Star Trek: DTI: Forgotten History

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “. . . some interesting experiences in store . . .”

  “Spock, if you can’t handle it, I’m going to have to trust . . .”

  “. . . talking about! Listen, you guys can’t come in here!”

  “If we ourselves do anything that changes history . . .”

  “. . . lovely animal, Captain. I find myself strangely . . .”

  “. . . destroy the Earth and probably yourselves, too.”

  “Spock? Spock!”

  He blinked, forcing himself back to full consciousness, and noted that the bridge systems had remained on line this time thanks to the precautions he and Lieutenant Commander Scott had implemented. The crew had blacked out during their previous slingshot around the Black Star, so it was best to take no chances. “Checking, sir.” He moved to confirm ship’s status through his console. Yet he was distracted by the memory, already fading rapidly, of the sensory hallucinations he had experienced during the blackout. He could no longer recall any specific words or ideas, but he had the sense of having been on Earth in its past. Could he possibly have glimpsed his subjective future? Perhaps his later self’s mind, returning along this same Feynman curve at the end of their mission, had entangled with his own now, allowing an exchange of memory?

  No—this was baseless speculation. All he had was a vague impression that could easily have been formed of memories of his previous visit to Earth’s past, blended with anticipation about what might lie ahead. He must still be disoriented or he wouldn’t have wasted time on such conjectures. He refocused himself on the status check, and in moments the sensory aberration was forgotten. “All decks reporting in, Captain. No injuries, all critical ship systems functional.”

  At the engineering station, Lieutenant Leslie turned to report. “Engines read nominal, sir.”

  “Nominal, he says,” Scott declared from main engineering below. “He means no worse than expected. It’ll be at least three days before I’m ready to use these warp engines again.”

  Sulu turned to the captain and displayed his habitual large grin. “We won’t have to, sir. The automatic braking program did the trick. We’re coasting north of Sol’s ecliptic, about one-point-three astronomical units from Earth.”

  “Curious,” Spock said, double-checking the readings. “That suggests we have arrived somewhat more than a year away from our previous arrival time—enough for the Sun and Earth to move that distance through space. Verifying . . . the date is April 4, nineteen hundred and sixty-eight.” His eyebrow rose. “Before our previous arrival date. But still well within the critical period we are here to observe.”

  Kirk threw him a quizzical look. “Well, let’s make sure we don’t stick around long enough to run into our past selves. That would be a rather awkward reunion.”

  “Indeed.”

  They proceeded toward Earth at moderate impulse speed. Spock took the time to coordinate with Lieutenant Watley, the head of the science department’s temporal analysis team, as she evaluated the sensor data gathered during the slingshot maneuver. Dierdre Watley, a physicist specializing in the temporal dynamics of subspace, had transferred aboard at the behest of Commodore Delgado, presumably in anticipation of temporal research missions such as this one. Her sister Elaine had already been part of the Enterprise crew at the time, having served as ship’s historian since shortly after the departure of Marla McGivers from the post. The current mission was perhaps uniquely suited to the combined talents of the Watley sisters. But Elaine Watley’s contribution would come later, once they entered Earth orbit and collected scans of the events transpiring there.

  It took slightly over an hour to reach Earth at this speed; any faster, and the plasma shock from their deflector shields cutting through the solar wind might have been detectable even to Earth astronomers of the 1960s. Once in extended orbit, however, their deflector configuration rendered them effectively invisible to all but chance optical detection. “Begin data gathering,” Kirk ordered. “Conventional scans in passive mode only, subspace scans in active mode. Lieutenant Uhura, antennas to maximum gain. I want to pick up every last scrap of broadcast traffic, particularly the classified military bands.”

  “Aye, sir,” the elegant communications officer replied, efficient as always.

  An alarm sounded on the engineering board. “Captain,” Lieutenant Leslie said, “we’re getting energy leakage from the transporter emitters.”

  “Spock, is that something they could detect in this era?”

  “Unknown, but quite possible, sir.”

  “Leslie, can you fix it?”

  “Trying, sir,” the big but soft-spoken lieutenant said. “No luck. The system must be damaged.”

  “Repairs can probably be effected from the main transporter room,” Spock said. “As Mister Scott is occupied with the warp engines . . .”

  Kirk nodded. “Go.”

  Moments later, Spock reached the transporter room, only to find Commander Scott already present. “Mister Scott, the engines—”

  “Will keep. First let’s make sure we stay hidden so we have space to work on ’em.”

  “Logical.” Spock moved around to the other side of the transporter console and checked the readings. “The emissions have already stopped.”

  “I put the system in receive mode as a stopgap.” Again, a logical choice. The emitters could not transmit a signal when they were set to receive one, even if there was no beam to receive.

  Working together, Spock and Scott quickly diagnosed the problem, a fairly simple matter to repair. No sooner had they corrected the fault, though, than the ship shuddered as though struck by something. Seconds later, the alert indicator by the entryway began flashing red, though Spock almost unconsciously muted the klaxon so he could concentrate on the sounds of the transporter mechanism itself. Warning lights came on to indicate that ship’s deflectors had been raised.

  But the sudden activity in the transporter console told Spock that this was no weapons fire or meteoroid impact. The beam power readings surged even as the ship shuddered again, confirming the correlation. Spock hit the intercom. “Transporter room to captain.”

  “Kirk here. What’s happening?”

  “It appears we have accidentally intercepted someone’s transporter beam, Captain.” With the system engaged in receive mode, it had automatically locked onto the signal and initiated materialization, pulling in the beam before it could reach its destination—whatever that might be. Spock tried to abort the process, but the sheer strength of the beam, strong enough to render maximum deflectors useless against it, had locked the system. “It is incredibly powerful.”

  “That’s impossible. The twentieth century had no such—” The ship rocked again, cutting him off. Unusual, flowing patterns of light began to form within the field generator matrix along the transporter platform’s rear wall, evidently an artifact of the alien beam’s distinctive field configuration.

  “Captain . . . something is beaming aboard this vessel.”

  Starbase 9

  Stardate 4744.8

  April 2268

  Antonio Delgado listened in fascination to Kirk and Spock’s report of their bizarre encounter three hundred years in the past. They had been hit by an alien transporter beam originating from over a thousand light-years away, a beam powerful enough to affect them like a weapon and overwhelm their own transporter system. Yet the being who had arrived on the platform had been a human calling himself Gary Seven, a man possessing superhuman abilities and physiological perfection on a par with the Augments of the Eugenics Wars, though predating them by a generation. He had claimed to be indigenous to that time, raised on a secret alien world and sent to help shepherd Earth through its most critical period in order to ensure humanity’s survival. Kirk had initially mistrusted the mysterious Mister Seven’s tale, particularly when Seven had escaped from the Enterprise. Kirk and Spock had seen no choice but to pursue him to Earth; it was beyond their mission parameters, but Kirk had decided that the risks of Seven’s interfere
nce outweighed the risk of accidental historical alteration. Though it had appeared his mission was to sabotage an orbital nuclear platform and send it crashing to Earth, it became evident that his goal was to detonate the warhead shortly before impact, in order to frighten humanity out of filling the skies with Damoclean death. When Seven had prevented his assistant from unknowingly threatening Kirk’s life, the captain had chosen to trust him, and the warhead was detonated exactly as history recorded.

  It seemed the mission had been more successful than Delgado’s historians could have hoped. Gary Seven’s intervention seemed to resolve the mystery of how so many looming disasters had been averted right at the brink—not all of them, surely, and not enough to prevent the Eugenics Wars or World War III; but enough to delay global nuclear conflict and guide humanity toward some degree of disarmament, so that when the war eventually came, it was limited enough to allow the species to survive and finally learn its lesson.

  Delgado’s colleagues in Starfleet Intelligence would surely be eager to investigate Seven’s mysterious backers. Doctor T’Viss had been more intrigued by the physics of Seven’s subspace transporter beam, which had exhibited properties that, in Engineer Scott’s opinion, could potentially allow it to transport beings through time as well as space. But Delgado himself was more focused on the outcome of the Enterprise’s encounter with the strange Gary Seven. “So not only did your actions in the past not alter history,” Delgado said with a smile, “but they were part and parcel of the original history itself. A self-consistent causal loop from future to past to future.”

  “With respect, sir,” Kirk said, “I’m skeptical. First you tell me interacting with the past will split off an alternate history, now you say it can bring about our own history. How can it do both?”

  Spock replied, forestalling the highly technical explanation T’Viss was about to give. “The same river can split into two branches or meander into a loop,” he said, “depending on its interaction with the contours of the landscape. The same underlying physics apply in both cases, but the conditions under which they operate are different and thus produce different outcomes.”

  Kirk still frowned. “I have to wonder, though. Did we really just act out the part we were always meant to play in history . . . or did we change history, and our records and memories along with it, so that we only thought that was the case?”

  “Jim,” Delgado said, “T’Viss has explained to you why that can’t happen.”

  “And Spock has said there’s still room for doubt.” He leaned forward, pausing to consider his words. “We were told we were only going back to observe, not to get involved. But despite our best efforts, we got pulled into the events of 1968 anyway.”

  Delgado sighed. “Jim, your caution is appreciated. It’s good to have a skeptic as part of the decision-making. But my read of this event is that it only reinforces my belief that time travel can be managed safely. And that the potential for discovery more than justifies the risk. We’d still know nothing about Gary Seven’s mysterious backers if not for this experiment.” And though he wasn’t ready to voice it aloud yet, he felt even more convinced that there was some physical process guiding events, though it would be melodramatic to call it “destiny.” What were the odds the Enterprise would arrive in exactly the right time and place to intercept Gary Seven’s transporter beam, and thereby allow this object lesson in safe, self-consistent time travel? Delgado felt that he, too, was being guided toward some important future event. He had to see it through; he might not even have a choice in the matter. “Thus, I’m going to recommend ramping up our research, both with the slingshot effect and the Guardian of Forever.”

  Kirk was reserved as he said, “You may need to go back to testing the slingshot effect with unmanned probes, sir. It still puts a great deal of strain on the ship, and Scotty is concerned that too many repetitions could seriously compromise our spaceframe.”

  “I know, I know, and the ship is needed in the field. Don’t worry, Jim, I know your girl’s been through a lot for us, and I’d say she’s earned a rest. We still have a lot of data to analyze from this experiment. But sooner or later, Captain, I’ll be calling on you again. Your ship and your crew are of unique importance to our efforts.”

  Even as he dismissed Kirk and Spock, the commodore began to wonder about the long-term possibilities. The Enterprise wouldn’t be on patrol, or under Kirk’s command, forever. All he had to do was bide his time and play his cards right . . . and sooner or later, those engines would be his.

  III

  Palais de la Concorde

  Paris, European Alliance, Earth

  Stardate 5318.1

  January 2269

  Vexam ko Nel, the Federation’s new Secretary of Science, crossed her three arms over her chest, a complicated maneuver that distracted Antonio Delgado from the question she’d just asked. She was the first Edosian he’d met, and a far cry from her predecessor in the post, Ahmed Suleiman. Ahmed would have discussed business with Delgado over a fine Saurian brandy or across nine holes (“craters,” as the wags called them) of Lunar golf. Vexam faced him from across her very neat desk in her very neat office, just recently stripped of all Ahmed’s prized possessions and containing little in their place as yet. Had she been too busy with the transition between administrations to redecorate, or was this austerity simply the way she preferred it? Given the way her beady eyes peered at him from under the pronounced orbital ridges of her skull-like face, he was uncharitably inclined to assume the latter. Her yellowish-brown skin, pale for her species, only added to her cadaverous appearance.

  “Well?” she said after a moment. “I have other appointments pending. I would think you’d appreciate the value of time.”

  Delgado tried to recall her question. He was vague on the specifics, but he knew he hadn’t liked the implications. “Madam Secretary, the work my division is doing could be vital to the Federation.”

  “Or very dangerous. Don’t you see the recklessness here? Sending ships back in time before you even have an adequately verified theoretical model of the possible impact?”

  “Doctor T’Viss’s analyses . . .”

  “Are the ones you prefer to believe because they suit your agenda. And you’ve managed to convince the rest of your boys’ club to go along with it, under the indulgent eye of President Wescott.”

  “Kenneth understood the potential benefits to the Federation. And the potential dangers if the Romulans or Klingons achieved this technology first.”

  “Well, ‘Kenneth’ is gone now, and I and the rest of President McLaren’s cabinet have been tasked to rein in the excesses of his political cronyism.”

  Delgado suppressed a grimace. The members of Wescott’s circle had had a good thing going. The two-term president’s decision not to run for a third had felt like a betrayal. Delgado was past being surprised at having his friends turn on him, but not being hurt.

  “Madam Secretary, you can’t halt this research just because Lorne McLaren wants to make a show of cleaning house. I may have used my connections to facilitate the project, but the project itself transcends politics.”

  “It certainly should, Commodore. That’s why President McLaren believes the project needs to be subject to independent oversight.”

  Delgado blinked. “Oversight?”

  Vexam used her middle hand to press the intercom button on her desk. “Send her in, please.”

  A moment later, the door opened and a tall woman in a red pantsuit walked in. Her drawn, severe features suggested a blend of African and Asian ancestry: light tan skin, narrow eyes under arched brows, dainty lips, and a halo of tightly curled black hair with an incongruously frivolous streak of red running through it. “Commodore Antonio Delgado,” Vexam said, “this is Doctor Meijan Grey, the noted xenoarchaeologist and xenohistorian.”

  Delgado shook her hand and offered a smile calibrated to make her feel more attractive than she was. “Doctor Grey. A pleasure to meet you.”

  “Commodore
.” Her voice was a sharp alto. “I look forward to working with you.”

  “Yes, the secretary hasn’t quite filled me in yet on the particulars of our collaboration.”

  “Jan here,” Vexam said, “is to be the head of a special advisory panel to the Science Council, known as the Chronal Assessment Committee.” Chronal? Delgado thought. Is that even a real word? “This is an independent panel of experts whose task is to review your research methodology and findings and report its conclusions to the Science Council. While it conducts its investigation, any further experimentation with time travel is to be put on hold.”

  Delgado started to protest, but he could tell from these two females’ stern gazes that changing their minds would take time and care. “I see,” he said instead. “Well, I’m not afraid to submit my team’s work for review. I’m proud of the work we’ve done and confident that a fair analysis will verify its safety and its importance. Doctor Grey, I welcome your oversight.”

  Inwardly, though, he seethed. Assigning an archaeologist to check his work rather than a physicist? Oh, he was sure the secretary had cobbled this committee together out of every discipline that might be seen as having some relevance to time travel, but Grey’s specialties seemed to make her an odd choice for leadership. Which suggested her appointment was largely political, despite Vexam’s protestations. McLaren and his cabinet were like any other administration, coming into office on a promise to transcend petty politics and find better ways to solve problems, but inevitably having to use the same political tactics as their predecessors, because that was how government actually worked.

  And that gave Delgado hope that he could win Grey and her “Chronal” Assessment Committee to his side. If she was a political creature, then he could find a way to do business with her. He was confident that this would be only a temporary setback.

  After all, this work was something that was meant to be.

  Institutes of the Federation Science Council

  Paris, European Alliance, Earth