'As the sands of time shifts beneath our feet
        consider yourself lucky 
              if you are not sucked underneath'
         
      - Third Refrain from The Ballad of The Passing Clock 
                                  






"Everything showing up fine?" Dylan asked for like the millionth time, his face popping up on 
one of the Maru's comm screens. 
You'd think he'd have the audacity to just invite himself aboard and take over the whole assignment
but today seemed to be one of his more 'laid back' days. Not that Beka wasn't use to his stringent 
work ethic(read: control issues) but she was pretty sure that these past few months had been 
particularly rough for everyone all around; what, with the new Commonwealth now circling the drain.
Turns out that the Universe being a lawless wasteland of scattered little planets was what kept
all hell from breaking loose. Everybody's found a cause to die for. Now, they were hellbent on 
the whole 'dying' part.

"Everything's still up and running, boss." She probably didn't have to say 'boss' so condescendingly, 
but, the way it made the corner of his eye wrinkle told her that he was now practically biting 
through his own tongue to stay professional. "Whatever was here is gone now, but, it did leave behind
some pretty interesting residual energy. Wanna see?" She then turned her monitor to face his, fully
knowing he couldn't assess an unprocessed readout to save his life. 
"Fascinating." He commented, bobbing on the soles of his feet, the liar. "Well, I'll just leave you to
to your business, then." And just like that, the image cut to black. Works every time. 
 
She should probably feel bad about all of this; what, with everybody on edge, lately. One of the worst
times to be testing the tensile strength of a relationship is right as everything was about to snap.
Besides, if they learned anything from what happened with Tyr, strangling yourself with your own safety net
still involved being strangled in the end. It sort of made her stomach hurt thinking what it must be like to be 
out there alone, without a place to come back to. Not that they were like some big happy family, but, hey 
they were all...well, they were certainly something.


Glancing down at the new energy readout from her latest probe, Beka watched as the screen burst to life
before her very eyes. "Hello..." Sliding to the edge of her seat, she hunched over the screen, drawing 
her face in so close, she could feel it's radiating warmth kiss her cheeks. "What are you?" She squinted,
trying to make heads or tails of an image practically scrambled beyond recognition. 
Where the stars usually lit the way like little holes punched into a box,
there was one particular area between two that started to peel outwards,
blurring them into one singular stream of light. They were bouncing the source back and fourth like a 
marker being swiped over the same spot over and over again until it began to bleed through.  
Worst of all, it was scrambling all her equipment. "C'mon old girl, don't do this to me now." She 
cooed to the Maru. Her reception flickering out and then in just long enough to see Dylan's face,
now blurred, essentially featureless, popping up into view. "Bek......rn arou.....ane.....ed.."
Covering the screen with a jacket she had laying around, she continued to watch the light sweep
over it's own path. "....n't lea......." Crackled the muffled voice of her Captain from behind her as she watched
it bloom outwards like a flower. "BEKA!" The voice on the other end of the call boomed, now, the audio systems
losing control over their sound levels. "....'s gone ro-" Without warning, blackness set itself upon the Maru. 












A Captain does not panic. He simply accounts for the time it takes for a message to be received. 
When that message takes far longer than it should, he then runs his fourth scan of their vessel.
A good Captain checks in on his associates. 
"Dead." Rommie chimed in, causing Dylan to twitch out of his daze of every single possible scenario
that could go wrong, "The signal system, I mean." She backtracked.
"...Right."
"You've been on edge lately." She observed, her concerned eyes looking him over as if she was doing
a scan of her own. 
As much as he appreciated her efforts, talking about an issue didn't seem to fix it as much as 
taking it into your own hands did. Lowering his voice, Dylan leaned over his control panel.
"I'd rather not open this dialogue right now." 
"Understood." Rommie saluted every which way but physically. She then eased, softly, into a tone of 
familiarity. "But you'll have to open it sometime." 
An eyebrow raised, "Duly noted." He scoffed. 
Heading off toward the Maru, he maintained a stride that wasn't too fast to merit panic but
not too slow to be considered relaxed. Nothing that anyone could or would perceive as anything
more than just a Captain simply going out on a jog.
The corridors of the Andromeda Ascendant felt far too familiar and yet he found himself rounding
the wrong corner at some point, leaving him turned around. Something felt...off. 
His body was unintentionally keeping track of the amount of time it took to head from one 
section of the ship to the next. Even as his mind wandered, he was sure he could find his way 
through these hallways blindfolded, but, his destination never seemed to come.
This time, deciding to take a different route- one that wouldn't necessarily bring him to his 
destination- he headed up a ladder and into the deck above. One cursory look and he realized 
that he was now in the deck below. Curious, he dropped down to the deck above and mounted it 
once again, this time counting each rung until he reached the top(or bottom) again. 
Too long. The ladder was too long. 

"You must quite enjoy doing that." Bemoaned a voice coming from the top of the ladder. One which
sent Dylan bounding up into the face of a very entertained Nietzschean.  
"...Tyr?"
Stretching his neck to the side, he blinked back at him, slowly. 
Scrambling for the lance on his belt, Dylan's brain began to blare on high alert. "What are you doing 
back aboard the Ascendant?!" He barked, already training his sights between a pair of hardened
eyes. 
"Is this one of your..." Tyr held his gaze for a moment, "...paltry attempts at a joke?" the word 
'stupid' remained unspoken. 
Blinking, Dylan, kept his lance heightened, wondering what kind of new set of mind games they
were playing this time. "Sure, let's go with that." 









Usually the Maru would signal a break like this with a groan; something they were so used to by now 
that Harper had a pretty good impression of it nailed down. Occasionally, he'd even answer it 
with his own. It made for a pretty entertaining show every time he'd to go to work on her internal 
wiring. 
This time was different. 
There was no call, no creak, not some weird leakage nobody could explain. Yanking out the particle 
tubes, she managed to rewire the ship's lesser systems into the essential ones. After all, you really 
had no use for a star map without a life support system. 
Rerouting only a meager amount to her overhead lights, they flickered to life, revealing an outline
in the dark; it's matted fur and brazen claws were enough to send her into a panic. Spilling over 
backwards, Beka reached for her cauterizer and chucked it at the figure who, in turn, retreated 
back into the dark. Rolling onto her knees, she grabbed her tool belt, pulling it from her waist and 
readied herself with a sharp eye and a prayer.
The second this thing peeked it's head out from behind her chair, it was getting the full ship-wide 
treatment. 
"By the Divine, I didn't mean to sneak up on you like that!" The figure immediately apologized,
claws intertwined as if they were begging for forgiveness. 
"B-Bem!?" Beka asked, cocking her head just far enough to see the Father, in all his nervous mannerisms,
continue to recede just far enough to avoid any more violence that might be launched his way. 
"I'm so sorry, I-I didn't think it was you since you left and-"  
"I said I would be back in a few minutes." He defended, now holding out a hand to help pull her up.
  
Taking it, firmly, she stared into his face, the teeth, the snout, the eternally hungry, eyes avoiding
contact with hers. Yup, it was Bem alright.
"No, no you don't understand; last time we saw you-y-you were less..." Beka scratched her brain, "...Maggogy?"
"I beg your pardon?" 
"Nothing, nothing." She laughed, nervously. Boy, this was gonna be a hard one to explain to 
the guys back on the ship.












With enough caffeine running through his bloodstream to kill a lab rat, Harper
exhaustively dragged out of his workshop to relieve his mind and, more importantly, his
bladder. After all, his brilliant work request to have a urinal installed up against the 
lateral wall had been put up on the chopping block of 'Things that we are no longer discussing
during ship-wide meetings.' Not that he was particularly passionate about it, but, hey, 
the walk was kinda long and it broke up his thought process. Besides that, without his 
usual work rhythm to keep him busy, his mind tended to wander; and when it wandered it 
roamed. Usually it was about stuff that didn't matter, but, once in a while he'd get a real
kernel stuck in his teeth over where they were headed and what they were gonna do about it. 
About death and war and all that good fun that turned boys into slightly larger boys who 
never really learned to deal with it all. About how long he could keep the lights on before 
he'd have to finally give up and shut 'em off.

Turning into the latrine, he realized he now didn't have to worry about that anymore. At least,
not in present company. Standing over the toilet, a man covered in lesions turned to him.  

His mouth fell open. "Uh..." It wasn't like the guy was using it or anything, but Harper still
felt like he just walked in on something he shouldn't have; which, for the record, always seemed
to happen to him. It was never in the sexy way, either, it was always something like this. Some
half naked dude poised and waiting for someone to come waltzing in. 
Falling backwards from the shock of nearly having his face caved in by the swing of a 
fist really made Harper appreciate all the times where he wasn't about to be creamed by some
lunatic. There weren't that many, but, he did tend to appreciate them when they came and went. 
"Hey, I get it, you just needed a little me-time in there!" He joked, now realizing that he could now 
technically cross 'peeing in front of a complete stranger' off his list of miserably embarrassing 
things he's had to endure in his life. "Just lock the door next time, huh, buddy?"  

Knocked to the ground, Harper could feel every weird nightmare about bathrooms all coming to a head
before they were blasted away by a single round, fired from the heaviest piece he'd ever seen. A 
pair of beefy combat boots slid into view as he watched the canon fire again and again until there was
nothing but a stain on the floor and, finally, he could breathe again. 
"Not gonna say that wasn't my first time between a pair of legs but, between you and me-" A 
hard boot connected with the back of his head as the figure drew back in all her rugged beauty.
"I thought you'd have learned to shut up by now." She said, a trained eye peeling over her 
smoldering target as it then landed to meet him with vague recognition. 
"Woah! Beka! Hey! What happened to you!?" Harper gasped, trying to take her in. It was like she
had gone full Terminator or Snake Plisskin or- 
"You don't wanna know." She clipped, reloading her piece with machine-like precision. 
Sitting up, he looked over her; red hair, eyepatch, leather, uh, everything else. Nothing like
the grease monkey he had come to have a weird and complicated relationship with. It then hit him,
wiping the smile off his face in one go. "I think I kinda do." 

"No." Sounded a voice that immediately made this Beka stand at attention. "I don't think you do."












The bay doors slid open and Beka found herself nearly losing an eye to a laser blast being shot 
off course from it's intended target. A twinge of deja-vu threatened to send her into a 
bad case of vertigo as she watched Dylan tackle Tyr to the ground, immediately getting flipped and
pinned as he looked up at her, breathlessly. 
"Stand back!!" Tyr warned, raising a bladed arm to provide some kind of invisible border between them.
It was apparent that neither of them got the memo.
"You wanna handle this one?" Beka asked the Rev as he nervously held both hands up and out in
front of himself as a sign of good intentions. 
"Gentlemen, I feel that neither of you have reached the same understanding that both Beka and
I have."
"And that is?" Tyr asked, morbidly craning his head out of curiosity.
"That I am not delusional!" Dylan barked, pushing Tyr off of him. "There's something...wrong here!" 
Straining against what she could only really describe as 'sorta like a pushup only backwards',
Tyr was rolled off of their Captain with a grunt. 
Well, no one ever said Good Ol' Bem was that good a mediator to begin with. Just that he was the 
only one they'd ever had.
Crossing her arms, Beka let her weight balance, unevenly, down to one firmly planted foot. 
"Did it totally not weird you out that you two have been playing a game of grab a-" She then 
froze for a moment, suddenly remembering that a man of faith was literally right beside her, 
"-and go-" she corrected with a toothy smile, "-and not one member of our staff has checked in on it?" 
Her hip swung, switching her balance from one foot to the other. "In fact,
I haven't seen anybody but you two since docking back on the ship."
It was here that the both of them finally looked up at her from their little macho pissing contest,
two sets of eyes reading off the same exact look but with different contexts. "Staff?" Bem asked
from beside her.  

Make that three. 

 













Pouring into the deck, everybody headed straight for their respective battle stations only to
find they were no longer there. Each member of the crew found the new setup completely alien. All except-
"Andromeda." Dylan snapped, reading the new configurations that had popped up on the screen before
him. A completely different iteration of her A.I. was now staring down at them, indifferent and 
suspicious. 
"Sealing off the deck." 
"Andromeda, it's me." He tried reasoning only for her to eye him suspiciously. "Captain Dylan Hunt."
"I know who you are." She clipped over the high pitched hiss off doors sealing them in. 
"Then why the hostility?"
"Captain Dylan Hunt; served the Highguard special ops before acquiring the vessel Andromeda Ascendant
for a four-year mission under the jurisdiction of The Commonwealth. Killed in battle
during a usurping of power approximately three hundred years ago. Exists now as a backlogged 
A.I. created by one Seamus Harper in our systems for games of Go with the current Captain."
"Who is...?"
"Ghaderis Rhade."
The dam of information broke, filling up his mind with a flood of panic he wouldn't dare show
in front of his crew. Swallowing, Dylan tapped his fingers on the console once and then twice,
gathering his thoughts. "Is he on board now?"
"Captain Rhade has not been on board the ship in..." A pause. "My readoff is clearly not matching
up with my perceived archive."
"Is he the one responsible for the ships interior layout?"
"No."
"Do you know where the rest of the crew, besides those currently in this room, may be?"
"Scanning..." The screen went black and he turned to a crowd of faces plagued with 
confusion and concern. "What's wrong with this picture?" Dylan asked his mismatched crew. 
"Maybe it's a test put upon us by The Divine." Reverend Bem offered, kindly, trying to put
things in perspective. "I believe we are being given a chance to come to terms with events
that have either happened or haven't. Facing the consequences of roads untraveled." 
"Tests, huh?" Dylan's eyes peeled towards over their resident pop quiz expert in all her
quiet resilience as she turned from his gaze. 
"What if a certain backstabber decided to set up some elaborate lie in order to confuse us?" Miss Valentine 
not-so-subtly reasoned. "Maybe in order to get something he left behind?"
"An act of manipulation?" Locking eyes with Tyr, Dylan tried reading his expression only to get
a look of quiet neutrality back in return.
"This looks more like a matter of time and space colliding with each other again." Rommie pointed
out, "Which, is more in the department of sciences, don't you think?" 
"An unregulated experiment?" He dipped his gaze down at Harper who was currently patting down what 
looked like a newly installed set of deck chairs.
"Hey! They put seat warmers in this thing!" Harper shouted in his attempt to ease the situation.

The Andromeda then appeared to them once again, this time without a word. 
"So?" Dylan pried.
Suspicion seemed to pull at her eyes. Something told him she didn't want to give them anything but, 
for now, she was willing to engage in their little mystery. "I'm....having difficulty reading for life signs." 
She admitted. 
"I see." 
Fishing for a way to explain it all as fast and easy as possible, she followed him up with,
"It could be caused by anything." 
"Like a...space anomaly?" He debated.
"Or sabotage." She debated back. 






From the other side of the deck, everybody had gathered, generally trying to avoid each other as
much as possible. They all seemed so rubbed raw by the whole ordeal. 
See, none of 'em had the mindset of an opportunist or, uh, con artist, to know when to take advantage 
of a bad situation. Oh well, one man's mess was another man's blessing in disguise.

"So, happy to see me?" Harper beamed up at the scowl hanging above him.
"I don't see why I would be." Tyr shrugged, leaning against the console. 
"He-hello? Because we're friends. You know, Harper and Tyr, the unbeatable duo of brains-" 
He pointed at Tyr's forehead, "-and brawn!" swinging his arm to pat at the muscle of his own arm. 
A pause of consideration.
Drawing in, Tyr met him face-to-seriously-way-too-close-for-comfort-face. "I'm going to tell
you this only once. We are not, and never have been, companions so, do take into consideration 
keeping your mouth shut." 
If he had a white flag, he'd be waving it right about now. 
Pulling away from the conversation, entirely, Tyr practically passed through him, crossing the 
room to be at Dylan's side. This was fine, of course. It's not like it was something he should totally 
take personally. After all, he was the one projecting three excruciatingly long years onto
some guy who, by all means and purposes, probably only knew him for a few weeks. It took a 
while to break down those barriers. He knew this. Besides, it's not this was the first
time he got stuck with a version of someone who got swapped out in some kind of weird happenstance. 
His life was pretty convoluted like that.

Speaking of which, he found his footing wandering over to the bridge's railing where a certain
someone was watching the scene unfold. It made this whole picture look just a bit too
foreboding for his taste.
Time to get to the bottom of this.
"So...Trance, what's going on?" Harper asked, watching her react with that look she got when she knew 
exactly what was happening. She wasn't going to tell him anything, though. Not until she absolutely
had to at the last second; right when everything was hanging in the balance of going belly up. Which
meant that things hadn't gone full-blown terminal yet. Good to know. 
"Nothing you need to worry about." 
"Right, right, oh by the way I ran into you and Beka on the way here." 
The look on her face said everything. 
"You know, pink really was your color." He carried on, already feeling his entire being 
transmogrify into the biggest ass in the world.
"Did they tell you anything?"
"Maybe."
Her mouth fell open like a fish. A tall, classy, fish with big sweet eyes and a rack to die for.
"Harper." 
"Look, I'm starting to get real sick of being the one getting burned, here." He bristled.
"I promise, I'm not going to burn you." 
"But you're not going to tell me when the fire's close, are you?" 
"I..." She stilled herself. "I'm not planning anything." Except, of course, for the other 
eight hundred other things she had planned from the start.
"So this is just gonna be the usual fare of coocoo quirky bananas hijinks we usually get into,
huh?"
Pressing her lips into a thin line, Trance's face betrayed her as she nodded. "Yeah, you could
say that." 
As much as he wanted- no- needed with every ounce of his being to; he didn't pry. Instead, 
he decided to continue to swallow it down. "Well, I guess that's all I need to know." 




"Do you suppose we should be trying to collect some kind of evidence on what's happening?" 
The Rev asked no one in particular but, since Beka was in earshot, she figured she was
probably better than nothing.
Thumbing over at Trance and Harper's little meeting, she gave him a knowing smile, "Well, the 
wonder twins seem to be on it which either means this is going to be a quick fix or I have ten
minutes before they start breaking out the booze and I have to fish somebody's head out of an 
airlock." 
The Reverend looked over at them with a face that read as anything but relieved. "Ah, yes, 
well, whatever keeps us in good spirits I suppose." He glanced down at his feet and then back
up at her, his teeth setting themselves into his particular brand of smile that couldn't ever
decide if it was an expression of good will or a threat. It made her wonder if Magog were ever 
capable of smiling in the first place. 
"I...have an inquiry." His nail began clicking against each other in an anxious tic he managed
to pick up from wherever or whenever he came from. "You mentioned something about me not being
as I am in this..." Eyes shifted across the deck for a quick second, "...place." 
"Well you were and then you weren't." Beka tucked her thumbs up under her belt, "After the 
Magog attack, you never really were the same." A pause. "You...left. Said you needed to get some stuff
sorted out." She let out a sigh, "You didn't even say goodbye. Not really, anyway." 
"I see..." 
"But you managed to find what it was you were looking for." She shrugged. "whatever it was, there you were
like a completely changed man."
"A man!?" He blurted out, amused, almost like he didn't believe her.
"Well, something like one, anyway." She shrugged, watching Dylan and Tyr work over a plan as if
that chapter of their lives had never happened, either. She didn't know how she was supposed to feel
about all this but she certainly didn't like it. It felt wrong. Like the past had come back to
slap them all in the face. A drunk ex boyfriend whose money you might've stolen before you
left him planetside with nothing but a half loaded blaster and that bra you forgot on the way out. 
"Now, I guess it's my turn to ask you a question." She had never really seen the look 
The Reverend flashed her, before, and yet it said everything she needed to know.  

Unfortunately, she never got a chance to ask him anything.

The ship bucked, cabin pressure falling just enough to make Beka feel lightheaded under the siege 
of blurring lights. It was like taking Flash without all the deliciously good parts that made her 
feel all focused and floaty and fast. 
This felt more like, if she took a step, she'd fly off aimlessly until she finally popped like a balloon
before hitting the ground all empty and shriveled and used up. The mental image, alone, was enough to make 
her gag. 
"I don't like this." She paraphrased. 
"Neither do I." Dylan agreed. "What do you think this is, some kind of event horizon?" 
"I don't think so." Beka explained, remembering the phenomena in all it's vividly blurry details. 
"Whatever it is, it's no black hole, it's..." She paused, remembering the beam of light tearing
through the very fabric of the universe. "...vibrant. Colorful." 
Swallowing something gross, Harper climbed his way up a nearby seat, "Well, whatever it is, if 
I start bleeding from the ears and talking backwards, do not resuscitate." 
"We don't plan to." Rommie reassured him with crossed arms, feet still firmly planted to the floor
despite the ship's increasingly heavy sway.
"Do you think we should make a jump?" Dylan asked, genuinely, for the first time in a very, very
long time. 
Knowing a simple 'yes' or 'no' wasn't enough to truly convince him, Beka decided to take 
a third option. By describing the outcome of his idea in all it's lovingly visceral detail.
"Not unless you want us to be pulled apart at every connecting joint and transported
into ourselves from another time." She shrugged. "Or space. Depends on how 
the third and fourth dimensions are aligned with this thing." 
"She's not very far off, actually." Trance spoke up, causing a room-wide shiver to crawl up everyone's
spine. 
"Okay, so, what? We can't just sit here." Dylan pried, causing Tyr, their bitterly beloved old Tyr
to come snaking up to the forefront with a sour demeanor. 
"Would it be safe for us to view this phenomena for ourselves?" Okay, maybe it wasn't so sour. 
And maybe she was exaggerating just a little about the snaking part too, but, damn it, just looking
at him made her feel so...
"Difficult to say." Andromeda responded, "But I could replay the footage that my video feed managed
to capture before it went out."

Even though it was the single most snowed out, unfocused, thing she had ever seen, the image came
in crystal clear. It was like watching the universe give birth to something wrapped in a bright 
light, head crowning out into full view, faceless, featureless, but pulsating. Full of a kind of
life that began it's existence right before their very eyes. 

The readout was even more brilliant, the light's very existence created a magnetosphere that could
suck everything in it's vicinity into it's own core.   

"It's The Age of Aquarius." Tyr muttered under his breath. 
"I'm a Libra, myself." Harper laughed, nervously.
Ignoring him, Beka found the phrase a little too ominous to just let it slip by, "The what?" 
As if on cue, Dylan started constructing his soapbox, drawn into the glow of the Aurora 
like a moth to a flame. "It's a time of great change. Political, technological, mathematical." 
Holding up three fingers, he watched the flicker of lights dance before them, "The dawn of
a new era and all it brings with it; the good, the bad, and everything in between..."
"Change is as change does." Rommie added, amazed at the phenomenon forming and unforming before
her. "It's messy. Usually, signaled by things getting bad before they even remotely start getting better." 
"It is both the beginning and the end." Tyr punctuated. You could assume this was his particular
brand of cynicism, only, Dylan didn't seem to disagree; watching over the constant readouts pouring
over the screens before them with a heavy brow.
"Okay, great." If Beka was wearing any sleeves, she'd be pulling them up by now. "If you're all 
done reciting poetry at each other, we should probably work on finding a way to get out of here."
Not that she didn't like a good horror story, she just preferred if it wasn't happening to
her. "This thing is made up of a magnetic field strong enough to pull stuff from other dimensions.
We should probably some way to get away from it before it drags up something worse than-"  
"You're right." Dylan cut her off with a stern look, already feeling her resentment start to reach
a head. "First, we need to set up ground rules." Drawing an audience, he brought everyone to his attention. 
"This is not show and tell. This is a situation involving the very fabric of time and space."
As he paced in front of his crew, he gestured at them as he saw fit. "That means, no anecdotes,
no comments, no nostalgic little quips. We are to remain professional until the problem has been 
absolved. Am I understood?" 
Harper raised his hand and refused to wait to be acknowledged, "What if my quips aren't nostalgic?"
Ignoring him, Dylan allowed his crew to disband as best as they could. 

Standing with his hands resting on his elbows, perfectly squaring up his profile in a manner that 
commanded respect, Dylan spoke with a clear and concise tone. "Andromeda. I'm going to need to ask
you to cooperate with us." 
"I will not fall to another mutiny." She answered with a hefty stare that dwarfed him in comparison. 
"No matter the circumstances." 
"Even if the circumstances meant total annihilation?" He offered, playing the only good card he
had in his deck. 
"Asking for surrender under the threat of destruction is a sign of a desperate man." Hm. Well, she
certainly wasn't wrong about that. 
"What if my desperation was to keep us both alive and running?" Surely, you would think this, alone,
would be enough to convince her. After all, if Nietzscheans were right about anything, it was that any 
being would choose survival first and foremost. Only, A.I. aren't your typical definition of a 'being'
and her footing seemed firm in her decision. 
"You have yet to prove that much, insofar."
Drawing back, Dylan retreated to the only crewmember in the room who he could trust with this 
particular task above all. 
"Rommie I'm gonna need you to play to your own weaknesses, here." 
"You want me to argue with myself?" The question felt as if it had already been answered before it
left her mouth. 
"Isn't that what we always do in these kind of situations?" If she didn't know any better, she'd think this
was almost his way of saying 'please'.
She looked over to the image of herself positioned on the screen. "You know she can hear everything 
you say."
"Then she should know that we're genuine." He reassured her with a pat on the arm. 
"I don't think that's what's bothering her."


Mocking a deep breath, Rommie stared at the echoed image like it was some kind of terrible mirror
telling a story of all the things that could've went wrong. It brought images to her mind that 
she'd rather not consider. What were simply flights of fancy for her, she knew this version 
had lived as a reality. 
"Schadenfreude." She stated, causing the ship's A.I. to finally pay her any form of attention. 
"What?" 
"And a little bit of relief." 
"What are you-"
"That's what I'm feeling right now."
It was here that she watched a blink of something flash from behind the projection's eyes. 
"You don't feel, you're a warship."
"Do you miss him?" She egged on.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm only standing over here and I miss him."
It felt like something pulled from a nightmare. The image of your own face blazing down upon you with this 
anger that had been held in for so long, she wasn't sure it would ever fade. Maybe it wasn't Schadenfreude
she was feeling. Maybe it was- 
"Pity." The A.I. responded, "Even though I knew our time together would've been short, I never would've
considered there to be any other options. He was supposed to be a passing face. Just another name on my roster."
She glanced over to watch Dylan relay orders to various members of the crew, splitting them each up into
parties of two. "And there he is." Rommie watched as the Andromeda's systems ran scan after scan over him,
as if this was her way of pinching herself to see if she was dreaming. "Is he still a good Captain?" 
There was a hesitation in those few seconds that said everything either of them needed to know. 
"He wants to be." She answered, truthfully. 
"Then I suppose it wouldn't be unwise to allow him to lead this mission." The A.I. reasoned with a stillness
that could only be attributed to her avatar's unwavering resilience. "After all, adversity breeds excellence 
in those who overcome it." 

As the doors unsealed, Rommie made her way back to Dylan who dropped his voice to just above a whisper, 
"You did well." 
Tilting her head, she caught a glimpse of his smile before it was put back to rest. "I learned from the best." 
For a moment, her eyes wandered, looking over his face as the rest of the room seemed to pull away from her
all at once. She was now on her knees, Harper shouting her name from across the room, drawing closer as he slid
right under her before she hit the floor. Her central systems were heaving from overuse. 
"It's okay, Rom, you're gonna be alright." He was panicked. Everyone in the room was panicked. Dylan was
knelt at her side, trying to get a read of her condition. 
"It's a hard reset." Harper explained, having to hold her head up for she could no longer hold it up 
on her own. "She'll be fine, but, this isn't supposed to be happening right now." He gathered her head up to 
his shoulder, cradling her as her body began it's shutdown for maintenance. 
Scooping her up out of his arms, Dylan carried her across the room to be seated. Funny. She'd always imagined
one day being carried like this.
"We have no time to waste." He addressed the rest of the room as she admired the underside of his chin oddly
finding herself transfixed to stare at his jawline. Unshaven. Set firm from long work hours and too many late nights, 
tightened from stress. "We need to fix this problem. Now."















Getting set up with retrieval duty was an easy gig. It fit just smack between 'important enough' and
'low stakes' that made this whole 'staring into the face of potentially fueling the birth of something
new and beautiful and horrifying all at the same time' feel like a weird little chapter of her hectic 
life. It made Beka feel like she could just shrug and go 'So, the Apocalypse, huh?' and a live audience 
would go crazy with laughter. 
"Have you been getting a lot of deja vu lately?" She asked aloud, unprompted by anything except maybe
everything that she'd seen today and then some. Interestingly, the question made Trance's face twist into
something readable for the first time in ages. "I'm not talking possible future stuff. I mean the feeling 
like we've been here before but the us that was here wasn't really us." God, this was hard to explain.
"I haven't felt any different." 
Well, that made one of 'em.

"Not that way." Trance guided as Beka found herself dodging yet another hallway as if it was 
rigged to explode. 
"There's nothing wrong with them, it's just the wrong way." She explained, which didn't make
Beka feel any more at peace with the fact that she was chained to Little Miss Ominous. Lately, it 
felt like every time Trance had anything to say, it was either the most surface level comment or
a deep world shattering revelation. There was no moderation, no middle ground, no conversation in
between the lines. Just one extreme or another. 
"Sometimes, I miss you." She blurted out. 
Trance, mistaking this for some big cheesy heart to heart, started to look around as if she was
searching for the right words to say. "Wow Beka, I..."
"No, I miss the old you, The one who was my friend." She swallowed that biter pill and could feel 
it get caught in her throat. So, like any reasonable person; instead of trying to spit it out, 
she kept swallowing. "Remember when Harper had to fix the Maru in a pinch and mistook the output 
unit for an input unit? He set his head on fire. The cargo port smelled like we had been frying
rats for weeks." 
She then watched, miserably, as Trance tried to recall the memory, glancing at the floor and back
up at her as if to apologize. "You don't remember, do you?" Beka was starting to wonder if this 
Trance had any fond memories at all.
"Not anymore, no." She stared, "Would you tell me about it?" 
"About what?"
"About how it was with me, before?"
It was a request Beka couldn't turn down if she wanted to. There was a kind of bond that happened
when you trusted someone enough to pull off grifts with them. It was like this big series of trust falls
except, when the other person doesn't catch you, you end up splattered all over the pavement. 
When your crew was good, it was good. When something lasted long after all the schemes and heists 
of the old days? Call it 'honor among thieves' or whatever, but it was solid. Unbreakable.

"Yeah, okay, deal. After all this is over, I'm dragging you down memory lane, one brick at a time." 
"It's a deal, then." She smiled and then immediately gasped, "Wait, Beka!!" Trance called out as she 
took a sharp turn, coming face to face with...oh, well, speak of the devil herself! 
Here they were, again, staring face to face into the worlds most screwed up mirror. Beka found herself
reeling back, heart racing in the kind of anger that threatened to burst at the seams.
"You knew about this didn't you?" 

"It's not her fault." Trance- her Trance- pouted, immediately pulling her back. "She has nothing to
do with this." 
"Then why are you here!?" Beka spat with a little bit of shame. Why else would this Trance come back?
It's not like any of them were the same, anymore. There was nothing to come back to but unfamiliar 
territory. Obviously, she was just another blank faced extra along the journey to a large-picture 
story. "In fact, why are any of you here!?" Her eyes felt like they were laser-guided, her gaze, devastating. 

For all her powers and myth and mystery; Trance was still very small. Not just in height but in personality
too. Staring at the ground, searching for an answer- whether it was a lie or the truth(or an omission of the truth) 
deeply wanting to make things okay again. Even for a little while longer. 
It ran Beka's patience thin. 
"Well!?" She urged, only to hear a peep of something mumbled, not quite legible. "What?"
Looking up, Trance actually looked her in the eye; stern, sharp, larger than she had ever seen her. Looking
back at her like she was just a road block in her way. 

Stepping between, them she watched as this weird mirror version of herself hoisted a sizeable laser gun off her back. 
"Hog."
"What!?" 
"HOG!" Trance shouted, her face falling back into shock as she turned and booked it, grabbing the other Trance's
hand with her along her way. 
Turning just in time, Beka watched as a hoard of Caldonian hogs descended upon them, their jowls frothing and
open, ready for a feeding frenzy. One blast managed to take out about three of them and she suddenly found
herself swept up in a fit of panic. 

"Don't worry about her, she'll be fine." Her future self instructed, "Quick, we need to find a safe place to 
hide and regroup." With her good eye, she glanced between each door down the hallway. Blasting the control panel 
on a door to their left, Beka felt herself hoisted through without another thought, practically thrown onto the 
floor while she watched the other Beka blast out the panel, definitively sealing them both inside. 


It was surreal in a way. Sitting in the darkness of an unused crewman's 
quarters, listening to the pack outside snarl and pound down the hallway until it faded into a haze of silence. 
Catching her breath, Beka looked up from her spot crouched on the floor, her eyes now adjusted just enough to watch
this version of herself casually pull what was probably the biggest laser canon she'd ever seen off her own back
without a second thought. Uncanny.
"So, what's the plan?" Beka asked.
"What plan?" Future Beka asked back.
"Well, we're safe now, right?" Beka reasoned, "We should probably try to find Trance and, uh, Trance."
"Did I say that?" 
"Don't you tell me that was-"
"A distraction? Yeah, pretty good wasn't it?" She almost sounded proud of it. 
It was one thing to lie to yourself but it was another thing to be lied to by yourself. At this point, Beka
was pretty sure this was the kind of thing that got people locked up in padded rooms. 
"The hogs too?" 
"Oh, no, those weren't part of it." 
"Well then where did they come from?"
She could hear metallic joints creak as her future self turned her head, staring back at her as if
she'd have already had the answer from the start. "Just some old cargo."
"Old carg-wait. You don't mean..." Suddenly, it felt like she was being whipped back to one of the 
worst scams they ever almost didn't pull off in all it's diseased, squealing, glory. 
"Some very old cargo." Her counterpart admitted. 















The Andromeda Ascendant drew in a kind of haunting atmosphere with all of it's systems down like this.
Only the level-one doors would open for them during power-saving operations, thus forcing Dylan's hand
in having to deal with the ship's locks. 
Slicing a firm line through the door's seam as to keep from entirely destroying his own ship from the
inside out, he couldn't help but feel like he was performing an act of sacrilege. A Captain is 
supposed to be duty bound to his ship above all else and here he was, dismantling her. 


Reaching the first power emitter was, at least, the easiest part of his job. Holding the doors open, 
he allowed Father Bem to slip through the crack before joining him on the other side. Cruelly, he 
looked over the room with a sense of nostalgia. It looked exactly like it used to only, now, it was tinted 
in a blanket of darkness shrouding every corner. 
In a brief moment, Dylan caught a glimpse of his own reflection off of the blank monitor, and froze from
it's sheer presence. "Father I have a confession to make. Your absence has not been an easy one." He 
admitted despite himself. 
"I'd be flattered if you didn't sound so dire." The Reverend lamented, reaching his hand out to guide 
Dylan away from his own uneasy gaze. "Tell me, child, what seems to be weighing you down?" 
"It's my crew." No that wasn't it. "It's this new Commonwealth." That wasn't it either. "It's this 
whole damn universe that feels like it's constantly on the verge of tearing itself apart." This was
as close as he was ever going to get to an honest answer. 
Understanding the strife one must be going through had always been difficult for Dylan. 'We're all 
suffering so there's no excuse for you to put your own above everyone else's.' That's what he'd say.
A sad story had no place in a sea of sad stories. You simply looked past it and carried forward 
despite it. So, even as he was guided away to sit and clear his mind, he couldn't help but to 
notice how simple The Reverend made it look.

"It's not easy trying to guide a flock on your own." He advised with an empathy Dylan found 
unsettling. "Especially not one so vast." He then seated himself at his side, neither of them 
looking at each other but, instead, focusing on their breathing. Deep breath in. "Tell me, 
why do you place the fate of our Universe on your shoulders?" Deep exhale out. 
"I'm not sure I..." Deep breath in. Deep Exhale out. "I look at something that's broken and 
I see failure." 
Deep breath in. Deep exhale out. "Who's failure is it?"
Deep breath in. Pause. 
It was here that the Reverend nodded, thoughtfully, to himself, a solemn gaze drifting into 
the ether before him as if he was holding a conference. "Do you see me as a failure?"
"You? Of course not! You're one of the most remarkable success stories I've ever seen!" 
Exhale. 
"Is that why you come to me for guidance?" 
It wasn't until now that Dylan considered this. 
That out of every member of his crew, Bem was the only one who hadn't seemed to fail him 
on some front. "Are you saying my judgement might be clouded?" 
"I'm saying you might be clouded by your judgement." His eyes were now closed as he bowed his head;
opening them once again, now as clear and bright as they were before they headed out. "After all, 
I'm just as marred by flaw as anyone else."
Humility was an admirable trait.

"You might want to watch out, father." He joked with a soothed tone. "You keep talking like that 
and I might start to doubt your judgement." Right then, he felt his comms link burst to life, 
frantically pushing away every thought in his head as he donned the title of Captain once again.
"Report." He commanded, already sensing nervous hesitation on the other line. From this, he deduced 
trouble. What he did not deduce was where- or, to put it fairly, who- it was coming from. 
"So we may have a problem." Beka admitted, sorely, as if just the very thought of admitting to a 
mistake would kill her on the spot. "If you happen to see any, say, Caldonian hogs around, you 
probably should be advised to shoot them on sight." 
By all means and purposes, he was joking, but by the way things sounded on the other end, her 
warning was starting to sound a lot like a distress signal. 
"Caldonian...hogs?" He repeated back, still in a haze of confusion. 
"Look, it's a long story. One we'll fill you in on one day but right now just work on trying 
to avoid them. They'll kinda..." She drew out the last word as if she was searching for a better 
term than- "...eat your face." 
"What!?" 
"Look, it's fine. We have everything under control. Except the hog part. Look, we gotta go- 
I mean, I gotta go- I mean we-" She let go of her side of the feed for a moment before continuing. 
"Heading back to the Maru. Over and out." 

Well, that certainly wasn't the strangest transmission he'd ever gotten. 













Harper had a list of Pros and Cons penned up in his head. 
Pro: he finally was given a vital job to do.
Con: It was a simple engineering fix that even a newbie could pull off with three fingers and a thumb.
Pro: He could get a glimpse at all the variations of The Andromeda's possible layouts. 
Con: They might as well have put a paper bag over his head and spun him around a few times before sending him 
off on this thing.
Pro: The one person he knew would come back to him was here, right in front of him.
Con: This wasn't, exactly, the way he had planned it. 
 


It felt like centuries since Harper found himself on the receiving end of one of Tyr's foul moods. 
Admittingly, they were just about as 'charming' as he remembered. Not that this was his timeline's 
Tyr, anyway. I mean, what did he expect was gonna happen? That they were gonna stop and catch up
like old pals? Hell, this Tyr didn't even seem to slow down the pace, long legs striding forward
instead of doing that funky jog that kept them neck to neck. If he so much as even tried to catch 
his breath, Tyr would be gone in an instant. 
"Hey, uh, no offense; not really critiquing on your style, here, but uh..." He swallowed a gulp of
air, letting it burn in his lungs, "Doesn't the whole point of being an escort involve, I dunno, 
escorting!?"
Lucky for him that Nietzscheans had that freaky sense of hearing or he'd have to repeat himself and, 
frankly, given the looks he'd been getting, he'd rather burn off his fingerprints and shoot himself into
deep space than do that. 

Stopping dead in his tracks, Tyr turned to give him a real face-full of wrath, "Are you blaming me 
for your shortcomings?" He asked. 
"Hey you're not allowed to play the short card here!"
"I was talking about your lack of physicality." 
"So I'm not the fittest guy at the gym, either! Big deal! Not everyone was personally chiseled from the gods!"
Pulling away from him, Tyr seemed to wrap around himself in thought. An argument was going on inside 
him that looked ugly enough from where he was standing. Like watching a married couple fight in public 
and knowing divorce would win out in the end. 
"I'd prefer it if we kept our exchanges brief." 
"You want me to shut up."
Locking eyes with him, Harper could feel the brunt of something on the other end. It felt like getting
swept up in a storm he knew he couldn't ride out. Used to, he'd throw his arms up in the air and go 
'What's that guy's problem!?' But he knew Tyr and this looked like something far beyond the usual 
shaky foundation of problems that made up the guy. It kinda made him feel like he should be the one 
to apologize, here. He wasn't going to, but, hey, it's the thought that counts, right?
Opening his mouth, Tyr's eyes briefly glanced at something just slow enough for Harper to catch it. 
Bingo.
"I'd advise you to run."