Records
Posted on Wed Jul 1st, 2026 @ 3:08pm by Captain Elia Thorne & Lieutenant Nathaniel Mercer MD
733 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
Backstories
Location: Ready Room
The station was quiet.
Not silent—Starbase Concordia was never truly silent—but the kind of quiet that settled over command decks after gamma shift. The corridors beyond Captain Elia Thorne's office carried only the distant hum of environmental systems and the occasional whisper of boots crossing polished decking.
Her office lights were dimmed to half power. Dozens of holographic personnel files floated in the air around her desk, suspended like translucent ghosts. Service records. Personnel evaluations. Medical histories. Promotion citations. She had read them all.
Twice, something was wrong, not wrong in the conventional Starfleet sense. There were no forged documents. No corrupted files. No missing security encryptions. Everything was too perfect, she dismissed another record with a flick of her hand.
Lieutenant Commander Talen Vor, clean, Commander Caelyn Rhys M.D. ,
Perfectly consistent.
Chief Ashir, exactly where he should be.
Then she opened the one that refused to make sense. Lieutenant Colonel Judith Rouse.
Marine Corps.
Second Officer.
Special Operations.
Her service record expanded before Elia.
> **2377–2381:** Starfleet Academy
> **2379:** Mathematics Major
> **2381:** Commissioned Second Lieutenant
Nothing unusual.
> **2381–2383:** Advanced Flight School. Advanced Fighter Tactics. Camp Mimas.
Again... Normal.
Her eyes drifted lower.
> **2383–2388:** USS *Patton*. Marine Pilot.
Promotion.
Flight Leader.
Commendations.
Then—
> **2388–2390:** Recovery following catastrophic shuttle crash.
Medical rehabilitation.
Extended leave.
Nothing impossible.
Then...
USS *Ares*.
USS *Portland*.
Langley Station.
Starbase Concordia.
Every assignment had commanding officers, transfer orders, performance reviews, recommendations.
Than there was the hundreds of supporting documents.
Every witness... remembered her.
Elia leaned back. A sigh escaped, "Who the hell are you?"
She wasn't asking because she doubted the she existed.
Rouse absolutely existed.
She'd spoken to her earlier that day.
She knew procedures Elia wouldn't have had time to teach her, she knew SBC like the back of her hand, even the secure ones. She called people by first names.
People who insisted they'd known her for years, the problem wasn't Rouse.
The problem was... Elia didn't remember Rouse, not vaguely, not imperfectly, like at all.
Not vaguely.
Not imperfectly.
Not at all.
Yet according to every file—she had served under her command for almost four years. She pinched the bridge of her nose, Lanthanites possessed remarkable memories, nearly photographic. Time blurred over centuries, certainly, but important events, people they simply are not forgotten. Not like this.
She didn't simply forget them.
Not like this.
The office computer chirped.
**Cross-reference complete.**
She looked up.
"Display discrepancies."
The computer projected overlapping timelines.
One represented official Starfleet records.
The other...
...was one she had painstakingly reconstructed from her own journals.
The two aligned only minute differences, minor ones, officer rota's, mission reports, ship names and conversations. There were also a lot of things she didn't recall, like the massive shipyard out her window, other missions she had no recollection of, thousands of threads being unraveled, replaced, and rethreaded.
Someone who had lived long enough to remember the texture of history itself.
A soft chime interrupted her thoughts.
"Enter."
The office doors slid open.
Doctor Mercer stepped inside.
"You wanted the neurological scans?"
Elia nodded and asked, "Anything?"
Nathaniel placed a PADD on the desk. "I've scanned everyone you requested."
She hesitated with his news, "No abnormalities."
Elia frowned and fired off a rapid succession of questions,
"No chroniton residue?"
"No."
"Temporal radiation?"
"No."
"Memory engrams?"
"Nothing."
Nathaniel folded his hands behind his back.
"Elia..."
He never used her first name.
"...what exactly are you looking for?"
Elia stared through the office window.
"I don't know." She finally admitted it aloud. "I remember another version of this station."
Nathaniel remained silent.
"I remember different officers."
Silence.
"I remember different conversations."
Still silence.
"And apparently..."
She tapped Rouse's file.
"...I've known this woman for years."
He looked at the record.
"Everyone knows Colonel Rouse."
"I don't."
"You've served together since she transferred from Langley."
"I haven't."
"You have."
"I haven't."
The words hung in the room.
Neither blinked, neither believed the other was lying which made the situation infinitely worse.
Nathaniel slowly exhaled.
"You should get some sleep."
Elia almost laughed, "That's the medical advice?"
"It's the best advice." After a long moment Nate nodded politely and left. He knew he didn't get through to her.
The doors closed.
Silence, Elia reopened Rouse's file, then another, then another, she heard a materialization process happening in front of her desk, she reached under her desk for a phaser and stood up, kicking back her chair.
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