On the Lam

Posted on 02 Jul 2026 @ 2:03am by Lieutenant Ryan Collingway & Lieutenant Commander Steven Remington
Edited on on 02 Jul 2026 @ 4:47pm

2,359 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Time After Time
Location: Heritage Oak Motel, Sherman Oaks, CA

// Heritage Oaks Hotel //

“Yes, Sir, that’ll be $22.50 for the night,” the office clerk said. He was a short, middle-age man with a red and white Hawaiian shirt and dingy white linen pants.

“You got change for this?” Steve handed him a $50 bill.

“Sure. He bent down and fiddled under the counter to pull out some tens, fives and ones and two quarter coins and handed the change and a paper receipt to Steve.

While the man had been counting change, Steve noticed a display behind the desk, featuring a variety of colorful packages of sundries.

“Hope your friend feels better,” he offered nodding toward Ryan, who sat on the plastic upholstered sofa by the window.

“You got anything for a headache in there?” Steve asked, indicating the display.

“Anacin and Tylenol.”

“Give me one of each,” replied Steve, placing a five on the counter. Again, the clerk made change and Steve pocketed it and the medications.

“You can park out 'round and back.” The clerk waved his arm to give directions.

“Thanks, we already did. Have a good night.” Steve picked up the room key and Ryan stood, slowly from the seat.

“Check out is at 10:30. After that, you pick up another night.” added the clerk.

“Okay. Thanks. Do we just leave the key in the room?” asked Steve.

“Yeah. That works.”

“Night.” Steve waved.

“Night.”


// Room 110 //

“Let’s make you comfortable, as much as possible.” He pulled the pain relievers from his pocket and handed them to Ryan. “Let me see if I can find a glass of water.”

"Thanks," Ryan said, working from a small desk. He was examining the Walkman carefully. "Let me get this straight-you had money this entire time? Why the hell was I pickpocketing people at the pub for?" he said jokingly.

“Well, let’s just say I’m resourceful as well, and I found a money clip in my pocket with the badge, that’s what that flat metal piece is, and it had money in it."

"Touché," Ryan said, taking a generous amount of painkillers. There was already a large purple bruise on his side. The ribs were either cracked or broken. This would have to do for now.

It didn't take long for Ryan to retrieve the tricorder. As soon as he did so it felt like he had held it a thousand times before. He examined the internals from it. "Power levels at twenty-six percent. But we can recharge it using the phase..." The word was there and gone in an instant. "...rayguns."

Something else caught his eye. "The internal storage is lower than it should be. But that could only be if....I think this thing was recording something," he finished.

“Well, that wouldn’t surprise me. It’s a pretty amazing piece of equipment. Talk to it. Hey this is Steve. Meet my friend Ryan. He’s as curious as me.”

“Hello Ryan.”

“Ask it if it’s been recording. Ask it your name. Ask it anything, it’ll have an answer, but you have to be specific and it only gives the answer to what you ask,” Steve instructed.

"Okay," Ryan said. "What do you know about me?"

"Voice analysis confirmed. Ryan James Collingway. Your rank is Acting Lieutenant. Your assignment is Acting Chief Engineer on the USS Arawyn."

"Woah, wait, hold on," Ryan said, waving his hand. "Acting Lieutenant? I'm really not the type to join the military." He paused. "Was I drafted?"

"Negative," the scanner said helpfully.

"And my friend next to me is....?"

"Lieutenant Commander Steve . Chief Science Officer. USS Arawyn."

Ryan paused. "Why am I an acting Lieutenant?"

"You were granted acting status after Commander Elias Harlan was injured on Stardate...."

*That* brought back unpleasant memories. "Suspend query," Ryan said quickly, and the scanner obliged. There was more he could ask. A lot more. But there was something more important than his personal history. "Do you have a recording available?"

"Yes. One recording available at 17:50 standard time today."

That was before either of them had met. "Play it."

The tricorder obliged, and showed them in a very different place. The first thing Ryan noticed was that there were three other people he vaguely recognized-two women, and a man. Wearing different clothing that in no way appeared to be military. They appeared to be in Sherman Oaks, but the street looked empty. Deserted.

[I]Lieutenant Remington, are you detecting anything unusual on your scanner?[/i] The woman in the bright clothing asked.

[I]Where are the people? There should be some noise, a dog barking, something[/i] Steve said as they observed the area.

They watched as they both analyzed a woman apparently frozen in time. Then came the wave. Ryan jumped slightly as he was sucked in first and disappeared. Steve's body was then jostled as something grabbed him. The recording went flying. Then the transmission ended.

"We weren't exactly invited here. That's what he said," Ryan said quietly. At Steve's look he elaborated. "The Police Chief. He seemed to know things. Said that the I was in a prison, in more ways than one. That I should have stayed to the assigned role of being a student. That we were a threat to the peace in the town, which is why we had to be locked up.”

“So, if what the tricorder is telling us about Starfleet is true, we are somehow from … somewhere else. The future.” Steve took a deep breath, held it a moment before sighing it out. “It makes sense. I know nothing about the innards of that tricorder, but my hands went right to the task and I just sort of watched. It was amazing. Everything I’ve asked that thing has been true, from the components of my boot to how the Electromagnetic Resonance Generate would get you out of jail. What it says is more dependable than anything you or I remember, either about living here in 1984, or 2425 on a spaceship. Ask for your Personnel File?” he suggested. “It knows your name, your birthday. Your voice print! And the technology is sure not like any transistor radio I’ve ever seen.”

"Okay, Steve," Ryan said, and paused as he realized for the first time there was a rank difference between them. "Sir.”

That felt so weird to him.

Don’t you do that to me,” Steve said instantly and firmly. “We are in this together. We complement each other, not outrank one another. Got it?”

Ryan nodded, a little surprised by his response but understanding at the same time. He would probably do the same if the positions were reversed. "Got it," he said, and went back to the tricorder.

Ryan viewed his personnel file. The picture taken was undoubtedly him. The same conflicted emotions on his face. Briefly on the USS Thysia. On medical leave for six months, then transferred to the USS Arawyn. He read, as quickly as he could, exactly what Starfleet Command actually was. Parts still felt missing, but it was way more information than he had this morning. "This almost seems crazy. Like we're sharing the same hallucination or fever dream," he couldn't help but say.

"What is our next move?" he finally asked.

“Well, we only have part of the story. That recording ended abruptly. Why? Computer, display sensor readings for the last 10 seconds of the recording.”

The screen populated almost instantly.

“Temporal distortion in the K-405 range.
K405.126 and decreasing.
Graviton spike at .25 seconds.
Density of Chroniton particles .257%.
Localized dimensional shear at 4.25 seconds.
Subspace harmonic resonance steady at 157 U/m.”

The words and numbers were meaningless to Steve’s conscious mind, but he could feel the change in his heart beat, the heat in his ears. There was something there. But it was still not proof.

“The Police Chief is not our most solid witness. This tricorder is our evidence. This readout is a timeline. First there was a temporal distortion, a disruption in time. Decreasing. It was already in progress. We didn’t cause it … we walked into it.” He looked at Ryan. “You’re an engineer. I’m a scientist…. if you saw a machine producing those readings, what would you ask next?”

Ryan slowly got up and grabbed one of the two rayguns. He stripped it of its power cell. He disassembled the back of the tricorder and connected it to the battery. Fortunately the battery of the raygun was considerably stronger and could withstand the drain. "First I would double-check its readings and do a full diagnostic to make sure it wasn't impacted by outside influence," he said. "Then I would attempt to find the source of the temporal flux. We came to this place for a reason. Didn't we?”

Watching Ryan’s expert handling of the weapon, taking it apart, and knowing how to do that just like he’d done with the isolinear crystals, was more reason to believe the idea they were indeed from somewhere other, some time other. He was not comfortable with that idea and had a lot of questions, but he was beginning to put more stock in the tricorder and the muscle memory than in his own conscious memory.

“We’ve been trying to remember what happened. Maybe that’s backwards,” Steve ventured. “I’m gonna construct a timeline. Those readings were not simultaneous. They were a chain, which means there’s an origin. If we can find that origin, we can perhaps begin to predict what comes next.” He pulled the pad of paper from the top of the desk and reached across the equipment Ryan had disassembled for a pen, and began to list.

"17:50 recording begins. Unknown street. I remember it was Oak Street. We had three companions. Tricorder makes normal observations. We see a frozen civilian. Some kind of energy wave caught you and you disappeared. I was seized too. Recording ends. Why’d we come here? But what if here isn’t real either. The tricorder can’t identify everything. It couldn’t recognize a book cart as a book cart in the library. It said it was an anomaly that was not contained in the whole Starfleet database.

"What if this is all some kind of construct, an illusion, a hologram?” Steve waved his arm around the room. “Ask the tricorder to scan that bed. We don’t know for sure what’s real and what’s not. But this tricorder does. It know’s we’re real and that my boots are real and were replicated on a certain timestamp on a spaceship called the USS Arawyn. Can we use this device to find the last known location of those people?”

Once the recharge was done, Ryan reassembled the tricorder and implanted the instructions Steve had given him. He scanned for everything that could be replicated material, filtering out the anomaly readings. His shoulders sagged as he looked at the results. "Nothing."

He had an idea. He took the scanner to the other devices, which they hadn't really used so far. "What are these?"

"Standard Starfleet communicators. Capable of planetary communication," the scanner helpfully replied.

"How do I use it?"

"The user must tap the combadge, identify themselves, specifiy the intended user and wait for a response."

"Is that a person or a place?"

"Both."

Ryan tapped the communicator. "Ryan Collingway to Steve Remmington."

The second communicator chirped helpfully.

Ryan consulted the scanner again. "Identify all members in the provided recording."

"Commander Batenburg, Lieutenant Flammia, Doctor Amberlyn, Lieutenant Collingway, Lieutenant Commander Remington."

Ryan tried the combadge. "Lieutenant Collingway to Commander Batenburg."

No response. He tried the other two without any luck.

He tried one more thing. "Lieutenant Collingway to USS Arawyn."

No response.

"Okay," Ryan said. "The police chief said that this was basically a prison. Could it be that we are literally locked away from everyone else?"

“Possible. Radio waves work here. Maybe these com badges are on a special frequency.” As he talked, pondering aloud, he turned to the television and used a remote control to turn it on. He had intended to merely illustrate the frequencies available and almost turned it off before recognizing a news broadcast.

~~~
This is a SPECIAL NEWS BULLETIN
from the Sherman Oaks Police Department.

Authorities are asking residents to be on the lookout for two men wanted for questioning in connection with an incident at the Sherman Oaks Police Station tonight.

The first suspect is described as a white male in his mid-twenties to early thirties, light brown hair, average build, believed to be suffering from injuries sustained during his escape. The second suspect has not been sighted for description. They are expected to be traveling together.

Police advise that the suspects should be considered potentially dangerous due to their involvement in the incident, though no firearms have been confirmed.

Anyone who sees individuals matching these descriptions is urged not to approach them. Instead, contact the Sherman Oaks Police Department immediately or dial 911.

We now return you to your regular programming.
~~~

“Shit,” moaned Steve. “If that clerk is watching TV, we're no longer safe here. But where we gonna go that more people aren’t gonna see us?

Ryan released a deep sigh. His dad's house was a distinct possibility. He had made pains to make sure it was hidden from the local police. Before he could mention that very unpleasant possibility, there was a knock at the door. They both froze.

“Office manager here. You might want to keep your lights off tonight.”

Steve bolted to the door to listen. The sound of footsteps faded as someone walked back toward the office. He returned to the desk. “Interesting.”

“What?” asked Ryan.

“He warned us instead of reporting us.”

Ryan thought hard. "My textbook. Batenburg beer. The equipment. There are things in this place trying to help us, give us a fighting chance. It's certainly possible."

"But we should probably have the scanner verify we can stun people," he added. "Just in case.”

“Good idea.”
~~~

Lieutenant Ryan Collingway
Acting Chief Engineering Officer
USS Arawyn
&
LTCmdr Steve Remington
Chief Science Officer
USS Arawyn

 

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