SECTION 15

“Tell her that I’m related to Chris Richards.”

The officer at the desk speaks quietly into a comm system that you cannot see, then listens for a bit. “The admiral will see you,” she says finally. “An escort will be here for you shortly.”

A few minutes later, a lieutenant leads you from the lobby to Admiral Kristen Larkin’s office. Larkin looks the same as you remember, but then, why wouldn’t she? She’s an android after all, and not one of those fancy ones that ages.

“Please have a seat, Ms. Davies,” Larkin says, gesturing to the chair across the desk from where she sits.

“Thank you,” you say, quickly taking the offered chair. “Let me just start with I’m sorry. I lied to get in here. I’m not related to Chris Richards, but I needed to see you.”

“I gathered as much. There is no record of a Rosalyn Davies in his family. But the fact that you knew to use his name at all interested me. My creator’s identity is not common knowledge. How do you know it, and why are you so intent on speaking with me?”

“I know because you told me. In my timeline, you, my husband, and I are old friends.”

“You’re from a different timeline?”

“Yes,” you reply. You then hit Admiral Larkin with a massive exposition dump explaining everything about how the USS Anomaly stopped the Hobus supernova (And if you’re memory is rusty, it’s all detailed in the Series Nine story, “We’ll Always Have Romulus.”) but then someone from Section 31 went back in time and undid it all.

Larkin listens intently until you finish. “I know that was a lot,” you said. “But you have to believe me.”

“I will admit that the most unbelievable thing is that I am friends with Reginald Bain,” Larkin says. “He’s made the Orion Envirion Movement the terror of the Federation for decades now. That man will do just about anything to save some plants.”

“My Reg is a terrorist?”

“This Reginald Bain is not the one you married.”

“Can you look up a few other people for me? A Yynsian named Tovar?”

Larkin checks her desk console. “There is no one by that name in Federation records.”

“Michelle Marsden. She was a Starfleet Lieutenant.”

“No one by that name is currently serving.”

“This is why I have to go back in time,” you say. “If Hobus goes supernova, I lose my husband, our kids, and so many other people I love, not to mention the lives of all of the Romulans who were killed when the planet exploded.”

“That event certainly put the Federation on a grimmer path,” Larkin says. “We distrusted the Romulans, and a group of their people sabotaged their own evacuation by using synthetic beings to destroy the evacuation fleet. For a while, synthetic beings were banned in the Federation.”

“Oh, that’s terrible! How did you manage?”

“No one seemed to remember that I was an android at that point. I just kept doing my duties and tried not to draw attention to myself.”

“That’s a relief. And I’m sorry to put you in this spot now, Kristen, but I don’t know how long I have until my tachyon protection wears off and I forget the old timeline. Can you help me put things right?” you ask.

“Right for you,” Larkin says. “But it does sound like a better galaxy. The Romulans are our allies. Spock still vanished in your timeline, which is a loss. But overall, it is enticing. We just have to be careful. Time travel is a complicated endeavor, and what you are proposing is difficult. You could just end up spawning even more alternate timelines. You see…”

Admiral Larkin is launching into a lecture about temporal mechanics. Do you have time for this? Granted, she could provide important information. But you have limited time yourself. Maybe you can just get her to skip to the point.

If you listen to Larkin’s thoughts on time travel, go to Section 24.

If you interrupt her and try to move things along, go to Section 3.