Ridire/Nansk Log

[Tabor Nansk 0]

Tabor left the bridge after the latest batch of probes was fired into the bubble. His mind was spinning with contradictions about the whole procedure and didn’t even notice that Commander Ridire had joined him in the turbolift. Somewhat startled, he said, “I was thinking about your response to me saying the Ithaca crew might not have had a destination in mind as they tried to escape the bubble. You called it suicidal, but I think it was actually the only real option they had. Imagine being lost in the middle of a circular desert, with no knowledge of how far it was to an edge of the expanse, and no way of knowing where help lay beyond its boundary. Any direction would be as good a choice as another. It’s possible that all the Ithaca knew was that they were caught in some kind of distortion, and that nothing showed on their sensors except empty space. You’re probably right that Benicia would be the logical choice of direction, even though they couldn’t see it. But they never reached Benicia, or anywhere else for that matter, and I think I know why.”

 

 

Aidan smiles to himself, privately thinking that Tabor does have a point. "You're possibly correct, Mr. Nansk. Of course considering the fact that we're dealing with a temporal situation it is possible that they did have a destination in mind and have gotten there...and we just don't know about it yet. Rather the bane of situations dealing with time travel and temporal paradoxes, I'm afraid. It's a pity that such things couldn't just remain the purview of ships named Enterprise." Aidan shrugs slightly as he finishes his comment. He waits for Tabor to inform the computer of his destination before Aidan himself orders it to leave him off near his quarters.

 

 

Tabor paused before responding. “Respectfully, sir, I think we’re missing an important point – namely, we’re dealing with a spatial anomaly as well as a temporal one. If the bubble we’re only a time distortion and all other spatial parameters were the same as our own space, in order to physically contain a starship at warp for 25 years, the size of the sphere would encompass half the quadrant, if not the entire thing. But that’s not the case. The Captain pointed out that the bubble was actually fairly small. It doesn’t reach Benicia or any other system in normal space. To the Ithaca, they ran for 25 years towards a destination they couldn’t see. To us, they’ve barely moved at all. If there were to be planetary systems for them to reach, the bubble would have to contain a parallel universe of some sort to give them that opportunity. And we’ll never know unless we entered the distortion ourselves. Which I’m not suggesting by the way.”

 

 

Aidan frowns darkly when Tabor mentions going into the distortion. He had already decided that he'd fight tooth and nail against that idea because it was just as likely that the Reaent would also become stuck. Aidan knew what he wanted the next 25 years or so of his life to be and it didn't involve being stuck on starships. "Tabor, at this moment we simply don't know enough about what's going on to make that determination or any other. For all we know this may be something like those old...oh what were they called...slow motion sports bloopers that my grandfather watched as a kid. Or we're simply getting something like a view through a magnifying lens. Simple logic says they wouldn't have abandoned their ship without a destination in mind." Aidan holds up a hand to forestall the expected reply. "Yes, you may be right and they didn't have a destination in mind. So you should bring up that point to both the Captain as well as Ms. O'Halloran."

 

 

Tabor knew better than to press his point further. “Deck 3, Flight Ops” he announced to the turbolift. Actually, he was amazed and pleased that the conversation had gone this far – both in terms of getting his ideas included in the mission discussion and that the Commander had even spoken to him at all. Tabor hoped this might be the start of paving over a rocky past. The two men rode the rest of the way in the silence of their own thoughts.