SECTION 26

If Federation history has taught you anything, it’s that you shouldn’t trust a Q. You activate the time tunneler again and vanish. You had already hoped to throw Lornstrum off by going a couple centuries farther back. Maybe it will be enough to keep Q from bothering with you as well. And there’s always the chance that he’ll put his focus on Lornstrum.

You appear in a small room in a house on Earth in 2023. The place is filled with bookshelves and various posters on the wall as two men in their 40s sit at a desk hunched over a laptop, staring at the screen. Oddly, some of the posters show images of starships that you recognize. Finally, they notice your presence.

“Do you mind?” one of them snaps. “We’re working on a story here.”

You peer at the screen. “That is a video of a cat waterskiing.”

“It’s part of our creative process!”

“I’m sure it is,” you reply as you punch in new coordinates. “If a woman shows up after me, ask her if she wants to watch it.” You activate the time tunneler again and jump.

But instead of landing on Andor during its equivalent of Earth’s Middle Ages, you find yourself in a blank white void.

You’re not alone, though.

Lornstrum is there, too, and she DOES NOT look happy about it.

You go to set new coordinates, but the time tunneler is gone!

Q appears in a flash, still dressed for the beach. “I warned you,” he says. “Now it’s Time Traveller Time Out for you both.”

“Wait!” you cry. “I need to…”

But he’s gone with a snap of his fingers and another bright white flash (which is kind of hard to see against the whiteness of your surroundings).

Lornstrum sits down with a huff. “This is all your fault.”

You try to access the Section 31 network using your uniform. Nothing. The suit itself is dead. Either you ran out of power finally from all of those jumps, or Q just shut it off.

You sit down as well. You have no time machine, no idea when Q will come back, and no clue if you’ll still remember your old timeline by the time he does.

Go ahead and get comfy because this is…

THE END

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