Once Upon a Future

Stephen April felt helpless before the great crushing leviathan.  The beast brandished a double-bladed axe.  It swung, lifted, then came down, and cleaved need from desire, sense from emotion, demand from fulfillment.  It lifted up a mountain-sized foot, and stomped down on the remains, and he laid helpless in one of its massive footprints, their shapes plastered into the road of his life, a road stretching across time and space.  Signposts dotted the path: This way, Destiny.  No retreat routes; no reverse.  Forward, forward, forward you go.  Turn your eyes back if you must, but your feet cannot follow.

The leviathan had a name.  Its name was Duty.

He dreamed of a life without it.  A world without change.  Castles in the sky of paradise, free of time, in the company of good people, and the woman beside him.

While Nyerko, Libra and Midak pondered their next move, the search for Jordan Rampart had yielded an interesting discovery.

Libra produced a holoshot of transporter station 489, where Nyerko left Rampart.  In its interior, two Starfleet officers, a Cardassian and a Vaadwaur, both in Ops yellow, stood behind a console, looking out at them, patiently waiting.  They were coordinating in the effort to locate Captain Rampart.  The facility was bright, clean... alive.  And, in present time, completely operational.

The realization behind the view quickly fell into place.

"The laws of physics could be changing," Libra announced.  "Or it could be that we're discovering a new set of rules."  To Nyerko he said, "I've isolated the chronometric frequency from your cells and the probe scan.  Lieutenant, you and the Captain shifted twenty years into the future.  You said it was abandoned.  I think that may be why.  That tells us something.  I've managed to isolate a mass displacement pattern.  I believe it may be why we're not seeing the Captain.  But with these readings, I can't be sure.  I suggest that we follow them."

Nyerko came to a different decision:

"Lieutenant Libra, I suggest that Petty Officer Midak and myself meet with the Department of Temporal Affairs.  Keep working on bringing Captain Rampart back... alive and in one piece, preferably."

"Don't bother."

The group turned, startled, at the voice in their midst.  Standing before them in the transporter station was Jordan Rampart... clean-shaven, dressed in black.

His clothing appeared casual at first glance, but studied observation indicated otherwise: It was carefully, purposefully proportioned, with delicately arranged lines, made of a shiny fabric – probably packed with layers of advanced microtech.  Starfleet uniforms were more than mere clothing.  His was even more.  Comtact data readouts were instantly fuzzy, where he stood.  They couldn't get a clear analysis.

He had only been missing for what seemed a couple of days – to everyone but Stasia, who said she'd spent over a month in the jungle, searching.  When she located him, he told her that it had been four months.  When she rejoined Midak, Midak insisted that she had only been gone a few hours.

Yet Rampart seemed... older – the lines in his face etched a little deeper, if only by impression.

Midak spoke first: "Captain?"

"Not anymore."  He nodded to Stasia.  "Lieutenant.  Glad to see you made it."

The Bartokian returned the nod, barely containing her own surprise.  "Likewise, sir."

"How did you—" Midak started.

"I can't explain it here," Rampart said.  "The search is over.  Starfleet's calling it off.  You've found me.  It's time for you to leave."

"Leave!"  Libra stared at him in disbelief.

"That's what I said.  I know you want to get to the bottom of this, Libra, but don't go poking around here anymore.  This is out of your area."

A quick DNA sweep verified that it was Rampart.  "If you're no longer our captain," Libra said, suspicious, "then technically we aren't required to follow your orders."

"You're right," Rampart said.  "But you can contact Admiral April.  He'll confirm it.  I'd advise you to do it now.  That is an order you'd better follow."

"By whose authority?"

April blinked, consciously deactivating the eyeview of data he had just received.

In the Arcadia's ready room, he let out a troubled breath, and looked over the panorama he had erected.  Around him, on all sides, a galaxy replaced the walls.  The bridge entrance before him, where Lokken came in then left moments ago, sat hidden by the glowing, distant mass of the galactic core.  A holorepresentation, but realistically scaled, relayed by the interstellar sensor grid.  It was one of his favorite holoramas; he surrounded himself with it often.  He lived his life among the stars, saw them every day; sometimes he got sick of seeing them.  But ironically, the setting soothed and comforted him.

He needed that comfort now.  He had received news from Cardassia, concerning the status of the missing Jordan Rampart.  Nyerko and Midak had located him... briefly.  April sent a science officer to Cardassia Prime, to assist the investigation, as requested.  But that was not what troubled him.  It was only part of it.

"Time waits for no man," he mumbled to himself, thinking aloud.

Analysis proceeded apace, with the discovery of a temporal discrepancy bisecting the Cardassia system.  The conclusion, at Starfleet Science Command, was undeniable – and was part of what troubled him.

The thing about space was its vastness.  That cold, endless void, though alive with stars, and countless worlds full of life... It numbed the senses with its vastness.  It isolated a person, if the person let it.  Cut them off – from what planets offered, from the homes where they began, even from their own feelings.  It could sever people from each other, and leave them as cold within as the void beyond.

It was a common ailment for many a space traveler.  April had dealt with it on and off over the years, recalling the effect when he first ventured into space in childhood, but more so after the Academy, especially pronounced after the beginning of his career.  It could get lonely, despite being on board a ship full of people, and often did.  They had each other, but they were all alone, in the void.  They were not alone in sharing the condition.  For many, it was a life.  But they had to go home, occasionally; set foot on real soil, under real gravity, to remember where they came from... and to remember why they journeyed into space.  As did April.

This felt ten times worse.  Though excited, to a degree, with anticipation... with desire, to see what the future held in twenty years – his old explorer's heart, making itself known... he already knew part of it.  It was there, in the hologenerated face, sent by transmission from the future.  Twenty years into the future.

The face.  His face.

He replayed the transmission again.  He'd stopped counting how many times he had seen it now; the words were etched into his memory.  He didn't know what he was looking for.  Some trivial detail, perhaps, that this was some elaborate hoax.  Some escape route, so he wouldn't have to go.  It would not have been so bad, for him, personally, if not for the fact that he was married... and if not for the fact that his wife would not be allowed to accompany him.

"This is Admiral Stephen April."  The holographic April spoke his personal identification code.  Flickering lines of data scrolled and shifted through the air in his ready room, framing the face, revealing extra information designed to prove the authenticity of the message.  The Federation used quantum computers.  Those computers were linked up with their counterparts in the future – themselves, essentially – even now, analyzing the transmission package, and verifying, across time, all of its contents, right down to and including the shape of his face.  "We've just arrived in the year 2407, having time-traveled into the future... to this time... by Starfleet order.  Since I've already seen this message, I'm now here, composing it, sending it back, so that I will..."  He paused.  "So that I'll see it and know what to do.  What must be done."  He paused again, murmured, "I feel like I'm talking to myself...."

He shared the details of what Starfleet had learned.  It was, in the grand scheme of things, very little – but enough to alter the course of his life... as was about to happen, many lives, on this ship.  Along with the transmission came a manifest – a roster of the ship's personnel, those who were required to go forward in time with him.  Those who had been on board, and journeyed into the future five years ago, from 2382, via the Nexus, into a possible future.

The details would have seemed complicated to an average person, if unversed in the intricacies of temporal mechanics.  Every second of every day, a new timeline sprang into being.  Parallel universes were alternate universes, in a sense, branching off from each of a possible number of choices.  Eat out, or dine in.  Replicator, or grown food.  Go swimming, or go dancing.  Take a breath, or hold it.  Look to your right, or look to your left.  The temperature increases a degree, or lowers – or remains constant.  A particle might go this way, or might go that way.  Different outcomes... different timelines.

Five years ago, Humanist actions on Earth created a branching point.  It would have produced a future in which Earth seceded from the Federation... and somehow, by doing so, left it ill-equipped to withstand an invasion, by those mysterious residents of the No'Zal Cluster known as the Usurpers.  April died in that timeline.  His daughter, Neria... his now deceased daughter... lived on.  She saw her father's death... saw the Usurper invasion.  Saw it bring the Federation down.  Unable to bear it, she came back in time to warn them.  As a result, the Arcadia played a direct role in preventing it.

Afterwards, Starfleet gave her command of the ship.  Ordered her to the future, to verify the mission's success – that the future to which she ventured would not be the future she had escaped... that the Federation would not fall.  Arcadia warped through a temporal gateway, which El-Aurians called 'the Nexus'.  Neria indeed succeeded, and remained in that new future, as the ship returned to 2382... now in a new timeline.  The previous future, of the No'Zal invasion, ceased to be... yet the future Neria, a grown adult, as she was only a teenager in 2382, did not blink out of existence.  April remembered her.  In his memory, she lived on – as her younger self did, until a few years later.  The intricacies of time, and fate, robbed him of his only child, in all of her physical aspects.  Scattered molecules, transformed into inert elements, were all that remained of her.  He had spread her ashes on the shores of Cape Cod, in Earth's Atlantic Ocean.  She was gone.  All he had now were images, and memories.  Not even her mother: Ilona, too, died in the same incident which claimed his daughter.

Yet he remembered her.  Remembered both versions of her.  Time, space and thought intertwined.  Thus, that original future still transpired, on some other plane of reality, inaccessible and removed.  Possibly his daughter still lived.

Time was a funny thing – nothing more than a measurement of movement... of actions, reactions, causes, events.  But being able to breach the barrier – to go faster than space permitted, through a dimensional medium called timespace, and skip links in the chain – led to causality: effects creating causes, which created new effects.  Causal loops could destabilize the fabric of spacetime, as events increasingly escalated and spiraled out of control.  Time-travel-related incidents had plagued April, and Arcadia, for years.  They weren't alone: It happened throughout the Federation, repeatedly.  Not only the Federation: Any species capable of measuring time was, theoretically, capable of defying it – thus the need for such agencies as the Department of Temporal Investigations and Affairs.

The discrepancy spiraled throughout the galaxy... and Arcadia was at the heart of it.  It seemed Neria's legacy was not quite 'fulfilled' – that alternate future version of his daughter, who came back in time five years ago, from a point 25 years into the future – the year 2407 – to warn the Federation about the Usurpers.  She had since returned to the future, except it was not her future – not the future she came from.  From that point, she existed in an alternate timeline which she helped to create.  And now it was wreaking havoc, retroactively, as well as progressively, rippling outwards in both directions, past and future.  Temporal splintering.  Separate timelines, struggling to merge.

The general public remained unaware of the looming danger.  Starfleet Command and the Federation Council wanted to keep it that way – not for purposes of being clandestine or secretive, but merely to remove the threat.  Time was going havoc across known space – in little ways, here and there, but the effects would increase in scope and frequency as time progressed.  Rampart's ordeal on Cardassia posed one example.  It was happening elsewhere.  Time slowed down, or sped up.  Different locales experienced time unfolding at different rates.  A black hole had been detected reversing its polarity – a physical impossibility.  Neria's actions... or her father's; he wasn't really sure... had triggered a causal loop.  Whether that was the source, or merely another aspect of it... he wasn't sure of that either.  But it was evident – and it centered around those on the Arcadia, who had undertaken the 2382 trip... those who went forward, then returned.  Those who traveled forward, 25 years beyond 2382, had pulled something back with them, when they returned – maybe even just the knowledge of that future, since they didn't forget it.  It accounted for the loop.  Possibly this all related to the universal restructuring attributed to a far-future enigma force called 'Shapers'.  The Federation's brightest minds had analyzed the readings, and arrived at what they felt was the best solution.  Ably assisted by quantum supercomputers, it seemed the only solution.

With the analytical conclusion came consensus, and a decision: The Arcadia, and those personnel, had to be removed as a variable from the equation.  The effect would cancel and break the loop, they said.  The Arcadia had to "return" to the future... jump forward in time, past the point of Neria's future terminus, to emerge at the original future target date.  Temporal alignment would erase the alternate timeline completely.

And never return.  They would be forced... required... to stay in the future, twenty years from now, and live out their lives from that point.

It was only twenty years, one part of his mind said.  Whole years went by fast, and faster, the older he got.  What was twenty years?  But then, he did not have to live them... and time brought change.  What could change in twenty years?  He knew the Federation, at least, survived, and Starfleet – but still it was not an easy situation to deal with.  Not for those who had attachments... mates, spouses, family and friends in this era, who could not go along.  They would be twenty years older.  Twenty years of change.  No one could know, yet, exactly what those changes might be, or what they would mean to those who made the jump.

Twenty years.  Twenty years.  He had to skip the next twenty years of his life.  He and several other crewmembers... those who had been present at the source of the temporal split.  Those who went forward, under Neria's command, while April took early retirement, five years ago.

The ship was powering up.  Systems began coming back online.  Throughout the starship Arcadia, sections appeared, lighting the darkness, as more and more personnel returned... preparing for a trip unlike any other.

Some did not return.  They had been reassigned.  With their reassignment, new personnel came in to take their place.

Beaming across an entire quadrant was not often advisable.  Subspace transporter technology was sound, and being improved constantly, its safeness and efficiency tested, but it was still relatively new.  Typically, only urgent circumstances compelled beaming such vast distances.

April had taken a brief trip to Earth, on a quantum transport beam, under such circumstances.  By then, the reassignments had been hammered out, and the ship's new roster set.  It was one of many duties required of him, as an admiral in charge of the slipstream exploration program, including the Quantum Fleet, and as temporary acting CO of the UFS Arcadia.  Rampart was the ship's designated executive officer under April, but that carried a different connotation with April as his superior.  Jordan Rampart was, in fact, the ship's official commanding officer – CO & XO in one.  He and April split some of the command duties, letting Rampart pick up the slack in the lack of an official XO.  April used the ship as a mobile base of operations, during the execution of his own particular duties.  The Arcadia was his home, where he preferred to be.  Thanks to advances in travel and communications in recent years, it presented little of a problem.

Unfortunately, what he learned, on Earth, made it more of a problem.

Jordan Rampart was no longer missing.  His return brought a change that would affect all of their lives... forever.

When April reboarded, several new crew were already inbound.  With Sunni's assistance, he managed to send out timely alerts and stop them from arriving.  He could not explain to them why they could not be assigned to this ship.  They did not know what he knew, what he had learned, and could not be allowed to know.  Such knowledge risked changing or destroying the future.  But a few still slipped through the bureaucratic cracks – including one Kurt Lokken.

As Lokken left the ready room, April came upon a new bit of information he had not known of previously.  Working through the holoscreens, looking for a ship in need of someone with Lokken's qualifications, he found one – the USS Galapagos.

Then he compared and double-checked a roster Rampart had delivered – a manifest of the personnel aboard Arcadia upon arriving in the future.  One of them was none other than... Kurt Lokken.  For some reason, he would accompany the ship on its twenty-year jump, to the year 2407.  That came as a surprise.

April mentally kicked himself, for not checking the manifest first.  He would not have ordered him to do it.  Demanding someone give up twenty years of their life, of a life they would have lived, was not something anyone had a right to do.  But now that April knew he would... he had to.  In a sense, Lokken was already 'there', in the future, as they all were, and would be.  He had to reveal to Lokken what would transpire... what, in a sense, had already transpired, since this information came from the year 2407.  In so doing, Lokken would become aware of that future... and short of having his memory surgically altered, would have to go along, so as not to be left in the past, where he could possibly alter it.

It was a paradox.  A revolving temporal loop.  And it was not the only one.

How would Lokken take it?  Being assigned to a new ship, then having to leave behind everyone he knew, friends and family, not to see them again for twenty years, by their perspective?

It would not be easy on them.  It would not be easy on Lokken.  Nor would it be easy, trying to explain to the science ensign why April suddenly had to reverse his previous decision.

It would not be easy on anyone, with such attachments... including April.

Breaking it to Brenda defied all definitions of difficult, in theory.  Of course, he had to tell her, despite the risks – despite knowing that she would have to accept memory alteration afterwards.  Like anyone, she could not be allowed to retain knowledge of the future.  Such foreknowledge would threaten that future.  The alternative was to up and leave her.  That was not something he was prepared to do.  It would hurt her too much.

In reality, it had turned out easier than expected, to simply say it.  Words, out of the mouth.  They came, and left her befuddled, trying to wrap herself around it, to believe what she heard.  He was going to the future... and she would not be allowed to go with him – if she would have been inclined.  He knew she would not want to, not to give up her command, or leave her crew, whom she considered family.

"Twenty years...."  From her own ready room, on the Liberty, Brenda's com-voice shifted, dumbstruck.  With most holosystems offline, they were restricted to verbal transmissions.

"To you it'll be twenty years," April said.  "To us it'll be twenty minutes."

April wanted to reach for her.  He felt a need to cling to her... insecure, emotional.  To hold on to, and keep, her.  But she didn't want that – and he felt ashamed, a child inside, for wanting it.  An all too human instinct, one he thought he had outgrown... made worse by the impending departure.

He closed his eyes briefly.  "I don't like it anymore than you."

She was silent for a beat.  Then: "Steve—"

"Don't say it," he cut her off.  He knew that tone of voice: The defiant Brenda, the Brenda who challenged the Federation Council, in the wake of the Cirean displacement, when they first met.  He saw the wheels turning behind her eyes, hatching a plan to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  "This isn't like before.  We're not dealing with invaders from another dimension.  We can't get off with disobeying orders like we did last time.  We follow orders for the sake of order."  He realized he had quoted something someone told him, once – some admiral.  T'Urla, maybe.  What would she say about this?  "Who knows what we could destroy," he told Brenda, "if we don't?"

"You may be my superior officer," she told him over the com, "but I'm your wife.  I don't have to take this lying down."

He knew what she would do.  For a Starfleet captain, she could be brazenly disobedient at times, if she felt justified... and no amount of orders, from him or anyone, could stop her.  Before April could try, she had jumped into the subspace transporter system, and beamed across space to join him, half a quadrant away.

She convinced him to fight it, or at least try.  He tried to find a way around it, with the backing of the Federation's highest authorities.  He ordered the Arc's holosystems back online.  Once restored, he contacted them, on holofeeds, from his ready room, bringing in every affluent person he could, those 'in the know', aware of this situation, supported by the vast compiled data.  If there was a loop... was there a loophole?

But it was no use.  There could not be yet another splintered timeline, for the mere sake of his marriage.  They could not take that risk.  When he saw Brenda again, in the future... if he saw her again – if she lived... she would be twenty years older.  Older than he was, now.

April had given up the love of his ship, for the love of a woman.  And now he would lose the woman, as well.  Twenty years of her, and perhaps more.

It wasn't fair.  But he sucked it up and committed himself to the decision.  He knew what had to be done.  He wasn't the type to whine about it.

They had been forced to accept it, together, when Ensign Lokken entered the ready room.

"I can wait," Brenda assured him.  She laid in bed, facing her husband.  "It'll be all right."

"You'll be older than I am now."

"Not by much.  Thank science for nanomod rejuv."  She grinned; coy, playful.  "Do you have a problem with older women?"

"This isn't a joke, Brenda."

"I know it isn't."

"This is serious.  Once we warp out, you won't see me again.  Not until the year 2407."

"I know that.  I'm not thinking of myself, Steve; I'm thinking of you."  Brenda's hand warmed his cheek, electric and chilling.  "If the sun doesn't shine, then we try to make a life in the dark.  If we can't be together now, we'll be together later.  I'll be waiting for you."

April wouldn't let himself feel relief.  That kind of solace had the potential to mislead.  He had to force his words.  "It's twenty years, Brenda."  He sounded grim, to his own ears – too grim.  April realized he had already made the decision, and it wasn't his to make.  It was not his time.  It was hers: She had to wait.  Twenty years could be twenty hours, or twenty minutes, to him.  He held her.  Here.  Now.  Felt her heartbeat... the warmth in her flesh.

"You'll stay in my heart.  We'll be together," she told him.  "That's how it should be.  I love you."  She held his hands with hers, looked him in the eye.  "Say you love me too."

He met her gaze for a long moment, then, tenderly, kissed her fingers... her knuckles.  "If it becomes too much... too long... don't hold out.  Don't hold yourself to it if you don't believe in it.  You have a choice.  You don't have to be alone."

She promised that April had a wife waiting, already, in the future, when he returned.

They spent an hour together.