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Chapter Text

The Time Machine.

By Time Traveller-1900.

-8-

Dr Frederick Turner and his daughter, Holly, both of them physicists specialising in quantum physics and quantum mechanics, although many of their fellow scientists would claim their specialities were practically anything, ranging from the dangerous and mysterious hyperspace mechanics introduced to the human race a century ago by the Centauri Republic, stared at the device in front of them. It was a large device, similar to one of the old telephone booths used in Earth's 20th century, and had long since been obsolete since mobile phones and the internet appeared, linked by cables to a number of computer consoles, while thick black power cables littered the floor.

Holly turned to her father, a smile on her face despite her exhaustion. They had both been working on this ever since the Earth-Minbari war had begun entering its third year, using every single bit of money they had from their jobs, despite having to budget all they had to buy the parts for their machines. They'd been inspired to do something, and while their work wouldn't likely be used in the war effort in the way many other scientists were clamouring to try to break the infamous stealth the alien warships used, at least one optician had worked with others in their field to use a low-tech solution.

"Do you think we've done it, Dad?" She asked.

"I hope so, sweetie," he said, wiping his brow and then his eyes. "We've been busy with this for weeks. With some luck, it will help us with other pursuits."

But Holly was quite sceptical. "Do you think the second machine will be okay?" She asked, craning her neck backwards slightly, to focus on the second machine that was largely identical, but bigger slightly and was even more complex, but it was under construction. "We don't know if the tachyons will do what we want."

Frederick bit his lip. Holly was right, he knew that. They wanted to use tachyon particles to create a wormhole, and they could relive 7 or 9 days.

"We'll soon see, Holly," he said philosophically, "and besides, we have the first machine; that one is going to be worth a great deal more."

Holly smiled. She was confident about that as they had already tested some of the details of that one out. She had her doubts about the second machine, even if it should work just fine, but this one would work brilliantly.

A time machine.

Time travel, actual time travel. Once believed to be the realm of science fiction, especially as so many other races had tried, and failed, to develop their own time travel machines, whether it was because their technology couldn't do it or because they gave up, and they'd done it. They wouldn't be able to use the quantum teleportation device to be transported to other times, not yet anyway, but they would be able to open up channels into other realities - parallel universes - and watch scenes like they were watching ISN or a VID or streams from Youtube, TikTok, and Instagram, and Netflix, and they'd be able to watch scenes straight out of history, and maybe further beyond, and they would learn much more than that; they would discover whole new cultures unknown at the moment or never to be discovered by humanity, new technologies, new sciences. Their experiments showed it was possible, so there was that, and Holly was looking interested in what they'd found.

"Have you thought about the second machine?" Holly asked hesitantly.

"We've started it, but we need to make adjustments, but for the time being we're finished," Frederick replied, with a sigh. "I should start work within a month."

The second time machine would work by bombarding a stream of tachyon particles, where it would be hoped they would generate a wormhole that was brief, allowing people to relive a few hours or 7 days before returning to their proper time stream.

"Why so long?"

"I will be splitting up my work with these, and then with university students, and of course, you, Holly," Frederick smiled. "How's Jeff?" He asked, smile fading.

Holly bit her lip. Her boyfriend was a pilot in Earthforce, and with so many losses on the frontlines, the thought of losing him was too great for her liking. "I don't know," she whispered.

Frederick gently hugged her. She returned the hug instantly, like an octopus. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"This is why I wanted to help, Dad, I wanted to do all I could to help him; what we find…it might help save millions of lives, including Jeff's."

Frederick tightened his grip. He liked Jeff greatly. "We'll soon know."

-8-

Days later, the two physicists started work; within hours of being activated, the second machine relayed events of 7 days back to the Turners, who were understandably hesitant about the thought of using foreknowledge, and they had programmed their computers to be selective of what they got back, but they would be shown enough for the information to be helpful.

For the first time machine, the Turners learnt a great deal about different versions of history, witnessing for themselves a Centauri invasion of the Earth after First Contact. The Centauri had arrived shortly after World War 3 ended, and took advantage of Earth's weakened state, and then conquered the planet. They were more vicious with humanity than with the Narns, as the human race was more spirited, even when defeated, and for close to 50 years, the Centauri devastated Earth while moving some enslaved humans off world where they would work at different slave camps across their empire, working with the Narns, who were conquered as well.

Finally, after years of slavery and oppression, the humans of that world fought back, eventually stealing several Centauri warships in a shocking display, while the Centauri rounded up and killed anyone they wished, and found themselves facing greater resistance, starting to talk about implementing genetic cleansing programs to remove the hostility and aggression, devastating Earth even more, while those humans who'd stolen the Centauri warships caused small pinpricks to rise up here and there in Centauri space. Eventually, the Centauri left Earth, but not before they devastated the planet, and left behind a truly angry and hurt human race, one which slowly began expanding across the galaxy, but was hemmed in by the League of Non-Aligned Worlds.

A surprising bounty came when the Turners managed to isolate and download 30% of the Centauri database, which awed both of the Turners; while they were less advanced than the Minbari, the Centauri Republic was more advanced than many of the other races in the galaxy, and they had refused to offer or help humanity with the Minbari war.

The Centauri had gotten their technology from an alien starship which had crash-landed on their homeworld during their Atomic age; the ship was an interstellar vessel, with jump engines, gravimetric engines, and crystalline technology. The Centauri had stripped the ship, set up dozens of research think-tanks, and begun a new phase of their space age, which was accelerated. The Centauri, before the crash-landing, had already begun sending capsules into orbit, and they'd landed on their nearest moon and sent probes out into space. Suddenly, they had the means to go further out, their new engines being powerful enough to reach the inner planets of their system, before going further out, planting space stations and outposts of the worlds in their system to develop their knowledge and proficiency to work in space.

Once they'd done that, they built the Centauri Republic, and while they had never challenged the Minbari, there were theories that the Minbari would have had a lot of trouble fighting them off.

In another reality they saw, Earth was conquered by the Dilgar; humanity hadn't made contact with the Centauri in that world, and the Dilgar had seen a primitive interplanetary race, and they had seized a chance, conquering the planet while humanity fought back with fusion-powered spaceships, but dozens of asteroid and moon colonies were destroyed, and millions died from bioweapons, with many splitting off into groups to avoid the risk of further infection, and work on cures. Same thing, the Dilgar eventually left, but the human race had become an interstellar power who wanted revenge against the Dilgar, and they got their hands on a large chunk of the Dilgar's database, and now Frederick and Holly got it, 67% of the Dilgar database, showing starcharts of old Dilgar installations.

And then they turned their eyes towards the other time machine, and they showed the Dilgar and Centauri databases to the military, who took an interest, and learnt what the Turners were doing.

And then the Turners discovered something that answered one of their biggest questions, something horrifying.

-8-

Author's Note - Hi, and welcome to my newest Babylon 5 short story, a crossover with dozens of franchises - there's Sapphire & Steel, Halo, Mass Effect, a bit of Doctor Who, the Time Machine, and others. In this chapter, we meet the Turners, after the characters in Crime Traveller, a BBC TV series in the 90s about a time machine being used to solve crimes.

Chapter Text

The Discovery of Underspace.

-8-

"Zeta 3, break, break, break!" Commander Alan Carter barked over the comm link as he tried to keep his crew from being shot down by the Minbari fighters, but the Minbari's advanced gravimetric engines were sharp, quick; it wasn't long before they chased after them.

"We can't shake them off," another pilot called.

On his screens, Carter watched as two of the other pilots turned to fire more desperate blasts from the plasma bolters'; one of the pulses destroyed an enemy fighter, but while they were celebrating foolishly the Minbari shot back, but their targeting systems effortlessly broke through whatever computer and electronic systems effortlessly, and their beams of lethal energy destroyed two more fighters.

"Don't celebrate, RUN!" Carter barked through the link, and he pushed the engines even more as they tried to make their way towards the jump gate again, but the Minbari, determined not to let them go, were herding them away from the jump gate, and they were doing a good job of it.

Carter thought about the last few months. The war had been heating up, and now 2 years of hell since the disastrous first contact when the Prometheus opened fire on the Minbari squadron on the border of their own space when they'd opened their gun ports (Carter personally thought that bastard Jankowski should never have been given command of the mission; the man was an ass hole, a fool who made even the most arrogant Centauri look like a saint) had gotten worse and worse as the Minbari rampaged through the Earth Alliance's space, burning down colonies, destroying ships and space stations, and destroying escape pods to wipe out the human race.

In the first days of the war, the Earth Alliance had believed the Minbari were aiming to destroy the warriors of Earth, but now that changed after Earth discovered a low tech way of breaking through the Minbari's stealth, but the discovery, while it had helped, had only made the Minbari, who were terribly slow to adapt, fight even harder.

It was such a simple method of breaking the Minbari stealth without actually breaking it. An optician instead of a hacker had worked out how to do it, was interested in how the alien's ships couldn't be locked if the optical sensors and cameras, and human eyes, could see them, and realised light could be used to lock on their ships instead of radar and other scanner systems.

The blue finish of the Minbari ships used made it even easier to design an optical device to track down and give a firing solution to such a target, and optical targeting was very old technology. Then they got to work, and very soon they had won their first victory against the Minbari. The aliens were stunned by the unexpected victory; it was known that Earth ships had the firepower to damage Minbari ships. But the breakthrough had come almost too late; the Minbari had adapted, and they had started pouring more ships and weapons into the war effort, and hundreds of people had died so any plans of taking advantage of the shock of the destruction of Minbari ships and invade their territory and take it to the arrogant aliens went down the drain.

Carter had been given the mission to enter a system to do a recon, to see if the Minbari had reached this far before it was closed off. And they had. The Minbari were here, and they had surprised the Earth group stationed here, and they were destroyed, but not before they took several Minbari ships with them.

And now they were being chased. The Minbari had thought this one out, they had left a small number of war cruisers here and a hornet's swarm of their fighters.

Carter and his crew had managed to splash a dozen of their fighters, destroying them, but they'd chased them; they were outnumbered, outgunned, and while their new targeting systems were infinitely better, simpler without needing some complex tech, Carter wasn't stupid enough to think they could beat them, and they began running out of here. Worse, the Minbari were keeping them away from the jump gate. They wanted them to die, to pay for their recent victories, but if they honestly thought the Earth Alliance was going to stop winning minor victories, which started with Sheridan's use of tactical nukes, they were in for a shock.

Ah, tactical nukes!

"How many tactical nukes do we have?" Carter knew each Starfury was armed with a harness loaded down with tactical nukes. But he didn't know how many they had individually.

"I've got three," McCallum informed him.

"I've got six," Furlan called, her accented voice slow and hesitant, like she didn't know for sure.

"Six, why so many?" Someone asked, but Carter didn't know her voice at all, but she was new. She sounded Russian or American, hard to be sure.

"I thought it was five at first, but then I saw a few more," Furlan said.

"Well, I've got four. Are we gonna dump 'em?" The unknown pilot asked.

But Carter was already checking the scanner, and he adjusted the focus on the reverse cameras and spotted the Minbari fighters. They were too close for comfort. "No, no," he replied, "they're still too close. They'd see the nukes as they're dropped, and they'd blow them to bits, and we'll be caught within the blast radius."

"Zeta leader, we're coming close to a large cluster of asteroids in orbit around this planet," one of the fighters said, and Carter wished he was there personally so he could smack the pilot for stating the fucking obvious. Of course, he had known there were asteroids here, which was why he'd aimed for the asteroids in the first place. Best friends to fighter pilots, asteroids; you could hide in them, depending on how big they were, and you could use them to secretly drop a nuke, and the blasts could be shielded by much larger asteroids, and the pieces of rock could be fired in all directions, like hypervelocity rounds.

"That's where we're going," Carter had to bite his tongue not to say 'moron,' or something harsher, and he checked the cameras again. The Minbari were hesitating, slowing down. They had discovered how much humans loved using asteroids as traps, and they were wary, but they still came after them. But the hesitance gave them what they needed. "The Minbari have slowed down, we can use that," a look forward made him grin. "Zeta 2,3,7," he hated how many of his squadron had been destroyed, "plant the nukes on the asteroid ahead," and he gave the bearing, "set them for remote detonation, and then get the hell outta there."

Once they'd acknowledged the order, the fighters got ahead, and the group separated to give the Minbari the direction of where they were going, and they laid down even more of the nukes.

"Wait until they're nearby," Carter ordered, praying the Minbari weren't clever and canny enough to see the trap. "NOW!"

Carter, like the rest of the squadron's survivors, closed their eyes tightly at the blast. Sound didn't travel in the vacuum of space, but he could see the effects; the Minbari fighters, caught by the blast despite their well understanding caution, were destroyed, Carter could already imagine the way the nukes exploded, blowing the asteroid into chunks, propelling them at high speed and shredding any further fighters to pieces.

Carter didn't cheer like the others, he was too busy checking the cameras and the screens - the scanners had been knocked out by the EMP, but it looked like the Minbari weren't here. But had they really caught them all? "Okay, we're gonna stay in the asteroid field and then move to the other side of the planet to avoid future detection," he said over the cheers.

"Radiation levels are quite high, and the blast didn't do a lot of good," the unfamiliar pilot spoke up again. "And the cruisers would have detected the blast and would come to investigate."

"I know," Carter replied, biting down the urge to snap back. "But we might have the time to get to the planet; the explosion would have put out more than enough EMP to cook their scanners. If we get there, we might be safe, and then we could make our way towards the gate."

"Sorry. I'm Russian, it's one of our quirks, we like to catalogue the threats around us," the pilot said in a flippant way.

"Who are you?" Carter asked.

"Ivanova, Susan Ivanova," the pilot replied. "Lieutenant."

"Ivanova, are you related to Ganya Ivanova?"

"Yes, he was my brother," Ivanova replied. Her voice was guarded. Sad. He couldn't blame her.

Carter sighed. "We were friends, if you'd like, we can talk, but now's not the time."

-8-

Carter's hopes with the EMP causing the problems with the Minbari's scanners seemed spot on, but since they were so far away from the warships, it was hard to be sure.

"Commander Carter, there's something wrong with my scanners," that was the last thing Carter wanted to hear right about now.

"What do you mean?" Carter snapped.

"I dunno, there's a strange neutrino reading that doesn't make sense. There's a strange buildup all around us as we're leaving the asteroids," Ivanova said.

"Confirmed, Commander," Furlan said. "I'm picking it up as well."

"EMP fallout?" Carter asked.

"I don't think so, we're a long way from the blast-," Ivanova said before she stopped talking, when they suddenly found themselves in what looked like a long tunnel, like some kind of god had taken ordinary space and dug down far enough to reach for the levels of hyperspace, gravitational inclines, tachyon waves, and then curled them all together. The remnants of the Starfury squadron caught sight of curved passageways leading off, branching down like corridors or underground railway tunnels.

And then they were back out, space unfolded itself.

"What the hell was that?" Carter asked eloquently, stunned and breathless by what he'd just seen.

"Dunno. But the sensors confirm it wasn't a glitch. They picked it up as well."

"If you thought that was weird, then you ain't seen nothing yet. Commander, we're not in the same star system we were in; we've travelled over 30 light years," Ivanova said.

"What did you say?" Carter demanded, but it was confirmed by their computers. Their astrometric readings were loud and clear; they had travelled just 30 light years away from the system where they'd been attacked by the Minbari, and their own eyes only added more weight. They had been close to a planet surrounded by asteroids, loaded down by abandoned mines left by the Earth Alliance. Now they were in a large system, no planet nearby unless they wanted to spend the next 7-9 hours travelling at maximum burn.

"But what was that?"

"Some kind of wormhole?"

"It might have been, and it formed near us, but why?"

"Hold on, why hasn't it been discovered before?"

"Why would it be, especially here? We mostly leave our installations near planets and asteroids, never in open space."

"If you guys are interested, the wormhole, or whatever it was, hasn't left. The neutrinos are right behind us, strong as ever."

Carter made a split-second decision. "We're gonna turn around and see what we can learn from this wormhole, or whatever it was, because if it is a wormhole, we might've made one of the most vital discoveries of the entire war. Turn around, follow my lead."

For the rest of the standard galactic day, the squadron travelled back and forth along the wormhole, only for them to discover there were routes branching away, leading to fresh branches before they were lucky enough to find another Earth ship. As they were being taken onboard, their star furies and their personal reports forming in their minds, Carter knew things were going to change.

Chapter Text

The Past and the Future, Plans in the Present.

-8-

President Elizabeth Levy, when she'd first heard about the discoveries of the EYE scanner, the Underspace, and the time machines, had at first asked what her advisors had been drinking, and asked if she could have some herself, such was the troubles of war. When she had been elected as the president of the Earth Alliance, she had never imagined she would have to deal with the nightmare which was the Earth-Minbari war.

And she had never imagined having millions of deaths on her watch, but there was still a lot of time to work out where to go from here, and as she sat down in the conference room, she looked at the people who had come to the meeting. Several of her senators/advisors were here - Senator Quantrell, Senator Hidoshi, Senator Luis Santiago, and, she wished he wasn't here, Senator William Morgan Clark, one of the biggest thorns in her side - some of her military advisors and important members of Earthforce - General William Hague, General Robert Leftcourt, General Franklin, the recently promoted Captain John Sheridan - and two representatives of IPX, Dr Koenig and Dr Marcus, and Drs Frederick and Holly Turner, the inventors of the time machines.

"Okay, thank you all for coming, and I must thank the Turners for being here; they're here because I asked them for any future data from the time machines that could be of use to our future plans," Levy began the meeting.

Holly Turner was trying to hide how intimidated she was by being here, in the last 5 months she and her father had been working on their time viewing equipment before they discovered a reality the Centauri had conquered the Earth Alliance shortly after the Third World War, enslaving all humanity and were many times more vicious with them than they were with the Narns.

It had been eye opening, how one small decision was able to change billions billions billions of lives across the whole universe, but the Turners had managed to download a massive chunk of the Centauri database, and when they had shown Earthforce what they had, the Turners and their research had been snapped up, but fortunately they had managed to avoid being buried by tonnes and tonnes of bureaucracy, and they could truly work and have meetings like this. 'At the same time, I can do more for the war effort than ever before, I might save thousands of lives,' she thought to herself, and she had to stop herself from scowling at the thought of the Minbari killing Jeff…

She was only just able to stop herself from thinking about him too much, but it was so fucking hard. Jeff was out there, risking his life for the Alliance, and she wasn't sure if she would see him again, especially since finding out she was pregnant.

'I'm doing this to give you a future,' Holly thought to herself, resting a hand on her belly. She thought nobody was watching, but Captain Sheridan, General Hague, her father, and President Levy were. Levy smiled to herself for a moment as the young brunette cleared her throat.

"I think we can," Holly Turner took the initiative, and she opened a plastic box designed for holding data crystals. "And here's a start."

Levy nodded and pointed at the holder on the table. Holly picked out one of the crystals and slotted it inside. Everyone turned when they saw the screen near the table light up, displaying a 3D holographic map of the Milky Way galaxy, but it showed the 3D blob like amoeba shape of the Earth Alliance, but its greatest highlight, shown in green lines much like the veins and arteries you found in one of those illustrations in a human body, or the roots of a plant.

"What's that?" Sheridan asked.

"That is a map of the Underspace."

Marcus gasped. "We've only been able to map a small chunk of it," she commented, turning to her fellow scientist. "How did you get this, from the time machines?"

"One of them at least," Holly replied, ignoring Sheridan's look of awe at the mention of the time machines. They could come to that in a moment.

"Do you have a completed map?"

Holly replied by removing another data crystal - Sheridan, Hague, Levy, and Clark noted they were marked - and she slotted them into the reader, and she tapped in a command. A moment later, the screen changed, this time showing more lines, showing more sectors of the galaxy with highlighted underspace routes. This time, the new map showed a large chunk of the galaxy's other side, while creeping over and lacing through areas in Earth Alliance, Drazi, Narn, and Centauri space.

"This is as complete as we're gonna get, we're still looking for other realities at around the same time period, but in some, the routes are shorter, so no, we haven't got a complete map."

"We looked in several different worlds for this, and it was extremely hard to find," Frederick said at this point, "but when we found it on the off chance an alien race had discovered it already, it was easy enough to focus the time machine on them, and get these. Go ahead, Holly," he said to his daughter.

Holly took out another data crystal. A moment later, highlighted in shades of orange, a much smaller collection of tunnels was shown, but it was clustered on the other side of the galaxy.

Another data crystal, and this time more of the galaxy was highlighted with tunnels appearing out of nowhere, highlighted in purple.

"Why the different distances?" Hague asked.

Instead of answering verbally, Holly tapped the control pad. The image changed, showing a number of strange, but beautiful starships that were bulbous at the end, but had four long protruding tentacles, orbiting a planet. All of them were differing shades of green, yellow, orange, and golden brown…but they were dwarfed by a massive, flat, disc-like ship, mottled in the same way as the first. In the middle of the disc was a shimmering blue line, pulsing with unnatural energies….but it glowed a bright yellow-green, before there was a burst of light…and the planet was utterly destroyed and reduced to rubble.

"We've seen that scene play in four different realities," Holly explained grimly to the shocked group. "They're all identical, so there's no point showing them all. In all of these realities, these ships track down the aliens who use these tunnels and wipe them out. They systematically overwhelm them, destroying them and their ships before they have the chance to fight back…not that it makes any difference," judging from her slightly haunted, grim expression, she had seen this place out more than once, a look shared by her father.

"What was that?" Hidoshi snapped, speaking for the first time.

Frederick sighed. "Vorlons. We have the descriptions of them from the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, and what records the Centauri had of them, although we've never seen them, the visual files the League and the Centauri showed us are clear."

Levy's eyes widened while there were gasps and mutters around her. The Vorlons? The Minbari were bad enough when it came to mysterious aliens, but they'd been hearing legends and myths of the power of the Vorlon Empire for years, knowing nothing about them, except every ship that passed through their borders never returned, but after seeing that picture, Levy never wanted Earth to go through a similar scene.

"But why would the Vorlons destroy the race that charted the Underspace?" Hague demanded.

The Turners looked at each other and then back at them. "We don't know," Holly began.

"We've only just seen this, but we set the quantum technology to begin looking into Vorlon history to give us a bit more to work with; when we get back to the time machines, we should find a lot more," Frederick added.

"We haven't seen the Vorlons really destroy races, so we're not quite sure what made them do this, but we think it has to do with the Underspace. Again, we don't know," Holly finished.

"But the maps you've made of Underspace will be of great use," Dr Koenig spoke up to change the subject. "We're still mapping, and we've sent probes off into the Underspace. It's easier to work with than hyperspace since there are landmarks to work with, but we still need tachyon beacons to help us maintain the maps. But this will help."

"We'll give you the copies afterwards," Holly promised.

"Thanks."

"You two have given us a great deal of help, what with giving us large chunks of the Dilgar and Centauri databases," Leftcourt said, further surprising others in the room, "and our engineers, reverse engineering them have high hopes about what will happen when they meet the Minbari in space."

Holly said nothing as she thought about Jeff. Knowing what she was thinking, Frederick took her hand and squeezed it.

"What kind of realities have you probed into?" Clark demanded, and Levy closed her eyes when she heard his voice, and the demand that the realities better have something to do with the destruction of the Minbari.

Holly sensed it as well, because her voice and face hardened. "More than a few, but some of them have nothing to do with the Minbari. We found a few realities where humanity never even left the solar system for centuries, or they never did. Or developed basic interstellar travel but no hyperspace. When we looked in different universes, we found various versions of Earth; some of them were iceworlds, water worlds, deserts, or it didn't even exist, and in some realities we discovered the flow of time itself was reversed, or there were wormholes looping around the place, allowing rapid transit from one place to another. But during our…investigations, we discovered the answer to a question we've been asking ourselves for a while, and not just us, but other scientists for a long time; why nobody has developed time travel."

"What did you find?"

Frederick took a data crystal out of the box and slotted it in. Within minutes, everyone felt truly sick when they watched a time travel experiment, one repeatedly performed time and time again…..before they finally tore a hole in the fabric of reality, releasing some strange….beings, they were invisible but their actions weren't, and the whole world and many others nearby were destroyed before something happened, and the damage was reversed.

"What the hell was that?"Leftcourt asked breathlessly.

"We don't know, but we think Time itself is something best left untouched. Time in our universe seems to have some strange beings that are destructive, and they're not meant to be here. I know, the explanation sucks, but that's the best we've got. This is the only clip we've found. We think if you jump to other realities, then nothing will happen, but if you probe too deeply into time," Holly sent her father a hard look which interested some of the others, "then you'd release…these, and we don't know if we can stop it."

"So, let me get this right, if we try to travel back in time in our universe, we could release these things, but if we jump back in time to other universes, then nothing would happen, but if we tried too hard to travel back in time in that universe, we'd release these things, too?" Quantrell asked.

"Looks like it," Frederick replied.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but could one of you two please explain to me….you've got time travel now?" Sheridan interrupted.

Holly and Frederick glanced at each other, a smirk on their faces, before they turned back to Sheridan. "That's right, Captain, we do have time travel," Frederick replied.

"We've been working with Quantum teleportation for a very long time," Holly added, waving her hand about. "Like so many other scientists, we were obsessed with the idea of some way of travelling back in time, or forwards. But nothing really worked. We made the mistake of following the examples of scientists who were looking for a way of finding a complex method of twisting the laws of physics around like a pretzel. We might be more advanced now, but exotic matter is still beyond our reach. Exotic matter, or negative energy, has always been viewed as the holy grail of science, because with it, we could manipulate space/time itself, so we can travel faster-than-light in ordinary space by warping it, or creating traversable wormholes."

"Mm, we assumed the Underspace was a network of wormholes, in fact, the pilots who discovered them assumed that's what they were, but they're not; they're just another hyperspace domain," Marcus commented.

"It might be possible for wormholes to exist in our universe, but so many people believe they can't, because of time paradoxes," Holly said.

"So many people have spent so long looking for it, but we decided to turn to quantum teleportation when we decided the simpler a time machine, the better," Frederick answered.

"How does your time machine work?" Hague asked.

"Well, we can't physically visit any of these worlds, but the time machine can transfer and receive particles, similar to a television, and show us the past and even the future. Basically, we break down atoms and send them through microscopic wormholes to the foamy substrate of the universe. These tiny wormholes pass off into other realities; we're just not sure yet if we can travel in our own world, but so far ,all our attempts prove it doesn't happen."

"How far have you come with your time travel experiments?" Levy asked.

"We can only look back in time at the moment, but there's nothing that says we can't go back physically and explore these realities. Personally, I think interdimensional travel's better than space travel," Holly commented.

"Why do you say that?" Hidoshi leaned in, blinking his dark eyes curiously.

"Personal preference more than anything else. The multiverse is rich with thousands of possibilities, realities where the laws of physics are different, and the life forms in some realities are more interesting than what we have here," Holly said, "but it will likely take decades while we work on computing and power technologies before we can get to them."

"With other universes," Frederick took over, "we might be able to colonise the same sector many times over, and even travel to other galaxies."

"Should we go to them?" Levy asked while Clark looked distinctly unimpressed. She knew he was one of those isolationist types.

"Definitely. But not for a long time; we can only view the past, and other realities; to travel through them, we'd need to really work on our energy technology, or find a way of sending people into these realities which is more suitable and practical than simply disassembling them atom by atom."

The meeting went on; it turned out, the two Turners had already found several alien technologies in other realities, technologies that, as far as they knew, had never been seen before, but would be passed on to Research and Development departments to experiment with to see if they were feasible and easy enough to recreate in their reality, and they had also downloaded several versions of the Minbari database so they would have some scientific knowledge there to build on and would hopefully be enough to really hurt the Minbari, far more than they were now, and finally Levy came to a decision.

"Mm, Dr Turner, could you do me a favour?" Sheridan suddenly asked, a curious frown on his face. Everyone turned to him wondering what he was thinking.

"What is it, Captain?" A part of Holly wondered if some immature part of Sheridan was going to ask about something from his past, but what he asked for did come from the past. Sheridan reeled off a date, a time, and a planet. As he reeled it off, Hague, Leftcourt, Levy and the other senators listened with dawning comprehension.

Sheridan explained to the two time travel pioneers how the senate had arranged with the Narn Regime to agree to peace talks a group in the Minbari government were keen to go through with, and how Sheridan, Dr Stephen Franklin, and G'Kar of the Narn Regime's ruling body travelled to a remote planet to meet with a Minbari representative.

Sheridan talked about how well the first moments went; the Minbari who met them was alone, slightly worried for his own safety, and yet determined to do his duty… only for a senseless attack which destroyed the Narn heavy cruiser which took them to the planet, and then devastated the outpost. The Minbari were killed, while the humans and one Narn managed to survive. It was a terrible, evil twist of fate. They had waited for hours before a Minbari warship appeared and they had blamed the humans, and were prepared to execute them. Sheridan frowned as he spoke, remembering the grey-robed Minbari who had apparently saved them, and he wondered more about their story, but he wished that individual Minbari had just spoken to them.

When he was finished, the Turners and the people from IPX were quiet.

"Why would a renegade arm of our government want to keep the war going?" Koenig asked. "Surely they don't want us to die?"

"The incident was investigated, but there was no evidence of who did it," Levy sighed.

"I think we can arrange to have a viewing, Captain," Frederick held up a notebook and a pen, with the date, time, and planet scrawled in one of the pages along with a note of what Sheridan said, presumably, so the scientists would not forget it.

"Thank you," Sheridan nodded gratefully.

"I think the situation is clear. All time travel research is to go on, along with the interdimensional experiments, but how are things going with the war?" Levy asked the soldiers.

"The EYE is definitely shortening the gap between us and the Minbari," Leftcourt replied.

"Earthforce command is working with the strategists and officers like Captain Sheridan," Hague sent Sheridan a nod, "to lure the Minbari into traps in the hopes of giving R more time to work with the new technologies we've been given. So far, we've come up with a small number of them. But the noose is still tightening."

"The Minbari are throwing all they've got at us; we've slowed them down, but that's it," Sheridan said gloomily.

Levy nodded grimly. "I've read the reports," she muttered. "How much hope can we expect these alien databases will give us an edge?"

"Good question," Leftcourt replied, "we'd wanted the Centauri and other members of the League to give us some technical support, but they didn't give it, and the Narns' imported weapons have helped us save dozens of human lives, but its not enough. They bled us nearly dry. The databases might help us, but we need time to regroup and make them work. We might manage to win more victories and really slow the Minbari down."

"We can."

Everyone turned to Dr Koenig, who blushed slightly at the attention. "We have the Underspace. If we can switch over to it, we can start throwing aside our dependency on hyperspace. We could lay down mines."

"Of course!" Sheridan snapped his fingers, a grin on his face. "Some strategists suggested fighting in hyperspace to address the tech gaps between us and the Minbari, but everyone said it was a terrible idea. Small skirmishes, yeah, but too many explosions and you'd be sucked off course or deeper into hyperspace."

Everyone agreed.

"How long before we can do something like that?" Hague asked the IPX people.

"It might take a while," Marcus's reply dampened the enthusiasm a bit. "Just because we've got those maps doesn't mean we know every single route, every branch, we've got to map them out ourselves, but I think if we had over a few months, we should see the need for hyperspace…disappear."

"That's all well and good, but what about the Vorlons? If they discover what we've done, they might come after us," Hague warned.

"Yeah, that's a point, and I'd like to know what made them destroy that species so much. What do we know about the race that discovered the underspace?" Leftcourt asked the Turners.

"Not much," Frederick replied.

"We only discovered them by chance, but what we do know is they were apparently wiped out 5,000 years ago, in all realities. They had basic space travel, which got more and more advanced; they even developed sciences we don't know ourselves, and we're looking into that, and they discovered the underspace by accident, like we did," Holly finished.

"But we have nothing about why the Vorlons attacked," Frederick added.

Something struck Koenig. "In those maps, you had the homeworld of the aliens, yes?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Well, I can have an IPX explorer sent out there by the end of the day. When they arrive, they should confirm if that planet's been destroyed, but they might find other clues," Koenig replied. "At the same time, they could explore a new corner of the galaxy."

But Clark didn't like that. "We shouldn't be wasting our resources on exploration; we're trying to fight an alien race," he grumbled.

"We can do both, and we need to know why the Vorlons massacred an entire race. In the meantime, Dr Turners, please give R all technologies you've been able to find, and look for new ones," Levy ordered.

The meeting changed as they discussed different tactics, but none of them would realise until much later that the underspace's exploration would be what ultimately saved the human race when the Minbari launched a terrifying attack which killed millions of humans.

-8-

The exploration of the Underspace began in earnest; thanks to the variants of the Underspace tunnel maps given to them by the Turners, IPX used them, laying down tachyon beacons and sending out expeditions. Dr Koenig was one of the top explorers, taking it personally. Thanks to him, Earth has located dozens of worlds, some of them had been observed through telescopes but have never been visited.

Jump engine technology was great to help a species bypass lightspeed limits, but the technology was limited, and they could only travel in one slice of the galaxy. The Underspace changed that.

And they discovered that many of those worlds had been inhabited, especially around the outer rim. All of the planets showed signs of ruined civilisations, some of them having tech levels close to the Minbari, others being in the stellar or atomic ages. But they were all gone, with debris littering the systems; shattered moon bases, pieces of space stations. All of the planets showed signs of orbital bombardments so powerful they had cracked the crust open, triggering violent volcanic eruptions, but the planets had healed and were liveable again.

IPX discovered dozens of worlds like this, and the mystery was solved when the Turners discovered a horrifying truth; the Vorlons, in an act of unimaginable arrogance and stupidity, had ripped open a hole into an alternative universe, releasing an older First One race, and started a genocidal rampage which the Vorlons, and other First One races were barely able to stop. From that point onwards, President Levy ordered no contact with humanity and the Vorlons, who had proven to be manipulative and untrustworthy.

Discovering there were First Ones and the story of how all but a few had remained in the Milky Way was a surprise, and as their secrets found their way beyond the Rim, albeit too late, they learnt of how the Vorlons and the Shadows, another race, had stayed behind to shepherd the younger races, of which humanity was a part of, but they used different approaches; the Vorlons valued order, obedience, and the Shadows encouraged wars, atrocities, pain and struggle. Chaos.

The Vorlons and the Shadows became obsessed with their roles, and eventually they began manipulating the races into fighting each other, hoping to prove who was right and who was wrong. It was so twisted and pathetic, the Turners and the small group in EarthGov couldn't believe it. They also discovered the Vorlons had uplifted several alien races over the centuries, giving them technologies as gifts, appearing as beings of light while they subtly altered their genetic structures so they would respond favourably towards the older race without caring what the long-term costs were.

In fact, both races were responsible for manipulating the genetics of other races; the Vorlons, to the shock of EarthGov, were the ones behind the mysterious creation of the telepaths who had appeared out of nowhere a century before. It had been discovered that humans had natural telepathic abilities, but nobody had unlocked them.

And then something, or someone, did.

Now they knew who it was. All the time, the Vorlons and the Shadows manipulated dozens of races.

Many of these races had died, and the Minbari were just the latest in a very long line. Every thousand years or so, the Shadows and the Vorlons would stage one of their wars, both fighting with the galaxy acting like a chessboard. And the younger races were just pawns.

By this point, Levy was becoming increasingly worried and she shared her concerns with everyone else.

-8-

"We cannot let this happen," she was saying during one of the meetings. "Is there any way we can prevent ourselves from being used?"

"The planets we're settling thanks to the Underspace won't do any good," General Hague replied. "The Vorlons were able to reach that part of the galaxy effortlessly. They can do it again."

"We know they target races who veer from the path of the First Ones, believing it to be the one and only true way to develop, but how far does their manipulation go with us anyway?" A Brazilian senator asked. Many other senators had been brought into the discovery of the Time Machine project.

"We know they are the ones who manipulated our genome so there would be telepaths," Holly spoke up. "There's probably other work that's been done beyond that, we just don't know what it is, or how to remove it."

"Can it be safely removed, without causing any genetic damage?" A Japanese senator asked in concern.

"I don't know, I'm not a geneticist, and the details have been passed on already," Holly assured her.

"I think we're shifting from our main concerns, the war with the Minbari, and the colonisation of the other side of the galaxy," Senator Clark interrupted tightly. "How is that going?"

Holly bit her tongue, disliking the man's manner and his attitude. She had met this man more than once recently over the last 3 months. And he was constantly pressuring her and her father to give them the means to win the war, forgetting that Earth was still being pushed further and further.

General Leftcourt sighed wearily, not bothering to hide his exhaustion and fatigue. "I can answer the Minbari side, they're pushing us harder than ever. The databases we downloaded from the Centauri and the Dilgar, and some of the knowledge we collected from other races, like the Ikarrans, they've helped us slow down the advance, but that's it."

"And the colonisation?" Hidoshi whispered, but everyone heard.

"More and more shuttles and liners are leaving for the Outer Rim. So many we're focusing more on refugee ships rather than Starfuries," General Hague finished. "We stepped up the evacuation from the colonies when we realised that the Minbari weren't going to stop."

"Have we begun studying First Ones and organic technologies?" Levy asked.

"We've got researchers going over them now, Madam President, but we're still a long way from fully understanding it. We've drafted in biologists, xenogeneticists, and dozens of other experts to helping us, but we're rushing them around the clock despite slowly understanding how it works, but it will take a long time to fully understand organic technology before we can use it for ourselves," an IPX researcher whom Holly hadn't seen before now replied.

Levy sighed, but she didn't seem interested in ordering IPX to push it further. "Just get them to do the best they can. We all know the Minbari are funnelling all of their forces into the advance. Have we truly stopped using hyperspace yet?"

Leftcourt smiled. "The switchover to Underspace hasn't been easy, but now only a third of our fleet is using hyperspace. But we estimate we only have another two months to go before we've stopped using hyperspace entirely. Earthforce has been mining hyperspace with clusters of nukes, even going behind Minbari lines to cause as much damage as possible, and they have," the general finished triumphantly.

"Are you sure of that?"

"How many Minbari casualties?"

"Yes, we're sure, and we're not sure how many Minbari casualties there are, but intelligence informs us the Minbari have lost thousands of their people, but even they're unsure if they're dead or if the blasts swept some of them off course, or deep into the gravitational inclines," Leftcourt admitted.

Holly shuddered at the thought. Everyone knew how unstable hyperspace was, despite the necessity of needing to use it to travel. If you triggered a battle in hyperspace then you would be sucked into the depths of the alternative dimension. Earthforce no longer cared as they had discovered Underspace, so the risk of fighting in hyperspace was minimal, and if lives were lost they wouldn't care unless a human life was in jeopardy.

Holly had to tune herself back into the conversation. "There's something else," Leftcourt was saying, "we've been experimenting with robots, androids, AI, and drones. We've already started rushing automated ships into production."

"What good would that do?"

Holly frowned, thinking the question was more than a little naive and very stupid. Drones had been used in the military for years, although this was the first time she'd heard of them being used like this, but if they could design and launch automated drones against the Minbari, battles would be fought with expendable weapons instead of sending hundreds of soldiers to their deaths.

Hague's expression was a professional mask, clearly indicating what he personally thought of the question. "We're hoping by sending fleets of automated warships, we can ensure the survival of hundreds of our soldiers and crews."

"This is all well and good, but will all of this be enough to slow the Minbari down, or stop them?"

"To be honest, we don't know. The databases have saved lives and have helped us win dozens of battles, but the Minbari have been putting more and more pressure into the war effort on the front lines," an Earthforce official replied.

Levy sighed. "I suppose this is the best we can do," she admitted wearily before she exhaled slowly as she began making her decisions. "Continue to send as many of our people off to the Outer Rim; even if we can't stop them down, if they succeed in making it to Earth and destroying our home, we can still save our civilisation and our cultures."