When Commodore Dmitri Andreyevich regained consciousness, he immediately noticed that the bulkheads of the cabin he was in had a strange curvature, sterile pale color, and layout. He was on his back, lying on something resembling a biobed. His first thought was that he didn’t know what to think.

 

     Am I dead? By all rights I should be. If I'm not, then where am I?

 

     “Do not be alarmed. You are in sickbay.”

 

     Dmitri tried to look at the source of the voice, but could not see any other person in the room.

 

     “Strangest sickbay I've ever been in," he replied honestly.

 

     A humanoid woman stepped into his field of view, with racial features he couldn’t recognize, dressed in a uniform he could not identify, yet, something about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on said “Starfleet” to him.

 

     “We could not rescue you until you were legally dead. Apologies for the suffering you went through; it could not be helped," she explained. "Fortunately, you have healed quite nicely, and we were able to remove the unpleasantness of the ordeal from your mind. You are as good as new. And let me assure you, you are not a prisoner. We only brought you here to talk to you, and make an offer to you that you should feel entirely free to accept or reject. If, after you have heard us out, you wish to go back to your ship, we will happily return you without delay.”

 

     “Sounds fair to me. By the way, what ship is this, anyway?”

 

     She smiled warmly. “You are aboard the Federation Timeship Atlantis. She is a namesake of the one you have been serving on. This one is of the Andreyevich-class, in fact.”

 

     Dmitri suddenly sat up. “I see. So you’re from the future.”

 

     “That is correct,” she nodded. “And it is a future that has a lot to offer you, Commodore. For example, take a look around this sickbay, and tell me what is so unusual about it.”

 

     Dmitri slid his legs to the floor and stood up, gazing about the room. Other than the biobed he had been lying upon, there was nothing else in here to suggest that he was in a sickbay of any kind. One moment later, even the biobed disappeared.

 

     “Plain, isn’t it? No diagnostic panels, no other patients, in fact, no other personnel, other than yourself.”

 

     “Exactly,” grinned the woman. “In your time, Starfleet had been flirting with blending holographic technology with traditional medicine. We have done away with both. This sickbay has no doctors or nurses, holographic or otherwise.”

 

     “So, who tends to the patient’s needs?”

 

     “Sickbay, itself,” she said proudly. “We use a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence, armed with all the tools it needs to maintain the crew at peak efficiency. It is programmed to instantly cure any illness or injury it detects in any of us -- and that includes diseases of the mind. And it does so quickly and painlessly. Usually without the person even being aware that anything was amiss in the first place.”

 

     “What’ll they think of next?” muttered Dmitri, with a slight tilt of his head. He supposed that he should have been impressed, but for the moment, he did not feel the need to widen his eyes for her benefit. There was still plenty for him to absorb before he could even begin to let his guard down with strangers.

 

     “A lot has changed since the twenty-fourth century,” she continued. “Allow me give you a tour of the ship, so you can see this for yourself.”

 

     She took his hand in hers. “Shall we start with the bridge?”

 

     He prepared himself to be led to a turbolift. “Why not?”

 

     Instead, the room they stood within instantly morphed into different one.

 

     This could only have been the bridge. Dmitri recognized the main viewscreen at the front, the general circular layout of the stations, and the captain's chair in the middle of it all.

 

     “No turbolifts in this century?” he asked her.

 

     She released his hand and shook her head.

 

     “Inefficient. They waste space, power, and time. All crew members have a brain implant which can access the ship’s transportation grid. Just mentally tell it where you want to be, and it puts you there, in one second or less.”

 

     “All very well and good, but suppose the system fails?”

 

     The center seat spun around to face them. The captain was an elderly oriental human.

 

     “It would have to be a massive failure for it not to work," answered the captain. "Normally, it beams you through the shortest distance between two points -- a straight line. But the system is a grid, so if there’s a failure somewhere, you’re just routed around it. And the repair systems make short work of the occasional rare failure.”

 

     “Captain Ho, this is Dmitri Andreyevich,” said the woman. “Commodore, meet the captain of the Atlantis, Bertram Ho.”

 

     The captain rose and gripped Dmitri's hand. "An honor as well as a pleasure, Commodore."

 

     Dmitri saw no harm in shaking this man's hand, and did so. “Likewise, Captain. But still, say the worst happens and the entire grid isn’t working?”

 

     "Not to worry. We still haven’t done away with Jefferies tubes." He nodded to the woman who brought him here. "Thank you. You may return to your assignment."

 

     "Aye, sir," she answered, and then she beamed away, presumably to another part of the ship.

 

     “Why, exactly, am I here, Captain?” asked Dmitri.

 

     “I am assembling a crew for this ship. Under a new DTI policy, I may even make my selections from a pool of certain operatives from the past,” answered Ho.

 

     Dmitri considered this. “Well, that’s certainly flattering, but aren’t you messing with history?”

 

     Ho shook his head. “I'm afraid your contributions to history came to an end when you died aboard your ship. That’s what empowers me to offer you the chance to continue making them in our era. In return for your services, you’ll be able to partake of all of the advances this century has made.”

 

     “Yes, I've noticed a few already. But what about temporal contamination? Suppose I decide I want to go back to my era. With what I have learned here, I could alter the course of history.”

 

     Ho nodded. “We have advanced memory-erasure techniques.”

 

     Dmitri expected no other answer than that. “Well, then, in that case, I would like to see more before I give you my decision.”

 

* * *

 

     Ho took Andreyevich to engineering, next, in the same method the woman had, by making physical contact with him and transporting there.

 

     “We still have warp drive,” Ho explained. “but it is reserved as a backup interstellar drive on this ship. The slipstream method is more safe and efficient and doesn’t cause any damage to the environment.”

 

     “I expect that your timedrive must be more refined than what I’m used to, as well,” said Andreyevich.

 

     “Much,” agreed Ho. “The interface has been made so simple, a ten-year-old could time jump this ship smoothly.”

 

     “What about weapons? Defense?”

 

     “The Atlantis carries minimal weaponry. We are, after all, a ship of stealth, not combat. Er, that’s not to say we are defenseless in the face of a powerful enemy. The bridge can function without a captain, if need be, making decisions much more quickly than an organic mind is capable of doing, especially an organic mind under stress.”

 

     “Hmm. Your sickbay, your transportation grid, your bridge. I’m beginning to see a pattern here. Complete automation. On this ship, people seem to have been rendered obsolete. Richard Daystrom’s dream has finally come true, eh?”

 

     “That’s not true, Commodore,” contradicted Ho. “I’ve met Dr. Daystrom, personally. A man way ahead of his time, and he knew it. But he wanted intelligent machines to explore space without risking the life of any human. Obviously, what we have here is more of a symbiotic relationship between people and machines. One cannot protect people from their own spirit of discovery. We will always want to see for ourselves what is going on down on that unexplored planet. Even if it is dangerous, we are willing to take that risk. Our machines are marvelous, I’ll grant you, but even in this age, they aren’t ready to “solo,” just yet, especially not in temporal operations. And we biological entities are just as lost without them.”

 

     Dmitri really didn’t like the sound of what he was hearing. Is that where humanoids were truly headed? More dependency on technology, rather than maintaining a grip on self-reliance? What would these smug people do in the event of a catastrophic failure? Insist that it wasn’t possible, even when the reality of it was suddenly hitting them in the face? More than likely.

 

     “Captain, the woman who brought me to you seemed quite convinced, as you seem to be, that your technology is so advanced that nothing can really go wrong. In my time, Starfleet was pretty insistent on crews keeping their minds and bodies ready for all eventualities, including the sudden deprivation of all of your luxuries. Can you honestly tell me that your crew can handle that?”

 

     “This era is different from the one you left in many ways,” answered Ho. “Starfleet had to be discriminating in your day, because of the circumstances you were living under. As you say, failures were common, and often a crew was subjected to reverting to the old tried and true survival methods. What you need to grasp is that all of that has been completely written out of the equation! Let me give you a comparison. In your day, an away mission sometimes required days of preparation so that a team could beam down, mingle with the natives, accomplish the mission, and then return, sometimes injured, or sometimes not at all. If the mission was botched, the whole thing had to start from scratch again, unless the captain was content to let things stand as they were, which was often the case. Starfleet learned from those mistakes, and the result is how we handle pretty much all of our missions today."

 

     Ho paused, as if something was interrupting him. "Ah! How timely. The computer has just informed me that the Atlantis has arrived at her destination.”

 

     “I didn’t hear anything,” Dmitri began. Then he saw the captain tap his own temple. “Oh, yes, that neural implant. I should have suspected it had more than one use.”

 

     “Come with me back to the bridge,” invited the captain. “You need to see how we do things, now.”

 

* * *

 

     “Panoramic view,” ordered Ho, once they were both back on the bridge.

 

     What Dmitri witnessed, took his breath away.

 

     As he would have expected, the view of the planet they were approaching was being projected on a bulkhead at the “front” of the bridge, where one would normally find the main viewscreen aboard a typical starship, albeit higher off of the deck than to which he was accustomed. Except that here, that image was capable of widening horizontally, until both ends of it met on the other side of the bridge, creating a 360° panorama of the space outside. Then this image extended “upward” to the zenith of the bridge’s interior dome. In effect, it now looked like the entire top of the bridge had been sheared off!

 

     “Don’t worry,” chuckled Ho. “It’s just holographic hocus-pocus. Today’s starship captains don’t much like wearing 'blinders.' This way affords a better view of what’s going on around the ship -- at least topside.”

 

     He pointed to the planet ahead. “That is Gorozia, a Federation planet, despite the fact that a sizable minority of its inhabitants wish it weren’t. In our era, a militant separatist group had stolen a crude time shifting device, capable of sending an assassin back to this point in time. Another vessel saw to the confiscation of the stolen device, but it is our job to patch up the dent in Gorozia’s history. Let me ask you, Commodore, what would Commodore Andreyevich do in this situation?”

 

     Dmitri shrugged. “I would apprehend the assassin before anyone on the planet got hurt.”

 

     “Ah!” said Ho. “I agree. Except, you see, in this case, it would be the worst thing to do.”

 

     Dmitri looked confused. “I don’t understand.”

 

     “In your time, how a mission was handled was pretty much captain’s discretion, was it not?”

 

     Dmitri nodded.

 

     “In our time, the Department runs countless temporal senarios at home base before deciding on the best crew to carry out a very specific mission. It just so happens that once the assassin learns he has failed in his mission, as well as comes to the realization that he is trapped in this era for the rest of his life, he devotes that life to being a part of the loyal opposition. His knowledge of future events cause him to try to use his political clout to steer his people away from the disasters he knows are coming. At first, his fellow Gorozians laugh at him, for pretending to be clairvoyant. But he turns out to have been right each and every time. By the time the people grow to trust his judgment, he has become an elder statesman, whose radical youth has been mellowed with age. By the time he actually serves in office, himself, he has grown to see the long term benefits of Federation membership. So, you see, our would-be assassin turns out to be one of Gorozian history’s most legendary figures. This must be allowed to happen.’

 

     “But,” continued the captain, “as you say, we must not allow this assassin to succeed at his current mission.”

 

     “So how do you intend to stop him?” questioned Dmitri.

 

     “I’ll show you,” smiled Ho, again touching Dmitri to whisk him to another part of the ship.

 

* * *

 

     Dmitri and the captain stood before a wall stocked full with similar looking devices, metallic, roughly bowling ball-sized, and extremely complex-looking.

 

     “These are holodrones. They represent the next step in the evolution of what you called holodroids,” explained Ho.

 

     Then he said. “Activate HD-1.”

 

     One of the devices came to life, hovering from its storage compartment down to the deck. But it never touched the deck. When it got to about waist-high to the men, it stopped and projected an image of the body of a Gorozian around itself.

 

     “Allow me to introduce you to Thalkor, Supreme Hect of Nalba, Gorozia. One of our assassin’s intended targets. We have a holodrone programed and ready to impersonate every target that our man wants to hit. When the mission is ready to start, we will beam up the real Thalkor and place him in stasis, where the computer will begin copying his memories for the use of our ‘actor,’ here. You would have probably simply sent a man through the matter stream modifier to risk his neck on the planet, eh?”

 

     Dmitri said, “A few moments ago, you told me your machines weren’t ready to solo in the world of temporal repair missions. Now you tell me you’re going to send a bunch of these...puppets...down to take the place of actual people?”

 

     Ho smiled. “You misunderstand. The drones aren’t going at it alone. Allow me to demonstrate. How would you like to try out being Thalkor for a bit?”

 

     “And how would I do that?”

 

     Ho motioned for him to follow. He led Dmitri to the inside of a room that was a short walk away.

 

     “This is holotactics. Think of it as a cross between the holodeck of your time and a telepresence control chamber. It is currently assigned to HD-1, or Thalkor. While the drone is projecting its image of Thalkor, it is also holomapping its surroundings, and sending that data back to this room. Observe.”

 

     The room took on the form of the area the two of them had just left.

 

     “I’m temporarily assigning HD-1’s motor commands to you. As of this moment, what you do here in the virtual world, is what Thalkor is mimicking out there in the real one. Go ahead, take a little walk around.”

 

     Dmitri took him up on that. He paraded his new Thalkor body down the hall, and, totally by chance, almost bumped into the woman he met when he first opened his eyes aboard this ship.

 

     She took a half-step back in surprise, and said, “Okay, who’s in there? Is that you, Captain?”

 

     “Actually, no,” admitted Dmitri. “It’s me, Dmitri Andreyevich. The captain was just showing me how this works.”

 

     “Well, I hate to interrupt your fun,” she replied. “But I need to get this fellow ready for the serious job ahead.”

 

     “Uh, Captain?” shrugged Andreyevich. “Could you...?”

 

     Ho nodded. “Disconnecting motor functions.”

 

     The holotactics room resumed its normal appearance.

 

* * *

 

     “The computer tells me that you are feeling hungry,” mentioned Ho, as he and Andreyevich continued the tour of the ship. “We have more than one option to take care of that.”

 

     Dmitri found himself and Ho beamed to what looked like a luxurious lounge.

 

     “This is the lounge,” confirmed the captain. “A place for off-duty personnel to relax and socialize. In your day, it would have been located at the front of the vessel, or at least near some large view ports. That is no longer necessary, with the state of holographics being what it is. Now visitors here can request whatever view they want, wherever they desire it. Which table would you prefer?”

 

     Dmitri indicated the closest one; they were all unoccupied at the moment.

 

     As they sat down, the captain continued to speak. “As you are a first-timer, you’d probably like to see a menu. Most often it is summoned by using your implant. Allow me.”

 

     A menu materialized before Dmitri, hovering in the air, looking like an image that should have needed a physical screen to present it, except, of course, there was none.

 

     “You can either tell it what you want aloud, or just touch what looks good on the menu,” explained Ho.

 

     Dmitri tapped a finger on a specific item. The menu winked out of existence, as a plate of food appeared on the table before him, along with utensils.

 

     “So this is viinerine,” said Dmitri, taking a sensual whiff of it before lifting a forkful to his mouth for a taste. “I’ve always wanted to try it, but Romulan cuisine isn’t terribly common on Starfleet menus.”

 

     “It is now,” contradicted Ho with a quick meaningful twitch of his eyebows, as a cup full of some sort of beverage materialized for him.

 

     Ho took a sip. “I mentioned that there were other sustenance options. Sometimes a job that you do will take you past your normally scheduled eating times. In the old days, you’d have to choose between going hungry or dropping what you were doing in order to go grab a bite. Here, in order to keep working at top efficiency, some crewmembers opt to have the computer just beam nutrients into their digestive systems at the proper times. Still, for most, nothing can replace taking a break when you need one. Would you like a view of the space outside? I imagine that’s what you are used to. I must tell you, though, you have other options there, as well. If you are in the mood to be surrounded by a particular setting while you eat, or to be entertained in a specific way. I’m partial to a little place on Triniki Island, on Betazed, myself...”

 

     “I would prefer no distractions at the moment, thank you, captain,” said Dmitri, as he obviously enjoyed his exotic meal. “I must say, your life is one to which I could get very accustomed. Even the missions are no longer personally dangerous, anymore. I’m very tempted to take you up on your offer to stay with you.”

 

     “But you are wondering why you, specifically, aren’t you?” surmised Ho.

 

     “The idea has continuously crossed my mind.”

 

     “It’s a subject I have been avoiding for reasons that you are probably aware of.”

 

     “I am also a DTI officer, captain. If I couldn’t take it, I would have chosen another profession.”

 

     “Very well. As you might imagine, there is a little more to pulling a prospective new crewman from the past to our present, than just determining that his usefulness in the past has come to an end. We pulled you off of your ship at the moment of your demise. So, you understand, if you do choose to return, we will be required to allow that fate to take you, as history dictates it did.”

 

     Dmitri's face fell. “So much for your promise of a memory wipe, and a return to my former existence, eh?”

 

     “Well, we didn't want to use the truth to influence your decision," said Ho. "The choice of whether you remain with us or go back is always yours to make. But it is true that should you decide to leave us you will be choosing to die in your crippled ship.”

 

     “Captain, everything you have said and shown to me amounts to one thing. For Dmitri Andreyevich, staying here is good. 'Look at all the nice toys you’ll be able to play with. Going back is bad. You will die.'"

 

     Dmitri paused for a moment, then continued. "Your entire presentation is built upon what you think is in my best interest. But I just cannot fathom how a man of my time can possibly be of any value to you.”

 

     Ho took another sip. “You’ve personally known much of the history of the Federation, and as you know, history is the patrol route of this ship. Oh, yes, we have computer records, and learned historians aboard. But their information is second hand, at best. Yours is first, because you, personally, took part in that history. Secondly, I probably know more about you, the man, than you do. I know you to have the skill and the character of someone I’d be very proud to have among my crew.

 

     Ho hesitated. “Dmitri...may I call you that?”

 

     Dmitri nodded.

 

     “Dmitri, I’ve gotten indications that you are not altogether pleased with the way this future has turned out. Am I right?”

 

     “As idyllic as it all sounds, it does seem to me as if whatever authority governs you now has lost all of its perspective on the things that give life its meaning,” Dmitri glanced around the lounge. “They’ve succeed in weeding out the pioneering spirit that belongs in the exploration of time and space, and placed all of you back in the womb, technologically speaking. Conveniently for you, it is a portable womb, so you can take it with you wherever you go. And you are so dependent on that womb, that I wonder how you would handle being deprived of all or part of it.”

 

     Ho grinned. “You may be right. We may be so close to the forest, that we may not see the trees. While I can’t have you go back and change what is my history, you can point out the flaws in the present. If valid, I’ll bring them to the attention of my superiors. Who knows? You may be the fresh pair of eyes that might return us to the true path, one day. If that's not value -- what is?”

 

     Finishing off his drink, the cup in Ho’s hand fizzled back out of existence. “Another thing I wanted to add...if you do decide to stay...you needn’t consider yourself chained here. You’d have all of the rights and privileges of your rank and position that you had before, of course. Including the right to transfer elsewhere, or leave the service entirely, if you wish. It would be up to you. Frankly, if I was in your shoes, I know what decision I’d make. In your time, I believe it was called a no-brainer.”

 

     Dmitri smiled as he continued eating. “That expression was old even in my time, captain, but I do see your point. I promise you I will give everything you said its due consideration. But one thing still baffles me.”

 

     “And that is..?”

 

     “What does your history say about the disappearance of my body from my ship?”

 

     "Life went on," answered Ho. "It was a never-explained mystery. There were lots of theories. You can look them up yourself, if you're curious. But let's face it, even in your time, a missing body was no longer considered an unusual thing. So the impact of it on history was so small as to be perfectly acceptable to the DTI."

 

     Ho stood up. "I realize that you have been given a lot to absorb today. Take all the time you need to decide what you want to do. I need to be getting back to the bridge. Feel free to go anywhere and talk to any member of the crew. When you're ready to see me, just tell any one of them, and I'll be back with you in a blink. Now, if you'll excuse me..."

 

     Ho dematerialized.

 

* * *

 

     Dmitri wandered the ship for a couple of hours. When he needed to use the lavatory, he asked a crewmember where the nearest facilities were. The young man, who seemed a little impatient with him, inquired if Dmitri wouldn't just prefer to have the computer handle the situation instantaneously for him.

 

     Dmitri reluctantly agreed, expecting to be beamed to where he needed to go. Instead, he felt the transporter sensation only in his nether regions, then the desire to use a toilet had vanished when the sensation faded away.

 

     Of course, he thought, fighting the indignation he suddenly felt at having his privacy invaded in such a manner by a machine. I should have known.