[PLOT PROLOGUE] The Slush Pile

Posted on 30 May 2021 @ 1:07pm by The Narrator

738 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Starting Again
Location: Department of Temporal Investigations - San Francisco Office

Lieutenant Wilhelmina 'Mina' Murray had been at the top of her class in the academy. She had been highly awarded and praised on every posting she'd had from cadet to lieutenant, and she had been recruited for DTI especially because of her skills and intelligence...

...which was why she still found it annoying as hell that she was buried in the "grunt work" of DTI. She had to read PADD after PADD, report after report, about what was going on with different ships and starbases to figure out if there was somewhere an agent needed to go. Sometimes, it was obvious. Sometimes, they were hiding it specifically so they could avoid a visit from DTI. Few of them managed to get past Mina, though. She could usually read very well between the lines, see what was really going on--or at least be able to tell when something didn't add up.

Of course, not every time that happened was it a temporal matter, but when it wasn't about time, it rolled out to other departments to be sorted out.

She wondered if maybe one of those other departments would recruit her so she could actually go out and do something...but everyone hated DTI. Once you were there, you usually stayed there.

Which felt somehow ironic for a department regarding time travel.

Today, she was back at it. A stack of reports had accumulated on her desk overnight and despite all her best interrogative efforts, no one would fess up as to who had put them there. She had read through several by lunch time and hadn't found anything interesting. While holding her turkey sandwich in one hand, she kept reading while she ate. It was then that one of the "flagged" reports popped up--which meant that there was no doubt that time travel had been involved and DTI had to jump on it immediately. She almost choked on her food when she realized that one of these Very Important Reports had landed in her slush pile.

"The USS Odin," she read aloud, half-smothered by her half-eaten bite of sandwich. It was vaguely familiar. Her eyes widened as she read, and the more she read the wider they got.

She was dusting crumbs off her uniform as she hurried out of her closet-of-an-office and made her way to her supervisor. (She astutely left the sandwich behind.) Pressing the chime, she hurried through the door before it was even fully open and waved the PADD in her hand. "Sir!"

Commander Rhix was a heavyset Bolian man who looked every bit a jolly fellow but was perpetually taciturn. Anyone who attempted to be clever and ask him if he was "feeling blue" was terminated from the department, although the office of personnel always brought them right back because Rhix didn't actually have the authority to give someone the boot for bad jokes. That of course had done nothing at all to stop him from trying, but fortunately, there hadn't been many new people for a while and thus there wasn't presently anyone who didn't know about this...idiosyncrasy.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" Rhix asked. She would've called it a weary tone if it wasn't the tone he almost always used anyway.

"There's a ship we need to send someone to," Mina said quickly, slightly out of breath from hurrying over here. (That was quite a task involving a couple of trips up ladders while the lifts were down for maintenance. She knew she could've used her comm badge, but Rhix had a habit of cutting her off.) "The USS Odin. It was flagged for our immediate investigation but it somehow ended up on my desk." This might actually be worth booting someone for, she reflected as she put the PADD on her desk.

"What's our rating on the Kirk Scale?" Rhix asked with all seriousness as he took the PADD and brought it up to read.

"Well, pretty up there, sir. They apparently created an entire other timeline and only came restored this one by way of a powerful being's help," Mina explained quickly. "They've been back for some time now and being questioned by every department but ours."

Rhix's blue brow-ridge rose. "Well, we need to get the captain in here for interview and everyone off that ship. We'll coordinate with whoever we need to for the crew. We have a lot of work to do, it seems..."

 

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