Lieutenant Ras El'Heem - Paradox Pt 1

[Ras El'Heem]

((Conference Room, Deck One, USS Khitomer))

 

The air in the room had become warm and uncomfortable. Things had started terribly, but now they were becoming downright catastrophic. Tampering with the timeline had unintended consequences that could not be guessed. Still, the time travelers were already there, tampering had begun. Asking after their main objective only helped put the course of action they needed to take into perspective.

 

El’Heem: What made ::pausing:: uhh makes this…Tholian so formidable?

Tori: He speaks fluent Sheliak.

Zerva: ::raising a brow:: How is that possible?

 

Any: Response? 

 

That in and of itself was impressive. A Tholian managing to parse together one of the most complex languages in the known universe and then actually be able to vocalize it? If nothing else, that needed to be studied.

Harford: More importantly, why is that important? 

Tori: You have to understand that, at this time, no member of any species has ever learned the Sheliak language. Even telepaths can’t understand them. It's part of what their sense of superiority is built on. But Tholians being imprisoned side-by-side with Sheliak created a unique environment for one to learn the language. His book will be the first published in their language by an alien to their culture. He will be the first non-Sheliak to deliver addresses in the language. Factor in his radicalization during his imprisonment, and he’s going to become a force of uniting hatred the likes of which this quadrant has never seen.

 

A large part of him had already considered walking out of the room and refusing to hear any more of this temporal blasphemy. The cracks in causality were already growing at some point in the near future, and he hardly wanted to be at the center of it when time pushed back on them to correct itself. The other part of him was an artificial hand who had learned the consequences of insubordination. There was clearly some prioritizing that needed to be done because one of those tugs should have been much larger. Both parts of him were kicking himself for asking questions.

Tori: Tholian and Sheliak units don’t combine outside of Federation prison. It’s possible there will never be another like him.

Michaels: That is possible. But, it is not impossible that there will be several more like him. Based on what you said, every Tholian or Sheliak in that prison is a candidate.

Ohnari: While I can understand how dangerous an extremely charismatic opportunist can be...how are we certain that this particular Tholian is the linchpin?

 

Admiral: Because of the dramatic change in fortune upon its rise. The Alliance simply… got better at choosing battles, supplying its forces.

 

Zerva: ::muttering mostly to himself:: And they weren’t already?

 

Time travel problems aside, the plan seemed too farfetched to be entertained and featured countless moral quandaries and plot holes.

 

El’Heem: You know, in biology, getting rid of one pathogen could very well lead to the rise of a worse, opportunistic pathogen…

 

Any: Response?

Michaels: I have a question. ::beat:: A two part question. ::beat:: I confess that I do not understand the equations and engineering around time travel or inter-multiverse travel. I will concede that your version of the Ouachita is capable of both. You could have travelled to anywhere in space and time. Why did you pick this place, in a nebula that makes detection difficult, and this time? If the quartermaster is the critical individual, why not travel to DS33 during the siege, where there were numerous dead Tholians, and kill him there?

Kael: Traveling through time ain't like dusting crops! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end our trip real quick, wouldn't it?

 

Ras squinted and cracked his neck. He didn’t have anything against these three for wanting to solve the horrors of their time, it was simply desperation. Kael, however, was rubbing him the wrong way. The way he spoke to his would be saviors was grating. He was the best they could send? Despite his terse attitude, he was also wrong or just very uniformed, stellar drift could easily be calculated, even more when you knew the exact position of things in your past, rather than the future where anomalies could make guessing a larger part of the equation.

Zerva: ::shifts in his seat muttering:: Like we're supposed to know you can travel back in time in less than 12 seconds.

 

Tensions were beginning to rise and Ras was catching on that he wasn’t the only disgruntled officer in the room. Ezra, for his part was in the right for being extremely cautious, even without knowing the science behind why this didn’t add up.

 

Ohnari: ::snapping:: Kael. Give the Lieutenant some grace, we're all just trying to come to terms with...::her hands gestured to the trio:: and how it came to pass.

 

And what was that? Talia seemed far too enamored with the little irradiated brat. It wasn’t normal for someone to become so attached so fast, telepathic or otherwise. Ras pulled out his PADD and jotted down some notes on potential memetic affective contagion between the travelers on certain members of the crew.

Banks: To clarify: you’re saying that your ability to travel back in time is constrained, and there are only certain places or times you can successfully travel to?

 

Tori: Yes.

 

Admiral: The singularity we created in the nebula. It’s the only way any of this works. It limits where and when we can go. ::beat:: It also pins the timeline together. Any changes made before the singularity collapses in the next fifty-two years will stick. ::a glance to Tori:: Or so I'm told.

 

And they were just supposed to take that hand-wavey science at face value? The way she presented that information felt rehearsed and it put Ras on a different type of caution. One of distrust.

 

Dewitt: So what is the exact plan, then, Ginny?

TAGS/TBC

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Lieutenant Ras El’Heem

Science Officer

USS Khitomer (NCC-62400)

K240106RE3