The chamber’s lattice structure pulsed and stuttered, torn between instants, but motionless sat the glyphs along its walls and the ethereal spire at its center, untouched by the convulsions of the universe. The science was impossible, incomprehensible even, yet here it was.

“We destroy it,” Lieutenant Commander Sena stated firmly. “That’s the only answer.” As much as the scientist within her wanted to unlock its secrets, she was far too pragmatic for that.

“How very Romulan of you,” Voragh grumbled frustratedly. “When faced with a mystery, you reach for a blade.” Advancement came with risk, but he feared not.

“When confronted with a construct outside causality, immune to analysis and control, what other choice exists?” Lieutenant Commander Sena asked coolly. They could spend a lifetime studying this device, and still she doubted they’d find a solution. It transcended every principle of physics as they knew it. “If we cannot understand a thing, we cannot anticipate its…”

“Beyond what we see around us,” Voragh interrupted. “That gives us a start.”

“Yes,” Lieutenant Commander Sena conceded with a cold chuckle. “A world splintered across time, proving my point. The only rational option is to remove the threat before it removes us…” She turned to Dr. Brooks and Dr. Hall, aware the Starfleet pair would make the final call. “And as a bonus, we free the Choradians of their shackles.” That had to have some sort of appeal.

Her argument might have worked on a typical Starfleet officer, but neither Dr. Brooks, nor Dr. Hall fit the bill. They weren’t here to save the Choradians. They’d come for their own reasons. Still, Dr. Hall found herself in agreement with the Romulan on account of the threat it posed. As Dr. Brooks tapped at his tricorder, he saw a problem though: “Destroying it isn’t an option.”

Lieutenant Commander Sena’s expression tightened with displeasure.

“Not because the universe wouldn’t be safer without this device,” Dr. Brooks continued. “But because removing it from existence wouldn’t be safe.” It wasn’t that he didn’t want to remove it. He did. This place at this time was not ready for such technology. It shouldn’t have been here. Unfortunately, though, the universe wouldn’t make it so easy. 

He passed his tricorder over to the Klingon and the Romulan so they could have a look.

Lieutenant Commander Sena shrugged as she stared at the model he’d worked up. The math was beyond her. “I’m not following.”

Voragh, though, immediately understood. “Imagine trying to shatter a shadow cast across a table without touching the object that casts it.”

“That’s not possible,” Dr. Hall noted.

“Of course it is,” Dr. Brooks smiled coyly. “You could blow up the table.”

Dr. Hall understood the reference. “Are you saying…”

“Yes, we could destroy it, but the impact on the spacetime scaffolding of this region… no promises on anything except that we’d almost certainly be erased from the fabric of the universe,” Dr. Brooks chuckled, seemingly unperturbed, if not almost amused, by the idea.

“So what do you propose instead, then?” Dr. Hall asked.

“If we want to fix it, we’ll need to find a way to cooperate with it,” Dr. Brooks smiled.

The others looked confused.

“Cooperate with what, exactly?” Lieutenant Commander Sena asked skeptically. “It isn’t sentient, and its instruction set is incomprehensible.”

“A warrior cannot negotiate with the wind, doctor,” Voragh cautioned.

“Perhaps not, my friend,” Dr. Brooks chuckled. “But you can tune a sail to it.”

Dr. Hall folded her arms across her chest. “Enough of metaphors.” The aged astrophysicist was brilliant, but the way he sensationalized science drove her nuts when they just needed to get something done. “Speak plainly, Tom. What do you mean by cooperate?”

The Klingon understood though. “No, Dr. Brooks is right. The spire is a conductor out of time. Align its rhythm once more, and the symphony finds its balance again.”

Dr. Hall looked like she was about to rip the Klingon’s head from his body. Hadn’t she just said no more metaphors? But whatever. She’d go with it. “Align it to what, exactly?”

“The local chronometric frame,” Dr. Brooks answered. “If I’m right, this spire was built to lock the Shackleton Expanse to a specific temporal rhythm to compensate for the temporal side effects of the mechanics behind the Shroud’s inertia lock. But the Wall changed the rhythm, and the universe moved on, so now its beats are out of sync.”

“Supposing you are right,” Lieutenant Commander Sena interjected. “What do you propose we sync it to? Spacetime is disintegrated here. We have nothing stable to reference.”

But it wasn’t the astrophysicists that had the answer. Rather, it was Lieutenant Commander Taylor, who’d been quietly studying the glyphs along the walls while the others technobabbled. “But we do…”

The others turned towards him, matching looks of confusion on their faces. As they debated the science, the xenoarchaeologist been so silent they’d almost forgotten he was present.

“These glyphs,” Lieutenant Commander Taylor offered without his gaze ever leaving them. “They don’t flicker. They don’t waver. Everything else is slipping, frames overlapping, stuttering and doubling back on each other, but these… they’re fixed against the chaos.”

“And?” Lieutenant Commander Sena asked, raising an eyebrow. “They’re just markings.”

“No, they’re not,” Taylor shook his head. “They’re intentional. Why else are they static when everything else in this chronometric spaghetti bowl is shifting and stuttering? Someone went to a lot of effort to make them that way.”

“A warrior follows that which does not yield,” Voragh nodded in assent. “Where does it take us, commander?”

“At first, I tried to understand them like you tried to understand the computation system of the spire,” Lieutenant Commander Taylor offered, acknowledging Lieutenant Commander Sena’s frustration. “But like you, if I consider the glyphs as an expression of sequence, I get nowhere. However, if I flip the lens, treating them not as statements but as states, or durations instead of instructions…”

“Fixed phase constants,” Dr. Brooks interrupted, his face lighting up with recognition. “Precisely the invariants you’d need if ever you had to recalibrate something like this.” Of course. It all made sense now.

Dr. Hall glanced between them, trying to follow. “So they’re… what? Calibration instructions?”

“Reference tones,” Dr. Brooks corrected. “Locked outside the local timestream so they stay put even when everything else fractures.”

“How?” Dr. Hall asked.

“How is any of this possible?” Dr. Brooks countered rhetorically. The science of this place was beyond them. That didn’t matter though. “It is, because it is.”

“And the composer was so kind as to leave us tempo markings on the sheet music,” Voragh smiled. “Not just what to play, but how long each moment should last. The rhythm. The intervals. The original beat.”

“But how do we interface with it?” Lieutenant Commander Sena asked.

Dr. Brooks looked down at the device on his arm, the chronometric anchor that held him stable in the sea. There was a way. But it wasn’t going to be comfortable. Not for them.

“A tuning fork,” Voragh inferred.

“Exactly,” Dr. Brooks agreed. “We retune it.” His eyes danced across the glyphs. He saw it now, what Lieutenant Commander Taylor had seen before. There were just enough of them, or more, just enough of their devices… “One anchor won’t be enough. We will need a stable manifold of temporal coherence to imprint the new reference tone.”

“A chorus of warriors,” Voragh flashed a toothy grin.

“But why would that work?” Lieutenant Commander Sena asked.

“Because this machine doesn’t realize results in steps,” Dr. Brooks explained. “It doesn’t follow sequence. It manifests state. The chamber, the spire, the glyphs… they’re all part of a single temporal condition. Change the state around it, shifting the local chronometric field into a new stable harmony, and the device must shift with it.”

“It isn’t following a script,” Voragh added. “But a chorus that sings as one can force even the most lost conductor to fall back in line.”

Dr. Hall exhaled slowly. She’d hoped they’d eventually get beyond nonsensical metaphors, but in the end, it turned out those metaphors were all they had. “Alright, walk us through the plan.”