Day of the Dead {Star Trek Enterprise Fan Fiction}

Cracks

"I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand

Walkin' through the streets of Soho in the rain

He was lookin' for the place called Lee Ho Fook's

Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein"

Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London

=/\=

Amanda Cole sat down and Tripp sat beside her. "This seat taken?" he asked. There were dozens of empty seats.

"Uh, now it is," she grinned at him. "You have homework, yanno."

"And so do you, Missy."

"Oh, yeah," she said, "but I am blowing," she hesitated for a second, "it off. Dawson can be a pain in the you know where."

"Erm," he said quietly, "maybe you need a massage?"

"I dunno," she said. "I get the feeling you're not licensed."

"I'll show you my license," he said and then they were shushed as the movie was about to start.

Chip walked to the front of the room. "It is the last All Hallows' Eve here on the NX-01. And so we are showing Halloween. There's really nothing highbrow to look for. But Donald Pleasance and Jamie Lee Curtis are in it and we've seen them a lot when we've had retro weeks. He was in The Great Escape and Ten Little Indians. She was in Trading Places and A Fish Called Wanda – and that's just the films we've shown you. I'm not so sure this particular picture was on their resumes in later years. Roll it, Aidan!"

Tucker sat quietly and didn't make a play for Amanda – at least not to start. He decided to bide his time and wait until things got scary. The MACO Corporal, he knew, wasn't exactly going to be terrified even by a lot of on-screen gore, but she might be affected by the suspense. He was counting on that. He was certainly not thinking about reports or any degree of responsibility.

=/\=

In 2367, a very different scene was unfolding. "I'm glad you're all right," Wesley Crusher said to his mother, Doctor Beverly Crusher.

"Well, that warp bubble experiment ended up being pretty frightening. I felt like everyone and everything had been forgotten, and then I was being forgotten. I was stuck in my own universe." She shook her head. "I'd better go see to my guest. I'm just so relieved he exists again! Maybe, uh, Wesley, maybe don't perform another warp bubble experiment for a while, all right?"

"Okay, Mom." She departed.

Wesley looked at a display on a screen in front of him. "That's odd."

Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge was nearby. "What is?"

"Well, I'm not so sure what really happened to the warp bubble. The Traveler came, he helped me get Mom out of it, but now, well, see for yourself."

The engineer checked readings. "Huh. That is strange, Wes. I mean, consider the fact that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. So where did the bubble actually go?"

"Yeah!" Wesley exclaimed. "I mean; I figure we have a few possibilities, right? One idea is maybe the bubble was converted to matter."

"If it was, we'd get a reading, though."

"Okay. And what about if it was pushed to, I dunno, another universe?"

"That's a little farfetched, don't you think?" asked the engineer.

"Well, we know about parallel universes. Didn't the NCC-1701 encounter one?"

"It did," Geordi admitted, "but that doesn't necessarily mean the bubble went there somehow."

"I know, but right now it's just a theory. Brainstorming mode, all right?" Wesley said. "Now, there's that but maybe there's other things going on."

"You mean like Q?"

"I don't think Q's involved with this. If he was, I think the Traveler would've mentioned him."

"Then the Traveler," Geordi said. "I mean, he did help you get your mother back."

"I dunno," Wesley said. "It seems like it was just lost. And one impression I get about the Traveler is that he isn't careless."

"That may be so, but he can – we think – control space and time with his thoughts. Or at least it appears that way," Geordi pointed out.

"I don't think it's anything malicious."

"I don't either, but that warp bubble isn't exactly the most stable thing out there," Geordi said. He tapped the communications badge on his uniform top. "LaForge to Data. Can you come to Engineering? We have a bit of a puzzle here."

The android arrived quickly. "What seems to be the trouble?" he inquired.

They explained the situation as best they could. "I believe you are correct that the energy has not simply vanished. And readings indicate that it was neither converted to matter nor was it dissipated. Now," he thought for a moment, "the Traveler apparently can control both space and time?"

"That's what we believe," Wesley said.

"Then perhaps the bubble has moved both spatially and temporally," offered the android.

"It went forward in time?" asked Geordi.

"Or backward. The future is, at least from our own perspective, as-yet unwritten. But the past can be known," Data replied.

"And it can be checked," Wesley said, "we could check historical records."

"For what, Wes?" asked Geordi.

"I dunno, maybe indications that something strange is going on."

"That is a rather broad subject," said the android.

"I know," said Wesley, "but I get the feeling that I need to figure this out. We were able to fix the problem. But people on, I dunno, the Cochrane or earlier, they wouldn't know what to do."

"Go back far enough," Geordi cautioned, "and people will think it's the work of a god."

"Let's hope, if it did go back in time, it wasn't quite that far," Wesley said, sighing.

=/\=

"There's a crack in the mirror
And a bloodstain on the bed -
There's a crack in the mirror
And a bloodstain on the bed -
O you were a vampire and baby
I'm walking dead
O you were a vampire and baby
I'm walking dead"

Concrete Blonde –Bloodletting