Part One
The Ambassador-class USS Erebus hung benignly in high orbit above Earth.
Inside the starboard edge of the saucer section, on deck seven, section three, four figures stood in an unassuming set of guest quarters. One of several such accommodations dotted throughout the ship's saucer.
But Jirel Vincent had lost all bearings on where he was and who he was with. He merely stared across the confines of the modestly-sized room. At the old man who was looking back at him.
The old man with his face.
A face that was gently weathered and creased with the early signs of the ravages of age. But still unquestionably his face.
"…What the hell?"
It was the second time he'd asked that question in quick succession since his father had led him into this particular room and he had seen the older Trill, and it wasn't the most probing of queries given the circumstances. But right now, it was the only question his mind could formulate.
Next to the older Trill with Jirel's face, a younger human woman responded to the question. She was clad in a black jumpsuit with red piping and had light brown skin and dark hair that was pulled back into a ponytail. She offered a fraction of a half-smile and gestured to the chairs around the dining table of the quarters they were in.
"It…might help if you take a seat, Mr Vincent."
The Trill had no idea who the woman was, nor why she was being so formal. And he certainly wasn't prepared to admit that he knew who the impossibly familiar Trill was. Instead, he decided to formulate a more specific question.
"Is this a prank?" he managed, looking from his father to the two strangers with a hopeful and entirely out of place grin, "Are you all pranking me right now? I mean, is that Sunek wearing a mask or what?"
He gestured to the older Trill, who mustered a sad smile at the memories that name brought up inside him, but he shook his head.
"No. It's me, Jirel. Or, more accurately, it's you."
The younger Jirel's bearings weren't getting any more clear.
"You're…me?"
"I'm you," the older Trill nodded back.
There was an awkward pause. Not the first such gap in the conversation since it had started. The younger Jirel cocked his head slightly, peering at the other Trill to see if he could spot the join lines of the mask that Sunek was wearing. But he saw nothing.
It was him. There was no denying it.
"There's no way you're me," he insisted, immediately disputing that internal truism he had arrived at.
"I'm definitely you."
Jirel was starting to feel light headed.
"If I remember rightly, you're starting to feel light headed," the older Trill said, gesturing to the table, "Like my friend said, we should all probably take a seat for this."
Jenner took the lead, heading the motley group over to the table. Jirel sat directly opposite the man who both clearly was and couldn't possibly be his older self, and to the right of his father. The still-mysterious jumpsuit-clad woman sat to the side of the older Trill, opposite Jenner.
"Ok," Old Jirel sighed, glancing at the woman next to him, then back to his disbelieving younger self, "I've been told to go for the band-aid approach. Just…rip it off in one go. So…"
He took a breath. And then dived straight in.
"I'm you. And I've lived the last thirty years in the past, after I was thrown back in time by a temporal event that I—that we got caught up in. Since then, I've lived my life in secret, as much as possible. Until a year ago, when I followed the orders that I was given. And I contacted your—our father."
Jenner nodded tightly. Young Jirel glanced from one man to the other, still incredulous.
"What orders?" he managed.
"The, um, orders you're about to be given. By this incredibly capable lady."
He gestured and smiled at the woman in the jumpsuit, who managed a slight smile of her own in response, before she turned to Young Jirel with an entirely more formal look.
"Agent Leona Taylor, Department of Temporal Investigations."
Young Jirel's already well-boggled mind boggled slightly further.
"I understand how difficult this will all be to take in," she continued, "And it's my job to make what happens next as easy as possible for you."
Without waiting for any fresh questions from his younger self, Old Jirel gripped the band aid again.
"In the next few days, you're going to travel to a research station in the Vandor sector and help to prevent a temporal disaster. But, as a result, you're also going to fall through a time vortex and wind up in the past."
"H—How do you possibly know what I'm going to—?"
"Because that's what happened to me. And this is what I heard myself telling myself back when I was you, on the other side of the table. And I know that, back then, I didn't believe what I was hearing either. But it's the truth. That's what has to happen. And…I'm sorry."
Young Jirel audibly scoffed and shook his head as he glanced around the table, from the older Trill with his face, to the woman claiming to be from the Department of Temporal Investigations, to his father's stony expression where he sat next to him.
He began to see that, if this really was a prank, they were really committing to it.
And the more he considered the situation, the less reasons he could think of as to why anyone would go to this length to play a prank on him. Especially as it seemed to require the use of an entire Federation starship. He was pretty sure that Sunek wasn't capable of pulling that off.
As realisation slowly dawned, Old Jirel mustered a sad smile, as if he was remembering himself going through that same mental process, thirty years ago.
Young Jirel's face slowly morphed from a look of incredulity to one of dread.
But there was still one aspect of what was apparently going on that he could cling to. One thing in his mind that was still convincing him that this couldn't be true. One question that kept him from buying what he was being told.
Why him?
After all, despite what he might have liked to think about himself back onboard the Bounty, he wasn't a heroic starship captain. He wasn't a trained Starfleet officer or special agent. He was an idiot who bought a spaceship. That was all.
And these days, he didn't even have the spaceship.
"But," he whispered, deploying his last gambit, "Why—?"
His older self cut him off immediately, knowing exactly what he was going to ask.
"Because," he offered with a sad expression shining through aged features, "Of who we need to rescue."
The younger version of Jirel didn't need any further information. The sense of dread was complete.
Suddenly, everything became clear.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Mannheim Research Outpost, Vandor IV
Temporal Reset Number 14
Natasha Kinsen woke up.
Just as she always woke up. Lying on the bed she always woke up on.
Previously, when she had woken up on this unfamiliar bed, she had sat bolt upright in shock, or fear, or confusion.
But now, the bed and the room she was in were an awful lot more recognisable. So instead, she merely sighed and lazily swung her feet over the side of the bed, standing up with a practised sense of resignation.
On autopilot, she slouched across the room to the table on the other side of the sparsely decorated room. Without even looking, she picked up the freshly replicated double cheeseburger (with all the trimmings) and took a bite for sustenance.
As she chewed the familiar mouthful of food, she turned and walked out of the familiar open doorway of the room, into the familiar surroundings of a pristine white corridor.
She turned away from the end of the corridor that led to the small shared living area she already knew was there, and instead walked the other way, towards a set of heavy sealed doors.
The rest of the Bounty's crew was already there.
"Hey doc," Sunek, the ship's emotional Vulcan pilot, quipped from where he slouched against the wall, "Fancy seeing you here."
Natasha didn't respond. She merely stood in front of the doors and waited for them to open.
Just as she always did.
Denella, the Bounty's Orion engineer, was in place on the shoulders of Klath, the ship's Klingon weapons chief. She worked feverishly inside a small access hatch in the ceiling of the corridor, trying to short out the door controls.
Just as she always did.
Seconds later, the doors robustly thudded open.
"Time?" the Orion called out.
"Thirty-two point four seconds," Sunek responded with a stifled yawn.
He didn't have a stopwatch, or any other means of time measurement. But underneath the emotions and the bad jokes and the creased Hawaiian shirt, he still had a Vulcan mind. So Denella was happy to claim it as a personal best.
As soon as the doors opened, Klath stepped through, still with the Orion on his broad shoulders. Natasha and Sunek followed, into an identical stretch of corridor to the one they had just been in, with another sealed set of doors at the end.
Just as was always there.
"You know," Sunek offered as Denella began to work on the access panel above this new door, "It wouldn't hurt them to mix things up a bit. Throw in the odd surprise."
Nobody even bothered to try and shut the ever-talkative Vulcan up. There didn't seem much point.
Instead, Denella focused on her work, Klath focused on absorbing the weight of the Orion on his wide shoulders, and Natasha just stared at the new set of doors. Waiting for them to open.
Just as they always did.
She had lost count of how many times they had been through this process. Every pass through was starting to blur into the others. Ever since they had been trapped in this temporal nightmare, it had become harder and harder to keep track of what was going on.
All of this was a plot headed by Doctor Lester Brooks, an initially disarming temporal scientist that they had agreed to help transport supplies to his research outpost, but who had turned out to be the son of Paul Mannheim, the original owner of the outpost they had been lured to.
It had turned out that Brooks was being assisted by Berlinghoff Rasmussen, a 22nd century con man trapped in the wrong time, who had provided Brooks with the specs to a time pod in the hopes of using his research to return to his own time.
Natasha found herself not thinking too hard about the reasons for their incarceration. It tended to give her more of a headache than the temporal resets themselves.
But however they had become trapped here, the fact was that they were stuck in a hermetically sealed experiment, inside some sort of artificial time loop. An extension of the Mannheim Effect, an unwanted side-effect of Brooks's father's research years ago.
The purpose of which, if Brooks's gloating explanation was to be believed, was to harvest chroniton particles. To then be used to help power a replica of Rasmussen's time pod. And that was why they were experiencing so much repetition.
The second set of doors began to open in front of them, just as they so often did.
"Time?" Denella asked again.
"Forty-four point six seconds," Sunek called back, "You're getting sloppy."
Denella again resisted the urge to fire back a quip of her own.
The small convoy of individuals, Orion atop Klingon, yawning Vulcan and morose human, stepped into the next section of corridor, up to the next set of identical sealed doors.
So far, their record was six doors. Before their world reset itself. None of them had any idea how many doors there might actually be. Or even if this was actually the way out of their incarceration. All they knew was that they hadn't been able to find any other potential avenue of escape. So, each time the loop reset itself, they started again.
And it was starting to drive them crazy.
Given the immense drain on their mental states that their repetitive and fruitless escape attempts were starting to have, Natasha had elected to keep the full picture of the danger they were in to herself for now.
But she knew, from the depths of her medical knowledge, that long-term exposure to these sorts of conditions was going to start to cause irreparable damage to their brain functions before too much longer. If it wasn't doing already. Regardless of their species, their cognitive functions were simply not designed to cope with this sort of temporal stress.
Still, there was nothing she could do about that from where they were. And telling the others this information wasn't going to do anything to improve their already fractured moods. So she made the medical decision to keep them in the dark for the time being, and let them get on with their work. While she stared at the door.
After a few more moments, the latest door slowly opened up as well.
"Time?"
"Wasn't paying attention. Sorry."
The convoy moved on to the next section of corridor. And the next door.
Deep down, all of them knowing that, like every other time they had tried this exact plan, they weren't going to escape.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"They're not actually going to escape, are they?"
There was a distinct edge of concern in Berlinghoff Rasmussen's question. He stood and watched the latest temporal reset play out on the screen in front of him, from the safety of the small research outpost's main laboratory space.
Over by the expansive chroniton collection mechanism built into one of the walls of the lab, Doctor Lester Brooks didn't even bother to look over at the screen.
His focus remained entirely on the readings from the collection chamber itself.
"No," he replied dismissively, "What none of them have noticed, thanks to the rather disorientating white decor of the corridor, is that the whole thing is slightly curved. They're ultimately just working their way around a loop, back to where they started."
He paused and allowed himself a proud smile at the depths of his own preparation.
"Rather a fitting metaphor really, when you think about it."
Rasmussen kept his eyes on the monitor, but he couldn't help but emit an amused chuckle at this explanation.
"Oh, that's cruel," he mock-chided, "That's very, very cruel."
"It's effective," Brooks countered, "Like laboratory rats in a maze, they go for the most obvious means of progress that's right in front of their eyes, rather than studying the problem with a little more of an objective outlook."
He tore his focus away from the collector for a second and gestured idly to a control panel to the right of where Rasmussen was standing.
"And besides, even if they do elevate themselves above rats at some point and discover the real exit, we can perform a manual temporal reset from here. Stop them in their tracks."
Evidently satisfied with the genius of his experimental setup, he returned his attention to the readings in front of him with relish.
"Fourteen point six chroniton particles per cubic millimetre inside the stasis field," he reported, "The efficiency rate isn't quite what I was hoping for, but we're still inside the margins of error from my calculations."
Rasmussen didn't even pretend to follow along with the scientific intricacies of Brooks's plan. But he understood enough to recognise good news.
"How much longer before we have enough for the time pod?" he asked.
"A while yet," Brooks admitted, "But no matter. I suppose we have plenty of…time."
Rasmussen somehow found it in himself to offer another chuckle at that comment, then looked up from the screen and pondered.
"Hmm. I wonder what I'll invent first when I get back. The hand phaser, or the quantum slipstream drive…?"
Brooks fixed the other man with a stern glare.
"I told you not to do that. I'm not sending you back to your own time just so you can pull that same scam you were trying before."
"Heh," Rasmussen shrugged back, "Just a little joke—"
"Well don't joke about that. The timeline is a precious thing. All I'm doing is getting you home, and finally proving that my father's experiment wasn't a failure, but the start of something incredible. Using the Mannheim Effect to harvest chronitons."
Rasmussen glanced back at the screen with a slightly churlish expression.
"Provided you have some captive subjects to torment like this?"
Brooks felt a surge of anger rise up inside, but he quelled it immediately. Not for the first time since he had joined forces with Rasmussen, he wondered if it would be better for him to part ways with him now, violently if necessary. He still had his phaser, after all.
And now that Rasmussen had told him about the plans for the time pod, and they had recovered them from the copy of the USS Enterprise's computer core they had been able to get their hands on, he wasn't really providing much help to the completion of the plan.
The plan to prove the validity of Paul Mannheim's life's work. To win back his father's professional dignity. No matter what the cost.
For now, he compartmentalised any thoughts about dealing with Rasmussen away again. And kept focus on the plan.
"That was a necessary part of extracting a healthy dose of particles," he argued back, "But, with more research, I'm sure I can automate the process."
Rasmussen didn't look convinced. But equally, he wanted to get home. So he didn't push the nascent argument any further, and simply craned his head back towards the screen, like a 20th century child straining to get a decent view of the TV.
"Ooh," he smiled, "They made it through door five! One more and you'll owe me a slip of latinum."
Brooks idly checked the chronometer on his wrist and shrugged.
"I wouldn't worry about that. They won't make it to door six this time…"
'*'*'
'*'*'
Mannheim Research Outpost, Vandor IV
Temporal Reset Number 15
Natasha Kinsen woke up.
Just as she always woke up. Lying on the bed she always woke up in.
With a sigh, she resumed normal service.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed. She stood up. She took a bite out of the freshly replicated double cheeseburger (with all the trimmings).
And she walked back out into the corridor. Preparing to fail all over again.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Course has been laid in for the Verillian system, sir," the unflappable voice of Commander T'Ren, the Erebus's Vulcan executive officer, sounded out over the comms line.
"Understood, Commander," Jenner called back in response, "Engage immediately. And increase speed to maximum warp as soon as we clear the solar system. Jenner out."
With the impromptu interruption speedily dealt with, the admiral gestured back to Agent Taylor, where she stood next to a wall-mounted LCARS panel in the guest quarters, using the screen more usually utilised as an entertainment system to deliver a mission briefing.
Typically, such a briefing onboard a starship would be delivered in a more formal setting, such as the conference lounge located on deck one. But there was no realistic way that this collection of individuals could freely walk around the Erebus at this point.
The older Jirel had been secretly beamed into and out of these quarters throughout his time here, a special Department of Temporal Investigations algorithm installed by Taylor purging all details of his DNA and transporter pattern from the ship's database as soon as it was complete.
And now there were two versions of Jirel onboard, they couldn't risk being spotted, even if they were transported en masse directly into the conference lounge. So, Old Jirel's sealed guest quarters would have to do.
"My apologies," Jenner offered to Taylor after the interruption, "Please continue."
Young Jirel hadn't really followed the brief discussion his father had exchanged with his first officer, nor did he particularly notice as the starfield outside the window slowly shifted and moved as the Erebus pivoted away from Earth and set off on its journey. Instead, he was still focused on the older Trill on the other side of the table.
The older him.
"So," Taylor began, her voice enough to shake Jirel back to attention, "I've been assigned to this case for the best part of a year, since Admiral Jenner first contacted Temporal Investigations. And, based on Jirel's - the older Jirel's - information, this is what I'm able to share with you. As you can understand, Admiral, even senior officers are on a need to know basis around temporal matters."
Jenner conceded the point with an unhappy nod, aware that he knew almost as little as his son did about the wider details of their situation. He only knew what Old Jirel had told him so far. Which had been frustratingly little.
Taylor quickly tapped the screen and began a short presentation to the group.
"Our destination is the Vandor sector. Where we will be required to prevent a catastrophic temporal event from happening. My duty, and all of our collective duties throughout that process, will be to ensure that the timeline is preserved."
"I've just laid in a course for the Verillian system," Jenner pointed out.
"That's just a stopover," Old Jirel replied on Taylor's behalf, "We need to make one final check that everything is playing out as it should."
Jenner unconsciously clenched his fist, but mustered a nod back. He was still a little uneasy about being spoken to so authoritatively by a man who was still technically his son.
"Feels like that's all we've been doing this past year," he grunted flatly, "Just letting everything play out."
"I know," the aged Trill smiled sadly, "But that's what we had to do."
Taylor allowed the brief back and forth to play out, then continued with her presentation.
"For temporal security, only a handful of people know the truth about the mission. And aside from the admiral, that number does not include any of the Erebus crew. And we'll be keeping it that way all the way to the end."
It was a thinly-concealed threat, and one that even Young Jirel's addled brain picked up on. Taylor seamlessly tapped the screen and brought up two blurry images of two different humans.
"Doctor Lester Brooks. Berlinghoff Rasmussen. A renegade scientist and a con artist, respectively. And two men currently running a dangerous experiment in the Vandor sector. An experiment that, apparently, has resulted in the incarceration of four individuals known to everyone here."
Both Jirels felt their hearts jump as four other images were displayed on screen. Pictures of Denella, Klath, Sunek and Natasha.
"From what we understand," the agent continued, "The experiment has been designed to validate the work of Brooks's father, Doctor Paul Mannheim."
"Of the Mannheim Effect?" Jenner queried.
"The same," Taylor nodded, "The details of the experiment aren't important right now, but essentially he has honed the time-skipping properties of the original effect as a means to effectively…harvest chroniton particles."
"Why?" Jenner pressed.
"Because they hope to use them to power their…time machine."
Young Jirel, already struggling to keep up with the finer details of the presentation, felt his incredulity boil over again.
"Seriously," he managed, "Is this a prank?"
"I wish it was," the other Trill muttered, without any trace of amusement.
Taylor offered an understanding look in Old Jirel's direction, before she tapped the screen again and brought up a schematic overview of the Erebus's planned course.
"No prank," she affirmed, "And we need to stop them not only to rescue your friends, but also because they're messing with powers you can't understand."
She turned away from the screen and glared around the table with clear severity.
"Again, withholding certain details, we believe that without our intervention, the entire Vandor sector will suffer a devastating temporal event as a result of this experiment. Because, not to put too fine a point on it, and notwithstanding Dr Brooks's personal beliefs on the power of his intellect, we're dealing with two…certifiable idiots."
"Which I know we're definitely used to dealing with," Old Jirel offered to his younger self with a more jovial tone.
He was met with a still-disbelieving silence. Just as he knew he was going to be.
"What sort of temporal event?" Jenner pressed, trying to keep the meeting on track.
"We can't be completely certain," Taylor conceded, "But what we do know is that in less than two days, Jirel will help to stop them and save those four individuals. And, in the process, will fall through a transient time vortex and emerge thirty years in the past. I'm sorry."
Despite the formality of the presentation, the apology was genuinely heartfelt.
Still, Jirel wasn't convinced.
"But, I mean, if that's really what—I mean, can't we…stop it?"
"No, we can't," she replied, maintaining her understanding tone, "Because it's already happened."
She gestured to the older Trill to underline her point. Jirel stared at the figure he was now becoming used to not thinking of as Sunek wearing a mask.
It was him. And it had already happened.
The older man on the other side of the table was proof of that. A man who had come from the past to here in the present, as a result of something that was going to happen in the future.
Jirel's head was really hurting now.
The older Jirel mustered an understanding smile, knowing exactly what confused mental gymnastics were at play inside his younger brain right now.
"Welcome to the world of temporal paradoxes," he sighed at his younger self, "You're gonna hate it."
'*'*'
'*'*'
Trill Colony, Morana VI
Earth Year 2351
Jirel stood back and admired his handiwork with no small amount of satisfaction. In front of him stood a squat wooden building. One storey, rectangular in footprint, with a sloped roof and a sturdy front door.
His home.
A home that he had built with his own hands.
It had been four years since he had appeared out of nowhere on a lonely hillside. Since he had left his old life behind him. Or, temporally-speaking, ahead of him. And he was finally starting to feel settled.
It had taken him a while to figure everything out in his head. As Agent Leona Taylor had explained to him at the time, he had to go through several stages of processing what had happened before he would be able to finally accept his new life.
It had taken time to adjust to life thirty years in the past. To adjust to the idea that he wouldn't see his friends again. And that there was no way of going back to where he had come from. And after he had finally worked through all of that as best he could, he had finally turned his attention to the one big instruction he had been given to follow.
Find a quiet corner of history, and stay out of the way.
Part of him had wanted to immediately rebel against that rule. Even if just to rail against the unfairness of what had happened to him. But somehow, he had found a more mature side to himself that he had barely been aware of the existence of. And he had stuck to the plan.
Because deep down, he knew how vital it was.
So, after several diversions around the cosmos, through various nondescript jobs in backwater ports and colonies to earn some latinum, he had earned enough to secure transport here. To Morana VI.
He had picked a Trill colony to ensure he could blend in as much as possible. Even though he didn't exactly stick out from a crowd in most Alpha Quadrant settings, he elected to become just another boring Trill on just another boring Trill colony.
That decision had immediately led to another internal crisis, similar to the one he had been through when he had first arrived in the past. He had considered all the things he wanted to do with his life, all the places he'd wanted to go and the events he'd wanted to experience. And knew now he would never do or visit any of them.
In truth, he might not have completed them all anyway. But at least they had been ambitions. And now he was condemning himself to a quiet life in self-inflicted exile on Morana VI.
In order to disappear.
Fortunately, once he had arrived, he had found some renewed determination to make the best of the worst possible situation. And he had decided to learn a craft, to try and discover and hone skills that he had never thought he had before.
He had never been especially gifted in working with his hands. That was one of the reasons he had been so dependent on Denella to keep the Bounty in a serviceable condition for so long. But, over the months and years on Morana IV, he had quietly and diligently learned what it was to be a craftsman. Thanks to the efforts, and the patience, of the other colonists.
He had been shown how to chop, cut, plane, sand, varnish, assemble and all the rest of it. And after numerous false starts and countless splinters, he had finally gotten the hang of it.
And all those years of learning had culminated in the one storey house that stood in front of him. It wasn't exactly a mansion on Risa. But he couldn't help but feel something inside that he hadn't felt very often in his life. Certainly not recently.
He felt proud.
The spot that he had chosen to build it had come from an equally careful process. It was some way away from the main settlement of the colony, out in the lush and quiet woods of the northern continent where they were located.
Not so far away that he would become a complete hermit, cut off from society. But far enough away that he could pick and choose when he wanted to interact with the others. He would be a visitor in town when he did so. A passer-by.
In summary, a very, very boring Trill.
"You could have saved yourself a lot of time with a replicator, you know."
The voice came as a surprise, but it didn't startle him. He turned around and smiled as she emerged into the small clearing where he had chosen to live, and she smiled back.
Kiara Loren was, like him, an unjoined Trill, as most of the colonists were. And she had helped him more than any of the others to learn to live here.
As a teacher at the main school of the settlement, she was definitely more understanding and patient than the others. And it also didn't take a telepath to work out that she didn't just spend her time helping him out of a streak of pure altruism. There was an attraction there as well. And it was mutual.
"Replicator would've done all that work," she continued as she approached him and gazed at the house, "Saved you all that time chopping down trees, sanding down wood, whatever else you've been doing out here all alone."
She was right. Morana VI was a Federation world, and as such there was no need to worry about money or employment. An industrial replicator back at the settlement could've easily replicated all the materials he needed for free. Or even the entire house. But he knew that wasn't the point.
"That would've been too easy," he replied, maintaining his feeling of pride in his work, "And besides, a replicator would just make a house. I've made a home."
"Is that a fact?" Kiara smirked.
He nodded back, stepping over to the front door and running his hand across the varnish.
"See here?" he pointed, "This ugly big blob of varnish? Ruins the whole pristine surface of the wood when you run your hand across it. A replicator wouldn't have done that."
Kiara stepped up to his side, a little closer than was strictly friendly, and gently ran a finger across the obvious blemish.
"So you didn't use a replicator because…it would have done it properly?"
"Now you're getting it," he smiled back, silently cursing himself for the playfulness in his tone as he did so.
"Yeah, I think I get it," she offered back, "You're an incredibly stubborn man. And even now, you don't want to admit that my replicator idea was better."
His smile widened. For a moment, he forgot who he was, where he was, and what he had to do. He was just a boy, talking to a girl. And life was simple.
And then, after allowing himself the briefest moment of indulgence, he forced himself to remember the truth.
"So," she continued, with a slightly coquettish toss of her hair over her shoulder, "I assume this all means that you're staying on the colony for good?"
There was more than a hint of subtext about the query, but he continued to ignore it.
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Oh, I don't know," she shrugged, not so casually, "I just always thought you might have someone out there you wanted to get back to…"
There was less subtext to that one. Jirel stifled a grimace as she continued.
'You know, there's a big festival this weekend. Marking ten years since the colony was founded."
"I know."
"And I know it's not really that important, but I don't have anyone to go with right now. And I don't really wanna go by myself, so…"
He glanced back at her, and felt a distinct pang of regret. For what he was going to have to do.
"Got any ideas?" she added.
She couldn't have made the implication more clear if she had tried. But Jirel forced himself to play entirely dumb.
"Well," he shrugged, "What about…Jalon Gavar?"
Kiara's face slumped instantly.
"Jalon Gavar? The administrator's son?"
"Yeah," Jirel nodded, putting his heart and soul into dispassionately selling the suggestion, "He's not bad to look at, right? And I've heard he likes you. I could ask him for you, if you'd like?"
She stared at him for a moment with mild incredulity. He kept his expression entirely neutral, for as long as it took her to give up with a shake of her head.
"No," she snorted, "I can talk to Jalon Gavar. If that's who I need to talk to."
He wanted to say something more. To explain what he was doing, and why he was doing it. Why he couldn't have anything more than a fleeting role in her life. But it was too complicated.
So instead, he kept quiet, as she turned and walked back out of the clearing, heading back towards the main settlement.
Jirel watched her leave, and noted that she didn't look back.
With a deep sigh, he turned back to the building in front of him. To his home.
And he kept his mind focused on the image of a different woman. A woman that, over the past four years trapped in the past, he had come to realise the strength of his feelings for. Even though he knew he would never be able to do anything about them. Not now.
And then, he walked in through the front door. Into his empty home.
All alone.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Berlinghoff Rasmussen was getting bored. And impatient.
He had given up watching the images on the screen several loops ago, even as Brooks kept his attention on the ongoing experiment. Instead, he had elected to pace around the expanse of the laboratory. Feeling increasingly frustrated that he was so close to returning home, and yet still so far away.
He stopped next to the wall-sized transparent aluminium window at the rear of the lab, giving a view of the storage area beyond. In the middle of that space sat a familiar vessel. His time pod.
Or, at least, a copy of his time pod that had been constructed for him and Brooks by a small group of Verillian merchants.
It was his ticket home. But right now, it was just gathering dust in a storage bay.
"You're a very impatient man, you know," Brooks called out, his focus still on the screen in front of him.
"I didn't realise it would take this long," Rasmussen retorted, pacing back over to the other man, "I assumed we'd be there by now."
Brooks mustered a faintly superior smirk at this, again revelling in his own deeper grasp of their situation at the expense of his colleague.
"You have to understand that we're at the cutting edge of science here, Mr Rasmussen. There are so many variables at play. We have to be careful, and be patient. Nobody asked Albert Einstein to hurry up with his theory of relativity. Nobody gave Zefram Cochrane a tight deadline to invent the warp drive. Nobody rushed my father when he was—"
"Screwing up."
That idle comment got Brooks's attention away from the screen.
"My father did no such thing! He laid the foundations for everything I'm doing here!"
He stood up angrily and pointed at the wall behind him, where the sealed experiment was still running on the other side.
"Through there, thanks to my father's tireless lifetime of research, I have isolated a discrete pocket of time. One that I have the ability to control. To manipulate. And to get you back to that life of yours in the 22nd century. Ok?"
Brooks stared daggers across the lab, and a wary Rasmussen immediately held his hands up in good-natured defeat.
"Of course, of course. My mistake. Evidently."
For a moment, Brooks maintained his glare. He once again found himself reconsidering his colleague's usefulness to him at this stage of their enterprise. But in the end, he relented, and returned his attention to the screens.
"Just try to exercise a bit of patience, Mr Rasmussen."
He mustered a half-smile as he gestured to the latest images from the experiment.
"Which is some advice that it looks like our subjects could do with following…"
'*'*'
'*'*'
Mannheim Research Outpost, Vandor IV
Temporal Reset Number 23
"Klath!"
Denella called out the Klingon's name in frustration as she picked herself up off the ground of the corridor, where she had been thrown by Klath moments before.
For his part, Klath merely growled angrily at nobody in particular as he panted from exertion a little further down the corridor.
"Do you really think that's helping?" the Orion added, gesturing to the ground at the Klingon's feet, where Sunek's dead body now lay.
Natasha felt oddly sanguine about having just witnessed Klath throwing Denella from his shoulders, before turning to the Vulcan and snapping his neck with one clean motion. She idly found herself wondering how many times Klath, or indeed anyone who had crossed paths with the Bounty's pilot for any period of time, had fantasised about doing that.
And she knew that it didn't really matter. He'd be back soon enough, after all.
Denella was equally unfazed at the sight of the body. But she continued to stare down the angry Klingon, hands on her hips, as she waited for him to explain his actions.
"He was…annoying me," the still-growling weapons chief managed eventually.
"Yeah, well, that's what he does," Denella pointed out, "And it's never bothered you this badly before."
"That was before we were trapped in this foolish place! I am tired of being toyed with, like a feeble neSngech in a maze!"
The fuming warrior punctuated his frustrations further by slamming his fist into the wall next to him with enough force to break three of his fingers above the knuckle with a sharp crack. Not that those injuries mattered any more than Sunek's death did. And the flare of pain merely served to further feed his anger at their incarceration.
Denella didn't back down, despite the ferocity of his reaction. But, sensing that it might not be long before another body joined Sunek's, Natasha felt the need to step in.
"He does have a point," she offered, gesturing at the sealed door behind the engineer, which she had been in the middle of trying to open when she had been so rudely dismounted, "We're not really getting anywhere."
"Our times are coming down," Denella countered, "If we can get through door number eight, then we can—"
"Get stopped by door number nine?"
Still with her hands on her hips, the Orion's ire switched targets to the morose human.
"You have a better idea?"
Natasha tried to find a more positive response, despite her fatalistic feelings inside.
"Temporal mechanics were never my strong suit," she admitted with a shrug, "But I do know the phrase 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' Which feels like what we're doing. Maybe we need a different…angle on this."
"Like what?"
Natasha paused again, trying to rack her brains for information that she wasn't sure was there, and dredging up any old Academy lectures on temporal issues she could recall.
"Ok, so, we know that the Mannheim Effect doesn't produce a true temporal loop."
"Meaning?" the tired Orion asked impatiently.
"Meaning that we retain memories of everything that happened in the prior loops, whether they officially happened or not, temporally-speaking. In a true time loop, everything would reset and we'd lose any memories of any previous loops."
"Ok. So, how does that help us?"
"I'm…not sure," Natasha admitted, "But it does mean that we can be more systematic in our escape efforts. We know what hasn't worked, right?"
"True," Denella nodded, before gesturing around the confines of their location, "But it's not like there's a lot more escape routes around here."
"Except, maybe there is."
"Where?" Klath grunted.
"I dunno," Natasha shrugged, "But maybe we missed something. Maybe we're still missing something, and we need to be a bit more thorough. Can't hurt to try something new, right?"
Denella looked back at the sealed door behind her, then turned back and shrugged.
"I guess not. But we'd better be quick, before—"
'*'*'
'*'*'
Mannheim Research Outpost, Vandor IV
Temporal Reset Number 24
Natasha Kinsen woke up.
She got out of bed. She walked across the room. She took a bite of double cheeseburger (with all the trimmings).
And she sighed.
Outside, from further down the hall, she heard Sunek calling out with some understandable irritation.
"Hey, big guy, did you just kill me in that last one? Cos that was not cool at all—!"
The Vulcan's annoyed rant was interrupted by a roar from Klath, followed by the sound of a body being slammed into a solid wall with deadly force.
"Klath!" Denella barked into the silence that followed, "Stop killing Sunek!"
'*'*'
'*'*'
Jirel stood in the Erebus's corridor and stared at the door in front of him.
He had been walking around the ship for some time now. Ever since he had finished what little of his replicated dinner he could bring himself to eat back in his guest quarters.
While his older self was confined indoors for the duration of their trip, the younger Jirel was free to roam the common areas, given that he wasn't the time-displaced one. Despite what he now knew. And he suspected that he understood why.
After all, if a scruffy Trill in civilian clothing pulled any of the Erebus's crew to one side and told them how he was a critical part of a secret time-bending mission to save a sector of space from catastrophe, he'd end up being thrown in the brig for public intoxication.
Frankly, he wouldn't believe himself either.
He'd nevertheless been glad of the opportunity to take a walk. His head was still spinning from everything he'd been told.
It couldn't be true.
And it seemed somehow inevitable that his walk had brought him back here. Even if, now he had arrived, he hadn't been able to bring himself to press the door buzzer.
Still, apparently that didn't matter in this particular situation.
"Come in."
The oddly familiar voice calling out from inside took him by surprise. But with a slight grimace, he followed the direction and stepped inside.
"That's really annoying," he grumbled to his older self as the doors closed behind him, "Let me guess, you knew exactly when I was gonna be outside."
"Actually, I called out three times before that. Couldn't quite remember the timing."
Old Jirel smiled warmly and gestured for Young Jirel to join him at the table. There was already a bottle of scotch and two glasses waiting. As the younger Jirel awkwardly sat down on the opposite side of the table, his older self filled both glasses from the bottle.
"You know," Young Jirel offered, "I've never really liked that stuff."
"I know. But you will."
To emphasise that point, Old Jirel slid one of the glasses over to him, and then took a healthy gulp from his own drink. Young Jirel accepted the glass, then stared down into the dark liquid uncertainly.
"So, before I start, is there any point in us having this conversation?" he asked, "I mean, you know how it all goes, right?"
"Yes."
"Because…when you were my age, you had the same conversation with you when you were your age?"
"Yes."
"And so you know everything I'm gonna say?"
"Yes."
Jirel pondered this temporal wrinkle for a moment, as he looked up at the aged face on the other side of the table.
"Well," he said eventually, "At least your lines seem easy enough to remember."
The old man's face creased into a knowing smile, as he took another sip of scotch and savoured the warmth for a moment.
"But you're right, I remember it," he replied, "Or I remember most of it, at least. Sort of. It's hard to describe. It's like I'm saying the exact things I heard myself say all those years ago without really thinking about it."
"What if I say something really weird and unexpected, like…trimetric spatial fr—"
"Fracture," his older self finished off for him, "It's not so weird and unexpected when you've already said it. Still, I think it's best we talk it out. For your sake, if not mine."
"I thought I was you?"
Old Jirel conceded that with a nod, as his younger self swirled his whisky around in the glass, getting lost in the movement of the liquid for a moment.
"Surely there's another way?" he asked eventually, without looking up.
"I've spent the last three decades wondering that. It was the first thing I asked Leona when dad went to Temporal Investigations. But there isn't. Call it predestination, causality, destiny, whatever. But whatever you do to try and stop it will just end up helping it to happen."
Young Jirel set the glass to one side and glared back at the unsettling visage in front of him. He wasn't willing to give up that easily.
"But—I mean, what if I just don't go. Hmm? I mean, we're literally on a Federation starship. Surely there's enough heroes onboard for them to deal with this without me?"
"That's not how it works. I went over this with Leona."
Young Jirel idly noted that was the second time his older self had referred to Agent Taylor in such a personal way. He couldn't help but wonder if…
"We're just friends," his older self affirmed, "Before your mind wanders. And all we'd end up doing if we tried to get someone else to go is make that poor officer break a leg or get trapped in a Jeffries tube so that we'd end up having to go anyway. I'm afraid that we—you have to do this."
Young Jirel sighed again, more deeply. He could see the seriousness in his older self's eyes, but he couldn't quite shake the idea that he still wasn't getting the full story.
"So," he said, trying a different tack entirely, "What exactly do I end up doing for the next thirty years."
He paused and considered his wording for a moment.
"Or…the last thirty years. Or—Whatever. You get what I mean."
A clear flicker of sadness crossed the older Trill's face as Young Jirel rather awkwardly managed to get his question out.
"You live your life," he shrugged eventually, "You stay out of the way. And you read a hell of a lot of books about temporal mechanics."
The younger Jirel persisted, wanting to know more.
"Yeah, but…what did you do? Did you get a new job? Settle down? Get married? Have kids—?"
"I stayed out of the way. Does any of that sound like staying out of the way to you?"
There was a clear edge of bitterness to the comment. For the cards that he had been dealt. Old Jirel topped off his glass from the bottle.
"But," the younger Trill persisted, "You must've done…something?"
Old Jirel took a long slug of scotch, and set the glass down slowly. Painfully aware of where the conversation was heading.
"When you've read all those books, you'll understand what we're doing here. And why we had to avoid doing anything to change the timeline."
"Come on," Young Jirel fired back, "I'm not talking about rigging the Lissepian lottery, or stopping the Dominion War or anything. But you still could've—"
"No. I couldn't. It doesn't matter how small an act it might seem. I just…couldn't."
Not long now, the older Trill thought to himself. Here it comes.
"But," the younger Trill argued, "How much would it have screwed up the timeline if you'd just met someone? Settled down? You could've just—"
He stopped himself on the spot, realisation now dawning on his face. He'd been so wrapped up trying to process everything that he'd been told, and been shown, that it hadn't crossed his mind until now.
What he could have done.
Old Jirel forced himself to maintain eye contact. Even though he wanted to look away.
"You…could have saved her."
The younger man didn't need to be any more specific. Both versions of Jirel knew exactly who he was talking about.
Maya Ortega.
Young Jirel's jaw clenched as the rage began to build inside him.
"You knew she was going to die," he hissed, "You could have stopped it. You could have warned her. But you did nothing!"
Old Jirel regarded his younger self with sadness. He knew there was nothing he could say to help right now, because he vividly remembered the pain he had felt at this point in the conversation, thirty years ago.
"I had to preserve the—"
"Screw the timeline!"
Young Jirel jumped out of his seat with a start, knocking the table with enough force to send his untouched glass of whisky tumbling to the ground, where it smashed on the carpeted floor. He ignored the sound and jabbed a finger at his older self with venom.
"Maya Ortega living wasn't going to screw anything up! You could have helped her! You could have built a life! You could have done…something! But instead, look at you. Thirty years, and you didn't do a goddamn thing!"
The older Trill didn't reply. He couldn't reply. He knew he had to take his punishment.
"That's why you want me to throw away the rest of my life, isn't it?" the younger man continued, "To justify the fact that you threw away the rest of yours."
He shook his head angrily as he sized up the man in front of him, then made for the door.
"You know," he added just before he walked out, "There must've been a mistake. Because you're not me. I don't recognise you at all."
He turned back and aimed one final angry glare at the older Trill.
"Well screw you. And your mission. Didn't know I was gonna say that, did you?"
Without a second's pause, he stormed out of the quarters, leaving Old Jirel alone at the table. He sighed deeply and threw back the rest of his glass of scotch.
"Yes," he muttered to himself with a sad nod, "I did…"