In Search of Lost Time: A log of Drogan Aklar

Posted on Fri Apr 25th, 2025 @ 2:55pm by Ensign Riya Aklar

3,616 words; about a 18 minute read

“In Search of Lost Time”
Professor Drogan Aklar, Lt. Cmdr., ret.
USS Bonhomme Richard-B
SD: 78284.8 (April 14, 2401)

“Time comes and goes,
But all the while
I still think of you.
Some things last a long time.

Your picture is still
On my wall, on my wall
The colors are bright.
Bright as ever.

The things we did, I can’t forget.
Some things last a lifetime.”

- Daniel Johnston, “Some Things Last A Long Time”

For a long time, Drogan wouldn’t go to bed early. Sometimes, the illumination in his quarters blaring, his eyes would remain open until he had to tell himself “You need to fall asleep.” That’s how he found himself sitting alone in the Bonhomme Richard’s Observation Lounge after hours. He sat hunched over the table reading a padd in the low light of the quiet shipboard night; the streaks of light dilated by the warp field providing a subtle strobe in the lonely bar.

Holding the padd aloft in his left hand, his right hand dipped a slice of cong you bing into a mix of black vinegar and chili crisp. The scallion pancake had long been one of Drogan’s favorite foods, having spent considerable time in San Francisco’s Chinese restaurants while growing up and during his Academy years. The savory, chewy and crisp slice had been a staple food of late night studying, even later nights partying and duty shifts on some of his more boring missions. When he’d arrived on Starbase 80, he hadn’t anticipated finding a food court, let alone a cong you bing vendor. He’d once again become hooked on the savory street food. He was sure he’d be admonished at his next physical for eating too much of the pan fried bread.

He bit into another slice as he skimmed a digest of the latest articles in theoretical temporal physics. Mentally writing off the failed theories and crackpot theorists, he narrowed down the next lineup of articles he would be reviewing for the team back on SB80. Drogan was a typical procrastinator. He did his best work against a deadline, late at night and stacked against him. It pained Aklar and its many hosts, nearly all of whom were ardent organizers. Phaele, though, never met a deadline she didn’t miss, and that was the energy Drogan was bringing to this very late briefing.


Well, he supposed, it’s not a briefing if they get it after the meeting… Summary? Wrap-up? He dug through a few more abstracts, having to remind himself just how tedious this line of work could be.

He leaned back against his chair, swiveling his hips, momentarily annoyed to find his chair didn’t spin. He dabbed another pancake triangle into the sauce and idly waved it in the air. Without realizing it, but for what felt like the millionth time in his life, he drew the image of a chroniton in the air before him with the saucy end. “Theta equals 3x2(9YZ)4A,” he said aloud, absently. A well trod mantra.

Drogan had never intended to be a temporal physicist. Never intended to be so obsessed with the concept of time. He had been a generalist in the sciences throughout his career. His years of study at Leran Manev University in physics and biology augmented by Berin’s socio-economic background, Eurid’s engineering skill and Seris’s mechanical knowhow. But that particle had changed the arc of his life.

It was a day like no other, a day where he witnessed that reality could be changed on a whim. A snap of fingers, an off hand remark and he was one of the last individuals in the universe to remember that time was a tangible thing, a fundamental force of the universe. Afraid that he’d forget, as soon as he reached the Potemkin, Drogan broke for his quarters, dragging a pane of transperisteel behind him. He drew the figure of a chroniton particle. He wrote out the formula. He willed all five of the minds swirling within him to remember. For years, he and a select few of the ‘Tem’s crew remembered that time was a force that could be changed. Drogan had even been able to develop a brute force temporal scanner for the ship. Though, it more accurately scanned for the absence of chronitons then for their presence.

An extra-dimensional tribunal removed time travel from the equation of the universe for many years. And in many ways, he was the torchbearer. Someone who could find the missing piece and lead them on a path to restoring it. When time was eventually restored, he retained a vague sensitivity to time effects. He was sometimes aware when large scale events were… different. He didn’t retain specifics, unless he was personally involved, but he could tell when things were off. And that made him a desirable addition to a temporal physics team.

Thinking about the tribunal and the particle, he stood up and moved to the observation windows of the lounge, finding some comfort in the warp field distortion. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned into the arch.

If he were to be more honest with himself, what really drove him into the arms of temporal science was guilt. That day, that moment, was seared into his mind, making paradox and lost time his life’s work. Drogan had stared a good man in the eyes, begged him to hold out hope, to wait just one more minute for Warp or Ceja or he to solve the problem. And then he realized he had lied to him, was lying to him, would always be lying to him.

Perhaps Drogan had also been lying to himself.

Tyler. He had stood on the brink of existence and told Tyler Arnet that it would be all right, they would find a way. And then Tyler disappeared before their eyes. Tyler had been his friend, someone he respected, cared for and continued to miss. His friend was a complicated space-time event, never meant to exist. Indeed, his very existence necessitated the erasure of someone else from reality, his own brother, Thomas Arnet. The moral quandary he, Warp, Jayla and Ceja found themselves in, missing Thomas, knowing he was lost to them, but wanting Tyler to stay, and that he would need to be gone… it broke them. When Tyler disappeared, Thomas was back. And they had to live with what had happened to their friend, so that someone they loved could return. They all lost something, a friend, Tyler, but they all lost a piece of themselves at the same time.

A decade later, while he’d come to live with it, he still struggled with rationalizing it. He lied to Tyler. Not by choice, rather by circumstance, but he let the man down. And it tore at him. He very nearly swore off his science life, even came within inches of erasing his drawing of the chrontion. And for a while, he tried to get past it. The return of Thomas allayed some of his regret. But it still played at his mind. Phaele and Berin did the most to talk to him about it, Aklar working to help his host understand what happened.

The memory remained. He stood, staring at his friend, and told him it would be all right while forces beyond their comprehension rooted him out of existence. Powerless, lost.

In the moment, he regarded his knuckles. It had been years, but he swore he could still see the abrasions from when he lashed out. Despondent and destroyed, he had no other recourse when Tyler disappeared. He ran forward and rained punches on the Guardian of Forever. The torus of stone, immutable, unmoved by his cries, stood there as he whaled at it. Stony in its silence. It was all he could do, because there was nothing he could do. He finally collapsed into Ceja’s arms, awash in tears, hands bloodied. The pain made him feel and he had to feel to deal with the loss of Tyler.

For a while, he stayed doing science on the Potemkin. He found solace in his friends, in Teagan. Just the thought of her sent ripples through his mind, through Aklar. Their’s was an unlikely connection, romance, relationship. And yet, it made too much sense. He unconsciously traced the scar on his forearm where he took a knife to rescue her. Despite himself, he smiled. She was a bright spot in his life and one of the few people who truly understood what they went through. Perhaps, she was one of the few who truly understood him. Understood the mess of Drogan, the order of Aklar and all the personalities in between.

Their on-again-off-again-on-again whatever-you-want-to-call-it continued and they were good together. They were broken in complementary ways and they could complete each other, like a kintsugi bowl whose cracks were filled with gold. But they would also drift, an ebb and flow.

Eventually, shipboard science wasn’t enough for him. He couldn’t find the answers he was looking for here. Admittedly, the question was “Why did that brunette take Tyler away?” The answer was evident, but like so many answers, unsatisfying. So he played a card that had been dealt to him by his sister. She made him aware of an academic position he was the right fit for on their homeworld, one she’d been holding for time. So, he retired his commission with StarFleet and took a lecturer position at Leran Manev University in theoretical physics. And for a while, the challenge of teaching, the research in the off hours, the ability to do more to solve the question of time, was freeing. He was happy. Despite him now living on Trill Prime, he and Ceja made attempts to make whatever they had work. Eventually, though, it was unfair to her, to both of them and they amicably parted. Semi-parted? Stayed entwined? Separate. Though there was the odd week on Risa, a weekend in San Fran, a night on Ferenginar. Broken. But complementary.

And then one afternoon, he became aware that something changed. He wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but he was suddenly aware of a place, a mission, that hadn’t been there before. In fact, it had been there since before the chroniton incident. That couldn’t be the case. Of course, time was fungible. So anything could happen and change. If he hadn’t been there when time was taken away, if he hadn’t been there when time was corrected, he wouldn’t notice. But now he did. He never tracked down the actual incipient cause of the change. But he was starting to find little pieces. A history that wasn’t there, just a little changed from what he remembered. As if some fixed point in time far in the future required some changes in the past to flow for it to happen. Some far off discovery on a strange new world, made by someone from as high up as Picard or down to some prodigy on the lower decks.

Drogan used his connections in StarFleet, including his own family, and was able to find out about a top secret project, based out of an aged space station. A project with implications for space as well as time. And so, after closing out the semester a year ago, he made the first initial trek to Starbase 80. He was welcomed into the program as an advisor, someone who had preternatural sensitivity to time and its effects. For the past year, he was helping them chart major changes to the established timeline. And this era was rife with temporal fingerprints.

In the short time working on 80, he’d made some interesting findings. And he was starting to build toward a theory. But there was something that nagged at him. He couldn’t find Tyler. No hints, no references beyond the same story: Tyler Arnet died, inspiring his brother Thomas to enter StarFleet. A fixed point in time. As if Tyler could exist only as backstory for others. It had done little to assuage his guilt, but the scientists he worked with led him to believe in the vast infinity before them, Tyler could be found. Somewhere, sometime. He was gearing up to ask for his commission back, to get involved in StarFleet again. To not just be a researcher, an advisor, but to plunge into this newest frontier headlong.

It was by chance that this same desire to rejoin StarFleet coincided with Frontier Day. Aklar had been invited to attend two events in the days following the fleet ceremony. So he found himself here, being transported away from Starbase 80 to attend the Frontier Day Festivities.

Berin Aklar had written extensively of the early Federation. This included his seminal treatise, Four Species, Five Cultures, One Nation, both an entho-history of the Federation’s first 30 years and a paean for Trill to join the Federation. He was being invited to attend a lecture series on his works at StarFleet Academy. It was being billed as a way to celebrate how the opening of Earth’s frontier led to the formation of the Federation and the various members who came with it.

Aklar was also invited to officially unveil the recent restoration of Phaele’s Reflections on the Bonhomme Richard. The seven-meter long abstract painting was displayed in the atrium of Command, Phaele had donated it to commemorate the decommissioning of the ship some 80 years ago.

It was no mere chance that he was being escorted to Earth on the latest iteration of that namesake. Berin’s final journey after accepting Trill’s membership in the Federation took place on the Bonhomme Richard, Eurid had been part of the Constitution-class refit project whose test bed was the Richard, Seris served as its Chief Engineer, Phaele was at the ship’s decommissioning and completed her mural three years later. Volen and Drogan had only ever been on the Bonhomme Richard-A once or twice, passing through, but they all touched a version of the ship in their lives. He now found himself sitting alone in the forward lounge of the new Ross-class Richard-B, contemplating the line of his lives.

Alone, of course, was subjective for a Trill. Against all his training and the rules of the Symbiosis Commission, Drogan had steadily increased his ability to tap into his past hosts. Initially, he would lose some of his autonomic functions or lose consciousness after a short period of channeling a former host, but he’d mastered the ability in the last few years. On a whim, he could “conjure” Phale from Aklar. To his eyes, she’d be sitting there across from him, her improbably large glasses, angular haircut and perennially bare feet tucked under her. They could talk and interact in ways he hadn’t imagined when he was first joined. It was imaginary, a product of his mind imposing the image unto reality while they interacted internally.

She was “with” him now, always the closest to the surface. She hadn’t said anything, she just was there, sitting as if she was listening to a story. He “felt” her hand on his, it was oddly reassuring. He sat back and looked out at the windows, breathing in. Phaele broke the silence, “You brought me here. You aren’t even going to talk?”

“I just…” he trailed off, staring at where his mind saw her but he also knew it was an empty chair. “You feel things so much better than I ever did. I just want to sit being you for a bit. Just to see it from your perspective.” He grinned. “Plus, you have bangs when I see things through you. They wiggle when you move.”

She laughed, which really meant Drogan was feeling relieved. He said goodnight to her and breathed out, letting the projection go. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, finished his food and stood up to leave. They’d be at Earth in a few hours and they’d be participating in some fleet exercise before he beamed down to Command. Admittedly, he was fuzzy on the specifics of exactly what the Fleet was meant to be doing. Top secret. Though Volen had his suspicions based on the press clippings. He’d been putting off channeling Berin to write a keynote for the lecture series, much to Berin’s annoyance. Perhaps he should do that before turning in.

He smoothed down his rumpled shirt and tossed his jacket over his shoulder and walked out, placing his tray back into the replicator as he did. Catching a glimpse of the shipboard clock, he whistled at the hours it related back to him. Very late, Drogan, he chided himself. He wandered idly down the corridor, seemingly trying to put off returning to his room, lest he have to acknowledge all the next few days would bring.

His guest quarters were very well appointed but had that air of artificiality that all liminal spaces have. Neither home nor hostel. And so he avoided it. The hum and buzz of the ship felt almost primal in the dimmer lighting of shipboard night. As if the ship were breathing. That’s when the Lieutenant coming down the hallway drew his attention. She had just backed out of a jeffries tube. A bit late for repair work, if he really thought about it, but who knew on ships like these. Seris did his best work at night.

Her head was down as she marched forward, oblivious to the rest of the world, a single-minded focus. Drogan nodded at her and hadn’t planned to think anymore about it as his hand hovered his door button.

But his hand stayed in place, he pushed against his own muscles to try and press the button. It’s her.

Drogan snapped his head and looked around. The voice was in his head, but he couldn’t quite place what it was asking. Drogan… it’s her. It said again. Volen’s voice. And there was something about it. He turned his head and regarded the officer slowly leaving his vision. There was something that Aklar recognized…

And without saying it, he felt his mouth formulate words, project sound. “Suh-suh-Sattaro!” Drogan’s mind suddenly lurched into focus. Had Volen just asserted himself into his body? Fascinating. But even more so… Volen saying the name jogged his memory. And he was taken aback. The woman who passed him did bear a resemblance…

NO! I know my daughter’s face, Drogan. It’s her.

But that couldn’t be. Sattaro died. More than a decade ago. Before he could think anymore about it, he could feel the pressure in his midsection. Volen was attempting to take him for a ride. Not wanting to hurt Volen or Aklar, Drogan shook his head and jogged after the retreating lieutenant. She hadn’t heard or hadn’t acknowledged the call.

Clearing his throat, Drogan regained control. “Uh, excuse me! Miss! Lieutenant.” She paused mid-stride as Drogan ran up behind her. He nearly barreled her over as he came to a stop. “Ahh, oh, sorry!” He feigned discombobulation and emergency to take her in. He also opened his mind and pulled on Volen’s security skills.

She was wearing a modern uniform, operations gold. From her neck up was a pattern of Trill spots. While Aklar retained much of his hosts’ personalities and memories, he couldn’t be certain that Volen’s recollection of the spot pattern would hold any clues. Drogan imagined the woman thought he was letching after her as he stared at her neck and followed the line of spots up into her mid-length, dark hair.

“What do you want, visitor?” she said in a voice he didn’t recognize. But then his eyes crossed her face. The rounded jaw terminated in a graceful, imperious point. The subtle taper of her almond eyes, the dark brown of her irises. Sayana’s nose, Volen said, remembering the features of his wife. Drogan only knew the face from a file photo. But he could hold Volen’s many thoughts in his hands, and this was indeed the same face. The face of his daughter, Volen’s daughter.

“Umm, are you… does the name Sattaro Taeno mean anything to you?”

The eyes of the person in front of him fluttered, a look of confusion and annoyance crossed her face. “No, sir, it does not. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m on duty.” She made to turn away but Volen asserted himself again. I’d know that cross look anywhere, Drogan. It’s her. I know she’s dead but…

Drogan could hear the pleading in Volen’s voice. He knew what it was like to be haunted by a face. He knew how much he - they - wanted a second chance…

“If you’re not Sattaro Taeno, then why are you wearing her face?”

=/\= To be continued =/\=


This log is a sequel to “Some Things Last A Long Time,” a 2014 log in which Drogan first draws the chroniton particle. It also contains elements repurposed from an unfinished log, “Time Makes Fools of Us All,” that has been sitting in my Gmail drafts folder since 2014. Both are bookends to the Tyler Arnet affair. This log is also, improbably, a sequel to - and a retcon of - the log “I Regret to Inform…” from 2012. With thanks to Mike Mahan and the Lower Decks team for providing the right ribbon to tie this all together.

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