The Time Lord Empire.
The First TARDISes.
John Sheridan never failed to hide his amazement whenever he saw or heard about the new technologies of Earth. For him, it was like going to bed one day, in the day of medievalism where everyone wore their hair loose and ragged, their technology not as advanced as a candle, only to wake up the next day in a world where there were air cars, trains that shot across lands and starships that did not need jump engines. The new buildings of Earth towered over him, never losing their brilliance, and were as beatiful as the Great Pyramids, and as ageless.
Like everyone else, Sheridan had been in denial when they had moved to the Andromeda galaxy but he had adapted to it quickly, more than most, and whilst some of the more die hard members of the old Earth force had wanted to deny it, the protests were ignored. But Earthforce was now gone, the Alliance had been reorganised into an Empire, although it was not based on conquest, it was a name for strength. It was actually a commonwealth of worlds, each one connected by the stargate network.
It had taken Sheridan a long time to become used to the changes, especially the rearrangement of Earthforce into another organisation, and Starfleet was much more better than Earthforce had ever been. Instead of a miltant group, Starfleet was more in the range of science and exploration, and diplomacy. Starfleet was dedicated to the new era of peace, whereas Earthforce was a throwback to the old world military services, and it was Earthforce that had begun the Earth-Minbari war thanks to that bungled First contact because the fools higher up put an unstable man back in command, only to find themselves in a war Earth would've lost.
Earth did lose. Sheridan grimaced.
They had been forced to leave their old home behind, hunted and hurting from the attacks by their former allies and their enemies, but then they'd moved here, and safe in their isolation they rebuilt. At first the military jarheads had wanted to launch a genocidal war of revenge against the Minbari, the Narns and the Centauri, and for a time Sheridan had been behind them, until he realised that humanity was growing into something different, something better. Sheridan himself had witnessed humanity's origins, thanks to the progenitor. Sheridan walked through the Starfleet headquarters, nodding in acknowledgment to the officers and officials he encountered, but none of them saluted. Again, Earthforce was a throwback. Salutes belonged to a different era, one Sheridan was more than happy to prosper in. That was the price to pay for progress.
" Captain Sheridan?" A female voice asked from behind him in headquarters. Sheridan turned and smiled when he saw who it was. " Susan Ivanova, what're you doing here?"
Ivanova smiled, and Sheridan had to admire her appearance. Dark blue was still the traditional colour for an Earth uniform, but now it was a tunic with black trousers with a badge showing a star delta. The new Starfleet uniform possessed a utility belt containing a communicator, not a link on the hand like in Earthforce, a pocket scanner, and a disruptor with power cells next to it.
" I'm a Starfleet captain," she replied, showing her command pips.
Sheridan smiled, " Congratulations, what've you been doing?"
She shrugged, " I've been on a three year mission exploring a galaxy a million light years away. The new subspace slipstream drives are amazing. What about you, what're you doing here?"
" I've been called in for a briefing," Sheridan replied with an easy going smile.
Ivanova cocked her head, " A briefing at..." she checked her wrist watch. " 14.23?" It was 14.19.
Sheridan nodded, " That's the one. Why do you ask?"
" Because I've got a briefing as well. 14.23." Ivanova replied.
A young officer approached them, holding a padd. He consulted it before looking up with a smile, " Captains Susan Ivanova and Sheridan?" He asked.
Both officers acknowledged, and the officer nodded back, " Please follow me. The briefing is going to start."
The two Starfleet officers followed the officer, and they entered the briefing room. It was already occupied with at least a few others, among them were noted temporal scientists and engineers, and wormhole specialists. There was a viewing screen at the head of the table.
Admiral Hague started the meeting without preamble. " Thank you for coming Captains Sheridan and Ivanova. I think you know everyone?" Hague didn't wait for a response. He sat at the end of the table, and started the debriefing.
The screen turned on at the touch of a button, and an object, no bigger than a telephone box appeared on the screen. " This is the newest advancement of time travel technology. For a century we've been developing our knowledge of time travel, and through countless experiments we've finally found the answer. Dr. Weir, if you would."
One of the scientists stood up, a woman in her early 20s, or looked like she was in her early 20s. It was hard to tell because of the new genetic techniques, an individual could appear 12 years old and be over 80 in reality. " Thank you, Admiral Hague. I should start by explaining how we've reached this technology," Weir looked at the screen. " We first laid down the plans when we first arrived in this galaxy a hundred years ago, temporal fields became easier and easier to create, time portal technology. The temporal observatory, all of the temporal engineering projects, their results yielded this." She pointed. " But other experiments, the wormhole engineering and drive projects, and the pocket universe developments and Time's Eye, helped develop the TARDIS project."
Ivanova held up her hand, " TARDIS project?"
" T-A-R-D-I-S, Time And Relative Dimension In Space," Weir answered, " Basically, what a machine like this can do is travel in space/time, using wormholes for space travel and a temporal field for time travel, with the crew and the equipment existing inside a pocket universe. The TARDIS warps space with a warp field and takes the capsule away from the atmosphere, before the machine creates a wormhole for space travel."
" With the temporal field providing time displacement," Ivanova finished.
" More or less. Instead of the TARDIS providing the temporal field, it instead manipulates the temporal energy absorbed from Time's Eye and allows it to pinpoint the exact temporal destination for the time ship. We tested the method already with models, and they work well, the only problem is that we needed more than one Time Eye."
Sheridan sat up. Like everyone else in the Empire, he knew exactly how long and how difficult it had been to create the out of time and space black hole power source, and he knew it could not have been easy to accept. " What do you mean?" he asked.
Weir sighed, " Time's eye could send energy back through time, pulling the time ships through time, and sending them back, but only through a certain distance. Time ships powered this way needed to be pushed and pulled through time, using the energy sent from the Eye. When we verified our findings, we started work on not one, but two extra eyes. One in the past, as far back as possible, and one in our current era, say 34, 000 years in the past or the future."
" And we have this now?" Sheridan asked.
" Yes, the problem with the universal timeline is that its centuries long, and temporal energy needs a boost. The problem with time travel is that it needs vast amounts of energy, and whilst the Eye worked perfectly, it could only send time energy back only a finite distance. Its like an underground railway, you need more than one power station to keep it running, stations, trains, signals, the lot. We now have three separate Time Eyes beaming energy into the past and the future, or both." Weir said, folding her arms.
Hague took over at that point, " Captain Sheridan, Captain Ivanova, you will both be given command of the prototype TARDISes, and you will journey into the past and into the future. You'll be in overral command of the exploration missions."
" Where do you want us to go?" Ivanova asked.
" You're missions will be chosen for you, but you'll be sent on exploration missions. The new TARDISes use a wormhole drive that's more sophisticated than the drives we've been using. Captains, this project is vital. Our diplomatic services are trying to speak to the Hegomony, but they are losing ground with them." Hague said, his voice emphatising the desperation of the situation.
" War is inevitable?" Sheridan whispered. Hague nodded grimly, " It is. For the last century, our people have tried to stay as far away from alien contact, and the incident involving our seeding ship means they're aware of our existence. They refuse to speak to us, and our scanners indicate movement in their territories, moving towards ours. The TARDIS project may be brought in for war, sooner or later."
The pocket universe technology had allowed for larger on the inside spaces than on the outside, and the humans had seen them being used in factories and living space, massive city sized spaces in over developed cities. The TARDIS was the first time he had seen them be used for space/time travel; a massive pocket universe, temporal field generator, time observatories, holographic complexes, laboratories, wormhole and warp engine drives, shield generators and power station, all rolled into one. Sheridan and Ivanova had been sent into the past and into the future, respectively, and both of them were to test the engines of the TARDISes and the power systems.
Sheridan's TARDIS.
Not for the first time, John Sheridan looked around his TARDIS, his TARDIS, and couldn't help but feel...awed and shaken by how much technology had changed and improved over the century. Sheridan had never believed in immortality when he had been younger, he had believed that it wasn't how long you lived that defined someone, it was what you did in that lifetime.
Sheridan had lived for a hundred years already, and he had lived through pain in misery in the Minbari war. He knew how pathetic the Minbari were, calling him Starkiller, just because he managed to destroy a few of their ships. A few! He wasn't going to apologise to that pathetic species, in fact he wished they apologised to the humans they murdered, just because of a mistake. The time observatory had shown them everything, one of the biggest mysteries that had faced humanity was what had started the war that started them on the path of mastering space/time travel in the first place, and they found it.
They had killed the leader of the Minbari.
And the Minbari, did they try to find out what had happened? Did they accept apologises?
No.
They simply launched a war that cost thousands of lives, turned Earth's fair weather allies against them, got the Narns and the Centauri to launch their own massacres. Then the souls. Oh, yes, the humans knew about the Minbari souls, but they could not do anything about them, send them back or destroy them to spite the Minbari, not until Jeffrey Sinclair was sent to the Shadow war he was destined to fight in.
Sheridan clasped his hands behind his back as he walked around the TARDIS. The corridors were vast, and the TARDIS was sending telepathic signals to his mind where everything was. A ship? This was a city that travelled through time! Sheridan walked through the arboretum that took him an hour to walk through, where he admired the hummingbirds, the fishes swimming in the ponds...
...The engine section was massive, more expansive and more cathedrallike than the engine rooms of the ships Sheridan had been on, but where those had been the space equivalent of steam ships, these were the space equivalent of...well, god. In the centre, and dominating the room was the spherical form of the temporal core, the device which allowed for temporal displacement, powering the temporal field. Connected to the sphere were the power conduits that opened the wormhole and the warp drives that propelled the ship through the vortex...
" How soon to the destination?" Sheridan asked.
The TARDIS control room was not structured like a normal ship, with consoles and wall panels with viewing screens at sharp angles. Shaped in a circle, the console room had in the centre the central console with the time rotor, a device that rose and fell showing the extent of the power systems and the wormhole, was the nerve centre for the whole ship.
The console was manned at the moment by six people, engineering, navigation/helm, communication, technical, life support, science. Sheridan didn't know them all yet, but he was told they were the first people - aside from Ivanova's crew, of course,- that possessed the new Time Imprimature, an artifical genetic structure that gave people an instinctive knowledge of time travel, sensing temporal shifts and allowing them to build and understand the timeships. The imprimature gave them the ability to control the TARDIS, and understand how the living ship worked.
" We'll be there...in a minute, Captain," the navigation technician replied.
Sheridan nodded. The time rotor slowed down and with a sigh, it stopped, and the interior of the glass cylindrical column started spinning in its scanning mode. " Location?" Sheridan asked.
" Temporal and spatial probe shows we have travelled to another galaxy, about 23 billion light years away from Andromeda, and our temporal location is...June the 12, 1200."
Ivanova's TARDIS.
Ivanova's TARDIS travelled through the blue-purple-green hued tunnel of the wormhole, propelled by the warp field, and the temporal field allowed for time travel was laced inside the warp field. Ivanova had toured the TARDIS she was commanding like her contempory, and she had taken the time to tour the console room and looked over the console and the people that worked on the controls, how they operated the systems of the TARDIS and how they acted like the hands and ears of the living ship. Ivanova closed her eyes, leaning against a wall and listened, opening her telepathic senses so then she could properly hear the TARDIS thrumming in her mind.
The scope of how intelligent the TARDIS was compared to what Humans knew of ships operated by the Vorlons and the Shadows, and the rest of the First ones, amazed Ivanova. Unlike those the TARDIS was a being of its own, Ivanova could see that with the way the TARDIS extended itself to her.
Telepathic technology had allowed humans to interface with their technology, Ivanova had seen first hand how organic starships had communicated with their pilots, and she herself had found herself in conversation with the crafts.
TARDISes were much more than that; they seemed to exist in a non linear arrangement, and the implications startled her.
" We've arrived," the temporal navigation officer reported.
Ivanova licked her lips. " Status of ship, and location time?"
" Dimensional stabilisation systems, navigational deflectors working properly, main space time element's sub atomic and pulsar clocks are functioning within normal parameters. External and internal shells are properly aligned. Location time, the end of the universe. Scanning and temporal observatory crews are already at their stations."
Ivanova nodded, not at all sure what else she could do, these people knew more about this ship than she did. The TARDIS project was relatively new to her, and she had heard rumours about the technology over the years, but only rumours. The promise was that these machines would give humanity the master of time, the mastery they had sought for a hundred years.
The creation of the TARDIS heralded the arrival of the Time Lords, and the final shedding of the vulnerabilities of humanity, but for the time being much was be accomplished. The TARDIS was only the dawn of the Time Lords, there still remained the threat of the Hegemony, though they were seen as lessers and not important enough for concern. The TARDIS would remain in testing for another 3 years before they were mass produced, the symbiotic nuclei would be mixed into the genetic structures of every human being, making them a Time Lord.
An Extract from Time Lord history - From The Earth - Minbari war to the Present day.
" Now we know the TARDIS works properly, what do we do now?" The President asked her aides and senators.
For a moment no one spoke, thinking about the matter before one of the senators voiced an opinion. " We should continue our experiments, basing them on the machines commanded by Ivanova and Sheridan, and then send them out into the cosmos for exploration missions. Our knowledge on astrophysics, biology and culture has already received boons thanks to the faster than light breakthroughs, not to mention the temporal drives installed on them, our TARDISes are sure to be even better."
Another senator voiced her own opinion, " I think relying on TARDISes for time travel missions is a mistake. I think we should continue looking for other means of time travel to ensure our supremacy. Our temporal observatories have already shown a total of a thousand races with time travel knowledge, and some of that same knowledge led to the development of the TARDIS in the first place. If we would need other races to help us with it, without their knowledge, then what else can we accomplish?"
Quantrell had been a senator for years, and his influence carried a lot of weight in the senate. " I think we should create two forms of TARDIS; one for exploration and scientific assignments, and the other for military purposes. Our exploration grade TARDISes should be sent out into the universe for periods of years, say 4 or 19, and have them soak up as much as possible before returning to Earth or one of our colonies. The exploration TARDIS would carry a full crew complement and carry out cultural and scientific surveys, using the principles laid down by our earliest time travelling missions. But I agree that we shouldn't just rely on TARDISes for time travel, we should not be complacent. We must expand our knowledge of everything."
Quantrell's statement was met with applause, and everyone agreed with it.
The President called for silence, " Senator Quantrell has raised a number of good points, as have everyone else. Our temporal observatories have discovered we're not the only species to study time travel, and its thanks to those same races our understanding of temporal mechanics has increased. The potential of the TARDIS is also in question. Our ships are designed for exploration missions, thanks to the turnabout of Earthforce into Starfleet. Our TARDIS project was to help us to develop our understanding of the universe itself, not to wage war, but the idea of a military branch of the TARDIS project is already in hand. The military potential of time travel technology was never in doubt. We have already experimented with using time as weapons, as we have already in our past with nuclear power. This is my decision, Senator Quantrell's plan does have merit. The TARDIS project will be improved, but we shall improve it better with sending out the machines commanded by Ivanova and Sheridan, though both of them will have full and proper crews on board with different captains. Both ships will be sent out into areas brought into question by the Temporal observatories, and they will stay out there, sending reports back here for analysis. In return our observatories will be monitoring the information received from the time aware races in the cosmos to aid us in our understanding of time. With 2 TARDISes out there, I guarantee our knowledge will improve and our quest for knowing will continue."
