Exit-Ramp(art)

Time.  He was a temporal agent... time, his oyster.  And he didn't have time.

Actually, time was all he had.  All he had left.

The runabout was called Delta Flyer.  With a few inputs the craft piloted itself.  The on-board computer made decisions and course corrections.  Automated technology was more efficient.  Organic control was unnecessary.

Once he wouldn't have been the type to sit for hours in meditation.  Rampart and cerebral contemplation sat as far opposite as opposite could be – once.

Everything changes.

A Cardassian named Osipyan Torok changed that, for Jordan Rampart.  As a result, Rampart changed.  He was still Jordan Rampart... but, older.  Calmer.  Settled.  A little wiser.  And no longer just Jordan Rampart, the man of action he used to be.  Now he was that... and more.  That, plus this... thanks to the subatoms.  And meditation was needed.

He tuned out the hum of the runabout's engines, eyes shut, slowed his breathing, detached himself from feelings reminding him that he had a body, and emptied his mind.

The subatoms spoke to him... telling him things.  Telling him where to go, like a sixth sense.

He was nearing the end.  He had retrieved the subatoms Vor'ana took from him, on Aos.  He needed them, for the next step in the last journey of his life.  The final chunk of missing element – what Hon Jurmol took from him, after Memiklon – waited to be reclaimed.  And then he would be whole... whole, without Vor'ana; what the subatoms meant him to be... needed him to be.  He did not know yet exactly what that was – what that would be... what he would be.  But he knew, whatever it was, it had to happen.  It had to be.  DTA computers had confirmed it by their analysis, ahead of time, and they were never wrong.

The DTA computers revealed what, exactly, was wrong, and why.  The temporal anomaly... the anomaly Arcadia came forward in time to erase by the very act of leaping over time... was not yet completely resolved.  Or, it was.  More accurately, it would be.  Rampart was involved.  By his involvement, he contributed to it, just as April's daughter did, by changing history.  April indirectly helped to create the problem.  So did Rampart, unknowingly.

He had tried to explain it to Vyra, earlier... standing in the DTA's analysis center, observing the interior of Arcadia's bridge from afar, across time and space, while the ship waited near Memiklon for the away team to return – a team Rampart personally led, years ago, from his perspective.

Rampart referred to Common Era reckoning; 323 corresponded to 2386 on the medieval Gregorian calendar.

"An ancient tribal group of Cardassian aborigines, the Pleknareth, inhabited the jungle where he went to live.  They took him in, made him a member, taught him everything about their way of life... their customs, rituals, special things – like a liquid stuff called makaïde.  It's... well, it's a form of communication, you could call it.  Lets you communicate with a subatomic intelligence, what they call subatoms.  And these subatoms know a few things we don't.  They knew what was going to happen to me over the next few years, and knew I couldn't leave."

April and Rampart were connected... linked, somehow... by the subatoms, by causality, by fate, by destiny.  Their lives paralleled each other, since they met.  And before that.  Now he had to help to resolve it, finally, once and for all.  Rampart would do what April couldn't – not a matter of choice for April, who would have sacrificed himself, if he had known that it would make a difference.  Rampart made his own choice: He took the choice out of April's hands, by making the choice for him.  He would sacrifice himself in April's place.  Their connection afforded Rampart the opportunity to finally find some peace and closure.

Such thoughts didn't bother or worry him.  He had lived his life devoted to service... service to Starfleet, to the Federation, to king, God and country.  Service to a greater good, to a cause larger and more important than one person.  He and April shared that in common – another parallel between them.  When it came to such selflessness, they were not alone.  Millions of men, women and others in the service of Starfleet lived their lives ready to give their lives in such service, every day.  They were two of a kind: The Starfleet kind.

Brett Sterling would have dressed him down, for making such a choice... as if Rampart was selfish for daring it – as if Sterling had not done so, more than once... what Sterling did, ultimately, by wiping himself out.  The mandroid always was judgmental, passing sentence on others – and no longer around to argue it with him.  Rampart didn't miss that aspect of Brett Sterling's nature, although he partly missed Sterling, for positive aspects he had brought into Rampart's life.  Was there a heaven for androids, or mandroids... or anyone?  Did another level of life, consciousness or being await, after the death of flesh?  Rampart did not know, nor occupy himself much with such thoughts.  Perhaps he would find out when he died.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps no life existed after death... in which case, he would never know.  But if so, then he would never know the difference, and what he didn't know in that sense could not hurt him.  In a way, he hoped death was final.  Complete, total, and utter.  No more thoughts, no more feeling, no more awareness of existence.  Just final, oblivious rest.  That... would truly be rest.  If he lived on in the memories of others – that was something he could accept.

On the other hand, maybe no one would remember him, or care that he was gone.  If not, so be it.  Being dead, he suspected, he would still know no different.  Without Vor'ana, the one tender spot in his soul, it did not matter.  She had liberated him.  Once he had severed himself from her, no longer letting love define him... his love for her... he was free, and unafraid, to make this choice – to make it, calmly, without hesitation.

If life was a highway, he was approaching the exit-ramp.  Exit Rampart.

Vronak was probably glad, wherever he was.  The Romulan scientist never approved of his son-in-law, nor his daughter's choice to take a human husband.  Rampart wondered if Vor'ana ever told Vronak the reason for her choice.  She couldn't, for the years spent undercover.  It was part of her mission.  To be convincing, she had to make her own father believe the deception.  Just as she fooled her husband.

He never thought he could love a woman, or a Romulan, as much as he loved Vor'ana.  Memories of their past together – real and imaginary – followed him, as they would follow him for the rest of his days, until the last.  One such memory was aboard the Arcadia – standing over her in their quarters, watching her sleep, so gently he could not be certain, without scanning, whether she breathed.  She laid on their bed, long and straight, posture carefully composed, in a black silken gown matching her hair, melded into darkness.  So gorgeous.  Nature could be so kind.  And so cruel.

Then he discovered the truth.  How could a person could hurt another like that?  It reminded him of a passage in a pre-Federation era book – The Price of Humanity, by Joshua DeVille:

It was not so true of most humans anymore, but it was amply true in centuries past.  Rampart saw it with his own eyes, in his time-travels.  Humans once continually hurt one another, and kept hurting each other... as if some evil force infected the human psyche, bound and determined to wreak destruction, havoc and chaos.  Evil.  Humans were puppets of evil, once.  None of them wanted to face the truth, before the great awakening.  Too lazy.  Careless.  Vile.  Delusional.  The thing he never understood was... Why?  Why did it happen?  Why did it have to be that way?

Vor'ana was not human.  Yet she was, in that sense, and in that sense, human enough.  She did not betray him: Her love had to be real, to betray him.  But she hurt him.  She had carried the knife in her hand, concealed.  She'd thrusted it in when Rampart didn't expect it, and twisted, cutting deep.

Was it any less for Stephen April, when his wife divorced him? – Another parallel.

Rampart's complant activated, filling his retinas with information.  He had deactivated the implant.  For it to activate autonomously told him this was important.

First, it told him the lesions on his brain had worsened – a subatom effect, in conjunction with the complant itself.  The technologies were incompatible.  He was dying.  Too much time travel; too many errant energies... having his cells taken apart and put back together, repeatedly, through the years.

Secondly, the runabout approached its destination.  The wormhole, unstable, provided a shortcut across the Delta Quadrant, in the reverse, opposite direction of Voyager's path; else the lost starship might have attempted to utilize it.  Rampart could not, and did not, share what he knew about wormholes with Captain Janeway, or she surely might have.  A few simple subspace frequency attenuations would configure it for Alpha Quadrant return, at the proper point.

The Hledexh had attacked Arcadia, in the Alpha Quadrant, at Memiklon, while Rampart's team visited the surface.  April's ex-wife, Brenda Shoemaker, was forced to take temporary command.  Just as they did at Wenga, an Earth-solar year before, the Delta Quadrant race's motives and machinations had confounded Starfleet analysts as much as the previous, first contact.

Not the DTA.  In time since, DTA computers had peeled away the shroud.  The Memiklon attack was a diversion, to allow Stephen April to slip off into 'The Loop', that temporal phenomenon inundating the Memiklon system.  Why April did, or had to, did remain a mystery.  Something to do with the Shapers, obviously.  Rampart did not come to solve that mystery.  It was not a mystery he could solve; nor could the DTA's quantum computers, for all of their seemingly infinite faculties.  April had gone somewhere, beyond their capacity to fathom... too far beyond.

The Hledexh liaison identified itself as Tiled with Plastic Water, in a scraping voice that made hairs stand on Rampart's neck.  Hledexh names weren't as strange as the aliens themselves.  The X-ray-image body bobbed up and down in its red gelatin tank, black skeleton visible through blue-white muscles, its glittering fringes glinting in the obscure light.  The black bones within shifted, turning and reconfiguring as it moved.  Disjointed skeletons.  The being lifted limbs, gesturing to a dark recess of the chamber to which Rampart came.

Time froze.  The room went still, as it did on Qo'noS.  Only, Rampart wasn't responsible – and there were no other temporal agents present.

Not exactly.

Hon Jurmol stepped out, sans forcefield.  The white-haired Klingon stood on a sloping promontory of what might have been obsidian, black volcanic glass, overlooking Rampart... expressionless, with that drilling stare, his complex thoughts his own.

"You're a hard man to find," Rampart said.  "Except... you're not really a man, are you?"

Jurmol silently regarded Rampart, as Rampart regarded him.  Not Klingon, either.

The Organians had always been a bit of a mystery, in their own right.  They stopped an all-out war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, before it began.  204 CE: 2267.  Then they disappeared.  The Organian Peace Treaty maintained peace ever since, surpassing even the Khitomer Accords (attributed to that peace)... both historic events, forged by the willingness of organics with a stubborn streak – once focused on war, turned and channeled by the Organians with one simple act, into a focus on coexistence.

Without the Organians around to force peace, what ensured that it would endure?  The Federation and the Empire got down elbow-deep in the dirty work, hammering the nuts and bolts, ultimately believing their own efforts had paid off.  They seemed almost driven to spite the Organians... to prove they did not need the meddling of super-evolved energy beings in their affairs.  And they credited themselves with success.  After all, they were the ones who had to do the hard work – to get along.  They wracked their brains, tested the limits of their own tolerance, and made policies out of the reluctant knowledge that they had to do the right thing... or the Organians might return.  How much of a hand did the Organians have in the process?

How much, indeed?

There had been theories, that the Organians never left... that they provided guidance, behind the scenes.  Hidden from all, yet right under the collective noses of those they guided.

Thoughts filtered into Rampart's mind.  Transmission source: Unknown.  He blinked, shifting on his feet.  Jurmol did not need a complant.

Thoughts, anticipating questions.  And answers began to come.  The answers had been there, all along... simply awaiting a mind to put them together.

"Sei'mossin never translated for you," Rampart said.  "You let him think that."

Jurmol founded the ju'Haq... swayed the course of Klingon society ever since.  "You're an Organian?" Rampart said.

Jurmol held perfectly still.  No wasted energy.  If that is what you believe, then why ask?

Rampart studied the being's cellular composition through his comtacts.  An Organian.  One of the last.  "We always wondered what happened to you."  His Klingon DNA was perfect.  "Were you ever on Arcadia?"

The answer: Yes, and no.  For beings of pure energy, such distinctions were transient.  "You stayed, because... Why?  To make sure peace took between us and the Klingons?"

Jurmol waited.  Rampart wasn't completely dead-on... hadn't quite hit the bull's-eye.  But he was close.  He was just missing the final piece.  "No," Rampart said.  "That's not it... not entirely.  That's just the start.  This goes down to the future.  Some kind of... special destiny, for our peoples."  He gave it a moment's thought, listening within.  "Do you know what the Shapers are?"

Jurmol fixed him with that look.  Don't you?

Rampart squinted, perplexed, hearing the whispers.

"Energy beings.  Abstracts.  Like you."

Jurmol, the being who called itself Jurmol, nodded without moving his head.  Not only Organians.  Many beings of energy, throughout the cosmos.  Without leaving his place, the Klingon who was not a Klingon entered Rampart, mixing with the subatoms, bringing more information... the information he had so long withheld.

The universe was expanding.  In an open universe, time would come when there would be no more galaxies... no new star-birth... Not enough gravity to hold everything together.  Atoms would separate from nuclei.  Black holes would devour all, and evaporate.  Energy would cease to function.  The universe would continue to expand.  But everything would be dead.  No energy... no life.  Just a vast, dark, endless nothingness.

Beings existed with the ability to do something about it.  All across the universe, throughout time, they evolved... and merged.  Time proved no barrier to their collective force.  The Shapers reached across time, attempting to change the outcome... restructuring the universe, to prevent its stagnation – to prevent ultimate entropy.

Humanoid-kind would evolve as well.  Many were taking the steps.  Some had already taken the final step, becoming pure energy... like the Zalkonians.

What was Jordan Rampart's part in this?

Jurmol said something, again, with his look:  Do you believe in destiny?

After thinking about it, Rampart said, "I guess I do."

Then Jurmol spoke aloud, for perhaps the first and final time: "Are you ready?"

Rampart took a breath.  "I'm here."

"You know what you must do."

Jurmol began to glow.

Briefly, Rampart stared into the light of a sun.  Air molecules crackled; a high-pitched whine hurt his ears.  His comtacts autoshifted to dark-mode, protecting his retinas... and still it was too bright to look at.  He squinted, lifting a hand to block it the same instant he averted his eyes.

Then it was gone.  Movement caught his attention; the Hledexh, time moving forward again.  Wherever Jurmol went, he might never know, in this lifetime.  Not in this timeline.

This timeline was alternate.  Rampart enacted it... caused the branch.  A temporal agent.  Resolving alternates and clearing them... That was one of the primary reasons for the Department of Temporal Affairs, and its subsidiary, the Department of Temporal Investigations.  They taught their agents what they needed to know – how to do it.  He knew what to do.

And he was the only one who could do it.  The answer had been there, since all those years ago... when Rampart asked Osipyan Torok, "What does that have to do with that runabout we found?"

He had to go back.  Back to the Alpha Quadrant.  To Cardassia.

And afterwards...?  Would he be caught in a temporal loop, going back in time, to die?... And by doing so, cause his future self to arrive at the same conclusion – the conclusion that he had to go back, in circular repetition, until, and if, someone broke the loop?