So, What Are We Going To Do About Kevin? pt 3

Posted on 09 Dec 2025 @ 3:45pm by Lieutenant JG Cajag Lagnas & Lieutenant Commander Raviran Dattek-Winters

1,631 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Shakedown
Location: CMO's quarters - USS Cygnus
Timeline: after Part 1

::On::

Over breakfast the next morning, Ravi was unusually quiet and reflective. She wasn't sad, far from it, she was just unusually serene. Serving up a plate of eggs florentine and coffee with cream, she was just setting the Terran toast and marmalade on the little table in her kitchen.

"Do you prefer Marmite?" she randomly asked Caj, suddenly wondering if he liked marmalade or not?

"What's a marmite?" asked Caj quizzically as took a long stretch then walked over to the breakfast table.

"It's a terran yeast spread" Ravi answered. "apparently everyone either loves it or hates it, nothing in between."

"Sounds like my wife" murmured Caj to himself as he started to apply the black and brown tar like substance to toast he shoved the toast into his mouth. Chewed on in thoughtfully, made a face of someone who looked like they has just been stung by a bee, and swallowed with difficulty. "yep just like the wife...." he said around gulps of orange juice.

Ravi was stunned. She had never imagined...... well, she'd never asked..... and before now he'd never offered any information to even hint at a wife. She flushed, her cheeks red with embarrassment and even a little shame. He didn't wear the senna or tattooed band around his finger - but then that was a terran thing and even her own mother and father didn't do that either so why had she expected it of a Trill? She had NO idea what gave any sign that a Trill was already taken, committed, foresworn to another?

Her sudden flush drained away the more she thought about her own neglect in this matter. She shivered, feeling cold and a little bit shocked but at the same time not sure which of them she was the most shocked regarding.

Still sitting at the breakfast bar, on a pull up stool that seemed wobbly all of a sudden, Ravi took a long look at Caj - a silent, deep, questioning, long look, wondering if she had any idea who he was, and if she had ever had any real idea and what in the Prophets' name had she just done, without much thought or preparation or common sense.

~What is WRONG with me?~ she asked herself, still silently, distantly staring at this gorgeous man as if she'd never met him before this moment in time.

Caj looked up from his food and caught the look that Ravi was giving him "Ah....." said Caj putting down his food. "It would appear I have made another social faux pas......Urmmmmmm" he paused a moment as he tried to figure out what he had said wrong. He clicked his fingers enthusiastically and smiled, proud at himself for picking up on Ravi's social cue "It is because I said I was married right?" Ravi was not smiling in fact Ravi seemed rather perplexed and bothered. So Caj, always wanting to help pressed on. "I am not married....Well I am married...Well sort of....well i was married....I mean maybe the term is widower. But technically she never existed. Even though she did. Does that help at all?"

Ravi opened her mouth to say no, not at all, but even that was almost as scrambled as her mind at that precise moment. "........come again? Slowly this time please." she said, her head involuntarily tilting to one side as if that might unscramble something... ANYthing inside. She almost felt an urge to tap the higher of her two ears and try to let something of the tangle between them to slide out of the lower one on the other side, just to clear it.

He grabbed at a napkin off the table and fumbled hopelessly with it.
“Look,” he said again, “imagine this napkin, right, as the temporal Universe, right? And this spoon as a transductional mode in the matter curve .......no, better still this fork ...” He picked up the fork but dropped a the spoon on the glass “alright, alright. Why don't we say ...why don't we say that this glass is the temporal Universe...” The glass started to leak orange juice “forget that. I mean ... I mean, look, do you know - do you know what happens to you and the universe when a time line changes?"

"I guess if it happens before you are born, then it might go a different way and you don't get born so you vanish? I suppose if your personal future changes, then you live out a different life?" she tried to understand what he was saying but the glass still leaked orange juice onto her tablecloth and the cutlery clattered to the floor all of which was pretty distracting.

“Nothing happens. Nothing at all. Because it is all relative and you will never know those change’s happened. So imagine if you will an eccentric scientist type.” Caj then pointed to himself “inventing a machine that makes you immune to any changes in the timeline but which the side effect is that you are aware of any changes to the timeline prior to or after creating it.”

"Like someone..." she pointed to him "changing a timeline (for some unknown and incomprehensible reason) and either knowing in advance what it will do, OR knowing afterwards what you've done.....?" she asked with a horrified look on her face.

"Unendurable....." she shook her head. "wait, you're not saying you altered timelines deliberately are you?" her thoughts ran on, audibly.

"noooooooo" said Caj perhaps a little over exaggerated. "Never changed a time line. But for a finite moment, when i stepped into that machine I was aware to all changes in the time line, at once. Hence I know that I was married before I stepped into the machine but I also know they never existed. But to make matters worse, after working for the DTI, parts of my memory have also been wiped. That was always the agreement by the way, I volunteered for that. You know now that i think about......this probably has a lot to do with my erratic behaviour....Are you eating that croissant, No?" He took the freshly baked croissant and bit the end.

"Yes, actually!" Ravi took the croissant back and bit the other end but then returned it to him as she fetched another tea for herself and another orange juice for Caj. Putting both drinks on the table she sat back down and sipped thoughtfully.

"So.....you're telling me that you could see all the possible timelines in the various multiverses, all at once. And that you were aware that in one of them you were married before stepping into the machine. Presumably you also stepped into the machine in several if not all of the timelines, but how is it that you don't remember all of the options as well as you seem to remember your nonexistent wife?

Of course, no-one could possibly hold the memories of every timeline so how did that one latch itself into your memory and why wasn't it wiped with the rest when you got your head cleaned out?

AND how do you know she didn't exist.... because actually she must have somewhere for you to be able to remember her and her characteristics in the first place........ and............"
even a medically -scientific brain like Ravi's was struggling with this concept. Here was someone with actual memories, complete or incomplete of proof of multiple timelines.... going on all at once.

"Why didn't the DTI release that proof and let us all know that's what's going on?" she looked physically exhausted as well as mentally and emotionally confused. "Surely they had a duty to us all to make proof of findings like that public - at least in the scientific circles? It's a breakthrough..... "

“It’s classified and ex DTI Members get critical classified parts of their brain wiped to protect the temporal prime directive.” Also it could have been conceived as some sort of war crime, thought Caj to himself glumly.

Ravi nodded, the reasons made sense. "Parts of their brains wiped? That sounds like war crimes against their own staff!" Ravi worried. "Did they do that to you as well?" she touched his forehead but then realised she was being too simplistic. She would never have been able to tell from a physical examination.... perhaps not even from a scan.

She felt herself becoming protective though. "Are you alright? Have they harmed you?" Her expression looked shocked and offended. She felt she wanted to go and put something right and that to do so she would need to go and fight something, someone, some monsters, somewhere, to support him.

She stood up and then wondered why so she sat down again. What was she actually thinking? How could she go anywhere to fix the past? Who could she take to task for hurting Caj and why did she always seem so confused and impulsive whenever he was around? She blushed.

Caj shrugged a little with a bit of downcast look “I volunteered. We all did. Volunteered for all of it even the mind wipe. There are somethings people are just not supposed to remember about time travel it gets in your head in weird way……” He perked up a bit and grinned “so does that mean your going to give me a extra detailed examination?” Caj said over exaggerating the innuendo.

Ravi gave him a look. That look. But it wasn't a no and it dissolved into a smile. "I've already counted your beautiful spots.... do you have anything else that's troubling you that might need a doctor's eye on it?" she said with a chuckle, meeting his innuendo with a parry.

 

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