Andrew's Shuttle
Andrew is reading an old physics book and he has an old laptop computer near him. His screen is full of complex equations. At the top, the title of his page says "Time Relativity". Mal, Zoë, Wash, Kaylee, and Jayne approach his quarters. As they do, Andrew closes his laptop.
Wash: Hey, Andrew, how you settling in?
Andrew: Pretty good. Hey, where are Dr. Prude and the Sister of Doom?
Zoë: Thought it may be better to avoid another, um, confrontation.
Mal: Anyway, we want to ask you about why you're really running from the Alliance.
Andrew: Huh?
Mal: Well, after all, you keep saying that all these claims about these weapons of yours are false, so we'd like to hear the truth.
Andrew: Just a big mix-up. That's about it.
Wash: Yeah, well, according to Simon, his situation is nothing but a mix-up, but the Alliance tends to see things differently than people like us.
Kaylee: Look, Andrew. It's not like we don't believe you, it's just that…
Jayne: We don't believe you.
Kaylee: Thank you, Jayne.
Jayne: No problem. Just trying to be of service.
Andrew: Uh-huh.
Inara and Shepard Book walk up to the entrance of the ship.
Book: Mr. Jameson, we just heard what happened with little Ms. Tam.
Inara: We just wanted to tell you that it's not her fault. She's really a sweetheart, and in time, you'll grow to love her.
Andrew: Right. Well, it looks likeyou two are just in time for the interrogation.
Inara and Book: What?
Kaylee: River attacked Andrew because, according to her, he doesn't "belong" here. She says that he should have died a few centuries back.
River, who has escaped Simon's grasp, has just run to the shuttle. Simon is right behind her.
River: Five centuries to be exact.
The crew gives Simon a dirty look.
Simon: Sorry.
Mal: Now, we're not saying we believe her to the letter, but she does have a knack for knowing when strange things are afoot.
Andrew: Oh, by all means, believe her.
Wash: What?
Andrew: She said that I'm 500 years old?
Zoë: Not exactly. She said that, biologically, you are 23, but you were born 500 years ago.
Andrew looks at River.
Andrew: Look's like you're not as crazy as I originally thought.
Mal: So… what, you had yourself cryogenically frozen for five hundred years? I hate to tell you this, but you haven't exactly awakened to find humanity at its best.
Andrew: Frozen? Cryogenics was nothing more than science fiction 500 years ago.
Book: So, how exactly are you here?
Andrew: Let's just say that there is another method that, although it seemed like a sci-fi concept, turned out to be for real.
Inara: What are you talking about? Time travel? It's impossible.
Andrew: Obviously not.
Zoë: This don't sound right. Simon, River could have read Jameson wrong, couldn't she?
Simon: I still have no idea how accurate she is. I need a little more time to run some diagnostics on…
River: Too young! He's too young and he doesn't belong here!
Wash: Now, come on. How dumb do you think we are?
Jayne: Yeah. You expect us to believe that you would travel all these years without some sort of passport?
Everyone except Jayne, River, and Andrew roll their eyes. However, Andrew gives Jayne a perplexed look.
Wash: Okay, just how dumb do you think the rest of us are?
Kaylee: Yeah, the physics of it just don't make no sense. I mean, there was that scientist guy… oh I forget his name, but he said that only at the speed of light would a temporal flux be achieved, and nothing…
Andrew: Einstein?
Kaylee: What?
Andrew: You're referring to Einstein's theory of relativity. Yeah, speed of light, can't be reached, blah blah blah. Hate to say it, but I met someone who was able to disprove ol' Albert.
Kaylee: Who the hell's Einstein? I was referring to um…
Simon: Sun Tze. The great scientist who specialized in temporal physics. He attempted to accelerate an object to the speed of light, numerous times I believe, and he was never able to come even close.
Andrew: Sun Tze? Never heard of him. When was this guy around?
Simon: I think that the 79th anniversary of his death is in about a month and a half. Anyway, I've never heard of this Einstein guy either.
Andrew: I see. No wonder I don't know this Sun Moon guy. He was born four and a half centuries after me. Um, how much knowledge has been retained from the Earth That Was?
Mal: Not a whole helluvalot. When the evacuation took place, books weren't a high priority item to be saved, or so I'm told.
Andrew: And yet you've heard of Hawaii.
Mal (Defensive): It was a popular place.
Andrew: That it was. Anyway, how 'bout Freud?
The Crew: Nope.
Andrew (Hopeful): Billy Joel?
The Crew: Who?!
Andrew: Alright, I KNOW you've heard of this guy: Joss Whedon.
The Crew: Sorry.
Andrew: That's too bad. The guy was a genius when it came to television.
Inara: So, how is this even possible?
Andrew: Well, it started at… do any of you know about Michigan?
Simon: Another tropical paradise?
Andrew: Um, not so much. Anyway, I was a student at a school called the University of Michigan. I was trying to get a degree in physics. Anyway, there was this one professor. He was kind of a like my mentor. He had two passions in life. One was Einstein. There was no one else in the world who was a bigger Einstein scholar than Prof. Carter. Oh man, just talking about that man's obsession takes me back…
Simon: What was the other obsession?
Andrew: Disproving Einstein's theory of relativity.
Simon: Ah.
Simon has a confused look on his face.
Andrew: Yeah, I didn't understand it either. I always joked that that he should have studied Freud instead. Heh heh.
No one laughs.
Andrew: Come on. Carter saw Einstein almost as a father figure and yet he wanted to outdo him… Come on, it's funny! Aw screw it. Anyway, one day, Prof. Carter got this bright idea. He knew from Einstein's theories that nothing can reach the speed of light… except for of course light.
Mal (Annoyed): Of course. Could you get on with it please?
Andrew: Anyway, he developed these, well I guess the best way to describe them is these "bubble belts". That's what I called them. What they did, you put these belts on, and when you turn them on, you are enveloped in this temporal bubble. Bubbles of light. And you can control them from your belts; you can even cause them to move, at the speed of light of course, and they have to carry you because they cannot escape their source. And so, the wearer can traverse time.
Book: So how did you get out here? I mean, can you travel time and space simultaneously?
Andrew: Of course not.
Book: So if you were on the Earth That Was when you did this, how is it that you came to be all the way out here?
Andrew: Funny story actually. Carter and I, after testing these things out on lab rats, were going to try a human test. Anyway, I volunteered. After I activated the field, something happened. A chip overheated or something. I don't know, my knowledge of the things was nowhere near that of Prof. Carter's. Anyway, there was a small explosion, and I was knocked out. When I woke up, I deactivated the field, which had been running for who-knows-how-long, and I was in some box. I think I was on a spaceship or something. Anyway, I reactivated the field and tried to go backwards, but I soon realized that, due to the malfunction, I could only go one way; forward. When I deactivated the field again, I was in some lab. There were these weird men with blue hands and lidless eyes.
River: Two by two… hands of blue…
Andrew: Yeah… Anyway, they were very intrigued by the disappearance of the field. They were even more interested in me though, because there were some other things in the box with me. They were items from my home, along with a note from Prof. Carter, all of which I still have here. That's why the Alliance wants me. I'm from the past and I have a very large collection of Earth-That-Was artifacts, and not crap like lasers or other weapons. I mean I have culture. Books, music, clothes, all of it. I am a researchers dream come true.
The crew begins to exchange amazed looks.
Andrew: After I escaped, the Alliance told people that I was an arms dealer. They didn't want anyone interviewing me before they did, and if someone did, they would have a reason to kill them.
Jayne: How did you escape?
Andrew: It wasn't easy. Especially since I wanted to escape with all of my stuff. Well, that night…
Suddenly, the whole ship shakes from a collision. Wash runs back to the bridge, then screams for Mal and Zoë to come and help him with something. Behind Serenity, the small Blue Sun ship is in pursuit, and is firing shots at the ship.
The Bridge
The Blue Sun agents hail Serenity.
Agent 1: Malcolm Reynolds. We know that you are carrying some of our property. If you do not allow us to board your ship, we will blow out your engine, enter your ship ourselves, and once we have retrieved our prisoners, we will destroy your Firefly.
Mal: I'm sorry, I don't have any of your "property". I have some passengers, but I hardly think they belong to you.
Agent 2: If you do not stop your ship immediately, we WILL take measures to stop it ourselves. And if you even try to jump to warp, we will follow and outrun you. Our ship is nearly 5 times as fast as a Firefly. You have one minute to comply.
Andrew, Simon, and Kaylee come up to the Bridge.
Simon: We have to run.
Zoë: We can't.
Andrew: Why not?
Zoë: Can't run from someone who's faster than you are.
Simon: So we're going to fight them?
Andrew: Don't think that's a good idea either.
Kaylee: Why not? You've fought these people before. You can help us out.
Andrew: I never said I fought them. When did I fight them?
Kaylee: When you escaped, of course.
Andrew: Never said fought.
Simon: So what are we going to do?
Mal: We let them on. It's all we can do.