Chapter 31:

I said to our planning meeting in June 1999, to Khan, "You need to make a speech about Y2K."

Tracey Pike said, "No bland reassurances, and certainly nothing that has the possibility of being disproved."

Khan said, "But needs to be optimistic and inspiring."

We worked out the details, Khan made a global address, "As has been mentioned before, the world relies on computers in many ways, some obvious and some behind the scenes. Some of the older programming could have run into difficulties when they register the year 2000.

For years, enormous efforts have been made to identify and fix these potential errors. All software made in the last several years has been checked by United Earth. Still, some have predicted a general failure of systems that deliver energy and food.

While we have experts who have checked on the reliability of crucial system, we have a backup plan in place not only for this theoretical Y2K problem, but for any general failure of computers or electronics. Magic is being used to provide local emergency distribution of food, water, and energy, throughout the world, without the reliance of electronics.

This system will be available for storms, earthquakes, and any other disaster, to get essentials to everyone, and to quickly restore essential transportation. It will also be a resilient system to handle any breakdowns of normal systems of commerce and assistance.

We also should note that energy production and water distribution is being revolutionized due to magic. It has already been for a few years, but needed to be hidden when magic was hidden. Now water no longer needs to look like it comes from a well. Energy no longer needs to look like it is coming from a power plant.

The Earth contains Ley lines, which are sources of magical energy. Scientists have determined that we can sustainable convert energy from Ley lines to non-magical power. They have further determined how to do this in balance in a way that does not use up this resource any more than solar power uses up the sun.

United Earth has also accomplished combining the ancient magical knowledge throughout the world, including Song lines in Australia, Dragon veins in China, Huaca in Peru, pre-Celtic cursuses in Northwest Europe, and others."

Armand Malfoy was born in October 1999. President Khan gave him some extravagant gifts very publicly. He was named after the Malfoy ancestor who joined William the Conqueror in taking over England. Draco reiterated that Armand will be brought up to study politics and war and especially war in space.

The International Space Station had its central section operational and in use in late 1999. It was considered important to have residents of ISS, as they were referred to, give live messages during New Years 2000. United Earth coordinated New Years celebrations around the world.

In Portage Creek, in the US State of Indiana, ground was broken to build a giant structure called the Millennium Gate. It was a government project, with subcontractors, so eminent domain could be used, much to the displeasure of Henry Janeway, an ancestor of Captain Kathryn Janeway, who ran a bookstore in its location. This project would be used to try out space habitations on Earth, as well as becoming a tourist attraction, a shopping mall, and a space port.

My Safe-Guarding the Future department had a covert action group called Section 31. Part of that group kept track of important canon issues scheduled to happen soon.

We verified that there was no Romulan Watcher watching Renée Picard, born in 1996 in France. From what we could determine, Q's prevention of time travel prevented the entire Watcher program from existing, although we assumed not the Supervisor program of Gary 7 and others.

One canon character that needed to be watched was Adam Soong. Agents scheduled a meeting to visit him at the headquarters of Soong Dynamics. The Section 31 agents arrived wearing black uniforms. "Mr Soong, we have identified you as a researcher who can do a lot to help or to harm. You company will receive funding from United Earth. You will report everything, and I repeat everything you research and plan to research. Section 31 might require modifications or limitations, or it might heavily fund a project."

Scorpius Malfoy Greengrass was born in March 2002. He was going to be the heir to Greengrass. Harry and Hermione Potter were married at the start of 2002.

Trelawney's prophecy detector went off and recorded, "Ship from other land sails silently. This land watches in secret. Each leaves the other be. This time." The British Department of Mysteries also duly stored the prophecy as being to "L.A.M.", meaning Lucius Abraxas Malfoy..

I said to our planning group, "This might be in space. We know we are being observed. Let us review Star Trek canon ship visits in this era."

Khan said, "It is not my ship escaping. You have prevented that timeline from occurring."

Jonathan Pike said, "The aliens living on Earth stay hidden and do not interfere, so it doesn't seem worth making a prophecy about. Saying, this time, implies that another time they will make open contact."

Hermione said, "Removing time travel, which would mean several invasions in the next century, only the Vulcans would make open contact, therefore the prophecy could be about them."

Harry Potter said, "Before that canon first contact, the Vulcans had sometimes been to our Solar System. We do not know how often."

I said, "The prophecy is self-fulfilling, by telling us about it, we will presumably observe this scout mission of presumably the Vulcans. Without the prophecy we would not."

Khan asked, "Is it beneficial to fulfill a prophecy?"

I answered, "If not, it becomes true anyway in some unexpected way. Better to cause a non-harmful fulfillment of a prophecy."

Draco added, "It also is obvious that we are capable of secretly watching this future probe, and have enough time to accomplish this task, otherwise the prophecy would make no sense."

Khan and I met with space design and operations leadership. Dr. Jackson Roykirk described his invention, "I have a prototype of an artificially intelligent space probe, using a combination of the latest advances in computational artificial intelligence and a sub-field of magic used to create all sorts of devices that appear to have their own intelligence, without actually containing even a shade of a soul."

Ace Castillo continued, "We have reprogrammed this prototype deep space probe, to a Solar System reconnaissance probe. We further are prepared for mass production as soon as the design is finalized. We have already begun production of parts that we know will be in the probe. We will have enough to detect anything up to the orbit of Saturn. We do not yet know the distance of effective detection. The duplication spell will be used as needed, and then replacing the duplicated probes when they wear out.

The probe has several enchantments. The human revealing spell, and the animal revealing spell, each designed to work over very long distances in places that are expected to have none. It also is charmed to be undetected. For propulsion it has considerable magic acceleration.

We are also adding non-magical sensors to detect any anomalies in gravity and heat, as we would assume a spaceship would cause. Visual detection would only be useful if the probe gets close to an anomaly.

Once an anomaly is communicated to Earth, we will rapidly re-aim the Hubble Space Telescope. We will have magical personnel at the telescope to accomplish its rapid rotation, as well to hide the telescope so a ship wouldn't notice that a telescope was directly aimed at it."

The production of the Solar probes were completed and they were deployed. At the same time a few deep space Nomad probes were sent out. The designers were informed about the Original Series episode, The Changeling, and made several changes based on the lessons from that episode. Voyager 6 had been launched a long time ago, so with the lessons of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there was a plan to recover this probe once warp travel has been achieved.

On August 3rd, 2002 a Solar Nomad detected a gravitational anomaly. Every resource tracked the anomaly. The Space Telescope found a black outline where there should have been stars, with no reflection. The anomaly simply passed through the Solar System with no course changes, but traveled very rapidly, about one quarter of the speed of light.

We checked the British Department of Mysteries and saw that the prophecy changed its status to completed.

The information gathered was widely distributed through special reports. Khan addressed the planet, "Our planet Earth is not alone in the galaxy. We had earlier indications, now confirmed with evidence, that an extra-terrestrial probe visited our Solar System. Other information we have through magic indicates that these visitors will only reveal themselves when we can travel faster than light. Many say that is impossible, but we have indications that it is not.

United Earth will devote considerable resources to establishing ourselves in space and researching technologies of great wonder and promise. We will be recruiting those who want to work in space and those who can research areas of advanced physics and engineering."

We gave access to canon to a large number of researchers. They zeroed in to recent research in fusion as being a precursor to warp technology.

Another group looked at space weapons. They identified fusion bombs, discovered 50 years ago, as still being effective. They also looked into anti-matter weapons. They also found existing theoretical research to channel the energy of a fusion bomb to a beam weapon. They said that in canon, faster than light beams were common, but that we would need to discover sub-space before it could be invented.

Another group was trying to discover sub-space. They focused on high-energy particle colliders as being a pathway to possibly learning about it. Some worried about the safety of these experiments. The decision was to continue with the level of experiments already done on Earth, but to build much higher energy ones in space.

Another group went over every technology shown in canon and looked into feasibility. With magic we already understood how to do artificial gravity, inertial dampers, life support, and shields. The limit of shields were going to be energy levels of magic. A separate research areas was investigating how to increase shield levels with enchantments, and with spell casters. Another areas was to investigate how well magic works in space, away from Earth's ley lines. Another was to try to replicate ley lines on space ships if they turned out to be needed.

Wand experts were researching whether large staffs could be effective for spell casters in space instead of wands. Could magical energy be harnessed at higher levels? These were basic questions being looked into.

Dilithium crystals were investigated. Did the canon 2063 warp ship have them? If so, they can be found on Earth. If not, faster than light warp travel does not require them. It was assumed that they would be able to be detected after more was known about sub-space. It was also assumed that a war torn timeline up to 2063 was able to discover all of these necessary technologies, so that it was achievable. It was also determined that in canon 2063 there had been crewed probes to throughout the Solar System, but no major habitations or resources being mined. It was therefore assumed that dilithium crystals, if used by Cochrane in 2063, would not have come from off planet.

It was determined however, that a sentient microorganism was brought to Earth from Io, a moon of Jupiter, in 2024 or soon after. That microorganism was helpful in fixing some problems with Earth's ecosystem in that timeline.