Episode 41: I Genics? No, Eugenics!

All was peaceful above mid-20th Century Earth. At least until a temporal rift suddenly appeared. The rift spewed out a small 29th Century Federation timeship, which, upon close inspection, turned out to be named Aeon.

Inside the craft, the pilot was trying desperately to prevent the Aeon. At the same time, he was quite vocally venting his frustration at the series of events which had led to his current predicament. "I'm going to get that Janeway someday! I ask her nice and politely if I can blow up her ship to save the future, and she turns me down! Then, I do my duty by trying to blow her up anyway, and what do I get in return? Getting thrown to whenever the heck this is!"

Unfortunately, no amount of effort could stop the Aeon from accelerating towards the Earth's surface. The pilot, one Captain Braxton, finally surrendered the ship to gravity and beamed himself to safety. The ship continued to streak across the sky until it finally crashed into the Sierras.

An odd-looking man happened to see the crash and went to investigate. This man was Henry Starling, a hippie whose life was about to be altered in ways he couldn't begin to imagine. He finally found the smoking Aeon and looked at it in amazement.

Now, I bet you all think you know what's going to happen next. You all think that that Starling will take the ship, and use its technology to found the Chronoworx Corporation.

Well, that's where you'd be quite wrong.

As Starling continued to stare at the scene in front of him, a shadowy figure emerged from the woods behind him. A very distinctive voice said, very softly, "Good evening, Mr. Starling..."

Starling turned around to face the newcomer. "Who are you? What's going on?"

"The answer to that is quite simple, Mr. Starling. For my future to exist, yours must cease to be. Goodbye."

The figure took out a phaser, and vaporized Starling. The figure then stepped forward, his face illuminated by the fire caused by the Aeon's crash.

Khan Noonien Singh then began to laugh...

***

Nine centuries later, or several days earlier from Khan's point of view...

Business was not going well for Crazy Khan's House of Shields, mainly because being located inside Federation space meant that no one had money with which to buy shields. Khan, scowling over his financial papers, was quite relieved when a customer beamed down. "Welcome to Crazy Khan's House of Shields! How may I help you?"

The customer studied Khan for a few seconds. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Everyone knows me! I'm Khan Noonien Singh!"

"Uh... No, that doesn't ring a bell."

"Oh, come on... I ruled half the Earth during the Eugenics Wars!"

"Eugenics Wars? Never heard of them."

"I'll bet you didn't do well in your history classes."

"Actually, I'm a professor of history at Starfleet Academy."

"You mean to tell me you've never heard of the Eugenics Wars? You've never heard of the genetic engineering, the rising of the tyrants, the mass destruction? It took up most of the 1990's, for heaven's sake!"

"Nope."

"What kind of history are they teaching you people?"

The customer whipped out a book and handed it to Khan. "This kind of history."

"Hmm... I'm going to have to look this over."

"Wait, I want to buy some shields! I've got lots of money!"

"I have no time for that now! Go away!"

So, after the customer beamed away, Khan took the book into one of the back rooms and turned to the chapter on the 20th Century. Flipping through the pages, he quickly realized something was very wrong. "Where the heck are the Eugenics Wars? There's the Information Revolution where there's supposed to be apocalyptic devestation! My entire past is gone!"

Khan went flipping back through the book trying to find out what had gone wrong. After a few minutes, he finally found out what the problem was. "Who in the heck is this Starling guy? I don't remember him at all. He apparantly used 29th Century technology from a crashed timeship to build a huge corporation and make a ton of money, which caused the Eugenics Wars to never have happened! I'm not going to stand for this! In fact, I'm not even going to sit for this! I'm going to set things right! First of all, I need to get off this rock. But of course, there's never a starship around when you need to steal one..."

As if in response, someone else beamed down to Khan's store. Oddly enough, it was Galvatron. "Hi, Khan!"

Khan ran over and pointed at Galvatron. "You! I never forget a face! Who are you again?"

"I'm Galvatron. I was here last year when I was part of the Excelsior crew. We bought shields from you at less than a fraction of what they were worth. I'm here to pay the rest of the bill. I can count it as a tax write-off."

"Forget the money! Let me use your ship for a while and we'll call it even!"

"What does Khan need with a starship?"

"I have to go back in time to correct a travesty of continuity! My entire past has been erased!"

"Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Between the Transformers cartoon and the various comics, I have three or four different continuities myself! Go ahead and take the ship."

"Excellent..."

So, Khan beamed up to the Nemesis-A. Galvatron, however, suddenly realized that he was marooned with nothing to do, at which point he began blowing up stuff for amusement.

***

Several days later, Khan beamed down to a dead world with ruins scattered about. He looked around and saw what he was looking for. Before him was a huge stone donut-like thing, which was glowing mildly. He approached it and whispered, "The Guardian of Forever..."

***

Meanwhile, the senior staff of the Relativity had assembled in the shuttlebay to welcome back Damar, who had finally finished his time with Astro-Alcoholics Anonymous. Braxton stepped forward and smiled. "So, Damar, what's it feel like to be neither drunk or hungover?"

"It feels good, sir."

"Really? I would never have suspected."

"Uh, sir... I haven't seen you touch a drop of alcohol this entire series."

"Your point being?"

"Never mind... I'm going to go perform an experiment on the temporal shields."

"Why?"

"It's a plot device."

"Oh. Carry on."

Ducane accompanied Damar to Engineering. Damar started looking somewhat sad. Ducane noticed. "What's wrong, Damar?"

"Well, sir, my running joke is gone."

"I see. Well, don't fret. We got rid of Dax's running joke a while back, too."

"Yeah, and she barely gets any screen time now!"

"Hmm... I understand. Well, I'll help you try and find a new running joke if you want."

"Sounds good, sir."

***

Khan approached the Guardian of Forever. "At last, I have the means to set things right!"

The Guardian began to glow brighter. I am the Guardian of Forever!

"I know that."

Oh. I suppose I don't need to go into my speech about how I'm my own beginning and ending and stuff, then.

"Nope. I just need you to send me to 1967 Earth."

I can't do that. That's not the way I work.

"Don't give me that excuse. You should be bending over backwards to help me out!"

And why is that?

"Do you have any idea how easy it was for me to get down here?"

Not very. There's probably a fleet of starships in orbit making sure no one uses me to travel through time. Time traveling is very rare, you know.

"Get a clue, Guardian. There isn't a fleet up there. There's not even a ship, except for mine. Nobody cares about you, because you're from the original series, just like me! I'm going to strike a blow against continuity rewriting by fixing my own past!"

There's not even a warning buoy or something?

"Nope."

The Guardian's glow changed from a soft yellow to a bright red. Let's rock...

Seconds later, the Guardian brought up the Sierra Mountains, and Khan stepped through...

***

Back on the Relativity, Damar had the temporal shields up while working on them. The Doctor strolled into Engineering with some PADDs in his hand. "Ah, Mr. Damar! I've been looking for you!"

"And why's that?"

"Lt. Ducane stopped by Sickbay earlier and let me know about your running joke problem. I've compiled a list of possibilities for you."

The Doctor handed Damar one of the PADDs. Damar looked at the contents. "Hey, this is nothing but a bunch of names!"

"Whoops, that's the list of possible names for myself."

"How is your search for a name going, anyway?"

"It's going well. I've come up with a really good one."

The Doctor highlighted one of the names on the list. Damar squinted at it. "Charles Capps? That's the dumbest name I've ever heard of!"

From out of nowhere, a bolt of lightning struck Damar. Damar, in intense agony, cried out, "Fine! It's an acceptable name!"

Another bolt of lightning struck. Damar screamed, "Okay! Okay! It's the greatest name there ever was!"

After making sure he wasn't about to get smited again, Damar slowly got to his feet. The Doctor took back his list of names and gave Damar the list of possible running jokes. Before Damar could look at it, one of the consoles started beeping. He ran over to check it, then tapped his communicator. "Damar to Dax."

"I'm still not talking to you."

"Huh?"

"You killed me!"

"That was Dukat, you moron!"

"Oh yeah... Well, what do you want?"

"Are you detecting some sort of temporal ripple passing over the shields?"

"Yes, I am. I'm attempting to track its origins."

***

While Dax was trying to track the temporal ripple, Yar's noticed her console was beeping as well. "Captain, we're being hailed."

Braxton said, "Put it onscreen."

Admiral Picard's head appeared. However, whereas Picard usually had a look of disgust on his face every time he saw Braxton, now he looked utterly confused. "Who in the heck are you and what are you doing in Captain Sulu's chair?"

As soon as what was just said sunk into Sulu's brain, he jumped up, tossed Braxton out of the captain's chair, and plopped himself down in it. "At last, the chair is mine! All mine!"

Ducane shot Sulu an icy glance so cold that Sulu immediately shut up. Ducane stood to address Picard. "Sir, Captain Sulu is not the commanding officer of the Relativity. Captain Braxton is."

"Who?"

"The guy Sulu just threw out of his chair."

"Oh. Ducane, I've never seen that guy before in my life."

"Maybe that has something to do with that temporal ripple we just detected."

"That's what I was calling about. We've tracked it to 1967 Earth. Someone has apparantly changed history."

"Well, I guess we'll travel back to that era and attempt to set things right."

"I'm afraid that's going to be impossible, Ducane. Whoever changed history has also set up a temporal inhibitor. It's out of phase with normal space-time, so you'll have to go to the 1990's to deactivate it first."

"Understood, Ducane out."

Sulu added, "Hey, I'm the captain! I get to say when we cut communications!"

Ducane whacked Sulu over the head, then closed the channel. Braxton got up, threw Sulu out of his chair, and sat back down. "1967... Why does that sound so familiar?"

"I believe that's when the Aeon crashed on Earth, sir."

"The what did what?"

"Sir, have you forgotten why you hate Janeway in the first place?"

"Uh... No... But everyone else might have, so why don't you remind them?"

"When the solar system blew up, you detected pieces of Voyager in the debris. You went back to the 24th Century in the Aeon and tried to blow up Voyager, but they fought back. You got blown back to 1967 Earth and got seperated from your ship when Starling found it and used it to get rich."

"Oh yeah... So, I guess it's off to the 1990's. Mr. Sulu, set a course!"

"Hey, I'm the captain now! I don't take orders, I give them!"

"Just shut up and set the course!"

"Fine, but I am the captain..."

And with that, the Relativity entered the timestream and vanished.

TO BE CONTINUED...

***

Next time, on Star Trek: Series ?, the Relativity crew battles Khan and his army of supermen to restore the past. Well, maybe "restoring the past" isn't the right phrase, since "Space Seed" happened before "Future's End." So, in a sense, Khan restored the past. Now my head hurts. Well, the Relativity crew will battle Khan and his army of supermen. That much I know.

[ October 06, 2001: Message edited by: Krenim ]

[ October 06, 2001: Message edited by: Krenim ]