Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock

by Christopher L. Bennet

  “Agent George Faunt?”

  The mustachioed human turned to see a tall, dark-complexioned Deltan male wearing a kaftan in solid red with gold piping and insignia. “Yes.”

  “I am Meyo Ranjea of Planetary Security. Welcome to Dhei.”

  Faunt reminded himself he’d have to get used to hearing that. The early space boomers in their low-warp ships, far removed from any central authority to enforce regularity of nomenclature, had loved cataloguing the systems they visited or charted with faux-Bayer designations consisting of random Greek letters like Alpha Omicron or Epsilon Gamma or the like. So when the ECS Horizon had made first contact with a foundered starship in 2141 and been told by its beautiful, hairless occupants that their homeworld was Dhei of the star Lta—“Dhei-Lta”—they had entered it in their charts in the predictable way, and it had stuck.

  “Thank you,” Faunt said. “You’re the investigating officer for the . . . incident?” The Deltans may not have been crowding as close to him and the other offworlders as they did to each other, but there were still many people in easy earshot.

  Yet Ranjea evinced no such concern for secrecy. “Yes. I was in charge of security for the time perceptor. Its theft was my failing, its recovery my responsibility.”

  Faunt cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should discuss this more privately.”

  Ranjea smiled as if Faunt were a child that had just said something adorably absurd. “Agent Faunt, the time perceptor was on display in the Yongam Museum, freely accessible to researchers and—availability permitting—inquisitive patrons. There is no need for secrecy.”

  Faunt reminded himself that the Deltans had been an advanced, starfaring civilization thousands of years ago before their culture had “outgrown” their expansionism and turned their attention inward to mental and spiritual development. They had retained spaceflight capability at a limited level, and their renewed contact with humans and others over the past 231 years had led them to improve on it since then, creating the impression that their starfaring capability was a recent innovation. But their technology from thousands of years in the past had been more formidable, and had even included the invention of a technology that used quantum wormholes to view events in the past. The perceptor had been abandoned along with most spacefaring and weapons technology during the birth pangs of the modern Unity Era, nearly forty-five standard centuries ago. But eight years ago, a working perceptor had been discovered in a ruin and brought to the museum.

  “All right,” Faunt said. “Then could we at least go to the scene of the crime?”

  “Certainly,” Ranjea said, casually placing a hand on his back to guide him through the crowd as if they were dear friends. “I hope you don’t mind walking.”

  “Can’t we beam there? Or take an aircar?”

  “And waste a fine afternoon like this?” Ranjea asked, gesturing at the warm glow of V2292 Ophiuchi, which hung in the deep blue sky, larger yet dimmer and subtly oranger than the sun of Faunt’s native Earth.

  “Mister Ranjea, time may be of the essence here.”

  “Time is always of the essence. Which is why every moment of it must be cherished. And it’s just Ranjea, please.”

  As they headed through the streets, Faunt couldn’t help but admire the lush architecture, the intricate clothing, the complex aromas that wafted from eateries, the delightful music that pervaded the air. The Deltans’ reputation for embracing all forms of sensory and emotional stimulation was evidently well-earned. But their greater reputation seemed underrepresented.

  Embarrassingly, Ranjea saw right through him. “You’re wondering where the public displays of sexuality are,” the security officer said. “Most offworlders do. Don’t worry, they do occur, but not in regions where offworlders congregate. Would you make love in front of your children?”

  Faunt glared. “Just because we aren’t constantly preoccupied with sex doesn’t mean we’re immature about it.”

  Ranjea looked surprised. “But you are preoccupied with it. Or so it appears to us. To the Dhei’ten, sexuality is merely one of the many facets of existence that we celebrate. Yet it seems to be the only facet of our culture that offworlders take any interest in.”

  Faunt grew more subdued at his words. “And that’s why you think we’re immature about it?”

  Compassion filled Ranjea’s eyes. “We find it sad that humans and others go through so much anxiety and distress over something that for us is so simple and joyful. You dwell on it, mythologize it, and so you raise such high expectations about it that it terrifies you.” His hairless brows rose in apology. “Perhaps ‘immature’ is a harsh way of putting that. What I should say instead is that we believe it is a difficulty you have the potential to outgrow.” He smiled. “You are a people of great spiritual potential, and sometimes we grow impatient waiting for you to achieve it.”

  Faunt wasn’t exactly mollified, but at least he was no longer sure whether to be insulted or flattered. He decided it was best to drop the subject. “Well, that’s the future. Right now, I’m more concerned with the past. Both recent and otherwise.”

  “Indeed,” Ranjea replied, effortlessly adapting to the shift in subject. “It’s this way.”

  Yongam Museum

  09:57 UTC

  Identifying the culprits in the theft was not a problem. The Deltans had little need for security cameras, but some patrons of the museum had been making a sensory record of the time perceptor exhibit when it had been raided, and Ranjea allowed Faunt to view it. Although “view” was not the correct word, for it was a full sensory immersion experience, complete with the emotions experienced by the patron making the recording. It unnerved Faunt to experience fear and anger that were not his own—particularly when he felt them being embraced and mastered so effortlessly in ways he couldn’t understand.

  But he reminded himself to concentrate on the attackers themselves. They were blocky, hirsute, gravelly-skinned humanoids dressed from neck to toe in red body armor—almost a diametric opposite to the Deltans in appearance, as well as in politics, for they were clearly soldiers of the Carreon. Hailing from a system only a few parsecs from Lta, the Carreon had entered space in the 2150s using low-warp technology purchased from human space-boomer traders, and had soon begun clashing with the Deltans for possession of worlds that the elder civilization still held a nominal claim on after thousands of years. A treaty had maintained a tenuous peace for two centuries, but the Carreon nurtured a resentment of the Deltans that often threatened to erupt into violence.

  Now, apparently, it had. The raiders had entered the city as tourists, using concealed, unpowered weapons to pass spaceport security. They must have charged the weapons at the hotel they’d checked into; its utility logs showed a commensurate power demand in their quarters. Their raid on the perceptor display had been quick, efficient, and brutal, costing the life of one curator and leaving one guard injured, another in critical condition. A security field had been automatically raised, but the Carreon had used a pattern enhancer to allow their orbiting ship to lock on and beam them away with the time perceptor.

  “An inconceivable act,” Ranjea said when Faunt had completed reviewing the record. “To bring such pain and loss, for a mere historical curiosity? Why? What do they hope to gain from it?”

  “How does it work?” Faunt asked. “Not the technical stuff, just . . . what exactly does it let you do?”

  “It allows us to experience events in the past.”

  “How far in the past?”

  “We have been able to probe back tens of thousands of years.”

  “But more recently too?”

  Ranjea shrugged. “As little as a generation or two.”

  “And where? Just in the same location?”

  “No; the perceptor can show any location on Dhei or in its orbit; anywhere within, oh, roughly half a million kilometers of its location.”

  “Hm.” Faunt frowned. “Any time in the past, this location would’ve been the middle of empty space.”
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  “The perceptor uses the quantum ansible effect to entangle with itself in the past. Its position in the past is the origin point for the quantum wormholes it generates.”

  Faunt nodded. The ansible effect was a nonlocal phenomenon, independent of distance, allowing instantaneous communication between quantum-entangled objects. It often showed up in time-travel situations, such as the incident nearly six months ago where the chief of operations of Deep Space 9 had been repeatedly displaced five hours uptime by a unique interaction with a Romulan singularity core, probably in combination with the exotic energies of the Bajoran wormhole. Luckily his self-entanglement had created a subspace link that caused him to materialize in proximity to his future self each time, otherwise he would have teleported into the vacuum left behind once the station had moved five hours ahead in its orbit. When he’d debriefed the DS9 personnel about the incident, Faunt had so much trouble keeping the overlapping causality loops straight that he almost found himself wishing the man had just popped into vacuum and made the whole scenario that much simpler.

  “And what information do you get from these wormholes?”

  “Whatever we wish. Bandwidth permitting, we can experience past events with full sensory resolution.”

  “Like from that recording you just showed me? You experience an event through someone else’s senses?”

  “Yes.” Ranjea’s gaze grew distant, enthralled by the thought. “The opportunity to live history as it happened . . . to feel the great loves and adventures and triumphs and sorrows of our forebears . . . it gives us a more intimate connection with who we were, binds us closer, present and past.”

  “Hm.” Faunt gave a sardonic chuckle. “‘The Dead Past.’”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s the name of a story by a Terran author named Asimov. Speculative fiction from centuries ago. He imagined a device a lot like your perceptor, something that could view any moment in history. There was a later book, The Light of Other Days, that was also about a very similar device, right down to the quantum wormholes. And they both pointed out something very important about how such a device could be used.”

  “And what was that?”

  “The past isn’t just a generation ago or a millennium ago, Ranjea. What about a week ago? An hour ago? A second ago?” At Ranjea’s startled look, he went on. “We think of the past as something separate from the present. But when you hear my voice, you’re hearing sound waves that were emitted a few milliseconds in the past. When you look at me, you’re seeing photons that reflected off my face a few nanoseconds in the past. There’s really no such thing as the present; there’s just the most immediate slice of the past.”

  Ranjea grinned. “What a delightful observation!”

  “No, actually it’s a pretty terrifying one. Focus, Ranjea. Is there any reason your perceptor couldn’t be set to a time that recent?”

  “I’m not certain, but based on what I’ve learned of the device to date, I don’t think there’s any lower limit on the timespan. It gets easier the closer into the past you look.” He shook his head. “But why would anyone do that? If we wish to share an experience with people in the present, all we have to do is ask them.”

  “Don’t you see the enormous potential for voyeurism?”

  Ranjea looked puzzled. “Voyeurism. I’ve heard of that practice among offworlders, but it’s not something we engage in here. Why settle for merely witnessing an act of joy when you can participate?”

  The corner of Faunt’s mouth quirked. “I guess I should’ve figured that. With no concept of privacy, there’s no illicit thrill from invading it. But that’s among Deltans. How would a Carreon see it?”

  “By the One,” Ranjea breathed. “You’re right, George. They have a history of engaging in espionage against us.” He chuckled. “They profess to find our open ways repellent. Yet rather than avoid an experience they find displeasing, they pursue it all the more fervently to give themselves more grounds for condemning us.”

  Faunt hadn’t invited Ranjea to use his given name, but he was surprised it had taken the Deltan this long. “And now they have a way to spy on you anywhere and anytime they want. They can invade the most secure levels of your military and government, know all your secrets in real time, so long as they keep the perceptor within half a million kilometers.”

  “Possibly farther,” Ranjea said. “The range of the wormholes is proportional to the power applied. Connecting an external power source could extend the range.”

  “On the other hand,” Faunt mused, “you’re not a people who have a lot of secrets.”

  “From each other, no,” Ranjea said. “But there is information our defense forces must conceal to preserve security. Not to mention technological secrets we keep to maintain the advantage that keeps them from abrogating the treaty. With unlimited access, they could undermine us in many ways.”

  “Then we have to find out where they went,” Faunt said. “It can’t be far, if they intend to gain current intelligence. Somewhere within the system.”

  “Their ship was able to cloak its drive trail by diving near Lta during a stellar flare.” Faunt nodded. The “V” in V2292 Ophiuchi meant variable; its luminosity didn’t change enough to affect the climate of Dhei, but it had an unusually active chromosphere and gave off frequent X-ray flares, which were safely absorbed by the planet’s robust ozone layer. “They could be anywhere.”

  “We need to find out if they said anything, dropped any hints about where they were going.”

  “You saw the sense record yourself. It revealed nothing definite.”

  “That’s because the guy recording it was cowering behind a statue. We need to talk to the surviving guard.”

  “That may not be possible, George. She does not have long to live.”

  Faunt stepped closer and held the taller man’s gaze. “Then time is really of the essence.”

  Eternal Love Hospice

  11:09 UTC

  The human DTI agent was surprised by the nature of the facility Ranjea took him to. “A hospice? With your medical knowhow, couldn’t you do more to save her?”

  “Prolong her life, perhaps,” Ranjea told him. “But at the cost of ongoing discomfort. Better a short, comfortable life than a longer, unpleasant one.”

  George Faunt frowned. “I thought you Deltans reveled in every sensation equally.”

  “We do accept whatever experience life gives us,” Ranjea explained, “and try to find fulfillment and meaning in it. And yes, there are those among us who enjoy pain, fear, aggression . . . but in controlled, safe contexts, and only with others who share the same fetishes willingly. To inflict suffering on one who is lost and helpless . . .” He shook his head sternly. “That we will not do.”

  The hospice facility was designed to maximize comfort for those near the end of their lives, with gentle lights, warm colors and textures on the walls, soothing music and scents wafting through the air, and most importantly, companionship—not only a large staff of dedicated caregivers to provide comfort to clients and loved ones alike, but abundant open space to accommodate each client’s circle of loved ones for the final sharing.

  And yet the room containing the dying museum guard, Riroa Nadamé, was oddly empty. Besides the caregivers who always remained close at hand, Ranjea saw only four people attending the dying one, and they seemed wistful and distressed, huddling together and caressing one another for comfort yet keeping a subtle distance from the guard herself.

  Ranjea came up to the group, gently placing his hands on the shoulders of the nearest two, and introduced himself. It took them little prompting to explain; they were eager for someone to commiserate with. “Riroa never let anyone become truly close,” said Nijen, a young, dark-complexioned woman in a blue floral-patterned kimono. “We were her regular lovers, but she never let it go deeper than everyday intimacy. That was fine; it was what she desired, and we all had deeper bonds with other partners.”

  The other woman in the foursome, an o
lder, fuller-figured Dhei’ten named Kelia, clasped Nijen’s hand tightly. “But now, Riroa’s body is failing. If she doesn’t open herself fully to us now, she will be lost forever.”

  Sensing Faunt’s puzzlement, Ranjea left the women and their companions to embrace one another and stepped back to explain to the human. “We believe each of us lives on through the love we share with others. When we bond, the barriers between us vanish; we become one another, and something of us remains in one another after our bodies part. But if Riroa has never shared herself fully with anyone, and does not do so now, then very little of her essence will survive.” He shook his head. “If such . . . isolation is her wish, of course we must respect it, but it is difficult to understand.”

  Faunt peered at Riroa, thinking. “When you do this joining . . . is it just sensations and emotions, or is there knowledge passed on too?”

  “Not detailed knowledge, but understanding, yes. Experiential awareness, inner certainties.”

  The human puzzled over that for a moment, then let it go. “So if, say, she had some secret about who and what she was, that could come through?”

  Now Ranjea was puzzled. “In a true sharing, the kind needed to preserve the essence at death, it could not fail to be known.”