Recall :: Part 1 :: Recognition
Posted on 01 Jul 2026 @ 12:24am by Lieutenant Commander Steven Remington
1,732 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Time After Time
Location: Pub & Library, Sherman Oak, CA
// The Pub //
Late afternoon was slipping toward evening. Sunlight peered through the curtains of the Pub and caught Steve’s attention.
Sun’s moving. That’s something to be thankful for. This struck him as an odd thought.
He finished his iced tea and a grilled cheese sandwich with French fries and paid the bartender. In his mind, he had retraced his experience of the strange new world back to a headache under a tree. He left the pub and returned to that tree, where he found his abandoned Walkman. Hefting it in his hand, something about it seemed odd; like everything had seemed odd since encountering this tree. It was too heavy for the size of the unit. It was odd that he could not remember what music was on his own Walkman. He knew what a Walkman music cassette player was, but not any personal memories about this device, such as where he got it or how long he’d had it. He keyed the Play button. Nothing happened. It was broken. No, not broken, just … no power.
He took the Walkman over to a park bench and sat down and tried to check the cassette. Perhaps it was not seated correctly in the unit. Why won’t it open? Why is it so heavy?
He shook his head and checked the battery compartment. Empty. “Why no batteries?” he questioned himself, his fingers searching the edges, the sides for any evidence that it opened some other way. His thumbnail caught an almost invisible seam.
Click.
The entire top half was hinged and hidden inside was another plain, gray mental rectangular device. He felt elated. “All right. That’s better,” he heard himself mutter. He removed the hidden unit from the Walkman casing, handling it like he’d done it a thousand times. He was surprised how familiar it felt in his hand.
There were no leads or wiring attaching it to the Walkman. His fingers began to explore the surface. He randomly tapped the flat plane of the device and flinched when a screen lit up. Displayed were mathematical or chemical symbols and upon closer examination, they were labeled with an abbreviated English language, which he recognized the meaning of immediately.
“How’d I know that?”
He took a breath and looked around briefly, leisurely, to find no one near.
He wasn’t thinking anymore. It was like his fingers knew the way. A series of small lights, visible along the right-hand edge of the illuminated screen tempted him and he tapped the one easiest to reach with his thumb.
The screen repopulated dramatically with new numbers and abbreviations. His heartbeat and breath quickened. He knew he needed more privacy. He packed everything back up and headed to the library, which he knew would have lighting, relative privacy, a bathroom, and it would be open late.
// Library //
The machine, or device, was fascinating. After two hours of trusting his intuition, he realized that his hands knew this device like the proverbial back of those hands. They revealed to him how to turn the device off and on, how to adjust the sound level of a soft hum. When two of the lights were depressed at the same time, the readout on the screen shifted from just numeric codes to abbreviated words and symbols he’d never seen before, but which his mind knew exactly what they meant. It was a computer of some kind. So tiny though. He questioned just how much computer power it could possibly provide.
“Wonder what this does,” he pondered. As if in immediate answer, his fingers tapped gently on a column of numbers. The column responded with a soft tone and resolved into a vocal sentence coming from the machine. It was so soft he could barely hear it. His fingers instantly turned up the volume a fraction and he heard his own voice ask, “Repeat.”
"Inquiry is ambiguous. Please specify the function or object to which you are referring."
He held the unit up to eye level, examining it yet again. “This.” He gave it a gentle shake.
"You appear to be examining the science tricorder, model D-174F. Would you like an overview of its functions?"
Steve nearly dropped the machine as if it were burning his fingers. “It knows what I’m doing,” he whispered. He placed it back on the desktop.
“Insufficient. Please specify the inquiry?” came the soft reply.
“What?” he asked.
“Would you like a basic operational tutorial?” asked the science tricorder.
“Sure,” he replied cautiously.
"Basic operational tutorial selected. The science tricorder is a portable multispectral sensor platform designed for scientific investigation, environmental analysis, biological assessment, and data storage. Tutorial may be interrupted at any time by verbal command."
Steve looked down at the device. "Okay..."
"Step one. The display currently shows passive environmental data. Passive scans collect information without emitting detectable energy."
Steve squinted. "Passive?"
"Affirmative. Passive sensors observe existing electromagnetic, thermal, gravitational, acoustic, and subspace phenomena."
“O....kay…” he repeated.
“Would you like to perform a passive environmental scan?”
“Sure.”
“Please orient the sensor array toward the object of interest.”
Steve slowly turned the unit to toward a cart of books. Colored tracings appeared across the screen.
“What am I looking at?” Steve inquired.
“Please identify the anomaly.”
“The anomaly? A library cart with books on it.”
“Incorrect.”
“Incorrect?”
“The anomaly is not present within the reference database.”
Curious, he moved the unit to examine his own booted foot. “Now what do you see?”
"Human footwear. Leather, vulcanized rubber, nylon fiber, steel eyelets. Trace soil composition indicates recent contact with oak woodland and silicate-rich sediment. No anomalous energy signatures detected."
Steve studied the display.
"You got all that... from my shoe?"
He slowly turned the tricorder back toward the book cart.
"So... the cart is different."
"Affirmative. The previously observed anomaly remains unclassified.”
Steve was no longer simply marveling over the device. The scientist had taken over. “Do you know my name?”
“Affirmative. Voice print positively identified as Lieutenant Commander Steven James Remington.”
He stared at the display for a long moment. “Lieutenant Commander?” he said slowly.
“Affirmative.”
“Of what?” he continued his inquiry.
“Starfleet.”
Steve furrowed his brow, tapping his booted foot softly. The name meant nothing. And yet, it didn’t feel foreign. It felt like a word he should know, one that hovered just beyond the reach of memory. And the tricorder knew him by name. By voice print. It knew what it was, a Science Tricorder Model D-174F. It knew intimate details about his boot, and detected something about the library cart that even its own computer memory could not classify.
He trained the tricorder toward the Walkman. “What is this object?”
"Object identified. Portable analog audio playback device. Cultural designation: Walkman. Origin: Earth. Historical era: Late twentieth century. Replicated aboard USS Arawyn. Replication timestamp: 2425.0606."
“Two thousand … four hundred … twenty-five!!!” He was incredulous. But the machine was meticulous. It answered very precisely anything he asked. It didn’t embellish or speculate. Its answers were apparently based upon only the available evidence.
“Good science,” he whispered.
Starfleet. The name produced a faint flicker of recognition, and his intuition again asserted itself, vibrating with the truth of the information. “What’s Starfleet?”
“Starfleet is the exploratory, scientific, diplomatic, and defensive service of the United Federation of Planets."
Steve frowned. "The... United Federation … what?"
"The United Federation of Planets."
"Never heard of it. What's the Federation of Planets?"
"The United Federation of Planets is an interstellar alliance of member worlds dedicated to peaceful cooperation, scientific advancement, and mutual defense."
"Scientific advancement …” Pause. “What's the USS Arawyn?"
"USS Arawyn, NCC-94817. Sovereign-class exploratory starship. Current assignment: deep-space exploration."
Steve actually laughed. "A starship."
“Affirmative.”
“Show me,” Steve challenged and watched as a simple wireframe image of the ship appeared on the screen. It held the picture for several moments before the image shifted to a Starfleet delta logo.
What appeared next was the cover page of a dossier: Personnel File for Lieutenant Commander Remington, Steven James.
Remington stared at the screen. He recognized a deep fear building in his belly. Did he really want to unleash all this? It would perhaps piece together the competing fragments of memory that were haunting him. Whatever was in that personnel file, one of his lives was about to die.
He replaced the tricorder on the desk and studied the words on the screen. “Think,” he said to himself.
The machine had identified him before he'd volunteered a single personal fact. The machine seemed convinced he was indeed Steven James Remington. It answered his questions correctly about his boot, and about the Walkman, it detected something impossible about the book cart.
Every observation appeared to be correct.
There was no scientific reason to doubt the next one.
There was every emotional reason.
He chewed on his lower lip as he reached toward the screen, but he hesitated, pulled his hand back. He reached again and a tap revealed the second page.
His own image started back at him. Unmistakably himself. He wore his hair in the same ruffled manner, his neatly trimmed beard and mustache the same. The picture could have been taken today. In the image, he wore a black high-neck t-shirt and a blue jacket with a distinctive yoke, outlined with a slightly lighter blue piping. A delta shaped badge was perched on his chest.
His own hand strayed to his front pocket. The delta shaped device was still there.
He studied his blue eyes, buried his attention in the image, searching for the man the tricorder believed him to be. He willed memory to surface. It was there, but just barely. Not quite. “Who are you?”
Below the picture, the date: Assignment: 2424.0217.
A year before the date of the replication stamp on the Walkman.
Below Assignment: Chief Science Officer.
Steve froze for a fraction of a second before shutting down the screen with a fevered tap. He waited.
He felt the hair on his arms prickle and lift as a shiver mounted his spine and shuddered his whole frame.
His mother used to say of that sensation “A rabbit just ran over my grave.” That seemed to have a deeper meaning today.
He looked away and swallowed hard.
Continued in Part 2
~~~
LtCmdr Steve Remington
Chief Science Officer
USS Arawyn
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