He put it out of his mind for his next mission. Denial, denial, and denial – it was a formula that worked, Rick had learned. It was all he had; he was overworked and there was no time – heh – for treatments. Carmen needed to hire more temporal agents but, in the meantime; he still had to go out there. He had a photographic memory. Forgetting was not an option. So denial it was. 

This time, the historian he was escorting was a Suliban. “I want to understand why my ancestor Silik was so taken with the 28th century.” 

“Yes, the Temporal Cold War. We’ve traced the transmissions from the person we’ve been calling ‘Future Guy’ to a certain time period and ship.” Rick still had a human look to him as there was no need to alter his appearance and make him look like a Suliban or any other species for this particular mission. 

They beamed off the Audrey and onto a Klingon ship, the IKS PIq. A brunette greeted them. “I’m Phillipa. You’ll start with the targeting array. I want it recalibrated, and I want it perfect.” The unspoken last two words of that sentence were likely, Rick realized – or else. 

“Of course,” replied the Suliban, pretending to get down to work, as this was their pretext for being there. 

Rick instead talked to Phillipa. He boldly asked, “How’d the array get offline in the first place? Were you using it for a purpose for which it wasn’t intended?” 

“Of course we were,” she replied, “as my esteemed ancestor, the great Colonel Phillip Green, used to say, ‘Limits are for everyone else.’” 

“That may be so, but your targeting array doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. Now, tell me, Phillipa, how often are you transmitting, and where to?” 

“You don’t need to know that. Jim Horan and I are doing as we please.” She gestured in the general direction of a stern-looking guy. “Just fix it.” 

“And then what?” 

“Maybe some recreation,” she purred, glancing back at Horan for a split second. “Silik’s busy with Archer. I’ll have some time.” 

He was not a good-looking guy. He was okay, decent, nothing more. But the last several missions had given him a kind of attractive swaggery confidence that was unshakable, even in the face of Betty’s suicide attempt. 

Rick got acquainted with Horan, too, – although nowhere near as intimately – and saw both of them transmitting in time once the array was recalibrated. The whole thing was barely jerry-rigged together, to communicate in time, but it worked. And so he learned that Future Guy was really two people. 

Impressed with his repair work, Phillipa asked, “Who the hell are you, that you know how to do this?” 

“I’m no one. I’m just a stranger.”