On October 29, our Enterprise Away team discovered a control room on the surface of the dead planet of Iconia. Inside that room was a series of operations consoles. Lieutenant Dexter Ridden, one of our away team engineers, inadvertently activated a console, and it powered up the entire room. At that moment, a purple-blue portal flickered into existence, and we witnessed the opening of an "Iconian Gateway". I had my digital camera with me, so I took a few pictures.
The photo (above) shows the first planet location that the portal revealed. The architecture on the other side looks like an Ancient Greek or Roman ruin to me. That style of ancient architecture is only found on Earth, so I have wonder.... did this "Iconian Gateway" lead back to Earth? And if it did, could the theories about the Ancient Humans who left Earth -- before the Biblical Flood -- be true? And did they establish a portal that allowed them to return?
Or was this just a random connection to Earth that had nothing to do with the Iconians?
After it was opened, the "Iconian Gateway" started cycling through a variety of locations every minute or so. I don't know if this was intended behavior, or if it was an accidental result of the functions Lieutenant Ridden had activated. One of the next locations to appear (above) looked like stone city structures on some desert planet. I didn't recognize the imagery, but I am certain that it isn't a place I'd want to visit.
This subsequent gateway location (above) shows a cloudy beach on another planet somewhere. What caught my attention (unseen in this photo) were the people on the beach. They looked Human, and were all wearing swimsuits similar to those worn on Earth. The group I saw looked like a family preparing to leave the beach before a storm rolled in. I doubt they had any idea that our away team was watching them -- from a completely different planet light years away.
After a few more planet locations appeared, our away team must have activated a bad sequence of commands, because the entire control room went into lock-down, sealing the doors, and trapping us inside. Our tricorders registered a massive power overload -- most likely from the malfunctioning control room equipment, so, with nowhere else to go, Lieutenant Idella Haas ordered us all to go through the portal, and find our way home from wherever it sent us.
Unfortunately, the portal locations had begun fluctuating more rapidly at this point. It was almost certain that we wouldn't all arrive on the same planet. The three Starfleet officers that stepped through the gateway before me probably arrived at the same place. I caught a glimpse of the planet on the other side -- it showed a vast forest. The next two officers who stepped through (one of whom was Lieutenant Ridden) went somewhere else -- all I could see was a sunny ocean beach on the other side. I stepped through, and ended up on the planet I'll show you tomorrow.
I don't know where Lieutenant Commander Haas or the two Marines, that were with us in the control room, went -- or even if they survived the explosion. The overload hadn't reached critical yet when I stepped through, so there would still have been time for them to escape.
I spent three weeks on my deserted planet, and I had the lucky happenstance of finding the strange time travel device that called itself, "The Guardian of Forever". It sent me back to Iconia, three weeks earlier -- minutes after the explosion. I made it back to the Enterprise because I was lucky. I hope to God the rest of the away team is faring better than I did.
Time travel is extremely rare. Aside from the Enterprise, and our experience with the Devron Anomaly (and, of course, myself via this experience), there are no records of anyone else traveling through time. As far as I can tell, no one else has ever seen, discovered, or experienced the "Guardian of Forever". I'm the only one, and I don't even know where that planet is located. I could have been deep in the Delta Quadrant for all I know.
My heart goes out to the other members of our away team. I made it home; they're still out there somewhere. We'll find them. We have to. They're our crew. We won't leave them behind.
-Lieutenant Sam Archer
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November 7, 2364 -- (Original Devron Timeline)