The boy of Summer

Posted on 27 Jun 2026 @ 5:50pm by Commander Suzanna Batenburg & Lieutenant Commander Steven Remington & Lieutenant Commander Aev Flammia & Lieutenant Ryan Collingway & Lieutenant Commander Riah Amberlyn XMD

1,958 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Time After Time
Location: California fragment

///Sherman Oaks////

The team of five arrived fairly close to the boy's location, but on an empty-side street, which carefully avoided any close life signs. The first thing Ryan noticed was the sun. It was stuck in a never-ending sunset. Add to that the lack of sound. He couldn't hear anything. No birds. No bugs. No vehicles or people talking. It was eerie, to say the least. It also had the heightened feeling of danger.

Suzanna slowly surveyed the neighbourhood. The houses appeared normal. Lawns were trimmed. Cars sat parked in driveways. Yet, the entire area felt suspended, as though time itself had paused and forgotten to continue. Satisfied that no civilians had observed their arrival, she withdrew a tricorder from the pocket of her tracksuit and began a broad-spectrum scan. The readings only deepened her concern.

“Atmospheric composition remains within expected parameters,” she reported quietly. “No immediate environmental hazards detected.”

Her gaze briefly returned to the silent street. “We are standing in a populated suburban district, yet I am detecting none of the background activity one would logically expect. The absence itself is becoming a data point.” For the first time since their arrival, Suzanna felt a faint unease. Not fear. Simply the growing realization that whatever they were investigating did not conform to any known pattern of temporal or spatial phenomena she had encountered before.

She looked toward Remington. “Lieutenant Remington, are you detecting anything unusual on your scanner?”

Steve was frowning at his own scanner. "It's certainly unusual from what we were led to expect on the ship's feed. Where are all the people? There should be some noise, a dog barking, a siren, something. Where are the people from these houses? In the images from the ship, they were scattered and panicking. There's no one here? I'm not even picking up residual readings. It's just... empty."

Ryan peered out from the side-street, then his eyes widened. "Commander," he said quietly. Without waiting for a response, he walked into the main road.

A woman was standing in the middle of the road, completely frozen. Her posture was in a running stance and her back turned to the group. Her clothing was also wrong-half a floral dress, half a grey uniform of some kind. She did not appear to register on any kind of sensor reading.

Remington hesitated, looking around, before following Collingway into the road and toward the woman. His scanner was trained on the figure. “There’s nothing there. It’s like a hologram without even a source. Don’t touch it,” he added. “We don’t know what it is. Commander,” he called back to the First Officer, “it seems our scans from orbit were incorrect. There are no life signs, as we understand life. The houses are visible, the pavement feels real and apparently the ground beneath us is real and solid, but whether it actually is, I can’t say. What we see and are walking on look very different from what the scanner reveals. We could be on an asteroid with holoprojectors … hidden … somewhere.”

"That or maybe she is displaced somehow," Ryan said. "Like the Commander said. Looking at a cracked viewscreen of different realities. What if that happened here?" Ryan obeyed Remington's request not to touch anything, and let him work. But then he noticed the buildings at the end of the street grow taller, and darker. “Look!” he pointed down the street.

Remington stared. At the far end of the block, the ground had buckled up over itself, creating what appeared as a solid wave of road moving slowly toward them. Then the houses on the left and right of the street began to heave up and join the wave. Oddly, the ground did not tremble as one might expect. There was a low frequency rumble, but nothing of the kind of cataclysmic noise such an event should have caused. The wave grew higher, 20 feet easily and growing, it was now less than 100 yards away and moving steadily toward them.

“Commander, its speed is increasing as it gains height.”

As Remington spoke, the wave crested and began a rolling motion, the crest beginning to tumble down ahead of the rest of the surge.

“I recommend we retreat,” Remington grabbed Collingway by the shoulder and they both moved with urgency back toward Batenburg, Amberlyn, and Flammia. Remington could now feel movement in the ground beneath his feet, subtle, unbalancing, a lifting from deep below.

"What-" was all Ryan could say as the displacement wave, whatever it was, seemed to change everything it touched. It was as though the area was literally correcting itself. The air crackled with energy as they ran, interfering with transporters.

But no matter how fast he ran, it wasn't fast enough. He was far too close. From Ryan's point of view, there was a sudden explosion of light and sound as the wave passed through him.

And then he simply disappeared.

Aev blinked as the wave of earth and pavement rolled through the landscape, swallowing the street in a slow, impossible surge. It looked almost as though someone had pressed a reset button and the world was expressing that correction physically, reshaping itself in real time. Would it affect them if they were not part of the simulation? Or was it even a simulation at all? The thought tightened in his mind. Perhaps the wave was not correcting an illusion, but altering space and time itself. He frowned, brows lifting as Collingway and Remington hurried back toward the group, panic rippling ahead of them. Then he turned toward Batenburg. Her calm unease brushed against him, steady enough to cut through the sharper fear radiating from the others.

“Will this affect us?” Aev asked, looking from one officer to the next. The air prickled against his skin, charged and unstable. He lifted his tricorder, only to watch the readings fracture into nonsense across the display. “Ignis,” he said, his voice tightening. “This may be some kind of electromagnetic pulse. Will you be all right in the ring, or do I need to reinforce the shielding?”

The ring on Aev’s hand gave a faint pulse of golden light as Ignis’s voice emerged from it, slightly compressed but unmistakably indignant.

“Oh, excellent. A possible electromagnetic pulse, a collapsing artificial reality, and the very real chance that space-time itself is being laundered around us. This away mission has become impressively comprehensive.” The gold shimmer within the ring flickered once as the air crackled around them. “My core-” Ignis stopped.

Aev blinked, seeming to realize that Collingway had just disappeared into thin air. He could feel the panic in the group beginning to rise exponentially. He drew in a breath. They had seconds here. “Ignis, what do you think this is?” he asked hurriedly, reaching into his security pack and pulling out the emergency field emitter. “Is there some way for us to dampen it, shield ourselves from it?”

For once, Ignis did not answer immediately. “That was not an electromagnetic pulse,” the AI said at last, his voice stripped of most of its usual theatricality. “I am reading temporal shear and a frankly rude disregard for linear existence.”

The ring pulsed again, faster this time. “Your emitter will not stop the wave,” Ignis continued. “But if you recalibrate it as a localized temporal stabilization field, it may anchor the remaining away team to this frame of reference long enough to avoid being displaced.” A beat. “And I recommend doing that immediately, before reality decides anyone else is optional.”

Aev looked toward Remington, still running hard in their direction, then back to Batenburg. “I am going to reconfigure the field emitter and try to shield us from the wave,” he said. His fingers moved clumsily over the device at first, urgency making the controls feel unfamiliar. He forced himself to slow down, drew one steadying breath, and began making the alterations with deliberate speed. When he finished, he activated the emitter and felt it vibrate gently against his fingers.

Perhaps it was his own curiosity that kept the utter panic at bay. He could feel the pressure behind him, pushing him forward faster than his legs could keep up. Amberlyn, Flammia and Batenburg stood just 30 feet away, but he was getting no closer as he ran toward them. And then the sound caught him, and the light blinded his mind, not his eyes. He could see them sinking as he rose over them, maybe even through the midst of them, and then beyond them. They were in some protective bubble, and he was part of the temporal wave. He flailed as though swimming in liquid time and then suddenly his body struck a solid surface, hard! Stunned, he fell to his knees. He tried to spin around to get his bearings. Where was he? When was he? But slowly a white veil descended over his eyes, consciousness departed and he collapsed.

The changes unfolded with alarming speed. Suzanna's gaze shifted continuously between her tricorder and the street ahead. The woman Ryan and Remington had reported remained plainly visible to her, yet her tricorder continued to register... nothing. No life signs. No thermal signature. No measurable energy field. The readings confirmed their earlier observations while simultaneously contradicting her own senses.

"Fascinating," she murmured, though there was little satisfaction in the conclusion. Then the approaching wave caught her attention. Her tricorder emitted a brief warning tone before the readings dissolved into noise. Whatever the phenomenon represented, it bore little resemblance to any known spatial or temporal distortion in Starfleet's database. She heard Flammia tell Ignis he intended to reconfigure the field emitter and gave a single approving nod. It was the only logical course of action with the information currently available.

Then the wave reached them.

One moment, Collingway and Remington approaching and only a few metres away. The next, they were gone.

"What the..." The words escaped before she consciously restrained them. Years of Vulcan discipline reasserted themselves almost immediately. The modified field enveloped the remaining three officers. Suzanna felt herself lifted from the pavement, as if gravity itself had momentarily lost its hold. The sensation lasted only an instant before she, Amberlyn and Flammia settled gently back onto the asphalt.

Silence.

The street appeared exactly as it had moments before. Houses. Parked cars. Endless sunset. As though nothing had happened. Suzanna immediately raised her tricorder. The readings had changed again. Life signs had returned throughout the surrounding houses. Conversations. Elevated heart rates. Normal biological activity. The neighbourhood had, inexplicably, become alive once more.

There was no trace of Lieutenant Collingway. No trace of Lieutenant Remington. She tapped her combadge. "Batenburg to Collingway." Nothing.

"Batenburg to Remington." Again, silence.

She swept the tricorder through a full three hundred and sixty degrees. No residual energy signature. No transporter trace. No subspace distortion. Whatever had removed them had erased nearly every measurable indication that it had occurred. Suzanna took a slow, measured breath. "The available evidence indicates this event was not random," she said, forcing her thoughts into a logical sequence. "If the boy is responsible for the previous anomalies, logic dictates he is also responsible for this one."

She looked first to Amberlyn. "Doctor, continue scanning for Lieutenant Collingway and Lieutenant Remington. Any residual bio signature, no matter how weak, is relevant."

Her attention shifted to Flammia. "Lieutenant, where was the boy last detected?" "If he is the source of these disturbances, locating him has become our highest priority."

Lieutenant Ryan Collingway
Acting Chief Engineering Officer
USS Arawyn

LtCmdr Riah Amberlyn, XMD
Chief Medical Officer

LT Steve Remington
Acting Chief Science Officer

Lieutenant Ave Flammia
Chief of Security

Cmdr Suzanna Batenburg
First Officer
Everything fits, otherwise we'll make it fit!

 

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