Chapter 18 – Restoration

Marty and Dana were beamed back to Sick Bay, right at the time that they had been beamed out originally. "Oh!" exclaimed Dr. Crusher. Then, gathering her wits about her, she said, "Security, cancel that request. It looks like the attempted beam-out was unsuccessful. Crusher out." She tapped her communicator pin, and then noticed that they were holding hands. "I see you're at a point where a lot of us hoped you would be."

"Hmm?" asked Marty.

"You're together," the doctor clarified. "Or, at least, it looks like you are. If I'm mistaken, then I apologize."

"Nothing to apologize for," Dana assured her. "And you're right; we are together." She looked at Marty and smiled, and he gazed and smiled right back at her.

"Good!" Crusher enthused. "That law is awful."

"Right; that's evidently our purpose. Or at least, it's one of our purposes," Marty said.

"Yeah, we're also supposed to have at least one kid," Dana added.

"But that'll all be in the prime timeline," Marty stated. "I get the feeling that Rick is about ready to work on putting it all back."

=/\=

Marty was right. Rick and Carmen looked over their instruments. "Let's do this," Carmen suggested. "I'll fly you over and deposit you where you need to be. Then I'll head back to Audrey."

"All right. Do we have information on what happens afterwards?" he asked.

"If it all snaps back into place, then the master time file's copy of their trial transcript will be accurate. But I don't think you'll need to stay quite so long as all that. Go in, keep Yi'imspi from setting off a pulse shot, and then get out, I'd say."

"Makes sense to me. I'll need to infiltrate the Temporal Cold War faction, I figure."

"We might be able to get someone from the Section to pose as a historian. If you can disable this so-called Future Guy's capabilities, then that should slow down this horrid Temporal arms race, and maybe even end it."

"Here's hoping. Uh, Carmen?"

"Yes, Richard?"

"I wanna thank you for giving me the opportunity to meet my ancestors."

"I'm certain you've got several more. After all, at some point, I think you should meet Hayes."

"Now that would really be something."

=/\=

"Yes, they're back," Crusher reported via her communicator. "I'll have them return to the conference room. As for my patient, I can't let her go just yet. She just regained consciousness."

"Understood. Picard out."

As they left Sick Bay, Dana turned and said to Beverly, "I hope you'll come to our wedding."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world."

They walked through the halls, hand in hand. At one point, Marty backed Dana into a wall, and kissed her. "Hard for me to wait," he murmured.

"Probably because of other hardnesses."

"Yeah, definitely. You do it for me like no other does, Mystic."

"We'd better go, while we've still got a timeline."

They arrived at the conference room, still hand in hand. Tamsin angrily leapt to her feet. "They're committing incest!" she bellowed.

"Oh, go sit the hell down, Cousin Tamsin," Dana wearily protested. She turned to Mike. "I don't know what your descendant sees in her descendant."

"My, my what?" He blanched a little.

"We're gonna fight the law," Marty announced. "And Rick is probably going to put it all back soon. But I want it to be known, now, and on the record, that Dana and I are going to marry, and we are going to fight the incest law. Sir," he turned to Picard, "if you need for me to resign my commission, then I will do so, and I will do it gladly. This," he turned to Dana, smiling at her again, "is infinitely more important."

"Of course you'll stay on," Picard declared. "And do allow me to be the first to congratulate you. And if you like, I would be most honored to perform the ceremony."

"The honor would be all ours, sir," replied Dana, who grinned from ear to ear as Tamsin fumed.

=/\=

"Preparing for time jump," Carmen announced. She sat in the ship's copilot's chair and flipped a few switches.

"Ready," Rick replied. He was sitting in the pilot's chair and performed somewhat similar operations. "We've been in this timeline for five days."

"All right, then. Preparing to jump back to September 25th of 2379, when Yi'imspi fired the dark matter pulse shot."

"Better make it two days before that," Rick suggested.

Carmen threw a few switches. "Confirmed. Audrey, what are our vitals?"

This vessel is fully fueled and is operating at peak efficiency. Agent Daniels and Admiral Calavicci are found to be optimally healthy. There are no damages, malfunctions, or injuries at this time.

"All right, let's do this," Rick said.

Revved up on dark matter and energy, the Audrey Niffenegger altered a stream of chronitons as it began to reverse itself temporally.

The space around the ship bent and was distorted slightly, and then it suddenly snapped back and into place. The effect was nearly instantaneous.

The Cookie moved from where it had been, under the command of a Gorn named Szish, who was dead again after the change. Yi'imspi was no longer in Sick Bay on the Enterprise-E; she was perfectly healthy and back on the Cookie. Other people were whisked off the Enterprise-E and back onto the Cookie, including Wesley Crusher, M'Belle and Tag Shaw.

On the Enterprise-E, Mike Daniels was automatically switched from the nighttime Tactical position to the day shift. On-loan crew member Tamsin Porter was seamlessly shifted back to the Talos.

Dana was nearly instantly transferred from Tactical on the Enterprise-E to being the captain and the owner of the Cookie. Kent Hoberman was no longer reconciled with his wife and was back to being her boyfriend. His Mirror counterpart, EK, was back in the right universe, and Darragh Masterson, as was proper, had not been born yet.

And Marty, inexplicably to himself, was standing, alone, in the front of a conference room for what looked like a very important meeting of some of the Hayes descendants with the captain and B-4. Guinan was back in Ten Forward, having never been invited to the meeting. The admirals were also not invited, so they had not been patched in. It was just the captain, B-4, Geordi, Mike Daniels, and him.

Marty felt bereft, as if something was missing, or something had been snatched away from him at the last minute. The odd feeling was uncomfortable and unpleasant.

Picard furrowed a brow. He had forgotten the reason for the meeting, and apparently so had everyone else. He looked at the assembly. "Dismissed."

THE END