Lt. JG Robin Hopper: Overwritten [ACT 1]
Robin Hopper
((Amity Outpost - Copernicus Center, Chief of Mission’s Office))
The moment she had received Rivi’s summons, Robin had felt an immediate wave of concern wash over her. Sitting at a table in the Mezzanine, anxiously drinking her second coffee of the day (one more than her typical daily maximum) and reading through mission reports with frantic uncertainty. Things were not adding up… Was she the only one who recalled the events of yesterday – or was it all some sort of delusion?
It hadn’t helped that all the people she might normally rely on to ‘steady her’ were gone… Ikaia, Nathan, S’Raga, Bec… all had been assigned to a mission of special importance on Betazed and had loaded onto a QSD transport the previous night. She had checked their mission status and confirmed as much, but knowing they were alive and well was about the only consolation the morning had given her thus far.
Even Amity’s computer seemed set against her. After her confusing interaction with Tidrid, she’d returned home and found the door wouldn’t open. Inquiring with station systems directed her to a small junior officer’s quarters nearby… with her name by the door. Within, she’d been stunned to find several of her houseplants and her record player in the living space.
The changes ran far too deep to be a simple prank. The quarters’ replicator wouldn’t even produce her a proper uniform. Instead, it insisted she was a Junior Grade Lieutenant and warned her that additional attempts to produce Lieutenants’ pips could lead to an investigation. Eventually, she had given up and put it on in a huff before rushing to the Mezzanine to clear her head.
Her head had not been cleared. Instead, she had found many months of mission reports that told a different version of history than she was familiar with. To her recollection, she had not been present on Amity when the Indy-B had gotten mired in a gravity well; nor had she sustained serious injuries on Idrustix while fending off Trenvonn drones.
And then the call had come. Ambassador Vataix was calling the senior staff for an emergency meeting. Robin’s heart had fluttered – the caffeine and terrible worry wreaking havoc on her. She was also surprised to be summoned as Amity’s “Acting” Chief Science Officer… a distinction that functionally meant little, but implied a great deal of difference in how and why she had come to Amity than what she remembered…
Vataix: Thank you all for coming. Please, have a seat.
Everyone, including Robin in her Lt. JG uniform, sat. She still nursed the dregs of her second cup of coffee – needing the cup as something to fidget with as she looked suspiciously around the room. A terrible idea had begun to form in her mind that this might, in fact, be some sort of deception. That perhaps it was a test, or a trick to glean information about Amity from her. So, for the time being, she said nothing… listening and waiting to see what was going on.
Vataix: I've called you all here because something is wrong.
Robin’s brow’s raised, slightly. Could Rivi know what was going on? Or at least – had she also noticed that something wasn’t right? Nobody else had batted an eye at her ranks, or at the unfamiliar Rodulan man sitting by Vataix’s side.
Core: Response
Carter: Response
Vataix: There are people missing from this station.
Robin gasped, a hand on her chest. oO Who?! Oo
Iovianus: Missing? We haven’t had any reports.
Reade: ::confused look:: Missing Ma’am? I have not seen anything odd in the last few days.
Hopper: ::To Iovianus and Reade:: Nothing strange? At all?
Core/Carter: Response
Vataix: At least four... there may be others. I'm not sure.
Iovianus: Who would they be then?
Reade: I agree with Cassian. Do we know who they are?
Core/Carter: Response
Robin nodded, uncertain what to say. If there were some sort of ‘game’ being played here, she was wary of laying all her cards out on the table. Instead, she opted for silence, waiting to hear exactly what Rivi was getting at…
Vataix: The ones I *know* were here last night: Commodore Aron Kells, Captain Nic del Vedova, Captain Roshanara Rahman, Commander Addison MacKenzie, and Commander Wil Ukinix. We were all together at the chief of mission accommodations last night celebrating Wil's promotion to Commander... all of us except you, Commander Core. Because up until now, Wil was Amity Outpost's first officer.
She gasped again, then felt tears beginning to form at the corners of her eyes. oO Oh thank god… Oo While everyone else looked at each other in bemusement, Robin covered her mouth to try and avoid crying with relief. Someone else knew.
Core: Response
((OOC per Rich: Unless you've been told otherwise by me directly, no one remembers attending any promotion ceremony party or that Wil was first officer. They might have known him if they served on the Veritas with him before, but otherwise, they would only know that he was briefly assigned to Amity on Commander Core's team before he went missing in action shortly thereafter.))
Reade: I do not recall being at any party last night.
Hopper: ::Looking around the table:: Do any of you?
Core/Carter: Response
Iovianus: Let us go through this step by step. We were all at a party last night. That we don’t remember being at.
Hopper: You might not… ::Looking at Rivi with hopeful eyes to confirm:: ...but Rivi, you do?
Iovianus: That some of us do not remember being at. Now we have two commanders, two captains, and a commodore missing from this station?
Reade: The odds of those many ranks just *magically* disappearing from the station seems a bit odd. Someone must have been told or alerted to what happened.
Core/Carter: Response?
Iovianus: Ambassador I do not see how any of those people would be able to go missing without someone from the staff knowing about it. Especially since one of them went missing before the mission at Amity began.
oO What? Who? Before the mission at Amity launched? I don’t understand… Oo
This rapid back-and-forth of conflicting information was making Robin’s head spin. Already she’d been trying desperately to unravel why so much had changed – but she hadn’t realized there had been any ‘disappearances’... or that nobody else would even remember having served aboard Amity with Wil.
Reade: I agree with Cassian. Something does not seem to be adding up at all.
Core/Carter: Response?
Hopper: ::Raising her hand, trepidatiously:: I… Might also remember the party. ::Looking around the room, uncertainty:: No, I do remember the party. And I remember serving with Wil Ukinix and not… ::Glancing at Core:: …I’m sorry, but I don’t know you, Commander.
Vataix: Response
Hopper: I don’t know what what is going on, but I woke up this morning and everything had just changed.
Vataix: Response?
Nobody seemed to know what to say. Robin folded her hands in front of her on the table. After a moment, Scotty retrieved his PADD and began running some high-level scans.
Reade: May I suggest something? Could we potentially be dealing with a temporal issue? I can head back down to engineering and begin a scan of the systems.
Hopper: This could be some sort of ‘temporal’ issue but… if so, why do Rivi and I share the same memories? At least of last night’s event. Why wouldn’t it affect us all? And at what point was our timeline affected? And how?
Core/Carter/Iovianus/Vataix: Response
Reade: My only other hunch is that something else is interfering with the systems on Amity. At the moment I am unsure of what that could be though.
Core/Carter/Iovianus/Vataix: Response
Hopper: Whatever is going on here, something shielded Rivi and I from it. So why us?
Vataix/Core/Carter/Iovianus/Reade: Response
Hopper: You do all believe us, right?
Vataix/Core/Carter/Iovianus/Reade: Response
TBC
