For me, the last four weeks have been extremely challenging. It looked like I was going to live out the rest of my life, alone, on a desolate plateau, on some random planet far from the Federation. I can’t even put into words how heartbroken and frightened that made me feel. For as far as I could see, it was just me and the grass, the cliffs, the ocean, the cold, the storms…. just me and a few small animals. You don’t truly realize how blessed you are, until you have nothing but a tattered uniform on your back, and whatever tools you can make out of rocks and grass. But, I survived. I made it back to the Enterprise.
I will never again take for granted this life that I have been given.
I can only hope the rest of our away team survived – somewhere out there, and that whatever planets they arrived on, they don’t have to go through anything as desolate as I did – or, as I suppose I am, right now, considering the fact that I came back in time via the “Guardian of Forever” (after three weeks on that planet), and the earlier me is still on that planet, starting week 2 of his – my – survival experience.
Week 2 was brutal for me. Absolutely brutal.
But, I’m home, I’m warm, and I am in the company of friends I never thought I’d see again. I am lucky, blessed, and humbled beyond anything that I could ever imagine.
I’m home. I’m safe. I won’t die alone, on an abandoned planet in the cosmos.
-Lieutenant Sam Archer
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November 4, 2364 -- (Original Devron Timeline)