Second Officer's Log

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

Second Officer’s Log, Stardate 2704

USS Manticore 5852-T

Somewhere in space.

 

“The Door”

 

Manticore’s time jumps were enough to make one’s head spin. Soon after Dr. Zwicky came aboard with is dark matter experiments that may or may not have had something to do with the spiders, the Manticore zipped back to 19th century Earth and had become a Man-o-War, the HMS Manticore. They were there long enough to fumble around the ship and engage in battle with pirates, then they jumped to 3142 and a ultra-futuristic sterile silver Manticore, the stuff of otherworldly dreams. Again they scouted out the ship, engaged in battle, and suddenly whoosh.... another jump took them to 20th century Earth and World War II as the Battleship USS Manticore, where they resolved to do nothing in the hopes of stopping the jumps. But now they were in the year 2704, just 300 years into the future, aboard the USS Manticore-T.

 

It felt to Jami Farrington that the Manticore and her crew were caught on a swinging door, like the ones in restaurants between the kitchen and the dining room. It opened to one room, then swung back into the other, in and out, back and forth, never stopping, never quite opening altogether, never allowing them to remain in one room or the other, always coming just a bit closer but never quite hitting the mark. But they were getting closer to their own time, 2407, if even by a little, each time they jumped. And they had begun to notice similarities and dissimilarities with each Manticore, and some things that needed resolution had been resolved. Sort of.

 

A few things came to mind, things she had mulled over during a breather they had on the Manticore of 3142. Dr. Zwicky must have something to do with this, since he and the spiders have been absent from the beginnings of our odyssey, though they had been sighted briefly by the crew at the moment of each leap. We can, for some reason in these jumping realities, see the Croatoans, who would be normally invisible - out of phase - to us.

 

The most important factor, however, was that this jumping was very real. The ship has received significant damage, some of the crew have been severely injured, and some have died. Commander Garnoopy, Lt Escher, and Admiral Atragon are among the injured. They had been trapped in areas of the ship that had apparently been damaged during past or future battles. Chief Garnoopy’s injuries appeared minor, but Lt Escher has yet to regain consciousness, and Atragon. . . .

 

It was some time before Jami Farrington realized she was still sitting next to her husband in Manticore’s OR, her uniform and hands still covered in blood from his severed artery. How long had she been there? Someone was speaking, urging her to move, to wash, to . . . .

 

Jami looked up. It was Dr. Mele. His lips were moving but the words weren’t registering in her mind. Had she performed as she should have, she wondered through the fog. She’d been out of medical for how many months? She had reacted instinctively, but had she reacted appropriately? Her timing was off. She turned to stare at the floor as though it would give her the answer she needed, but she wasn’t sure of the question. Everything seemed distant, like something seen or heard in the time between waking and sleep.

 

It has been said that a door is a symbol of hope, the opening to opportunity, the entrance to a new life, or the initiation to a new stage of life. Were their lives changing as a result of these jumps? Were their lives changing for the better, or was the swinging door damaging to more than the ship? Could it be that these time jumps were effecting the crew psychologically? And if so, would the damage be reversible?

 

There was the door to which I found no key;

There was the veil through which I might not see:

Some little talk of me and thee there was,

And then no more of thee and me.

~~The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám~~