We're safe... so what!

[Atragon9 0]

::sitting in his Ready Room, looking glum, he presses the record button on his desk console::

 

Computer, Open Personal Log, Stardate ... ::sigh::, Admiral Atragon-9, Commanding Officer, USS Manticore, NCC-5852, password *********

 

[whirr, click]

 

Well, we have averted the EPS power spike from damaging more ship's systems than just the warp engines and cloaking system. In the process, we have over-stressed and warped the main deflector dish, lost a huge percentage of our available power resources and are now running the ship in our impulse system, burning Liquid Deuterium just to stay alive.

 

So, we're back in the time of the ancient Egyptians, in a ship without warp power or, soon, without power at all - once our fuel runs out. There are no Dilithium mines in the Solar System and we're about 4,800 years too soon for the processing of Deuterium. Where do we go from here? We can't go down to the surface, as the temporal contamination could make our returning to our own time moot, depending on what we do, who we see, what we take or make! We don't have the speed or time to get to any of the ancient starbound races - not to mention what that would also do to Earth's standing among the other species in the Universe. Humans are just not ready for the stars yet and if we are presented to other races now, the Earth wouldn't stand a chance in cross-species interaction.

 

Can I just send the ship into space, stranding us away from all habitable systems and let our resources deplete? Can I make that decision for the crew? What about the temporalists who will argue that we were MEANT to come back here - meant to teach the Egyptians and Greek their science and ethics? I can't believe that we are the ancient astronauts, but there is a compelling argument for it to have been someone who spurred on human intellectual evolution in the next few hundred years.

 

Well, time to see what miracles the crew has performed with ship's systems and hope that none of these decisions will be necessary.

 

Computer, EOM, EOT

 

[whirr, click]