Close, But No Cigar

Taking Stock of Their New Situation

Claire Finn pondered her life over the last few months since the Union Starship Orville, the ship she was chief medical officer of, was commandeered by time-traveling mercenary Pria Levesque and sold to the Benzians, or Binzians, Claire wasn't sure of the spelling, or even if it mattered, a water dwelling race that somehow achieved space flight. She could only assume they hadn't exposed their existence during her era, or they somehow managed to achieve an advanced level of technological achievement at a highly accelerated rate, since she never heard of them until the ship encountered them in this era.

Her son Ty Finn had announced something that Claire found perplexing.

"What?" Claire yelped, "What do you mean, Ty?"

The nine-year-old reiterated, "we're in a different future from what ours should be, a different dimension or something. History is different. I think we can go back. We may have to!"

"What do you mean?" Claire was aghast, "How are we going to do that? I'd like to, of course, but why do you think we have to? What happens if we don't?"

Ty waved his hand and a display appeared, text and images. Claire read, "the Interstellar Trade Conglomerate was able to thwart the incipient synthetic lifeform revolution brewing on Kaylon 1 by negotiating an agreement in which..."

She blinked. The depictions of the Kaylon in this article were those of living creatures, not mechanical beings. The "synthetic lifeforms" were mechanical beings that resembled Isaac, that were built to be servants. She looked quizzically at Ty.

Ty just directed her to the date. She saw the year 2734. "What?" she exclaimed.

"If we were in our own dimension, back in the year we left, would we see living beings on Kaylon 1? According to Isaac, only artificial lifeforms live there!" Ty informed her.

"Okay," a gobsmacked Claire replied, "go on."

"Look," Ty pointed to some text and read out loud, "'the synthetics have agreed to disarm the built-in weaponry they installed in their heads, on the condition that the Kaylon allow independent oversight by representatives of the Conglomerate'..." He paused and looked at Claire.

The Conglomerate. An organization that supplanted the Union about 400 years earlier than now, in the year 2566, Claire heard. It still maintained the noncommercial institution that was a hallmark of the Union among all the planets that were members then, but new members of the Conglomerate operated under the commerce system, and Claire heard that some original Union planets were transitioning toward that system from the traditional Union system.

It was all fascinating, Claire supposed, but she was particularly focused on the report mentioning the "built in weapons" that the artificial lifeforms apparently installed in their heads. 'Does Isaac have that?' she wondered. "How long ago did the Kaylon start building their 'servants'?" Claire asked Ty.

He answered, "about 300 years ago, according to this article!"

"That's after the time we were taken from," Marcus, who came in a couple minutes earlier and listened to the conversation, observed. "So, there was no Isaac in this dimension!"

Ty shrugged. "Probably not, I don't know."

Claire and Marcus looked at him and then each other, befuddled.

"But here's something else," Ty declared, showing a report about the missing ship, the USS Orville.

Claire read it. According to the report, the ship was commanded by Edward "Ed" Mercer at the time of its disappearance, not Joanna Barrett, who took over when Ed and his first officer, Commander Kelly Grayson were kidnapped by the Calivon. In fact, the report stated that Ed and Kelly were kidnapped, but rescued by the Orville while it was commanded by Lieutenant Alara Kitan, something that definitely did not happen where she came from, Claire mused. Reading through the list of crewmembers serving aboard at the time, she gasped at seeing the names of the bridge crew, most of whom were actually missing at the time. Ed and Kelly, kidnapped by the Calivon, Lieutenant Gordon Malloy, who was court-martialed and discharged, for actions taken while attempting to take a shuttle against orders to attempt a rescue of Ed and Kelly, Lieutenant Alara Kitan, who took the Orville back to Earth as ordered instead of rescuing her command officers, then resigned her commission, Lieutenant John Lamarr and Isaac, the former taking a shuttle to retrieve the latter who was observing some stellar phenomenon on a planet somewhere at the time. The few names that matched the actual crew on board when the ship was taken by Pria included the second officer, Lieutenant Commander Bortus, a Moclan from Moclus, and herself.