The NeverEnding Story

Posted on 19 Jul 2026 @ 10:38pm by Captain Sabrina Corbin & Commander Suzanna Batenburg & Lieutenant Commander Steven Remington & Lieutenant Commander Aev Flammia & Lieutenant Ryan Collingway & Lieutenant Commander Riah Amberlyn XMD

1,551 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Time After Time
Location: Street in Sherman Oaks, CA

// Suburban Streets of Sherman Oaks //

Aster’s eyes shifted toward the street before Aev heard anything.

For a moment, the boy looked less like a frightened child and more like something listening through the bones of the world. The stars beneath his eyes brightened, then scattered, as if he were trying to track too many motions at once.

“Your people are coming,” Aster said.

He did not sound afraid of that exactly, but the grass around his shoes bent farther away from him. The white house behind him flickered again, blue trim becoming blackened metal, then smooth beige siding, then white-painted wood once more. The changes came faster now, little shivers of possibility snapping in and out of place.

Aster looked back at Aev.

“I am trying not to pull,” he said, as though that explained everything and nothing. “But they remember me looking for them. They remember the place I made for them. They are carrying pieces of it back with them, and the frame wants those pieces returned.”

His hands tightened in his sleeves.

“I do not want to take them again.”

The last words were almost too quiet to hear.

Then, from somewhere beyond the curve of the cul-de-sac, came the first faint sound of approaching footsteps.

The rest of the Away Team slowed as they neared Aev and Aster on the lawn of the house, three doors deeper into the cul-de-sac. Aev was kneeling and talking to the boy. Steve noticed the flickering changes in the house. "We need to go slowly. The boy is agitated," he observed. He could feel it, or was he remembering; a familiar yet distant hint of memory focused in his spine, a feeling from his time in 1984. He discreetly stretched his back and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. If he could feel the boy, perhaps the boy also felt their approach. Slow, calm, respectful.

Suzanna noticed the flickering as well. Reality itself seemed unstable around the boy, as though the distortion responded to his emotional state. She watched Flammia speak to him and immediately raised a hand, signalling the rest of the away team to hold their position. "No closer," she said quietly, ensuring only her team could hear.

Keeping her posture relaxed and her hands visible, she addressed both the boy and Lieutenant Flammia in a calm, measured voice. "We are here to help," she called. "May we approach?" She allowed the question to linger, making it clear that the choice was his. "You need not fear us. We will not come any closer without your permission."

Aster looked at Suzanna for a long moment.

The question seemed to matter. Not because he did not know they could approach if they chose to, but because she had asked instead of deciding. The grass around his shoes slowly lifted back into place. The house behind him flickered once more, then steadied into white siding and blue trim.

“Yes,” he said carefully. “Slowly.”

His gaze shifted from Suzanna to the others, pausing on Steve and Ryan with a visible flinch. For one terrible second, the air between them thinned, and behind Aster’s eyes there was a glimpse of the other place: a motel room, a police cell, a green lawn rising like a wave. Then he blinked, and it was gone.

“I will not take you again,” he said, voice tight with effort. “But you are not all the way back yet. You remember both places because the holding frame touched too much of you.”

Ryan nodded. The air was tense, and the boy was extremely powerful. Those were undisputed facts. Maybe he was a Q, whatever that was. He wouldn't add to it with his own feelings. But at the same time, the boy looked upset. Stressed. Determined. So much so like an actual kid who had messed something up, and was trying to fix it. Looking at him now, Ryan doubted that what he did was intentional. Maybe a reaction to something.

He was assaulted with another memory he couldn't quite place. But it had left him with a definite feeling-he had done his own fair share of screw-ups on the ship. "It's okay, we'll figure it out," he said, keeping his voice quiet and forgiving.

Aev gave the commander a slow nod as the group approached. He kept his emotions carefully controlled in front of the alien child, briefly glancing toward the others. “Commander,” he acknowledged before turning his attention back to Aster.

Aster looked toward Aev, then back to Suzanna, as if trying to arrange the right order for words that were too large.

“I can end it,” Aster said. “Not just this street. All of it. The ships, the Veylith, the people, the evening. I can put the fragment back to the moment before I made the mistake, or I can call Liora and she will help me do it properly.”

His hands came free of his sleeves at last. They looked almost human.

“But if I do that, you cannot pull at the edges while I am working. No weapons. No transporting. No pushing the ships. No frightening the Veylith. No one trying to keep pieces because they are interesting.” His eyes lifted, star-bright and pleading. “Everything has to be allowed to go back where it belongs.”

Aster swallowed.

“I need someone to tell your ship that.”

"Commander," said Steve, quietly. "I feel like that would fall to me to do, but I'm not completely sure how. However. I think I can figure it out, but with your permission first."

Suzanna considered the boy's words, then glanced toward Remington. If both accounts aligned, they might finally be approaching an explanation. "Thank you," she said calmly. "Please ask Liora to join you, as a precaution." She paused, carefully choosing her next question. "If I understand correctly, once you leave, this fragment of Sherman Oaks will return to where it belongs?"

Another brief pause followed. "And my away team and I... will find ourselves back aboard our ship?"

Aster’s eyes widened at the word leave.

For a moment, the blue of them failed completely, and the stars beneath looked too close, too frightened, and far too old for the face wearing them. His fingers curled inward, not quite fists, and the air around his hands shimmered as if the lawn were being viewed through heat rising from pavement.

“I do not know if I leave,” he said quietly. “I do not think of it that way. I can put this back to where it was, and your ship should remain where it belongs. Your people should remember enough to be whole. The humans below should not remember the sky opening.”

He glanced toward Steve and Ryan, guilt moving visibly across his borrowed human expression.

“But the ones I touched may remember more than they want to.”

His gaze shifted then, past Suzanna, back to Aev. Something in the boy’s expression softened, not into calm, but into trust that was still new enough to frighten him.

“You felt me before you found me,” Aster said. “You knew I was afraid.”

The grass around him trembled once, then stilled.

“When I start, I will be afraid again,” he admitted. “If I get too afraid, I might try to hold on to the wrong things. That is how I made it worse before.”

His voice dropped smaller.

“If that happens, I need you to remind me that I am not being chased. That I am choosing to put things back.”

Aster looked at Aev, small and impossibly bright beneath the frozen evening.

“Can you do that?”

"In the meantime, I will contact the Arawyn and warn them," Suzanna replied. She then turned to Remington. "Commander, when the correction occurs, you and Lieutenant Collingway must remain mentally focused on the Arawyn. You have been affected by the anomaly in ways that I have not. Hold on to who you are and where you belong."

"Understood, Ma'am," replied Steve.

Ryan swallowed as he fully understood what she was telling him. He and Steve would likely change, at least their memories again. Hopefully for the better, but it was still terrifying. He thought of Alura, and what little he remembered of her. He let it be his anchor point. "Understood," he echoed.

Suzanna tapped her comm badge. "Batenburg to Arawyn. The boy, together with a helper, is attempting to restore the damage that has been done. Until the process is complete, we must remain entirely neutral. That includes the Arawyn."

She paused briefly before continuing. "His instructions are explicit: No weapons. No transporting. No attempts to move the ships. Do nothing that might frighten the Veylith. And no one is to keep any part of this phenomenon simply because it appears interesting."

Can I do that? Aev held his smile as he focused on the thought. He had only the barest training in controlling his own emotions. Could he truly extend that calm to another so easily? He looked at Aster and slowly nodded. “I can,” he said, hoping reality would prove him right.

Aster
Juvenile Stage Four of the Meridian
apb Capt Corbin

Lt Aev Flammia
Chief Security Officer

Lt Ryan Collingway
Acting Chief Engineering Officer

LtCmdr Steve Remmington
Chief Science Officer

Command Suzanna Batenburg
Executive Officer

 

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