine.

And that would certainly be the only way she was going to get to creepy little Algebra with its two moons and oh so friendly climate. And the human.

She smiled to herself as she opened her eyes, as if there would be people on such a planet…

Her thought came up short as her world focused in around her.

This was not her room. This was not the vacant office she slept in when she couldn't make it to her room. This was…really bright.

Her head protested the overhead lights and she squinted and winced at the pain that action caused as well.

Suddenly the lights dimmed around her to a much more manageable and lets brain piercing level.

"Very sorry my dear, quite unthoughtful of me. Good to see you awake though, lets have a look at that head shall we." It was a friendly male voice that seemed to lift at the end of every sentence as if perpetually happy about whatever it was doing.

Slightly cold hands touched her temples and caused her to close her eyes with relief before she could focus in on the face that the voice belonged to.

"Oh that's much better, thank you." She heard herself say, as the pain seemed to melt away at his touch.

"Nothing to it, human pressure points are easily manipulated for pain relief."

She just nodded in response. She wasn't sure she should open her eyes, in case the pain returned with the fog that she was sure would be before her since she couldn't feel her glasses.

"Where am I?"

"I think ill let the captain answer that. Ill just let him know you awake." He moved off she could hear the rustle of his cloths. It was probably someone new to the facility if they were still catering to the military wills. She remembered Marks little tirade, maybe something had hit her in the head while he was demonstrating his 'window' to her. That would explain her headache.

The new guy was gunna get a wake up call when he realized Captain Talver didn't not like to be trouble with petty details, which included anything to do with the staff of the base. He was only interested in updates and progress. The last time Maggie had words with him was so long ago, it was a depressing reminder of her last breakthrough, the construction of the engine model. She would see him again if she could just get the number straight. Of if this little guy here woke him up.

She heard the man across the room push a button and page the Captain as Dr. Flox or something like that. So he was their physician now. She opened her eyes a bit and saw the back of the man as he walked to the other side of the room. And this must be their new medical facility. Shed of course never seen the old one, but she had heard it was getting updated with the latest funds that had come in. she knew she hadn't seen any of that money. It hit her that she could actually see him across the room. No wonder she had a headache she had slept in her contacts, even though she didn't remember putting them in. Another sign she had been working to hard lately.

She laid her head back down and decided to get a few more seconds of sleep before she had to deal with the captain and answer questions and eventually go back to work.

She was just about to dose off when she heard a door slide open. Of cause being military he had to be quick about things blast him.

She started to sit up again and opened her eyes to someone she had never seen before.

"Who are you?" she asked. More then a little suspicious at the presence of a new captain aboard. One who seemed to be wearing a flight suit of some kind?

The man smiled kindly and held out his hand.

"I'm Captain Jonathan Archer of the Enterprise. And you are?"

She shook his hand because it seemed the polite thing to do.

"I'm Maggie Claims, I work here. What is the captain of a aircraft carrier doing in Utah, or is it classified." She tried to smile despite the decidedly uneasy feeling that was beginning to settle in the pit of her stomach. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the doctor approaching and turned thinking to give him a friendly smile.

"Is she going to be alright doctor?" Jonathan Archer asked his chef medical officer, Dr. phlox, with concern in his voice for the woman passed out on the biobed.

"Yes I'm sure she will be just fine." He injected her silently with some medicine or other the Archer didn't even try to understand. "Sudden loss of consciousness can be common in these cases of extreme exposure among humans. Also the prolonged exposure to the elements has made her woozy and excitable and I've found that the human body often knows what's best. Rest will do her the most good at this point. Why I once read a study by a fascinating man by the name of Cramin I believe the hypothesized that the human brain…"

"Really doctor I need to get back to the bridge. Keep me updated on the situation will you." He politely made his way to the door as quickly as possible.

"Of course captain." The Doctor answered to the closing door and retreating form on the other side, completely un offended. He turned and once again began to sort through his new collection of Tomeirian Sloth Beetles, amazing on athlete's foot as humans called it…

Archer walked on to the bridge and all eyes were on him.

"I still don't have any answers yet. The doctor says she could be weak for a while longer still." He headed to his ready room and notice the fallen faces of the bridge crew who where dieing to know the particulars of how they even came to have their currant passenger. He had the same feelings.

He patted Porthos his little beagle on the head and took a seat behind his desk in the ready room. He picked up the report, how they happened to find this woman, and read it for the third time.

They had simply been doing a routine scan of another uninhabited system. Not even a microbe seemed present even though the fifth planet seemed to have a Minshara class atmosphere capable of sustaining life. There was nothing. And then suddenly there was. A single biosign turned out to be not so hard to spot when it was the only one in an entire system…and it was just suddenly there. And it was human. That was what made them think it was a glitch, but it wouldn't go away, the biosign was really there, meaning someone was actually on that frozen wasteland of a planet.

They immediacy sent a shuttle to retrieve her, no one could last down there for very long, and they where further surprised to find she wasn't even dressed for the climate, but instead nearly dead from the cold. After she was on board and in the doctors' capable hands they had spent over a day scanning every inch of the surface in search of the ship she must have used. Then they started subterranean scans to search out an underground installation she may have wandered out of. After almost three days of nothing, they had no more ideas. They were just going to have to wait for the healing patient in sickbay to come to and shed some light on the situation.

He picked up and glanced at the doctor's notes. She had not surprisingly suffered some frostbite and exhaustion as well as many other side affects of exposure. The doctor had also had to remove frozen antique glasses from her face and repair some damage that the metal had caused when it had adhered to her skin. The startling thing had been her vision. Though it didn't seem damaged by the snow or ice fragments her acuity was around 20/200 making her unable to function without some corrective eye gear. Why she hadn't had it corrected at a young age seemed a mystery even the doctor couldn't speculate on. It was obviously genetic yet only the most primitive steps had been taken to compensate for it. The doctor had taken it upon himself, after the destruction of her glasses to repair her vision, the whole procedure taking less then five minutes.

Archer had been tempted to take Hoshi with him when the doctor informed him that the patient was awake. In case he couldn't find another way to communicate. And then she had seemed so calm if a bit disoriented, and that puzzled him even more. She just acted as if this happened all the time. She shook his hand as if he was the one who didn't belong and needed to explain his reason for standing before her. And then her next question sent chills up his spine. He wasn't sure he would ever get over the shock or its implications. Surely it was just a joke or a silly misunderstanding.

He didn't have time to clarify though because dr. phlox came to give her another injection, she looked at him blankly and passed out. He wasn't sure if he concurred with the doctor's diagnosis either, it didn't look like it was fatigue that caused her to black out, more like shock. Like shock at seeing an alien.

If she had been at this distance though she would have traveled through alien space to get there, she would have had to encounter other species. And even if she hadn't, she was likely to have seen and or heard of them some how. The very fact she was out here meant she knew of volcans at least.

None of it seemed to make sense but something about the whole thing rubbed him wrong.

His door chime sounded just as the thought ran through his head.

"Come in.," he answered distractedly.

Charles 'trip' Tucker III walked in and waited for the door to close behind him. "So Captain what really happened down there in sickbay?"

Leave it to the chief engineer to come straight to the heart of a situation.

"The problem is trip I'm not exactly sure what happened."

"Ok looks like I need to sit down for this." He said as he did just that. He easily rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward in anticipation for his captain and long time friend to continue.

"She just seemed to calm and together one minute and the next she passed out, and a comment she made, I just rubbed me the wrong way, like there's something bigger going on her then we know."

"Woe you just said a lot there. What do you mean something bigger, are we talking bad guy bigger or just cosmic bigger?" he had that nervous quality to his voice that seemed to pray for a good answer, one that didn't call for his engines to be nearly blown to smithereens.

"I don't know," Archer got up and looked out the window at the stars that lazily passed by as they continued to orbit the planet. "Its like I cant really put my finger on it, but its still there." He sighed. "Maybe it's just me. And maybe she was just pulling my leg."

"Ok now I'm lost. Pulling your leg?"

Archer looked above his friend to where he had framed all the other ships to bare the name enterprise and right there was the thing that made him uneasy.

"When I introduced myself, she asked what the captain of a aircraft carrier was doing in Utah. The doc says it's just a symptom of her recovery from extreme exposure. That it's just a case of disorientation and she'll get over it with rest and medication. But something about the way she said it sounded perfectly sane to me."

"So what are you saying, she doesn't remember the decommission of that ship like over a hundred years ago? That cant even be possible. She had to be pullen your leg, or the docs right. She was out on that planet in nothing but her Sunday close for far longer then was good for her. We should really wait till she can fill in the blanks before we do."

"Your right. I've just been up to late." Archer retook his seat, rubbing the back of his neck to emphasis his point.

"Tell me about it I can't wait for this shift to end." Trip got up and started for the door. "Ill be in engineering if anything happens."

"Ill let you know." Archer said with a smile as he watched him go.

And for some reason his eyes drifted back to the carrier.