Generations

Posted on Wed Jul 24th, 2019 @ 9:14pm by Captain Enalia Telvan & Kodria Mizu & Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox
Edited on on Wed Jul 24th, 2019 @ 9:14pm

Mission: Mudd on the Souls of Mankind
Location: The Future
Timeline: The Future

Enalia was in one of the lounges on the edge of the Hera's saucer waiting for some of the allies of the Artan family to be brought aboard to conclude some negotiations she'd been working on since the close of the Tribunal, sipping at some black coffee and staring out the large bay windows at the fortress. Thankfully the timeline had been stabilized for now and it was once again the glorious jewel in the sky she had grown up on. The downside was that random time quakes were still happening and the away team had yet to return, which meant they still had to catch Mudd.

As she brought the mug to her lips again, the red alert klaxon went off and the room around her suddenly shifted into that of a steel and polished aluminum look, the klaxon taking on a harsher tone to it. The view outside was the same and the reflection of the ship on the outer shell of the fortress was still that of the USS Hera... though parts of the ship no longer reflected right...

"Telvan to the bridge, what's going on?" There was no response. She headed to the lounge display panels and tapped at them, but other than displaying a schematic of a Crossfield class ship and the name USS Hera, it was unhelpful. The Trill captain headed to the door to see if she could get back to the rest of the ship, but even though the door opened, there was some sort of temporal anomaly on the other side and poking it with her coffee mug proved disastrous to it.

"Well then..."

That was when a petite woman's voice spoke up from the other side of the room. "Oh my! Everyone is going to be latelatelate! You need to catch that foul beast or I'll be unraveled at this rate!" Standing there was the most curious person Enalia had seen in... Well, ever. She was a five foot tall humanoid dressed in a white sexy bunny outfit with bunny ears that actually twitched and seemed to be a part of her, and a ragged top hat with a tag in the band that read 10/6. She was looking at a rather over sized and ornate pocket watch that had more hands than Enalia cared to count. Her eyes were one of the more mesmerizing parts of her. One was silver with a normal white and iris and the other was completely black with what looked like watch gears moving inside of it.

"Excuse me? Who might you be?" Enalia asked, not sure what to make of this development now.

"Oh, no, excuse me." Putting the watch away in some mysterious pocket that didn't seem to exist in the skin tight outfit, the mysterious person popped off her hat and bowed elegantly. "I am the White Rabbit, keeper of time and the bearer of gravity. Or is it? Oh, never mind it all. I'll just stick with brevity. You must be asking why I am here of all places before you. It is because someone has disrupted the universal glue. Your people are on the job already, repairing the continuum, but there's someone you need to meet that's in a conundrum."

Enalia shook her head to try and clear it. Whomever this woman was, it was messing with her sense of clarity and she didn't like it. "Ok, before I go anywhere with you, I need a few more answers and proof. First off, how do I even know you're friendly?"

The woman thought on this a moment, tapping a finger to her lips. "A friend and her horse call her home next to yours. Death and Taxes are but two of the inescapable beings in this universe. As for who you go to meet, it is muchly more yourself. A future you three lives from the current that feels less herself."

The spotted woman shook her head in exasperation and threw up her hands in defeat. "Fine, I concede. I've seen enough of this deific mumbo-jumbo to know when I'm outclassed. Besides, who knows... I might learn something. Just promise me you'll bring me home to the right place in space-time afterwards?"

The White Rabbit stepped forward and booped Enalia on the nose with a wide toothy grin. "Done."

No sooner had the word been spoken than she found herself in a study filled with old books, the White Rabbit quietly standing beside her and motioning for her to move further into the study. As she did so, she found a young Trill woman asleep at a large, book covered desk. She now recognized this place. This was one of the studies allowed to the final selection candidates after pre-selection but before final selection. Looking up in surprise at the woman that had brought her here, all she got was a smile at first.

Then the White Rabbit spoke. "She will not know you, nor will she know this as anything other than a dream. She will need your help to rise to the top of the cream." And with that, she faded softly into the shadows, barely perceptible to Enalia and likely invisible to anyone else.

Enalia took a moment to steel herself before reaching out to rouse the young woman.

With a start, the young Trill shot awake at Enalia's touch. "Aaaah! Awake. I'm... What?"

Sitting back and rubbing her bleary looking, slightly bloodshot eyes, it was clear that she had passed out from the exhaustion of her studies as she seemed barely awake now that the initial shock had passed.

She was a slight of a girl. Thin and almost plain, especially compared to the almost bombastic Captain. She had shoulder length brown hair pulled back into a messy ponytail and wide, curious, but sad eyes. "W... Who are you? Are you with the Symbiosis Commission?"

Chuckling softly, Enalia pulled out a chair and sat down with a soft smile. She recognized the look in the young girl's eyes and had an idea why she was here. "No, I'm just an old traveller passing through. You looked like you could use a friend so here I am."

Looking at the statuesque woman with the Raven black hair in a uniform she was far too removed to recognize, the young Trill seemed confused and more that a little stressed. "Uh... Thanks, I suppose. Um..."

Still groggy and trying to get her bearings, the young hopeful looked down at the stacks of dusty old tomes in front of her as a visible wave of concern landed on her face "What I need is a miracle. I... I really need to study or I'm going to be dropped from the program, I just know it."

"It looks like you're studying for final selection for symbiosis. I remember those days." The Trill captain picked up one of the older tomes and flipped through it. The Treatises of the Symbiotes and Initial Joinings had been mandatory reading and she still had a lot of it memorized. And I bet you've got yourself a real hardass for a field docent. I did too, but I think I still impressed him."

Setting the book aside, Enalia leaned forward and grinned her signature lopsided grin. "So... Care for some words of advice and encouragement? I can answer some questions as well."

The frazzled young woman looked up at Enalia with an almost incredulous expression. "What advice could some perfect looking woman give me that would help. I'm pathetic." The sheepish young woman muttered as she ran a hand through her hair and nodded slightly.

"I mean... I don't know what could help me at the point. But... please." There was an aire of both desperation and depression about the young woman.

"Pfft... Perfect..." Enalia paused a moment, the sudden burdens of the commands she had had to give over the years weighing heavily on her, staring down at her hands sadly for a moment before continuing. "No, no one is perfect. I just look that way on the outside because I'm good at hiding it all."

"Anyway, they've expected you to memorize all these materials and documents... They've told you the basic science of it all. Right?"

Getting a nod, Enalia pressed on. "But unless things have changed since I went through the process, they forgot to tell you that you need your own life goals and dreams and a personality of your own. Otherwise the symbiont will overpower you and you'll be confused and lost for the rest of your life. The goal of symbiosis for the symbiont is to have as many different life experiences as possible, as opposed to the host who is looking for... Well, everyone's reasons are different, I suppose. The confidence of lifetimes is one benefit."

"When I faced my field docent, the first thing I said to them was 'I don't care about you or your opinions of me. I'm going to be a Starfleet Captain with or without the joining.' We sat down and the old man and I had a talk about my future goals and aspirations. In the end, he must have decided I was worth the time, because I was chosen. He never once asked me about any of the things I had studied to get to that point."

The younger Trill initiate shuffled in her seat as the elder Captain spoke. As she listened, she was nervously tapping on the edge of the large, ornate wooden desk. "Starfleet? Yeah... my... I don't think my docent is all that impressed with what I want to do."

Fidgeting, the young woman could barely make eye contact with Enalia. "It's nothing... important. Not like that. My Mother's hoping that symbiosis will... will give me ambition so I'll 'grow up' and decide to do something that she thinks is important instead of... But... I just want to... Well, it's like you said. It's about experience, right? You gain experience from the symbiote and it gains those experiences from you. So, that would just make me... I could be better. Get better and maybe have more to say with..." Then her tone shifted slightly more melancholy. "It's... not important."

The elder Trill nodded knowingly, her own melancholy expression matching the younger woman's. "My mother wanted me to take over the family business and be like her, ruthlessly ruling the privateer lanes. I betrayed her, ran off to Starfleet, and instead of having a fleet of ships, a mining colony, the easy life... Relatively... I spent my life as the captain of a single ship for Intel Command, running around and putting out fires that no one will ever know about."

"As for growing up? You don't get that from the symbiont. That comes from within you. More experience? I'm the first host so I can't really say one way or another. No added experience for me other than the memories of swimming in the underground spawning pools, which faded pretty quick. Subsequent hosts will have my lifetime of experiences to pull wisdom from though. Does it make you a better person?"

Enalia leaned back and thought on the question for a moment, taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out before replying. "I think overall... Eventually... I'm a better person for it. But the joining isn't something magic. It's more like... Finding your soulmate and they're within you. If you can take the responsibility for your own future, whatever it may be, and can bear the responsibility of the symbiote as well... You'll have the past and future of two races behind you to support you in whatever you decide. That little voice in your belly encouraging you can go a long way."

My mother wants me to go into politics like her. She's an ambassador and I guess that's important. But I... kinda hate... talking to people." The young Trill replied with a chuckle. She fidgeted a bit more as she pondered saying more before working up the nerve. "She hates it, but I've never wanted to do anything else. And... I... I got accepted into the Aldebaran Music Academy. I've been playing piano since I was a little girl. I... I can play the piano, ceremonial bells. Cello. Even Klingon drums. I love it all."

A slight smile cracked the nervous young girls face. "Joining... There's always been a part of me that... I don't know if this makes sense, but the idea of joining always meant like... having a million more stories to express in my music. Or, like you said, that soul mate that understands. Maybe just an audience of one that meant that whatever I did would be passed on to the next host and keep going. That seems... that seems like a good thing to me. I don't know." She was suddenly embarrassed and began scratching the spots on the side of her head.

"That sounds like a beautiful life goal," Enalia replied, grinning from ear to ear. "Growing up I learned how to play the harp and the vandolin, but I was never that good at them. My wife is amazing with just about any instrument though. But her goals lied elsewhere, so she's a masseuse and rare items broker. She says she enjoys playing people more than instruments, but I think she just gets off on... Ahem..."

Blushing slightly, Enalia cleared her throat and held her fist in front of her mouth a moment before continuing. "Music is a noble and worthy goal. Being joined will certainly help with that, but you'll want to get out and live your life as well.

At which point, the young Trill's smile cracked a little wider as she hadn't spoke to many people that encouraged her dreams. "I love the harp. Haven't learned that yeet, though. But, yeah. I mean. You have to live your life if you want to have something to make music about, right?"

Then her tone shifted back to being a little pensive again. "I... I told my docent all of this, but I can't tell if he thinks I'm an idiot or not. And I think I'm... afraid to ask."

"I've been a docent a time or two... And I'm pretty sure they won't tell you until after they've written their report. That's how most operate, anyway." The elder Trill grinned again. "I might have been a bit more encouraging and inquisitive in my decisions, but generally if the person had hopes and dreams of their own and had a way of doing it without the symbiont as well... Then the answer was yes."

"As for you, if you've already discussed all this with them and already made an impression, you should be practicing your music. You have to worry about the Aldebaran Music Academy too, you know! What are you doing studying this crap for? At this point it won't help you in the selection. If you aren't selected, you won't need it. If you are, your prior hosts will have it all memorized and you'll be able to recite every page from memory... And you still won't need it until you're a docent!"

Chuckling lightly, the young candidate ran her hand through her hair and looked at the books. "I don't know. I feel like they want me to know... everything. Like everything is some massive test I'm always a step away from failing. So... I figured I'd try and study everything that might be even a little relevant."

Then she looked up at Enalia and tilted her head. "Were you... were you scared about making it?"

"Honestly?" It was Enalia's turn to chuckle softly, remembering back to when she was selected. "It was my mother's goal for me, so I honestly didn't put as much effort into it as most people. I focussed on my other studies in piloting and command. I read through all the material and took the practice tests and jumped through all their hoops... But up until final selection, I'm pretty sure it was my mother's bribes I was riding on. Final selection rolled around and I spent three days shadowing my docent. They were a Starfleet Ambassador and I was a cadet so she pretty much got a free secretary for a few days."

"What scared me was that I'd be shadowing a Commodore. Do well and it would reflect well for my career. Do poorly..." She let that thought hang in the air for a moment before continuing. "I know she enjoyed the tea I made at least. Being able to get real tea leaves from all over the galaxy has benefits. I left her with a small stock of Rigelian white crown ceylon and contact information on where she could get more."

"So I guess in a way I was scared, but not for the same reasons? She held my hopes and dreams in her hand and as docent, she could have ended my Starfleet career before it started and denied me the joining. Without that, I would have had to go back to my mother and taken over the family."

"So... you could have lost both? That's..." The young candidate sunk in her chair a little. "My... my mom was rejected. I think that's why she's pushed for this so hard. I didn't want to be joined for the longest time, just to spite her, really. Until I started really thinking about it, not framed by her ideas, but by what I wanted. And... and this is something I want. To be a part of something more. Something bigger than myself. Something that will last longer than just me. The joining. My music. It's all part of that idea, If that makes any sense."

"It makes perfect sense. Hey, no matter what, you have a fan in me, ok?" Enalia smiled as kindly as she knew how, hoping the warmth inside of her came across well. "And I know you'll get selected. With a goal and a dream like that, no docent in their right mind would deny you."

With a slightly broader smile, the young woman looked up at the Starfleet Captain on the other side of the desk. "Thank you. I mean it, I really appreciate you taking the time to... to help me get out of my own head. It means a lot to me."

She stood up and held out a hand, smiling a full head shorter than the stunning fleeter, "I'm... I'm Dana, by the way."

"I'm Enalia," she replied, standing and reaching to return the handshake with a stunning smile.

Just before their hands met though, time seemed to slow and the color seemed to drain from the world. Then, parts just flitted away in clouds of smoke until only Enalia and the White Rabbit remained in a shadowy emptiness.

"I suppose this is your way of telling me that the visit is over?" Enalia asked, her brow furrowing.

The mysterious woman smiled and cocked her head. "The conversation she will have with her mother that eve would have driven her to suicide that night. Now she will live and be selected as your fourth host and inspire many, every necessity set aright."

"Well... I won't pretend to understan..." As she spoke, the area around them faded into existence once more, forming that of her mother's study. "And we're someplace else..."

"Here you are your mother in a time that which is lost. You must see that decisions made are a necessary cost." The White Rabbit then faded into a shadow as the pirate queen before her stood from the overstuffed chair in which she had been seated and drew a rather distinctive and familiar fencing blade, facing off with... Well, herself.

“Whoever you are, the disguise isn’t working and I’m unimpressed. You’ve ten seconds to give me a good reason not to kill you,” the armed pirate queen explained, eyes flickering to the readouts on the hilt of the sword which apparently doubled as a tricorder. “Chronal signature notwithstanding...”

Enalia just huffed slightly as she looked over the older version of herself before her, completely ignoring the demand. "So this is what I would have become if your plot to steal my body had succeeded... Bravo, mother. At least you didn't let yourself go. So tell me... Are you happy with the life you stole?"

A coldly calculating expression settled on the face of the pirate queen, and in that moment, Enalia could truly see her mother in there. Past the familiar face, past the changes that age had wrought and the wrinkles and silver threads shot through her hair, that expression of emotionless observation was one she knew all too well, and in that moment it was clear precisely whom she was facing, if she were not already certain. Setting the sword down on the table beside her, Arenara Artan offered her daughter, who had perished three decades earlier essentially by her hand, a set.

“I don’t know how you’re here, or why particularly, but assuming that I take this seriously… yes. Yes, I’ve rather enjoyed living in your life, seeing the world through your eyes, righting all of the mess you’d made of your life and all of the useless emotional attachments you maintained… oh do shut up, Enalia.” That last bit she looked down to speak to her own stomach, where the pouch that held the symbiote was contained. “She’s not the ghost of my past misdeeds come to avenge you. No one succeeded then, no one has managed to do so in the intervening years, and I keep telling you, no one ever will. I’ll just keep slaughtering your friends as I have every other challenger.”

Enalia clasped her hands behind her back and waited for her mother to finish talking to the Telvan symbiont. Apparently, having stolen her body like that, there wasn't a traditional joining so there was some internal bickering going on. It was interesting to know that though she herself was technically dead, she lived on through the slug in the woman's belly and kept up the harassment.

"It would seem you have an unwelcome houseguest. I can only imagine how that must feel." There was neither sympathy, nor sarcasm in her voice. It was simply an observation.

“It’s the voice of a weak and pathetic ghost, more gravy than grave,” Arenara scoffed. “She whines and she complains, but she’s long since given up trying to overwhelm me. I think disassembling her holographic love doll when I finally caught her might have been what finally broke her,” the older woman reminisced with a smirk that was entirely self-satisfied. “So since you’re here, tonight of all nights, why? What do you want? Are you planning to change history, is that it? You’re a past version of my sniveling whelp, come to confirm what your future holds? You won’t be able to stop me, you know- not even death will stop me, but you’re welcome to try.”

It was at that moment that Enalia Telvan had the unusual experience of being checked out and inspected by an older version of herself, and as the hand of the older woman crept closer to the hilt of the sword she bore, Enalia realized she was considering stealing this younger-than-her-current body as well.

"On the contrary," Enalia began, eyeing the sword as well. "In my timeline, you were vaporized in front of me as you were about to throw yourself on your own sword I was holding to steal my body. I'm just here to... I suppose confirm that the decisions made were the right ones. If you've killed everyone I cared about... Then yeah, you got what you deserved." She may have appeared to be composed, but inside she was in turmoil and conflict. What she was in conflict over, though... Even she wasn't sure about... She wasn't about to allow her mother to see it though.

“For all the good it did me,” Arenara grumbled. “Turns out getting checked out by a doctor you trust is harder than you’d think after you kill one in an agony booth. Once word got around, I was on my own for health care. Which might not have been so bad but for the brain tumors. Apparently a side effect of Mudd’s process was that the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord were damaged, and over time it has advanced. So the last laugh’s on you anyway- turns out your stupid brain and body betrayed me. The blade doesn't work on my scrambled brain, so I’m going to self-terminate tomorrow… which is, I suppose, why you’re here tonight.”

"That explains a few things, I suppose. Mudd is brilliant in his own way, but he always has a way to screw you over if things don't go the way he likes, doesn't he?" The Trill Captain clenched her hands tighter behind her, now knowing yet another piece of the story behind the future she wasn't supposed to know. "So do you have any regrets? Anything you would have done differently? Any pearls of wisdom at your last hour for the daughter you failed to kill in another timeline?"

At that, Arenara grasped the sword and moved with quickness and surety, determined to demolish this spectre of the past that still seemed determined to haunt her. But thirty years and multiple sclerosis had taken their toll, and the younger woman in her prime easily sidestepped the attack, almost casually disarmed the older version of herself, then caught the loose weapon, raising it up only to drive the sword blade deep into the wooden deck with a rather meaty THUNK sound.

The look of shock and disappointment from her mother was surmounted only by the face of bitter disappointment it became, which Enalia knew so very well. Though it was odd to see it on her own face. Idly she wondered if over the years when she caught her reflection in a mirror, her mother had made the face to herself. Ready to criticize her daughter on sight, did that make Arenara a masochist living in Enalia's body?

Raising her eyebrows at the mind of her mother living in her older and ruined body, Enalia silently reframed the question.

Turning to make sure the chair was where she thought it was, the weary woman lowered herself into a chair, then massaged her hand where she'd been disarmed- actually showing weakness. Overall she just looked tired and worn out- which, in a poetically just manner, was precisely what was happening to the stolen body she'd killed for and subsequently abused.

"Advice. Pearls of wisdom. Something I never taught you... well, there are volumes of that," Arenara muttered. "No, you don't want any of that, but you're too much of a coward to ask for what you really want." Cocking her head in a manner that Enalia recognized as something she also did, her mother inquired. "Do you remember the day you beheaded me? I offered to tell you the truth. Anything you wanted to know, and I would be honest. I was serious then... I figured if you were going to die, I at least owed you that. Do you remember what you said?"

"Of course not. In my timeline, I decided to spare you and you were vaporized as you lunged at me." The younger woman walked over to the fireplace and stood in the warmth of the flames, but somehow they felt cold to her. "But if I had to guess... I would have told you I just wanted you to be proud of me. To be the mother I needed growing up."

The old pirate queen's face ran through a gamut of emotions before she settled on squinting at Enalia. "All right, so I must admit, I am rather curious. In a perfect universe where you got to live the fairytale life you always wanted, what sort of mother would I have been? Clearly I can't conceive of her, as I did my best, but why don't you tell me what you have in mind?" This from the woman who tricked her daughter into unintentional suicide and stole her body- 'I did my best'.

"Perhaps some form of encouragement other than how to avoid your lash and beatings every time I strayed from your projected path? A semi-kind word now and then?" Turning from the fire, there was moisture in Enalia's eyes as she glared at the woman seated before her. "Perhaps for just one time in your life the words 'I love you' to be uttered from your wretched lips?"

Rising from her chair, the pirate queen poured two glasses, picked them up and offered one to Enalia, who didn't take it. "See, I did teach you a thing or two. I suppose back when you were young, I probably would have told you that you deserved it for being worthless or weak. I would have told you that praise makes one lazy, and you must learn to strive without praise, taking pride in your accomplishments. Admitting love is a manipulation, and should be reserved for as such. Because love is a weakness that blinds us to the truth. I likely would have said all of those things, and more."

Sitting back down, it was clear that the canny old corsair wasn't doing so for dramatic purpose. It was because she lacked the strength to stand. Waving with her wineglass like a scepter, the queen of the Artans in her stolen life smiled, a humorless, wry smile that did not really reach her eyes, where there was only sadness.

"As I stand on the precipice of death, my perspective is enormous. I suppose I can finally be honest with myself, now." Setting the wineglass down as her hand had begun to shake, Arenara Artan looked her daughter in the eye. "I was cruel to you because you were willful. You didn't want to be what I wanted you to be, so I resented you. Because I resented you, I punished you and withheld my affection. Your sister made me proud, and then when she died, I... blamed you. I actually had your father killed but... your sister, that wasn't supposed to happen. It was supposed to be you, and... oh, don't look at me like that, it can't be that much of a surprise."

"It's not a surprise at all, really. I'm just amazed you're finally admitting to it." Enalia wiped at her eyes and continued. "At least you admit it. And yes, I blame myself for my sister's death as well. I'm the one that recommended her to the Commodore for that mission. Anyway, please, go on."

"When you went your own way and made your own choices, I resented your success. Others started looking at the life you were leading, and the glamour of a space pirate's life looked a lot less appealing than the latest technology, medical care and living on a luxury starliner instead of a hammock and a footlocker. Which only made me resent you more." It seemed her mother was on a roll, so she just let the words keep tumbling out. "I thought I could clone myself a younger body- that's what I wanted your genetic material for. I was going to 'birth a daughter' all right- and she was really going to be a new model of the same old queen. A custom built genetically augmented body to start over again at 18 sounds wonderful when you're in your seventies."

"I could never tell you I was proud of you because I was selfish and it was easier to resent and blame and abuse you, because that's who I am, like my mother before me, and like my daughter is too. It's a cycle- but you beat it by getting out, away from me, and living your own life. A weaker woman would have stayed and played the safe plan, but you never did. I couldn't admit it before now, but I suppose in my own way I was always proud of you. That's part of why I hated you so. Does that make sense?" The pirate queen cocked her head curiously, waiting to see if she'd connected the dots. Sometimes she got confused these days.

"Perfectly so. Thank you mother. I only wish... You had said this earlier..." As Enalia finished speaking, the world faded to grey and once again slowly turned to mist leaving Arenara-Enalia alone in her timeline and Enalia alone with the White Rabbit.

From behind her a willowy voice crept in like a fog. It was simultaneously a familiar voice and one she knew she'd never heard before. "I hope that brought you a semblance of closure. It's brought her soul a bit of peace in the afterlife, seeing you in her own alternate histories."

Turning to see who the newcomer in this bare, grey world was, Enalia's eyes went wide as she was greeted face to face with a vision of Death - A pale, skeletal woman wearing a thin black wedding dress that trailed behind her and giant glowing amethysts for eyes. She was the literal personification of the reaper from the children's books she read growing up.

"Ah... I assume you're Masato Rei... Does this mean I'm dead?" Enalia asked, worried about her future and that of everyone on the Hera.

The dry, hollow giggle that came from the woman was somehow mirthless and kind at the same time. "Oh no, you're just between worlds so now you can see all of us. You have one more person to speak with and since there's a life being born, I'll be the one to escort you."

With a wave of the skeletal bride's hand, the grey world shifted and Enalia found herself in a futuristic cybernetics lab, even by the Hera's standards. In it was a partially assembled android that looked like Kodria without her skin and a civilian scientist dressed in a white and beige uniform. She was an overly voluptuous Orion-Trill mix that was instantly recognizable, even though Enalia had never met her before.

She took a moment to look around and enjoy the look of things before she finally cleared her throat, startling the middle aged woman.

Standing over the Android, she raised her head in a start and all but dropped the tool in her hand. For a moment, the two women stood there staring at each other as the scientist's mouth hung open a moment.

Her long, her black hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she reached up to scratch the dark spots on the side of her pale green skin. "Mother?"

"Moira?" Enalia asked, not exactly sure what to say, also scratching at the spots on the side of her head. "I um... Is there anything I can help with?"

Stepping slightly away from the table, the adult Moira Artan... the daughter of Enalia Telvan and Maica who began her life as a flawed clone of Arenara Artan before the crew of the Hera worked to rescue a lifetime ago... Waved the tool towards her strange visitor. "What? Help? Wait? What are you doing here? This has to be some serious violation of Temporal... Anyway, I'm almost done. I should have been done seventeen hours ago."

Looking back to the table, the woman who looked middle aged but was likely near three times as old as Enalia was standing there thanks to the extended lifespans of Orion's and Trill's. "I just don't like the neural pathway degradation rate. It's only zero point zero two percent over every seventh cycle... under the spec rate... but I want it better. It needs to be better."

The younger, yet paradoxically older Trill woman chuckled softly as she walked up next to her daughter. "You know... It's not the perfection that makes us who we are, but the flaws. Besides, I know from experience that her self repair system will be more than enough to make up for it."

"I know that! I designed the self repair systems!" Moira slammed the spanner on the table as she picked up a PaDD and began scanning throught it, walk-in around the prone, incomplete android. "But she needs to be better than that. I need to be better. You don't..."

Cutting herself off mid sentence, Moira started shaking her head, looking at her PaDD. "No, no, no. What are you doing here? The room sensors aren't picking up any temporal abnormalities or residual tachyon displacement. And you won't be here for six days for her official activation."

"Uuhh..." Moira groaned. "Mnhei'sahe is picking up you, Mother, Rita, Sonak, Asa and... other people I probably shouldn't mention by name. An audience. I get an audience of family all waiting for something they knew about before I existed waiting for me to fail. Why are you here, Mother?!"

"Well, to be perfectly frank, I followed a white rabbit and found myself visiting various people." Enalia held her hands out to her sides, an innocent smile on her face. "You're the third one. I learned something at the last two and I think I helped them, so I assume the same will happen here. I mean, I wouldn't normally leave this sort of thing to some sort of supposed higher power, but I think I literally just met the incarnations of time and death. They did mention something about a birth though, if that helps."

Interestingly, Moira didn't look at all surprised. "Ah, that explains it. Haven't seen Bunny in a while myself. But you always did have the weirdest friends when I was growing up. As for a birth, I... guess that they mean her."

The Trill/Orion scientist looked down, running à hand gently across the endoskeletal form on the table. "She's... She's been what I've been working on for... what seems like forever. I worked on her for fifteen years before Asa ever mentioned that I was always meant to."

There was the slightest shudder as a wave of emotion rippled through the adult Moira Artan. "You all tried to protect me from knowing what I was meant to do but I had to do it anyway. She's... She's my legacy. All the genetically enhanced DNA in the galaxy, but this was the only way. And if I fail again, I don't just fail her and myself. I fail HISTORY!"

Walking back around the table, there was pain in Moira's eyes as her voice cracked. "D... Did she ever tell you that? Did she tell you how many times I failed? How many of her predecessors... died here in this room because of me?"

"Well, no... I think in her own way, she did her best to try to preserve the timeline... And make it better. After all, I'm still alive, right?" Smiling softly, Enalia rested a hand on Moira's shoulder. "Besides, I'm here this time. That's got to count for something, right? I've seen the plans and seen what Ila Dedjoy did with them to create her own android body."

"I know I'm not the scientist or cyberneticist or even artist that you are... But through the Tribunal and my time as Captain of the USS Hera, I've seen a lot of things that have made me wonder about a few things."

"Not a week ago, I watched my mother vaporized in front of my very eyes. Then less than a few minutes ago, I spoke with her, in my body, a day away from self-terminating at seventy years old in the original timeline. Now I'm standing here talking to my own daughter that an hour ago I just saw as a newborn babe that had yet to have her DNA corrected."

"Now... As for past failures, if you've learned from them, then they're not really failures, are they? And today? When you give life to Kodria, I'll be here with you either way. So what do you say?" Finishing up her little pep talk, Enalia gave Moira's shoulder a squeeze.

"I say that you think you know what's going to happen and it's infuriating that you're probably right." Moira sniffled and wiped a tear from her eye as she grinned at her mother. It was a crooked, mischievous thing that looked all too familiar to the Pirate Captain. "You're usually right."

Stepping across the room, Moira put her palm on a touchpad as a wall hatch hisses open, cold mists rolling out. "Kodria's brain. Well, the most important part. All the hardware is in her head already. The connections, positronic relays, neural synapses. But this... This is why her sisters failed. They didn't have this."

Putting gloves on, Moira gently pulled a small, five centimeters long metallic blue tube out of the wall casing. On the wall above it, Enalia could see a data readout with a series of DNA readouts, brainwave patterns and a list of names next to each: Rita Paris, Sonak, Asa Dael, Mnhei'sahe Dox, Mona Gonadie, Samuel Clemens XV.

"This is her soul. Made of the best parts of her family. Minds copied perfectly a lifetime ago in a mind-meld with a goddess." Moira's eyes were thick with barely contained tears as she slid the component into the back of the skull casing, locking it in place. "But... I'm scared, Mom. If we power her up and... I can't watch her die because I wasn't good enough."

"Sweetie, I know for a fact, from the moment I first saw you, you were perfect." Enalia leaned in and kissed Moira on the forehead. "And Kodria is as well. So how about we push that button together and give birth to a new life form? Give her an initial startup so you know for sure that the official startup in a few days, when everyone else is here, will go flawlessly?"

"Perfect?" Moira chuckled. "What happened to being defined by our flaws?"

Taking a deep breath, the spotted, pale green woman with her Mother's smile and the tired eyes took Enalia's hand in her own and placed it under the exposed sternum. It was cold and metallic. "Do you feel that? A small raised oval the dice of your thumbnail. That's it. Press and hold that for five seconds then let go. We'll know in two more seconds if the connections are complete."

Moira, with her hand over Enalia's, shuddering with anxiety, gave a light nod.

"Perfectly flawed then, thanks to everyone," Enalia added as she pressed the button and held it for five seconds and let it go. She pulled her hand back and wrapped one arm around the future incarnation of her daughter, the tension in the room almost palpable as the light in her granddaughter's black eyes came to life and the consoles around them started scrolling with exoquads of computational data.

This continued for nearly a minute before the whole room just went silent and everything stopped.

Then, as if waking from a dream, the endoskeletal Kodria raised one hand in front of her face, and just gazed at it. For a long moment, she studied it before looking around the room. Eventually, she fixed her gaze on the one that created her, as if she couldn't even see the other woman with her, and spoke. "Good morning. I am... Kodria... Are you my... Mother?"

Looking down into those eyes that reflected back with the life of her family... eyes filled with love and warmth... Moira began to cry as a broad smile broke across her face. Reaching up, she took Kodria's bare hand in her own and nodded, her joy uncontained, "I... Yes. I'm Moira, and yes. I guess I'm your mother."

With that, the room once again faded the same way it had before around Enalia, this time with tears of joy in her eyes as the White Rabbit once more stepped in front of her. "You have had a good trip through the continuum, yes? You have learned much and helped many in distress."

The Trill woman nodded and wiped at the moisture in her eyes. "Yes, thank you. I'm sure I've violated half a dozen temporal laws and the Temporal Prime Directive just now... But thank you."

The strange woman just sauntered up to her, pulled out her giant, ornate pocket watch from wherever she was hiding it, Looked up at Enalia from under the brim of that hat of hers, reached up, and booped Enalia on the nose.

Suddenly, she was back in the conference room where her trip had started.

Glancing around, she saw that the chronometer on the briefing view screen read the same as if no time had passed.

"Bridge to Captain Telvan," came a call over the ship's intercom.

"Telvan here, go ahead."

"Captain, the Galatean Alliance Delegates have been delayed due to unforeseen circumstances and ask that their meeting with you be put off until tomorrow. Something about an antique starship challenging them to a duel and chronometric radiation sickness."

"Please let them know we will be happy to render whatever aid they need upon their arrival and to take their time."

"Aye, Captain," With a chirrup, the line was closed and Enalia slumped a little, leaning against the wall of the conference room. This had already been a long day and she had forgotten about the delegation.

It was then that she noticed her previously forgotten mug of coffee on the conference room table, still hot enough to give off steam and she grinned that lopsided grin of hers. This little trip would take a few cups to tell.

If anyone even believed her.