Date with Destiny (Part 1)
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Arcadia # 4728
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| year | 324 CE (2387) |
| posted | March 17 2007 |
| previous | Common Interests |
| next | Lokken's Dilemma |
(Following "The Waiting Game", prior to the time jump)
Stephen Boone April swiveled slowly in his chair, surveying the bridge of the United Federation Starship Arcadia. For ten years this ship had been an integral part of his life; a limb he could not cut off or separate or live without. He had tried. What would the next ten years bring? The ten after that? What did the future hold for this man and his ship, bound together in the tightest bonds of destiny?
Whatever the answer, it seemed, at present, that they would no longer share that road together in this century... the twenty-fourth century. The next decades... perhaps centuries?... of their mutual lives would continue under a new dawn, in a new day, twenty years from now, in the twenty-fifth century. Not quite a step he expected, but considering the myriad twists and turns in his life, it did not surprise him much either.
A black cat appeared on the headrest of his chair, batting its tail about one side of his head. He reacted, leaning away from it, then turned and saw its strange eyes, one green, one blue, watching from the other direction. His first, instinctive reaction – for only a fleeting, infinitesimal instant – was to wonder what a cat was doing on the bridge. But, of course, it could not be such a simple thing as the Earth animal. The eyes provided the giveaway, and April recognized this as the latest holoform of the strange aquatic scientist living in the depths of the ship around him.
"Hello, Professor, Wembahdnaw, honored guest, traveler and scientific colleague."
The cat sprawled luxuriously, purring, and dangled a blue crystalline sphere from a forepaw.
"For your consumption, my Admiral-one," the cat sighed.
April reached up and plucked the offering. "What is it?"
"A datasnack."
"A datasnack?"
"It bears several plant flavorings I believe you favor, as a consumer of dry vegetation."
"A datasnack?" April repeated.
"Why not?" the cat replied. "With organics, it is efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. But visual acuity and cerebral stimuli are not the only means of data transmission. Why not experience it more fully? I have decided to make my information so good that you can eat it. And my personal assuredness is that it's quite tasty. Please. You will enjoy."
April trusted the Wembahdnaw. He looked at it – "Okay..." – and plopped it in his mouth. The sphere ballooned a cloud of data, circling his head with rows and columns of digits, formulae, equations. The holodata interconnected with internal communications devices in his skull – complant and comtacts – providing a visual and mental feast of information. In his mouth, he tasted a blend of banana, coconut, mango and vanilla, and what might have been raw steak. As the Wembahdnaw promised, it was indeed quite tasty. Thanks to the marine scientist's particular efficiency when it came to quantum data compression, the entire report impressed itself upon his senses in seconds, far quicker than any humanoid tongue could convey.
"I never thought of that," April whispered as the tiny blue data-storm dispersed, astonished at the report's culmination effect. "Can you implement this before we jump?"
The holocat's whiskers lifted as its mouth twisted into a wide, toothy smile, much too wide and toothy for any feline. No doubt the Wembahdnaw was (probably) unaware of that simple fact. "Yes."
"It sounds intriguing," April said. "Get started. I'm authorizing whatever assistance you need."
The cat sprang off the chair, vanishing in a poof of photons. April resumed scrutinizing operations on the bridge, as the ship prepared for the time-jump and its date with the next chapter of its destiny. Familiar officers, back from vacation or brief sideline assignments, entered the bridge from various directions, among them Mala Hendriksson, and, back from Cardassia, Stasia Nyerko. Most hands on this ship were old hands, who were going along on this one-way trip to the future. They had been here for a year or longer. Only one had his intended assignment reversed at the last moment, then had the reassignment itself reversed, upon discovery of a critical little truth: Kurt Lokken, who was probably confused now more than ever.
April had intended to reassign Lokken. He would not turn the man's life upside down by ordering him to leave everyone and everything he knew, twenty years behind. He had no right to do that. No one did, or could, in all fairness. Lokken had a life to live and family in this era. Only a bureaucratic snafu had allowed him to reach the Arcadia before April's recall stopped all other new assignees from beaming aboard. Had the temporal directive not suddenly become a factor in Arcadia's operation, Arcadia would have gone on in this century, in this year, 2387, on standard missions and assignments, with all of the new hands and some of the old. But, fate did not play itself out like that. Now, all but one of those new hands would never serve on this vessel in the 24th century, and many of the old hands had been subjected to the 'unfair' order – ordered to uproot themselves from their lives, for the sake of trillions more, and retained aboard the Arcadia. But most understood and accepted the need for their personal sacrifice. They were Starfleet officers.
April had paid Lokken a visit, in holoform, hoping the young man possessed the same sense of honor and duty. The admiral stayed seated at the center of the bridge, one leg draped over the other, fingers casually interlaced in his lap. The young man stood to attention; to his visual perception, April had walked up to see him personally. April informed him of a second change in circumstances, the reassignment reversal, and given a detailed reason why – the reason he could not explain to Lokken in the first place. April had not expected Lokken's name to be on the manifest, of personnel on board Arcadia when the ship reappeared (would reappear) in 2407. Because Lokken was due up there, in the future, he had to give himself to the logic that he would accompany the ship forward in time, on this one-way mission of time-travel into the future. In so being told, Lokken learned the circumstances of April's initial reticence at their first meeting, and why this was such a heavy situation for him. Those who had to go forward could not come back, as April explained it.
▷ continued ◁
