Next, Mr. Base arrived at the University and looked for the side of the building where the windows were. It was fortunate he could count them correctly by just scanning the wall with his eyes. After he had completed this task he ran down to the colosseum to help the Captain.
* * * *
The Captain was halfway through working on his wall and he had sent Kazzie-Spockers out to find some more items because she had completed her first lot very quickly.
“ Mr. Base I’m glad to see you,” said the Captain. “ Here is an item we didn’t think much about before. We have to go to the kitchen at the University and bake a wedding cake.”
“ How did we miss this one Captain?”
“ It’s easy to overlook things when one is under pressure. Do you think you can bake a cake like this?”
“ Captain I am versed in all types of cooking. I can make hundreds of salads, stews, deserts and I am a gourmet cook as well.”
“ Well that is comforting to know. Can you get yourself back to the University and back this wedding cake.”
“ Aye, aye sir.” Mr. Base ran off at top speed and the captain went back to building his wall.
Four hours later Mr. Base came back with a letter saying he had completed his task. The captain had now finished the wall and Kazzie-Spockers had found all her assigned items.
“ Let’s go through everything.” the Captain wanted to be thorough. “ Sub-Commander you tick each item as I call them out. We have today’s newspaper, the signature, the photo, the animal, the fruit, the brick, the white shell, the amount of windows, the completed brick wall of manure, the letters to say you did the pots and made the cake. That’s good, now all we need is our forgotten man.” He pushed his COM badge. “ Lieutenant Beani-Poohs are you there?”
“ Yes Captain, I have my forgotten man, if you have everything else I will meet you at the town square in a few minutes.”
“ Excellent, ” said the captain. “ Let’s get all this material to the Town Square, we should be on our way before long. It only took us nine hours to do all this.”
As the Captain and the others arrived at the towns square Beani-Poohs was still not there.
Mr. Keyes saw them and said. “ Do you have everything? You better be quick you're the second last team to arrive.”
The Captain started to look frustrated. “ What’s taking her so long?” he said out loud.
A minute later Beani-Poohs arrived with Neff, the alien they had found with the space ship that needed repairs.
“ What’s he doing here, is he your forgotten man?” the Captain asked puzzled.
Beani-Poohs smiled at the Captain. “ Yes Neff has no family or friends. He really belongs nowhere, he is a man unto himself. Because his planet was destroyed some time ago he is forgotten by almost everybody who ever knew him. He was reluctant to come down here with me but I convinced him it was for a worthy cause.”
They started to hand the items to Mr. Keyes who checked them of one by one.
“ Very good Captain you have all the items required and you are not last, it’s just a shame that I have to disqualify you and your team.”
The Captain was taken aback. “ What do you mean disqualify? We haven’t done anything wrong. Is it because you don’t think Neff here is not a forgotten man?”
“ No, he is a forgotten man and a good choice if I say so myself. No you are disqualified because you have a machine helping you attain your items.”
“ Are you referring to Mr. Base?”
“ Yes he is not a real man and does not qualify to play our game. Having him help you was cheating, according to our game rules. If you had belonged to this planet and done that, you would have been tried in court for your trouble. Being aliens here we will offer you some leeway. You can either play again tomorrow or you can be on your way.”
Captain Hemorrhoid was very upset to hear all this. “ All we need are the coordinates for the time rift. Can’t you overlook the fact that we are disqualified please? The members of our crew that are dying will be dead by this time tomorrow, please give me the coordinates so we can save their lives. I cannot stress the importance of this more urgently.”
Mr. Keyes seemed completely unmoved. “ Captain you have no one to blame but yourself. If you didn’t cheat I would have given you the coordinates by now. So unless you play again tomorrow I will not give them to you.”
The Captain could see it was useless talking to Keyes, he was never going to help them.
He pushed his COM badge. “ Five to beam up. Energize!”
A minute later they were on board the ship again.
* * * *
As they walked away from the transporter pad the Captain felt very sad. “ I want all of you to know that I was very proud of how we conducted ourselves on that planet and the way we played that ridiculous game. I’m just sorry it turned out the way it did,” he said to the others.
“ Thankyou Captain,” said Beani-Poohs. “ How were we to know that they didn’t allow androids to play their games? I still don’t know how we could have ended up second last when we had Mr. Base doing his assignments so swiftly. I think most of those teams were cheating. I don’t remember seeing them scurrying around getting even half of those items and only one other team were building the wall of manure. It all seems very strange.”
The Captain scratched his head. “ Yes, come to think of it you’re right. I never did see other teams very much.”
“ I saw some at the beach,” said Mr. Base. “ They arrived there very quickly I thought, and they watched me the whole time I was there.”
The Captain thought for a moment. “ Mr. Neff, would you like to have a drink in about ten minutes. I’ll meet you at the mess hall, okay.”
“ That sounds nice,” said Neff leaving the transporter room.
They had all walked out leaving only the Captain and Beani-Poohs. “ Captain I wanted to tell you something,” she said.
“ Oh, really.”
“ Yes, I wanted to apologize for taking so long to find the forgotten man. Perhaps that horrible smell down there was effecting my judgement.”
“ Perhaps it was, but you don’t need to apologize. I knew it was going to take a long time to find that item. I had faith you would work it out. I’ve come to rely on your capabilities. The reason I gave you that assignment was because I knew you were clever enough to succeed. I never would have found a forgotten man.”
Beani-Poohs started to blush. “ Thankyou Captain, I don’t know what to say.”
“ You don’t have to say anything,” he reached out and took her hand. “ I like having you on my team, it’s gotten so I would never want to beam down to a planet without you.”
“ Captain that’s the nicest thing you ever said to me.”
“ Well I’m glad, I’m going to say nice things to you from now on.”
Beani-Poohs thought for moment. “ If you want to, when we’re alone you can call me by my first name.”
“ Thankyou I will and you can call me Angus.” They were looking deeply into each other’s eyes. “ You know, now I know what you will look like in twenty five years time, I have to say I’m impressed. You turned out very nicely for a middle aged woman.”
Beani-Poohs smiled. “ Thankyou Angus, you turned out pretty good yourself.”
The Captain’s COM badge beeped and ruined the moment. “ Hemorrhoid here.”
“ Captain Neff is waiting for you in the mess hall.” Said Mr. Base.
“ I’ll be right there.”
He turned to Beani-Poohs. “ Would you like me to buy you a drink? Come with me, you deserve it.”
A few minutes later they walked into the mess hall.
* * * *
The Captain got everybody a drink and they all sat down at the table. Neff and all the other members of the landing party were present.
“ Mr. Neff, I have just spoken to Mr. La Trenne and your ship will be ready in a short while.”
r /> “ Please just call me Neff. I hope you don’t mind Captain but I would love to remain on board of a couple of days. I am enjoying just being here, it would be a shame to leave so quickly.”
The Captain nodded and smiled. “ Of course, you’re welcome to stay as long as you want. Just be aware that if we discover the coordinates we will be heading back towards the time rift straight away.”
“ That’s no problem captain.”
“ I also wanted to thank you Neff for agreeing to be our forgotten man. That was a very nice thing you did for us, even if it did not turn out the way we would have liked.”
Neff took a sip of his drink. “ I was happy to do it. I never thought of it before but Beani-Poohs is right, I am a forgotten man. I was away from my planet in my space ship some twenty-three years ago and my planet blew up. My whole family was lost and I have been wandering in space ever since.”
“ How did your planet blow up? Do you know what happened?” asked Kazzie-Spockers.
“ I’m from a planet named Junee and the last time I was there we where having trouble with a very large volcano. Some of the scientists on the planet were planning to drop a bomb into the volcano. I have always guessed that when they did, it caused a chain reaction that eventuated in the planet blowing up. I could never be sure of this fact, it’s pure speculation.”
“ You probably are not to far from the truth though.” Mr. Base confirmed.
The Captain emptied his glass. “ Well, I suppose I’d better head up to the bridge and see how things are going.” He sighed. “ I also have to get the Doctor to give me a physical, now that I’m older I want to make sure I’m healthy.”
Beani-Poohs smiled at him. “ Yes we want to have a healthy Captain.”
“ See these spots!” The captain showed them to everybody at the table. “ When I went to bed last night they were very small and look how much larger they are now, thanks to that time rift. As soon as I saw they were larger I went straight to sick bay and reactivated the Doctor so he could take a look them.”
“ What did he say?” asked Beani-Poohs.
“ He said they were sun spots and nothing to worry about, but I do worry.”
Mr. Base suddenly interrupted. “ Captain did you say you had to reactivate the Doctor yesterday?”
“ Yes, he said he had been off line for years.”
“ You should have mentioned this before. All I need to know is when he went off line and we can work out the coordinates of the time rift.”
“ That’s fantastic Mr. Base. I’ll call him right away and find out.” The Captain pushed his COM badge.
“ Doctor, we need to find out what was the exact time and date you went off line. With this information we can go back through the time rift and save the lives of the Finkonians.”
The Doctor answered a few seconds later. “ Of course I will give you the information, but there is no hurry now. Mother and baby have both died. Dweena the mother has been dead fifteen minutes and her baby Beta died just a few minutes ago.”
* * * *
Captains Log: Supplemental.
The news of the Finkonian’s death has sent the whole ship into mourning. It seems that everything was against us, because no matter how hard we tried we were just not able to save their lives. One thing the crew agrees on is that we never want to visit the planet Kardella again. We have no respect for a people who would rather play games rather than save someone’s life. When I think about how Keyes acted I become angry that a people could be so carefree about life.
Fifteen minutes later the officers were sitting in the conference room.
“ With the information you received from the Doctor are you sure you can get us back to the time rift? asked the Captain.
Mr. Sook answered. “ We have the utmost confidence we can arrive at the same coordinates and take twenty four years off our lives.”
“ That makes me very happy, but why haven’t we just gone there. Is there a problem we need to discuss?”
“ There is a problem. I’ll let Mr. Base inform you of what it is.”
The captain turned to Mr. Base. “ Yes what is the problem?”
“ Do you remember Captain what happened the first time we went through the time rift?”
“ Yes we relived about five minutes of our lives over again. Do you think this will happen again?”
“ I am almost sure of it and if this happens we will have no memory of what has occurred. What we have to do is somehow warn ourselves of what will happen in advance. We do not want to relive this all over again. We have to make sure we do not go through the time rift again from the same direction.”
“ That’s a very good point Mr. Base. Has anybody any ideas on how we can avoid going through the rift again?”
Beani-Poohs spoke up straight away. “ I have an idea Captain. I remember reading that students back in the twentieth century used to bury what they called time capsules. They would fill the capsule with lots of photos and objects associated from their time and people would dig them up one hundred years later and look back on a time gone by. We could do similar by going around the time rift somehow and putting a container with a beacon that we will be bound to investigate and this way we can warn ourselves to avoid certain coordinates. We can also tell ourselves not to bother visiting Kardella.”
“ This is a very sound idea,” he smiled at her with approval. “ Mr. La Trenne will you and Mr. Base get onto this.”
“ Another idea I’ve been thinking of Captain.” Said Mr. La Trenne. “ I think I can program a message into Mr. Base, and this can be a safe guard in case we miss the time capsule.”
The Captain nodded in approval. “ Let’s get onto this straight away and head back to the time rift at warp factor ten. I’ll be happy when we are back to normal.”
So before long Beani-Poohs had put her time capsule together and Mr. La Trenne had programmed Mr. Base with the correct information. So two hours later they managed to find and travel back through the time rift.
* * * *
The Captain didn’t seem to have slept long when he awoke. According to his clock he had only been asleep three hours. He got up to splash his face and drink some water, he felt extremely thirsty. As he looked in the mirror he felt a disquieting sense of deja vue.
For some reason he felt compelled to contact the Doctor. He pushed his COM badge. “ Doctor, how are things going down there?”
“ They couldn’t be better, Captain. If you hurry down here you can hear little Beta saying his first words. He looks like he will say something any minute now.”
“ I’ll be right there.” the Captain quickly got dressed and hurried to the sick bay.
He just walked in as the baby started to talk and he was overwhelmed, and incredibly emotional. It was most unlike him and it wasn’t as though he hadn’t heard babies talk before.
Suddenly his COM badge beeped. “ Hemorrhoid here.” He said.
“ Captain this is Mr. Base. It is urgent that you come to the bridge immediately, please.”
“ I’m on my way.”
Two minutes later he walked onto the bridge. “ What seems to be the problem Mr. Base?”
“ Captain we have come across a capsule with a federation beacon. Do I have your permission to beam it on board?”
“ By all means. I always thought we were the first from Star Fleet to explore the Beta quadrant but perhaps I was wrong.”
A short time later they had beamed it on board. To their surprise they soon realised that it was a beacon they had sent to themselves and read wth interest about their experiences with the time rift, including how to avoid it, as it was still ahead of them at this point in time.
“ Mr. Base, change our heading so we do not travel through this time rift. Do it quickly please.”
The Captain was amazed to read about what had happened to the Finkonians and the fact that they had died, plus their visit to the planet Kardella. Beani-Poohs had also included some digital 3-D images of what the
crew looked like twenty-four years older.
Some time later they came across a lone space ship and as they came closer towards it they noticed they were being hailed.
“ Crew of the DVD please respond.”
The Captain answered right away. “ How can we help you?”
“ Captain Hemorrhoid may I board your ship?”
“ Certainly, but how do you know my name?”
The alien laughed. “ You don’t remember what happened do you?”
“ I seem to remember that we have met before but I don’t recall precisely where. Could your name be something like Neff?”
“ You’re right Captain I am Neff and I was with you when you went back through the time rift. I was the forgotten man that you used when you played the scavenger hunt. When we went through the rift I was thrown into a different time. At first I was disorientated but then I remembered everything that happened.”
“ I’m very happy for you.” The Captain remembered that he had read this in Beani-Poohs notes that were in the capsule and the history of Neff and his planet.
“ You should be Captain. I had told you that I had been through the time rift before but I was wrong, I was just getting old. Now I am much younger and I’m so happy to tell you that my family is still alive. My planet Junee is still intact. Please may I once again land my space ship in your cargo bay? I wish to request that you take me to Junee and help me convince the people of my world that they need to explore different options, other than using bombs to fix the volcano problem.”
“ It would be my pleasure to help you with your problem Mr. Neff. We may be able to do more than just convince your people, we may be able to help in fixing the volcano threat. You may land your ship in cargo bay four.”
A few minutes later Neff was on board and they set coordinates for Junee.
* * * *
“ Captain I don’t know why you should ask me to have a drink with you when you know I do not drink. I require no physical sustenance whatsoever and you should know this!” said Doctor Flusher.
The Captain laughed. He was sitting around a table in the mess hall with Mr. Sook, Kazzie-Spockers and Beani-Poohs. “ I know you don’t drink but I wanted you to be here and thankyou for all your efforts with the care of the Finkonians. Also indirectly you have helped saved a whole planet from being destroyed.”