Carmen had waited long enough, she figured, so she ended up waking herself up. "That's a bloody perfect time for you to turn unreliable, Richard." Headache more or less gone, she spent some time using her PADD to take images of her own ration card and the picture of Charlie Eleven that Jenn had given her. "This would be a lot easier, and considerably more believable, if I had access to the Audrey's replicator," she groused. After nearly an hour's worth of work, she was satisfied.
With nowhere else to go, she headed to the big Calafan market to try to find Jenn Porter and, hopefully, also the deposed head of the late Terran Empire. And, if she was lucky, not run into Yi'imspi again.
=/\=
"Well?" Picard asked the Calafan.
"Not in front of all of these people," she replied in a stage whisper.
"All right." The captain raised his voice a bit. "Mister Shaw, Grosk, Dathan, you and most of the others are dismissed. Keep in mind that the entirety of this meeting is confidential. The consequences will be dire for your careers if you reveal anything about this gathering." He took a breath. "The only people required to remain are," he considered the matter briefly, "B-4, Mister Madden, Ms. MacKenzie, Guinan, Mister LaForge, both Mister Daniels's, Miss Porter, and of course myself and Yi'imspi."
Everyone filed out except for the ten named people. There was a communications chime, and the captain answered it. "Yes, Mister Crusher? Ceti Alpha V? Very well, thank you." He cut the connection.
Yi'imspi still seemed to be reluctant to speak. "I want you to understand," she began, "that I am under orders. And I'm rather skeptical by nature. I don't believe this talk of alternate timelines. After all, who's to say that our current situation isn't the correct one? Rick Daniels might be pushing us into a timeline that suits his own agenda."
"But you do buy into time travel, right?" Dana asked. "I mean, it's been proven for over a century."
"Of course I do. But Rick Daniels isn't even necessarily a time traveler at all. Plus, as I said, there is every possibility that what he claims to be the correct future simply isn't. Tell me," she said to him, "how is it even remotely possible that you know what the changes even are? Wouldn't they look as perfectly normal to you as they do to us? And as for the changes, I can almost buy that this, this device …."
"It was a dark matter collector and flying mechanism."
"Dark matter collector and flying mechanism, then – I can almost see where it would have the potential to effect changes. Maybe. But you! I mean, how can you change anything?"
Rick sighed. She was engaging in a diversionary tactic, to be sure, but it was a legitimate question. He could see from Dana and Marty and Picard's faces that they were thinking something similar. But he would have to launch into the big explanation. "It's like this. It's all about the decision nodes. Timelines can and do change when they're altered. Change your mind, change a timeline."
"Then that would make for, I am thinking, more universes – in theory, at least – than there are known stars," Geordi opined.
"There's actually even more than that. Some of these decisions are purely binary. You got up this morning. Tell me, Geordi," Rick asked, "did you take your first step of the day with your right foot, or your left?"
"I have no idea. Does it matter?"
"Of course it doesn't," Rick said, "but it's still a decision, even if it's a minor one that you don't even make consciously. Consider what are probably an infinite number of timelines and universes. Let's say you're in – and you are recognizably yourself – in a trillion of them. In 40 percent of them, you start your day with a left footstep. In 40 percent of them, you start off on the right foot. And in the remaining 20 percent, you don't step at all. Maybe you just lie in bed, and you're too lazy or sick or injured or tired to move. Or you don't have legs, or you never did. Or humans don't propel themselves forward that way at all, and instead you walk on your hands, or roll around on your belly."
"So Geordi gets off on the right foot in 400 billion timelines," Dana summarized. "So there are other differences at play, then."
"Right you are," Rick praised. "The 400 billion figure is purely arbitrary, of course. But we can still use it, in order to judge relative scale. Now let's look at something a lot less binary. What was breakfast yesterday?"
"Now you're asking the really tough questions," Geordi joked.
"You can make something up," Rick told him.
"Okay. I had a Western omelet, eggs whites only, side of home fries and bacon. Black coffee to drink."
"Here we've got a lot more variables," Rick pointed out. "Cream for the coffee, or milk, or skim, or half and half – that's just one of several decisions that Geordi made in what should be a fairly simple matter."
"But those decisions don't matter!" Tamsin whined a little. "This is meaningless!"
Picard shot her a look, but Rick quickly interjected, "Actually, you're 100 percent correct. None of that stuff matters. A universe where Geordi's home fries are cut slightly wider than in our own? Well, that universe, for all intents and purposes, is identical to ours. A timeline where he cuts his omelet from the left side of his plate versus here, where he starts on his right? You guessed it; the alteration is utterly meaningless. Nobody cares, right? Technically, the timeline or the universe differs, but the difference is so slight and so trivial that it ends up being just one big cosmic yawn. We call those otric changes."
"I have never heard this term before," the captain admitted.
"It's an eponym, named after a colleague of mine named Otra D'Angelo. Now, let's move a step up. Mike, here's a question for you."
"Uh, all right."
"Let's say you've got two girlfriends," Rick posited.
"Just what kind of a universe are you running?"
"A fun one, apparently," Guinan quipped.
"Yep," Rick confirmed. "Let's say you get serious, and you decide you want to get married. There's probably going to be a significant difference in your life if you marry Susan instead of Beth, right?"
"Of course, even if they're identical twins."
"Exactly. This decision is a meaningful one, although it might lose its meaning over time, particularly if you don't have any children. But if you're a very important person like, say, the President of the Federation, then this sort of a decision can be a vital one. It might even determine whether you're elected to the Federation presidency at all. But this significant change can still be made by us mere mortals. It's what's called a pariotric change."
"So that's the in-between stuff," Marty stated. "I take it there's something bigger out there?"
"Absolutely," replied Rick. "We've got Baby Bear and Mama Bear – Goldilocks, if you want to get technical, I suppose – and so now along comes Papa Bear. These very large changes cannot be effected by people. Or, at least, they can't without a boatload of work. These are things like the Industrial Revolution, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and World War III. As you might expect, these are called megaotric changes."
"So there are differing degrees," Yi'imspi said, "but that still doesn't explain how you can see these changes at all, or you can effect them and not accidentally snuff out your own existence."
"There must be some sort of a protective field," Dana opined.
"That's exactly it," Rick confirmed. "I'm not authorized to give you the specifics. But the general theory has to do with ionizing radiation."
"And chronitons, I'm willing to bet," Geordi interjected.
"I'm not at liberty to say," Rick stated, although he knew that the engineer was on the right track.
"I'm still not seeing any proof that you are who you say you are," Yi'imspi pointed out.
"Well, you're apparently not what you seem to be, either," Picard stated. "It's high time you ceased beating about the bush and came clean as well."
"Tell them about your training," Rick prompted.
"I'm an engineer."
"That's not all you are." As the professional time traveler made the accusation, Marty moved ever so slightly closer to Dana. "Tell me," Rick asked, "why did you learn a bunch of languages? We've got perfectly good universal translators during this time period."
"I like studying languages."
"Maybe you do. But the technology is perfect. This would be for if it fails – or in places where it can't be used. Gee, I wonder where those might be," Rick said. "And why, exactly, did you get your training from a prison guard program at Canamar?"
"It's where the courses were offered! I don't decide such things."
"Surely these classes could have been taught elsewhere," Picard said. "You could have studied at home, even."
"I like to learn in a classroom environment."
"But these classes were taught at the prison itself," Rick clarified. "And it's a pretty unpleasant place to be, even when you are free to leave at any time. Tell us – who were you meeting there, Yi'imspi?"
"I'll get to the bottom of this," Picard vowed. He tapped his communicator pin to activate it. "Yes; I'd like to be connected with Admiral Alynna Nechayev." There was a pause. "Admiral, yes, I'm having a rather interesting discussion with my night shift engineer, Yi'imspi. She's got a rather curious background. Tell me, Admiral, do you know her, by chance?"
As Picard was talking, Rick glanced at his PADD for a second. There was a silent message that the Audrey's computers were almost done breaking Section 31's encryption. Just in time.
Picard nodded at Dana, who threw a switch on the room's desktop computer unit, thereby adding a visual element to the communication and increasing the volume. The admiral's face appeared on a small screen on the desktop unit, which was located in the center of the table.
"Not everyone in your meeting has sufficient clearance for me to respond," the admiral stated.
"Admiral," Rick said, "I am from the 32nd century, and I am here to tell you that clearance and protocols right now don't amount to a hill of beans. This is an alternate timeline, and it's a fairly well screwed up one. There is a Temporal Cold War going on, and the actions of your agent attracted their attention. And they've now brought the Mirror Universe into play – and that never should have happened in the first place."
"What are you saying?" she asked.
"What I am saying is that there are factions in the Temporal Cold War that would have no qualms whatsoever about acting like Fifth Columnists and opening up the door and allowing the Mirror Universe to invade."
"Invade? But the government in exile was to be appeased by our acts."
"Appeased?" Picard asked. "Just what the devil is going on?"
"A moment", Nechayev said, and she fiddled with some controls. There was now a split screen, and the other side showed the face of the head of Section 31, Admiral Harriet Caul.
"What's going on?" Caul asked.
"I've just posed the identical question," Picard reported. "It would appear that there is some espionage afoot. Admiral Caul, is Yi'imspi your agent?"
Caul stared straight at them, and held onto her poker face. "What is it that you're asking, Captain?"
There was a ding, and they all hunted for their PADDs. "It's mine," Rick said, checking. He gazed at the head of Section 31. "My computer has hacked into your database. It doesn't matter how you answer. I know the truth either way."
"Hacked?" asked Caul. "That's impossible."
"Under the current state of technology, yes. But I don't have the current state of technology. Now, do you want me to start reading, or do you want to start talking?" Caul paused, so he threw in, "It's all about Yi'imspi's recruitment, but it's also about how you've been skirting a treaty – and even breaking it, at times – in order to get your hands on reliable cloaking technology."
"Cloaking?" asked Marty. "That's a violation of the Treaty of Algeron!"
"Admiral Caul, Admiral Nechayev," said Picard, "this is wrong. The Enterprise-E and her crew will not be a party to this, if anything that Richard Daniels says is at all true."
"He's bluffing," Yi'imspi claimed.
"No, you are," Rick declared.
=/\=
On the Mirror Lafa II, Carmen came to a realization. "I've got to contact you, mission or no mission." She was back in the same alley near the big Calafan market. Fortunately, no one else seemed to be around. She had a dark matter flare on her person, a small device that superficially resembled a black Christmas cracker. She aimed it at a wall and broke the flare. There was the slightest of clicks, but nothing more. "That'd best be it."
On the Enterprise-E, Rick heard a trill in his ear. "Just a sec." He tapped his ear to answer the call. "Carmen? Is everything all right?"
"Sorry to tug on the emergency line, but I've got some news. I was threatened by a silver Calafan. We might lose our dream conduit."
"I see. What was the name of that silver Calafan?" As he asked a question, he hit a few buttons on his PADD, and Carmen's voice could be heard by the others in the room.
"Yi'imspi."