Date: 04 Jun 2013 22:02 Title: Chapter 10
The background information on the Kent State shootings aches; my mother is an alum from the school, and I've been on campus and in Kent myself. I nearly went to school there. It's easy, so many years after the event, to let it sort of fade, but having it brought back like this is particularly poignant -- as both an Ohioan and as a person who lives maybe a half-hour from there, it strikes particularly deep. So, thank you for that.
The mirror universe, on the other hand, looks like it's gonna be a very fun little jaunt.
Author's Response:
I looked up everything I could find on Kent. Definitely didn't want that one to be the jaunt. But the MU, as you've surmised, will be different.
Date: 02 Jun 2013 06:40 Title: Chapter 10
Ah, Tom and Kevin. I like these guys, they have a fun dynamic between them. I get a sense that both are kinda the romantic types and both of these guys are nice guys. Generally speaking, that’s good company to keep. Already the witty banter is starting between the two, my favorite bit here being Tom’s “what you talking about, Kevin?” birth control shot. He’s obviously a little surprised at it but Kevin coolly tells him it’s SOP now. Of course, Tom is no dummy so he puts two and two together, knowing it was Daniels.
Speaking of Daniels, he’s got his mind set already on being in someone else’s bed. The possible alternate timeline involving Nixon and China was quite interesting to me, I do love a good alternate history, and the way he questioned whether or not that was wholly true was also interesting to me … I wonder if he questions other things about the TIC and the people they hire.
But the real fun is the mirror universe, as always. I do enjoy a good mirror universe story and you have written them well in the past, doing so again here. It seems as if the ladies might have already caused a bit of a temporal issue with Transporter Chief Kyle, possibly distracting him from his duties and the incident they’re there to observe. We’ll see what happens there, but it’s good to know even time travelers can be surprised.
Author's Response:
I went back to Mirror, Mirror and read up on it as much as I could, and rewatched it, trying to get a feel for the vibe and the look of it. Kyle is of course purely canon, so putting them a little early and then, yes, they run right into him. I love writing the MU and I'm glad you like my interpretations.
Tom and Kevin - they're fun - and they are, what do they say, good lads, stout-hearted and true. The names should be familiar; they are both Madden descendants.
And yep, Rick's got his own little side mission in mind. And yeah, there is plenty that the time travelers don't know. There is quite a bit out there to surprise them.
Date: 30 May 2013 13:13 Title: Chapter 10
So I'm halfway through this story and it really reminds me of the Matrix in some places. We have temporal agents going back into time, in the disguise of people looking conformal to this time period, and they mend these timelines or observe history unfold. But there sure are paradoxes to all of this, the birth control shot which while it seems a failsafe measure it also implies that temporal agents are abusing their positions.
They are lonely people travelling upon one time ship with only one member of the crew; themselves. But surely the risk of any temporal contamination goes above all other personal factors and desires? Also these temporal agents go back to ensure history is preserved, but only based around information concerning recorded history. So reliability of the historical data seems to be a big issue here. I take it Starfleet's Temporal Integrity Commission has collected and cross-referenced all the historical sources to ensure they know the precise key events of the timeline. Otherwise they could be preserving events or changing them without all the facts.
And given how delicate the timeline is, once you make one mistake it is near impossible to rectify it so... I think the Temporal Integrity Commission's task to preserve the timeline is A LOT more harder than you make it out to be!
Author's Response:
It is hard. But what I go with is - there are 3 kinds of changes. Otric changes are tiny and really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Eat the soup instead of the salad at lunch tomorrow and the world will not crumble. Empires will not fall. Really big changes (save the dinosaurs from extinction) are virtually impossible, even at this stage of their technology, to do.
It's the in-between stuff, where President Kennedy is saved, or, in this case, something happens at Kent, that really do a number on the timeline. We have recorded history, but it can't possibly be everything that ever happened. We operate under the assumption that the missing stuff is all otric - it doesn't really matter.
The Perfectionists are bulls in a china shop, upsetting a delicate balance. But this is a story of moral ambiguity. Our people aren't much better.