The time travel police MISSION END

Posted on Mon May 20th, 2024 @ 4:04pm by Captain Rueben Gregnol & Chief Engineer Michael Burnstein

Mission: Fractures
Location: Crew Quarters
Timeline: Jan 2398
1705 words - 3.4 OF Standard Post Measure

Ame Vovihl smiled as sat in the quarters of the man she was waiting for. The time travel incident was over with, Gregnol had given her nothing from her meeting with him in the future other than the item was destroyed but the man she really wanted to speak to was the Chief Engineer. For such a small civilian ship it seemed to be a a magnet for so many Department of Temporal Investigations. She had now been there twice, first to check on the crew members from 2243 and now thanks to a fracturing event.

She glanced around the quarters trying to work out the Engineer more as the door opened finally and the man she had been waiting for came in. She stood instantly from the couch stepping into the light so the Trill was visible.

“Your wife is asleep and I would like to keep it that way for us to have a catch-up.” Ame said. “My name is Commander Ame Vovihl. We’ve never had the pleasure of meeting each other personally but you have an impressive file.”

Burnie contained a sigh. But even if he had been warned this was coming, he would have expected it. "You know the one good thing about being discharged was not having to talk to you guys," he replied, shaking his head. "But I'd prefer not to wake my wife, so why don't we take this down the hall to a conference room?"

"We cover the Federation not just Starfleet Mister Burnstein but it is likely for the best. It is not every day someone meets the borg and lives." Ame pointed out but indicated that they could move somewhere else. She glanced at the bedroom and grimaced. She did not wish that trauma on anyone. She let him lead the way down the silent corridor and stepped inside. It was a typical conference room. "Gregnol wanted to use this place too when I disturbed his day in a couple of days." She laughed just a little and sat down.

Andi yet you had no problem ambushing me in our quarters, knowing she was sleeping. So it was obviously a control move. But he was in no mood for games, so once the door shut behind them, he brushed the comment aside. "Yeah, I know, your purview is everywhere and everywhen." He smirked slightly as they entered the conference room. "So the room should be as good for your interview as any other."

"Have you recovered fully?" She wondered. Her accent was airy but it was easy to see that among her mass of curls she was a force to be reckoned with.

You know I have you wouldn't be here. Popping in from a couple days in the future would have risked knocking me out if I weren't. He didn't say it. Vriha had been absolutely right that he did not want DTI taking an interest in his brain, so he decided to take the question the way it would have been meant for any other member of the crew. "I'm not sure anyone fully recovers from unexpected temporal events, but..." he shrugged and plopped into a chair, leaning back and giving a half-smile, "...I've been through worse."

“Well Ensign Ka’see McAvoy seems to have adjusted well here so I think some people handle it better than others but yes you have been through worse. I am glad to see that you have handled it better this time.” The trill said watching him carefully. He did not like her much she could tell and she could not blame him some of her colleagues were stuck in the mud who treated people who had time incidents as pests. “So I have a couple of questions about what futures you went to?”

"Cassie didn't time travel so much as pull a Rip van Winkle. Unless... do you mean she's adjusted well to whatever time fractures she got bounced through this time?" he asked. She'd seemed okay last he saw her, and he hoped he could take the agent's comment as indication that she really was. "I hope she's adjusting well if so. As for me, I don't remember a lot. It was more like ...a wild series of flashbacks/flashforwards, ya know?" He shrugged a little, then brightened. "But I do remember seeing Rosie back in her hey day. I almost got to tour engineering."

Ame could not say she knew the reference but that was not on him but her and her lack of Earth culture references sometimes. “I meant her almost statis moment and stepping from one time to another but that does not matter right now. I am afraid I do not know but I eager to know a little about how things have worked out for you. Last time anything like this happened you were very unwell but here we are talking and only missing something civilised like a glass of wine or a cup of tea.” Ame could not help but smiled at the way he brightened at the mention of engineering.

He chuckled. "Yeah, normally even having you here with your cloud of chronitons from jumping days forward and back a few days like dropping into different shops at a market would have made me 'short circuit'. So I assume you know that changed. The thing is, I'm the one who should be asking you how. Brain damaged," he tapped his head, "you know? I was out of it most of the time and unless I was somewhen long enough to start to come to, had no idea where or when I was. Then I was in the hydroponics bay with Nollel and I was conscious and okay.' His smile widened. "Kind of a miracle, but my memory of right before... well, I think I when I started to come around in whatever timeline that was, I had temporal psychosis. I mean, everyone else only time skipped within Rosie, but I had all these flashes of different points in my life all over. I guess whatever they did to treat it, fixed me." He got up and went to the replicator. "So we can talk, and for once civilized, as you say, since I'm not pinned in a medbay like the last time." He tapped in an order for coffee for himself. "What tea do you like?"

“I try to keep my chronitons to myself but yes I am gathering something has changed in your official status but that is not my business. Chai tea please.” She pursed her lips together. She did not care that someone was no longer suffering time sickness or whatever the official term was in this time. It did not effect the time stream as a whole. “I met an officer a year ago who introduced me to it and it’s not my go to drink.” Ame was one for small talk she found in her former life as the Clepsydra’s Chief Medical Officer it got her more answers than being cold and aloof.

Not her business? Just happy if they don't care, but interesting... He ordered the tea and brought it over to her, then sat down, taking a sip of his coffee. "Okay, I've told you I don't have much recollection of this whole thing except for briefly coming to back in the last century and then some trippy episode possibly in a future. So what are you here about?"

Ame smiled when someone got straight to the point it was preferred but she had only just gotten to her tea. She took a sip please to see it was a comfortable level to drink straight away. To her it signified he wanted to make this quick which she could not blame him about at all. “Why do you know about someone called Nyx?And did any of your flashes reveal anything about something called the darkness?”

His brows lifted in an expression best described as 'Huh?' "I don't know about anyone called Nyx. And I don't recall hearing anything about a 'darkness'." He shrugged slightly. "Sorry."

Ame sighed. “That is a shame.” She said quietly as she took a sip of her tea. Gregnol had mentioned that a future version of him had said something about it and the name had been mentioned a few times in interviews in the last few weeks. “I would highly recommend keeping an eye out for mentions.” She said simply hoping that there was nothing to it but the mentions were becoming more and more frequent.

"Okay." He took a sip of his coffee debating whether to ask. On one hand, keeping DTI interviews as short as possible was usually the best policy. On the other hand, that sounded ominous and forewarned was fore-armed - providing she'd tell him anything, which was generally a losing bet with temporal agents. Still, he decided to venture a question. "Anything you can tell me on how to proceed if I, say, meet a Nyx, or run into people talking about this darkness?"

Ame cocked her head to the side and wrinkled her nose in a gesture that spoke that she did not want to speak about it but she could not say nothing around it when she was trying to figure it out. “Run?” She offered as a suggestion. It was hard to know what it was but the darkness was never simple and a good thing.

"Gee, thanks." He rolled his eyes. "If that's all you can say about it, then unless you have other questions for me, I guess we're done here."

Ame contained a smile as she rose and returned the cup to the replicator smiling as it disappeared. So quaint to see the technology but she turned back to the man. “Unfortunately Michael I know no more than you at the moment other than several people have mentioned it.” She was not the type to drop it so she would continue to investigate. "But I am sure I will do." She commented as she pressed her comm badge and left the man alone to figure out his thoughts.