Chapter Five: Matter Over Mind

Summary: The events of Ouroborus take place…

Disclaimer: Look, I don't own any of it!

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Bravely I look further than I see,

Knowing things I know I  cannot be,

Not know,

So aware of what I am,

And I don't where that is,

And there's something right in front of me and I…

Touch the fingers of my hand,

And I wonder if it's me,

Holding on and on,

To theories of prosperity,

Someone who can promise me,

I believe in me.

Can you turn me off?

Just a second, please,

Turn me into something,

Faceless, weightless, mindless, homeless,

Vacuum state of peace.

On and on and on and on,

On and on and on and on,

I believe in me.

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Trance stopped, suddenly, a cold, shivering feeling passing across her consciousness. She had felt that sensation one too many times before, and knew exactly what it meant.

Beka, the older Beka, was dead.

Guilt clutched at Trance, and tears sprung to her eyes, stinging them. She could guess what must have happened, and the thought of it made her nauseous. Alone, on her own, by Kalderan's… her body even now being dissipated by the teseracts…

Beka had disserved better than that.

The other Beka, the woman who was not her Beka but would somehow have to do, stopped too. "What?" She demanded. There was a stricken look on Trance's face, and if there had been any blood there to begin with, it was now draining fast.

Trance shook herself. She could mourn later. Right now she had to get the teseract machine and fix this thing. "It's nothing. Come on, this way."

Beka shrugged and followed her. She was still trying to take in what had just transpired. Another teseract suddenly opened, swallowing them, taking them out of the Andromeda docking bay and into a corridor, back in the Andromeda itself.

Trance took a second to glance around her, feeling the sudden sense of nostalgia at being back at inside the Andromeda. It was strangely unreal, too much even for her to comprehend the enormity of the shift that was taking place.

"Are we anywhere near the machine shop?" She asked, looking at Beka.

Beak glanced around. "I don't think so…"

Trance suppressed a groan of frustration. "Alright then… we're on deck… deck seven… and the machine shop is on deck…" She blinked and found that she had forgotten. "What deck is the machine shop on?"
Beka looked at her in surprise. "Don't you remember?"

Trance shrugged. "It's been a while since I was last on board."

"Right." Beka muttered. "Okay, well, the machine shop is on deck twelve…"

"That way." Trance pointed calmly. A teseract was building up again, the prickling along her skin telling her where, and it was definitely getting more powerful. She would have to be careful. If she stepped into one without thinking they might be torn apart.

Walking in the right direction, they rounded a corner, were engulfed by a teseract, and found themselves walking towards Harper and a very flustered looking Perseid. Trance struggled to remember his name, gave up, and decided it best to ignore him anyway.

"Harper!" Beka made straight for the mechanic and embraced him tightly, relief flooding her veins. "Thank God! I was worried sick!"

"Harper." Trance greeted, a quiet acknowledgement. She tried not to let her own relief show. Just seeing him alive again was enough to marginally lift her spirits. It was the right one, this time, she could tell, but he had even less time to live than the first Harper they had encountered. The energy given off by the teseracts was probably feeding the magog eggs in his stomach. Her future vision was already showing her the many grizzly, blood soaked endings that this Harper was going to meat in the very near future, and none of them were particularly appealing.

Especially since she had already seen him go through it once.

Harper promptly drew his blaster. Well, that wasn't surprising. Trance watched him try to comprehend, recognition dawning on his features. "Trance?"

Trance didn't make any move toward him, although she was once again fighting the urge to fling her arms around his neck. Instead she attempted to reassure him, at least long enough to get him to the teseract machine before the magog eggs hatched. She was cutting it much finer than she would have liked to, but there was no way to back out now.

"It's me, it's just a new me."

The incredulity on Harper's face grew as he stared at her, then looked at Beka for help. "What the…"

Beka shook her head. "Temporal mechanics give me a headache."

Harper sighed and lowered his blaster. "Tell me about i-" he was cut off in mid sentence as a sudden white hot ball of agony blossomed in his stomach, the teeth of the baby magog sinking into his inner stomach lining. Gasping for breath as it subsided once more he straightened, kneading his stomach with her free hand. "I'm telling you, one more like that and I'm gonna be the father of six baby magog!"

Trance looked at him, her future vision going haywire again as a whole new set of odds were introduced into the equation. They had no time for this.

"Follow me." She said, simply, turning to walk away.

Harper frowned, still recovering from the pain. "Follow you? We don't even know you."

Oh boy, Trance moaned, inwardly, here it comes…They really, really didn't have time for this. She had not come this far to let Harper destroy reality because of his own paranoia!

Walking up to him slowly, exuding quiet threat, she looked him squarely in the eye, and, fighting the urge to grab him by the collar and lift him off the ground, informed him with calm, cold menace, "I'm still Trance, and if you'd like to get out of here alive, I suggest you do what I say."

Harper swallowed nervously. His eyes did a swift search of her face, trying to find something, anything, that could possibly be a suggestion of the purple pixie he had, up to two minutes ago, thought he knew.

He found none.

Trance turned and walked away from him, knowing he would follow, not bothering to allow him to demand further explanation.

Two teseracts later, and they found themselves walking into the machine shop, just as Dylan and Rommie appeared from the other end.

Trance made a beeline for the teseract machine, hardly noticing the presence of the other two.

"Beka what-" Dylan stopped and stared at the golden creature that had just appeared in machine shop. "Trance?" her head snapped up, looking him square in the eye.

Trance felt her heart leap. Dylan, alive and well, standing in front of her, and Rommie, right there beside him. She would quite liked to have flung herself at the pair of them and never let go again… but she had no time for that. And besides, they didn't understand. They couldn't understand.

"That is… you?" Dylan questioned, hesitantly.

"Right," Trance desperately clung to her patience. There was no time for this! "Last time, I'm Trance, basically the same person only older. And Harper only has a few minutes left to live so I suggest you focus on him right now."

Harper was inspecting the teseract machine. "It's finished." He said, softly.

Trance resisted the urge to role her eyes and make a very Beka-like comment about stating the obvious. Couldn't they see that they hadn't any time left to talk about this? If Harper wasn't saved then everything would go down hill from there and everything would end up exactly the way it was, and Trance was not about to let that happen, not now, not after all this.

"Good," Dylan nodded, "so activate it. Take out the eggs and we can destroy this thing once and for all."

Harper shook his head, "no, Dylan it's uh… it's not that simple. Hohne. He's dead. Because of this. Because he tried to help me."

"The Sinti government will be furious…" Rommie supplied, from the sidelines.

"Well… whatever," Beka shook her head, "we can't help what happened."

"Or maybe we can…" Dylan looked at Trance, who suddenly had a terrible sinking feeling. No. No… they couldn't do this… "You did by being here. How?"

"It's the teseracts." Trance explained, "they've created a warp in space time, one which allows paradox. What we do here will reshape reality as we know it. It could change the future or the past." For fates sake, change the future! Change the future!

"What uh…" Harper was thinking fast, "what if we don't activate it? What if we destroy it? Instead?"

"Then the distortions will be cancelled out, I will return to the future and my younger self will be restored." Trance replied. Fates, no… he can't seriously be considering…

"And Hohne will be brought back to life." Dylan added.

"But the magog eggs in Harper's belly will hatch and he'll die." Rommie stated.

"Oh the other hand…" Beka was slowly started to get a hold of the implications of the situation, "if he activates the machine he'll be saved, but Hohne will be dead and we'll be stuck with…"

She glanced at Trance.

Trance ignored her. Precious seconds were ticking by and pretty soon they wouldn't have the choice at all.

It was then that the Persied decided to act. "No one move!" He loaded up the rifle he was so clearly unable to use and pointed it at them.

Trance gave herself a mental kick. She should have been more watchful!

The sound of three more blasters being drawn, as well as Dylan's force lance, could be heard behind her, but Trance instead chose to place herself firmly between the Perseid and the teseract machine. If he destroyed it now, all would be lost.

"Enough!" The Perseid was clearly close to loosing his mind. Trance could understand. Temporal mechanics did that to a person. But she had not time to be sympathetic. "Enough of this insanity! Enough of the violence! Destroy the machine now, or I'll kill everyone here and do it myself! Why aren't you listening to me?" He was verging on hysterical. Trance was quietly counting the odds of disarming him without hurting anyone. They weren't too terrible, but this was still wasting time that they didn't have. "Hohne was the greatest mind of our age! We have to save him!"

Behind them, Harper groaned. "Gee, lay the stress on a little thicker why don't you?" He promptly collapsed to his knees as another, far more intense wave of pain engulfed him. Trance's mind began to work overtime. At best, Harper had perhaps three minutes to live. Something had to be done and it had to be done fast.

"I have the gun! You have to do what I say!"

Trance smirked, even as she calculated the odds of being able to get a scythe at his throat without him firing the gun. Clearly this Perseid had never been in a situation that involved any form of physically violence before. Besides, that was a Kalderan rifle. Anyone knew they only had a limited amount of charge. That thing might still fire, and might still do some damage, but at the very most it would only stun it's victims temporarily, not kill them.

Suddenly, there was an all-too familiar clanking sound, and a horrible, blood-chilling thud.

"Oh no…" Harper moaned, looking up.

"Not again…" Dylan glanced at the ceiling.

Great, Magog, just frelling wonderful, Trance thought to herself.

With no time to think, Dylan fired a well aimed blast at the Perseid's gun, the electric charge forcing him to drop it in pain.

The door at the back of the machine shop slid open to reveal Tyr running for it, two Magog already on his tail. He dived forward, throwing a Magog in front of him and shooting it dead.

Beka, Harper, Dylan and Rommie ran to assist, while Trance stayed where she was, keeping a watchful eye on the Perseid and the teseract machine. She regretted dropping her blaster in the Maru.

As the crew reappeared, this time with Tyr in tow, Trance prepared for the final battle.

"So, Mr Harper," Dylan began, "what do you want to do about the machine?"
Harper shifted nervously, scratching at his head and then shaking it. "I… I don't know. Maybe… Maybe Rekeeb was right, I mean, I'm just a good looking, young, brilliant engineer. Hohne; Hohne's a genius! If it's him or me, he's the one that really matters…"

"Don't say that." Beka shook her head.

Behind them, unnoticed, Trance was slowly glancing over the machine, taking in the various bits and peaces, slowly calculating odds…

"No, It's true, Beka!" Harper continued his argument, although really, Beka was not the one he was trying to convince, "I mean, he was one of a kind, he was the first one to commit to the new commonwealth… he was my friend! I can't just choose my life over his."

Making a snap decision he pulled out his blaster, "Let's destroy it! Before I change my mind."
Dylan looked at him seriously, "Harper, if we destroy this machine, you know what I'm going to have to do."

"What someone will have to do." Try corrected from behind them. Dylan glanced at him in surprise. Tyr shrugged. "I made him a promise. I'll keep it."

"Thanks." Harper looked back at him. "Just… try not to enjoy it, okay?"

Trance looked around the room. She saw the distress on Rommie's face, the fear on Beka's. She could see Tyr, desperately masking his grief, and Dylan, for once unsure what to do. And she saw Harper, determined and resolute, about to become a martyr for a cause that wouldn't care if he died or not.

And suddenly Trance didn't care anymore. She didn't care about the commonwealth, she didn't care about the common good, she didn't care about the future or the past, she didn't care about the end of reality, she didn't care about the perfect possible future and she certainly didn't care about Hohne.

All she cared about was the fact that she had come all this way, navigated a teseract field, fought an army of Kalderans, destroyed her younger self, lost her best friend…

And she'd be damned if she had gone through all that just to watch Harper die again.

Damn it, Harper! I'm saving you whether you like it or not!

And with that she reached down, twisted the starting button on the teseract machine and let loose a beam of teseracting energy.

Harper had no time to think or move. Blue and white light sparkled into life around him, lifting him from the ground. Trance watched with detached disgust as the magog larvae appeared, one by one, floating from their host as Harper fell away from them.

In the glinting light, Trance thought she caught one last glance of her family, of her people, dancing out their glory, beautiful, intoxicating music ringing in her head, and she saw the faces of her friends too… the old Beka, breathing her last, the Maru… Dylan… Rommie… Tyr… Harper… Beka's mother… Beka's daughter… little Rafe… her younger selves…

Then the light was gone, the Magog larvae obliterated, Harper slumping to the ground.

And Trance's future vision abruptly straightened itself out. The pounding headache she hadn't even realised she had vanished, the teseracts were gone, all the wrong things, the screwed-up-ness, everything disappeared, time, like a peace of string being pulled out or a knot, became legible again. She felt free, breathing… and the future erupted into a sparkling brilliance of light and warmth and… optimism.

"There," she breathed, "that's better."

"Trance?" Beka looked up at the creature standing before them, watching them, so calm and unreadable.

Dylan regarded her in much the same way. "What have you done?"


Trance only stated the simple truth. "I saved Harper's life."