Time After Time After Time
Posted on Sun Oct 9th, 2016 @ 1:42am by Lieutenant Riley Sukotav & Senior Chief Petty Officer Neomi Ocano
Mission:
Further Challenges
Location: Galileo Science Center
* Galileo Science Center *
Riley was stuffed. Tess has insisted he take a break, get out of the lab and have a real lunch, not something gobbled while he stared at his terminal. He had gone to Lao’s and enjoyed a leisurely lunch at a table by the massive aquarium. While he ate he had become the object of curiosity of a large blue fish. It had lingered close by as he finished off his lunch and then been joined by a smaller red fish with flowing fins. They swam around each other in endless circles, always close together and they had fascinated Riley, but before long he’d pulled himself away. He had work to do in the lab.
“Hi Riley,” Neomi greeted him as he entered. “How was lunch?”
“It was delicious. It was even better to get out and see something besides this place for a little while.”
“I hear you,” she replied. “Oh, Commander Leroy left a message for you while you were out.”
“Thanks.” Riley sat down at his terminal and touched the panel to open his messages. Immediately a note from Patrick appeared and he began to read. He was only a few lines in when a voice spoke beside him.
“Riley? Are you still here? It’s almost 0300 hours.” It was one of the lab techs who, he knew, always worked gamma shift.
“0300? It can’t be. I just came in from lunch.” He looked up at the young woman, then back to his screen. The message from Patrick was still on his screen but down in the corner the time showed 0258:00. How was that possible? He had left Lao’s and returned to the lab at 1300 hours. “I just got back from lunch,” he repeated.
“You’ve been here since I came on shift,” she said. “When did you come?”
“1300,” he replied, but he was distracted. Something was wrong and he was suddenly worried. Switching the viewer to the scanner watching the Krenim sphere, he saw a variation in the level output it showed over the last few hours. It was just a blip but it was there nonetheless. “Where is Ian?”
“Ian? He’s off today. You asked me that when you came in this morning.”
The answer came from Neomi, not the labtech, and Riley looked back over his shoulder. The lab looked exactly as it had when he returned from lunch. He could see Patrick in his office. On his screen, the message from the commander showed on his screen. Glancing at the time, he saw it read 1305:00. He had just returned from lunch.
“Is everything okay?” Neomi asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, no I’m fine, just a lot on my mind,” he answered. He shifted the view on his monitor to the sphere’s readout. The graph monitoring it showed a level line readout with just a tiny blip. “What the hell?”
“Something wrong Riley?” It was the lab tech again.
“Huh?” He looked up to see her looking at him with concern. “No, just tired. It’s been a long day.”
“I’d say so,” she laughed. “You’ve been here almost twenty-four hours.”
“Sleep might be good, yeah,” he conceded. “I’m going to hit the road.”
“Already?” Neomi pulled over a chair beside him and sat down. “You just got back from lunch.”
The whiplash changes were so rapid Riley couldn’t keep up and when Neomi sat down, he yelped. “Oh, Sorry.”
“No problem.” Neomi indicated the message on his screen. “That’s nothing, I’ll handle it if you do want to take off. You’ve been putting in a lot of hours lately, you and Ian both.”
Riley glanced at the screen, then tapped his panel to transfer the sphere’s readout to Patrick’s terminal. “I’ll be fine but I do need to see the commander.”
He rose and crossed the main lab area towards Patrick’s office, wondering how many hours it might take to get there.
**************
Lt. Riley Sukotav
Somewhere In Time
SCPO Neomi Ocano
Keeping Time
