Posted by Captain Johann Dvorak (CO) in Alt. Universe: Starfleet Command - Operation Bedlam

Posted by Lieutenant Siennadye Nox (Counselor) in Alt. Universe: Starfleet Command - Operation Bedlam

Posted by Captain Johann Dvorak (CO) in Alt. Universe: Starfleet Command - Operation Bedlam
Posted by… suppressed (8) by the Post Ghost! 👻

SNIP

She stepped in and saw him take a seat. It was obvious, even without their telepathic connection, she knew he was hurting. Sienna walked towards him and took the seat beside him. Her friendship may have been from a different universe but he was almost identical to her Johann. She reached out and took his hand in her own.

He looked at her hand, which did not posses a wedding ring, and then at her face. Did we…?

“No need to keep up control in here.” Sbe paused for a moment and then continued. “I am sorry I haven’t found a way to bring her back.”

Nox

“Oh, you’re sorry you haven’t found a way to bring her back,” he said angrily. It was more at himself, and at the lecture he had gotten not more than ten minutes ago. But mostly himself. Five years of failure was something he usually noted as the absence of his wife, but today it was made manifest in this woman here. This woman whose mind and personality he did not know, but whose body he was very familiar with. It was a body he wanted to be familiar with again.

She sucked in a breath at his sudden anger. Sienna hadn’t expected it and it took her by surprise. Unlike her far more even keel counterpart, this Sienna was no psychologist. She couldn’t read the visual cues that his wife probably would have noticed.

“Who are you, exactly? You must be from where she is. Where we aren’t married, I presume.”

– Johann Dvorak, CO Korolev

She stood up too, a bit of anger flaring inside her in response. “Well. Yes. And no? Hell I don’t know Johann. In the year I spent with your wife in my universe, there was very little difference between us in personality and mannerisms. Our jobs and occupational training differed and she met you at a very different time than when I met my Captain, but everything else was so much the same.”

He calmed down slightly. So she’s… safe? he thought.

She sighed, letting out her tiff of anger. “By the time I met Johann. I was his XO. I never let myself consider a relationship. I’ve never been married. The only slightly romantic relationship I’ve had in the last ten years was a few dates with Q.” She flung her hands up in the air in frustration and sat back down.

Nox

“Q?” he asked more calmly. “Q? Like… Q? That entity that was always chasing Picard around? That Q?”

She grinned. “Yeah. That Q. He was impressed by me for a time. Eventually he moved on to other things I suppose.”

His loss, he thought.

Must be unusually driven, he thought. Then he wasn’t so sure; would his wife still be single too? Was finding a blind man stumbling in the hallway the only way she could have met someone? Well, maybe? He had trouble believing it, without stopping to think why he might believe it.

– Johann Dvorak, CO Korolev

“As far as we could tell, when comparing lives, she and I differed in our career path. When she chose to stray from physical medical care to the mental. I had been inspired to go for Command. I was quite busy and it seems I missed out on something quite special as a result.” She smiled softly. “Is it narcissistic to have become friends with myself I wonder.”

Nox

Special? Who me? he wondered. He realized then that they could “talk” in this way with his thoughts; this woman was like his wife in that his thoughts were unusually easy for her to read. It was part of how they met.

“No,” he said analytically, focusing on the question asked aloud. “Because you aren’t actually friends with yourself. She’s not you, even if both of you were you a few years before you each became other people. Which you probably were, but now you actually are different people. I’m certain that can even be measured at the quantum level, assuming you got here the same way she was taken away. Because otherwise you would be where you are supposed to be, and she would be here.” The underlying assumption was that the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics was accurate and other worlds were real, something that had been demonstrated a couple of decades ago in the Forcas system.

“Did you follow all of that? I’m not sure if I did and I’m the one who said it.”

– Johann Dvorak, CO Korolev

“Yes.” She said with another small smile. Sienna seems to accept his explanation. “I’ve made quite the study of alternate universes in the years since she was transported to mine. We looked for the doctor together and after a year. We found him, but… he is crazed and we underestimated his determination to remain there. He threw me here to torture her and closed the portal. I assume he destroyed the machine behind all reckoning as she has not doubt her way back. I don’t know if she survived.”

Her smile faded and she looked down at her clasped hands, not able to meet his eyes. “I like to think so, but it has been so long.”

Nox

“The easy way would be to send you back and find out, if we could find the device he used to escape and how it works. You’re probably aware that has been a project of mine for some time now. I take it you have been read in to Operation Bedlam?”

There was a mild sense of annoyance in the question; the detail of the woman in front of him being in this universe would have been deliberately kept from him by someone higher up the chain of command.

— Johann Dvorak, CO Korolev

“Easy, you say?” Her eyebrow arched in disbelief. Her voice was a bit cold as she continued, ticking off the points. “Yes. So easy. Just find a machine that could be anywhere in the alpha or delta quadrant, hope that it works or could be fixed, and then send me back to the precisely right alternate universe, find your wife, and somehow send her back.”

“Yeah, that would be easier than the alternatives on offer,” he said. The alternatives on offer were, wait for some scientist to independently discover whatever breakthrough led to the machine, or just sit around and wish really hard for everything to go back the way it was.

Her eyes lifted to his. “Exactly how is that going by the way. I’m well aware of your operation. I’ve been supporting it and approving all the resources you have requested since I started working here.”

Nox

His annoyance became a little sharper with the confirmation that information only flowed in one direction around here.

“Well, we found his associate, Doctor Chorkit, and grabbed research data from his lab in the process. Then there was a slight… jurisdictional dispute… over some of that, during which the lab blew up and the jerk got away. So now Korolev and I get to spend a week in the penalty box here on Earth instead of hunting him down in Romulan space.”

“I suppose you couldn’t just call in a favor with Q?”

— Johann Dvorak, CO Korolev

She shook her head in the negative but she let it show that she was thinking. A week of time off. Romulan space. Her fingers drifted to her lips, lightly brushing across the lower half in a gesture that was identical to her alternate self.

Finally she looked up at him with narrowed and curious eyes. “What would you need to go after him?”

Nox