19

Not nearly so old as the individual who had come to them in far more dramatic fashion, this version of Wesley was much closer to what Picard would expect to see from a human male of forty to fifty Earth years of age. His hair was still longer, unkempt, and much grayer, as was the matching beard. Deep lines creased his face, but an intensity burned in the man’s brown eyes. He wore a dark shirt and matching pants, thick-soled boots, and a weathered leather field jacket. A drab canvas satchel hung from his left shoulder, slung across his chest and resting against his right hip. He turned to look at Picard and the others, offering a weary yet sincere smile.

“I should have known.”

Pushing her way past Picard, Crusher stopped just short of racing to embrace her son before relenting and throwing her arms around him. She buried her face in his neck, leaving him to face the others over her shoulder.

“Hi, Mom.”

Lifting her head, her voice trembling with emotion, Crusher said, “You really need to call your mother.”

“I know.”

After disengaging himself from her while still holding her hand, Wesley regarded Picard and the others. “Hello, Captain. It’s good to see you again.”

“The feeling’s very mutual, Mister Crusher. I only wish it could be under something resembling normal circumstances.” He held up his hands, which still cradled the strange device. “I believe this may belong to you.”

Allowing Worf to return to the bridge and Taurik and Chen to resume their normal duties, Picard along with Crusher and La Forge gathered with Wesley in the engineering nook. Crusher explained what they had experienced with his older self’s arrival and subsequent death in sickbay, and the investigation of the items he carried. Wesley, having already given the device a visual inspection, placed it on the table. The crystal sphere at the item’s center once again emitted a soft blue glow, while the rest of its visible internal components appeared to remain inactive, or at least operating in a passive state that offered no outward signs of activity.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Wesley after several moments of silent contemplation, during which he examined it from all sides of the worktable while also perusing the scan data collected by La Forge and his team. “But I can’t shake an odd feeling of familiarity. Like I should know what it is and how it works.”

As if on impulse, he reached across the table and placed his hand on the crystal. The response from the device was immediate, with the crystal’s glow changing from blue to green as it began a rhythmic pulsing. Picard noticed Wesley’s eyes had closed.

“There’s a massive amount of information stored here,” he said. “Years’ worth. Decades, I’m guessing. It’s staggering.” His eyes opened. “Apparently, I collected all of it. Or will collect all of it. By the looks of things, I’ve been pretty busy.” After a moment, he added, “There’s some kind of encryption protecting the data. I can’t seem to bypass it.” With a look of irritation, he removed his hand from the crystal, at which point the device once again became inert. “There’s also damage to some of the internal components. I think it may have taken a glancing blow from a type of temporal weapon. Most of the data’s protected, and once I figure out how to get in, I may be able to reconstruct what’s compromised. As far as I can tell, my older self brought it back here to give to… me.”

“To you?” asked Crusher. “I don’t understand. How would… I thought when I touched it, that meant…” The rest of her sentence trailed off, and she cast looks at Wesley as well as Picard and La Forge. “I’m sorry. I guess I just don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” added Picard, describing to Wesley how the device seemed to pick him out from the group and—for lack of a better description—entrust itself to him.

Wesley offered a small smile. “The O.C. reacting to both of you was a feature he programmed into it.” Now it was his turn to regard the others. “I guess I mean I programmed it. From what I can tell, my future self intended to travel to this point in spacetime, but he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to explain himself to any of you when he got here.” His expression fell. “Looks like he was right.”

“O.C.?” asked La Forge.

Gesturing to the device, Wesley said, “Sorry. It’s short for ‘Omnichron,’ the name I gave it. Or, will give it. You could say it’s a combination of quantum receiver and a very powerful tricorder, obviously with far more storage, and capable of scanning across time and space using techniques that simulate how we—other Travelers and I—see them. At least, I think that’s the case.”

“In sickbay,” said Crusher after another moment, “you—he—said something about trying to stop something. That he’d been trying to fight something but couldn’t do it anymore.”

Picard remembered those last agonizing moments. “Yes. He also mentioned time. Trying to fight something, but he’d run out of time?”

“Yeah.” Wesley’s expression fell as though he were lost in thought.

“Residual chroniton particles indicate he was likely traveling through time, though there’s no way to know if he came from the past or the future, or even from this reality.”

His attention still elsewhere, Wesley blinked away his apparent reverie and regarded the engineer. “I’ve been doing a lot of that myself lately. If what he was doing is related to that, then we might have a bigger problem than I thought.”

“Might?” Crusher’s eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you him? Wasn’t he you?”

“Not necessarily. Multiple timelines and realities mean multiple versions of individuals. That would include me. For all I know, my older self is from a different quantum reality.”

La Forge said, “There were enough fluctuations in his quantum signature that it was impossible to lock down to just one resonance frequency. I’m guessing the same would be true for you.”

“Maybe.” Wesley held up his right hand as though studying it. “Travel between dimensions can definitely screw with your internal makeup, and that’s before you add in anything artificial like being hit with a temporal weapon.”

“There was something else,” said Picard, recalling the older Wesley’s last few words. “No future, he said. Something about there being no future and having to try again. Is it possible he deliberately came back to this point in time, knowing you—or a version of you—would find us?” He pointed to the Omnichron. “And this?”

“It makes a certain sense, doesn’t it?” Wesley eyed the device on the table. “If I were going to give something to my younger self, you’d think I would make it easier to use. It’s almost as if…” His voice trailed off and he said nothing for several seconds, his attention focused on the Omnichron. “The encryption. I just realized it had its own temporal fluctuation.”

“We caught that with our scans,” said La Forge. “The crystal and other components are in a state of flux.”

Wesley nodded. “I’ve seen that before, but this is something different.” Once more, he reached to the device, his hand settling over the pulsing crystal. This time, Picard watched as his hand seemed to blur and dematerialize, and he recognized it as the beginning of a quantum shift.

Crusher moved toward him. “Wesley?”

“It’s all right, Mom.” He held up a hand. “I’m just… getting a feel for it.” After a moment, he said, “Hang on. I think I’m finding a way in. The encryption is there, but it’s fluid, almost like it’s reacting to the passage of time while I’m connected to it. I don’t—”

He gasped. Instead of pulling his hand from the Omnichron, the shifting effect obscuring his hand now moved up his arm.

“What’s happening?” Crusher asked.

“Something’s reaching out.” Wesley grimaced. “No. It’s more than that.”

His other hand darted from his side, grabbing on to Picard’s right arm with such speed and force that the captain started to pull back. Wesley’s hand clamped around his wrist as the quantum shift expanded across his body. Then Picard felt a tingling along his arm, and he realized the effect was moving to include him.

“Captain!”

It was La Forge, along with Crusher, reaching across the table toward them before they, along with everything else, disappeared from Picard’s vision in a vivid white light.

---

The Enterprise was gone, replaced by a foreboding landscape filled with rock formations, ravines, and little to nothing in the way of vegetation as far as Picard could see. Instead of the drone of the ship’s engines, he heard the soft moan of wind passing between gaps in the broken terrain. The scene stretched away from him toward a range of mountains looming on a horizon beneath a blanket of dark, ominous clouds swirling overhead. Lightning crisscrossed the sky, and at first Picard thought he might be observing the simple fury of a natural weather event. That notion fell apart as he watched all of the clouds being drawn toward something in the distance. He realized he felt a pull on him, compelling him in that same direction while at the same time he sensed something else pressing inward on his body. No. On his… consciousness?

It took him an extra second to notice he still felt Wesley’s grip on his arm, and he looked to see the younger man standing beside him.

“What happened to the Enterprise?” asked Picard.

Taking in their surroundings, Wesley replied, “We’re here, but we’re also there.” He released the captain’s arm. “I see Mom and Geordi. He’s scanning us with a tricorder. To them, we probably look like we’re stuck in some kind of transporter beam, which isn’t completely wrong.”

Eyeing the dismal valley around them, Picard asked, “Did your device bring us here?”

“After a fashion. This is the O.C.’s doing. Apparently something my future self left for me to find. I’m sorry for grabbing you like that. It told me to bring you along.” He gestured toward the mountains and the clouds above them. “Can you feel it? The pull?”

Picard nodded. “Like a magnetic attraction. You say your older self left you a message. To come here? Have you been here before?”

After taking another look at the bleak scene around them, Wesley replied, “I don’t think so.” He regarded Picard. “At least, not yet. Maybe I come here at some point in my future. I’m guessing the O.C. will be able to tell me for sure, but I realized in those last seconds before we came here that the encryption isn’t like a security code. It’s linked to a sequence of events. It wouldn’t let me access all of the data until I first navigated a particular segment.”

“A test?” asked Picard.

“Not so much a test as an… overture?” Wesley shrugged. “I sensed it as some kind of obstacle it wanted me to negotiate before it would allow me full access.”

“This is the encryption?” Once more, Picard considered their dismal environs.

Wesley nodded. “From the O.C.’s point of view, I guess it is.” Closing his eyes, he held up his right hand, palm facing away from him and toward the mountains. “The pull’s growing stronger, but now there’s something else.”

Though he did not understand at first, it took Picard only a moment to comprehend what his companion meant. His attention was drawn to a pinpoint of light appearing ahead of them. Floating above the broken, desolate soil, it stretched and expanded, growing outward in all directions while blocking from view the terrain behind it. There were no defined edges, but within the field’s perimeter he now saw a rush of intense colors swirling about one another. He started to step backward as it continued expanding toward them, but Wesley once more grabbed his arm.

“No, Captain.” His voice was calm. “It’s all right.”

Within seconds the wash of colors surrounded him, blotting from view everything else. For a brief moment Picard fancied himself standing in the middle of a holodeck simulation run amok, but despite the visual frenzy he felt no vertigo or other unease. As the scene seemed to settle around them, from out of the colors emerged a series of moving images. Blurry and indistinct, they reminded Picard of dream fragments that he might recall but struggled to decipher. The images began coalescing, moving about while staying within the limits of the orb’s boundary even as the sphere itself began to spin, affording Picard a view of still more imagery.

“What are we seeing?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. They’re almost like… memories?” His eyes still closed, Wesley turned in place. To a casual observer, he might appear to be straining to listen, trying to pick out a single voice or sound from out of a crowd. “No, that’s not right. Some of these images are familiar. I’ve observed some of these events firsthand, but the point of view isn’t mine.”

Watching the procession of scenes before him, Picard tried to make sense of what at first was little more than an unrestrained torrent of information. As he focused, some images seemed to emerge from the chaos. Living beings representing species he did not recognize. An indistinct crystalline lattice sitting atop a towering mountain. Vessels of unusual configuration in space. Entire worlds, subjected to some sort of destructive energy washing across their surfaces. The rush of imagery was slowing, becoming less frenetic and allowing him to study it all with greater clarity. Some scenes remained unidentifiable, but others bore hints of familiarity. Picard gasped when he beheld a depiction of his former starship, the previous Enterprise, only to watch it destroyed under the onslaught of some form of distorted energy wave engulfing it and ripping it apart. Then he was on the bridge, standing mere steps from Will Riker, older than he had been when serving on that starship and bearing a captain’s rank. His and other faces—close friends and family, some of them long dead—careened past him, dissolving as if to dust.

Another image surged toward him, this one of a desolate landscape not unlike the one in which he and Wesley had found themselves. At the center of the vision was an odd ellipsoid; a stone edifice situated among the ruins of a long-dead city. Picard recognized it immediately.

“The Guardian.”

His eyes still closed, Wesley nodded. “Yes.”

Picard watched a humanoid figure place hands upon the Guardian before stepping through it. Seconds later the ancient time portal crumbled, unleashing into the sky the merest hint of the staggering energy it once commanded.

“I watched it destroyed,” said Wesley. “Twice.”

“What about the Enterprise-D?” Picard gestured at the image of that ship, once more playing out its scene of destruction as if trapped in a vicious, cruel loop. “That’s not our ship.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Wesley raised both hands, extending them toward the sea of colliding visions. “It was from another reality. You encountered them last year. Captain Riker and his crew continued their mission for several more years before meeting their fate. I tried to stop that from happening too. Three times, and every time I failed.”

Still more appalling visions spilled forth. Ships, space stations, entire worlds laid waste. People, entire crews and whole civilizations, washed away in what Picard could only describe as tempests of unrelenting fury generated by forces unseen. That he did not know these victims did nothing to diminish the magnitude of their deaths, which to him seemed like nothing less than wanton genocide.

“What is behind all of this?” he asked, his voice little more than a horrified whisper.

Wesley said nothing as another series of images took form around them. These depicted what Picard surmised to be a Starfleet crew. Although they wore uniforms of a type he did not recognize, the insignia on their tunics was that of the familiar delta, albeit turned ninety degrees to the wearer’s left. The technology they utilized featured echoes of the systems with which he was versed, while also showcasing capabilities that to him seemed incredibly advanced.

“The twenty-ninth century,” said Wesley, his tone somber while still effecting his trancelike state. “The less you know about it, the better.” He said nothing else, leaving Picard to watch the people in this series of images subjected to more of the odd energy distortion waves pushing through the future ship’s interior. Moments later, the vessel collapsed in on itself before withering and disintegrating into a plume of ashes.

Wesley moved his hands in slow circles as if trying to cycle through the cascade of visions. “I’ve been there, but I don’t recall meeting those people in that manner. The record’s in the O.C. In fact, there are multiple iterations of this encounter. My future self must have returned there in a bid to fix whatever he failed at during earlier attempts.”

“Fix what?” asked Picard.

Around them, the swirl of visions had begun pulling back in on itself. Everything stretched and shrank, the scene withdrawing to the original, lone point of light that had set off the entire sequence. Then it blinked out of existence, leaving Picard standing with Wesley on the same desolate plain that had greeted their arrival. One mountain remained in the distance, awash in a haze or fog that seemed to cloak it from prying eyes and topped with the odd structure he had glimpsed earlier. Then, like everything else, the mountain vanished from existence.

Lowering his arms, Wesley opened his eyes. Picard saw the weariness there, as if he had aged decades—perhaps even centuries—in a matter of moments. The captain realized he had seen that look before, in Wesley’s older self.

“Wesley,” prompted Picard, “what was he—what are you—trying to fix?”

His shoulders slumping as though cowed beneath some invisible, oppressive burden, the other man regarded him with an expression of disillusionment and submission.

“Time, Captain. Time itself is what I’m trying to fix.”