Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock

by Christopher L. Bennet

  Luckily, Ranjea was proving an excellent, even superior replacement for Chall. Much of that was probably due to the intuitive knowledge he’d absorbed from the temporal operative Riroa, but any advantage was welcome where Lucsly was concerned. And it was no slight to Ranjea’s own abilities. He still needed to interpret those anachronistic intuitions on his own, to study temporal theory and DTI procedures and technology in order to decipher them. At first, Lucsly had been concerned that the infusion of Riroa’s knowledge might lead to anachronistic advances in DTI technology, jeopardizing the proper flow of the future, but it seemed Ranjea’s insights were limited by the knowledge he had available to filter them through. So it made him a quick study, able to master new theories and techniques quite easily, but not a prophet or an innovator before his time.

  Lucsly imagined, though, that Ranjea’s skill at interviews came from his own police training. Right now, that skill was proving quite useful. Handling one Professor Vard was difficult enough without having to deal with a second one.

  “So you’re not our Professor Vard?” Ranjea asked the duplicate of the Tandaran scientist, who sat in an interview room on the other side of the Aldebaran Branch Office while Lucsly and Dulmur rode herd on the original Vard here in the research lab. Or rather, Dulmur kept an eye on Vard-1 while Lucsly monitored the interview with the other on the lab viewer.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” said Vard-2, distinguished from the original by his less flamboyant clothing and the lack of dye in his graying hair. “The device you confiscated from me is not a time machine. It is a device for crossing the barriers between orthogonal histories!”

  “So you’re from an alternate dimension? A parallel timeline?”

  “Exactly! You see, three years ago, in my reality, a Starfleet officer named Worf encountered a quantum fissure that caused him to begin leaping across timelines, switching places with his parallel counterparts. His experience confirmed the existence of over two hundred and eighty thousand parallel timelines at the very least.”

  “Yes. The Worf of our timeline reported an equivalent occurrence.”

  “I’m sure the same befell all two hundred and eighty thousand of him.” Lucsly remembered the report of the alleged incident on Stardate 47391. According to Worf, by sealing the fissure he had reset time to before his encounter. Beyond a faint, ambiguous quantum flux echo in the Enterprise officer’s body, clothing, and shuttlecraft, there had been no proof of the incident beyond Worf’s own word—and the Klingon had nearly torn Agent Yol’s symbiont out of his pouch when the latter had questioned whether that was enough. So there had been little follow-up of the incident—at least in this quantum history.

  “In any case,” Vard-2 went on, “by analyzing his quantum flux readings and his description of the quantum fissure, I was able to perfect a mechanism for traversing parallel histories at will—although without displacing one’s parallel self in the process. You see . . .”

  The mechanism the alternate Vard went on to describe was intriguing, potentially far more useful than the multi-dimensional transporter device that inhabitants of one documented alternate history had employed to make incursions upon starbase Deep Space 9 on Stardates 48724.8 and 49725.5, a device replicating the accidental crossover that James Kirk—always Kirk—had made to that same history on Stardate 3645. That device had simply been a relay creating a Weinberg-Polchinski entanglement between transporter mechanisms in the two timelines, and could only be targeted upon a previously identified alternate realm. Vard-2’s innovation was self-contained and free of those limitations.

  “Well, Doc?” Dulmur asked Vard-1 after a time. “Can it do what he says?”

  “Hmm, very possibly, very possibly, Agent Dummer.”

  “Dulmur.”

  Vard-1 showed no sign of hearing the correction. “I certainly wouldn’t put it past a genius of my—er, our caliber to pull off such a feat. I’d need to study it in considerably more detail to be sure . . . but, then again, we have the word of an unimpeachable source.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Lucsly said. “He’s from a different history, a different life. We don’t know enough about his reality to know what kind of man he is.”

  “True, true. For one thing, the man clearly has no idea how to dress!”

  “So what was your goal in developing this device?” Ranjea was asking on the monitor.

  “I had a vision,” Vard-2 replied. “We know that only a finite number of timelines exist, but if nearly three hundred thousand branches can surround the life of one individual, one starship, imagine how many must exist overall!”

  “But many of those alternative branches Worf described were only infinitesimally different. Most likely they were artificially prolonged by the quantum fissure and would have collapsed into a smaller number.”

  “Yes, yes, but still, there could easily be millions of parallels within the history of our respective species, say. Consider it, Agent, ah, Ranjea. Why risk traveling forward or backward in time to create a desired state of affairs, thus jeopardizing the continued existence of entire quantum realities, when you could just travel sideways in time and find a naturally occurring reality that already conforms to your needs? Everyone could inhabit the universe of their dreams without having to jeopardize anyone else’s existence! Once I realized that possibility, I could no longer stand to work for my Tandaran Empire’s Temporal Warfare Division. I resigned in order to invent the track-jumper. Err, that’s what I call it, because—”

  “Yes, I understand.” Ranjea asked the question that had immediately occurred to Lucsly. “But what about the version of yourself who already lives in that ideal timeline? What if he doesn’t wish to cede that life to you?”

  “Ahh, yes, well, there are still some conceptual faults to be worked out,” Vard-2 conceded. “But I am willing to work with your Federation to perfect the technology. I would be glad to share it with every timeline I can reach, and begin a new era of interdimensional travel and trade.”

  Dulmur was at Lucsly’s shoulder now. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “A way to give people an alternative to time travel? Put an end to existential threats to the timeline?” Lucsly replied. “It’s an enticing thought. But I have to wonder: why’d he come to share it with us instead of his own people? I don’t think he’s telling the whole story.”

  “And you just know it’d create a whole rash of new problems,” Dulmur said. “Like, what if everybody decided to migrate to the best timelines? Things would get awfully crowded in some of them. People would multiply like . . . like tribbles.”

  Lucsly threw him a look. “Tribbles again? You’re still wishing you’d gone back to the Enterprise with Sisko, aren’t you?”

  “Hey, I never said I wanted to go back there.”

  “Come on. ‘Probably would’ve done the same thing myself’? You’d have tried to shake James T. Kirk’s hand?”

  “There wasn’t any handshake. Sisko just said a few words to him.”

  “But still. Kirk.” Lucsly may have shuddered at how close the Klingon spy known as Arne Darvin, who had used the Bajoran Orb of Time to send the Defiant back in time to Stardate 4523, had come to retroassassinating James T. Kirk with an exploding tribble and altering all subsequent history . . . but he could certainly understand the man’s choice of target.

  Dulmur shrugged. “Well, if you think about it, the Department wouldn’t exist without him.”

  “You can’t encourage people like that. The Deep Space 9 staff’s becoming almost as bad as Kirk already.”

  “They’re near a wormhole. Anomalies are bound to crop up.”

  “All the more reason not to encourage recklessness.”

  Vard-1 cleared his throat loudly. “Ah, would you two like to be alone?”

  He subsided under their joint glare, but the point was made. After a moment of silence, Dulmur spoke in a more subdued tone. “Is this about the promotion?”

  Lucsly turned back to the monitor. �
�Possible promotion.” Dulmur had recently been offered the assistant directorship of this very branch office.

  “Let’s face it, Lucsly, I’m not getting any younger. I’ll be forty-five in thirty-nine days. I know you’d never consider giving up field work . . .”

  “The field is where I can do the most good.”

  “But we can’t do it without support. If I take the AD gig, I’ll still be fighting the good fight.”

  “From the sidelines.”

  “I’ve been doing this for eight years, partner. Racing all over creation to keep it in one piece. I’ve done my bit. I deserve to slow down. Maybe even get a second chance at starting a family.”

  “You tried that. It didn’t work.”

  “That was when I thought it was a choice between my family and my job. If I did my job in one place, and found someone patient enough with it, maybe someone from inside, then it wouldn’t have to be a choice.”

  “You’re dreaming. Our job takes total commitment. How many married agents do you know?”

  Dulmur sighed, his patience at the familiar argument exhausted. “It’s the damn time loop all over again.” After a few moments listening to Vard-2’s running commentary, Dulmur said, “You’d find a new partner, you know.”

  “I don’t want a new partner. It took me two years, six months, twenty-four days to break you in.”

  Dulmur laughed, but the moment passed quickly. “Change happens, Lucsly. You can’t fight it forever.”

  “Then what’s the point of doing what we do?”

  Before Dulmur could formulate an answer, the comm signaled. The branch office’s outgoing AD, Farimah Hamidi, appeared on a secondary monitor. “A starship has just materialized in space, approaching Aldebaran III. Not a warp incursion, no signs of cloaking technology. But it does have a quantum signature matching that of our recent visitor, and we’re reading particle traces like those emitted by his device.”

  “Oh no,” said Vard-2. “They’ve found me.”

  “Who has found you, Professor?” Ranjea asked, keeping his tone calm and soothing.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Agent. Oh, I hoped I’d have more time before they found me, time to develop a defense . . .”

  “Who are they?”

  “The Temporal Warfare Division, of course!” Vard-2 said. “My former employers. You see, they . . . fear my device. If it became known on Tandar—my Tandar—then it would obviate the need for temporal alterations, and the TWD would no longer have an unlimited budget and carte blanche to do as they wished. They stole my invention, duplicated it, but only to ensure that I was prevented from publicizing it.”

  “Oh, my,” Vard-1 said, studying the sensor readings of the intruder ship. “They appear to have formidable temporal armaments. Chroniton-based torpedoes . . . they could shift out of temporal phase and penetrate our shields effortlessly.”

  “They can do far worse than that,” Vard-2 said. “Any move you make to block them, they’ll simply jump back several moments and avoid it. Oh, I was a fool to bring this down on you . . . please, you must return my device to me and let me lead them away to another quantum history! My only hope is to stay ahead of them, find someone who can defend me.”

  Lucsly turned to Hamidi on the monitor. “Director, we can’t just let this technology get out of our control.”

  “We don’t have a choice, Lucsly. They just incapacitated the Cyrus with a single torpedo. Right through their shields, just as Vard said. We’re not the Eridian Vault here, we don’t have the defenses to hold them off. So you two, get that device back to the other Vard and get him out of this timeline with all possible haste. That’s an order.”

  The agents and Vard-1 were already on the run with the track-jumper. “Professor,” Lucsly asked, “did you get detailed enough scans to replicate the technology?”

  “I barely had time to scratch the surface,” the Tandaran said. “And it’s not my field anyway. I’m sure I could pull it off given a few years, but I have more important and much more interesting research of my own to do. Honestly, the man has no more taste in physics than he has in clothing. You could give it to someone else, like that upstart Naadri, but it would take them at least a decade.”

  Lucsly sighed. Dulmur was probably right; it would turn out to be just one more source of trouble rather than an end to it. Best to get rid of it and maintain the status quo, such as it was.

  Not that the status quo is likely to remain for long anyway, he thought, throwing a look at the back of Dulmur’s head. But if his partner really wanted to take the promotion, Lucsly had to confess there was little he could do about it. Change came whether he wanted it or not.

  But I really hate breaking in new partners. . . .

  McKinley Station, Earth Orbit

  Mehr 16 1752 AP (A Sunday)

  18:29 UTC

  “You should be receiving our report in about six weeks,” Dulmur said as he showed Captain Jean-Luc Picard to the door of McKinley Station’s conference room.

  “Six weeks?” Picard echoed in his clipped European tones. “That seems a bit excessive.”

  “You gave us an awful lot of material to review, Captain.” He softened a bit. “But it’s just paperwork. No one’s denying the service you and your crew have done for history. And as for some of their actions in 2063 Montana . . . well, who wouldn’t want to share a drink with Zefram Cochrane?”

  The captain, who had grown increasingly irritated at the intense examination Dulmur and Lucsly had subjected him to for the past four hours, forty-three minutes, was mollified somewhat by Dulmur’s words. “Who indeed,” he said with grudging politeness. “But if you’ll excuse me, I must return to my ship.”

  “Of course. We’ll be in touch.”

  Once Picard had gone and the door slid shut, Dulmur sagged against the wall and let out a groan. “Shit. We are so screwed.”

  “Mm-hm,” Lucsly replied. Picard no doubt thought the story was concluded; the crew of the Enterprise had successfully compensated for the Borg’s efforts to destroy Zefram Cochrane and his prototype warp ship, prevent first contact with the Vulcans, and erase the Federation from history. Indeed, some of his crew had even ended up taking the place of Cochrane’s copilots and flight crew, becoming an integral part of the history that had shaped them, although that fact had been kept out of the history books thanks to Cochrane’s discretion (and probably a little judicious editing of history by the contemporary Aegis operative). For them, the mission was complete, the day was saved, and they could move on to the next adventure in classic Starfleet fashion.

  But Dulmur and Lucsly had to look at the big picture, and that picture had suddenly become much more frightening. That was why Dulmur had delayed taking his AD post at Aldebaran in order to conduct this one last debriefing with his longtime partner. Picard’s report had changed everything. “The Borg. The Borg have time travel. How can we fight that?”

  Lucsly frowned, lost in thought. “I’m not sure we have to,” he finally said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think about it. What are the odds that the Borg just happened to acquire time travel recently after existing for thousands of years? If they had it at all, the odds are that they would’ve had it and used it a long time ago. Our timeline wouldn’t even exist; the whole galaxy would’ve been retroactively assimilated. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Hm. You’re right.”

  “There’s more. The whole thing seems out of character for the Borg. Dealing with an enemy by going back in time to a key moment in their history, sabotaging it, and creating an alternate history in which they never existed? That’s too convoluted to be a Borg strategy. Too creative. They don’t think laterally. They just plod forward methodically, absorbing everything in their path. If something destroys one of their drones, they just send two more. If something destroys one of their cubes, they just send two more. They keep pushing until they overwhelm by sheer persistence.”

  Dulmur c
onceded the point. If anyone understood that kind of plodding, straightforward mentality, it was Lucsly. The Borg wouldn’t do a thing like this as a rule. But the alternative Lucsly was leading toward was at least as frightening. “Are you saying someone gave the Borg a time machine and sicced them on Earth?”

  “It’s the most logical explanation.”

  “But why?”

  “Same reason the Suliban Cabal’s Sponsor used them. Protective camouflage.”

  Dulmur nodded. If the Accordist factions knew who was behind an attack on history, they could act to prevent or correct it. Acting clandestinely was the safest option. “So you think this was a move in the Temporal Cold War? But who’d be crazy enough to give a time machine to the goddamn Borg? The Na’kuhl?”

  “They strike openly. Proudly. They wouldn’t hide it. Maybe Counter Strike.” It was possible; that rogue offshoot of the Aegis was as fond of clandestine operations as their more benevolent counterparts. “Or some wild-card player. A temporal power trying to make their name by erasing the UFP.”

  “Or it could just be an isolated incident. Maybe the Borg only recently assimilated a time machine for the first time. It’s not impossible.”

  “And they never assimilated one before? In thousands of worlds for thousands of years?” Lucsly shook his head. “It’s a safe bet the Accordists work overtime to keep temporal technology out of Borg hands. If something slipped through the net, it probably means someone ran interference to make sure the Borg got a chance to use it.”