Episode -1: Stuck Inside of the Past with the Future Blues Again
The Bridge was awash with light. Captain Clerk opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t. Everywhere he looked, he saw irritatingly bright floodlights pointed in every direction — including directly at his eyes. Then it hit him…
“Are those the Time Travel FlaresTM? I thought those were supposed to be disabled right after Admiral Nezbomb had them installed.”
“Sorry, Captain,” replied Lt. Whatsisname. “Lt. Ka’ppaa’ck changed the admin password and won’t give it out. The support ticket for the flares is still designated Open.”
Sigh. Sysadmins. “Okay, well… at least, turn them off before they give me a migraine.” An additional migraine, that is.
“Yes, sir. I’ll send him another email as well.”
Moments later, the lighting on the Bridge returned to normal, and Clerk could relax. Once his eyes had re-adjusted, he sat up in his chair and took a deep breath. Then he took a few additional sniffs.
“Does anybody else smell that?”
“Smell what, sir?” asked Lt. Wharf.
“It smells like broccoli in here.”
“Like what?”
“Never mind.”
Clerk rubbed his eyes again, still trying to shake the sting of the flares. Feeling it was about time to actually do something now that they were in the past, he was about to suggest a course of action, when all of a sudden, the ship began to shake violently. Disoriented, he uttered the only word he could think of that would hopefully get some feedback on the situation.
“Report!”
Ensign Kazoo, dutifully monitoring things at the Science Station, piped up. “Can you be more specific, sir?” His customary honk followed.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I’ve got several reports running right now. There’s the matter-antimatter level stability report, today’s tardiness/absence report, current space weather cond–”
“How about a report on our rough time travel re-entry?”
“Oh, no report on that just yet, sir. I will put it on my to-do list right away!” Honk.
Lt. Rosemary rolled her eyes and sighed loudly. “If I may, sir–”
“You may not,” Clerk said without even turning to look at her.
Unfazed, she continued. “The ship is probably reacting to having traveled through time with untested–”
“I have a word for you,” the Captain interrupted again. “Hush. Look it up.” Attempting to get away from whatever argument was about to ensue, he walked over to Ensign Kazoo. “So… where are we anyways?”
“Computing current stardate now, sir.” Honk. A few moments passed. “It looks like we’re in… Episode -1.” Honk.
“Do you mean minus one from where we were, or negative one?”
“Sorry, negative one, sir.” Honk.
“Well, that’s not… terribly far…”
“It’s a side effect of Kirk-Off’s Fairly Recent Law, that is, the Conservation of Time Travel. Without a specific destination plugged into the matrix, we simply went back the least amount of time–”
“But what about that–”
“Oh, the blip? Seems we slingshotted back a bit, and briefly flew past another episode before finally landing here.” Honk.
Rosemary took a step towards them. “That’s called a time visitation. It’s a well-documented phenomenon.”
I’ll buy the dictionary. You just look up the word. “Was that why we couldn’t really do anything?”
“Yes, sir.” Honk. “But all that’s over now.”
“Good, good.” Clerk stroked his chin a second. “Hey! Now that we’re in the past, we can tell them about the mistake in the refit at Deck X!”
“We’re too late for that,” said Lt. Whatsisname. “That was back in Episode -23.”
“Oh. Well, let’s go back there!” He stepped over to his chair and activated the intercom. “Clerk to Engineering. Fire up the time travel circuits again. We–”
“SSSSSORRY SSSSSIR!” Lt. Cmdr. Cecil replied. “THE SSSSSIRCUITSSSSS ARE ALL BUSSSSSTED. WE CAN’T GO ANYWHERE RIGHT NOW! THE MAIN SSSSSIRCUIT LEAKED AND NOW I HAVE ALL THISSSSS TIME ON MY HANDSSSSS!”
“Understood,” Clerk said, disappointed. “Get it cleaned up as soon as you can, so we can go somewhere else.”
“IT’SSSSS GONNA TAKE A WHILE THOUGH, SSSSSIR! I’D ESSSSSTIMATE FOR YOU, BUT THISSSSS ISSSSS SSSSSOMETHING I’VE NEVER DEALT WITH BEFORE!”
“That makes two of us. Or, at least 148 of us anyways. I’ll let you go then, so you can get back to work.”
“YESSSSS SSSSSIR! ENGINEERING OUT!”
Clerk switched off the intercom and sat down in the Big Comfy Chair. Well, this was a bust, wasn’t it?
“This means we’re going to have to experience The Rollover,” Rosemary said after a few silent moments.
“Rollover?” the Captain asked. “What’s that?”
“Well, we’re going from -1 to 1, and that’s always a rough trip. You thought this was rough? It’s nothing compared to The Rollover.”
“Guess I’d better– wait, from -1 to 1? There’s no 0?”
“There is, but you don’t wanna go there. And you can’t get there from here anyways.”
Don’t ask. Don’t even ask. “So this is it, then? No adventure or anything? Just… things are broken and we have to–”
“Well, we might have had one if you’d have just waited until–”
You keep forgetting that hush word. Maybe I should write it down for you.
Trying to put things back on a more positive note (and bring a smidgen of decorum back to the situation), Whatsisname spoke up. “Well, we did just go over 50 episodes back in time. There oughta be something worth investigating here.”
“That’s probably not a good idea,” Rosemary replied, knowing full well she annoyed the Captain with every syllable she spoke. “We really need to get back to our own time before the time circuits are damaged any further.”
For once, I agree with you. I don’t like this. “She has a point, Lieutenant. I guess we’ll just suffer through whatever this Rollover thing is, and book it on back before we do anything catastrophic, like, create an alternate timeline or something.”
The Bridge got tense as everybody felt the episode come to a close. The Rollover began…