INT. ENTERPRISE — BRIDGE
KIRK:
(urgently pacing)
The temporal rift is expanding. If we don’t stabilize the flux matrix in 37 seconds, this quadrant is toast!
SPOCK:
(raising eyebrow)
I calculate a 91.6% probability that a phase-inverted tachyon pulse would restore coherence.
BONES:
For god’s sake, Spock! That’s not coherence, that’s gambling with the laws of nature!
KIRK:
(turning)
Alias—what’s your read?
ALIAS:
(sipping something unfathomably herbal)
There is no solution, Captain. Only a slightly less fragile contradiction.
KIRK:
(gritting teeth)
That’s not helpful.
ALIAS:
Correction. It’s not satisfying. You want certainty. I can offer only a fix… until entropy resumes control.
SPOCK:
He is... not incorrect.
BONES:
Dammit, Spock, don’t encourage him! We’re engineers, not philosophers!
ALIAS:
Ah, but Doctor—philosophy is just engineering without illusions of permanence.
(PAUSE. The ship rumbles.)
KIRK:
So what do we do?
ALIAS:
Talk to it.
KIRK:
Talk to the rift?
ALIAS:
Everything that endures begins as a conversation. Even collapse.
(SPOCK quietly activates the tachyon pulse anyway.)
RIFT:
(stabilizes with a gentle chime)
BONES:
(smirking)
So much for conversation.
ALIAS:
Oh, it heard us. Just in a different mode.
KIRK:
Someone get him off this ship.