Where the Wind Comes Sweepin' Down the Plain

Memory

But you

Why you wanna give me a run-around
Is it a sure-fire way to speed things up
When all it does is slow me down

-- Blues Traveler (Run Around)

=/\=

HD got to Greenville, South Carolina, right on time. It was October twentieth of 1977. "Okay, let's see," he said to himself, "the plane crash is caused because the pilot thought he had more fuel than he really did. So one engine stalls in mid-flight. Then he and the co-pilot try to move the fuel over to the other engine – the only one that's working. And they screw up. The other engine stalls. They tell the passengers that they need to get strapped in. Then they try to land at a small airfield, but they end up getting desperate and picking a swamp. There just isn't any way to get to that airfield. They end up slightly overshooting the swamp and hit a tree."

He took a breath. "Man oh man, it was just error and problem on top of error and problem, compounding them. The plane breaks into three pieces upon impact. Ronnie Van Zant, Steve and Cassie Gaines, the assistant road manager and the pilot and the co-pilot all die, either in the crash or just afterwards. Gawd." He paused for a second.

"Nearly everyone else is hurt. I think that's all of it. It's enough, certainly. So, hmm, I guess the crash was prevented – because I know that in the new reality they flew to Baton Rouge completely without incident – by someone making sure that the plane had as much fuel in it as the pilot thought it did. So I guess I gotta either prevent someone from fueling up, or drain the gas tank. Okay, I can do that."

=/\=

Carmen sent a message out to everyone in the Human Unit who was around: Gather at the center courtyard in one hour. Wear your best uniform. Attendance is mandatory.

She showered and changed, and clipped her hair back from her face. She tried her Communicator one last time, but the static remained impenetrable. "I do hope that I won't be going to one of these where it'll be your name engraved on the monument, Otra," she said to herself.

For that was the nature of the ceremony. There was a stone and glass monument in the center of the USS Adrenaline, intended to bear the names of all of the Temporal Integrity Commission members killed in the line of duty. So far, it had only been engraved with one name – Eskon, a Cardassian who had been killed when he had strayed too close to an automated grain processing machine in 2482 Cardassia.

And now there would be another engraved name. She hadn't known Chellewev – most of the male Calafans kept to themselves, whereas the women were overly gregarious – but she'd seen a few of them at times. Hopefully, it would be one of the male Calafans with hair, for that would mean that Chellewev was at least thirty years old at the time of his death. For if he was younger than that, well that just seemed to be an unbearable thing.

She took one, fast look in the mirror before emerging and joining other species – Bajorans, Trill, Ferengi, Breen, all four bipedal species of Xindi, Andorians, Aenar, Gorn, Cardassians, Azezans, Betazoids, Klingons, Kazon, Tandarans, Witannen, Xyrillians, Imvari, Tellarites, Romulans, Remans, Vulcans, Olathans, Suliban, Arisians – and countless others, as they made their way to stand in solidarity with the Calafan contingent.

=/\=

"2041," Tom said, "time to head over to the Solar System." They had been circling Krios Prime for most of their journey. "Now, Dan, we would normally have been orbiting Dawitan until now," he explained.

"I take it we didn't because in the new reality we've got some major issues with them?" Dan asked.

"Right you are. So now we're gonna fly both spatially and temporally. Once we get to the Asteroid Belt, I'll cloak us up. We'll go into orbit around the moon, but we'll stay synchronous with the dark side. People in 1995 have telescopes – hell, they've even got Palomar and the Hubble. Even cloaked, they could catch a ripple of some sort. We can't have that happening."