Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations - 01 - Watching the Clock

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “Mm-hm.”

  As Dulmur went to the replicator, Lucsly returned to his desk and resumed work on his reports. Dulmur shook his head. He understood the need for temporal security as well as anyone, but still, the detective in him yearned for answers. He’d gotten a tantalizing glimpse of the future and he couldn’t help wanting to know more, to see how the story turned out. Even after sixteen years and eight months together, he couldn’t fully understand how his partner could be so content with his plodding, day-to-day routine when there were so many adventures out there.

  But no, he reminded himself—Lucsly was right. Adventure was what happened when people overreached and got themselves and others into trouble. Lucsly’s drab, mundane way of life may not have been the sort of thing that changed the world or shaped the future. But it was just the sort of attitude the DTI needed to keep the timeline stable and untroubled. And, Dulmur reminded himself, it was just what he needed to keep him grounded when faced with the craziness of time.

  “Don’t ever change, Lucsly,” he muttered as he pulled his partner’s black coffee from the replicator and took it over to his desk.

  UPTIME

  EPILOGUE

  Undisclosed Location

  Undisclosed Date

  Gariff Lucsly looked around him at the small but eclectic group assembled in the nondescript meeting room: Revad of the Typhon Pact’s Chronological Defense Corps (now merged with the Temporal Assessment Group); B’etath of the poH HubwoQ, the Klingon Time Defense Authority recently organized by the High Council; Vennor Sikran of the Vomnin BHRD; Mogon, a bovine-featured Gororm representing the Carnelian Regnancy’s Temporal Oversight Administration; and, encased within an environmental field, a Sheliak of unpronounceable name who represented the Corporate’s temporal security agency. It had taken less time than Lucsly had expected to bring this group together despite the policy differences of their various governments and the flaring of assorted tensions among some of them. But the events of 2382 had reaffirmed the importance of interstellar cooperation on temporal matters. The trickiest part had been arranging the logistics of the meeting in a way that would attract no attention and leave no record.

  He felt the absence of Dulmur by his side, but reminded himself of the necessity of it. Some weights simply had to be carried alone. Besides, the responsibilities of an assistant director were demanding enough without burdening him with this.

  “All right, Lucsly,” Revad said after a moment. “We’re all here, as you arranged. You don’t know how hard it was for me to pull this off. So are you going to tell us why we’re here?”

  Lucsly met the Romulan’s gaze, then took in the rest of the group. “We’re here,” he said, “because we’re unimportant.”

  “What?” B’etath cried, rising from her seat. “I did not come here to be insulted!”

  “You haven’t been,” Lucsly said. “Importance is overrated. History always concentrates on the big names. The presidents and emperors who make the laws. The starship captains who make new contacts and discoveries. The generals who win the wars. The physicists who make new breakthroughs.

  “And that means that historians tend to overlook the little guys. The bureaucrats. The middle managers. The chair-bound suits doing the drudge work—the real work without which all the emperors and captains and generals would be completely lost.”

  He looked around at the others, and he knew he had their attention. None of them were glamorous or famous. Their work was quiet, confidential, meticulous, uncelebrated. They worked in offices to minimize the damage from others’ adventures.

  “All right,” Sikran said, “so none of us will ever be immortalized in holoprograms. What’s your point?”

  “What if you wanted to create something entirely in secret?” Lucsly asked him. “Something massive. Something expansive. But something whose origins would be lost to history, so that no one could ever come back and prevent its creation. Could a president pull that off? Or a starship captain? Or a famous physicist with his own series of popular hololectures? No. They’d draw too much attention. They’d be the first people the historians would look at.

  “If you wanted to make it work,” he went on, “the entire project, from the initial conception to the final execution, would have to be the province of the little guys. The nondescript suits who could work invisibly behind the scenes.” He leaned forward. “The people who handle the paperwork—and know how to lose it.”

  The other temporal investigators traded looks. They recognized that this was going somewhere. “I imagine you’ll tell us what this is all about in time,” Revad said.

  “Once I’m confident you understand what’s at stake.”

  Mogon tilted her long-faced head uncertainly. “What you’re proposing . . . to operate in complete secrecy would introduce many delays. The work would have to be done piecemeal, in small enough increments that no one would notice our absence or our diversion of resources.”

  “That’s right,” Lucsly said. “This is the work of decades. Maybe generations. It would require profound focus and unwavering commitment. But our ancestors have achieved such projects in the past. Cathedrals and monuments that took the ancients centuries to build, knowing they wouldn’t see the result in their lifetimes. Environmental restoration projects, sacrifices made in the present for the sake of future generations.

  “It won’t be easy. But it can be done, by the right kind of people.” Lucsly looked his fellow temporal security agents in the eyes or optical receptors, one by one.

  “People who take a long enough view of time.”

  Acknowledgments

  AND Further Reading

  Agents Lucsly and Dulmur, DTI, were introduced in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations,” which teleplay was written by Ronald D. Moore & René Echevarria, from a story by Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler & Robert Hewitt Wolfe. Their scenes total only three minutes and forty-five seconds of screen time, with Dulmur speaking 170 words, Lucsly a mere 99. Yet the performances of actors Jack Blessing (Dulmur) and James W. Jansen (Lucsly) left an indelible impression, creating an enduring fan interest in the two DTI agents, as well as giving me essentially everything I needed to get a handle on who these men were.

  A number of earlier authors have portrayed Lucsly, Dulmur (usually with the variant spelling “Dulmer”), and the DTI in assorted works of short fiction. I’m particularly indebted to William Leisner’s “Gods, Fate, and Fractals” in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II, which inspired several elements of this book (including the phase-shielded DTI files and the Joe Friday–esque portrayal of Lucsly) and with which this novel is largely consistent. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Section 31—Rogue by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin established Lucsly and Dulmur’s interview of Picard after the events of Star Trek: First Contact, as seen in Chapter XIV. As for the other DTI stories out there, my interpretation differs from theirs in a number of respects, but I have borrowed inspiration from several. Dayton Ward’s “Almost, But Not Quite,” also in Strange New Worlds II, established Dulmur as a divorcé and provided the seed for the family-man side of his character, as well as informing the timing and circumstances of the DTI’s formation. Kevin Dilmore’s “The Road to Edos” in Star Trek: New Frontier: No Limits introduced novice agent Stewart Peart and the TDD. And Last Unicorn Games’ All Our Yesterdays: The Time Travel Sourcebook in their Star Trek: The Expanded Universe series provided some useful ideas about the DTI’s organization and equipment and the layout of its headquarters (though not its location, for which I’m indebted to Google Maps, Wikipedia, and the websites for the University of Greenwich and the Royal Observatory, plus a UK real-estate site that helped me home in on the exact buildings where HQ should be).

  Effectively every Star Trek episode and film pertaining to time travel is at least obliquely alluded to herein, but the most heavily featured ones include the Star Trek: The Next Generation installments “We’ll Always Have Paris” (written by Deborah Dean Davis & Hannah
Louise Shearer); “Time Squared” (written by Maurice Hurley; story by Kurt Michael Bensmiller); “Captain’s Holiday” (written by Ira Steven Behr); “Cause and Effect” (written by Brannon Braga); and Star Trek: First Contact (story by Rick Berman & Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga; screenplay by Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga); plus the Star Trek: Voyager series finale “Endgame” (teleplay by Kenneth Biller & Robert Doherty; story by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga & Kenneth Biller). The Temporal Cold War was established in multiple episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, including “Broken Bow,” “Shockwave,” and “The Expanse” (each written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga); “Cold Front” (written by Stephen Beck & Tim Finch); “Detained” (teleplay by Phyllis Strong & Mike Sussman; story by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga); “Future Tense” (written by Phyllis Strong and Mike Sussman); and “Storm Front” (written by Manny Coto).

  Paul Manheim was played by Rod Loomis in TNG: “We’ll Always Have Paris”; Clare Raymond (Gracie Harrison) is from “The Neutral Zone” (teleplay by Maurice Hurley; story by Deborah McIntyre & Mona Clee); Morgan Bateson (Kelsey Grammer) is from “Cause and Effect.” His bridge crew depicted herein is based on the unknown extras who appeared behind him in that episode. Korath (Vaughn Armstrong) appeared in the alternate future of “Endgame” but was created by René Echevarria & Kenneth Biller for the Klingon Encounter ride of the Las Vegas Star Trek: The Experience attraction. Then-Lieutenant Ducane (Jay Karnes) and the Temporal Integrity Commission appeared in VGR: “Relativity” (teleplay by Bryan Fuller & Nick Sagan & Michael Taylor; story by Nick Sagan). Enterprise gave us Agent Daniels (Matt Winston) and the mysterious “Future Guy” (James Horan). Dr. T’Pan (Joan Stuart Morris) is from TNG: “Suspicions” (written by Joe Menosky & Naren Shankar). Aleek-Om was a bit character in the animated Star Trek episode “Yesteryear” (written by D. C. Fontana), though his portrayal here is based largely on Alan Dean Foster’s adaptation of that episode in Star Trek Log One.

  The Borg invasion occurred in the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy by David Mack. Dina Elfiki and Jasminder Choudhury were created for Destiny, although they debuted in my TNG novel Greater Than the Sum. Heather Petersen is from DS9: Invasion: Time’s Enemy by L. A. Graf (which also introduced Ursula K. LeGuin’s ansible concept to the Trek universe). President Bacco was introduced in TNG: A Time for War, A Time for Peace and Articles of the Federation by Keith R. A. DeCandido. The term “Feynman curve” comes from the DS9 trilogy Millennium by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, whose detailed and well-informed discussions of temporal physics are reasonably compatible with the model I present here. Discussions with David A. McIntee helped me keep this novel reasonably consistent with his recent TNG novel Indistinguishable from Magic; David contributed the concept of the rarity and difficulty of successful slingshot maneuvers. My portrayal of Deltan culture is based on behind-the-scenes story notes reprinted in The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Susan Sackett and Gene Roddenberry, while the Deltans’ conflict with the Carreon was established in TNG: Gateways: Doors into Chaos by Robert Greenberger. The Clan Ru incident is from Star Trek: First Frontier by Diane Carey and Dr. James I. Kirkland. Turtledove Anomalies are from Star Trek: Crossroad by Barbara Hambly and are presumably a nod to alternate-history novelist Harry Turtledove. The Null and the Sentry AIs are from Star Trek: Titan—Synthesis by James Swallow. Lant’s temporal manipulation of the Ferengi stock market is from Star Trek: Corps of Engineers: “Buying Time” by Robert Greenberger.

  The name “Aegis” for the secret organization employing Gary Seven, from the original series’ “Assignment: Earth” (teleplay by Gene Roddenberry and Art Wallace; story by Art Wallace), and the concept of its participation in timeline defense were introduced by Howard Weinstein in “The Peacekeeper” in issues 49–50 (June-July 1993) of DC Comics’ second monthly Star Trek (TOS) comic book, and elaborated on by Greg Cox in Star Trek: Assignment: Eternity and the duology The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh. I’ve also alluded to elements of John Byrne’s recent Assignment: Earth miniseries from IDW Comics, although it conflicts in some respects with Cox’s version (perhaps representing an alternate timeline).

  Inspiration came from classic works of time-travel fiction including Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity, Gregory Benford’s Timescape, and Stephen Baxter’s The Time Ships and Manifold: Time. Poul Anderson’s The Time Patrol series provided the idea of alterations to history canceling out over the long term except at critical nexus points. The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter inspired the Deltan time perceptor. Greg Egan’s novella “Singleton,” available online at www.gregegan.com/MISC/SINGLETON/Singleton.html, helped give me general insight into quantum physics and planted the seed for the quantum lock concept herein. Certain ideas pertaining to the ultimate strategy of a time war were inspired by concepts developed by David Mack for his novel The 4400: Promises Broken.

  Living up to my usual preference for scientific credibility was a particular challenge when dealing with Star Trek’s time-travel adventures. To my surprise, though, I was able to find real justifications for most of Trek’s temporal weirdness. The root of my physical model in this book (as well as the model followed in the 2009 Star Trek feature film) is Hugh Everett’s relative state formulation of quantum mechanics, better known as the Many-Worlds Interpretation. “The Everett FAQ” at http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm is a thorough, accessible overview of the MWI. Another good, only slightly technical primer is “The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Many Worlds or Many Words?” by Max Tegmark (available online at http://www.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9709032/). These documents provided the critical revelation that parallel histories, once diverged, are not absolutely forbidden from recombining. This was the key to reconciling a plausible MWI-based temporal theory with Star Trek’s portrayal of timelines being erased or destroyed by time travel. Physicist David Deutsch’s work in quantum information theory influenced my model of quantum entanglement across timelines and the destruction of incompatible information being the key to such “erasure.” The “Quantum Decoherence” page at http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/reality_decoherence.asp also helped me figure out the physics of timeline mergers.

  The theory that time has more than one dimension is the work of Itzhak Bars, discussed on Bars’s site at http://physics1.usc.edu/~bars/research.html#2T and in Chapter 7 of Extra Dimensions in Space and Time by Terning, Bars, and Nekoogar (Springer, 2009), available on Google Books. (This is not to be confused with Stephen Hawking’s “imaginary time” dimension, which is merely a mathematical convenience.) Bars’s work leads to the conclusion that a third dimension of time would result in negative probabilities, a concept considered physically meaningless. Doctor Naadri’s interpretation of negative probability is my own fictionalized twist on the idea, grafted with the concept of “anti-time” from TNG: “All Good Things . . .” (written by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga). Meanwhile, the role of non-linear quantum mechanics in allowing interaction between timelines (including Naadri’s “Everett-Wheeler radio”) and other violations of conventional causality is discussed in Baxter’s The Time Ships and more formally in John Cramer’s essay “Quantum Telephones to Other Universes, to Times Past” at http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw48.html.

  Quantum Darwinism is a theory developed by Wojciech H. Zurek et al. to explain how the singular classical world arises from the multivalued quantum world. It gained preliminary experimental support in 2010, and may be the solution to the generations-old mystery embodied in the famous Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment. Zurek’s 2005 paper at http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0505031 is the basis for Lucsly’s discussion of quantum palimpsests in Chapter XXII.

  For help with the various calendars referenced in the chapter and scene headings, I’m indebted to the Calendar Converter page at http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/calendar/, as well as Tarek’s Universal Converter at http://bennyhills.fortunecity.com/elfman/454/calindex.html, the Darian Date Converter at http://pweb.jps.
net/~tgangale//mars/converter/calendar_clock.htm, and the Erisian Date Converter at http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/dateconvert.html. Thanks to Michael A. Martin for providing insight on the Vulcan, Klingon, Romulan, and Andorian dating systems he employed in novels such as Star Trek: Enterprise—The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor’s Wing and Star Trek: Excelsior—Forged in Fire. The Stardate Calculator page at www.hillschmidt.de/gbr/sternenzeit.htm was also a great help.

  I want to give particular thanks to Jaime Costas and John Van Citters for seeing this project as something worth pursuing when even I wasn’t convinced it could work.

  Most of all, I want to thank my sister Kathleen, her fiancé Larry, and my father’s friends Jerry Galvin and Tim Fischer (yes, this time I got his name right in the acknowledgments), as well as the caring staff of the Hospice of Cincinnati, for handling the medical, legal, financial, and other matters surrounding the end of my father’s life that I was unable to handle by myself, thus enabling me to complete this very complicated project on deadline (nearly) and with the assurance that my father and his affairs were in the best of care. And thanks to Shirley, Clarence, and Cynthia for keeping me company when I needed it most.

  About the Author

  CHRISTOPHER L. BENNETT’s tenure as a distinct entity within the space-time continuum commenced at 4:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time on a Monday in the Year of the Earth Monkey, Cycle 77, Chinese traditional calendar. Eight-point-nine-eight Venusian years later, he discovered Star Trek and fell in love with space, science, and science fiction. After earning bachelor’s degrees in physics (on 14 Asmà’, 150 BE, Bahà’í calendar) and history (on Misra 23, 1718 AM, Coptic calendar), he went on to author such critically acclaimed novels as Star Trek: Ex Machina (January 2005), Star Trek: Titan—Orion’s Hounds (January 2006), Star Trek: The Next Generation—The Buried Age (July 2007), and Star Trek: Titan—Over a Torrent Sea (March 2009). He visited alternate timelines in Places of Exile in Myriad Universes: Infinity’s Prism (July 2008) and “Empathy” in Mirror Universe: Shards and Shadows (January 2009). Shorter works include Star Trek: SCE #29: Aftermath (July 2003) and “The Darkness Drops Again” in Star Trek: Mere Anarchy (February 2007), as well as short stories in the anniversary anthologies Constellations (original series’ fortieth), The Sky’s the Limit (TNG’s twentieth), Prophecy and Change (DS9’s tenth), and Distant Shores (VGR’s tenth). Beyond Star Trek, he has penned the novels X-Men: Watchers on the Walls (May 2006) and Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder (January 2008) and had several original short stories published in 2010. More information and annotations can be found at http://home.fuse.net/ChristopherLBennett/, and the author’s blog can be found at http://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/.