Time After Time
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Mission Info
| Status | Completed Mission | |
| Description | The USS Arawyn discovers an impossible anomaly on an uncharted world near Federation space: an intact section of 1984 Sherman Oaks, California, displaced across centuries and light years without explanation. Entire neighborhoods continue living normal suburban lives inside an unstable spacetime bubble, unaware they have been torn from Earth’s past and stranded in the 25th century. As the illusion of normalcy slowly collapses, Captain Sabrina Corbin and her crew must navigate first contact with humanity’s own ancestors while racing to uncover the truth behind the anomaly before the fragile world around them fails completely. |
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| Start Date | 15 May 2026 @ 7:38pm | |
| End Date | 02 Aug 2026 @ 7:38pm | |
Mission Posts
Mission Summary
While exploring an uncharted system, the USS Arawyn encounters an impossible temporal phenomenon: a fragment of Sherman Oaks, California, from 1984, complete with thousands of residents who have no idea that their neighborhood has been displaced from its proper place in space and time. The fragment appears authentic, yet its environment violates ordinary physics, leaving the crew to determine whether they are dealing with time travel, an alternate reality, or something stranger. With a pre-warp population involved, Captain Sabrina Corbin and Commander Suzanna Batenburg must also balance the need to understand the phenomenon against Starfleet's obligation to avoid contaminating the lives of the people trapped within it.
As Science and Engineering investigate, Steve Remington and Ryan Collingway decipher a distorted warning originating from the anomaly, initially raising the possibility that the displaced community may have been caught in a much larger catastrophe. The evidence increasingly suggests, however, that Sherman Oaks is not simply a piece of Earth's past. Something deliberately created or manipulated the fragment.
The situation escalates when an away team enters Sherman Oaks. Ryan and Steve are swept into a constructed reality where their Starfleet identities become buried beneath alternate lives in 1984. They retain fragments of knowledge and inexplicable futuristic equipment but struggle to understand who they really are, gradually recognizing that their memories and surroundings do not fit together. Their ordeal forces the two officers to depend upon one another and creates a friendship that survives even after they eventually escape the constructed world.
The true cause of the crisis is eventually revealed to be Aster, a juvenile member of an extraordinarily advanced species called the Meridian. Sherman Oaks began as a supervised learning frame intended to let Aster observe a non-warp civilization. Fascinated by the people and the beauty of an ordinary California evening, he exceeded the boundaries of his assignment. When someone wished the evening could last, Aster simply allowed it to do so. His attempts to preserve and manipulate the experiment destabilized the frame, pulling people and objects from other temporal windows into it.
The result becomes increasingly dangerous. A Klingon D7 and Romulan Bird-of-Prey are dragged from an ancient battle, while enormous spacefaring beings called the Veylith are accidentally pulled from a migration route. Ryan and Steve's identities become incorporated into a holding frame, and Aster, frightened by the consequences of what he has done, hides while reality begins breaking down around him. His mentor Liora makes clear that although he never intended to hurt anyone, he caused the crisis and must take responsibility for repairing it himself.
Aev Flammia and Ignis ultimately reach Aster not by treating him as an enemy, but by recognizing the frightened child beneath his enormous power. Joined by Batenburg and the rest of the away team, they convince him that they will allow him to put everything back without interference. Arawyn is ordered to remain completely neutral: no weapons, transporters, or attempts to manipulate the displaced ships or creatures while Aster works.
With the crew's trust and Liora's guidance, Aster finally begins undoing the damage. The Veylith are returned to their migration path, the Klingon and Romulan vessels are sent back to their interrupted battle, and Sherman Oaks and its inhabitants are restored to where they belong. Aster's lesson is considerably larger than the experiment he was originally assigned: curiosity and good intentions do not give him the right to use other lives as instruments.
The Arawyn's crew returns home physically intact, but not entirely unchanged. Ryan and Steve retain memories of lives they never truly lived, while the crew is left with more questions than answers about the Meridian and the staggering power they possess. For Corbin and her officers, the mission ends without a conventional enemy or victory. Instead, Time After Time becomes a story about unintended consequences, identity, responsibility, trust, and what remains when reality itself has been rewritten and then put back together.