SECTION 21

You decide that Admiral Kristen Larkin is your best bet to believe your situation and help you correct the timeline. This isn’t the kind of conversation that you have over a commline, though. You need to talk to her in person.

If you’re just waking up in England, it’s going to be the middle of the night in San Francisco.

Wait. Do you even live in England in this timeline?

You head out to your living room and check out your life for the first time. Your house is in central Oregon. Well, that’s convenient. At least the universe is cutting you a break there (or maybe the author just doesn’t feel like dealing with time zones. Who can say?). But it doesn’t look like you are or ever were a professor at Starfleet Academy. Here, your profession is something about geographical surveying and xeno-urban planning and design. In other words, it’s a bunch of legitimate-sounding nonsense that would allow you to go pretty much anywhere without drawing suspicion. Handy for a Section 31 agent.

But not so handy for getting into Starfleet Headquarters. Even your Academy credentials would make that a stretch.

Given more time, you’d try to get Section 31 to fake credentials for you, get you into the computer system, and send you a proper uniform. But there’s just no time!

You arrange a transporter to beam you to outside Starfleet Headquarters, then head through the security checkpoint (which looks a bit more strict and severe that the one you’re used to.). Thankfully in this timeline, they still can’t seem to detect any of the technology hidden inside your Section 31 outfit, which you have covered with a pleasant light-blue knitted cardigan.

It’s a very nice cardigan, actually. Did you make that yourself? That was one thing you never really got the hang of in your home timeline. Maybe this timeline’s you made it. Hmm…so can you knit now? Or crochet? You were never sure of the difference. Or if you lose your memories of the original timeline, will you pick up that ability?

Would you stop thinking about knitting and focus!?! The officer at the visitor’s desk is eyeing you suspiciously as it is. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Kristen Larkin,” you say. Best to keep it vague in case her rank is different in this timeline.

The guard at the visitor’s desk checks her console. “Is Admiral Larkin expecting you?”

“No. But she will want to see me. My name is Rosalyn Davies.”

It feels weird to be back to your maiden name after almost 50 years of using ‘Bain.’ That was a whole discussion anyway. Reginald didn’t understand why you wanted to take his name. It certainly wasn’t something he demanded. He had thought that you’d both become the Bain-Davies. Since the option was there and you liked the ring that “Reginald and Rosalyn Bain” had to it, you decided to just go with Bain. You know all that, though. You are Rosalyn, after all.

Let’s get back to the situation at hand.

And it is a situation, what can you say to Admiral Larkin that will make her agree to see you? Spouting off about the timeline being wrong is probably not the way to go. Better to try a personal connection. In your timeline, Kristen Larkin knew Reginald from the time he was a cadet. That could be true here as well. Or you could go with a link to her past before the Hobus supernova, namely Chris Richards, the man who built her.

If you say that you are a friend of Reginald Bain, go to Section 9.

If you say that you are a descendant of Chris Richards, go to Section 15.