How could I resist an invitation to go on a Space Mission, to go where no man has gone before, to explore new planets and civilizations, to reach for the stars!
We arrived at the Space Port Docking Center and were escorted to a briefing room where we were told that we had been assigned to the UCS Columbia (a Federation Space Ship). Our mission was going to be to the Ronodov Nebula, where a "Top Secret" research station was located; but all communications with the Station had been lost. Apparently, the research station was so classified that only the President and a few of his staff even knew that the station existed. We were told that the Secretary of Defense wanted to join the mission and would meet us aboard the ship before we departed.
After transporting up to the ship's bridge, we found a variety of activity in process as the support crew was preparing the ship for departure. The crew for this mission was personally selected by the Captain, but not necessarily familiar with the Columbia, so the Captain assigned everyone to a position on the bridge and each staff member was given a brief training session on how to operate the equipment at their station. I was assigned to be the Medical Officer and found my duty station, which was at the far end of the bridge on the lower level. We were instructed to log into our computer and get familiar with the various drop-down menus available for our individual job functions. The Officers that controlled the ship's power thrusters and navigation systems were given extra training because we were told that on a previous mission one of the crew members accidently pressed the warp speed thruster button while the ship was still in the docking station - they have never found the space ship or part of the docking station.
I logged into the computer at the Medical Station and discovered that I had access to two different drop down menus - one menu contained instructions for medical procedures and the other menu was for ordering supplies. Checking the supplies menu I discovered that I could order a lot more than just medical supplies. Actually, I could order anything I wanted. So, I decided to see how well the system worked by ordering a case of phasers and had them delivered to Deck 6. However, before I could check to see if Deck 6 received the order, a doctor from the Space Port delivered a bag full of medical supplies to my station, which I thought was strange because I already had a bag of medical supplies. I remembered seeing this same scenario on a Star Trek movie, and the doctor was really a spy and the medical bag contained a bomb; so I borrowed a phaser and told the phony doctor to reach for the stars. (I had to borrow the phaser because according to the Geneva Convention doctors can not carry weapons. I just told the person that lent me the weapon that I was going to use it for "preventive medicine.") The Captain came over and looked in the bag and discovered that it was full of -- medical supplies. I told the Captain that there must be something hidden in the bag because I saw this scenario in a movie. He told me to just go back to my station and look busy.
The Captain then announced that we were one person short on the Bridge and there was no one to operate the Short Range Communication equipment. He wanted to know if anyone had any communication equipment experience, so I raised my hand and told him that I once owned a CB radio. With a puzzled look on his face he asked: "What is a CB radio?" He then asked me if I knew Twitter, Linkedln, Tumblr, or Flickr and I had to admit that I had never met those people. For some reason, he decided to have the Long Rang Communications Officer also operate the Short Range equipment.
In the mean time, it was total chaos on the bridge. The Secretary of Defense showed up several times to check on the mission progress and every time he showed up everyone had to stand up, then sit down, then stand up , then sit down, etc. Finally, the Captain just told everyone to just stand up until they finished the training session and we could move the ship out of the docking station. To add to the noise level, the ship's main computer kept talking to everyone at the same time and then got into an altercation with one of the crew members over a printer that wouldn't work. (It turned out that the printer power button was turned to the "off" position.)
To make matters worse, the head of Security (the Captain's older brother) was all over the bridge trying to give everyone directions and advice, which were often different than what the Captain was trying to accomplish. The Captain ordered the head of Security back to his station several times and told him to be quiet, but the head of Security did not follow the Captain's directions. Much to the surprise of everyone on the bridge, the Captain then pulled out his phaser, zapped his own brother, and had him thrown in the brig. And, all of this happened while we were still docked to the Space Port. Needless to say, everyone suddenly became much more attentive and the ship was able to leave the docking station.
Shortly after undocking, the navigator plotted a course for the Ronodov Nebula and we made a jump to hyper space at warp speed. The viewing screen at the front of the ship looked just like you see in the movies - first there were stars and when we hit warp speed there were just straight white lines where the stars had been located.
While we were cruising at warp speed I had a few minutes to visit with the First Officer and learned that he and the Captain had been on several other space missions together; thus, the Captain had picked him to be First Officer as a replacement in case the Captain became incapacitated in any way. I realized that he probably did not know about all of my space experiences and SAC training in the Air Force, so I asked him if he knew why the Captain had picked me to go on the mission. He looked kind of puzzled, and then he said "I think it was because you were the only one old enough to drive us to the Space Port." I decided it was time to visit the head of Security in the brig to see how he was doing.
The head of Security was still out, so I gave him a zap with my special medical tool that would heal everything and he immediately woke up. After checking his pulse he seemed fine, so I let him out of the brig and sent him back to his work station, after giving him a "pep talk" about how to take orders from the Captain..
About this time we arrived at the Ronodov Nebula. However, on the front viewer we could see that there was an asteroid belt between our ship and the space station and we would have to negotiate our way through it. The Captain ordered the ship to proceed through asteroid belt slowly so that we would not contact any of the large asteroids. Unfortunately, the Computer kept giving navigational directions in " port" and "starboard;" which was really confusing to "left" and "right" brained people. Then, unfortunately, someone accidently pressed the warp drive button instead of the directional thruster button. Have you ever seen an asteroid coming at you at warp speed? We didn't either, but everything went totally black for several seconds before the Supreme Creator told us over the intercom that we would be allowed one chance to backup in time and restart our journey though the asteroid belt. The Captain was then severely chastised by the Creator for crashing the ship and told there would be substantial penalties inflicted upon the captain and crew if we made another mistake.
On our second attempt we made it through the asteroid belt safely and arrived at the space station. The entire space station appeared dark and lifeless, and we could not get a response from the space station using our Short Range communication equipment. Therefore, the Captain decided that the bridge crew would beam down to the space station to determine why they were not responding and to check the space station's computer memory for any data that could be salvaged.
Arriving at the space station, we found that the crew were all dead, but the ship's computer was still operational, so the computer's memory was downloaded onto a storage device that we could take back to the Columbia.
We had just arrived back at the Columbia and downloaded the data from the space station's computer when we were attacked by unknown assailants that had beamed aboard our vessel. The attackers then kidnapped the Secretary of Defense and beamed back to their ship before we could stop them.
Suddenly a space rupture opened, and the alien ship disappeared through the rupture.
The Captain ordered everyone back to their duty stations, so that we could give chase and rescue the Secretary before the rupture closed.
Although the alien ship had a head start, the Captain directed us to follow the same path through the space rupture, even though we did not know what was on the other side.
The trip through the rupture was really a rough ride with everything bouncing around and all of the ship's warning systems were on high alert. Red lights were flashing and loud horns were blasting away to warn of potential structural failures to the ship's integrity. Because the Medical Station was adjacent to the Communication Station, the Captain told me to call Earth and report our situation, but I replied"Captain! I'm a Doctor, not a Communication expert! You will have to get someone else!"
Somehow we made it through the rupture, but once on the other side, none of our communication devices worked and we did not know where we were at.
We finally found a planet that looked just like Earth, but it wasn't the Earth that we came from. The Captain told us that we probably found an alternate reality, so we decided to beam down to the surface to see what we could find..
After everyone arrived at the surface, we regrouped and started to explore the planet; but, we were immediately surrounded by soldiers that captured us and took us to their leader. The Captain kept trying to explain that we were from an alternate reality, but the soldiers kept asking us questions about the history of our planet. After some explanations from the crew comparing our planet to their planet, it became apparent that the histories of both planets were exactly the same up to the Cold War era with Russia. On their planet, the Russians won the Cold War and now controlled the entire world, but the group that captured us were Freedom Fighters that had been Americans and wanted to return democracy to the people. Unfortunately, the Russians had recently started building eight-foot-tall mechanical Uries that were going to be used to hunt down the Freedom Fighters.
The Freedom Fighters said that they could recreate the space rupture so that we could get back home, if we would first help them destroy the Urie factory and eliminate their General. Since we didn't have any other choice, we agreed to help them.
Once back on the Columbia we went to the coordinates provided and beamed down to the Urie factory. The lighting in the factory was very dim, but at the far end of the room we could see the General giving orders to the Uries. As our eyes became accustomed to the low light, we couldn't believe what we saw - the Urie General was the Secretary of Defense that we had brought to the space station! About this time the General realized that we were in the factory and everyone immediately began firing laser weapons. Just when we thought we were going to be overrun, the Freedom Fighters showed up and joined in the fight. The Captain ordered everyone back to the ship because the Freedom Fighters were going to detonate a bomb that would destroy the factory and reopen the space rupture.
We had just reached the Columbia when the space rupture opened, so we immediately negotiated our ship through the rupture and then found ourselves back at the asteroid belt. The Captain ordered the ship to set a course for Earth and to proceed at warp speed. Within a few minutes we were back at the Space Port.
At our debriefing, we all received commendations for a job well done! (And, birthday cupcakes from the Captain's Mother!)
End of Mission!
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