Omoikane - The Onion
- jayphailey
- Posts: 1125
- Joined: Tue May 29, 2018 7:50 pm
Omoikane - The Onion
Omoikane 50 - The Onion
USS Omoikane
Jay P Hailey Commanding (Jay 3)
We came out of warp at the edge of the system and approached at a normal, reasonable pace.
The system was a red dwarf star. Slightly unstable. A super hot gas giant orbited it hand-shake close. The rest of the system was irradiated rocks. One of hundreds of millions of systems in the galaxy that were of zero interest and little utility.
The ship that called us was there. Another Orion light raider. Whoever was selling those to the Musari was making a killing. In many cases, literally.
According to its beacon, the ship was named the “Scalloped Crescent Blade.”
As we approached, we could see a dampening field. It was curved. A large sphere. The size of a large planet or a small failed star. It surrounded some sort of gravity well, about the size of a planet.
“Yo, Federation dudes. Thanks for coming.” The Musari captain said.
“You’re welcome. Remember who your friends are. What’s your name?”
“I’m Captain Zeecha. We were out scouting for hidden bases or good places for hidden bases, you know. We saw this gravity well and decided to check it out. We didn’t see the dampening field. Our friends ran into it, and just stopped.”
“We’ll investigate and let you know what we come up with,” I said
“I hope they’re okay.”
“I do, too.”
After he was off the screen, I said, “Harksain, Tillean, what are we looking at?”
We scanned the other light raider.
I looked at the scan myself on a repeater screen, “What the hell?” The scans came back dim and dark. Attenuated. The other raider looked like he was on the edge of sensor range. He was fifty-five thousand kilometers away and looked light-years distant.
“Hmmm,” Tillean said, “Permission to fire a probe?”
“Go ahead,” I said
We loaded up the probe and launched it.
“What’s that?” Zeecha called and asked
“It’s a probe. An instrument package, designed to let us look at things up close without risking danger.”
“Oh. Whew. My tactical panel went crazy. The Orions do NOT like your probes, dude.”
“They’re not fans of prying eyes.”
“I get that.”
The probe approached the other raider and stopped dead. All telemetry cut off, and it, too, looked fuzzy, dim, and distant.
“Any information? I asked.
“Working on it, Captain. Something very odd is going on here. It’ll take me a while to confirm it.”
Varupuchu worked his panel carefully, “Spaat would be a strong asset here.”
I nodded. Tarla asked, “May I ask how?”
Varupuchu said, “Forgive me, Ensign. Your training in piloting, extensive knowledge of this ship, and her capabilities are commendable. Your performance lacks nothing. Interstellar navigation is applied astrophysics, cosmology, and astrocartography, often under tight time deadlines. You specialized in the engineering of the Omoikane, and this is necessary. Spaat specialized in the astronomical sciences.”
“I’m no slouch,” Tillean said.
“Your strengths in biological sciences are well known. You did not begin as an astrophysicist.”
“Thank you for outlining my next course of study, Sir,” Tarla said.
Varupuchu said, “I believe, given sufficient time and effort, you will excel.”
I said, “Ensign Iryemalan, can you assist us here?”
“Gladly, Captain.” She replied from the walls.
“Please.”
The next several minutes were spent waiting. I hated it.
Li’ira worked on her panel to identify and clear up the dampening affecting our sensors.
Tillean sighed “Wow. Yup, it all matches.”
“What does?”
Tillean said, “That’s not a damping field. It’s a temporal distortion.”
I hissed through my teeth.
“It’s running something like twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand to one.”
Meaning?”
“One second for our probe is something like twenty thousand seconds for us.
I did the math in my head. “That means one second for the probe is something like 5 hours for us?”
Varupuchu nodded. “Our sensor scans are reduced by that amount of energy and time dilation. The energy from our sensors is coming back heavily red-shifted.”
I squinted “You’d only see something like that near a black hole,”
“Indeed. “
“But we’re not seeing that sort of gravity,”
“We are not. This is entirely mysterious.” Varupuchu’s voice carried both irritation and curiosity. Anomalies were rude interruptions in the orderly flow of business. But, like me, he was curious about why this was going on.
“Is there any way we can get a message to the trapped ship there?”
“Possibly. It would take staying in one place relative to the trapped ship and sending the message very slowly and strongly. I am not sure what effects the distortion is having from inside.”
“I need to construct filters for our sensors and comms for this thing.”
“May I?” Iryemalan said, “I can do it very quickly from your point of view.”
“Please do.”
More waiting.
The scans cleared up noticeably. We could see a small screen where an Orion was talking very slowly. A comm channel from the trapped ship.
“I think she’s calling for Zeecha,” Iryemalan said. We’ll have to wait a while to put any of it together.”
“Oh, hell,” Tillean said
“What is it?”
“Not sure, yet, but if it’s what I am thinking… it’s not good.”
The scans got more and more clear as particles of energy dribbled in slowly.
Tillean called up a top-down tactical plot of the anomaly: “There’s another bubble inside the first one. The rate of distortion is about the same. So one second in the inner bubble is 5 hours in the outer bubble. Or about 194 days for us.”
“What in the hell?” I said, “What could be causing that?”
“Good question. I have no idea.”
Varupuchu said, “I believe the gravity we’re experiencing here is a side effect of the temporal distortion, not the cause of it.”
How the universe created gravity and time together always made me a little dizzy. It always sounded like magic.
“So there could be a singularity at the heart of this thing?” I asked
“According to everything we know, if there was, this would be a small black hole, like the Romulan gravity cores. That does not seem to be the case.”
“I think that somehow gravity is being displaced into time, and time into gravity. Like it got confused doing the math and switched signs along the way,” Tillean said.
“Picturesque, fantastical, and poetic, Tillean. Unsupported by any math or real analysis,” Varupuchu said.
She stuck her tongue out at him “Let me get to work on the math and see if it lines up.”
Then Tillean giggled “Sure Iryemalan. Please do.”
I turned to Tillean, and then as I turned back, I caught a little animated face on my armchair repeater screen winking at me.
I grinned.
“Let’s keep things professional, please,” Li’ira said “If something stupider happens, I want to be ready to jump. Or run. Or something.”
Speaking of which, I called Zeecha “Okay, here’s what we’re seeing. The dampening field we’re seeing isn’t. It’s a bubble of warped time. Time is slowed down inside the bubble. One second inside the bubble lasts 5 hours out here.”
“Whoa! Trippy! Are you sure? I’ve had psychedelic trips that seemed that way from the inside.”
“Everything we see matches that idea for now. If we have a better idea that matches the facts, we’ll let you know.”
“Whoa. Okay, so, are we in danger? How close is too close?”
I sent him a map of the anomaly so far. “I don’t know how close is too close. I certainly wouldn’t get within 1000 klicks of the edge of the thing. If a civilian ship was here, I’d ask them to stay at least 10 light seconds away.”
“Whoa, so how are we going to get my friends out of there?”
“I have no idea right now.”
“Bummer,”
“Time anomalies are almost as bad an idea as time machines. I avoid them whenever I can.”
“Time machines are a thing?”
“Please, please believe me. They are not worth it. The Universe hates them. The Universe has nasty ways of getting back at them. It’s really not worth the hassle.”
“Huh,” Tillean said
“What’s up, cute monkey girl?” Zeecha asked
“I am a cute primate girl. I think our captain hit on something there. I’ll let you know when I know more.”
“Whoa! Cute and brains! You rock!”
“You have no idea,” Tillean grinned.
“Stay back and stay safe, Zeecha. We’ll talk again.” I cut the channel
I looked at Tillean “No having a thing for dangerous bad boy mice.”
That got an honest laugh “He does look pretty fuzzy, though.”
Li’ira shot me a look (Don’t Encourage Them!)
I grinned. I enjoyed that she felt safe enough around us.
-*-
Most of the Omoikane settled into cruise mode. We did maintenance, upkeep. The crew discussed and processed their visits to Forgal and other worlds behind us.
We slowly assembled enough of the other raiders comm signal to put together “Are you there? We’re scanning-”
Tillean hid out in a lab with the members of the crew who knew advanced physics and mathematics.
I could have dug up Charles Holly’s papers and joined in. But… I didn’t want to. His mathematics were a struggle for me, and I honestly disliked them. They put me off.
Fundamentally, it bothered me, somehow, that the universe had an opinion on such things and expressed “I’d rather you didn’t” as quantum tensor fields.
It made me paranoid. Was the universe watching me eat? Shower? Did it have an opinion of what food I liked? Ugh. No, thank you.
-*-
“I have more bad news,” Tillean grinned
“Please don’t tell me the anomaly is expanding.”
“Okay. Because it’s not. There’s a third bubble inside other two.”
I winced “Ouch.”
“Time, in there, would be running at about 1 second per 300 years for us,” Tillean said
“Do you think we can find out what is at the center of this thing?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Tillean said.
Stephanie asked: “So if time is distorted like that, is it taking photons extra time from our point of view to get across the bubbles?”
Tillean said “It doesn’t seem so. What’s happening is the time distortion is affecting the doppler shift. So we’re getting the wavelengths of radiation all stretched out and loosey goosey. To really see inside the bubble we’d need a radio telescope that can gather super long wavelengths.”
“There is another way,” Iryemalan said.
“What’s that?” I asked
“We could send someone in.”
That concerned me. “Iryemalan, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Sir. Why do you ask?”
“Because what you said doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does from a certain point of view.”
“Anyone going in there would be stuck in the time distortion.”
“That is true.”
“So not only do we lose whoever goes in there, we’re stuck with two rescue missions and we still have no idea what’s causing this phenomenon.”
“It may be that we’re just destined not to know until enough time has passed for the information to make its way outside the bubble. Iryemalan said.
“That doesn’t help me understand whats going on here and it sounds like a complex way to commit suicide.”
“Not suicide, Captain. Travel. If anyone goes in there, they’re taking a one-way trip into the future. Perhaps a long long way into the future,” She explained.
“You want to go see the deep future, huh?”
“Well, the me that goes will. The me that stays will not.”
“You mean to clone yourself to one of your back up units and fling that one into the anomaly?” I asked.
“We would have to draw straws about which one stays and which one goes.”
“Nope,” I said “Nuh-uh. Can you imagine the look Gensilan would give me if I let you hurl yourself into an anomaly like that? It’s reckless. Besides, what if the anomaly is twisting space-time past survivability? What if there’s something dangerous in there?”
“Risk comes with the uniform.”
“Managing risk comes with the extra pips on it. No. I sort of admire your willingness to hurl yourself at it, But no. Not today. If you’re right, and we can’t unravel it, then you have time to mull it over, think about it, and prepare a real mission. But not with any hardware I’ve signed for.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“We’ll have to think of something else.”
Tillean said, “We should inform the other raider of what we know. Enough for them to steer out of the anomaly.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“We can record a message in another probe and send in it. Once in same layer as the trapped ship, It can broadcast a message they’ll be able to receive.”
“That’s a good idea. Let’s do that.”
The message was me and Captain Zeecha. “Attention Musari ship Treasure Seeking Whore. You’re trapped in a zone of distorted time. Turn to heading 167 by zero and make full impulse to leave the distortion zone.”
Zeecha added, “Yo, Karsta. The Federation guys are here in rescue mode. I’m here with them and everything’s cool. But we’re worried about cha. Make heading 167 by zero and kick it hard. We’re waitin’ for ya.”
The probe thumped away from the Omoikane and into the distortion field.
Now all we could do was wait and see how they react to our message, very slowly.
USS Omoikane
Jay P Hailey Commanding (Jay 3)
We came out of warp at the edge of the system and approached at a normal, reasonable pace.
The system was a red dwarf star. Slightly unstable. A super hot gas giant orbited it hand-shake close. The rest of the system was irradiated rocks. One of hundreds of millions of systems in the galaxy that were of zero interest and little utility.
The ship that called us was there. Another Orion light raider. Whoever was selling those to the Musari was making a killing. In many cases, literally.
According to its beacon, the ship was named the “Scalloped Crescent Blade.”
As we approached, we could see a dampening field. It was curved. A large sphere. The size of a large planet or a small failed star. It surrounded some sort of gravity well, about the size of a planet.
“Yo, Federation dudes. Thanks for coming.” The Musari captain said.
“You’re welcome. Remember who your friends are. What’s your name?”
“I’m Captain Zeecha. We were out scouting for hidden bases or good places for hidden bases, you know. We saw this gravity well and decided to check it out. We didn’t see the dampening field. Our friends ran into it, and just stopped.”
“We’ll investigate and let you know what we come up with,” I said
“I hope they’re okay.”
“I do, too.”
After he was off the screen, I said, “Harksain, Tillean, what are we looking at?”
We scanned the other light raider.
I looked at the scan myself on a repeater screen, “What the hell?” The scans came back dim and dark. Attenuated. The other raider looked like he was on the edge of sensor range. He was fifty-five thousand kilometers away and looked light-years distant.
“Hmmm,” Tillean said, “Permission to fire a probe?”
“Go ahead,” I said
We loaded up the probe and launched it.
“What’s that?” Zeecha called and asked
“It’s a probe. An instrument package, designed to let us look at things up close without risking danger.”
“Oh. Whew. My tactical panel went crazy. The Orions do NOT like your probes, dude.”
“They’re not fans of prying eyes.”
“I get that.”
The probe approached the other raider and stopped dead. All telemetry cut off, and it, too, looked fuzzy, dim, and distant.
“Any information? I asked.
“Working on it, Captain. Something very odd is going on here. It’ll take me a while to confirm it.”
Varupuchu worked his panel carefully, “Spaat would be a strong asset here.”
I nodded. Tarla asked, “May I ask how?”
Varupuchu said, “Forgive me, Ensign. Your training in piloting, extensive knowledge of this ship, and her capabilities are commendable. Your performance lacks nothing. Interstellar navigation is applied astrophysics, cosmology, and astrocartography, often under tight time deadlines. You specialized in the engineering of the Omoikane, and this is necessary. Spaat specialized in the astronomical sciences.”
“I’m no slouch,” Tillean said.
“Your strengths in biological sciences are well known. You did not begin as an astrophysicist.”
“Thank you for outlining my next course of study, Sir,” Tarla said.
Varupuchu said, “I believe, given sufficient time and effort, you will excel.”
I said, “Ensign Iryemalan, can you assist us here?”
“Gladly, Captain.” She replied from the walls.
“Please.”
The next several minutes were spent waiting. I hated it.
Li’ira worked on her panel to identify and clear up the dampening affecting our sensors.
Tillean sighed “Wow. Yup, it all matches.”
“What does?”
Tillean said, “That’s not a damping field. It’s a temporal distortion.”
I hissed through my teeth.
“It’s running something like twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand to one.”
Meaning?”
“One second for our probe is something like twenty thousand seconds for us.
I did the math in my head. “That means one second for the probe is something like 5 hours for us?”
Varupuchu nodded. “Our sensor scans are reduced by that amount of energy and time dilation. The energy from our sensors is coming back heavily red-shifted.”
I squinted “You’d only see something like that near a black hole,”
“Indeed. “
“But we’re not seeing that sort of gravity,”
“We are not. This is entirely mysterious.” Varupuchu’s voice carried both irritation and curiosity. Anomalies were rude interruptions in the orderly flow of business. But, like me, he was curious about why this was going on.
“Is there any way we can get a message to the trapped ship there?”
“Possibly. It would take staying in one place relative to the trapped ship and sending the message very slowly and strongly. I am not sure what effects the distortion is having from inside.”
“I need to construct filters for our sensors and comms for this thing.”
“May I?” Iryemalan said, “I can do it very quickly from your point of view.”
“Please do.”
More waiting.
The scans cleared up noticeably. We could see a small screen where an Orion was talking very slowly. A comm channel from the trapped ship.
“I think she’s calling for Zeecha,” Iryemalan said. We’ll have to wait a while to put any of it together.”
“Oh, hell,” Tillean said
“What is it?”
“Not sure, yet, but if it’s what I am thinking… it’s not good.”
The scans got more and more clear as particles of energy dribbled in slowly.
Tillean called up a top-down tactical plot of the anomaly: “There’s another bubble inside the first one. The rate of distortion is about the same. So one second in the inner bubble is 5 hours in the outer bubble. Or about 194 days for us.”
“What in the hell?” I said, “What could be causing that?”
“Good question. I have no idea.”
Varupuchu said, “I believe the gravity we’re experiencing here is a side effect of the temporal distortion, not the cause of it.”
How the universe created gravity and time together always made me a little dizzy. It always sounded like magic.
“So there could be a singularity at the heart of this thing?” I asked
“According to everything we know, if there was, this would be a small black hole, like the Romulan gravity cores. That does not seem to be the case.”
“I think that somehow gravity is being displaced into time, and time into gravity. Like it got confused doing the math and switched signs along the way,” Tillean said.
“Picturesque, fantastical, and poetic, Tillean. Unsupported by any math or real analysis,” Varupuchu said.
She stuck her tongue out at him “Let me get to work on the math and see if it lines up.”
Then Tillean giggled “Sure Iryemalan. Please do.”
I turned to Tillean, and then as I turned back, I caught a little animated face on my armchair repeater screen winking at me.
I grinned.
“Let’s keep things professional, please,” Li’ira said “If something stupider happens, I want to be ready to jump. Or run. Or something.”
Speaking of which, I called Zeecha “Okay, here’s what we’re seeing. The dampening field we’re seeing isn’t. It’s a bubble of warped time. Time is slowed down inside the bubble. One second inside the bubble lasts 5 hours out here.”
“Whoa! Trippy! Are you sure? I’ve had psychedelic trips that seemed that way from the inside.”
“Everything we see matches that idea for now. If we have a better idea that matches the facts, we’ll let you know.”
“Whoa. Okay, so, are we in danger? How close is too close?”
I sent him a map of the anomaly so far. “I don’t know how close is too close. I certainly wouldn’t get within 1000 klicks of the edge of the thing. If a civilian ship was here, I’d ask them to stay at least 10 light seconds away.”
“Whoa, so how are we going to get my friends out of there?”
“I have no idea right now.”
“Bummer,”
“Time anomalies are almost as bad an idea as time machines. I avoid them whenever I can.”
“Time machines are a thing?”
“Please, please believe me. They are not worth it. The Universe hates them. The Universe has nasty ways of getting back at them. It’s really not worth the hassle.”
“Huh,” Tillean said
“What’s up, cute monkey girl?” Zeecha asked
“I am a cute primate girl. I think our captain hit on something there. I’ll let you know when I know more.”
“Whoa! Cute and brains! You rock!”
“You have no idea,” Tillean grinned.
“Stay back and stay safe, Zeecha. We’ll talk again.” I cut the channel
I looked at Tillean “No having a thing for dangerous bad boy mice.”
That got an honest laugh “He does look pretty fuzzy, though.”
Li’ira shot me a look (Don’t Encourage Them!)
I grinned. I enjoyed that she felt safe enough around us.
-*-
Most of the Omoikane settled into cruise mode. We did maintenance, upkeep. The crew discussed and processed their visits to Forgal and other worlds behind us.
We slowly assembled enough of the other raiders comm signal to put together “Are you there? We’re scanning-”
Tillean hid out in a lab with the members of the crew who knew advanced physics and mathematics.
I could have dug up Charles Holly’s papers and joined in. But… I didn’t want to. His mathematics were a struggle for me, and I honestly disliked them. They put me off.
Fundamentally, it bothered me, somehow, that the universe had an opinion on such things and expressed “I’d rather you didn’t” as quantum tensor fields.
It made me paranoid. Was the universe watching me eat? Shower? Did it have an opinion of what food I liked? Ugh. No, thank you.
-*-
“I have more bad news,” Tillean grinned
“Please don’t tell me the anomaly is expanding.”
“Okay. Because it’s not. There’s a third bubble inside other two.”
I winced “Ouch.”
“Time, in there, would be running at about 1 second per 300 years for us,” Tillean said
“Do you think we can find out what is at the center of this thing?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Tillean said.
Stephanie asked: “So if time is distorted like that, is it taking photons extra time from our point of view to get across the bubbles?”
Tillean said “It doesn’t seem so. What’s happening is the time distortion is affecting the doppler shift. So we’re getting the wavelengths of radiation all stretched out and loosey goosey. To really see inside the bubble we’d need a radio telescope that can gather super long wavelengths.”
“There is another way,” Iryemalan said.
“What’s that?” I asked
“We could send someone in.”
That concerned me. “Iryemalan, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Sir. Why do you ask?”
“Because what you said doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does from a certain point of view.”
“Anyone going in there would be stuck in the time distortion.”
“That is true.”
“So not only do we lose whoever goes in there, we’re stuck with two rescue missions and we still have no idea what’s causing this phenomenon.”
“It may be that we’re just destined not to know until enough time has passed for the information to make its way outside the bubble. Iryemalan said.
“That doesn’t help me understand whats going on here and it sounds like a complex way to commit suicide.”
“Not suicide, Captain. Travel. If anyone goes in there, they’re taking a one-way trip into the future. Perhaps a long long way into the future,” She explained.
“You want to go see the deep future, huh?”
“Well, the me that goes will. The me that stays will not.”
“You mean to clone yourself to one of your back up units and fling that one into the anomaly?” I asked.
“We would have to draw straws about which one stays and which one goes.”
“Nope,” I said “Nuh-uh. Can you imagine the look Gensilan would give me if I let you hurl yourself into an anomaly like that? It’s reckless. Besides, what if the anomaly is twisting space-time past survivability? What if there’s something dangerous in there?”
“Risk comes with the uniform.”
“Managing risk comes with the extra pips on it. No. I sort of admire your willingness to hurl yourself at it, But no. Not today. If you’re right, and we can’t unravel it, then you have time to mull it over, think about it, and prepare a real mission. But not with any hardware I’ve signed for.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“We’ll have to think of something else.”
Tillean said, “We should inform the other raider of what we know. Enough for them to steer out of the anomaly.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“We can record a message in another probe and send in it. Once in same layer as the trapped ship, It can broadcast a message they’ll be able to receive.”
“That’s a good idea. Let’s do that.”
The message was me and Captain Zeecha. “Attention Musari ship Treasure Seeking Whore. You’re trapped in a zone of distorted time. Turn to heading 167 by zero and make full impulse to leave the distortion zone.”
Zeecha added, “Yo, Karsta. The Federation guys are here in rescue mode. I’m here with them and everything’s cool. But we’re worried about cha. Make heading 167 by zero and kick it hard. We’re waitin’ for ya.”
The probe thumped away from the Omoikane and into the distortion field.
Now all we could do was wait and see how they react to our message, very slowly.
- jayphailey
- Posts: 1125
- Joined: Tue May 29, 2018 7:50 pm
Re: Omoikane - The Onion
Omoikane 51 - Onion Slices
We watched over the course of the next day and a half as the TSW very slowly seemed to haul around and go full Impulse towards the boundary of the distorted time bubble.
“I have a question,” I asked Tillean "As the TSW crosses the boundary of distorted time and normal time, is part of the ship going to be in normal time and part of the ship in slow time? Are people aboard going to be halfway in and out of normal time?"
"I scanned that when the second probe went in. There's a bubble of uncertainty around an object when it contacts the boundary of altered time. The distorted time wants an all-in or all-out state, so when something is on the border, it exists very briefly as both and neither until basic physics says it's in or out of the bubble."
"That's weird."
"It's unusual to see quantum uncertainty effects at the macro level, but temporal physics are weird."
"I hate them, thanks."
"I have some bad news for you."
"We're sticky to weird temporal effects?"
"Yeah. You've read Holly's papers."
"I hated them, thanks."
"Aha. That means you understood them partly."
"Partly?"
"When you understand temporal physics more, you develop a denial reflex. It is what it is. The universe didn't ask us."
"See, there's implications in the math that the universe does interact with consciousness, and that's even worse."
Tillean nodded "I'll ask you to explain how you got to those conclusions, later. You're not alone, but it's a controversial position."
"That I hate Holly's work?"
"No, everyone does."
"That conscious is present in the probability vectors?"
"Yes."
"Ugh. Homework. Okay. Noted."
"I feel the same way. I've really had to book up since this started. Fortunately, Iryemalan has backed me up."
"Alright, Steady as she goes. Officer off the Deck has the bridge. Call me if anything happens."
I went to go walk around the Omoikane in order to avoid working on explaining my conclusions about consciousness in Charles Holly's weird physics.
-*-
The next day, I was deep into the math about how an object in a space-time faced with a choice, forced space-time into an indeterminate state, awaiting the choice, and how the state of space-time constrained available choices. The Universe really wanted to place paradoxes outside the choice-cone of probabilities, so it developed quantum physics mechanisms for the available choices.
Make the wrong choice, and the universe might just change itself to put a paradox out of your reach.
But to allow for choices at all, the universe had to be fundamentally vague at a certain level in order to allow choices to crystalize into the reality we perceive.
Written long hand, I'd have covered several walls with mathematical symbols, most of which would have looked perfectly insane to my physics classes in Starfleet Academy.
I could feel how formulating this stuff into math was actually changing how I perceived it, thought about it and processed it. Not necessarily in a bad way.
Did my math have a culture? Were assumptions in my math changing how I saw choices as the universe relating to these?
Ow. I jotted down notes for later.
Tillean called "Captain, I think I have something."
"Tell me we're facing a hot fudge sundae-related crisis. That's an order."
A beat and a half. "Captain, a hot fudge sundae-related issue in the forward lounge needs your attention. I'll meet you there."
-*-
Over hot fudge sundaes, Tillean related her actual findings.
"I was looking into technological temporal manipulation," She began.
"There's your first mistake," I said
"The Slavers made stasis boxes. Little time machines that stop the flow of time within. Throw something inside a stasis box, and it'll stay the way you put it in the box, for a billion years or more."
"Yeah, the crew of the Enterprise encountered one once."
"They can be opened with something called a tachyon key."
"Those are short-ranged, low energy....." I trailed off as the implications hit me "Do you think the main deflector can handle it?"
"I'm not sure," She said.
"Let get Galaglan in on this,"
-*-
Galaglan looked sad **It's doable but abusive of the equipment. If we break the main deflector, our top speed will be seriously limited until we get it fixed.**
"How can we reduce the abuse of the equipment and still get this done?" I asked her.
**Hmm, let me think about that.**
"We have time, " I said.
**See, asking for the impossible immediately is one thing. Asking for the impossible with time to think about it makes it scarier.**
"If it's too far out of reach, we can recommend to the Bendarri that they special build equipment to do it. But there's no guarantee they have the focus or resources."
**I'll touch base with you tomorrow,** Galaglan said.
-*-
Galaglan laid a PADD on my desk. **This is the best I could do. with what we have on hand.**
I read the plan. "Ahah. I see your problem."
**It's not ideal. But we can make it work. The question is - do you want to take the risk?**
I looked at the plan. Galaglan could reinforce our main deflector and turn it into a giant Tachyon key by borrowing parts from the weapons system. I'd have to take some of Omoikane's phasers offline to cannibalize them for material to reinforce the main deflector.
Mentally, I boiled it down. Maybe raiders or space dragons later in exchange for answering what the fuck was going on with that time distortion now.
"Let me think about it and get back to you," I said.
-*-
I was shuffling around the ship at random. When faced with a dilemma and I have time, I avoid thinking about the dilemma at all costs.
Actually, this lets my subconscious chew on it. But it FEELS like procrastination and avoidance, and that was its own reward in a way.
And I had just the thing.
We watched over the course of the next day and a half as the TSW very slowly seemed to haul around and go full Impulse towards the boundary of the distorted time bubble.
“I have a question,” I asked Tillean "As the TSW crosses the boundary of distorted time and normal time, is part of the ship going to be in normal time and part of the ship in slow time? Are people aboard going to be halfway in and out of normal time?"
"I scanned that when the second probe went in. There's a bubble of uncertainty around an object when it contacts the boundary of altered time. The distorted time wants an all-in or all-out state, so when something is on the border, it exists very briefly as both and neither until basic physics says it's in or out of the bubble."
"That's weird."
"It's unusual to see quantum uncertainty effects at the macro level, but temporal physics are weird."
"I hate them, thanks."
"I have some bad news for you."
"We're sticky to weird temporal effects?"
"Yeah. You've read Holly's papers."
"I hated them, thanks."
"Aha. That means you understood them partly."
"Partly?"
"When you understand temporal physics more, you develop a denial reflex. It is what it is. The universe didn't ask us."
"See, there's implications in the math that the universe does interact with consciousness, and that's even worse."
Tillean nodded "I'll ask you to explain how you got to those conclusions, later. You're not alone, but it's a controversial position."
"That I hate Holly's work?"
"No, everyone does."
"That conscious is present in the probability vectors?"
"Yes."
"Ugh. Homework. Okay. Noted."
"I feel the same way. I've really had to book up since this started. Fortunately, Iryemalan has backed me up."
"Alright, Steady as she goes. Officer off the Deck has the bridge. Call me if anything happens."
I went to go walk around the Omoikane in order to avoid working on explaining my conclusions about consciousness in Charles Holly's weird physics.
-*-
The next day, I was deep into the math about how an object in a space-time faced with a choice, forced space-time into an indeterminate state, awaiting the choice, and how the state of space-time constrained available choices. The Universe really wanted to place paradoxes outside the choice-cone of probabilities, so it developed quantum physics mechanisms for the available choices.
Make the wrong choice, and the universe might just change itself to put a paradox out of your reach.
But to allow for choices at all, the universe had to be fundamentally vague at a certain level in order to allow choices to crystalize into the reality we perceive.
Written long hand, I'd have covered several walls with mathematical symbols, most of which would have looked perfectly insane to my physics classes in Starfleet Academy.
I could feel how formulating this stuff into math was actually changing how I perceived it, thought about it and processed it. Not necessarily in a bad way.
Did my math have a culture? Were assumptions in my math changing how I saw choices as the universe relating to these?
Ow. I jotted down notes for later.
Tillean called "Captain, I think I have something."
"Tell me we're facing a hot fudge sundae-related crisis. That's an order."
A beat and a half. "Captain, a hot fudge sundae-related issue in the forward lounge needs your attention. I'll meet you there."
-*-
Over hot fudge sundaes, Tillean related her actual findings.
"I was looking into technological temporal manipulation," She began.
"There's your first mistake," I said
"The Slavers made stasis boxes. Little time machines that stop the flow of time within. Throw something inside a stasis box, and it'll stay the way you put it in the box, for a billion years or more."
"Yeah, the crew of the Enterprise encountered one once."
"They can be opened with something called a tachyon key."
"Those are short-ranged, low energy....." I trailed off as the implications hit me "Do you think the main deflector can handle it?"
"I'm not sure," She said.
"Let get Galaglan in on this,"
-*-
Galaglan looked sad **It's doable but abusive of the equipment. If we break the main deflector, our top speed will be seriously limited until we get it fixed.**
"How can we reduce the abuse of the equipment and still get this done?" I asked her.
**Hmm, let me think about that.**
"We have time, " I said.
**See, asking for the impossible immediately is one thing. Asking for the impossible with time to think about it makes it scarier.**
"If it's too far out of reach, we can recommend to the Bendarri that they special build equipment to do it. But there's no guarantee they have the focus or resources."
**I'll touch base with you tomorrow,** Galaglan said.
-*-
Galaglan laid a PADD on my desk. **This is the best I could do. with what we have on hand.**
I read the plan. "Ahah. I see your problem."
**It's not ideal. But we can make it work. The question is - do you want to take the risk?**
I looked at the plan. Galaglan could reinforce our main deflector and turn it into a giant Tachyon key by borrowing parts from the weapons system. I'd have to take some of Omoikane's phasers offline to cannibalize them for material to reinforce the main deflector.
Mentally, I boiled it down. Maybe raiders or space dragons later in exchange for answering what the fuck was going on with that time distortion now.
"Let me think about it and get back to you," I said.
-*-
I was shuffling around the ship at random. When faced with a dilemma and I have time, I avoid thinking about the dilemma at all costs.
Actually, this lets my subconscious chew on it. But it FEELS like procrastination and avoidance, and that was its own reward in a way.
And I had just the thing.
- jayphailey
- Posts: 1125
- Joined: Tue May 29, 2018 7:50 pm
Re: Omoikane - The Onion
Omiokane 52 - Racing away from Thinking
Omoikane 52 - Racing away from Thinking
I leaned into the turn. Despite how it looks on video, the motorcycle was fighting me. It bucked and wriggled, skidded and slid.
I was having the time of my life. And I was losing. Badly.
We were on highway I-90, screaming east at insane speeds.
20th century America was stupid about cars and motor transport.
My ancestors about paved over a continent with concrete ribbons, designed to allow people and freight to move freely across the country.
A few people knew, at the time, that pollution from burning things for energy was not really a long term solution.
But for 100 years they didn't really think about it, until the Earth itself rebelled and made them pay attention.
The old days of partying on a dying world made for great story fodder.
They had technology that allowed them to map their world . Their maps and images were poor by our standards. But there were enough for holodecks to recreate ancient highways and scenic routes
My brother Bill introduced me to this route as a scenic recreational drive.
A guy I met in the academy, Tracey, introduced me to motorcycle racing.
And that led me to blasting my way through mountain passes on a racing bike.
The simulation had no other cars on the highway - that would be hard mode.
The Bikes were electrically driven with krellide cells powering the motors.
Tracey was a purist and rode simulated gasoline burners. I barely remembered that you had to change gears, let alone how.
I used electric bikes.
I invited a few of my crew people to race along the route from Spokane to Kalispel.
I really hadn't realized the toll age has taken on my twitch reflexes and reaction time.
Tarla blew us all away. Young, fast, and speed-addled, she took a few practice rounds and then dusted us.
Stephanie Anderson wasn't too far behind her.
Then Tillean. Tillean went too fast into the turns and ruined her lines coming out, but she was clearly having a blast.
Galaglan was riding very conservatively but doing well.
I could barely see them ahead of me, red brake lights flashing as they hit turns.
Worse, I knew the route!
We dropped out of the mountains, onto the flat part of northern Idaho, a flatter, straighter run between Cataldo and Kellogg, before you started the climb towards 4th of July pass.
I leaned down and cranked the accelerator handle.
It was the closest thing to flying. The Holodeck was really doing a great job simulating it. And I'm glad it was a simulation. I was going insanely fast, according to my real-world senses.
I guess I was doing something like 70 meters per second when the deer ran into the highway
I yelled and tried to avoid it, but the speed of the bike worked against me. I would have laid down the bike, but I hit the deer before that happened.
There was a big thud, and I tumbled through the air, confused, until the road came up to meet me.
The holodeck went black, and I was rotated to a standing position.
"You have died." The Holodeck helpfully said, "You scored 1256 points."
I blinked and said, "Computer, alter program - the deer do not cross into the road."
The Holodeck beeped and said, "Acknowledged."
I found myself on the side of the road, next to my bike, five miles behind where I'd hit the deer.
From there, I just rode and enjoyed it.
They were waiting for me at the St Regis Travel Center gas station. Simulated 21st century people milled around the shop and restaurant, seemingly oblivious to their missing cars and missing motivations to continue their trips.
Tillean slurped on a simulated Huckleberry shake. The Huckleberrys were native to the area, and well into the 25th century, the locals would try to make you anything with huckleberries in it. I thought about how a huckleberry-flavored dilithium matrix might make main engineering smell.
Stephanie munched on some hideous snack food called "Bugles."
Galaglan munched on a plastic tray of radishes.
"What happened to you?" Tillean asked
"I hit a deer," I said.
Stephanie looked at me intensely "I didn't know there were deer in the simulation."
"Neither did I. I took them out."
Tillean asked, "Didn't you write this program?"
"Yeah, but I just imported the Pacific Northwest. I didn't double-check how realistic the simulation was going to be."
Tarla came out of the gift shop and over to us by the gas pumps
Did the holodeck use a realistic simulation of the smell? From the hobbyists who had old fashioned gas-burners when I was kid in L.A. I recalled the smell was quite distinctive.
I decided not to ask.
Tarla smiled hugely at me "This is the most fun I've had on the holodeck since.... well outside of a private program."
We all carefully said nothing. Everyone had their own private holodeck programs. No one talked about it. No one wants to know.
"I should tell you, back home, before I went to the academy, I did a little bike riding," Tarla said.
We all looked at her. That explained it.
"Nothing organized. Just kids stuff," She said.
Stephanie squinted "Did your kids stuff involve things that were technically unlawful and evading the police?"
Tarla's smile grew embarrassed "Perhaps."
"Me, too," Stephanie smiled at old memories.
She was shading the truth there. Stephanie was a cop before joining Starfleet.
"Welp, let me hit the restroom, and get a small huckleberry shake and then we'll start the next leg," I said.
Galaglan asked **Are you having fun, Jay?**
I stopped and felt the simulated sunshine on my skin "Yeah. Yeah, I am."
It was a lovely way to avoid thinking about the choice I was avoiding.
I realized that, of course, we were going to turn the main deflector into a large tachyon key and peel the onion.
I was too curious not to. It was a risk. I hoped it wouldn’t bite us in the ass.
I nodded at my huckleberry shake and glanced around the replicated tourist memorabilia of Montana. I hoped the jury-rigged power couplings would hold.
I’d hate to get halfway towards the answer and have to quit because our tools broke.
I walked back out into the simulated sunshine. The Holodeck was pretty good at that part.
Omoikane 52 - Racing away from Thinking
I leaned into the turn. Despite how it looks on video, the motorcycle was fighting me. It bucked and wriggled, skidded and slid.
I was having the time of my life. And I was losing. Badly.
We were on highway I-90, screaming east at insane speeds.
20th century America was stupid about cars and motor transport.
My ancestors about paved over a continent with concrete ribbons, designed to allow people and freight to move freely across the country.
A few people knew, at the time, that pollution from burning things for energy was not really a long term solution.
But for 100 years they didn't really think about it, until the Earth itself rebelled and made them pay attention.
The old days of partying on a dying world made for great story fodder.
They had technology that allowed them to map their world . Their maps and images were poor by our standards. But there were enough for holodecks to recreate ancient highways and scenic routes
My brother Bill introduced me to this route as a scenic recreational drive.
A guy I met in the academy, Tracey, introduced me to motorcycle racing.
And that led me to blasting my way through mountain passes on a racing bike.
The simulation had no other cars on the highway - that would be hard mode.
The Bikes were electrically driven with krellide cells powering the motors.
Tracey was a purist and rode simulated gasoline burners. I barely remembered that you had to change gears, let alone how.
I used electric bikes.
I invited a few of my crew people to race along the route from Spokane to Kalispel.
I really hadn't realized the toll age has taken on my twitch reflexes and reaction time.
Tarla blew us all away. Young, fast, and speed-addled, she took a few practice rounds and then dusted us.
Stephanie Anderson wasn't too far behind her.
Then Tillean. Tillean went too fast into the turns and ruined her lines coming out, but she was clearly having a blast.
Galaglan was riding very conservatively but doing well.
I could barely see them ahead of me, red brake lights flashing as they hit turns.
Worse, I knew the route!
We dropped out of the mountains, onto the flat part of northern Idaho, a flatter, straighter run between Cataldo and Kellogg, before you started the climb towards 4th of July pass.
I leaned down and cranked the accelerator handle.
It was the closest thing to flying. The Holodeck was really doing a great job simulating it. And I'm glad it was a simulation. I was going insanely fast, according to my real-world senses.
I guess I was doing something like 70 meters per second when the deer ran into the highway
I yelled and tried to avoid it, but the speed of the bike worked against me. I would have laid down the bike, but I hit the deer before that happened.
There was a big thud, and I tumbled through the air, confused, until the road came up to meet me.
The holodeck went black, and I was rotated to a standing position.
"You have died." The Holodeck helpfully said, "You scored 1256 points."
I blinked and said, "Computer, alter program - the deer do not cross into the road."
The Holodeck beeped and said, "Acknowledged."
I found myself on the side of the road, next to my bike, five miles behind where I'd hit the deer.
From there, I just rode and enjoyed it.
They were waiting for me at the St Regis Travel Center gas station. Simulated 21st century people milled around the shop and restaurant, seemingly oblivious to their missing cars and missing motivations to continue their trips.
Tillean slurped on a simulated Huckleberry shake. The Huckleberrys were native to the area, and well into the 25th century, the locals would try to make you anything with huckleberries in it. I thought about how a huckleberry-flavored dilithium matrix might make main engineering smell.
Stephanie munched on some hideous snack food called "Bugles."
Galaglan munched on a plastic tray of radishes.
"What happened to you?" Tillean asked
"I hit a deer," I said.
Stephanie looked at me intensely "I didn't know there were deer in the simulation."
"Neither did I. I took them out."
Tillean asked, "Didn't you write this program?"
"Yeah, but I just imported the Pacific Northwest. I didn't double-check how realistic the simulation was going to be."
Tarla came out of the gift shop and over to us by the gas pumps
Did the holodeck use a realistic simulation of the smell? From the hobbyists who had old fashioned gas-burners when I was kid in L.A. I recalled the smell was quite distinctive.
I decided not to ask.
Tarla smiled hugely at me "This is the most fun I've had on the holodeck since.... well outside of a private program."
We all carefully said nothing. Everyone had their own private holodeck programs. No one talked about it. No one wants to know.
"I should tell you, back home, before I went to the academy, I did a little bike riding," Tarla said.
We all looked at her. That explained it.
"Nothing organized. Just kids stuff," She said.
Stephanie squinted "Did your kids stuff involve things that were technically unlawful and evading the police?"
Tarla's smile grew embarrassed "Perhaps."
"Me, too," Stephanie smiled at old memories.
She was shading the truth there. Stephanie was a cop before joining Starfleet.
"Welp, let me hit the restroom, and get a small huckleberry shake and then we'll start the next leg," I said.
Galaglan asked **Are you having fun, Jay?**
I stopped and felt the simulated sunshine on my skin "Yeah. Yeah, I am."
It was a lovely way to avoid thinking about the choice I was avoiding.
I realized that, of course, we were going to turn the main deflector into a large tachyon key and peel the onion.
I was too curious not to. It was a risk. I hoped it wouldn’t bite us in the ass.
I nodded at my huckleberry shake and glanced around the replicated tourist memorabilia of Montana. I hoped the jury-rigged power couplings would hold.
I’d hate to get halfway towards the answer and have to quit because our tools broke.
I walked back out into the simulated sunshine. The Holodeck was pretty good at that part.
- jayphailey
- Posts: 1125
- Joined: Tue May 29, 2018 7:50 pm
Re: Omoikane - The Onion
Omoikane 53 - Peeling the Onion 1
It took us most of the next 18 hours to complete the modifications to our main deflector.
By that time, the TSW was fully turned and burning back for the edge of the anomaly.
“Do we trigger the tachyon key while the Musari ship is still in the distortion, or do we wait for her to clear it?” I asked.
“I don’t really see any reason to wait,” Tillean answered. “There shouldn’t be any side effects from undoing the distortion.”
Stephanie said, “I think, to be safe, we should wait. The Musari count as distressed travelers. It wouldn’t be ethical to do what amounts to a high energy physics experiment on them without their consent.”
Tillean said, “The experiment is not being done TO them. But it’s a good point.”
“How long is it going to take them to clear the anomaly?”
“At their current rate of progress, about a week.”
I grimaced. “Okay. Then we wait a week.”
-*-
Zeecha called. “Yo, Federation Dudes. My ship is a lot smaller than yours. So, waiting around is getting to be a drag. But the SS Teestra is about three light years from here. They’re a flying casino and entertainment complex. You should come by when you can and check it out. They’re from outside known space. They’re real popular these days.”
“Okay. Thanks. We’ll message you when your friends are clear of the anomaly.”
“Cool, thanks. Let us know if they’ll need help getting home from here.”
“We will. Omoikane, out.”
The Scalloped Crescent Blade turned and headed for the flying casino. Now that they pointed it out, we could clearly see the ship’s beacon. It was chugging along at a low Dilithium warp. We could see other ships coming and going.
It is definitely worth a look once we got done here.
-*-
The holodecks were running non-stop. We were stretching to find things to clean and maintain. Tillean calculated the exit time of the TSW down to the tenths of a second.
Once our station-keeping status settled in, The crew set up classes and panels.
One of the most fun things about Starfleet is that most Starfleet Officers were inveterate teachers. And students. So, given the excuse, people want to share the latest information about their field.
I spent most of the time reading arcane books on mathematical philosophy and writing notes about my impression of Holly’s equations. It turns out the intuitions I had about it were a lot harder to nail down and define properly than I initially thought.
-*-
The Treasure Seeking Whore flew out of the anomaly at full Impulse and then some.
As they blasted away we asked, “Would you be willing to share your scans with us?”
The TSW dumped her sensor logs on us.
The Captain of the TSW called me. It was nice to see her face moving in normal time.
The Golden Orion woman introduced herself, “I’m Captain Rixza of the Treasure Seeking Whore. Starfleet, where is my companion?”
“They went to visit the SS Teestra, about three light years from here. Closer to 4 now. They’re slow cruising to coreward of us.”
“Ugh! I’ve heard rumors about it.”
“Such as?”
“Sometimes, people don’t come back. Sometimes ships don’t come back.”
“Huh. Have you confirmed any of this scuttlebutt?”
“What do we look like, scientists? Poking into rumors and confirming or debunking old stories is your kink, Starfleet.”
“That’s fair.”
“We’re going to go see if Zeecha needs his foot chewed out of a trap. I hope I never see you again, Starfleet. Full Offense.”
“We’re glad you’re okay. Safe travels.”
“Bye.”
They cut the channel and entered warp.
“Charming,” Varupuchu said
“Actually, being that honest was sort of a compliment,” Li’ira said.
I sort of liked the punk aesthetic, honestly. Rixza was as punk as it got these days. “Now we start peeling.”
-*-
We set up our gear and began the procedure.
We had to fly at the bubble. The problem was one of heat. We were using our warp core to power the giant tachyon key. The cooling mechanisms of the ship were designed around moving. We weren’t meant to run the warp core at full blast while standing relatively still. We rid ourselves of waste heat using engine plasma. We stuffed heat into the plasma and then threw it overboard.
If we did that, standing still, soon we’d be in a cloud of hot plasma that we were heating up and adding to.
So we drove at the anomaly at one-half impulse, ramped our energy levels up to a large level, and at the right moment, dumped the energy into our tachyon key main deflector.
It looked like a blue-white beam left our main deflector and illuminated the anomaly, The now illuminated bubble writhed and wriggled and then collapsed.
It collapsed into a mass of lightning. And thunder, from inside the ship it sounded like a huge thunder strike not far away. Blue-white lighting flared in every direction. Several bolts of tachyon/chroniton lighting struck us as we made our preprogrammed turn away.
I had an immediate physical reaction to this. “RED ALERT!” I bellowed, “FULL POWER TO SHIELDS!”
That wasn’t me trying to be heard over the thunder. It was me almost panicking at the thought of being thrown into a new anomaly of our own.
I grabbed hold of myself and very carefully said to Li’ira, “Report, please.”
“Emergency deflectors snapped into place. We suffered some cosmetic burns on the hull, but no real damage.”
I turned towards Varupuchu “Find out if we’ve moved, temporally.”
Harksain nodded and began to work.
I breathed deeply. “Tillean, what happened?”
She said, “The bubble had some sort of…. Temporal static charge. Energy was released when the bubble collapsed. But it doesn’t seem to have been a dangerous amount. It was disorganized and incoherent, so it didn’t cause any other temporal effects, that I can see.”
I breathed deeply, “Galaglan, status?”
Galaglan replied **Warp core is good. Warp Drives are good. Impulse drives are good. All defensive systems are good. All weapons are right where we left them. The main deflector… I’m looking. It looks okay, but I’ll have to do a detailed review of it.**
Li’ira looked at me “Everything seems good.”
I looked back. I didn’t know I had such a strong aversion to temporal anomalies “Okay. Drop some probes and takes us back to 1 light second to assess. I’ll be in my ready room.”
Li’ira nodded.
I retreated to my office, locked the door, and had a talk with myself.
I’d failed the Kobayashi Maru. Again.
I needed to work on that.
It took us most of the next 18 hours to complete the modifications to our main deflector.
By that time, the TSW was fully turned and burning back for the edge of the anomaly.
“Do we trigger the tachyon key while the Musari ship is still in the distortion, or do we wait for her to clear it?” I asked.
“I don’t really see any reason to wait,” Tillean answered. “There shouldn’t be any side effects from undoing the distortion.”
Stephanie said, “I think, to be safe, we should wait. The Musari count as distressed travelers. It wouldn’t be ethical to do what amounts to a high energy physics experiment on them without their consent.”
Tillean said, “The experiment is not being done TO them. But it’s a good point.”
“How long is it going to take them to clear the anomaly?”
“At their current rate of progress, about a week.”
I grimaced. “Okay. Then we wait a week.”
-*-
Zeecha called. “Yo, Federation Dudes. My ship is a lot smaller than yours. So, waiting around is getting to be a drag. But the SS Teestra is about three light years from here. They’re a flying casino and entertainment complex. You should come by when you can and check it out. They’re from outside known space. They’re real popular these days.”
“Okay. Thanks. We’ll message you when your friends are clear of the anomaly.”
“Cool, thanks. Let us know if they’ll need help getting home from here.”
“We will. Omoikane, out.”
The Scalloped Crescent Blade turned and headed for the flying casino. Now that they pointed it out, we could clearly see the ship’s beacon. It was chugging along at a low Dilithium warp. We could see other ships coming and going.
It is definitely worth a look once we got done here.
-*-
The holodecks were running non-stop. We were stretching to find things to clean and maintain. Tillean calculated the exit time of the TSW down to the tenths of a second.
Once our station-keeping status settled in, The crew set up classes and panels.
One of the most fun things about Starfleet is that most Starfleet Officers were inveterate teachers. And students. So, given the excuse, people want to share the latest information about their field.
I spent most of the time reading arcane books on mathematical philosophy and writing notes about my impression of Holly’s equations. It turns out the intuitions I had about it were a lot harder to nail down and define properly than I initially thought.
-*-
The Treasure Seeking Whore flew out of the anomaly at full Impulse and then some.
As they blasted away we asked, “Would you be willing to share your scans with us?”
The TSW dumped her sensor logs on us.
The Captain of the TSW called me. It was nice to see her face moving in normal time.
The Golden Orion woman introduced herself, “I’m Captain Rixza of the Treasure Seeking Whore. Starfleet, where is my companion?”
“They went to visit the SS Teestra, about three light years from here. Closer to 4 now. They’re slow cruising to coreward of us.”
“Ugh! I’ve heard rumors about it.”
“Such as?”
“Sometimes, people don’t come back. Sometimes ships don’t come back.”
“Huh. Have you confirmed any of this scuttlebutt?”
“What do we look like, scientists? Poking into rumors and confirming or debunking old stories is your kink, Starfleet.”
“That’s fair.”
“We’re going to go see if Zeecha needs his foot chewed out of a trap. I hope I never see you again, Starfleet. Full Offense.”
“We’re glad you’re okay. Safe travels.”
“Bye.”
They cut the channel and entered warp.
“Charming,” Varupuchu said
“Actually, being that honest was sort of a compliment,” Li’ira said.
I sort of liked the punk aesthetic, honestly. Rixza was as punk as it got these days. “Now we start peeling.”
-*-
We set up our gear and began the procedure.
We had to fly at the bubble. The problem was one of heat. We were using our warp core to power the giant tachyon key. The cooling mechanisms of the ship were designed around moving. We weren’t meant to run the warp core at full blast while standing relatively still. We rid ourselves of waste heat using engine plasma. We stuffed heat into the plasma and then threw it overboard.
If we did that, standing still, soon we’d be in a cloud of hot plasma that we were heating up and adding to.
So we drove at the anomaly at one-half impulse, ramped our energy levels up to a large level, and at the right moment, dumped the energy into our tachyon key main deflector.
It looked like a blue-white beam left our main deflector and illuminated the anomaly, The now illuminated bubble writhed and wriggled and then collapsed.
It collapsed into a mass of lightning. And thunder, from inside the ship it sounded like a huge thunder strike not far away. Blue-white lighting flared in every direction. Several bolts of tachyon/chroniton lighting struck us as we made our preprogrammed turn away.
I had an immediate physical reaction to this. “RED ALERT!” I bellowed, “FULL POWER TO SHIELDS!”
That wasn’t me trying to be heard over the thunder. It was me almost panicking at the thought of being thrown into a new anomaly of our own.
I grabbed hold of myself and very carefully said to Li’ira, “Report, please.”
“Emergency deflectors snapped into place. We suffered some cosmetic burns on the hull, but no real damage.”
I turned towards Varupuchu “Find out if we’ve moved, temporally.”
Harksain nodded and began to work.
I breathed deeply. “Tillean, what happened?”
She said, “The bubble had some sort of…. Temporal static charge. Energy was released when the bubble collapsed. But it doesn’t seem to have been a dangerous amount. It was disorganized and incoherent, so it didn’t cause any other temporal effects, that I can see.”
I breathed deeply, “Galaglan, status?”
Galaglan replied **Warp core is good. Warp Drives are good. Impulse drives are good. All defensive systems are good. All weapons are right where we left them. The main deflector… I’m looking. It looks okay, but I’ll have to do a detailed review of it.**
Li’ira looked at me “Everything seems good.”
I looked back. I didn’t know I had such a strong aversion to temporal anomalies “Okay. Drop some probes and takes us back to 1 light second to assess. I’ll be in my ready room.”
Li’ira nodded.
I retreated to my office, locked the door, and had a talk with myself.
I’d failed the Kobayashi Maru. Again.
I needed to work on that.
- jayphailey
- Posts: 1125
- Joined: Tue May 29, 2018 7:50 pm
Omoikane 54 - Peeling the Onion 2
Omoikane 54 - Peeling the Onion 2
**How do I apologize to the crew for panicking at them?** I asked.
**An emotional reaction isn’t a sin to atone for,** Tippalan said.
**Losing control is.**
**You did not lose control. You were closer to losing control than you like. I sympathize with that. To me it seems as if you did the right things in the right order, if a little too intensely.**
**I yelled.**
**You thought we were in danger.**
**We’ve been in danger before.**
**Danger we could control. Danger we had a hand in and influence over. You did not like the incident with the Rishan mine.**
**I thought we were going to die. I couldn’t figure out how to avoid it. Myself, my crew, my friends. All dead because I couldn’t think of a clever way to cheat death.**
**That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself.**
**I think it comes with a starship.**
**It comes from reading too much about Captain Kirk.**
**He’d have figured a way out of the Rishan bubble. He wouldn’t have put his ship and his crew at risk like I just did.**
**Jay, Captain Kirk wound up at Starbase 600 just like you did.** She showed me a picture of his Enterprise. It was bent. Some enormous force bent the ship like a giant pipe bender. She was curved like a large macaroni.
**Ew!** I said. They were very lucky the power system didn’t come apart and try to flood them with engine plasma.
**Scotty kept the ship from exploding when someone else might have lost her. Kirk has a team of great people around him. So do you.**
**I… I don’t feel like I’m good enough. I don’t feel like I can keep them safe.**
Images of the crew people who’d been injured under my command flooded my mind. They all felt like personal failures to me.
**If you want, you can quit,** Tippalan said
I blinked. I could. I could turn towards New Canada. Hand over the keys. I could go back to Earth. I could sit on Redondo Beach. I’d never get anyone injured or killed, or temporally displaced again.
But that was another kind of failure. That would be turning away from the things that were out here. New things. Weird things. Dangerous things. Someone else would be in this ship, or another one. Other people would be facing the dangers.
I was caught between two failure states. Get everyone killed or flee like a coward from the very thing I’d worked my whole life to get to.
**How well do you trust your crew?** Tippalan asked me
I trusted them absolutely.
I discovered I was as mad as hell at Tillean for not foreseeing the chroniton lighting storm that accompanied the collapse of the distortion bubble.
As soon as I framed the thought, I knew it was stupid. The emotion dispersed and drifted away. As soon as that happened, I realized I was reacting from fear. I hated it. But there it was.
I sat with that for a bit.
I realized I got to feel and think my way through that with a friend on my side. That was a really good feeling. **Thank you, Tippalan.**
**Just doing my job,** I could hear the grin in her voice.
-*-
“Okay, what did we learn?” I asked Tillean.
She sighed “There’s a build-up of some sort of temporal potential energy. I missed the potential for this effect when we came up with the methodology. I’m sorry.”
“Tillean, how many of these things have been encountered before?” I asked
“None that I’m aware of.”
“Yeah. We’re learning as we go here. That’s why the Federation builds ships like this. Your work here will smooth the path for people coming behind us.”
She smiled wanly “I put the ship in danger.”
“Nope. You came up with the idea. Executing it was my call. And it still is. I’d like you to take a couple of days to review the sensor data. And then, if it’s safe enough, we’ll get the next layer.” We took a risk, but it worked out. We already know this thing is a danger to navigation. So, if we can, I’d like to resolve it.”
“Aye, Sir.”
-*-
We approached the edge of the bubble. This time we knew more about what we were doing. Shields were up, and our course allowed a stronger turn away at the end.
We fired our main deflector into the bubble. It came down with less lightning and less disturbance this time.
-*-
“Captain,” Varupuchu said. “I am reading a ship. Not in the current outer layer, but one more layer in.”
“Oh, hell,” I said.
Tillean said, “The time dilation effect is staying consistent. As each later becomes the outer layer, it’s slowing time like the older layer did.”
“So each time we remove a layer, the new layer is running at one second inside to five hours outside?”
“Yes, that means the effect at the center of the distortion is losing power, I think.”
“Okay, what will the effect of popping the bubble be on the ship in there?”
“It should be about the same as for us.”
“Okay,” I said, “Let’s reset for another pass.”
-*-
With a much weaker lightning storm, the next bubble came down, leaving a scout in the middle of an emergency turn.
It looked swoopy. The tech was old-fashioned by our standards, but well done. We read thirty-six people aboard. The ship was an arrowhead shape with a warp nacelle embedded in the wing on either side.
As the ship whipped around and burned at full impulse away from the anomaly, it hailed us.
“Greetings, strangers. We’re explorers. We’re not looking for trouble. This is the scout Rebkali.”
Our systems said the language and subspace coding was ancient Lefyt. “Get Lt Kat-oh-lo and Lotara up here, please,” I said to Li’ira.
Then I answered the hail, “Greetings, Rebkali. I am Captain Jay Hailey of the Federation Starship Omoikane. The United Federation of Planets is an ally of the Lefyt Colonies.”
The screen cleared to show Lefyt people. Their skin was that nice golden orion color. Their hair was lustrous and a little longer than we usually wore ours. Their uniforms looked like soft brown chamois leather.
“I’m Captain Zerkaran. This alliance you claim is new to me.”
“There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that we were able to free you from a temporal distortion. The bad news is that you’ve been stuck in a temporal distortion. If you’ll give us your ship’s current date, we’ll try to figure out how long you’ve been in there.”
Captain Zerkaran gave me a disbelieving look. I sympathized. I felt the same way when the Harrier exited our own temporal distortion. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I confirm what you’re saying independently?”
“Not all.”
“May we scan your ship?”
“Certainly.”
Kat-oh-lo and Lotara came onto the bridge.
“Oh, wow,” Katolo said.
“Identify yourself, Warrior,” Zerkaran said
“Lt. Kat-Oh-Lo, Lefyt Colonial Warriors,” Kat-Oh-Lo said, “I graduated in year 472. It’s now year 478.”
“It’s year 277,” Zerkaran said.
Kat-oh-lo grimaced “You’ve been in a time warp for two hundred years.”
Zerkaran stared at us for a little bit. Then he asked, “How’d the Damyip war turn out?”
Kat-oh-lo said, “We lost. But things got better. It’s a complicated story. The important thing is to get you and your crew home in one piece.”
Zerkaran said, “I’d like to come meet you, Lieutenant. Face to face.”
Kat-oh-lo looked at me, I turned to Zerkaran, “Sure. You and your crew are welcome to come aboard and get to see us. “
I highlighted a location about five hundred thousand kilometers away from the anomaly. “Please come alongside us there, and signal when ready. We’ll bring you aboard.”
-*-
The transporter sparkled Captain Zekaran and two of his officers into existence.
They stared for a moment in shock.
“How… how did you do that?”
“Welcome aboard the USS Omoikane, I’m Jay Hailey, the Captain, This is the First Officer Li’ira O’Keefe, This is Lieutenant Kat-oh-lo and Lotara, an allied representative.”
Kat-oh-lo gave me a look.
Lotara smiled “We’re pleased to meet you.”
“Your people are … colorful.”
“That makes it more fun,” I said.
“I’m Captain Zekaran, this Lieutenant Peggera and Lieutenant Makolo. How did you bring us aboard like that?”
“It’s a technology we call a transporter. It has other names as well. It comes in handy.”
“And the Lefyt colonies have this technology as well?”
“They do, although it’s not evenly spread yet. We’re working on that.”
“You claim we lost the war against the Damyip.”
“Let’s table that for now and show you the rest of the ship. That will lend more credibility to our claims.”
“What planets are you all from?” Makolo asked
We left the transporter room and toured the ship. The Lefyt crew was suitably impressed. The Omoikane was designed for long cruises.
We chatted amiably about our worlds of origin. When we encountered one of the crew I drafted them into the story of the Federation and what we are about.
-*-
We were in a small conference room showing the Lefyt how much fun a replicator is.
Lotara said, “Captain Zekaran. I should tell you. I am a Damyip.”
The three Lefyt guests stopped and looked at her. Peggera looked her up and down “They’re definitely building them differently.”
“Thank you,” Lotara said.
Makolo pulled a scanner off her belt. It was chunky. She scanned Lotara.
I said, “It’s customary to ask permission before you scan someone.”
“If what you’re saying is true, this is a machine,” Zekaran said
Makolo showed her scan to Zekaran “It’s true. This woman is a machine.”
Zekaran said, “Please explain what’s going on here.”
“In our culture, we have artificial people,” I said “The Damyip count.”
“She’s my co-worker. My shipmate.” Kat-oh-lo said
“This … machine.” Rekaran all but spit.
“The Damyip and the Lefyt are allies now,” I said “It’s a beneficial relationship.”
“How beneficial do you mean?” Makolo glanced at Lotara meaningfully. She was insinuating something prurient.
“If they all look like that, I could do with some benefits,” Peggera leered.
“People, please, let’s focus here,” I said “You have a difficult adjustment to make.”
Zekaran glared at me. “You tell me that generations on my homeworld have passed and that my worst enemies are now allies? And you want me to adjust to this?”
“I’m very sorry. There’s nothing else to do.”
“Is there no way to get us back to our own time? To where we belong?”
I shook my head “No. The laws of physics are arranged against you, there.”
Peggera sobered briefly “Zekaran, we knew there was a chance we wouldn’t make it home when we left. We controlled for all the risks we could, but we still knew it was a risk when we climbed into the Rebkali.”
“I didn’t think it would end up like this,” Zekaran said.
“We never do,” I said.
Zekaran looked at me but refused the empathy, “What’s the next step?”
“I’m not familiar with your ship. How long do you think it’ll take you to get back to the Lefyt Colonies from here?”
“If we traveled straight back, I figure about 28 months.”
I blinked “Excuse me, is there a translator issue? More than two years?”
“Yes. We’re pretty far out on the frontier.”
“You can come back with us, if you like. It’ll take us about 21 days, more or less, depending on what we encounter.”
Zekaran and his people looked at me.
“We have better warp drives,” I said.
“At those speeds, I bet you don’t even use hibernation,” Peggera said.
“Not usually,” I said.
Zekaran said, “Let me think about it.”
“Alright. We’re going to finish repairing this time distortion. It’s a hazard.”
“Would you mind if I stayed aboard?” Peggera asked, “Just for the science.” He was leering at Lotara.
Makolo glared at him.
Zekaran had a good poker face, “If it’s alright with Captain JayHailey.”
I stared at Peggera. He was an odd, odd man.
“One condition,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“You don’t get to touch Lotara while both of you are on my ship.”
Peggera grinned at me. Li’ira gave me a look. Lotara looked a little confused. Kat-oh-lo laughed.
Lotara said, “Captain, there are regulations governing…”
I cut her off. “I have discretion regarding the crew's safety or effective mission completion. Lt. Peggera’s attitude poses a danger.”
That got another stifled laugh from Kat-oh-lo and a smile from both Zekaran and Mokolo. Surprisingly, Peggera smiled, too.
“I accept your condition,” He said, reaching across the table for a hearty handshake.
I shook his hand.
-*-
We beamed Zekaran and Makolo back to the Rebkali and began our process of resetting our tachyon key.
-*-
Li’ira pulled me into my ready room. “I want to understand your decision there.”
“What, telling Peggera to keep his paws off Lotara?”
“Yes.”
I took a breath to frame my thoughts, and whatever I was thinking fell to pieces in my mind.
“I… It was an instinctual thing.”
“Not only do you not have to protect Lotara’s honor, but you’re off base for trying to,” Li’ira said. “Lotara’s a big girl and can handle her own consent issues. Our job is to help her enforce her boundaries if she requests the backup.”
“I… I … I just didn’t like how he looked at her,” I mumbled.
“I know. I didn’t either. It’s not our job to enforce our mores on people. Lotara could see what he was up to. How she approaches the situation is for her, not you.”
“Half the quadrant could see what he was up to. It felt predatory. It felt wrong.”
“It’s not your call to make.”
I kind of waved my hands and tried to come up with something better to say.
The doorbell to my ready room rang.
Li’ira and I took a deep breath to reset. “Come,” I said
Lotara came in.
“Hi, Lotara,” I said.
“I would like to address something sensitive with you, Captain.”
Li’ira and I shared a look.
“I’ll check on the bridge,” Li’ira said
“Actually, please stay,” I said, “I appreciate your insight here.”
“I am fine if you’re part of this conversation, Commander,” Lotara said.
“What do you have to say, Lotara?”
“I appreciate the defensive tone you struck for me. It indicates that we have socially bonded and that you consider me one of your people,” Lotara said.
“Thank you,” I said
“But…” Li’ira said
“Mister Peggera was titillated by the concept of a Damyip he found attractive. His motives were prurient and self-centered. Perhaps there was some spite there, as well. Perhaps he found the notion of ravishing a Damyip as opposed to just shooting one to be amusing.”
“I found his thought process objectionable,” I said.
“In protecting me, you have also robbed me of a route of approach to the crew of the Rebkali.”
“You… You viewed the possibility of sex with Peggera as a chance to … bond with that crew?”
“That would be an ideal outcome. If I can access Mister Peggera’s emotions correctly, I can try to make him an ally. This might lead to a beneficial relationship with the Rebkali crew.”
I blew some air out past my teeth “So you’re saying, by instinctively trying to protect you from him being a sexual predator, I robbed you of a chance to manipulate him sexually?”
“Crudely put, but not inaccurate. Ideally, things will work out in a beneficial way for all involved.”
I looked at Lotara. The Damyip weren’t humans.
Li’ira said, “If things don’t work out ideally, you risk poisoning their relationship with us.”
Lotara looked thoughtful “It’s a difficult calculation. I need to try to assure that the Rebkali crew doesn’t try to form an anti-Damyip resistance once they return to the Lefyt system.”
“Their scout can’t pose much threat,” I said.
“Their current weak military potential is not at issue. Culturally, they are harshly anti-Damyip. They may try to rally modern Lefyt people to an Anti-Damyip movement. They can try to harken back to a golden age.”
I gritted my teeth “Lotara, I was out of line issuing orders about what you do with your genitals. I won’t interfere, consistent with regulations. But I’d like to advise you to take things more slowly and build up more of a relationship. I agree with Li’ira. Things can easily spin out of control when sex gets involved.”
“Thank you, Captain. I’ll proceed, bearing your preferences in mind.”
She smiled and left my ready-room.
Li’ira and I looked at each other.
“Suddenly, time warps seem simpler,” I said
“Indeed,” Li’ira said.
**How do I apologize to the crew for panicking at them?** I asked.
**An emotional reaction isn’t a sin to atone for,** Tippalan said.
**Losing control is.**
**You did not lose control. You were closer to losing control than you like. I sympathize with that. To me it seems as if you did the right things in the right order, if a little too intensely.**
**I yelled.**
**You thought we were in danger.**
**We’ve been in danger before.**
**Danger we could control. Danger we had a hand in and influence over. You did not like the incident with the Rishan mine.**
**I thought we were going to die. I couldn’t figure out how to avoid it. Myself, my crew, my friends. All dead because I couldn’t think of a clever way to cheat death.**
**That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself.**
**I think it comes with a starship.**
**It comes from reading too much about Captain Kirk.**
**He’d have figured a way out of the Rishan bubble. He wouldn’t have put his ship and his crew at risk like I just did.**
**Jay, Captain Kirk wound up at Starbase 600 just like you did.** She showed me a picture of his Enterprise. It was bent. Some enormous force bent the ship like a giant pipe bender. She was curved like a large macaroni.
**Ew!** I said. They were very lucky the power system didn’t come apart and try to flood them with engine plasma.
**Scotty kept the ship from exploding when someone else might have lost her. Kirk has a team of great people around him. So do you.**
**I… I don’t feel like I’m good enough. I don’t feel like I can keep them safe.**
Images of the crew people who’d been injured under my command flooded my mind. They all felt like personal failures to me.
**If you want, you can quit,** Tippalan said
I blinked. I could. I could turn towards New Canada. Hand over the keys. I could go back to Earth. I could sit on Redondo Beach. I’d never get anyone injured or killed, or temporally displaced again.
But that was another kind of failure. That would be turning away from the things that were out here. New things. Weird things. Dangerous things. Someone else would be in this ship, or another one. Other people would be facing the dangers.
I was caught between two failure states. Get everyone killed or flee like a coward from the very thing I’d worked my whole life to get to.
**How well do you trust your crew?** Tippalan asked me
I trusted them absolutely.
I discovered I was as mad as hell at Tillean for not foreseeing the chroniton lighting storm that accompanied the collapse of the distortion bubble.
As soon as I framed the thought, I knew it was stupid. The emotion dispersed and drifted away. As soon as that happened, I realized I was reacting from fear. I hated it. But there it was.
I sat with that for a bit.
I realized I got to feel and think my way through that with a friend on my side. That was a really good feeling. **Thank you, Tippalan.**
**Just doing my job,** I could hear the grin in her voice.
-*-
“Okay, what did we learn?” I asked Tillean.
She sighed “There’s a build-up of some sort of temporal potential energy. I missed the potential for this effect when we came up with the methodology. I’m sorry.”
“Tillean, how many of these things have been encountered before?” I asked
“None that I’m aware of.”
“Yeah. We’re learning as we go here. That’s why the Federation builds ships like this. Your work here will smooth the path for people coming behind us.”
She smiled wanly “I put the ship in danger.”
“Nope. You came up with the idea. Executing it was my call. And it still is. I’d like you to take a couple of days to review the sensor data. And then, if it’s safe enough, we’ll get the next layer.” We took a risk, but it worked out. We already know this thing is a danger to navigation. So, if we can, I’d like to resolve it.”
“Aye, Sir.”
-*-
We approached the edge of the bubble. This time we knew more about what we were doing. Shields were up, and our course allowed a stronger turn away at the end.
We fired our main deflector into the bubble. It came down with less lightning and less disturbance this time.
-*-
“Captain,” Varupuchu said. “I am reading a ship. Not in the current outer layer, but one more layer in.”
“Oh, hell,” I said.
Tillean said, “The time dilation effect is staying consistent. As each later becomes the outer layer, it’s slowing time like the older layer did.”
“So each time we remove a layer, the new layer is running at one second inside to five hours outside?”
“Yes, that means the effect at the center of the distortion is losing power, I think.”
“Okay, what will the effect of popping the bubble be on the ship in there?”
“It should be about the same as for us.”
“Okay,” I said, “Let’s reset for another pass.”
-*-
With a much weaker lightning storm, the next bubble came down, leaving a scout in the middle of an emergency turn.
It looked swoopy. The tech was old-fashioned by our standards, but well done. We read thirty-six people aboard. The ship was an arrowhead shape with a warp nacelle embedded in the wing on either side.
As the ship whipped around and burned at full impulse away from the anomaly, it hailed us.
“Greetings, strangers. We’re explorers. We’re not looking for trouble. This is the scout Rebkali.”
Our systems said the language and subspace coding was ancient Lefyt. “Get Lt Kat-oh-lo and Lotara up here, please,” I said to Li’ira.
Then I answered the hail, “Greetings, Rebkali. I am Captain Jay Hailey of the Federation Starship Omoikane. The United Federation of Planets is an ally of the Lefyt Colonies.”
The screen cleared to show Lefyt people. Their skin was that nice golden orion color. Their hair was lustrous and a little longer than we usually wore ours. Their uniforms looked like soft brown chamois leather.
“I’m Captain Zerkaran. This alliance you claim is new to me.”
“There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that we were able to free you from a temporal distortion. The bad news is that you’ve been stuck in a temporal distortion. If you’ll give us your ship’s current date, we’ll try to figure out how long you’ve been in there.”
Captain Zerkaran gave me a disbelieving look. I sympathized. I felt the same way when the Harrier exited our own temporal distortion. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I confirm what you’re saying independently?”
“Not all.”
“May we scan your ship?”
“Certainly.”
Kat-oh-lo and Lotara came onto the bridge.
“Oh, wow,” Katolo said.
“Identify yourself, Warrior,” Zerkaran said
“Lt. Kat-Oh-Lo, Lefyt Colonial Warriors,” Kat-Oh-Lo said, “I graduated in year 472. It’s now year 478.”
“It’s year 277,” Zerkaran said.
Kat-oh-lo grimaced “You’ve been in a time warp for two hundred years.”
Zerkaran stared at us for a little bit. Then he asked, “How’d the Damyip war turn out?”
Kat-oh-lo said, “We lost. But things got better. It’s a complicated story. The important thing is to get you and your crew home in one piece.”
Zerkaran said, “I’d like to come meet you, Lieutenant. Face to face.”
Kat-oh-lo looked at me, I turned to Zerkaran, “Sure. You and your crew are welcome to come aboard and get to see us. “
I highlighted a location about five hundred thousand kilometers away from the anomaly. “Please come alongside us there, and signal when ready. We’ll bring you aboard.”
-*-
The transporter sparkled Captain Zekaran and two of his officers into existence.
They stared for a moment in shock.
“How… how did you do that?”
“Welcome aboard the USS Omoikane, I’m Jay Hailey, the Captain, This is the First Officer Li’ira O’Keefe, This is Lieutenant Kat-oh-lo and Lotara, an allied representative.”
Kat-oh-lo gave me a look.
Lotara smiled “We’re pleased to meet you.”
“Your people are … colorful.”
“That makes it more fun,” I said.
“I’m Captain Zekaran, this Lieutenant Peggera and Lieutenant Makolo. How did you bring us aboard like that?”
“It’s a technology we call a transporter. It has other names as well. It comes in handy.”
“And the Lefyt colonies have this technology as well?”
“They do, although it’s not evenly spread yet. We’re working on that.”
“You claim we lost the war against the Damyip.”
“Let’s table that for now and show you the rest of the ship. That will lend more credibility to our claims.”
“What planets are you all from?” Makolo asked
We left the transporter room and toured the ship. The Lefyt crew was suitably impressed. The Omoikane was designed for long cruises.
We chatted amiably about our worlds of origin. When we encountered one of the crew I drafted them into the story of the Federation and what we are about.
-*-
We were in a small conference room showing the Lefyt how much fun a replicator is.
Lotara said, “Captain Zekaran. I should tell you. I am a Damyip.”
The three Lefyt guests stopped and looked at her. Peggera looked her up and down “They’re definitely building them differently.”
“Thank you,” Lotara said.
Makolo pulled a scanner off her belt. It was chunky. She scanned Lotara.
I said, “It’s customary to ask permission before you scan someone.”
“If what you’re saying is true, this is a machine,” Zekaran said
Makolo showed her scan to Zekaran “It’s true. This woman is a machine.”
Zekaran said, “Please explain what’s going on here.”
“In our culture, we have artificial people,” I said “The Damyip count.”
“She’s my co-worker. My shipmate.” Kat-oh-lo said
“This … machine.” Rekaran all but spit.
“The Damyip and the Lefyt are allies now,” I said “It’s a beneficial relationship.”
“How beneficial do you mean?” Makolo glanced at Lotara meaningfully. She was insinuating something prurient.
“If they all look like that, I could do with some benefits,” Peggera leered.
“People, please, let’s focus here,” I said “You have a difficult adjustment to make.”
Zekaran glared at me. “You tell me that generations on my homeworld have passed and that my worst enemies are now allies? And you want me to adjust to this?”
“I’m very sorry. There’s nothing else to do.”
“Is there no way to get us back to our own time? To where we belong?”
I shook my head “No. The laws of physics are arranged against you, there.”
Peggera sobered briefly “Zekaran, we knew there was a chance we wouldn’t make it home when we left. We controlled for all the risks we could, but we still knew it was a risk when we climbed into the Rebkali.”
“I didn’t think it would end up like this,” Zekaran said.
“We never do,” I said.
Zekaran looked at me but refused the empathy, “What’s the next step?”
“I’m not familiar with your ship. How long do you think it’ll take you to get back to the Lefyt Colonies from here?”
“If we traveled straight back, I figure about 28 months.”
I blinked “Excuse me, is there a translator issue? More than two years?”
“Yes. We’re pretty far out on the frontier.”
“You can come back with us, if you like. It’ll take us about 21 days, more or less, depending on what we encounter.”
Zekaran and his people looked at me.
“We have better warp drives,” I said.
“At those speeds, I bet you don’t even use hibernation,” Peggera said.
“Not usually,” I said.
Zekaran said, “Let me think about it.”
“Alright. We’re going to finish repairing this time distortion. It’s a hazard.”
“Would you mind if I stayed aboard?” Peggera asked, “Just for the science.” He was leering at Lotara.
Makolo glared at him.
Zekaran had a good poker face, “If it’s alright with Captain JayHailey.”
I stared at Peggera. He was an odd, odd man.
“One condition,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“You don’t get to touch Lotara while both of you are on my ship.”
Peggera grinned at me. Li’ira gave me a look. Lotara looked a little confused. Kat-oh-lo laughed.
Lotara said, “Captain, there are regulations governing…”
I cut her off. “I have discretion regarding the crew's safety or effective mission completion. Lt. Peggera’s attitude poses a danger.”
That got another stifled laugh from Kat-oh-lo and a smile from both Zekaran and Mokolo. Surprisingly, Peggera smiled, too.
“I accept your condition,” He said, reaching across the table for a hearty handshake.
I shook his hand.
-*-
We beamed Zekaran and Makolo back to the Rebkali and began our process of resetting our tachyon key.
-*-
Li’ira pulled me into my ready room. “I want to understand your decision there.”
“What, telling Peggera to keep his paws off Lotara?”
“Yes.”
I took a breath to frame my thoughts, and whatever I was thinking fell to pieces in my mind.
“I… It was an instinctual thing.”
“Not only do you not have to protect Lotara’s honor, but you’re off base for trying to,” Li’ira said. “Lotara’s a big girl and can handle her own consent issues. Our job is to help her enforce her boundaries if she requests the backup.”
“I… I … I just didn’t like how he looked at her,” I mumbled.
“I know. I didn’t either. It’s not our job to enforce our mores on people. Lotara could see what he was up to. How she approaches the situation is for her, not you.”
“Half the quadrant could see what he was up to. It felt predatory. It felt wrong.”
“It’s not your call to make.”
I kind of waved my hands and tried to come up with something better to say.
The doorbell to my ready room rang.
Li’ira and I took a deep breath to reset. “Come,” I said
Lotara came in.
“Hi, Lotara,” I said.
“I would like to address something sensitive with you, Captain.”
Li’ira and I shared a look.
“I’ll check on the bridge,” Li’ira said
“Actually, please stay,” I said, “I appreciate your insight here.”
“I am fine if you’re part of this conversation, Commander,” Lotara said.
“What do you have to say, Lotara?”
“I appreciate the defensive tone you struck for me. It indicates that we have socially bonded and that you consider me one of your people,” Lotara said.
“Thank you,” I said
“But…” Li’ira said
“Mister Peggera was titillated by the concept of a Damyip he found attractive. His motives were prurient and self-centered. Perhaps there was some spite there, as well. Perhaps he found the notion of ravishing a Damyip as opposed to just shooting one to be amusing.”
“I found his thought process objectionable,” I said.
“In protecting me, you have also robbed me of a route of approach to the crew of the Rebkali.”
“You… You viewed the possibility of sex with Peggera as a chance to … bond with that crew?”
“That would be an ideal outcome. If I can access Mister Peggera’s emotions correctly, I can try to make him an ally. This might lead to a beneficial relationship with the Rebkali crew.”
I blew some air out past my teeth “So you’re saying, by instinctively trying to protect you from him being a sexual predator, I robbed you of a chance to manipulate him sexually?”
“Crudely put, but not inaccurate. Ideally, things will work out in a beneficial way for all involved.”
I looked at Lotara. The Damyip weren’t humans.
Li’ira said, “If things don’t work out ideally, you risk poisoning their relationship with us.”
Lotara looked thoughtful “It’s a difficult calculation. I need to try to assure that the Rebkali crew doesn’t try to form an anti-Damyip resistance once they return to the Lefyt system.”
“Their scout can’t pose much threat,” I said.
“Their current weak military potential is not at issue. Culturally, they are harshly anti-Damyip. They may try to rally modern Lefyt people to an Anti-Damyip movement. They can try to harken back to a golden age.”
I gritted my teeth “Lotara, I was out of line issuing orders about what you do with your genitals. I won’t interfere, consistent with regulations. But I’d like to advise you to take things more slowly and build up more of a relationship. I agree with Li’ira. Things can easily spin out of control when sex gets involved.”
“Thank you, Captain. I’ll proceed, bearing your preferences in mind.”
She smiled and left my ready-room.
Li’ira and I looked at each other.
“Suddenly, time warps seem simpler,” I said
“Indeed,” Li’ira said.
- jayphailey
- Posts: 1125
- Joined: Tue May 29, 2018 7:50 pm
Omoikane 55 - Onion Core
Omoikane 55 - Onion Core
The Last time distortion bubble collapsed, leaving a ship. Its hull was hot and radiation-damaged.
The ship was a complicated cigar shape with two rings around it—one on its X-axis, top to bottom, and one on its Y-axis, front to back.
I blinked at it, and suddenly, it hit me: “That’s an Einstein-Rosen Bridge maker.” Two warp drives turned on perpendicular to each other. It was a thought experiment in Starfleet Academy. We all thought it would explode in my warp drive engineering classes.
The ship hailed us, “Unknown ship, please identify yourself.”
Our computer said the language was the Second El-Aurian Empire.
I answered, “This is the Federation Starship Omoikane, do you need assistance?”
“No… - yes, yes we do. The phenomenon we encountered damaged our external sensors. We’re lost.”
“I understand. I think we’ll be able to help you out with that. How many people are aboard your ship?”
“We’re a scientific research ship. 32 crew, and 17 researchers.”
“Your drive is in a strange configuration. May I ask that you leave it powered down for now?”
“It’s a…. High energy physics experiment. And yes, the equipment is powered down.”
“Alright, do you need help stabilizing your ship?”
“Not at this time. I may have to ask for help restoring navigational sensors and locating us.”
“We’re standing by.”
“Can you tell us the status of the local primary? From our point of view, it looked like it exploded.”
“It’s a stable type M red dwarf. No signs of any explosion. We’re safe here.”
“Thank you. We’ll get back to you soon.”
“Let us know how we can help.”
“Will do, Omoikane. Red-Seven-Five-Nine out.”
-*-
We approached to transporter range. The details of the ship were consistent with what we knew of El-Aurian ships. No writing or signage survived the damage to their hull, but the windows and hatches were round numbers in the classical El-Aurian measurement system. The length of the vessel, and dimensions of the warp-rings were all consistent with the El-Aurian Second Empire measuring system.
I wasn’t looking forward to giving them the news.
The Second El-Aurian Empire ended more than a thousand years ago.
-*-
The screen showed us the bridge of the El-Aurian vessel. It was ergonomically pleasing, done in pastels and earth tones. They had plants. To one side of the El-Aurian bridge was a large station that looked sort of like a science station and some kind of engineering station.
The crew were all El-Aurians. They looked human. Their uniform was some sort of body suit, with a black center and colored sides, I guessed different colors marked different branches. They had a complex device bracelet. I couldn’t read their rank markings at all.
The Captain was a tall man with a neatly trimmed beard. He blinked at us “A Green Orion? On a starship?”
“Sir, I’m Captain Jay Hailey of the starship Omoikane. We represent the United Federation of Planets.”
Another man yelled, “What year is it?”
“I’m sorry, researching a proper answer will take some time. But I can tell you that you’ve suffered some temporal displacement.”
The tall El-Aurian Captain looked angry “How much temporal displacement?”
“Something in the vicinity of a thousand years.”
The El-Aurian Captain got really angry. He snarled at the man off-screen “Leelo! What’s your plan for fixing this?”
“Whoa, whoa whoa!” I yelled, “Before you do anything rash, talk to us. This can get so much worse.”
“How can this get worse?” The El-Aurian Captain yelled.
The screen added a split screen. Zekaran, the Lefyt scout commander, joined our conversation. “Yes. Tell us. How can this get worse?”
I struggled for a few moments and then went with the truth. “See these two rings on this ship? That’s two warp drives in a perpendicular arrangement. The warp drives … fight each other, and, in so doing, open an Einstien-Rosen bridge. In theory, this can open a tunnel to other spaces and times. We always thought this arrangement would explode.
This ship is an attempted time machine. It’s a bad one. It’s suicide.”
The El-Aurian Captain said, “Captain JayHailey, I have a family. I have children.”
“What do you know about time machines?” Leelo shoved his way next to the Captain “Do you know how to stabilize the temporal wormhole?”
“I know the universe hates them and will screw you for trying it. Please, believe me, we almost got trapped in a collapsing micro-universe when we fucked with one of those.”
“I thought it was Rishan mine, Captain?”
“Not that collapsing micro-universe, the one before!”
Zekaran and the El-Aurian Captain stared at me.
“We didn’t even know until we destroyed the attempted time machine,” I said “Time machines damage causality, and the universe hates that. It’ll do strange things to avoid a paradox. Time is plastic and can be pushed, molded, and altered somewhat. But if you try to alter it too much, the universe will balance the equations by spinning you off into your own special little hell until you’re cured of paradoxes. We were lucky to get out of it alive. Time Machines are not worth it!”
“Easy for you to say,” The El-Aurian Captain said “I’ve just been told I’ve lost everything.”
“I’m the third Jay P. Hailey!” I bellowed “I got bounced 20 years into the future to find my life had already been lived by another me! And they were ready for me because there was already another duplicate of me and my crew! Heroes of the Federation and all sorts of people dumped out by weird time-bullshit! There’s THREE MORE OF ME BEHIND ME! Tell me I don’t know about time distortion BULLSHIT!”
“I had to fight the time ghost of a psychopath in my own goddamned engineering compartment to kill the last time machine I let on my ship!
“Do you know why the star exploded at you? Every time you weren’t cured of the potential for a paradox, that damned thing added another layer! We had to peel you out of a dozen layers of temporal distortion! That was normal light of that small, dim star accelerated by millions of seconds of time distortion! Once it vaporized you, I’m sure the distortion would have faded away! Clouds of plasma can’t fuck with the time stream!”
“Don’t believe me! Go ahead and patch that shit back together and try it again!
“Or, or, just maybe, you can try to do what we did, which was adapt to being in a new time and space. Mourn your losses, and then find something new to do with yourself. No, it’s not easy, but it’s better than whatever creative bullshit the universe is going to invent to fuck the paradox out of you!”
I stopped. I took a deep breath. Yelling at people was terrible diplomacy.
To the captain of the El-Aurian ship I said “Sir, what is your name?”
He answered me slowly, as if measuring what he wanted to say against “Go fuck yourself” and finding the balance very close. “I am Captain Dahlald Lorra.”
“Captain Lorra. There are still El-Aurians. They’re members of the Federation. You have a lot to tell them. You have a lot to tell us. You can build a new life. I know it, first hand. We have mechanisms to help.”
“Captain Zekaran, The Lefyt Colonies exist, and they could use you. You and your crew are valuable, not just as living history, but as a repository of a set of skills and knowledge that may well have been lost.
“If you try to fix this with time travel, you’re throwing away your lives. Please stay with us.”
Lorra looked grim “Your appeal is emotional. Do you have facts to back it up?”
I hesitated, “I have the math, but I don’t know how much I’m allowed to share with you. Also, we’d have to translate between our respective systems. But I’ll take a run at it, if you like.”
“Our outer hull has been cooked pretty badly. Can you help us regain our sensor capacity?”
“We can try. We are certainly willing.”
“Alright, while my crew works on that, You can try to persuade Leelo and I.”
“Reasonable,” I said
“I’d like to send someone to see that, as well.” ZeKaran said.
“Sure. I’m going to have to try and teach them advanced math, so someone with skill and interest in that would work best.
“Can you be ready to start in 4 hours?”
“No. But we’ll start then, anyway.”
He blinked “Alright then.”
The Last time distortion bubble collapsed, leaving a ship. Its hull was hot and radiation-damaged.
The ship was a complicated cigar shape with two rings around it—one on its X-axis, top to bottom, and one on its Y-axis, front to back.
I blinked at it, and suddenly, it hit me: “That’s an Einstein-Rosen Bridge maker.” Two warp drives turned on perpendicular to each other. It was a thought experiment in Starfleet Academy. We all thought it would explode in my warp drive engineering classes.
The ship hailed us, “Unknown ship, please identify yourself.”
Our computer said the language was the Second El-Aurian Empire.
I answered, “This is the Federation Starship Omoikane, do you need assistance?”
“No… - yes, yes we do. The phenomenon we encountered damaged our external sensors. We’re lost.”
“I understand. I think we’ll be able to help you out with that. How many people are aboard your ship?”
“We’re a scientific research ship. 32 crew, and 17 researchers.”
“Your drive is in a strange configuration. May I ask that you leave it powered down for now?”
“It’s a…. High energy physics experiment. And yes, the equipment is powered down.”
“Alright, do you need help stabilizing your ship?”
“Not at this time. I may have to ask for help restoring navigational sensors and locating us.”
“We’re standing by.”
“Can you tell us the status of the local primary? From our point of view, it looked like it exploded.”
“It’s a stable type M red dwarf. No signs of any explosion. We’re safe here.”
“Thank you. We’ll get back to you soon.”
“Let us know how we can help.”
“Will do, Omoikane. Red-Seven-Five-Nine out.”
-*-
We approached to transporter range. The details of the ship were consistent with what we knew of El-Aurian ships. No writing or signage survived the damage to their hull, but the windows and hatches were round numbers in the classical El-Aurian measurement system. The length of the vessel, and dimensions of the warp-rings were all consistent with the El-Aurian Second Empire measuring system.
I wasn’t looking forward to giving them the news.
The Second El-Aurian Empire ended more than a thousand years ago.
-*-
The screen showed us the bridge of the El-Aurian vessel. It was ergonomically pleasing, done in pastels and earth tones. They had plants. To one side of the El-Aurian bridge was a large station that looked sort of like a science station and some kind of engineering station.
The crew were all El-Aurians. They looked human. Their uniform was some sort of body suit, with a black center and colored sides, I guessed different colors marked different branches. They had a complex device bracelet. I couldn’t read their rank markings at all.
The Captain was a tall man with a neatly trimmed beard. He blinked at us “A Green Orion? On a starship?”
“Sir, I’m Captain Jay Hailey of the starship Omoikane. We represent the United Federation of Planets.”
Another man yelled, “What year is it?”
“I’m sorry, researching a proper answer will take some time. But I can tell you that you’ve suffered some temporal displacement.”
The tall El-Aurian Captain looked angry “How much temporal displacement?”
“Something in the vicinity of a thousand years.”
The El-Aurian Captain got really angry. He snarled at the man off-screen “Leelo! What’s your plan for fixing this?”
“Whoa, whoa whoa!” I yelled, “Before you do anything rash, talk to us. This can get so much worse.”
“How can this get worse?” The El-Aurian Captain yelled.
The screen added a split screen. Zekaran, the Lefyt scout commander, joined our conversation. “Yes. Tell us. How can this get worse?”
I struggled for a few moments and then went with the truth. “See these two rings on this ship? That’s two warp drives in a perpendicular arrangement. The warp drives … fight each other, and, in so doing, open an Einstien-Rosen bridge. In theory, this can open a tunnel to other spaces and times. We always thought this arrangement would explode.
This ship is an attempted time machine. It’s a bad one. It’s suicide.”
The El-Aurian Captain said, “Captain JayHailey, I have a family. I have children.”
“What do you know about time machines?” Leelo shoved his way next to the Captain “Do you know how to stabilize the temporal wormhole?”
“I know the universe hates them and will screw you for trying it. Please, believe me, we almost got trapped in a collapsing micro-universe when we fucked with one of those.”
“I thought it was Rishan mine, Captain?”
“Not that collapsing micro-universe, the one before!”
Zekaran and the El-Aurian Captain stared at me.
“We didn’t even know until we destroyed the attempted time machine,” I said “Time machines damage causality, and the universe hates that. It’ll do strange things to avoid a paradox. Time is plastic and can be pushed, molded, and altered somewhat. But if you try to alter it too much, the universe will balance the equations by spinning you off into your own special little hell until you’re cured of paradoxes. We were lucky to get out of it alive. Time Machines are not worth it!”
“Easy for you to say,” The El-Aurian Captain said “I’ve just been told I’ve lost everything.”
“I’m the third Jay P. Hailey!” I bellowed “I got bounced 20 years into the future to find my life had already been lived by another me! And they were ready for me because there was already another duplicate of me and my crew! Heroes of the Federation and all sorts of people dumped out by weird time-bullshit! There’s THREE MORE OF ME BEHIND ME! Tell me I don’t know about time distortion BULLSHIT!”
“I had to fight the time ghost of a psychopath in my own goddamned engineering compartment to kill the last time machine I let on my ship!
“Do you know why the star exploded at you? Every time you weren’t cured of the potential for a paradox, that damned thing added another layer! We had to peel you out of a dozen layers of temporal distortion! That was normal light of that small, dim star accelerated by millions of seconds of time distortion! Once it vaporized you, I’m sure the distortion would have faded away! Clouds of plasma can’t fuck with the time stream!”
“Don’t believe me! Go ahead and patch that shit back together and try it again!
“Or, or, just maybe, you can try to do what we did, which was adapt to being in a new time and space. Mourn your losses, and then find something new to do with yourself. No, it’s not easy, but it’s better than whatever creative bullshit the universe is going to invent to fuck the paradox out of you!”
I stopped. I took a deep breath. Yelling at people was terrible diplomacy.
To the captain of the El-Aurian ship I said “Sir, what is your name?”
He answered me slowly, as if measuring what he wanted to say against “Go fuck yourself” and finding the balance very close. “I am Captain Dahlald Lorra.”
“Captain Lorra. There are still El-Aurians. They’re members of the Federation. You have a lot to tell them. You have a lot to tell us. You can build a new life. I know it, first hand. We have mechanisms to help.”
“Captain Zekaran, The Lefyt Colonies exist, and they could use you. You and your crew are valuable, not just as living history, but as a repository of a set of skills and knowledge that may well have been lost.
“If you try to fix this with time travel, you’re throwing away your lives. Please stay with us.”
Lorra looked grim “Your appeal is emotional. Do you have facts to back it up?”
I hesitated, “I have the math, but I don’t know how much I’m allowed to share with you. Also, we’d have to translate between our respective systems. But I’ll take a run at it, if you like.”
“Our outer hull has been cooked pretty badly. Can you help us regain our sensor capacity?”
“We can try. We are certainly willing.”
“Alright, while my crew works on that, You can try to persuade Leelo and I.”
“Reasonable,” I said
“I’d like to send someone to see that, as well.” ZeKaran said.
“Sure. I’m going to have to try and teach them advanced math, so someone with skill and interest in that would work best.
“Can you be ready to start in 4 hours?”
“No. But we’ll start then, anyway.”
He blinked “Alright then.”
- jayphailey
- Posts: 1125
- Joined: Tue May 29, 2018 7:50 pm
Omoikane 56 - Onion Class
Omoikane 56 - Onion Class
**I don’t want to go,** Galaglan said.
I blinked at her “You don’t?”
The chance to dig around previously unknown systems and machinery often excited engineers. I’d enjoyed it when I was an Engineering Lieutenant.
**The Ane have a history with the Second El-Aurian Empire. They put colonies on our home world without asking. When called out for the boundary violation, they laughed at us. Our custom is that we don’t acknowledge or assist any Second Empire El-Aurian in any way.**
**If it had been an Ane Confederation starship, as soon as we identified the vessel’s origin, we’d have put our ship in gear and driven away.** Tippalan said.
**There would be a discussion about disabling their attempted time machine first.** Galaglan said.
**Indeed. Could they threaten our timeline with such a device?**
I blinked at them “Okay. Alright.” I tapped a PADD on my desk as I thought about it. “You’re excused from any activities assisting the El-Aurian ship. Please support the crew people who are assisting.”
**You should consider disabling their attempt at a time machine as well. For the same reason, they could hurt people who matter with it.** Tippalan said.
“I think if we play this right, we might come up with about 50 new friends, here.”
Tippalan looked deep in my eyes. I could feel a cold hard distaste for the El-Aurians in there. She made a harumphing noise. **I like that about you. So I won’t discourage it. If you make some friends, so much the better. But they’re no one to us.**
“If I can get them to apologize, will the Ane on this ship let it go?”
**I’ll bet you a ton of radishes you will not succeed.**
I sighed, “One disaster at a time.”
-*-
Leelo reminded me uncomfortably of Charles Holly. There was a resemblance there. A smaller, slight man with a goblin-like face and wild hair. When he was happy, it was catchy. When he was grumpy he looked like he belonged on the corner of a gothic cathedral.
Captain Lorra was there, too. He was a tall, thin man with a long face and slicked-back black hair that matched his carefully trimmed beard.
The Lefyt scout sent Makolo back. She, too, looked grim. Peggara joined the class with Lotara.
Our engineering parties were already working on restoring sensors to the science ship Red-Seven-Five-Nine. Our supplies of spare parts were looking thin. But you helped when you could. Next time, it might be you.
“Okay, first of all, we have what we call a Temporal Prime Directive. Our actual Prime Directive forbids unwarranted interference in the affairs of others and outlaws contact with pre-warp people,” I said
“How… Enlightened,” Lorra said
“We learned the hard way. Visiting people who aren’t ready for it can cause terrible harm.”
“Hmmm,” Lorra said
“So, when we discovered time travel, we immediately tried to safeguard our timeline by instituting a temporal prime directive along those same lines. We don’t interfere in history, and if history is changed, we must try and change it back to avoid unwarranted and involuntary changes.”
“When did your people discover time travel?” Leelo asked.
“That question doesn’t have a clear-cut answer. Once time machines get loose, they tend to migrate all over the time stream. We have evidence of time-travel-based interference going back 700 years or more. We began encountering other people’s time machines almost as soon as we ventured into deep space. Or rather other people’s attempts at time machines.
The Sarpedion people developed a time corridor to evacuate their world from a nova. But in our brief scans of their world, we found no evidence of the supposedly evacuated people. Our math suggests they were shunted sideways in time.”
“What math is this, then?” Leelo asked.
I called up the files. The starship Enterprise 150 years prior. I showed them the logs and scans of that incident.
I pointed out the Z-axis time vectors that arguably were in play in papers taken from the scans
“Those scans are incomplete!” Leelo said
“Do you see any evidence of z-axis temporal coils in this scan?”
“It’s awfully low resolution.” Leelo grumped.
Tillean tilted her head. “Computer, Display an image of Dr. Charles Holly.”
Holly’s face came up on one of the big wall screens. It was almost identical to Leelo. Scarily so.
“What? What’s this?” Leelo demanded.
“That’s Dr. Charles Holly. He invented the time machine that almost killed me on my first command,” I said.
“How is it that he looks like Leelo?” Captain Rollo asked
I shrugged.
“Might be a coincidence. Might be a temporal echo.” Tillean said.
“Ah, fuck,” I said.
“A what now?” Rollo asked.
“Holly or Leelo might have hit the time stream so hard he created echoes of himself. It means someone who looks about the same and has the same basic personality and interests might re-occur through time,” Tillean explained.
“That’s just a theory, and we don’t have much time,” I said.
“You’re the one trying to quantify humanoid choice and quantum temporal dynamics,” Tillean grinned.
“You’re doing WHAT?” Leelo yelled
“Look, the way we choose to do things has effects in the universe. It’s silly to think temporal physics doesn’t have mechanisms to account for that.”
“Show me your work!” Leelo said intently
“It’s not finished yet. It’s really not ready.”
“SHOW ME YOUR WORK!” Leelo yelled
“It’s done in Federation standard notation,” I said “We don’t have your mathematical systems to translate it to.”
Leelo grabbed a PADD and his own communication device. He tied into the El-Aurian Scout ship’s computer and downloaded data from that into the PADD. “Now, you do. Show me your work.”
I took the PADD, had the computer check the data, and then use it to create a translation matrix.
Then I ran my half baked work through the translator and handed my PADD to Leelo.
He started to read it intently. Then he started asking questions.
It turns out the translation wasn’t perfect. He found the formatting odd and difficult. We refined it as he went.
“How did you get these functions?” He barked at me
I answered as well as I could.
“What justifies these field tensor values?”
I felt like a student in an angry professor’s class.
He tore my whole paper apart.
Then, when he was done, he leaned back. “I’ve seen similar work derided as the incoherent ravings of a deranged mind.”
I pointed at Holly’s picture on the wall “Blame him.”
Leelo looked at me “They were saying it about me, Captain JayHailey.”
He waved my PADD around “You’ve made several critical errors. But you’ve also illuminated areas I had not considered. I find your work lackluster, but showing hints of promise. If I were grading this in a proper school, I’d tell you to scrap it and start over. But I’d also be prepared to give you good marks once you’d cleaned up the dumb mistakes.”
Leelo turned to Captain Lorra. “I am convinced this man is not speaking from a position of total ignorance.”
“He knows this time travel stuff?”
“Somewhat. Close enough.”
“Will you help us return to our proper time?”
“That’s not possible. You’ll just cause endless problems for yourself until the device is destroyed, or you are.”
“What if I refuse to accept that?” Lorra said.
“Hmmm,” I said “That leaves me with a problem.”
“What problem?”
“You might just be committing time-machine-related suicide. Committing suicide is your decision. However, the time machine part could have unexpected side effects. You might be volunteering others into your problem.”
“Like you did with us,” Maloko said.
Lorra said, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. But I have a wife. A daughter. They’re waiting for me.”
“Do you think you’re the only one?” Makolo asked. “My husband waits for me on Iponij, but I’m told now he does so in his grave.”
Lorra looked down at the table.
“Your mistake hurt us. Are you really comfortable doing so again?”
“I’d fix it if I could,” I said. “All I can do is offer support for a softer landing here, in our time.”
“You have a lovely, artistically built bad news machine, here, Captain JayHailey,” Makolo said. She wasn’t letting anyone off the hook or taking any prisoners today.
I looked around. I’d never heard the Omoikane described that accurately but uncharitably before. “Sometimes we help,” I said weakly.
Makolo told Lorra and Leelo, “If you attempt to activate your time machine again, we’ll fire on you. No more such idiocy. You’ve done enough harm.”
“I’m sure we can resolve this without resorting to weapons fire,” I said.
“Perhaps you can math it to death,” Makolo said “But we Lefyt Warriors have more direct means. Try us, if you’re feeling lucky.”
She got up and walked out of the conference room.
Peggara grinned, “Zekaran listens to her. I’d take her seriously.”
“She’s definitely hard to ignore,” I said. Tillean snorted.
**I don’t want to go,** Galaglan said.
I blinked at her “You don’t?”
The chance to dig around previously unknown systems and machinery often excited engineers. I’d enjoyed it when I was an Engineering Lieutenant.
**The Ane have a history with the Second El-Aurian Empire. They put colonies on our home world without asking. When called out for the boundary violation, they laughed at us. Our custom is that we don’t acknowledge or assist any Second Empire El-Aurian in any way.**
**If it had been an Ane Confederation starship, as soon as we identified the vessel’s origin, we’d have put our ship in gear and driven away.** Tippalan said.
**There would be a discussion about disabling their attempted time machine first.** Galaglan said.
**Indeed. Could they threaten our timeline with such a device?**
I blinked at them “Okay. Alright.” I tapped a PADD on my desk as I thought about it. “You’re excused from any activities assisting the El-Aurian ship. Please support the crew people who are assisting.”
**You should consider disabling their attempt at a time machine as well. For the same reason, they could hurt people who matter with it.** Tippalan said.
“I think if we play this right, we might come up with about 50 new friends, here.”
Tippalan looked deep in my eyes. I could feel a cold hard distaste for the El-Aurians in there. She made a harumphing noise. **I like that about you. So I won’t discourage it. If you make some friends, so much the better. But they’re no one to us.**
“If I can get them to apologize, will the Ane on this ship let it go?”
**I’ll bet you a ton of radishes you will not succeed.**
I sighed, “One disaster at a time.”
-*-
Leelo reminded me uncomfortably of Charles Holly. There was a resemblance there. A smaller, slight man with a goblin-like face and wild hair. When he was happy, it was catchy. When he was grumpy he looked like he belonged on the corner of a gothic cathedral.
Captain Lorra was there, too. He was a tall, thin man with a long face and slicked-back black hair that matched his carefully trimmed beard.
The Lefyt scout sent Makolo back. She, too, looked grim. Peggara joined the class with Lotara.
Our engineering parties were already working on restoring sensors to the science ship Red-Seven-Five-Nine. Our supplies of spare parts were looking thin. But you helped when you could. Next time, it might be you.
“Okay, first of all, we have what we call a Temporal Prime Directive. Our actual Prime Directive forbids unwarranted interference in the affairs of others and outlaws contact with pre-warp people,” I said
“How… Enlightened,” Lorra said
“We learned the hard way. Visiting people who aren’t ready for it can cause terrible harm.”
“Hmmm,” Lorra said
“So, when we discovered time travel, we immediately tried to safeguard our timeline by instituting a temporal prime directive along those same lines. We don’t interfere in history, and if history is changed, we must try and change it back to avoid unwarranted and involuntary changes.”
“When did your people discover time travel?” Leelo asked.
“That question doesn’t have a clear-cut answer. Once time machines get loose, they tend to migrate all over the time stream. We have evidence of time-travel-based interference going back 700 years or more. We began encountering other people’s time machines almost as soon as we ventured into deep space. Or rather other people’s attempts at time machines.
The Sarpedion people developed a time corridor to evacuate their world from a nova. But in our brief scans of their world, we found no evidence of the supposedly evacuated people. Our math suggests they were shunted sideways in time.”
“What math is this, then?” Leelo asked.
I called up the files. The starship Enterprise 150 years prior. I showed them the logs and scans of that incident.
I pointed out the Z-axis time vectors that arguably were in play in papers taken from the scans
“Those scans are incomplete!” Leelo said
“Do you see any evidence of z-axis temporal coils in this scan?”
“It’s awfully low resolution.” Leelo grumped.
Tillean tilted her head. “Computer, Display an image of Dr. Charles Holly.”
Holly’s face came up on one of the big wall screens. It was almost identical to Leelo. Scarily so.
“What? What’s this?” Leelo demanded.
“That’s Dr. Charles Holly. He invented the time machine that almost killed me on my first command,” I said.
“How is it that he looks like Leelo?” Captain Rollo asked
I shrugged.
“Might be a coincidence. Might be a temporal echo.” Tillean said.
“Ah, fuck,” I said.
“A what now?” Rollo asked.
“Holly or Leelo might have hit the time stream so hard he created echoes of himself. It means someone who looks about the same and has the same basic personality and interests might re-occur through time,” Tillean explained.
“That’s just a theory, and we don’t have much time,” I said.
“You’re the one trying to quantify humanoid choice and quantum temporal dynamics,” Tillean grinned.
“You’re doing WHAT?” Leelo yelled
“Look, the way we choose to do things has effects in the universe. It’s silly to think temporal physics doesn’t have mechanisms to account for that.”
“Show me your work!” Leelo said intently
“It’s not finished yet. It’s really not ready.”
“SHOW ME YOUR WORK!” Leelo yelled
“It’s done in Federation standard notation,” I said “We don’t have your mathematical systems to translate it to.”
Leelo grabbed a PADD and his own communication device. He tied into the El-Aurian Scout ship’s computer and downloaded data from that into the PADD. “Now, you do. Show me your work.”
I took the PADD, had the computer check the data, and then use it to create a translation matrix.
Then I ran my half baked work through the translator and handed my PADD to Leelo.
He started to read it intently. Then he started asking questions.
It turns out the translation wasn’t perfect. He found the formatting odd and difficult. We refined it as he went.
“How did you get these functions?” He barked at me
I answered as well as I could.
“What justifies these field tensor values?”
I felt like a student in an angry professor’s class.
He tore my whole paper apart.
Then, when he was done, he leaned back. “I’ve seen similar work derided as the incoherent ravings of a deranged mind.”
I pointed at Holly’s picture on the wall “Blame him.”
Leelo looked at me “They were saying it about me, Captain JayHailey.”
He waved my PADD around “You’ve made several critical errors. But you’ve also illuminated areas I had not considered. I find your work lackluster, but showing hints of promise. If I were grading this in a proper school, I’d tell you to scrap it and start over. But I’d also be prepared to give you good marks once you’d cleaned up the dumb mistakes.”
Leelo turned to Captain Lorra. “I am convinced this man is not speaking from a position of total ignorance.”
“He knows this time travel stuff?”
“Somewhat. Close enough.”
“Will you help us return to our proper time?”
“That’s not possible. You’ll just cause endless problems for yourself until the device is destroyed, or you are.”
“What if I refuse to accept that?” Lorra said.
“Hmmm,” I said “That leaves me with a problem.”
“What problem?”
“You might just be committing time-machine-related suicide. Committing suicide is your decision. However, the time machine part could have unexpected side effects. You might be volunteering others into your problem.”
“Like you did with us,” Maloko said.
Lorra said, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. But I have a wife. A daughter. They’re waiting for me.”
“Do you think you’re the only one?” Makolo asked. “My husband waits for me on Iponij, but I’m told now he does so in his grave.”
Lorra looked down at the table.
“Your mistake hurt us. Are you really comfortable doing so again?”
“I’d fix it if I could,” I said. “All I can do is offer support for a softer landing here, in our time.”
“You have a lovely, artistically built bad news machine, here, Captain JayHailey,” Makolo said. She wasn’t letting anyone off the hook or taking any prisoners today.
I looked around. I’d never heard the Omoikane described that accurately but uncharitably before. “Sometimes we help,” I said weakly.
Makolo told Lorra and Leelo, “If you attempt to activate your time machine again, we’ll fire on you. No more such idiocy. You’ve done enough harm.”
“I’m sure we can resolve this without resorting to weapons fire,” I said.
“Perhaps you can math it to death,” Makolo said “But we Lefyt Warriors have more direct means. Try us, if you’re feeling lucky.”
She got up and walked out of the conference room.
Peggara grinned, “Zekaran listens to her. I’d take her seriously.”
“She’s definitely hard to ignore,” I said. Tillean snorted.