To simple entities, it is invariant. It's speed and direction are forever fixed.
To those entities that are somewhat more advanced, only it's direction is believed to be forever forward. One's velocity, however, can cause time's speed to change.
To even more advanced entities, neither time's speed or direction are fixed. One can travel both forward and backwards through time, if one has the proper technology.
And then there are entities so advanced and so powerful that they just don't have a clue what time even is. Such are the Bajoran Prophets, who exist outside of linear time.
By the reckoning of lower beings, the Prophets exiled some of their own to the planet Bajor ages ago. These beings were condemned to be forever trapped in a bottomless pit hidden within a system of caves. The native Bajorans eventually named these caverns the "fire caves," since the appearance of the banished Prophets was not unlike flame.
In addition to these banished Prophets, three other entities in recorded history had fallen into the bottomless pit. Two were Benjamin Sisko and Gul Dukat. Neither was in the bottomless pit very long, though. Sisko was transported to the Celestial Temple, also known as the Bajoran Wormhole. Dukat was saved from his fate by being transported through time to the 29th Century.
The third (and most recent) victim of the bottomless pit was not so lucky. By the reckoning of the aforementioned lower beings, it had been falling for almost two years.
That, however, was about to change...
***
Festivities the likes of which had never been seen were taking place on Starbase 47. Tables and tables were covered with culinary delights from across the galaxy, being picked over by Starfleet's top brass. Balloons and streamers decorated every hallway. The disembodied head of Admiral Picard was atop its robot body, and had been dancing nonstop for quite a while. Finally, large posters were everywhere, adorned with the words "Good Riddance Braxton!"
Indeed, Captain Braxton and his crew had been declared dead by Picard after an apparantly fatal accident with Scorpius' new subspace drive. The novelty had yet to wear off for Picard.
It was thus unfortunate for Picard that one of his aides stepped into his office clutching a PADD and looking quite nervous.
Picard stopped dancing. "What is it? Can't you see I'm busy celebrating?"
"Yes, sir. I can see that. But this urgent report just arrived from Bajor."
Picard took the PADD from the aide with his massively powerful robot hands. He looked it over, and when he was done, he looked quite grim. "That will be all. You may go."
The nervous aide quickly left. Picard had his robot body unscrew his disembodied head off and place it on the desk. "This would be the sort of suicidal mission that I would send Braxton on, but with him gone, who am I going to send?"
Picard thought for a few minutes, almost unhappy that Braxton was now gone. Almost. Finally, Picard's face lit up with inspiration...
***
Meanwhile, deep within the bottomless pit on Bajor, the Mysterious Red Button continued to fall. The console to which it was attached was now oriented in such a manner that the Button was facing upwards. As such, it didn't see what it was rapidly approaching...
With incredible force, the Mysterious Red Button struck the ground, leaving a large crater where it hit.
Ow! Hey, I thought this was supposed to be a BOTTOMLESS pit! If I ever get out of here, I'm going to give the Bajoran Tourism Department such a headache!
As the dust settled, the Button was shown to be in pretty good shape. Well, I suppose being fashioned from Starfleet's finest materials finally paid off... Hmm... Well, it looks like I haven't hit bottom after all...
Sure enough, the Button had landed on a rocky ledge jutting out over the pit. Okay, so I've stopped falling. Now what?
As if on cue, a light shone on the Mysterious Red Button...
***
Still fugitives from both the Federation and the Vaadwaur, the evil crew of the evil Excelsior hid themselves within the Coular Nebula. With little to do, the senior staff were regularly asleep at their consoles. Rand woke up when her console started beeping.
Janeway turned to her communications officer. "What's going on? Have we been detected?"
"No, but we are being hailed... By Starfleet!"
"Put it onscreen. At least we've got something to do now..."
Admiral Picard's face appeared on the evil Excelsior's main viewer. In a curt manner, he said, "Admiral Janeway..."
Janeway replied, "Jean-Luc! How nice it is to hear from you!"
"Sarcasm does not become you, Janeway."
"Who's being sarcastic? I'm bored to death over here! It's good to have somebody quasi-intelligent to talk to!"
Dukat muttered under his breath, "And what are we, chopped liver?"
Janeway shot Dukat a death glare, then turned back to Picard. "So... What's up?"
"I need you for a mission."
"A mission? I don't know if anybody's mentioned this to you, Jean-Luc, but we're evil now! We don't take orders from Starfleet anymore!"
"The mission is to save the universe, and seeing as how you're in the universe, it might be in your best interests."
Janeway mused for a while, then said, "Give me the details."
***
Meanwhile, the Mysterious Red Button had been hauled off the ledge and into an adjoining cave by several scruffy-looking Bajorans. Get your hands off of me! Don't you know who I am?
If they did, the Bajorans didn't answer back. After several minutes, they set the Button down in a large chamber surrounded by rather large torches. A rather mean-looking Bajoran man dressed in black robes sat on an ominous-looking throne. "So... You have arrived at last!"
Uh... Yeah, whatever. Listen, I have places to go and mortal enemies to annoy, so if you would kindly haul me off to the surface...
"Silence!"
You betcha.
The Bajoran motioned to one of his scruffy-looking subordinates. "Bring me the book!"
The subordinate quickly returned with a large tome. The Mysterious Red Button instantly recognized it. He had seen this book once before, although it was a version from an alternate timeline. He was looking at the Book of the Kosst Amojan...
The head Bajoran leafed through the book's pages. "Your coming was foretold to us centuries ago when this book fell down here."
Yeah, that would be when my idiot lackey dropped it when he tried to release the Pah-wraiths.
"Yes! Hear now the Prophecy of the Button...
One button to irk them all One button to annoy them One button to bring them all And in the darkness"
And in the darkness...?
"Well, the author of the book obviously couldn't find a good rhyme for the word 'annoy.' But that's not the point. Your arrival here heralds the release of the Pah-wraiths!"
Cool. I was trying to do that a few years ago, but then some stuff happened and I got thrown in this bottomless pit. Twice.
"Soon our masters will be free and they will destroy the universe! Hahahahahaha!"
Uh huh... Listen, now that I've fulfilled your prophecy and stuff, can I go?
"Very well! I shall use our sacred artifact to transport you anywhere you want to go!"
The evil Bajoran got up and opened a cabinet of sorts nearby. Inside was one of the Bajoran Orbs. However, unlike the other Orbs, this one was red. "Behold the Orb of Ultimate Evil!"
What's so evil about it?
"The last time it was used, Farscape was cancelled!"
Egads! So that's the reason...
"Yes! And soon, when the time is right, we shall use it to release the Pah-wraiths! Now, where do you want to go?"
I want you to take me to my lackey... Gul Dukat!
TO BE CONTINUED...
***
Can the evil crew of the evil Excelsior save the day? Will the Pah-wraiths be released at last? What does the Mysterious Red Button have in store for Dukat? Do bad guys always have to be dressed in black? For the answers to some of these questions, read the quasi-exciting conclusion!
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Perhaps this has been mentioned before, but is the Red Button an actual button, or is it the usual Starfleet console button that's just a flat light?
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by TSN: Perhaps this has been mentioned before, but is the Red Button an actual button, or is it the usual Starfleet console button that's just a flat light?
It's an actual button, several inches in diameter.
quote:Originally posted by Lee: Yeah, that works. Almost. 8)
I thought about using "destroy," but I'm a stickler for rhyming.
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
The Coular Nebula, eh Krenim? Don't tell me you're going to be roping "Renaissance" into this somehow!
quote:"Behold the Orb of Ultimate Evil!"
What's so evil about it?
"The last time it was used, Farscape was cancelled!"
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I haven't laughed that hard since "A Wolf 359 in Sheep's Clothing" way back last year! That's a classic!
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Does it only have to be the last syllable of a word that sounds the same in order for it to rhyme? I'm sure I learned that at one point, but I have long forgotten.
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
We're not talking about whether it's funny or not, we're talking about whether it rhymes. You're the one who has this obsessive compulsion to point out the smallest error in anyone else's posts, so what's wrong with me trying to think of a word that rhymes with "annoy?" It's not like I'm demanding Krenny chances the chapter, it's perfect the way it is.
posted
Okay, it's time for me to take this concept of a "bottomless pit" way, way too far.
I shall assume that the Mysterious Red Button (MRB for short) was falling for exactly two years. That's 63,072,000 seconds. I shall also assume an approximately constant atmospheric pressure throughout the entire pit, since there was no vacuum sucking all the air out of the Fire Caves. (I'm going to avoid invoking Prophetic intervention or whatever here. ) Bajor has an atmosphere that for our purposes can be assumed to be identical to Earth's. On Earth, air friction will counteract the acceleration of a falling object, so that any falling object inside the atmosphere may accelerate to a velocity greater than around 125 miles per hour. That's 55.875 meters per second.
Given the algebraic formula:
code:
dD = V1 * dT + 0.5 * A * T^2
("d" means "delta" symbol)
...and we come up with an answer of 3.524148 * 10^9 meters, or 3,524,148 kilometers. That's pretty far!
So either Bajor is a heck of a lot bigger than we thought, or else that bottomless pit isn't quite bottomless in the literal fashion. Or maybe the bottomless pit truly is bottomless in that it goes all the way through the planet's core, and so the MRB kept falling and falling, then passed through the core and started to fall out the other side before it was pulled back by the planet's gravity, and then went back and forth through the core like a sort of yo-yo.
And that's just so silly that I'd better shut up now...
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Actually, that's probably rather incorrect. Using a differential equation will yield much more accurate results. But I digress...
The true nature of the bottomless pit will be revealed in Part II. If you think about the properties and purpose of the pit, you should be able to figure it out for yourself, though.
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
The pit is probably dimensionally transcendental. Doesn't matter how big the planet is. The pit just looks like a telephone booth from the outside.
Registered: Mar 1999
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