driftfleet | Captain's Log 04

Entry tags:

Captain's Log 04 - Waking Dreams

Who: Jim Kirk & You
Broadcast: Yes
Action: Yes, on the Tourist
When: Now (that is, Friday)

_{[ It's a strange feeling, waking up and staring at a ceiling that he instinctively knows is on a ship. He hasn't looked at one of those in awhile, mostly because his ship was still being built. He had been able to tour some parts of her, but she was far from complete, and certainly nowhere near ready for him to move into. So why? Why was there something familiar about this ceiling? He had seen it before, he was sure, nagging at the back of his mind -

The Fleet.

It struck him like a slap, making him gasp, and he sat up sharply, looking down at himself, wrapped in his survival suit of all things. He touched the raised silver crest of Star Fleet, trying to wrap his mind around the notion he was back on the Tourist. How long had it been? Almost three years? He had just celebrated his birthday, so, yes, three years...

Looking around he located the communicator, flipping it open, remembering the motions easily enough as he keyed up the video and looked in. It's to late by the time he realizes that he has a crown settled into his somewhat fluffier hair and a bright red lipstick mark on his cheek. Who-? Well, whatever, everyone will just get to see him attempt to rub the lipstick off as he speaks, crown, for the moment, remaining where it was. ]}

Uh - hello everyone. I'm not sure how much time as passed here, so I suppose I should start with introductions. My name is Captain James Tiberius Kirk, U.S.S. Enterprise, though feel free to call me Jim. I was here once before, but I suppose at some point I got sent home.

It's been three years for me. So, if possible, I wouldn't mind a roll call of who all is here - and exactly how much time has passed for you all.

Kirk, out.

_{[ He turns off the communicator and gets up slowly, stretching, making his way for the kitchen and wondering if that cantankerous coffee machine was still here and functioning, and if it had been tamed. He hoped so. He desperately needed coffee. Maybe something more too. Yes, definitely something more.

Irish coffee it was Or as close as he could get it. ]}

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_{[ There's a moment as he thinks on it. ]}

It's coming back more now, but I can't... I can't honestly say that I remembered much of it while I was home, you know? Now I do, but I don't... I don't think I ever told Bones or Spock of anyone I was on this Fleet.

I certainly didn't remember anything, not until I woke up.

[She sighs.]

Fact of the matter is though that I also want to be able to speak freely with you about home. You're the closest I've got to it.

Then please, let us speak freely. I think our timelines are diverged enough that I am not at risk for being influenced, anyways, and I - I want to speak with someone of home too.

_{[ He had much to tell, and the ache was suddenly very tight in his
chest as it truly hit that he was back in the Fleet, that his people were
once again so far from him. ]}

[Softly.]

Good. Then you will come soon?

Yeah. I can head over as soon as I get some coffee. Want me to bring you some while I'm at it?

That would be great.

One coffee coming up.

_{[ He shuts off the comm, and roughly thirty minutes later he's knocking on a ship door, calling for Bev to be let it. He has two coffee cups in his hand, still in his survival suit from when he had woken up. He wasn't ready to shrug off its comforts just yet. ]}

[Beverly, too, is still in uniform when she opens the door. A silly attachment, especially when she’s been wearing the damn thing for three days straight now, but there it is. She takes one of the coffees off his hands, taking a grateful sip.]

Thank you. Do you mind if we talk in my office? It’ll be a little more private at least.

I think this will be the first time I've been asked to an office and not been in trouble.

_{[ He grinned to make light of his joke, following Beverly, one hand tucked into a pocket, boots clunking against the floor. ]}

That the future uniform?

One of them.

[She smooths her hands down the sides of her uniform.]

Fairly new, actually.

_{[ He motions to his own survival suit. ]}

Sam. I wasn't wearing it when I went to sleep last in York Town, but... well, I don't hate the choice.

_{[ He sighed and sipped his coffee. ]}

So, you want to go first, or me?

Why don't you go first?

[Beverly takes a seat behind her desk and motions for him to sit across the way.]

_{[ He sits as directed, though it feels odd to be the one on the other side of the desk. It hadn't happened in awhile now. He sipped his own coffee, thinking on where to start, precisely. ]}

Well, I can't say that most of the two and half years out in space was all that exciting, until my birthday swung around...

_{[ And he launched into the story of Krall, of losing his ship, his crew, fighting to get them back and save York Town and possibly the Federation. He spoke evenly and slowly, delivering a report rather than injecting his feelings into it. He finished, taking a long sip of his coffee. ]}

And that about covers it. When I woke up I was just enjoying an extended shore leave while the new ship was being completed.

[Beverly listens carefully to Kirk's story, almost instinctively mimicking his professional manner, accepting this as a report between officers, not a confession between friends. For now, anyway. She doesn't say anything for a minute or so when he finishes speaking, taking her time to absorb everything. Some things are familiar to history - the MACO, the Xindi war, the Gagarin Radiation Belt, but so many other details are completely foreign. Finally, she shakes her head.]

I'll admit... our timelines are diverging even more than I expected.

Hmm, the Butterfly Effect?

_{[ It was the only plausible explanation, really. It made sense - each
little change flowing out, bigger and bigger as the years passed. ]}

The other thing is - well, I did ask that Balthazar's record be kept unblemished. I made my report to the higher ups including everything, but I didn't think anyone else digging into the matter needed to know Balthazar and Krall were the same. So maybe the incident is reported differently in your time.

_{[ That was the only other thing he could think of, but he'd already
had suspicions they were not from the same time line anyways. He looked at
her over the rim of his coffee mug. ]}

So, what's new with you?

Perhaps. But there's no Yorktown station, never was, so it couldn't have happened in exactly the way you describe. But I'm not a temporal physicist by any stretch of the imagination, so I suppose I'll have to leave such things up to them.

[She sighs.]

Which, speaking of that - I went back in time. Again.

_{[ That has him blinking. ]}

No Yorktown? That - is a very big difference.

_{[ A million and more souls worth difference, and he wonders where
those people are in Bev's universe, what they did, if they were ever born.
He snorts when she starts in on her tale. ]}

Should we pause and take our aspirin now or after?

_{[ It's a joke, he's interested, though discussion of time almost makes
him squint. ]}

[Beverly offers him a small half-smile at the joke, but it soon fades away.]

Do you know anything about the Borg? In my timeline, you never encounter them but with all the differences...

Borg? No, I've never heard of them before. From your expression, I gather they aren't the friendly sort.

They're a cybernetic collective of beings, centered around a queen, much like an ant colony. They're constantly expanding, taking what they deem useful as their own and destroying the rest. So no... not friendly at all. They cannot be reasoned with - fighting is the only option.

Sounds like a Klingon on steroids.

_{[ Which wasn't good, especially not in his day when the Klingons were
still very much not on friendly terms. He frowned, wondering where this
might be going. ]}

What did they try to do?

_{[ Because they must have been up to something, right? ]}

[Beverly frowns at the Klingon comment, but she lets it pass for now.]

They've tried attacking Earth and other Federation targets several times but have been repelled so they decided to try a new tactic - time travel. They went back to the time of First Contact, to try to prevent Cochran's warp drive test from happening and thus our contact with the Vulcans. Then there'd be no Federation, only an Earth that was entirely Borg.

_{[ He listens quietly, going a touch paler and eyes a bit wider as he
grasped the implications of such a thing. No warp test. No First Contact.
No Federation. Everything he and Beverly stood for would never have become,
they might never even be. The ripples it would cause, the changes - they
were to big, to numerous to calculate and it made his blood run cold and
his stomach turn. He put his coffee down, the taste suddenly sour. ]}

I've mentioned how much I hate time travel, right?

_{[ He rubbed the back of his neck. ]}

You stopped them though.

_{[ Not a question. He simply knows they did, he has that kind of faith
in Bev and her crew. ]}

How exactly did you do that?

Barely. [Her mouth forms a grim line.] We were caught in their temporal wake, dragged back in time with them. By the time we got to Cochran, his ship had already been sabatoged so we had to help him repair it, all while fighting off an invasion of Borg on the Enterprise.

[Her voice becomes softer.]

We lost too many good people and I thought we were going to lose the Enterprise too - which would have left us stranded in the 21st century.

_{[ He reached out, touching her hand for just a moment - a recognition of the pain that came with the loss of crew, of family. He had felt it many times, and it never ceased to hurt, no matter if he had hardly known them or worked with them for years. ]}

You did it though. You kept history together, which I suppose means I owe you a massive thank you. Without that, I don't think I'd exist - at least, not as I am.

But how did you get back? Follow the Borg back through another temporal wake?

_{[ Because surely the Enterprise was not suddenly equipped with something capable of ripping open time-space. ]}

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