Day 9
Naomi Wildman
Subject: Temporal Prime Directive
For: Commander Chakotay
The Temporal Prime Directive (TPD) is a fundamental Starfleet principle which states that in the event of time travel, the timeline must be kept the same, no matter what. The TPD was added as a subsection of the Prime Directive in 2267 after the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise was accidentally taken to the distant past (1930).
All Starfleet personnel (or those who are travelling as guests on a Starfleet ship) are strictly forbidden from interfering with historical events and are required to maintain the timeline. The past must not be altered.
If one historic event is changed, then our present and future could be made different, which might be bad for the people living in the present. The TPD also prevents Starfleet officers from telling too much about the future, should they find out what's going to happen.
Finally, the TPD forbids Starfleet officers to go in search of methods of time travel or acquire this technology from other races.
Here are two examples of what not to do if you time travel.
Example #1: If I travel to the future and I see that I have failed my next cell biology exam, I should not study extra hard for it when I get back to the present. Because, if I pass my exam when I should have failed it, it might lead to something else happening. Like, I get to have extra ice cream for dessert and then I get a stomach ache. Which is bad.
Example #2: If I travel to the past and find a flower that's really pretty, I should not pick it. Because if that flower wasn't supposed to be picked in the past and I kill it, then other flowers might not grow, the bees in that field might not find enough nectar and then the beekeeper won't have enough honey to fills his jars. Which is bad.
**Even though the TPD talks about people moving around in time, it does not cover when objects are being sent to people from another time. According to Seven of Nine, changing a command decision because of information received from the future is in violation of the TPD. She says this is an example of 'intent of the law,' where the term 'intent' is defined as a 'decision to bring about a prohibited consequence regardless of the manner." In Latin it is called a 'mens rea,' (but I'm not sure why Seven wanted me to write that down.)
The end.
**Indicates the section you specifically asked me to add to the report, Commander Chakotay. And I got it back to you the same day so I get the extra credit you promised, right?
Day 10
Sir stands before the door to her quarters precisely at 1900 hours, bottle of wine in hand. And he's decided that he won't take no for an answer.
With the first chime, he is confident. He stands straight and proud. He remembers dinners past, laughter and conversation. This night will be like those were, he's sure it can be.
With the second chime, his posture loosens. He considers that she might not have heard him, perhaps she's in the shower, or she might be resting. He feels slightly guilty for intruding.
His confidence is slowly slipping away.
After the third chime he begins to worry. He checks the computer again; she is indeed inside and active. He wonders if she is ignoring him.
He glances down the hallway then to the bottle in his hand. He is just about to step away when the door slides open, admitting him into the room, complete with a full view of stars beyond her viewport.
"Kathryn?" he asks, stepping inside. His eye is drawn toward artificial light, coming from above the dining table. Unlit candles and an empty vase adorn the top. The setting reminds him of easier times.
"I'm in here, Chakotay." Her voice comes from a room to the left. "I'll be out in a minute. I was just, uh, taking a bath."
A memory, one he suppresses in an instant, flashes through his mind in hues of blue.
"I'm sorry. I should have called ahead." He considers leaving, shifts his feet.
"It's okay, just… hang on."
Sir stands frozen, then remembers his resolve. He sets the bottle on the table, grabs two goblets and pops the cork. As he's pouring, she comes out, dressed in pajama pants and a V-necked sweatshirt, starlight reflecting off of her damp hair. He almost overfills the glass.
"What are you doing here, Chakotay?" Her voice is quiet and unsure.
"I thought we could have dinner together," he says, reverting to the speech he had prepared. "It's been a while. With all that's been going on, I thought it might be nice to put work aside and just enjoy a meal."
She sighs and it deflates her. "That's very nice of you, but I was planning on heading to bed early. Take a raincheck?"
That she is going to bed early is the last thing he expected; he knows she rarely sleeps. But it's also the one thing he won't argue about with her. "Of course," he says, trying his damnedest to hide the disappointment in his voice. "Of course." She steps closer, the dim light illuminates her eyes, and for just an instant he swears that she looks as if she's been crying.
She notices his attention to her reddened cheeks, places a self-conscious hand there, then takes a step back into the shadows. "Thank you for the wine," she says. "And the thought. It was… considerate of you."
He offers a sympathetic nod and heads back toward the door. He's about to leave, just about to step through with the ball in her court, when something urges him to press her.
"Tomorrow?" he asks. "Can we do this tomorrow instead? I miss you, Kathryn. And I'm worried about you."
He hears her swallow, sees her nod against starlight. "Tomorrow."
The tea is far too cold for his liking, but he sips it anyway. He's too tired to walk back to the kitchen and warm it up. He breaks off a bit of muffin and chews, it tastes nothing like what he wanted to eat. He's not even sure of what he's reading at the moment or why, all he really knows is that it's not holding his attention. He's too preoccupied with Kathryn, with clues disguised as objects, with a vaguely disturbing hyper-awareness of those around him, and with a fatigue that is only getting worse by the minute.
The mess hall is dim. All is quiet, and he prefers it this way; if he can't sleep – and he knows he won't be able to yet – then he might as well be relaxed.
He's on the last tepid sip from the mug when an alarm sounds. He sighs and taps his badge; two minutes later an engineer arrives, tricorder in hand.
"Any idea, Sir?" the man asks, beginning to scan the room.
"Nothing stands out," he says, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes. "Must be something that belongs here."
It doesn't take long for the engineer to zero in on a chair up against the wall. "Looks like we've got an extra seat," he says. In the process of completing his scan, the tricorder swings past Sir and it beeps.
"Something, Carey?"
"Not sure," the man replies, scanning him up and down. "You're coming up slightly irradiated. Must be your proximity to the chair…unless you're new here too," the man jokes, returning his attention to the misplaced object.
"Sorry to say, I've been here all evening," he replies with a tired smile.
"I'll take this out of your way," the man says, picking up the chair. "Enjoy the rest of your night, Sir."
After Carey leaves, he puts the entire lot of padds into the recycler, then finally goes to bed.
Day 11
Morning comes around too soon, and before long Sir is back in the captain's ready room, watching the captain draw strength from a steaming mug of coffee. She has already confirmed that she slept long and well the night before, though the dark circles under her eyes betray her lie.
And yes, he knows that she lies, but he'll be damned if he's going to chastise her for it.
"Neelix asked again, and I've told him, we're not going to hide any of this from the crew. We've had them all searching their quarters for several days; there's no reason that we shouldn't be completely forthright. Don't you agree?"
His mind is somewhere else completely.
"Commander?"
He startles back to her. "Yes. I agree. No secrets."
She nods and sips her coffee, returning to a report.
"Such random things," she mutters, thumbing down the padd. "Listen to all the stuff that was found last night: A deck of cards, a chair, a case of stembolts, a watering can, an empty hypospray, and a jump rope."
"A jump rope?"
"In the gym."
He shrugs. "Nothing ominous about those."
"Let's just hope it's not the calm before the storm."
As if on cue, her communicator chirps.
They have been summoned to the shuttle bay, and from the sound of B'Elanna's voice, what awaits them is quite likely the storm.
"What have you got?" the captain demands even before the shuttle bay doors have closed.
"Escape pod number eighteen," B'Elanna reports. "It's from deck eight, section twenty-two. One of the inspection teams just found it."
"Pod eighteen is between the science lab and astrometrics?" Sir asks, despite being confident he is correct.
"Yes, or it was." B'Elanna backs away from the craft. "I haven't opened the hatch yet, but I have a bad feeling about this."
"Why is that?" asks the captain, performing a cursory exam of the outside of the craft.
B'Elanna motions with a single finger to the viewport. Light from the shuttlebay ceiling reflects off the window, casting an unnatural red-tinge to the area behind transparent aluminum.
The three fall silent for just a moment. There is no way that Sir will allow either of them to be the first to see what is undoubtedly inside.
He preemptively moves for the hatch.
"Internal power hasn't been brought online," B'Elanna warns him. "You'll have to crack it open the old-fashioned way."
Sir grabs ahold of the release latch. He expects to have to heave on it, to use the weight of his body and brute strength to break the seal. This is not the case, however, and instead the door swings free easily. He stumbles backwards.
"It's been opened before," the captain observes.
A stale, sickeningly-putrid stench wafts out, and he swallows hard around the lump of rising nausea mixed with dread.
He has smelled this before, in a life before the one he leads now.
B'Elanna offers him a flashlight, which he takes from her outstretched hand. She retreats a few steps behind the captain, her arm over her nose.
The interior is dark. He sucks in a breath and holds it, then casts his light. It throws shadows of red and black and silver; after a moment the images register. A smattering of tissue and blood has dried on every surface.
The craft is otherwise empty.
He feels one of the women move close behind him. A wave of claustrophobic anxiety assails him and retreats.
"No bodies," he reports, pulling his head out of the pod. "But there's a sizeable amount of other remains…" He doesn't want to describe what he's just seen, so he stops short and says simply, "Explosive decompression."
He watches as the captain closes her eyes, then as expected, she snaps back into command form. "Get the Doctor down here to take samples," she orders B'Elanna. "When he's done, go over this thing with a fine-toothed comb. I want the logs, flight data module, sensors, everything analyzed. Find out why it failed. Then have a crew go over our pod number eighteen. Make sure it doesn't have the same flaw… if it was a flaw."
"Yes, Captain."
She turns to him, meets his eyes. "We need to finish our chat."
From: Lt. Thomas E. Paris
To: Adm. Owen M. Paris
Date: September 30, 2377
Hey Dad,
I know I haven't sent one of these in a while, sorry about that. Please tell mom that I got her last letter and I hope she's over her cold. But, um… do me a favor and don't let her read this, okay?
Things have been a little hectic lately. The baby will be here before we know it; B'Elanna feels like she has to get everything done before then, which is impossible. And me? To be honest, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing.
Life on the ship has been… tense. I'm sure you'll read Captain Janeway's reports, if she files them... I hope I'm not breaking some kind of conduct by telling you what's been going on. Hopefully by the time this goes out, the crisis-du-jour will be over and it won't matter.
We've been finding strange objects onboard and we have good reason to believe they're from our own future. At first it was funny, a soup and salad here, a naked picture there. Then things turned strange.
We got a dead body, a bloodied cot, a depressurized escape pod. Found shrapnel on the bridge. We stumbled on a whole canister of depleted hyposprays this morning… People are starting to talk. A lot of the crew believes we're headed into something really bad, though we have no idea what.
I've been trying to isolate myself from the scuttlebutt as much as possible; senior staff can't play into fears, you know. And I've been busy running drills at the conn for the junior officers, keeping my eyes peeled for anything strange along our heading.
Tonight though, tonight it hit home. And I'm not quite sure what to do.
B'Elanna's asleep. I've tried, I just can't lay there beside her. I'm so anxious, crawling out of my skin. I… I can't lose her.
You're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about, aren't you?
Okay. I convinced B'Elanna to take a few hours off, it's the first break she's had in nearly two weeks. We were watching a movie - did I tell you I have an old TV set like the one Gram had? Well, we were in the middle 'Revenge of the Body Snatchers,' I thought B'Elanna would get a kick out of it considering…
And then, it just appeared. Out of nowhere, it just popped onto our coffee table, right next to the bowl of popcorn.
A perfectly folded Federation funeral flag.
B'Elanna went for a tricorder, but I just kept right on staring. That cobalt blue is burned into my mind now, everywhere I look, cobalt blue.
Once she got her readings, she checked the nametag on the binding. I didn't need to. I knew what it was going to say.
B'Elanna shrugged it off, said the future isn't set and for all we know, the changes we've made have already rendered this moot. I told her she was probably right, but… there's an unspoken thing between us now. She'll never admit she could be wrong, and I don't want her to see that I'm not so optimistic.
Maybe we'll be fine. We've certainly cheated death before. Still I can't shake the knowledge that somewhere, sometime, there is a version of me living without her. Maybe without both of them. And I... I know you might see this as a sign of weakness, but I've tried to be honest with you in these letters.
I'm scared, Dad.
I'm so very scared.
-Tom
Addendum to Daily Log
Seven of Nine
Stardate: 54746.5
This evening, at 2158 hours, just before the beginning of my regeneration cycle, I witnessed the emergence of a temporally displaced object. I had backed into my alcove and was facing the spot when it materialized. My view was unobstructed.
A standard-issue cargo container appeared approximately 5.5 meters above the floor where it remained suspended in space for 0.15 seconds before falling to the ground.
I silenced the alarm and recorded chroniton radiation readings immediately but did not detect the presence of additional anomalies in the cargo bay.
A label on the front of the container identifies it as: SK-859-102 – 2 of 2.
The lid of the bin had detached upon impact with the deck below. I proceeded to investigate the contents, which were as follows:
· Four sets of folded civilian clothing
· One standard-issue, yellow, Starfleet uniform and men's boots
· Fifteen photographs of individuals I could not readily identify, some in frames
· Parrises Squares trophy – 1st place All-Federation Group B
· Brown leather case containing a B-flat clarinet
I checked the computer database for the personnel number on the side of the container; it is consistent with the items inside.
Given the evidence, I would conclude that in the reality this container originated from, Harry Kim has either put his belongings into storage, or has been declared dead.
