Old Things Are New Again

Posted on 03 Dec 2023 @ 2:45am by Senior Chief Petty Officer Goldie Brown

327 words; about a 2 minute read

Goldie settled comfortably in her chair, a tall glass of lemonade in her hand. "Computer, open personal log."

The computer chimed its compliance.

"Today we rendezvoused with the old Galileo. It's been a long time and I'd forgotten how young we all were then. Until I saw Mimi. It was good to see an old friend, but it also made the past 25 years seem so long ago. I half expected to see my former self walk off that transporter. But then, I would have created a temporal paradigm and messed things up good."

She grinned and took a long drink of lemonade. "It made me wonder if I'd do anything different if I had the chance. You know, I don't think I would. I made a lot of mistakes. Stan being one of them, but I don't regret Kurt, even knowing what I know now."

She paused, thinking. "I learned a lot from Stan—errors I won't repeat again. But we all make mistakes, right? And I now realize that if I didn't survive Stan, I would never have been ready for Kurt and part of me hopes that if this mission is successful. Not just the meeting part, but the rest of it, that I may have more time with him since there won't be the war. I like that possibility."

For several minutes she sat in the chair, taking swallows of lemonade and thinking. "Yea. Much as I'd like to tell my former self to knock it off, I think I needed to make those mistakes. Once, anyway. But enough retrospection. If I keep sitting here thinking of Kurt, I'll start to cry again and those repairs won't get done by themselves."

She set the empty glass in the replicator and pushed the recycle button. "Computer, end log."

She needed to get back to work, to get out of her head, and to hope for a better future for all of them.


CPO Goldie Brown

RSS Feed