Lieutenant JG Amelia Semara - My Daughter, Part II
Max
(( Conference Room, Deck 1, USS Khitomer ))
It felt like all Amelia could do was just breath. Emotions were running thick and fast and no one was thinking straight or reasoning all the way through on a single question.
Charles: The Temporal Prime Directive has already been violated six ways to Sunday. ::glares at the interlopers:: Whether or not we believe them, or trust their motives, the cat is out of the bag now.
Were they violating the prime directive? Amelia wasn’t positive, and she had no idea how to come to a conclusion for as long as people kept adding new comments before there were even answers.
El’Heem: The Lieutenant is right. Whatever they think the Hobart Hole can do with temporal anomalies, I am skeptical. There is no scenario where I believe the intent of these…butterflies who wish to flap their wings and change the course of history, will matter. Lieutenant Zerva is doubly right, in that their arrival assures the future they intend to prevent. We can still fix this by sending them back to the future.
Hobart: You’re making this more complicated than it needs to be, Lieutenant. I can’t order you to avoid your death, but I promise I won’t order you knowingly to it without a damned good reason. Make of that what you will.
Semara: Can we send ‘em back? There’s nothin’ to stop ‘em from comin’ back and tryin’ again without tellin’ us.
She couldn’t help a look towards Tori, unsure if it was guilt or criticism or both (or something else entirely) she was sending over their shared connection, but at least someone felt it. She couldn’t bring herself to break the bond for as long as her daughter was still in the room. She wanted to say something else, ask something else, but she couldn’t think what.
Zerva: I would rather not know my own fate in your timeline, thank you.
Korras: Nor would I. It is not relevant, either way. However, I believe we need as much tactical information as we can get.
Under ordinary circumstances, Amelia might have even noticed the fascinating cool analytics of the Klingon.
Charles: Captain? With respect, I think this briefing should end, Sir. We need time to evaluate the information we have been given and discuss the ramifications for our own, present timeline, crew members.
Amelia wanted it to end too, but not for the same reasons, she suspected. She could feel tempers and respect hanging on by a mere thread in the room. Yet no matter what, she couldn’t find a way to let go of Tori. Maybe she had been yearning for it too long, and now to feel the touch of someone so seemingly familiar in her mind…
Semara: ~ Tori, please, I don’t wanna be angry with each other. ~
Tori: ~ You could have stopped all of this. ~
So that’s how it was. The flash of Tori’s temper was followed almost immediately by tucked-tail shame. Amelia hadn't the slightest clue how to respond.
Shayne / Any: Response
Charles: We need to discuss it, for us, for Starfleet now. Not for them, Captain, and I feel having all three of them here is an unstable element in a risky and unpredictable situation. I hate to have to point it out but several of your higher ranking staff are… coming across as emotionally compromised.
Ha. Emotionally compromised. Of course she was emotionally compromised. Everyone in the whole room was emotionally compromised. They’d just been informed of their impending deaths and the deaths of billions. But it bothered her to hear people openly doubting each other. They could take the time to work this out.
Harford: To that end, Sir, I would like to review and possibly redo some of the scans taken upon their arrival. ::looks at Ohnari almost apologetically:: I don’t want to call anyone’s professionalism into question, Sir, but I do think a member of the Medical team who has not just met their son should be given the chance to confirm Doctor Ohnari’s assessment.
El’Heem: I concur with Doctor Harford’s assement. There is emotional entanglement that cannot be overlooked, and have suspicions of it being a result of temporal interaction between linked individuals, rather than genuine emotional attachment.
Amelia shot a pleading look to Ras, asking him to consider this.
Hobart: ::raised voice:: Stabilize those tongues before I fetch the welder.
Shayne / Kael / Any: Response
Charles: Are you hiding four pips on those clothes of yours? I said Captain, not Kael.
Oh goddesses… This needed to stop. Her eyes passed to the Captain, hoping he’d recognize the concern on her face before it was too late. But there were so many officers in the room, he couldn’t look at all of them.
Charles: You can’t be considering this so-called… plan, Sir? It’s embarrassing that this is the best they could come up with.
Kael: Response
Charles: Kid, I will slap you back to the future myself.
Hobart launched out of his seat almost in perfect synchrony to Amelia’s brows digging a valley on her forehead. So much for compassion and respect.
Korras: ::in a tone that indicated no room for discussion:: There will be no slapping here today. Save your energy for the Lattice Alliance.
Hobart: ::yelling:: Enough! Security!
Amelia caught Tori’s glance, trying to keep the worry from rising up in her as she felt the wrath inside her daughter rise up in response.
Semara: ~ Tori, please… ~
There was a flicker of hesitation. Amelia wasn’t even sure what she was asking for. Maybe just patience. Maybe to exchange forgiveness. Maybe just for another moment longer with the woman she just met, but knew she loved in another lifetime.
Hobart: Please escort our guests back to their quarters. ::glaring directly at Lt. Matthews:: Not another word.
And the security crewmen who’d entered started to escort the three out, Tori included. Amelia couldn’t look anywhere else… Feel anything else. The twisting, dizzy, angry, horrible, sad, noxious, sickeningly glittering, thundering concert of feeling in her daughter as she tried to sort it all out.
Admiral: ::looking around the room:: I never realized that… all of that was what happened in these meetings back then. I think I might have made a mistake. I may have overestimated you all.
Tori’s eyes stayed fixed back on her until she disappeared through the door. When the doors slid shut, Amelia let the telepathic contact with her daughter slide away from her grasp, leaving her all alone in a room full of boiling emotion.
Shayne: Response
Harford: Captain, if I may? ::pause:: Lieutenant Matthews isn’t wrong, Sir. Surely there is an alternative. Please give us, your crew, the chance to find one. I have to believe that you wouldn’t have gathered us all around this table if you weren’t looking for solutions and an open discussion.
Charles not wrong? Amelia abhorred a lack of manners in the best of circumstances, and couldn’t abide his attitude. But an alternative? An infinity of them, surely.
Shayne: Response
Harford: From what we’ve just been told, Starfleet was unaware and taken by surprise. That means that just giving us this information has already altered things. We have the chance to get ahead of whatever is coming and with an advantage that we didn’t have before. Which means that it is no longer certain that things will turn out the way they did for your future.
Korras: Indeed, we know what is going to happen, and we can prevent it.
Hobart: We think we know. All we have is the word of three people who convincingly appear to be time travelers. What we lack is substantial corroborating evidence of their story.
Semara: :: Quietly :: We got a shuttle, our guests, an’ the POW camp itself to check. Perhaps sensor recordin’s of the nebula, too. Plenty to continue questionin’...
Like how did Tori - her daughter! - come to the conclusion the best option was mass murder? Vengeance. Hatred. She couldn’t bear to see those things in Tori’s heart, but they were there whether she liked it or not. She couldn’t help but think what kind of mother she must have been. What was her future self thinking, raising a girl all by herself in a galaxy crumbling to pieces?
Any: Response
Harford: I don’t know what the solution is, but I know that I cannot condone mass murder. I took an oath to do no harm, and at the end of it all, I am a Doctor first. I won’t be a part of it. I’ll stay in Sickbay, I’ll patch you up, but if their plan is the one we're going with, I’d rather turn in my pips.
Amelia just shook her head. Please don’t do that, Alix. She knew what they were asking, but they’d find something else.
Korras: I know Klingons as a race are not known for their.. philosophic tendencies. However, over time, there have been some musings about fixed points in history, or in the future, depending on your perspective, that are unavoidable, and have an impact on history. It is often the place where time travelers play a part. Earth, for example, when Kirk brought whales back, on a Klingon vessel. ::he paused briefly:: The theory is that the event is going to happen, no matter what. The outcome, however, can be changed. They call it a Shatterpoint, a point where the future can change to a different path. Like how a window can break, but it will never break the same way twice. It would seem we are dealing with a similar situation here.
In another situation, she might have been irresistibly fascinated with the concept.
El’Heem: Captain, permission to share my thoughts on the matter?
It was profoundly impressive that Ras was able to form any thoughts at all after the briefing they’d just had.
Shayne: Response
El’Heem: ::looking around the room:: The moment we were told of these events, we became participants. The observer effect is real. Simply knowing this information has already altered the outcome. Any attempt to intervene now is not prevention, it is interference.
Bleak ruminations entered Amelia’s mind about starting off “interfering” by naming her daughter something else… What a sentimental old woman she must turn into sometime in the next ten or so years.
Any: Response
El’Heem: The temptation to treat this situation as fixed ::beat:: as if the timeline is a rail we can divert whenever we feel like it even if the situation is so dire it feels like it calls for it, is… ::pause:: hubris on a cosmic scale. We do ot have the foresight to account for the countless variables we would influence. Billions of lives across space and time, perhaps millennia into the future, will be directly affected by any action we take here today. There is no way to guarantee that what we think is “better” won’t cascade into something far worse. Who are we to prioritize our lives over there’s? ::lifting his hand to point vaguely in a random direction::
oO That’s why we need time to think about this… Oo
Hobart: But that’s a fact, Lieutenant, and it always has been. If we never encountered these time travelers, it would still be a fact. This is the future we’re talking about. We can never know the full impact of any of our actions. And assuming for a second that this… forecast we’ve been handed is accurate, we would be idiots to blunder down some other path because we believe it is preordained.
It took a lot to keep her mind focused on her breathing. She had a vague empathic sense of what Hobart was trying to do, trying to explain away, but she also had a vague empathic sense it wasn’t working the way he meant it to. Over and over, she kept following the flow, emotions in with her inhale, and emotions flowing back out into the ether with her exhale…
Any: Response
El’Heem: Even if the wormhole used by these travelers is an anomly, if it’s some kind of exception to typical temporal constraints, which, like I’ve already said, I do not think is, it does not grant us moral license. The timeline is already fragile and out duty as Starfleet officers, as sentient beings, really, is to avoid tipping that balance further. Captain, I will not take part in premeditated slaughter, and as a former doctor, it goes against the very oath I took when I joined Starfleet. If I am forced to do, I am doing so under duress.
Hobart: Nobody’s ordering you to do anything except your job, Lieutenant. ::to Shayne:: Sir, I propose we investigate. Have our science team explore the theoretical impacts of the Hoba— the anomaly. I suggest we alter course to Alpha Trionus, see if there really is a POW camp there, and what it holds.
Amelia suddenly found herself having to suppress a surprise snigger. The XO nearly said the words “Hobart Hole”? Talk about a way to save an awful meeting.
Shayne: Response
Amelia flexed her toes in her uniform boots, feeling the decking under her and the constraint of the leather against her, reminding herself of her body to ground back down and try to do something - anything, really, instead of keep thinking of her daughter over and over and over…
Hobart: Lieutenant, you have your orders. I assume you still want your pips, or do I have to make the course adjustment myself?
Korras: Response
Hobart: Good. ::to the room:: Dismissed. Lieutenant Matthews? My ready room.
As she left the conference room, whatever had been said and felt, there was only one thing she could think about.
oO My daughter… Tori… Oo
Tag / END