Lieutenant Ras El'Heem - Paradox Pt 4
Ras El'Heem
Kael was again running his mouth off when he should be thrown in the brig instead.
Charles: Are you hiding four pips on those clothes of yours? I said Captain, not Kael.
At the moment the heat in the room reached a fever pitch and
Ras set his jaw as he tugged at his color, desperately hoping for some cool air
to help cooler heads prevail.
Charles: You can’t be considering this so-called… plan, Sir? It’s embarrassing that this is the best they could come up with.
Maybe Charles was getting a tad emotionally compromised but in the other direction. Somehow the calmness of his voice without the threat of being raised in anger struck fear in his heart. The man was not someone you wanted to be on the wrong side of.
Kael: Response
Charles’ escalation seemed to be warranted, after all.
oO Ezra, please get this guy out of here, he’s inflammatory. Oo
Charles: Kid, I will slap you back to the future myself.
Korras: ::in a tone that indicated no room for discussion:: There will be no slapping here today. Save your energy for the Lattice Alliance.
Shayne / Kael / Any: Response
Things continued to get out of hand.
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.
Shayne / Admiral / Any: 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.
Shayne / Admiral / 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.
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.
The room felt like an airlock waiting to vent it’s contents. Either the door would blow and they’d all be pulled into the unforgiving cold of space, or decompression would allow them to find a rational solution.
Ras did not want to wait for the captain to share his order before he would be heard himself. Ras stood slowly, pushing the chair out from behind him and leaning onto his fingers on both hands on the table.
El’Heem: Captain, permission to share my thoughts on the matter?
Shayne / Admiral / Any: 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.
Shayne / Admiral / 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::
Shayne / Admiral / 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.
Shayne / Admiral / Any: Response
He let his words linger in the air before he silently took a seat and folded his hands back together while uncomfortably looking at the table in front of him, avoiding all the eyes liking staring at him.
TAGS/TBC
---------- ●● ----------
Lieutenant Ras El’Heem
Science Officer
USS Khitomer (NCC-62400)
K240106RE3