(In the shuttle Sagan)

Seven days earlier

“Phoenix, this is flight control officer Lieutenant Commander Daniel Foster transmitting from the Federation shuttle Sagan.  I have six passengers on board; a journalist,  two scientists, and three security officers. We departed the Space Station and we will rendezvous with you in exactly one-hundred and forty-two hours. Oliver out.”

Foster knew that it would take a while for the message to be received, but at least the officers of the Phoenix would be alerted to their impending rendezvous and the complements of their crew.

Lieutenant Kathleen Friedman leaned back in her chair, watching the journalist Ashlyn Scott relaying the last part of her article. Friedman wasn’t sure about the presence of civilians on board an exploration ship; more so one on its first voyage. Anything can go wrong and then they would be caught in a circumstance requiring them to babysit civvies that don’t know emergency drills.

Eventually, things began to settle in after the journey was underway. Each having tasks to complete, reports to work on or preparations for what follows once they meet up with the USS Phoenix.

Lieutenant Commander Josh Vincent sat in the back of the runabout Sagan reading over some notes about what transpired on the Phoenix during his leave. Just before the Phoenix departed on its maiden voyage, he had received an urgent message from Earth informing him that his mother had suffered a severe subdural hematoma after falling at her home in the Minnesota, United States. Upon hearing this news, Josh immediately requested leave from his post as Chief Tactical and Security Officer and took the next shuttle to Earth.

Josh leaned back in his chair as he thought back to his mother during her recovery.

“She was so positive,”he thought. A smile crept across his face as he remembered walking into her recovery room to find her reading some old Earth newspaper comics. She looked up when he stepped through the doorway and the first thing that Maria said to Josh after 2 years without seeing his face was, “You can’t be my son, you’re far too pretty!”

For almost two months Josh had been happy living in his childhood home and helping his mother fully recover, but not a night went by that his mind didn’t drift to the Phoenix and its crew. Now it was finally time to return to them. He didn’t have too much information on their current mission, so he would need to get caught up once he was on board in a few hours.

“In the meantime, I need to relax and get back into the Starfleet frame of mind,”he thought.

Approximately six days into their flight, the shuttle suddenly began to travel irregularly. Consoles, life support, and lighting began to blink off and then back on again as a series of shutters began to ripple through the small vessel.

As the small crew began to grasp on to nearby parts of the shuttle with looks of panic and confusion emerging across their faces, Foster yelled as calmly as he could. “Collision imminent. Impact in…5…4…”

“What the… Brace for impact! Brace! Brace!”

Foster’s warning came too late.  Even before the computer reached zero, a deafening whoomp made the structure shudder and all the warning systems screamed and flickered. The artificial gravity went offline and Kathleen, along with the others, found themselves slamming into the roof or other areas of the shuttle before slowly drifting around.

“Computer! Kill the alarms! Status!” Kathleen grab hold onto the back of her chair and floated down in it. She hooked her feet around the pedestal to keep her in place while she punched buttons to assess the damage.

“All sensors offline. Initiate reboot. Computer will shut down in 5 seconds.”

“Well hell,” she slumped back into the chair. For the first time she became aware of Ashlyn Scott screaming, tumbling wildly in the air.

“Will you cut it out? You are not hurt, are you? Relax, make small movements in the direction you want to go and grab onto something. It could have been worse.”

That was before the scientist noticed the gash on the top of the head of the reporter as she groaned. With eyes that remained closed, there were no more sounds emanating from the reporter as she floated seemingly lifeless in the cabin of the shuttle.

"Oh my" Kathleen stated worriedly, not sure what to do next.

Then the red emergency lights flickered briefly before going out for a few seconds.  Soft whirring and the restored lights showed the computer finished rebooting.

She then heard off in the distance “Initializing artificial gravity. Initializing inertial…”

“Thank you, computer. Please finish initializing the systems silently. If any problems show up, let me know.”

Lieutenant Commander Vincent was shaken awake as a the shuttle shook violently. Caught completely unaware, he overreacted and knocked his head against the wall. He regained his composure, unclasped his PID, and stood just as Doctor Fallon came running into the room.

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant!” The scientist nearly yelled in her excitement. She entered the room like a whirlwind before plopping down in front of the science table. Punching buttons, adjusting sensors, her fingers moved over the console with lightning speed.

“Doctor Fallon, is there something wrong?”

“Oh no! Something may be extremely right! If I am correct, we have just proven a theory that’s hundreds of years old. Congratulations!” She wriggled excitedly in the chair, pointing to something on the screen. “See? See? We somehow collided with a pocket universe!”

With a puzzled look now replacing the previous expression of fear, Kathlenn blurted out with exasperation "What the hell are you talking about?"

“It’s so exciting! No one ever paid much attention to Guth’s theory about the so called “Big Bang”! You know, how the universe, at least, our universe, come into being. This just proves it!” She started tapping again with one hand, the other waving expressively in the air. “Let’s see if we can measure how big this pocket is...”  With a flourish, she entered a few more digits and then sat back triumphantly.

“So awesome to be part of this making of history!” She beamed at the perplexed faces around her.

Kathleen raised an eyebrow. “Pray, continue. I am sure the others are just as curious as I am to know exactly where we are. But just so you know, the reporter... Ashlynn Scott and others seem to be rather injured....”

Fallon interrupted Kathleen without really even listening to what she had said.

“Oh, oh sorry! Well, if I can explain it without spouting a lot of scientific names so you all can understand...See, this is just a hobby for me, I am a geneticist, not a physicist. I am fascinated by the universe and...well...” she caught Kathleen’s eye, “Yeah well, Guth believed that  our entire observed universe  is  only a minute fraction of one of these pocket universes. The pocket universe, on the other hand, is only a minute fraction of all that exists.  Although inflationary theory implies that there was a beginning at some point, and that individual pocket universes will come to an end, the full universe existed long before our pocket universe, and will continue to exist for eternity.”

She took a deep breath.  “We all know that the universe is expanding;  the pocket our universe is in, is expanding,  and because of that, our pocket formed other pockets, but the more every pocket creates a pocket, it gets exponentially smaller. The moment such a pocket forms, it’s marked with some kind of explosion, some of which we observed from data gather by the crews of the Enterprise ships. It’s all available on the computer. But what we couldn’t see was the pocket that formed with that explosion. We could see the effects of it, but that’s it.

“While ‘inflation’ is an ongoing process until our universe reaches its extreme, it will either go poof like a deflating balloon, with a black hole as the exit point, or the tension will get so high that it will really go a really BIG bang, sending all the little pockets either to its doom or beginning their evolutionary stage. Which won’t be in our lifetime, indeed another few billion years at least are still left to our universe."

With only a slight breath, Fallon continued.

“From what I understand, it takes billions years for star or space matter to reach a stage where life can start. And then another 3 billion years or so before that life can come even near to the level of the early amoeba...” 

The blank look on the other’s faces reminded her that she is digressing.

“I..uhhh...well...” She shrugged, “to make it much simpler, is just to imagine blowing bubbles inside bubbles inside bubbles, but that is an oversimplification. Anyways, I think, and hopefully soon can prove when the data is in, that this is a rather small pocket and that we entered it at an angle or else we wouldn’t be here.”

“How do we get out of it?” Foster asked.

“Now there is our problem, Commander, We can’t even signal out. We can’t use the transporter and we can’t leave directly without blowing ourselves up.”

“We can do a reverse trajectory, right? Exit at the same place we entered?”

“No, Sir! In the first place, according to this,” she points at the screen, “even though it appears that the shuttle isn’t moving, we are moving. This means the pocket is moving, but I don’t know enough how to calculate how fast and how far we have come since we entered here. I don’t know if the accepted law of physics will apply here. For that we have to have a lot more data before we can try anything.”

She looked at the screen again.

“Oh dear...” She tapped her finger on a fast scrolling column on the screen. “We have reason for haste. Because this universe is on its way out.”

“What do mean?” A very nervous Kathleen enquired.

“It means, we collided with a universe that’s going to pop out of existence in the very near future.”

"Also" noted the head security officer from the rear portion of the shuttle, "it appears that my security crew has sustained injuries during the turbulence.  It looks like they weren't buckled in. Does anyone here have medical training?"

No one acknowledged.

Finally, science officer Friedman sighed.

"I've had emergency training, but I am not qualified to treat anything but minor injuries."

Security Chief Vincent then noted "Well, it would appear that your training makes you more qualified than any of us. Can you at least check them out?"

With a nervous sigh, Lieutenant Kathleen Friedman unfastened herself from her PID then walked over and knelt down beside the injured men, first checking their vital signs. Noting that they were both bleeding from their head, she signaled for security officer Murphy to get her a roll of wide gauze from their emergency kit. She carefully wound the gauze around each of the injured men's head, striving not to move them too much.

Kathleen then turned her attention to the reporter. After completing the same process as she had with the security officers, she signaled for a dermal regenerator that was also stored in the emergency kit to close the gash in the head of the federation reporter.  After closing the open wound, she lightly wound gauze around Ashynn's injured skull several times. 

She took a tricorder and scanned it across each of their virtually motionless  bodies.

"Well, they all seem relatively stable... overall" Kathleen observed, "but they each appear to have sustained different levels of concussions. Perhaps this occurred during the sudden tossing about and some sort of subsequent collision. I don't really know for sure. But I do know that they will all need to get real medical attention immediately."

Daniel Foster yelled back to them "We can address that once we figure out how the hell we are going to get out of this bubble thing before it compresses us out of existence! Any quick suggestions for this?"

“I can’t say much towards a scientific solution,” the security chief started, “I think that is best left to you Lieutenant Friedman. We could send out a distress signal, but we have no idea who or what inhabits this universe, so I wouldn’t recommend attracting too much attention.”

Josh paused to think for a moment, lines creasing his forehead. “We can’t go back through and our scientist doesn’t want to make a move without more information,” he thought.

“I’ve got two men and a reporter that need medical attention and we’re stuck in a universe that is about to pop; the Phoenix will know that we missed the rendezvous, if they don’t already,” he stated. “They will be looking for us, and they will have more capabilities to work a way out.”

Turning to face Friedman, Josh said, “We may not be able to get the shuttle back out right away, but would it be possible to get a signal back to our universe?”

Switching her perspective from these injured patients to their unusual circumstances that Doctor Fallon described, she pondered the question that the security officer just posed to her.

Looking up at Josh, she confessed "Like medical treatments, unfortunately this is not my area of expertise either."

Then thinking about the situation logically, she added "Perhaps Mister Vincent, we may need to figure out how we got here first, before determining our next course of action. I for one would prefer something much less abrupt and potentially dangerous."

Flight control officer Foster then chimed in.

"That is fine and dandy Lieutenant, but if we don't find a way out of this situation... and soon... the results will definitely be catastrophic!"

Before a response was uttered, Foster added  "I emphatically second the proposition of the Lieutenant Commander here... to somehow send out some sort of mayday. We need more qualified people working toward a solution for all of us trapped here!"

The eerie silence that followed his statement served as a despondent verification of having no immediate solution available to them at this moment. Yet they did know that time, just as the space around them, was closing in on this shuttle and its occupants. 

 Doctor Fallon, Lieutenant Friedman, you are the closest thing we have to experts on this phenomenon,  so we're going to need your best to get out of here," Lieutenant Commander Vincent said. “And I agree that we need to find how, and more importantly, where we got into this universe. If I understand correctly, we somehow ran into this universe and punched through to where we are now. Assuming this is true, we must have left some kind of mark where we broke through to this universe. Can you two find this mark using a controlled plasma leak, or gas from a nearby planet?”

Kathleen Friedman spoke up first.

"Unfortunately Sir, there were no planets or other objects in proximity to where we apparently left our universe." 

Josh paused for a minute as he thought further. He was pacing over a short area while he tried to think up a solution to this seemingly impossible situation. Ha, I didn't think I'd be facing the Kobayashi Maru before I even got back to the ship, he thought. He stopped in front of the flight control officer.

“Lieutenant, can we increase the gain on the comm antenna to tighten our signal and aim it at the tear if we can find it?” Josh asked. “That should lessen the likelihood of attracting unwanted attention from this universe and increase our chances of the signal punching back to ours.”

The two scientists nodded concurrently, but this time Doctor Friedman spoke.

"Looking for the proverbial needle in a cosmic haystack Lieutenant Commander Vincent?"

Then Kathleen jumped in verbally as she stood up.

"There may not be any planetary bodies to differentiate from..." she rationalized as she spoke "but that doesn't mean that there couldn't be subtleties in the composition of this environment compared to our universe. If there is something different here that we could detect, then perhaps this could lead to a trail of breadcrumbs back to remnants of this hypothetical tear existing at our point of entry."  

Doctor Fallon's face began to light up as she stood up near Freidman.

"That to me sounds like a place to start! I'll tap into our computer logs to get data on any compositional readings that we gathered before we were pulled into this.... bubble thing. Kathleen, continue sensor readings all around this area. Let's see what we can find!"

"Okay Mr. Foster, I'm going to set up a passive scan of the area to make sure that nobody sneaks up on us while we work on getting out of here," Vincent said. "Then let's get to work on that comm antenna."

He moved into the copilot's seat and pulled up the tactical display. Good, nothing on sensors yet, he thought. He set up an alert if anything showed up on scanners. Meanwhile Mr. Foster took the pilot's seat and began tweaking the comms.

After working on the console for several minutes, Foster said, "Using some rather witty magnetic tricks, I've increased the electric efficiency of the antenna and comm system."

"Great job," Josh replied as he looked at Foster's changes. "Your 6 dbi increase in gain will nearly quadruple the output strength of our signal. I'll use some tricks I learned from my posting with Starfleet Intelligence to increase the selectivity of the signal and cut down on the side lobe saturation, so that the wrong ears don't hear our message."

"Now we just need to know where to aim the message and what to send," stated Foster. "Let's check in with the others to see if they've made any progress."

The two officers stood and walked back to the science officers, who were hard at work. Josh paused to check the vitals on the three unconscious crewmembers. "They're still with us, but I can't be sure how long they'll stay that way," he said to Foster.

Then he turned to the science officers and asked, "How are things going with your search? We've modified the antenna, so we're ready to send out a distress call for our universe once we find out where that is. Can we do anything to help?"

Exasperated, the two scientist worked in tandem as they continued to search for an area of differentiation in their comparative analysis of normal sector space with this confined region within the bubble.

Kathleen Friedman looked up for a moment as the security chief addressed them.

"Well Mister Vincent, it's like looking for an opening in what appears to be a seamless uniform. For now, we are running scans along the entire spheroid enclosure... trying to detect even trace particles of our entry point or find any locale that is different from those surrounding us. Unfortunately, we have yet to find anything; other than that this region is slowly closing in on us."

Kathleen then looked down at the calculations she was running earlier and studied them once again before she continued speaking.

"From my estimates, we have less than 12 hours before this bubble's compression begins to engulf the outer layers of the shuttle's hull. After that, it will be only a matter of minutes before... well before our chances.... our lives will be extinguished."

An eerie silence filled the small shuttle as that realization settled in.

After a moment, Kathleen looked back up to Josh Vincent.

"Lieutenant Commander, I do not know how long it will take to find an entry point let alone have a the means to successfully carry a signal beyond this bubble-verse.   Therefore, my only suggestion at this point would be to work on a way to reinforce our shielding . It may provide us extra time that we may need as we continue to figure out a way to get out of this situation. In addition, maybe try to figure out some alternative means for penetrating this enclosure."

Kathleen sighed again.

"I know that is a lot to expect, but we have to at least try a few things here rather than just countdown the time to our possible demise."  

Have I been away so long that a Lieutenant outranks a Lieutenant Commander? Josh thought to himself, caught off-guard by Kathleen's tone.

"Thank you for the suggestion about shields Lieutenant," Josh said directly to Kathleen. "I had planned on reinforcing our shields and structural integrity when it became necessary, but I was hoping that we could find a way out of here before we resorted to being crushed slowly."

The Security Chief took a step back and spoke to both science officers again, "But if you have no progress to report, and you cannot think of a way that I can assist you in solving this problem, I will upgrade our defenses."

With that, he turned and proceeded to work on preparing the shuttle for its seemingly imminent demise.

Aboard the Sagan, the small number of isolated crew members were each exerting continuous effort in their particular specialization. The two-women science team were meticulously scanning and examining the confined area of space which enveloped their shuttle; hoping to detect some area or means from which to exploit a possible escape. Despite their diligent efforts though, no seams or differentiation had yet been discovered.

Another team worked on transferring any and all available energy not used for life support into reinforcing their shuttle's shielding. They were now running almost everything off of battery back-up power, since they calculated that the ship would be engulfed by the constricting bubble-verse long before their batteries were drained. Even the science team were now relying on this energy source as they continued their work.

Kathleen even devised an algorithm determining an estimation of the rate of compression of this bubble they were all trapped within. She synchronized this formula and the sensors up to a shuttle chronometer which analyzed all the information streaming in and began a silent digital countdown based on the data received.

It was helpful to know what they were up against in regards to their elapsed schedule as they worked, yet as each crew member would steal a glance now and then at the descending numerals illuminated on the chronometer, it was as if the sands were steadily pouring through the hourglass of their remaining time before their very eyes. 

As Josh finished his preparations on the shield, he looked to the chronometer that Kathleen had set.

That's not much time. I hope Kathleen has a breakthrough or the Phoenix finds a way through to us, he thought. We may need the increased structural integrity after all.

"Mr. Foster, let's transfer power from our antenna to the structural integrity field," Josh said, "but be prepared to shift it back if we find a way to communicate through the bubble in time."

As all this was going on, Doctor Nasaro-Myth felt rather useless and helpless, a feeling not to his liking at all. But as he listened to them talk around him, something was creeping at the back of his mind until it came out in a sudden exclamation.

"Tuning fork!"

They all turned to face him, surprised by his sudden break of his silent stance. He looked at their blank faces then spoke up more clearly what had come to his mind.

"OK I'm not astrophysicist but I've been around the best; Syntron, K'Leysha... and I remember what had been discussed about the Azimuth Horizon, how it had come from another universe... heck I've been even there myself with the Artemis once! Anyways... I remember that someone at one time talked about quantum signatures... the specific... frequency of each dimension of reality..."

Kathleen's face then lit up.

"I got you, Doctor! Whatever this... pocket universe or anomalous reality this is, it can only be part of the overall quantum reality... or realities... else it could not even exist for a fraction of a second, even like this, in our own universe. Thus, it must have a specific quantum signature. Now, if we can measure it with our sensors and then adjust our shield harmonics to it..."

"We could get in... just like the Sagan accidentally did... but in our case deliberately," completed the Deltan doctor with a smile.

"And keeping on record our own normal quantum signature, we could then move out with the Sagan and back to normal space," finished the science officer.

"Just don't forget that last part," added Elliago with a wink.

With a friendly nod occurring between them, the scientists turned to focus their attention back to the scanners. Damn that chronometer... they were going to find a way out of this bubble-verse; before it was too late.

The scientists on the Sagan were working at a fast pace of calculated intensity when out of nowhere, a narrowed signal flashed just behind the ship.

Kathleen almost jumped out of her seat with a combination of excitement and hope as she scanned the signal before it disappeared.

She then immediately turned to Commander Riker.

"Sir, a signal just flashed from the stern of the ship. I'm not sure what it was... but it appeared to somehow breach the perimeter of this bubble. I'm just analyzing it now."

As this was being worked on, another signal came through. This time they were able to analyze it in greater detail. Then the eyes of the scientists lit up as they both realized something almost simultaneously.

"There's a message attached to this signal Commander" they blurted out.

((Riker's response))

They sent the cipher to the computer and decoded it in a matter of moments. The then looked up as Kathleen notified the small crew "Here's the message..."

With an almost crackling static sound, a voice rose from the noise.

"USS Sagan, this is the USS Firebird, lead shuttle of the USS Phoenix. We're following this traveling anomaly in hope that your vessel and crew are safely contained within it. Use the synchronized phase and frequency combination of this signal to relay a message back to us."

They all sat there stunned of a few seconds before the reality of message sunk in. They were just presented with a key to unlock the confines of this bubble-verse; at least in terms of communication at this point.

Without awaiting an order, Kathleen honed in on the synchronized phase and frequency combination into their sensors and locked them in. She then engaged commutations and created a return message.

She closed her eyes for a second before engaging the sensors to send the signal.

Then they patiently but excitedly awaited a response.