Journey to the Center of Eternity

Posted on 09 Aug 2021 @ 9:22pm by Ensign Quinn Mackie & Ensign Kelly Khan

4,272 words; about a 21 minute read

Mission: Extinction
Location: Holodeck
Timeline: Mission Day 21 at 2130

Kelly piloted the modified DeLorian class runabout through the Gamma Quadrant while Center of Eternity blared on the ships speakers. The petite brunette sang along heartily with it as she looked at the monitors. They were doing a healthy warp six, but they were also there to test the prototype runabout.

"There's no present there's no future
I don't even know about the past
It's all timeless and never ending
To take it in it's all too vast"

"It goes, forever and ever
You thought you knew but you never"

"There goes
Tomorrow
Journey to the center of eternity"

Quinn emerged from the aft compartment, bobbing his head with the rhythm of the music. Out of Kelly's eccletic classic music tastes, this was one of the few songs he found he could enjoy. The beat was not too rough, nor was the singer shouting higher than any human designed to do. "All the engine assemblies look good," he told her. "This is some program you concocted."

"Program?" She looked offended. "This is a work of art, Tiger, and we're going where no one has gone...more than a few times...that I know of at any rate."

He tugged at the bottom of his flight jacket, a feature typical of test pilots, as he stopped at a rear console to perform a diagnostic. "You realize the power requirements for these modifications is like sticking a Galaxy class fusion generator into a compartment no bigger than my foot locker."

"Isn't it glorious?" Kelly asked. "We have the kind of technology that lets us do that in the form of a tiny little flux capacitor chip. It'll give us a boost of one point twenty one terracochranes when we engage it."

"There's nothing like tearing a hole in the space-time continuum like one point twenty one terracochranes!" Quinn jokingly said from his station. "So what exactly is this craft supposed to do anyway?"

"Fix things that go wrong," she said as she brought the runabout up to warp six point five, the high end of warp for most runabouts.

Quinn's ears could hear a bit of stress on the structural integrity and inertial dampeners. "Rerouting some power from non-essential systems." The sounds began to settle not too long after. "I may have to make some adjustments to the deflector and warp shell before we push it any further."

"You are such an Engineer," Kelly laughed. "This thing was designed to withstand standard stresses and every ones that aren't standard. They programmed sandbagging into the warnings so guys like you can moan to people that you're giving it all you can when you know it can do more. Check the temporal readouts and make sure it's set to a time and place that no one has ever been to."

"Time and place, eh?" Quinn moved to another station to check the readouts there. "We are definitely seeing a lot of temporal flux and turbulence, but finding a time and place that no one has ever been to... I think only the DTI can tell us that, and even then, it would be classified."

"Okay, narrow that to a time and place that we haven't been to," she suggested. "And who or what is DTI?"

"The Department of Temporal Investigations," Quinn replied. He shuddered at his memory of dealing with them, having to be interviewed as the surviving lead Dolmoqour conspirator. "Let's just say I'm glad that this is a simulation. All right. Time and place. How about... late twenty-third century... just before the Khitomer Accords were signed. Or... jumping one hundred years into our future."

"Your choice, Tiger," Kelly said, glad she hadn't been grilled as her only part had been to sit on the bridge and keep things locked down. Her fingers danced across the console and it gave a chirp. "The Capacitor is online. Power increasing to one ten. One twenty. One thirty. Prepare to engage the temporal drive." The DeLorean class runabout passed warp seven, then hit eight and began to climb. "Warp Eight. Eight point one. Eight point two. Eight point three." She intoned as the runabout continued to accelerate. "Engage at Eight point eight."

The craft shuddered immensely, but not violently enough to throw anyone from their seats. Quinn did, however, make the mistake standing at the moment of transition. Not only were his eyes filled with a bright light, but the deck shifted under his feet, causing him to lose balance and fall against Kelly. The craft lost all propulsion and was now flying ahead under just inertia. "Did it work?"\

The runabout jerked and static electricity formed around the nacelles and arced away behind it as it jumped exponentially in both warp and time.

An eep that couldn't have been more genuine if she had practiced it a thousand times came from Kelly's mouth as she started into eternity on the viewscreen in front of her. The usual warp bubble and stretching star trails were there for an instant, then it looked like space had caught on fire in front of them. She opened her mouth to say something, then fell forward onto the console as he landed against her. The runabout jerked again, this time more violently and came to a slow drift after a minute.

She forced her head up and looked ahead at a region of tumultuous space before there was a long, drawn out grinding noise from the computer.

The time is coming but also going
And it's leaving never to return
Maybe forever it could be heaven
But if it's hell then you can watch me burn

It goes, forever and ever
You thought you knew but you never

There goes

Tomorrow

"Are...we dead?" she asked quietly.

Before Quinn could answer, the runabout shook again, this time because it had been caught in the wake of another ship. The runabout involuntarily turned towards the starship that was rushing by them at high impulse, not at all bothering to stop or at least scan them. "No... but that was probably one of our closest encounters with death."

"What the....RUDE!" Kelly shouted at death before it noped past them and kept going without even a hail of "Sorry, maybe next time." She looked a the console, then did a double take. "Did...you happen to set our destination....to four point six billion years ago?" she asked in a quiet voice.

Quinn picked himself up and sat down at the station beside her. "No," he said in disbelief. "I set it for a hundred years in our future. The second impact must have messed up the temporal hardware somehow." He changed his settings to view the sensors. "Um... Kelly? I, uh... I'm not picking up anything. No stars. No worlds. Nothing besides a couple ships that are moving very, very... far... oh shit."

"Is that Engineer for the warp core is about to go?" Kelly asked as she continued to stare ahead before she finally looked at her readings. "Quinn....do we have power? Please tell me we have power."

"We have power, just not terracochrane power," Quinn said, rushing back to the aft engineering station. "But behind us, there's about to be a massive combustion of cosmic energy. I think we're at ground zero for the big bang."

"B-b-behind us?" the petite brunette stuttered. "Bing bang? You mean the Big Bang!?"

"The one and only," Quinn said. "I'm going to have to manually shift us over to the reserve fuel tank. In the meantime, you'll have to get us as far away as possible." Quinn tapped his combadge to open a channel to the cockpit and disappeared into the rear of the craft.

"Computer, remove Big Bang from program," Kelly tried as she began to use the ship's impulse power to start to navigate away from the biggest bang in galactic history.

"Unable to comply," the computer intoned.

"What do you mean, unable to comply? I didn't put this in here! Diagnostic mode! Arch!"

"Unable to comply," it intoned again. "Program Duct Tape 1.0 is working properly."

"What tape?" Kelly asked.

"Duct Tape 1.0."

"What is Duct Tape 1.0 or whatever?"

"Duct Tape 1.0 merges compatible programs for new results in scenarios."

"Who ran this? I didn't!"

"Duct Tape 1.0 has been running for three days, two hours and nineteen minutes. Unable to determine personnel responsible."

"Well, isn't this peach," Kelly muttered. "Quinn! There's a bug in the program and the Big Bang is still loading!"

"Great!" Quinn called back over the comm. "Just great! Our best chance then is to outrun this thing, at least long enough for me to get this... oh no. That second jolt drained most of our reserve energy."

Quinn reappeared in the cockpit a moment later. "We're going to have to try a different approach now. I'm going to reconfigure the bussard collectors to absorb some kinetic energy from the explosion. That should be enough to supercharge the nacelles and get us out of here."

"You want to....let's do this. Strap in, Tiger," she said. "We aren't about to die when the universe is about to be born!" Her fingers flew over the console. "We need max SIF and maximum warp for..." She did the math in her head. "Four seven point three seconds." The DeLorean class runabout began to maneuver around with the collectors ready. "Can we do that?"

"I think I can do that," Quinn said, strapping himself in at the Engineering station. "We've got twenty seconds until detonation. Diverting everything we have left to engines and structural integrity. Reducing inertial dampeners to eighty percent."

"Twenty? I said everything, not half that," Kelly complained as she strapped in and got the DeLorean class runabout moving. "Going to warp on your mark."

Quinn tapped his last few buttons. "Do it!" he shouted without waiting to confirm the changes. If he was wrong, well, it wouldn't matter anyway.

The petite pilot engaged the warp engines and hoped they had enough power from what was about to hit them to be able to outrun it. "Is this what we call faster than life?" She asked as the runabout surged forward. "Time to detonation?" She asked as the experimental craft passed Warp 2.

"Faster than life... that's a good one." Quinn looked at his readouts. "I had thought twenty seconds, but it's exponentially reaching critical mass. It could be any moment now. I'll shift life support and everything else to SIF. Also resetting the temporal circuits. Gonna take us back to where we originally started from."

"What do you mean, any moment?!" Kelly practically yelled as the DeLorean class passed Warp 7. "We're not going to make it." The runabout shook and trembled at the forces behind it and she fought to keep it steady. "Do it. Warp 7 point five. Point nine. Warp 8. Come on, we need more!"

"I'm giving it all I've got!" Quinn cried back. The runabout continued to accelerate, though it was not as exponential as the big bang charging up. "Oh no..." he muttered, looking at the readouts. "The stellar energy is contracting. Explosion in three... two... one."

"one...two...three..." she counted off. When he reached one, she hit the Emergency Warp, which she had been told was a bad thing if they were already past tolerance. The runabout seemed to stretch and time dilated around them; the Big Bang gave birth to creation of the universe and the blast wave reached out to try to swat them like the bugs they were. She screamed something unintelligible that was drawn out from seconds to minutes.

Quinn moved his hand over to the bussard controls. While normally this action would have taken less than a second, he was stunned to see that the simple movement actually took almost a full minute. His mind still processed activity in real time, or so he supposed. A minute later, the bussards activated, and they filled quickly thanks to the surge of energy. All of Quinn's indicators quickly flooded to maximum, almost to the point of flying off the scale.

The ship's automatic controls kicked in, giving preference to the temporal circuits. A bright flash of light appeared through the viewports, followed by a very violent shudder.

"Warp eight point eight" dragged out of Kelly's mouth as slow as everything else, then time snapped back to normal with a violent start. Being the runabout, the minor electrical show of before now looked like massive twin bolts of lightning that was igniting the Big Bang. Then the DeLorean class vanished and reappeared where they had left.

Quinn watched as his readouts began to stabilize, and then as the gauges started to fall below acceptable levels. "Well, Kel, it worked. Sensors are registering the stars right back where they are supposed to be. The downside is, we'll need to refuel before we try anything like that again."

"I...think I'll pass for now," Kelly said after a moment. "What I want to know is who the hell did that to the program and why? We need to find this Duct Tape and rip it off."

"If this was a couple months ago, I'd blame HASA." Quinn rose from the seat and moved back to the forward station. Rather than try and mess with the controls, he sat down in the open seat beside Kelly. "But Duct Tape? It sounds like someone was just doing a bad repair job."

"The computer said it linked compatible programs, but that would require a lot of programming," she said. "So most likely an Engineer or someone versed in holodeck programming enough to make a program that can interact with other programs on this level."

Quinn thought for a moment. "I suppose the best place to start is to look at the compatible programs, determine what they are and why the computer thought they could be linked. Understanding the program could help us trace down who wrote it."

"When I find them, I'm going to duct tape their hands behind their back and frog march them to the Captain," Kelly groused. "But it is kinda cool, isn't it?"

"Which part?" Quinn asked. "Nearly being killed by the explosion that created the universe? Or that there's a subrouting that provides a truly unique perspective and randomness to holodeck programs?"

"Yes," she said to both. "I'm more interested in something else. Computer, is the fail safe engaged?"

"Negative," the computer intoned.

Kelly turned pale and looked at Quinn. "Let's get the fuck out of here! End program!"

"Unable to comply," droned the computer.

Quinn's eyes shot open. For a moment, he wondered if that as often as his face had reacted this way in the last ten minutes, he assumed it would eventually freeze in an eternal surprise mode. "What the hell?" he shouted aloud. "Computer, emergency holodeck shutdown. Authorization Mackie Epsilon Gamma Nine Nine Zero."

The computer buzzed once more. "Vocal authorization denied."

"Dammit," Quinn muttered, flying up from the chair and starting to tear away every access hatch. "We're going to have to do this manually. Where's the override?"

"Second console under the Ops console," Kelly said as she checked the readouts to see if anything was heading their way, like another Big Bang. Nothing. She breathed a sigh of relief. "Override, Khan Charlie Delta Omega Seven One Four!"

"Vocal authorization denied," the computer repeated.

"Okay. We're obviously in someone else's program now," she mused. "Computer, what is the current program?"

A traditional processing whirl could be heard through the speakers before the computer answered, "Three programs are currently running. Khan Timeship Beta Six, Genesis Battle Theta Two, and Supernova Observation Training Protocols Lesson Six Gamma."

"What's the parameters of Genesis Battle Theta Two?" Kelly asked. "Work faster, Quinn."

The computer processed the request and answered, "Genesis Battle Theta Two is a historical program that explores the 2285 battle between the U.S.S. Enterprise under the command of Admiral James Kirk and the U.S.S. Reliant under the command of Khan Noonien Singh."

"Oh lovely," she started. "Well, we're faster than those ships and have better weapons, but I wonder why part this program is supposed to play in it, and why did we go back even further?"

Quinn looked at the temporal circuits. "Looks like we're back in the present day, actually. Without looking at the program however, if it's combining elements from like programs together, it probably extrapolated the fact that this runabout requires a massive amount of energy to traverse time and space, and the massive explosion from the big bang, and the Genesis Device detonation from 2285, and then also a supernova burst... it gathered like items together."

"So, we have to get to the Genesis planet before it goes boom in order to jump out of this timeframe and back to our own after causing a supernova. Got it. Anything else?"

He raised an eyebrow, wondering if she'd actually heard all he said. "Other than making sure we don't die... that's probably it. I'll take a look at the engines and see what I can give you. Although..." Quinn paused, an idea having struck him. "What if we rewrote the script? What if the genesis device doesn't explode?"

"Then Spock never gets reborn and Khan wins and Kirk doesn't get busted down in rank again," Kelly mused. "But why would we do that?"

"In theory," Quinn said with a shrug. "It should cause a critical error and end the program. Normally, with historical programs, there are failsafes to keep the user on the right path. But if the failsafes are down..."

"Then we set a course for Genesis and stop them from detonating the device!" She exclaimed as she did a search for the coordinates. "How long until we can use the temporal drive again?"

Quinn checked the fuel levels. "Looks like we picked up quite a bit from the Big Bang, but there's only enough for one trip. I'll set the circuits, reset the system, and we should be good to go."

Kelly laid in a course for the Genesis Planet and took the DeLorean class to warp once again, but kept it at Warp 6. "Four hours to go, Tiger. What do we do for now?"

"We can try and find other ways to override the holodeck," he suggested. "There's always a panel or some sort of emergency access while the program is running. We just need to find it."

"Then let's tear it apart," she said as she pulled off a console beside of her and got down to inspect it for a emergency override or exit. "Computer, arch," she tried again.

No arch came.

Quinn pulled off a few covers of his own. So far, everything appeared to be part of the ordinary. "You don't think the computer would have put the override on the outside of the craft? Do you?"

Kelly stopped and looked at him. "I seriously hope not," she said as she took another panel off. "I didn't equip it with EVA suits. Computer, two EVA suits in our sizes," she tried.

Quinn paused for a second, looking around to see if two suits materialized. It didn't take long to realize that none were coming. "Well, I suppose that's out for now, besides, we'd have to drop out of warp to check the outside of the hull. I don't think we can afford to lose that amount of time."

"We don't," she agreed as she removed another panel, then stood up quickly. "What if we disabled the temporal drive thing?"

"What?" Quinn turned and looked at her. "Well, I suppose we don't really need it. If we stop the Genesis device from going off, then that should be enough to disable the program and free us from the holodeck. What are you hoping it will do?"

"Take a short cut and force it to let us out," Kelly said as she headed back to the cramped Engineering compartment and ripped a panel off. "I'll smash this thing and then we can't follow the program."

He raised an eyebrow. There was a lot of risk involved, but at this point, Quinn didn't think that there was any risk more dangerous than another. "I really hate holodecks," he muttered. He grabbed a tool kit and walked to a different access panel. "This will take a few minutes. I'll need you to reroute some of the power so that I don't electrocute myself."

"Or is this a bad idea and we should do what you said instead?" she asked, confused as to why she was going against herself when he was readily agreeing with her. It irked her a bit, and she looked at him. "Do whatever."

Quinn paused, before turning to Kelly. "Are you okay?" he asked. It was very much unlike her to waver like this.

"Yes. No. Maybe." Came the response as she pulled off another panel and deliberately avoided looking at him.

He never ever had a reason to worry about Kelly. Quinn had only ever worried about the shenanigans they found themselves in, or how they would get out of them, but never once did he ever worry about her mental state. Well, aside from the time they had both been subjugated by the Dolmoqour. "Are you sure, Kel?" He set down his tools and crouched down beside her.

"Positive," she responded in a lackluster voice. "What was I doing?" She looked in the panel she had just pulled off and couldn't figure out her question.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. Okay, he knew that they couldn't wait four hours, aside from the fact that their holodeck reservation was due to expire soon. "You know, the holodeck is simulating the runabout's computer. I bet... if we can overload the computer, we might be able to force a critical error and shut down the program that way."

"Computer, calculate the total terraquads of data encapsulated in the sperm of every reproducing species known to the United Federation of planets from smallest to largest, in alphabetical order and from first discovered to last discovered." She said. "Think that might work?"

"That's just a simple database search and cross reference," Quinn said, shaking his head. He rose to his feet and moved over to the console. "What we need to do is come up with a few different equations that'll set the computer into a feedback loop. Heavy database queries, cross references, analyses..." his voice trailed off as he started to write several algorithms.

Kelly joined in and started added more to what he was doing on a console of her own, but was setting them at odds with his. "Okay. Let's see if we can get out of this mess."

"Start a series of Level One diagnostics on all major systems, but keep everything in manual mode so that all systems continue to function." Quinn knew this process was absolutely illegal, but if it stopped the program, it was completely worth it.

"On it," she said, but didn't do anything. She just sat at the console looking at it. She glanced over at him and wondered why he was still bothering with her, then looked down again.

Even with all of the button tapping and computer whirs, Quinn took a chance here and there to glance at Kelly. He noticed her slowness and hesitation. He continued worry about her, but the priority here was to end this program.

Finally, Kelly remembered what she was doing and set the diagnostics on manual. "Done," she muttered and sighed. She lay her head on the console after that and closed her eyes, wishing she could keep them closed.

Quinn started to look around, wondering what was holographically generated, and what was a replicated prop. The chair he sat in appeared to be replicated, but he moved to try and remove an access hatch. His hand waved right through it, indicating that the computer was struggling to keep up. "Just another few seconds of all of this should do it. "Computer, access the complete library of music, analyze and compose a symphony."

"Journey to the center of eternity!" the computer blasted, but made it sound like a classical Klingon Opera singer belting out the Earth classic song.

Kelly shot up and fell off her chair and nearly caved the back of her skull in. "Red ale...rt?" she gasped. "I've fallen and I ...what is that?!"

Suddenly, everything stopped. The stars outside the runabout refused to move, the air ceased circulating, and even the familiar sounds inside the runabout ceased. A moment later, everything vanished, dropping both Quinn and Kelly onto the holodeck floor.

"Critical error," announced the computer. "Holodeck Two has been flagged for maintenance and will be inoperable until further notice."

She sat up after the short fall and rubbed the back of her head, then struggled to get up. "Let's make like shepherds and get the flock out of here!"

Quinn extended a hand to help Kelly get back on her feet. "You don't have to tell me twice," he declared, keeping his feet planted to maintain his balance.

With an enthusiastic nod of her brunette mane, Kelly agreed with him and gave his hand a squeeze as she headed for the arch. "I think I'm done with holodecks for a while."

"Me too," sighed Quinn. He slid his arm around her to escort her both out of the holodeck and back to their quarters. "Me too..."

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