#and so a scientific account of creation would only be relevant to one period of history

[apilgrimpassingby]

I was just wondering today:

Put your reasoning in the tags!

[fanexus-dot-net]

FAQ

What is the purpose of Fanexus?

Fanexus was originally conceived as a way to make it easier to organize fandom content. The founders are fans who have followed fandom activity as it has migrated across many different social media platforms, and found that none of them quite suited their needs. After spending years thinking about how each of these platforms could be altered to better support fandom activity, we eventually realized that we’d amassed the money, skills and connections to make a platform ourselves.  

Fanexus is also open to use by original creators; original works are where fandom begins, after all. Enthusiasts of non-media fandoms, such as people who are passionate about interests as broad as cooking, crafting, interior decorating, brewing, extreme sports, rock collecting, history, model-building, archaeology, philosophy, etc, are also all welcome to use Fanexus as a place to post about and discuss their interests and ideas. Fanexus can be used for any type of interest so long as it doesn’t violate our rules regarding legality, harassment and hate speech.

While we originally wanted to create Fanexus as a means to better organize our content, as we’ve watched toxicity in fandom grow to increasingly alarming levels in the last few years, we’ve decided that making Fanexus a space that actively opposes this toxicity is a goal of equal importance to us. We want Fanexus to be a place where people can explore weird, complex and dark things in art and fiction without being accused of endorsing those things, and can have nuanced discussions and debates without things immediately devolving into insults and dogpiling.  

You can read more about the philosophy driving Fanexus here.

Why an integrated wiki?

We would like to go over some of the issues we’ve faced as fans that inspired the inclusion of the wiki:

There are a lot of fandoms that have very complex fanon worldbuilding/terminology/characterisations/etc, and this can be very confusing for a new fan. The way we have the wiki set up means that users will be able to go straight from a post that mentions those concepts to the wiki page for those concepts (we’ll elaborate on how this works in a later post dedicated to this feature), instead of having to search through other parts of the internet for an up-to-date fanon wiki for this fandom. We feel like people will be more likely to keep these wiki pages updated than they would if it were an external wiki, because once they have accounts on Fanexus, it will be very easy to quickly go and update a wiki page on the site, rather than going and creating a new account for a separate wiki.

In a similar vein, fandoms can produce very interesting AUs that many different fans contribute to. We’ve had the experience of coming across a piece of artwork or fiction based on one of these AUs and wanting to know more, but then finding it very difficult to track down information that explains what the AU is about, and people’s various different takes on it. We thought that by providing a wiki feature, people could create pages for each of these AUs and then update them as they develop. The AU itself may not be complex enough to justify the creation of an entire wiki for it, but having a page or two dedicated to it could certainly be helpful. The same logic applies to things such as OCs.  

People develop their own personal headcanons which can be very complex, and it can be tiresome to have to explain them over and over. So if users can create wiki pages for each of their headcanons (or AUs, OCs, etc) and link them whenever they’re necessary to understand the context of say, a fic they wrote or a piece of art they made, it could save them a lot of bother. Personal wiki pages won’t be available on launch, but we’re endeavouring to add them as soon as we can.

Can you tell us more about your other features?

Details of the features we’ve announced so far can be found here. 

We intend to add new features to Fanexus to improve our users’ experiences for as long as we have the funding to do so. We endeavour to add features that are highly demanded by our userbase, so long as the features in question are within our legal and technical capabilities to implement, and align with the philosophy of Fanexus.

How is this being funded? Will it be free to use?

Right now the beta is being paid for by the founders. Once the beta is online and in use, we plan to have a Kickstarter to fund the development of additional features we couldn’t afford to include in the beta. Fanexus will be freemium, which means it will be free to use, with premium features such as added customisation, that will be used for the ongoing funding of the site.  

Will there be a mobile app?

Currently we have a responsive web app, but a mobile app is one of the first things we intend to develop should we get the required funding via the Kickstarter. 

What kind of customisation options will Fanexus have?

In the long term, we hope to introduce in-depth customisation options to Fanexus, some of which will be premium options. We will take feedback from our userbase to decide what customisation features we will prioritise implementing first.

Are all ships welcome on Fanexus?

Yes. We understand that the reasons someone may enjoy a ship can be very complex, unexpected and/or personal, and have nothing to do with a belief that the ship is healthy or a desirable relationship to have in reality. So long as a person understands the separation between fiction and reality, and knows what a healthy real life relationship is like, we maintain that they should be able to ship what they like. We just ask that they tag their content for people who wish to avoid it. This extends to the shipping of real life people, with the provision that if Fanexus gets a direct request from any of these real people asking to have shipping content of them removed, we will remove content containing them specifically, out of courtesy.

Is NSFW content allowed on Fanexus?

Fanexus welcomes NSFW content, simply requiring that it be tagged with an adult content warning so that it is hidden from underage users.

Our servers are currently hosted in Denmark, so content posted on Fanexus must abide by Danish law. 

Further details of what sort of content is and isn’t permitted on Fanexus will be outlined in our TOS, which will be shared prior to launch.

How old do you have to be to use Fanexus?

Fanexus will be 13+, with adults-only spaces. On sign up, users will be asked if they are over 18, and anyone who indicates that they are a minor will be required to enter their DOB. Posts and blogs that are marked as Adults Only will then be hidden from minor users until they turn 18. Minors found to be lying about their age to interact with adult content will be banned. We looked into ways we could have people prove their age on sign up, but we couldn’t find any practical, reliable method. People were uncomfortable with providing personal information, and given that many adults don’t have credit cards, while many minors borrow their guardians’ credit cards, having people make a credit card deposit to prove their age wasn’t a viable solution.

Will Fanexus be doing anything to protect minors?

We believe that the best form of protection against online dangers is education, and so we’re in the process of compiling educational resources to be made available on the site so that people are aware of what sort of red flags to look out for when it comes to a variety of online threats. We also want to provide information about the separation between fiction and reality, so that minors (or anybody impressionable) won’t misunderstand or be manipulated with fiction into thinking that unhealthy behaviors and attitudes presented in dark/complicated/self-indulgent fiction and art are acceptable in reality.

We currently have the following ideas for distributing this information:

We’ll have a staff blog that provides site updates, and also periodically posts articles containing this information.

We’ll keep a compilation of this information available on a page on the site, which will be easily accessible via the navigation bar.

Eventually we want to introduce a feature where if a user searches for particular keywords, a banner appears above the search results, linking to helpful/education information relevant to the keywords. The banner will be able to be hid so it doesn’t show up again in subsequent searches.

We will of course also have a mod team watching out for any reports of suspect behaviour that may be endangering minors (or any of our users), who will take action to neutralise these threats. Another feature we are planning to develop to help our mods protect minors is a keyword detector for comments and DMs. This will scan the comments and DMs of minor users for any keywords that suggest they may be being targeted, and send a warning to our mods to check up on them. 

What is your affiliation with the Prostasia Foundation?

The Prostasia Foundation is a child protection organization that adopts an evidence-based approach to child sexual abuse prevention, that respects human rights and is sex-positive. Being evidence-based means that their positions are based on scientific research. Fanexus reached out to Prostasia because we agree with these tenets, and wanted to find ways to create a safe space that doesn’t resort to censorship. Prostasia proved to be extremely helpful in this respect, offering us information on legality, the impact fiction actually has on reality, and effective methods to protect minors, all based on research. They have also offered to help us develop our keyword detector feature.

Prostasia has an Advisory Council made of voluntary, unpaid experts from relevant fields. These advisory members do not carry any vote or authority on deciding Prostasia policy, and the views that they express on social media or elsewhere are not necessarily representative of the views of the Prostasia Foundation. Fanexus’s point of contact with Prostasia has been with the Foundation’s Executive Director, and we have no affiliation with the members of their Advisory Council.  

Similarly, Fanexus has no vote or authority in deciding Prostasia policy, nor do we sign off on anything they publish, unless it directly references us. The reverse is also true, while Prostasia provides us with advice, they don’t sign off on all the decisions or statements made by Fanexus.

Are you trying to replace Archive of Our Own?

No. We love Archive of Our Own and we have tremendous respect for the Organisation for Transformative Works, but we can’t affiliate with them due to the rules that govern not-for-profit organisations. You will definitely be able to host fanfiction and original fiction on Fanexus, but we’re currently more focused on covering the areas that Archive of Our Own doesn’t already have great features for, such as providing a space where people can host art, have discussions, role play, and document information about their headcanons, worldbuilding, original characters, etc.

Will Fanexus be open to all or invite-only?

We want Fanexus to be open to all eventually, but we also anticipate that the sort of people who promote and thrive on fandom’s toxicity will sign-up with the express purpose of breaking the rules we put in place to protect people from them. To avoid that happening en masse on launch, Fanexus will initially be invite-only. Once we have an established community of fans who can report trolls and other troublemakers, we will open Fanexus up.

In order to get an invite to Fanexus, you will need to apply via this form. If you are accepted, you will be emailed an invite (please check your junk mail) to our  Forum and Discord. Users of the Forum and Discord will be given priority invites to the site.

When’s the release?

As of the 29th of August, most of our initial features are finished, and are in the process of being bug-tested. We plan to start allowing users of our Forum/Discord on the site within the next month. Fanexus will open up to the public after the Forum/Discord users have thoroughly tested the capabilities of the site, and we’ve implemented any further features required to cover weaknesses they’ve found.

Are there other places I can follow Fanexus news?

We share updates on the following accounts:

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[rhetoricandlogic]

recommended by @marthawells

Fandom for Robots

BY VINA JIE-MIN PRASAD

Computron feels no emotion towards the animated television show titled Hyperdimension Warp Record (超次元 ワープ レコード). After all, Computron does not have any emotion circuits installed, and is thus constitutionally incapable of experiencing “excitement,” “hatred,” or “frustration.” It is completely impossible for Computron to experience emotions such as “excitement about the seventh episode of HyperWarp,” “hatred of the anime’s short episode length” or “frustration that Friday is so far away.”

Computron checks his internal chronometer, as well as the countdown page on the streaming website. There are twenty-two hours, five minutes, forty-six seconds, and twelve milliseconds until 2 am on Friday (Japanese Standard Time). Logically, he is aware that time is most likely passing at a normal rate. The Simak Robotics Museum is not within close proximity of a black hole, and there is close to no possibility that time is being dilated. His constant checking of the chronometer to compare it with the countdown page serves no scientific purpose whatsoever.

After fifty milliseconds, Computron checks the countdown page again.

The Simak Robotics Museum’s commemorative postcard set ($15.00 for a set of twelve) describes Computron as “The only known sentient robot, created in 1954 by Doctor Karel Alquist to serve as a laboratory assistant. No known scientist has managed to recreate the doctor’s invention. Its steel-framed box-and-claw design is characteristic of the period.” Below that, in smaller print, the postcard thanks the Alquist estate for their generous donation.

In the museum, Computron is regarded as a quaint artefact, and plays a key role in the Robotics Then and Now performance as an example of the “Then.” After the announcer’s introduction to robotics, Computron appears on stage, answers four standard queries from the audience as proof of his sentience, and steps off the stage to make way for the rest of the performance, which ends with the android-bodied automaton TETSUCHAN showcasing its ability to breakdance.

Today’s queries are likely to be similar to the rest. A teenage girl waves at the announcer and receives the microphone.

“Hi, Computron. My question is… have you watched anime before?”

[Yes,] Computron vocalises. [I have viewed the works of the renowned actress Anna May Wong. Doctor Alquist enjoyed her movies as a child.]

“Oh, um, not that,” the girl continues. “I meant Japanese animation. Have you ever watched this show called Hyperdimension Warp Record?”

[I have not.]

“Oh, okay, I was just thinking that you really looked like one of the characters. But since you haven’t, maybe you could give HyperWarp a shot! It’s really good, you might like it! There are six episodes out so far, and you can watch it on—”

The announcer cuts the girl off, and hands the microphone over to the next querent, who has a question about Doctor Alquist’s research. After answering two more standard queries, Computron returns to his storage room to answer his electronic mail, which consists of queries from elementary school students. He picks up two metal styluses, one in each of his grasping claws, and begins tapping them on the computing unit’s keyboard, one key at a time. Computron explains the difference between a robot and an android to four students, and provides the fifth student with a hyperlink to Daniel Clement Dennett III’s writings on consciousness.

As Computron readies himself to enter sleep mode, he recalls the teenage girl’s request that he “give HyperWarp a shot.” It is only logical to research the Japanese animation Hyperdimension Warp Record in order to address queries from future visitors. The title, when entered into a search engine on the World Wide Web, produces about 957,000 results (0.27 seconds).

Computron manoeuvres the mouse pointer to the third hyperlink, which offers to let him “watch Hyperdimension Warp Record FULL episodes streaming online high quality.” From the still image behind the prominent “play” button, the grey boxy figure standing beside the large-eyed blue-haired human does bear an extremely slight resemblance to Computron’s design. It is only logical to press the “play” button on the first episode, in order to familiarise himself with recent discourse about robots in popular culture.

The series’ six episodes are each approximately 25 minutes long. Between watching the series, viewing the online bulletin boards, and perusing the extensively footnoted fan encyclopedia, Computron does not enter sleep mode for ten hours, thirty-six minutes, two seconds, and twenty milliseconds.

Hyperdimension Warp Record (超次元 ワープ レコード Chōjigen Wāpu Rekōdo, literal translation: Super Dimensional Warp Record) is a Japanese anime series set in space in the far future. The protagonist, Ellison, is an escapee from a supposedly inescapable galactic prison. Joined by a fellow escapee, Cyro (short for Cybernetic Robot), the two make their way across the galaxy to seek revenge. The targets of their revenge are the Seven Sabers of Paradise, who have stolen the hyperdimensional warp unit from Cyro’s creator and caused the death of Ellison’s entire family.

Episode seven of HyperWarp comes with the revelation that the Second Saber, Ellison’s identical twin, had murdered their parents before faking her own death. After Cyro and Ellison return to the Kosmogram, the last segment of the episode unfolds without dialogue. There is a slow pan across the spaceship’s control area, revealing that Ellison has indulged in the human pastime known as “crying” before falling asleep in the captain’s chair. His chest binder is stained with blood from the wound on his collarbone. Cyro reaches over, gently using his grabbing claw to loosen Ellison’s binder, and drapes a blanket over him. An instrumental version of the end theme plays as Cyro gets up from his seat, making his way to the recharging bay at the back of the ship. From the way his footfalls are animated, it is clear that Cyro is trying his best to avoid making any noise as he walks.

The credits play over a zoomed-out shot of the Kosmogram making its way to the next exoplanet, a tiny pinpoint of bright blue in the vast blackness of space.

The preview for the next episode seems to indicate that the episode will focus on the Sabers’ initial attempt to activate the hyperdimensional warp unit. There is no mention of Cyro or Ellison at all.

During the wait for episode eight, Computron discovers a concept called “fanfiction.”

While “fanfiction” is meant to consist of “fan-written stories about characters or settings from an original work of fiction,” Computron observes that much of the HyperWarp fanfiction bears no resemblance to the actual characters or setting. For instance, the series that claims to be a “spin-off focusing on Powerful!Cyro” seems to involve Cyro installing many large-calibre guns onto his frame and joining the Space Marines, which does not seem relevant to his quest for revenge or the retrieval of the hyperdimensional warp unit. Similarly, the “high school fic” in which Cyro and Ellison study at Hyperdimension High fails to acknowledge the fact that formal education is reserved for the elite class in the HyperWarp universe.

Most of the fanfiction set within the actual series seems particularly inaccurate. The most recent offender is EllisonsWife’s “Rosemary for Remembrance,” which fails to acknowledge the fact that Cyro does not have human facial features, and thus cannot “touch his nose against Ellison’s hair, breathing in the scent of sandalwood, rosemary, and something uniquely him” before “kissing Ellison passionately, needily, hungrily, his tongue slipping into Ellison’s mouth.”

Computron readies his styluses and moves the cursor down to the comment box, prepared to leave anonymous “constructive criticism” for EllisonsWife, when he detects a comment with relevant keywords.

bjornruffian: Okay, I’ve noticed this in several of your fics and I was trying not to be too harsh, but when it got to the kissing scene I couldn’t take it anymore. Cyro can’t touch his nose against anything, because he doesn’t have a nose! Cyro can’t slip his tongue into anyone’s mouth, because he doesn’t have a tongue! Were we even watching the same series?? Did you skip all the parts where Cyro is a metal robot with a cube-shaped head?!

EllisonsWife: Who are you, the fandom police?? I’m basing Cyro’s design on this piece of fanart (link here) because it looks better than a freakin metal box!! Anyway, I put DON’T LIKE DON’T READ in the author’s notes!!! If you hate the way I write them so much, why don’t you just write your own????

Computron is incapable of feeling hatred for anything, as that would require Doctor Alquist to have installed emotion circuits during his creation.

However, due to Computron’s above-average procedural knowledge, he is capable of following the directions to create an account on fanficarchive.org.

…and Ellison manoeuvred his flesh hands in a claw-like motion, locking them with Cyro’s own grasping claws. His soft human body pressed against the hard lines of Cyro’s proprietary alloy, in a manner which would have generated wear and tear had Cyro’s body not been of superior make. Fluids leaked from Ellison’s eyes. No fluids leaked from Cyro’s ocular units, but…

Comments (3)

DontGotRhythm: What the hell? Have you ever met a human? This reads like an alien wrote it.

tattered_freedom_wings: uhhh this is kinda weird but i think i liked it?? not sure about the box thing though

bjornruffian: OH MY GODDDD. :DDDD Finally, someone who doesn’t write human-shaped robot-in-name-only Cyro! Some of Ellison’s characterisation is a little awkward—I don’t think he would say all that mushy stuff about Cyro’s beautiful boxy shape??—but I love your Cyro! If this is just your first fic, I can’t wait for you to write more!!

Computron has been spending less time in sleep mode after Episode Thirteen’s cliffhanger, and has spent his time conducting objective discussions about HyperWarp’s appeal with commenters on various video streaming sites and anonymous message boards.

As he is about to reply to the latest missive about his lack of genitalia and outside social activities, which is technically correct, his internal chrono-meter indicates that it is time for the Robotics Then and Now performance.

“So, I was wondering, have you ever watched Hyperdimension Warp Record? There’s this character called Cyro that—”

[Yes, I am aware of HyperWarp,] Computron says. [I have taken the “How To Tell If Your Life Is HyperWarp” quiz online, and it has indicated that I am “a Hyper-Big HyperWarp Fan!” I have repeatedly viewed the scene between Ellison and Cyro at the end of Episode Seven, and recently I have left a “like” on bjornruffian’s artwork of what may have happened shortly after that scene, due to its exceptional accuracy. The show is widely regarded as “this season’s sleeper hit” and has met with approval from a statistically significant number of critics. If other members of the audience wish to view this series, there are thirteen episodes out so far, and they can be viewed on—] The announcer motions to him, using the same gesture she uses when audience members are taking too long to talk. Computron falls silent until the announcer chooses the next question, which is also the last due to time constraints.

After TETSUCHAN has finished its breakdance and showcased its newly-programmed ability to pop-and-lock, the announcer speaks to Computron backstage. She requests that he take less time for the question-and-answer segment in the future.

[Understood,] Computron says, and returns to his storage room to check his inbox again.

Private Message from bjornruffian:

Hi RobotFan,

I noticed you liked my art (thanks!) and you seem to know a LOT about robots judging from your fic (and, well, your name). I’m doing a fancomic about Ellison and Cyro being stranded on one of the desert-ish exoplanets while they try to fix the Kosmogram, but I want to make sure I’m drawing Cyro’s body right. Are there any references you can recommend for someone who’s looking to learn more about robots? Like, the classic kind, not the android kind? It’d be great if they’re available online, especially if they have pictures—I’ve found some books with photos but they’re WAAAAY more than I can afford :\\\

Thank you for any help you can offer! I’m really looking forward to your next fic!

Shortly after reading bjornruffian’s message, Computron visits the Early Robotics section of the museum. It has shrunk significantly over the years, particularly after the creation of the “Redefining Human,” “Androids of the Future,” and “Drone Zone” sections. It consists of several information panels, a small collection of tin toys, and the remnants of all three versions of Hexode the robot.

In Episode 14 of Hyperdimension Warp Record, Cyro visits a deserted exoplanet alone to investigate the history of the hyperdimension warp drive, and finds himself surrounded by the deactivated bodies of robots of similar make, claws outstretched, being slowly ground down by the gears of a gigantic machine. The “Robot Recycler” scene is frequently listed as one of that year’s top ten most shocking moments in anime.

On 7 June 1957, the third version of Hexode fails Doctor Alquist’s mirror test for the hundredth time, proving that it has no measurable self-awareness. Computron watches Doctor Alquist smash the spanner against Hexode’s face, crumpling its nose and lips. Oil leaks from its ocular units as it falls to the floor with a metallic thud. Its vocal synthesiser crackles and hisses.

“You godforsaken tin bucket,” Doctor Alquist shouts. “To hell with you.” If Doctor Alquist were to raise the spanner to Computron, it is likely that Doctor Alquist will not have an assistant for any future robotics experiments. Computron stays still, standing in front of the mirror, silently observing the destruction of Hexode so he can gather up its parts later.

When Computron photographs Hexode’s display case, he is careful to avoid capturing any part of himself in the reflection.

[bjornruffian] Oh man, thank you SO MUCH for installing chat just for this! Anyway, I really appreciate your help with the script so far (I think we can call it a collab by this point?). And thanks for the exhibit photos! Was it a lot of trouble? I checked the website and that museum is pretty much in the middle of nowhere…

—File Transfer of “THANK YOU ROBOTFAN.png” from “bjornruffian” started.

—File Transfer of “THANK YOU ROBOTFAN.png” from “bjornruffian” finished.

[bjornruffian] So I’ve got a few questions about page 8 in the folder I shared, can you take a look at the second panel from the top? I figured his joint would be all gummed up by the sand, so I thought I’d try to do an X-ray view thing as a closeup… if you have any idea how the circuits are supposed to be, could you double-check?

[bjornruffian] Okay, you’re taking really long to type, this is making me super nervous I did everything wrong :\\

[RobotFan] Apologies

[RobotFan] I

[RobotFan] Am not fast at typing

[bjornruffian] Okaaay, I’ll wait on the expert here

[RobotFan] The circuit is connected incorrectly and the joint mechanism is incorrect as well

[bjornruffian] Ughhhhh I knew it was wrong!! DDD:

[bjornruffian] I wish the character sheets came with schematics or something, I’ve paused the flashback scenes with all the failed robots like ten billion times to take screenshots >:\\

[RobotFan] Besides the scenes in Episode 14, there are other shots of Cyro’s schematics in Episode 5 (17:40:18 and 20:13:50) as well as Episode 12 (08:23:14)

—File Transfer of “schematic-screenshots.zip” from “RobotFan” started.

—File Transfer of “schematic-screenshots.zip” from “RobotFan” finished.

[bjornruffian] THANK YOU

[bjornruffian] I swear you’re some sort of angel or something

[RobotFan] That is incorrect

[RobotFan] I am merely a robot

There are certain things in the museum’s storage room that would benefit bjornruffian’s mission of completing her Cyro/Ellison comic. Computron and Hexode’s schematics are part of the Alquist Collection, which is not a priority for the museum’s digitisation project due to a perceived lack of value. As part of the Alquist Collection himself, there should be no objection to Computron retrieving the schematics.

As Computron grasps the doorknob with his left claw, he catches a glimpse of Cyro from Episode 15 in the door’s glass panels, his ocular units blazing yellow with determination after overcoming his past. In fan parlance, this is known as Determined!Cyro, and has only been seen during fight scenes thus far. It is illogical to have Determined!Cyro appear in this context, or in this location.

Computron looks at the dusty glass again, and sees only a reflection of his face.

[RobotFan] I have a large file to send to you

[RobotFan] To be precise, four large files

[RobotFan] The remaining three will be digitised and sent at a later date

—File Transfer of “alquist-archive-scans-pt1.zip” from “RobotFan” started.

—File Transfer of “alquist-archive-scans-pt1.zip” from “RobotFan” finished.

[bjornruffian] OMG THIS IS AWESOME

[bjornruffian] Where did you get this?? Did you rob that museum?? This is PERFECT for that other Cyro/Ellison thing I’ve been thinking about doing after this stupid desert comic is over!!

[bjornruffian] It would be great if I had someone to help me with writing Cyro, HINT HINT

[RobotFan] I would be happy to assist if I had emotion circuits

[RobotFan] However, my lack of emotion circuits means I cannot be “happy” about performing any actions

[RobotFan] Nonetheless, I will assist

[RobotFan] To make this an equitable trade as is common in human custom, you may also provide your opinion on some recurrent bugs that readers have reported in my characterisation of Ellison

[bjornruffian] YESSSSSSSS :DDDDDD

Rossum, Sulla. “Tin Men and Tin Toys: Examining Real and Fictional Robots from the 1950s.” Journal of Robotics Studies 8.2 (2018): 25-38.

While the figure of the fictional robot embodies timeless fears of technology and its potential for harm, the physical design of robots real and fictional is often linked to visual cues of modernity. What was once regarded as an “object of the future” can become “overwhelmingly obsolete” within a span of a few years, after advances in technology cause the visual cues of modernity to change (Bloch, 1979). The clawed, lumbering tin-toy-esque designs of the 1950s are now widely regarded as “tin can[s] that should have been recycled long ago” (Williamson, 2017). Notably, most modern critiques of Computron’s design tend to focus on its obsolete analogue dials…

watch-free-anime | Hyperdimension Warp Record | Episode 23 | Live Chat

Pyro: Okay, is it just me, or is Cyro starting to get REALLY attractive? I swear I’m not gay (is it gay if it’s a robot) but when he slung Ellison over his shoulder and used his claw to block the Sixth Saber at the same time

Pyro: HOLY SHIT that sniper scene RIGHT THROUGH THE SCOPE and then he fucking BUMPS ELLISON’S FIST WITH HIS CLAW

Pyro: Fuck it, I’m gay for Cyro I don’t care, I’ll fucking twiddle his dials all he wants after this episode

ckwizard: dude youre late, weve been finding cyro hot ever since that scene in episode 15

ckwizard: you know the one

ckwizard: where you just see this rectangular blocky shadow lumbering slowly towards first saber with those clunky sound effects

ckwizard: then his eyebulbs glint that really bright yellow and he bleeps about ACTIVATING KILL MODE and his grabby claws start whirring

ckwizard: theres a really good fic about it on fanficarchive… actually you might as well check the authors blog out here, hes pretty cyro-obsessed

ckwizard: his earlier stuff is kinda uneven but the bjorn collabs are good—shes been illustrating his stuff for a while

Pyro: Okay

Pyro: I just looked at that thing, you know, the desert planet comic

Pyro: I think I ship it

Pyro: OH MAN when Ellison tries the manual repair on the arm joint and Cyro has a FLASHBACK TO THE ROBOT RECYCLER but tries to remind himself he can trust him

Pyro: Fuck it I DEFINITELY ship it

ckwizard: join the fucking club

ckwizard: its the fifth time im watching this episode, this series has ruined my life

ckwizard: i can’t wait for season 2

bjorn-robot-collabs posted:

Hi everyone, bjornruffian and RobotFan here! Thanks for all your comments on our first comic collab! We’re really charmed by the great reception to “In the Desert Sun”—okay, I’m charmed, and RobotFan says he would be charmed if he had the emotion circuits for that (he’s an awesome roleplay partner too! LOVE his sense of humor :DDD).

ANYWAY! It turns out that RobotFan’s got this awesome collection of retro robot schematics and he’s willing to share, for those of you who want to write about old-school robots or need some references for your art! (HINT HINT: the fandom totally needs more Cyro and Cyro/Ellison before Season 2 hits!) To be honest I’m not sure how legal it is to circulate these scans (RobotFan says it’s fine though), so just reply to this post if you want them and we’ll private message you the links if you promise not to spread them around.

Also, we’re gonna do another Cyro/Ellison comic in the future, and we’re thinking of making it part of an anthology. If you’d like to contribute comics or illustrations for that, let us know!

Get ready to draw lots of boxes, people! The robot revolution is coming!

[manantrivedi]

How AI might be the most effective weapon to detect COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic raises many problems in the domain of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The major challenges are often raised by way of so many pertinent questions such as, can AI help to keep an eye on the outbreak and predict the quantum of spread? Can AI apply to assist with diagnosis and prognosis as well? Could it be utilized in a quest for proper treatment and subsequent hunt for the exact vaccine? Will it be used to govern the social factors?

There are a plethora of questions expected to be answered, and people are anxious to know everything. This blog is an effort to facilitate an honest analysis of how AI has progressed in this respect so far, and to note down limitations, weaknesses, and concerned drawbacks. The relevant research is aptly affected by the dearth of proper data and increasing conflict between imperatives on public health and data privacy issues.

To keep tabs on and predicting the future

In theory, AI can be used for monitoring and predicting how the COVID-19 disease would spread its wings over time and space. However, in December 2019, an AI-driven Health Map module at the venue of Boston Children’s Hospital (USA) triggered one of the first alarm bells that were a warning given by a scientist at the site of PMED (Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases).

Even so, AI has not been very effective up to now for any further tracking and predictive analytics of how COVID-19 will spread. That is because of a variety of reasons. The first and foremost is that for AI to desperately need data on COVID-19 for a proper drill down.

However, a variety of exciting projects have commenced collecting and exchanging data, both existing and fresh, to train new AI applications and machine learning. Now, these projects entail the global work on the Coronavirus Disease database initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in terms of giving access to other related enterprises.

There is also a second opinion as to why AI has not been quite helpful in monitoring and foreseeing disease spread thus far. Not only is this a paucity of piling historical training data, but it is also an account of issues exploiting big data extracted from social media. In the recent fiasco of Google Flu Patterns, it highlighted the limitations of AI and big data in the scope of infectious diseases.

Owing to a lack of evidence, chaotic social media big data hubris, algorithmic dynamics, and outlier data, AI predictions of the outbreak of COVID-19 are still not very accurate or robust. The majority of frameworks used for monitoring and making predictions thus far do not use AI technologies. Rather, a majority of forecast modules prefer conventional epidemiological patterns.

To chase down the mushrooming of COVID-19 in real-time, a true application for the data creation dashboard has surfaced to visualize the existence of the virus. The first, and most customarily used, is that of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins. The data created and made accessible through this dashboard can be found in a GitHub repository, so to say.

Attempts for diagnosis and prognosis

Besides potentially monitoring and anticipating the transmission of COVID-19, AI may also be deftly used in disease diagnosis as well as its prognosis. Actually, perhaps it is where most of the AI initiatives have been given due recognition.

Rapid and precise COVID-19 diagnosis will save innumerable human lives, restrict disease contamination, and trigger data to train AI applications. There is an increasing endeavour to educate people through AI models to use chest X-ray images to detect COVID-19.

Even though it has been confirmed that a host of Chinese health care facilities have deployed AI-driven radiology techniques, the prospects of AI are not yet converted into practice. Radiologists elsewhere have voiced alarm that not sufficient data can teach AI applications, that many of the available COVID-19 samples come from Chinese laboratories. Also, they may surely suffer from self-selection, and that the use of X-rays and CT scans may infect relevant equipment and are further prone to the spread of the disease.

It appears that relatively less effort has been made to use AI for diagnostic processes at a primary stage. For example, determining whether anyone is contaminated before it appears in CT scans or X-rays in making data-driven diagnoses with less chance of contamination.

Vaccines and treatments

A third dimension where AI may theoretically contribute to combating COVID-19 is the detection of alternative therapies and vaccines. Years before the COVID-19 outbreak, AI had been suitably admired for its ability to contribute to the development of the newer approach of antidotes.

In the scenario of COVID-19, plenty of data centres and research laboratories have already confirmed that they are trying to engage AI to find an opening in terms of the COVID-19 vaccine. The idea is that AI will speed up both the cycle of developing new drugs and the savaging existing drugs. A lot of scientists have claimed to have found repurposing drugs, to say the least.

Such medications (especially a vaccine) are unlikely to be available soon, and certainly to be of great use during the ongoing pandemic situation. The explanation is that it will take some time for the scientific and medical tests, tracking, and controls to be carried out before such vaccines are released once they are detected and tested, which might take as long a period as up to 18 months.

Social management

One of the foremost objectives for AI lies in social control and management in the campaign against the COVID-19 outbreak. It is asserted that AI application is imminent to manage the alarming spread of pandemic via the implementation of thermal imaging to scan the open realm for conceivably infected people and by supporting social distancing and lockdown metrics.

Infrared cameras are taken into consideration at airports and railway stations all over to scan throngs of people for the lookout of high temperatures. Often, they are shown with a system of facial recognition that can identify the person suffering from high temperature and whether he or she is donning a surgical mask.So even though using AI Information to identify and treat COVID-19 is hindered by a lack of critical historical databases, there are no AI resources like robots and computer vision. Hence, in the short term, people are more expected to see this form of AI to be utilized for social control as an extra effort.

Conclusion

To summarize, AI can be a fundamental tool in fighting COVID-19 and related pandemics. The assumption is that issues related to public health will outweigh data privacy issues. There could be mission creep, with policymakers and statutory bodies maintaining their exceptional monitoring of common citizens long past the pandemic is subsided. Concerns over data privacy degradation are thus ably founded. AI-powered Chatbots provided by Let’s Nurture proves to be a great business plan in tracking the Covid19 outbreak. If you are looking for technology service providers, we are right here to guide you through your prospects. Please feel free to contact us

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[sciencespies]

Why Lie Detector Tests Can't Be Trusted

https://sciencespies.com/history/why-lie-detector-tests-cant-be-trusted/

Why Lie Detector Tests Can't Be Trusted

Francis Gary Powers had his first polygraph experience right after signing up as a pilot for the CIA’s U-2 program in January 1956. In his memoir, Powers described being called into a room where he was confronted with the question,

“Any objection to taking a lie detector test?” Though I had a great many, I didn’t voice them, shaking my head. If this was a condition of the job, I’d do it. But I didn’t like it. … I had never felt so completely exposed, as if there was no privacy whatsoever. If at that moment someone had handed me a petition banning polygraphs forever from the face of the earth, I would gladly have signed it. When I was asked the last question and the straps were taken off, I vowed that never again, no matter what the circumstances, would I undergo such an insult to my integrity.”

Yet Powers would later take another polygraph test, with even higher stakes.

Powers’ case would be an uncommon one, but the polygraph was considered an essential tool in that period, for reasons that had little to do with getting to the truth. The polygraph was more of an attempted answer to a central Cold War conundrum: How could Americans fulfill their pledges to oppose an allegedly totalitarian enemy without becoming totalitarian themselves?

To square this particular circle, federal agencies, first and foremost the CIA, began using a controversial technology developed by psychologists in the early 20th century, and then refined and applied by the police and private businesses since the 1920s. Polygraph measurements—derived from changes in blood pressure, breathing depth, and skin conductivity of an electric current—have never been proved to be reliable indicators of deception. Not only is genuine emotional turmoil hard to reproduce in laboratory studies, but such emotional responses are not uniform among humans and can be imitated by countermeasures (such as pinching yourself before giving a response). In large screening tests, significant numbers of “false positives” (innocent people being labeled deceptive) are unavoidable.

In addition, the question of whether deception during a polygraph test indicates a person is unsuitable for employment transcends merely technical issues. In the final analysis, American security agencies never arrived at a definition of what personal characteristics a model employee should have. Instead, the polygraph provided reasons for dismissing a person as a security risk or denying him or her employment.

Leonarde Keeler was the first American to receive a patent for a polygraph. His patent, granted on January 13, 1931, described the machine as an “apparatus for recording arterial blood pressure.”

(U.S. Patent 1,788,434)

Bureaucratic usefulness, rather than any scientific validity, goes a long way toward explaining why the polygraph became a standard instrument of the American national security state. The case of Powers and his history with polygraphs is instructive.

From 1956 to 1960, 24 U-2 flights over the USSR yielded invaluable strategic intelligence on Soviet military capabilities. But on May 1, 1960, disaster struck when Powers’ plane was shot down over Sverdlovsk (today called Yekaterinburg). American authorities issued a cover story about a weather balloon gone astray and were caught flat-footed when Nikita Khrushchev presented to the world the remnants of the plane, and then the pilot himself. Powers had miraculously survived and was subsequently put on trial in Moscow and sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage. In February 1962, he was exchanged for Soviet KGB colonel Vilyam Fisher (alias Rudolf Ivanovich Abel).

Powers returned home a hero under suspicion. Unbeknownst to him and the American public, doubts about his truthfulness arose due to National Security Agency intercepts of Soviet responses to the U-2 flights. Tracked radar signals indicated that Powers’ plane had dropped below its regular altitude of 65,000 feet, making it vulnerable to surface-to-air missile attacks. But Powers vehemently denied that he had allowed the plane to decline. The CIA, fearing for its then-stellar reputation with the American public, insisted on Powers’ innocence as well.

CIA director John McCone set up a board of inquiry under a federal judge, E. Barrett Prettyman, to prepare a statement for public consumption. The document highlighted that medical tests, a background check, and an interrogation had confirmed that Powers “appeared to be truthful, frank, straightforward. … He volunteered with some vehemence that, although he disliked the process of the polygraph, he would like to undergo a polygraph test. That test was subsequently duly administered by an expert. … [Powers] displayed no indications of deviation from the truth in the course of the examination.”

Contrast this with Powers’ own version of his treatment: Getting frustrated by “doubts about my responses, … I finally reacted angrily, bellowing: ‘If you don’t believe me, I’ll be glad to take a lie detector test!’ … Even before the words were out of my mouth, I regretted saying them. ‘Would you be willing to take a lie detector test on everything you have testified here?’ … I knew that I had been trapped.”

Francis Gary Powers holds a model of a U-2 spy plane as he testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Powers’ plane was shot down by the Soviets, and he was tried and convicted of spying in the USSR.

(Bettmann/Getty Images)

Since shortly after its creation in 1947, the CIA has used the polygraph as part of its personnel security procedures to ascertain the truthfulness of job applicants and employees and to confirm the bona fides of agents. At the height of McCarthyism, utilizing a machine known by the public as a “lie detector” made sense, especially for a brand-new agency that had to be staffed quickly. To its proponents, the polygraph represented a promise of objectivity and fairness along with effective deterrence of spies and traitors. As a CIA inspector general report from 1963 emphasized, “We do not and could not aspire to total security. Our open society has an inherent resistance to police-state measures.”

When challenged by Congress, which investigated federal polygraph use repeatedly beginning in the mid-1960s, the CIA defended the polygraph aggressively. In 1980, the Director of Central Intelligence’s Security Committee insisted: “The utility of the polygraph interview as part of security processing has been demonstrated by empirical means. … These practical results, plus more than thirty years’ experience, make the use of the polygraph in security screening truly unique and indispensable.”

Yet internally, CIA bureaucrats admitted that the practice of sorting out job applicants and employees based on their test results was questionable at best. Even after decades of polygraph practice, the CIA could not define what exactly it meant by elusive terms such as “routine” and “voluntary” in its polygraph program. A 1974 list of questions from polygraph examiners to the general counsel included the following query: “What can a polygraph officer say in response to the question: ‘Do I have to take this test to get a job with the Agency?’ or ‘What happens if I don’t take the test?’” The relevance of the evidence produced during most polygraph tests was also unclear. “The precise yardstick for the measuring of security reliability of an individual continued to be elusive,” an internal CIA history on personnel security concluded in 1973.

Up until his death in a helicopter accident in 1977, Powers insisted that he had acted as a loyal American under trying circumstances. No definite account of the incident has been established yet. We also don’t know what data Powers’ polygraph test produced. However, it is reasonable to conclude that the Kennedy administration found it advisable to assure the public of Powers’ truthfulness, and that announcing that Powers had passed a polygraph test was part of their public relations strategy.

Powers’ experience highlights three ambiguous characteristics of polygraph use by the CIA for purposes of “national security.” First, the claim by polygraph proponents that the test could be a witness for the defense, exonerating loyal citizens, often turned out to be less than clear-cut. Second, while the polygraph relied on the rhetoric of voluntarism, in reality the pressure to take the test often mocked the idea of a free decision. Third, polygraph exams often served to provide official cover rather than revealing the truth of events.

Other questions haunted the polygraph throughout the Cold War, and the often-traumatic experience of the test provoked fierce protests from Americans across ideological lines. Journalists Joseph and Stewart Alsop, two otherwise unrelenting Cold War boosters, compared the polygraph to the embrace of an octopus whose “electric tentacles” produced an “overwhelming impulse to tell all … in order to appease the octopus machine.” Even former chief of CIA counterintelligence James Olson called polygraph exams “an awful but necessary ordeal. We all hate them. … A polygraph examination … is rude, intrusive, and sometimes humiliating. … It’s a grueling process.” Whether the sheer unpleasantness of the exam did more to deter potential traitors, or kept otherwise upstanding citizens from joining the agency, is impossible to determine.

Ultimately, there is the question of whether the polygraph ever caught Soviet spies. Certainly no major communist spy was ever caught by the machine, and the most damaging one, Aldrich Ames, passed two routine polygraph exams after he had delivered deadly information about U.S. activities in the Soviet Union to his handlers.

While the Ames case almost fatally damaged the polygraph’s reputation, the technology was rekindled in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, because, once again, it gave the appearance of a scientific way to test such elusive values as loyalty when doing the inherently risky jobs of screening employees and counterintelligence work. As the history of the polygraph makes clear, American policy makers place great trust in technological fixes to thorny political problems—even though they themselves question those fixes privately.

John Baesler is a professor of history at Saginaw Valley State University and the author of Clearer Than Truth: The Polygraph and the American Cold War.

#History

[simplemlmsponsoring]

New Post has been published on http://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/copywriting/7-steps-to-create-a-successful-profitable-blog/

7 Steps To Create A Successful, Profitable Blog

When I first started tweeting, I struggled to think of even a single tweet. What would my new Twitter audience care about? Why would they care what I was doing or thinking at any given moment?

Fast forward many years and I’m now tweeting dozens of times a day, am approaching 100,000 tweets overall, and have grown a Twitter audience of over fifty thousand fans.

How’d I do it? Where’d I get all those tweets?

One of the best compliments to an active, growing Twitter community is a source of original, helpful content.

In other words, you should be blogging and powering your Twitter with that blog content.

The problem is, like anything else we want to do for our business, blogging takes time and experience to work well.

You can, however, get help making your blog as successful, and profitable, as possible!

Here are the steps we’ll cover:

Who Is Your Blog for? What Is Your Blogging Voice? How Do You Start A Blog? How Do You Write Blog Posts? How Do You Generate Blog Ideas? How Do You Encourage Blog Sharing? How Do You Build Your Blog Audience? STEP ONE: Who Is Your Blog For?

Whether you’ve already started your blog and business or not, this is a critical consideration. Determining who your blog is for will not only help you be more effective in your writing, but also ensure that none of your blog posts are wasted on a disinterested audience.

Focus

That starts with having a specific, narrow topic which you plan to write about.

It may seem counter-intuitive to be so highly focused, but the broader your topic, the more diluted your content will be. Which means that it will be harder to become “known” as an authority.

As part of my blogging community training, we spend a lot of time educating new bloggers on the importance of market research. We’ll use tools like SEMrush and Buzzsumo to research their niche ideas and determine if they’re viable. All before writing a single post or even building a website.

That’s how important this step is.

PRO TIP: The Content Analyzer can be used to compare topics. Look for the number of articles you will be competing against, as well as the number of social shares for each topic.

Targeting

Once you’ve decided on your core topic, it’s time to think about your audience.

What are they like? What are their interests?

Most importantly, what are their issues and pain points?

The more accurately you’re able to describe them, the better prepared you will be to write to them.

This process often involves the creation of “personas” so that you can attribute whatever descriptors make sense, whether that’s demographic, geographic, or just the psychological points I mentioned.

Analytics

After you’ve begun creating content around your core topic, written for your targeted audience, it’s important to measure the success of that content.

So make sure you’ve set up Google Analytics and are regularly reviewing your content’s performance.

Which posts and topics are performing best? Does the demographic data within Google Analytics for your actual audience match what you were hoping to attract in your target audience?

You can use social media platform insights to measure your social posts, as well as the makeup of the audience you’re building there.

Twitter Analytics offer a lot of information, and you can benchmark your audience against the rest of Twitter.

Here’s an example from my Twitter Analytics page:

STEP TWO: What Is Your Blogging Voice?

Now that you know who you’re writing for, it’s time to think about how you write.

Think about how you talk, for a moment.

What language do you speak? Do you have an accent? Are you funny or serious? Short or long-winded? Do you prefer to quote classical authors or contemporary movies?

“Everything I learned I learned from the movies.”

― Audrey Hepburn

Combine all of those elements and more, and the result is most accurately described as your personality.

Your blog should have a personality as well.

Whether that completely mirrors your own or is more refined to represent your brand, is entirely up to you.

If you’re not sure what you want your voice to be, start by reading other blogs in your niche, or even outside your niche, and take note of those that have a style you enjoy. And consider whether your audience would enjoy them as well (this is why looking at popular blogs in your niche is helpful – you already know your target audience appreciates something about them).

Make it a habit to read your blog posts out loud after you’ve written them.

Not only will you find necessary edits, but you’ll also gain a greater appreciation for the style you write and identify points to change.

STEP THREE: How Do You Start A Blog?

If you already have a blog in place for your business, you can skip this step. But if not, there are a few technical points that we need to address if we’re going to be assured success.

First, it’s critical that you own your own blog, which means paying each year for a domain name and hosting.

That also means that using Facebook or a free blog platform like blogger.com is not acceptable.

Those free platforms are fine if you’re blogging for fun, but a professional blog requires a professional environment. Not only will it be more powerful and secure, but it also conveys the appropriate message to your audience.

Then there’s the blog itself. For most instances, we recommend using WordPress as it’s incredibly easy to set up and easy to use. You can use a theme to control the look & feel and install plugins to add additional functionality.

With WordPress set up on your own hosting account, you’re ready to start writing and publishing.

STEP FOUR: How Do You Write Blog Posts?

When it comes to writing blog posts, there are several questions that often come up.

How Should I Structure A Post?

While there are no rules with regard to blog post structure, here are a few recommendations to make them easy to read (and easier to write):

Start with an introduction that explains your topic and hooks your audience, preferably with a story. Outline your most important points and introduce them using section headings. Summarize your blog post and provide your readers with a “next step” – whether that’s to read something else, download something, or perhaps call you. How Long Should Blog Posts Be?

The average blog post is about 750 words, and that’s a good length to aim for most of the time.

However, be advised that according to research done by BuzzSumo, “long form” content performs better.

Specifically, articles with 2000+ words tend to be shared socially far more often than shorter articles. And yet, there were 16x more articles written at less than 1000 words.

Which means more people are writing shallow posts, leaving you plenty of opportunities to create more meaningful, in-depth content.

How Often Should I Publish Blog Posts?

In this analysis of HubSpot survey data, the frequency of content publishing was compared among a range of business blogs.

The findings suggested that, once a blog has accrued over 50 pieces of content, they begin to receive exponentially higher levels of traffic, leads, and sales.

Why do I mention it?

Because if you want your blog to really start to drive traffic, you should try to get to at least 50 blog posts as fast as possible (without sacrificing quality, of course).

So, rather than answer the question of “how often should I blog?” arbitrarily, we can use data and business goals to determine the ideal frequency.

If you’re content with achieving that exponential level of traffic a year from now, then blogging once a week will suffice.

If, however, you want to ramp up your content marketing within, say, 90 days, you’re going to need to create a lot of content far more rapidly.

Either way, you’re going to need dozens and dozens of ideas for blog posts!

STEP FIVE: How Do You Generate Blog Ideas?

Brainstorming ideas and writing about topics that occur to you is OK, but if you’re targeting 50+ blog posts within a designated period of time, you’re going to need a more scientific approach.

Keyword Research

Start with using available tools to help you not only come up with ideas of what to write about but also view data on how much those topics are actually in demand.

There’s no point in writing about topics no one is interested in.

Such tools include:

Google Keyword Planner SEMrush Buzzsumo Trending Topics

You can also write about trending topics. While you will not be able to plan these types of articles in advance, you can determine that you’re going to be open to possibilities and plan accordingly.

That means following industry news sources and journals and making sure that you have a flexible schedule to grant time for writing about such topics.

Funnel Content

The most important type of content for your business blog will be posts that are specifically related to your sales funnel(s).

You see, every buyer for every business must go through a standard sales funnel.

As they move through the Awareness and Interest phases, down into the Decision and Action phases, you can and should have relevant pieces of content available to help them.

The most important of which is the Bottom of the Funnel – that’s where potential customers decide to buy from you!

Through a combination of popular topics, trending topics, and content designed to educate your prospects, you can easily fill a content calendar for months.

With Google Analytics in place, you can then track your sales and funnel results.

STEP SIX: How Do You Encourage Blog Sharing?

After you publish a piece of content, of course, you’re going to share it to all of your social profiles. But how do you get other people to share your content?

Great Social Sharing Buttons

First, make sure that you have great social sharing buttons. That means having buttons that work, of course, but also have some of these traits:

Share counts to offer social proof Ability to select the best social buttons for your audience Customizable button styles to match your brand

Social Warfare is a great example. When you have social buttons for the networks your audience prefers and can show them that other people are sharing your content, they’ll be more likely to share your posts as well.

Pinnable Images

Speaking of sharing, one of the social networks that benefits bloggers the most is Pinterest. But only if you prepare your posts accordingly. That means:

Having at least 1 vertical image per post (ideally 735 x 1102) Having multiple images

Tall images perform the best on Pinterest as they stand out in the feed, while multiple images will give you (and your readers) different images to pin to different boards.

STEP SEVEN: How Do You Build Your Blog Audience?

Up until now we’ve talked about planning and structuring your blog so that it will attract readers, and even touched on some social media points.

But the most critical audience-building activity for your blog is to work on growing your email list.

Your email subscribers are readers that you’ll be able to communicate with over and over, whether that’s for new content or sales or other important information.

Giving blog post readers multiple ways to get on your email list is Priority #1. ― Mike AlltonClick To Tweet Newsletter

Start with a newsletter subscription option. The email marketing solution you choose should have forms that you can embed into your sidebar or footer so that visitors can subscribe from anywhere on your site.

Content Upgrade

Next, start to develop “content upgrades.” These are digital downloads that complement and supplement your published content.

An example might be a PDF version of this article. You can also offer workbooks, swipe files, and other similar resources.

Such offers require a different signup form so that you can email subscribers the promised content.

Gated Content

Finally, every once in a while, you’ll want to create pieces of content that are only available via email.

A great example would be an eBook that you write and then simply introduce via blog post. Readers have to have the full eBook emailed to them if they want to read it.

Again, a dedicated subscription form will do the trick!

With Wishpond, I’m able to create popups and landing pages and funnel all of those subscribers into appropriate lists and autoresponders.

Wrapping Up

As we said at the outset if you work on creating valuable blog content, one of the side effects is that you’ll be able to use that blog content to power your Twitter presence.

Not only can you tweet links to your latest posts, but you can also quote and reference your blog posts over and over again. The more posts you have in your archive, the more often you can tweet about them!

Now, are you ready for your free gift?

I recently wrote How To Start A Blog: The Ultimate Guide – I called it the ultimate guide because it’s a nearly 100 page eBook packed with detailed explanations and examples of everything we’ve covered here today, and more.

You can read the full blogging guide here, as well as download a free copy of the eBook. (See what I did there? That’s a content upgrade!).

Good luck with your blog!

The post 7 Steps To Create A Successful, Profitable Blog appeared first on BuzzSumo.

Read more: buzzsumo.com

[zenruption]

The Biggest Tech Breakthroughs In Addiction Treatment in 2018

It’s no secret that America is facing an addiction crisis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that drug overdoses killed more than 72,000 Americans in 2017, a record high. This epidemic is so bad that it may have been responsible for the drop in overall U.S. life expectancy from 2015 to 2017 of 0.1%. This decline marks the first in more than two decades, the last time being at the height of the AIDS epidemic, and before that between 1962 to 1963 when influenza ravaged the country.

Lawmakers have rallied in response to these statistics by expanding access to treatment options and cracking down on pharmaceutical supply chains, yet there remains a barrier in the way of making significant progress. This problem is namely that treatment for drug and alcohol addiction needs a 21st century makeover. Modern treatment centers help thousands get sober every year, but there’s little concrete evidence to support the claim that one method of rehab works better than another, especially given that not all treatment centers use the same programs and individuals respond better according to different treatment models.

There’s also the fact that AA, one of the most popular treatment programs in the world, has remained largely unchanged since its birth from the Temperance Movement more than 75 years ago. There needs to be a more modern solution for people seeking recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Modern medication is effective at getting people off harder substances, but it also carries the risk of patients getting hooked, such as with Methadone or Suboxone, only to have them grow tolerant and eventually relapse. One relatively untapped field in addiction treatment is advanced technology.

If we can use technology to increase our lifespan, make things more convenient, and myriad other miracles, then why can’t we use it to solve the age old dilemma of addiction? We may be approaching an answer. Here are several ways that tech companies are making strides in the field of recovery technology.

NeuroModulation

One possible answer to the dilemma of responsible pain management and withdrawal could be neuromodulation, also known neurostimulation. This type of technology works by sending electrical currents that interrupt pain signals in the brain, effectively relieving pain. Instances of this kind of technology have been around since the 1960’s, but it wasn’t until the advent of the first spinal cord stimulator approved by the FDA in 1989 that medical devices began making steps towards effective pain management. Since then, companies like Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and St. Jude Medical have produced neuromodulation devices intended for treatment following spinal cord injury or surgery.

Today, multiple newcomers to the marketplace are creating more powerful, compact neurostimulation devices for use in addiction recovery. Nevro, a California based company, received FDA approval in 2015 for a high-frequency modulator that could be subdermally implanted to treat pain. In a two-year study of nearly 200 patients, results showed that the Nevro device was better at relieving back and leg pain than all external spinal cord stimulation devices. Patients are able to try out the device in a non-intrusive format for one to two weeks before they decide to make the commitment.

Cleveland-based SPR Therapeutics also produces a less intrusive, matchbook sized stimulator that can be worn on the arm or elsewhere on the body. In one study by the National Institutes of Health, the device showed a 72% reduction in pain for users. Another external device called the Neuro-Stim Bridge was approved by the FDA in 2017 for treating opioid addiction.

The Neuro-Stim has been used by rehab clinics in 30 states to help people with withdrawal symptoms associated with opioids. The Neuro Stim Bridge is attached directly to the skin behind a person’s ear and sends electrical pulses that disrupt pain signals being sent through the brain. For recovering addicts, detox from substances like opioids, benzodiazepines, and alcohol can be a significant barrier to getting sober. In one clinical study on patients undergoing opioid withdrawal, subjects experienced a pain reduction of more than 30% within 30 minutes of using the device. After using the device for a period of five days, 88% of patients successfully transitioned to the next phase of their program.

With neuromodulation, patients can safely detox and enter into a rehab program where they can learn the tools for longer term recovery. Similarly, people who may be prescribed painkillers for an injury or following a surgery could use a neuromodulating device instead, eliminating the risk of developing an addiction.

Remote Monitoring

One of the more difficult components of recovery is tracking patient success rates. It’s difficult to tell whether a graduate from a recovery program has remained sober unless they commit to repeated drug testing. Oftentimes graduates from recovery programs are simply called and asked whether they are using substances again. Several tech companies are developing more effective monitoring programs to help rehabs and clinicians better track their patient’s progress and prevent a relapse from becoming a full blown backslide into addiction.

One such innovation includes SoberLink, an FDA approved solution that uses facial recognition technology to confirm the identity of the user and an alcohol breathalyzer to measure blood alcohol content. The user simply confirms their identity through the device’s camera and simultaneously blows on a tube connected to the breathalyzer within. Results are seamlessly uploaded to the cloud and shared with relevant parties such as with personal physicians, probation officers, or rehab clinics.  

Since its introduction, the technology has been utilized by leading treatment center names such as Hazelden Betty Ford, Edgewood Health, and The Lighthouse. Case studies from these and more treatment centers have demonstrated that the technology has shown success when integrated with a typical recovery program and has helped to de-escalate situations in which a patient suffers from a relapse.

Remote monitoring monitoring devices are also being used to ensure that patients do not misuse prescription medication such as opioids. Called “Abilify MyCite”, the first iteration of such devices received FDA approval in 2017 to help monitor ingestion of the antipsychotic medication Abilify, commonly used for treating schizophrenia and cases of bipolar disorder. The medication comes in the form of a small tablet containing a harmless microsensor. The user wears a small receptor patch that transmits the signal from the sensor to a cloud database.

This type of technology could be useful for elderly people with memory problems and those suffering from mental disorders that could hinder their likelihood to regularly take medication. However, it can also be used to help physicians track their patient’s opioid prescription adherence. Or at least that’s what one company, EtectRx, hopes to use these devices for following FDA approval in 2017. EtectRx’s product is a gel capsule that fits over the patient’s regular pills, and when swallowed, is dissolved and emits a radio signal that is picked up by a wearable device on the patient’s body. This device can transmit information to a physician and inform them of how many pills a patient has ingested.

Obviously, this type of technology has its limitations. For one, patients will have to consent to use the device, which may be more likely for those finishing rehab but might not be as readily accepted by the average patient looking to fill a prescription. There’s also the possibility that users find a way to open the capsule and extract the drug they wish to take. The results aren’t promising yet, as EtectRx cites a only small clinical study of 10 patients where 90% of respondents said they would be willing to continue using a digital pill monitoring program to adhere to their prescription.

Smartphone Applications

Nowadays there’s a smartphone application for everything, so it should be no surprise that we’ve got apps to help people recover from drug and alcohol addiction. Smartphones offer the opportunity to be an effective treatment device because they go everywhere with us and keep our connection to the world intact at all times. A smartphone application can’t replace a sponsor, but it can help track where you are, give you daily motivation, connect you to resources, and help you track your sobriety.

A quick search into the app library of your smartphone will turn up hundreds of results for recovery apps. Most are some variant of daily motivation and progress tracking. For example, I Am Sober is a popular recovery application that includes a sobriety calculator along with daily motivational quotes and daily pledges for staying sober.

Another app, Reset-O, is the creation of Pear Therapeutics, which received FDA approval in 2017 to market their app for addiction recovery. The app is intended for people recovering from opioid addiction and includes clinically recommended cognitive behavioral therapy activities as well as financial incentives for reaching milestones. In a clinical trial with 400 patients, the app produced an abstinence rate of 40% compared to 17.6% for the control group.

Nomo is a popular recovery app built around a sobriety clock. You can track progress, share results among friends and social media, and connect with accountability partners that you can send notifications to when you’re feeling tempted to use again. The app also lets you earn chips by reaching specific milestones in your recovery and lets you see how much money you’re saving by not spending on your habit. A convenient “check-in” button allows you to keep in contact with sponsors and let them know you’re doing alright.

For those looking for extra failsafe features, WeConnect offers location tracking software that helps monitor whether you are near or inside liquor stores or bars and allows you to check in to make sure you are attending a particular meeting. It also includes an SOS button so that users can send an alert to emergency contacts to get in touch if they need immediate support. Like Nomo, the app includes a built-in rewards element that allows users to earn discounts and coupons as they complete milestones.

In Conclusion

Technology is offering new methods of addiction treatment that have never been possible before. Given more time and investment, this field of research can hopefully offer more effective solutions to this epidemic that is gripping America.

BIO

Matthew Boyle is the Chief Operating Officer of Landmark Recovery, a growing chain of drug and alcohol rehab centers in Kentucky and Oklahoma. Matthew graduated from Duke University in 2011 Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree and has worked in the healthcare industry ever since, creating a holistic treatment model that supports patients in the pursuit of achieving lifelong sobriety.

[mariemary1]

It’s Time to Reconsider ‘Best Time to Post on Social Media’ Studies. Here’s What to Do Instead.

If you are a social media manager, you’ve likely looked at ‘best time to post on social media’ studies to come up with several posting times for your brand.

I know I have.

But now, I believe it’s time to reconsider these studies.

In the last few years, more and more studies on the best times to post have been released. (At Buffer, we contributed to this too!) And while knowing your best time to post is still very relevant, I’m starting to feel that it’s no longer useful to refer to studies on this topic.

Bad insights can drive poor decision-making and simply going with the best time to post from a study could hinder your marketing efforts rather than help.

Read on to find out what you should do instead…

Why we should reconsider “best time to post on social media” studies

The concept of ‘best time to post on social media’ is still very much relevant.

Even with social media algorithms, it’s important to get engagement within the first few hours of posting so that the algorithms will show your posts to more of your audience. And finding the right times to post for your brand can help with that.

But I think it’s time we shift our focus away from studies on the best time to post on social media. While the studies are well-intended, they (including ours) are flawed in several ways.

Aggregated data vs unique audience

Many of these studies suggest best times to post based on aggregated data. The challenge with this is that the data includes businesses and individuals from different locations and different industries while your audience is unique to you. It’s hard to say that the average best time to post for a wide range of businesses would apply to your business.

Here are two good examples by Matt Rhodes from his article, The danger of bad insights and poor digital marketing decisions:

For a brand targeting mums, for example, it may make more sense to create engaging content at 2am when mums are awake and alone with their babies. For a brand targeting football fans, as another example, your research may find that your audience most wants to engage after football matches in the afternoon or evening.

Outdated studies

We are guilty of this at Buffer. Our best time to tweet study was done in 2016. Another guide on best times that we compiled was done in 2013!

As social media usage has likely changed over the last few years, the information in these posts might not be that useful now.

It’s also good to note that “newer” studies that were published recently could be referring to much older studies. So it’ll be great to check the primary source of the data before taking the recommendations.

Great starting point

Does this mean that those studies are not useful at all? Not entirely.

They can serve as a great starting point, especially if they suggest plausible explanations for those best times to post. For example, if you are working on an entirely new social media profile and do not have any data of your own to work with, some studies can come in handy. But they are not a copy-and-paste blueprint for success.

Try to go beyond just taking the “best times” from the studies and understand why those could be great times to post. Perhaps it’s because people are using Facebook while commuting to work. Or maybe it’s because teenagers are scrolling through Instagram late at night before they sleep.

And they are just that — a starting point.

What’s more important is to gain a better understanding of your brand’s unique audience such as their social media usage patterns. Let’s go through how to find your best time to post on social media while learning about your audience!

How to find your best time to post on social media

Social media is becoming increasingly personalized. From being a broadcasting channel, social media is becoming a one-to-one and one-to-few engagement channel.

To provide a personalized experience to your brand’s followers, you need to post according to your audience’s social media usage behavior. When done right, there’s a higher chance of them seeing and engaging with your social media posts — more reach and more engagement!

Here’s how to find your own best time to post on social media:

1. For a new social media profile, start with informed guesses

The approach that we’ll be going through below depends on your previous posts. Even if it’s your first social media manager job, the brand probably has some data for you to work with if they have posted before.

If you are taking on a brand new social media profile, don’t worry. You can start with a few informed guesses. Think logically about when your audience might be online and interacting with your social media posts. (Or some of the better studies could be useful.)

Here are some possibilities:

Mornings and evenings during commute time

Lunch and tea break

Weekdays for B2B brands and weekends for B2C brands

If you know your target audience and their rough location, you could use that information to strengthen your hypotheses. For example, if you are a local business in Singapore, you might want to focus on times when people in Singapore are awake.

2. Set up a posting schedule

Once you have a handful of informed guesses, it’s time to test them!

To effectively test your guesses, you would want to post at those particular times a few times. With Buffer’s custom posting schedule, you can easily experiment with the times over a period of a few weeks (or more).

Here’s how the posting schedule works: After you set up your posting schedule with several times, every social media post that you “Add to Queue” will fill up the next available time slot in your schedule (or “Buffer queue”).

To create or change your posting schedule, select your desired social account and click on “Settings”, then “Posting Schedule”.

Here are the quick steps to adding a new posting time:

Select if you want to add the new posting time to every day of the week, only the weekdays, only the weekends, or only a specific day of the week

Set the time

Click on “Add Posting Time”

If you want to edit a time in your schedule, simply click on it.

To delete a time in your schedule, hover over the time and click on the cross that would appear on its right.

Note: Your posting schedule is unique to each connected social account. Adding a new posting time to one social account’s schedule does not apply it to all your connected social accounts.

3. Schedule posts for several weeks

You could schedule a few weeks’ of social media posts all at a go or do it on a weekly basis. Up to you!

This is not truly scientific but three to four weeks of posting would usually give you enough data to work with and find your best times.

What you should be posting can be a blog post on its own (or several blog posts) so I’ll not cover this here. If you would like some reading resources, here are some of our blog posts on content creation:

How to Discover and Create Content That Your Audience Craves (and Grow Your Following)

We Studied Our Top Social Media Posts of 2017. Here’s What We Learned.

How to Create Engaging Short Videos for Social Media (Including 7 Excellent Examples)

To schedule your social media posts with Buffer, click on the composer (“What do you want to share?”) in your dashboard. In the composer, select the social media accounts you want to share to and add your text, link, or multimedia. When you hit “Add to Queue”, that post will fill up the next available slot in your posting schedule (or “Buffer queue”).

Pro tip: When you add a link to the composer, we’ll automatically detect images on the page and suggest them for your post.

4. Study your analytics

Once you have a few weeks worth of data, you can start to analyze your results.

In your Buffer dashboard, select your preferred social media account and click on “Analytics”. There are two ways you can analyze your social media posts and find your best time to post.

Posts Report

The first way is to use your Posts Report. When you click on “Analytics”, you should see it. Otherwise, click on “Posts”.

(This report is only available on our paid plans.)

To find out the best times to post for your social media account, click on “Most Popular” and see when the top posts were published or if any times keep coming up for your top posts. Note down the times. These are your current best times to post.

Pro tip: For a little more advanced exploration, you could filter by “Most Likes”, “Most Clicks”, etc. and/or by post types.

Overview Report

If you are on one of our Business plans and want a more advanced way of finding your best time to post, you could also use the Overview Report, which is available for your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

In the Analytics section, click on “Overview” and scroll down till “Engagements by the hour of the day”.

With the chart, you can quickly identify when you receive the most engagements on your social media posts. These are likely the times when your followers are active and interacting with you — possibly also your best times to post to maximize your engagement. Again, note them down.

Pro tip: You could also look at impressions, likes, clicks, etc. by the hour of the day by changing the setting in the upper-left corner.

5. Experiment further

By now, you should have a good sense of the good and bad times 

Go back to your posting schedule in your Buffer dashboard and update it. Keep the good posting times, delete the bad ones, and add a few more experimental times.

(And repeat all the steps!)

How many posting times should you keep and how many to delete? It depends. And this isn’t very scientific: for a start, you could keep half of the posting times and change the remaining half. Once you have run a few rounds of tests and are more certain about your best times to post, you could keep to an 80/20 ratio — 80 percent tested times / 20 percent experimental times.

Your best time to post could be always changing as your following grows. It might not change, too. If you’re comfortable, you could only re-run this timing experiment every quarter or half a year.

Pro tip: By now, you likely have some followers data in your native analytics such as Facebook Insights and Instagram Insights. Use the information (e.g. top follower locations, demographics, interests) to come up with more educated guesses (as per step 1 above).

Over to you: How do you find your best time to post?

While I still think posting times are important for reach and engagement, I personally feel that we marketers have unintentionally put more emphasis on “best times to post on social media” studies than doing our own experimentation. Instead of getting recommendations from the studies, we might be much better off running our own best time experiments.

That’s because every brand has a unique audience. Your audience is likely made up of mostly your customers and your fans while other brands’ audience is made of theirs. What works for other brands might not work for you so it’s important to do your own experimentations to find your best time to post on social media.

It’ll be great to hear from you. What do you think of “best times to post on social media” studies? How do you find your best time to post? (I’m sure what I’ve shared in this post is just one of the many ways of doing it.)

—

Image credit: Photo by Le Buzz on Unsplash

Thank It’s Time to Reconsider ‘Best Time to Post on Social Media’ Studies. Here’s What to Do Instead. for first publishing this post.

[gabrielcollignon]

What One Brand Did After It Created a Top 10 Blog

What One Brand Did After It Created a Top 10 Blog

What would you do with a blog that averaged 150,000 monthly views? Do tons more to drive leads, our team decided unanimously back in 2016.

Up until that point, we merely invited readers to consume our blog content, which focused on the latest social media trends. Readers were free to enter and leave the premises at any time. We didn’t ask for visitors’ email addresses in return for access. Even if we wanted to use in-your-face dropdowns begging for an address, we had no special content to offer.

Resolved to do better, in 2016 we began creating premium content monthly. We published lengthier e-books, practical templates, and how-to guides; we also posted blog content pointing to those premium assets. And we hired a full-time inbound marketing expert to generate leads through landing pages and nurture those leads through an evolving set of email sequences.

The results came quickly. Our premium content brought thousands of downloads and our email campaigns turned into a sizeable amount of free trial activations and subscriptions.

Still, we were restless. Was this the best we could do? Within a year, we knew we were ready for something more … something bigger. Yet instead of going deeper into the funnel to garner more sales, we chose to focus on the top of the funnel. We came up with a content initiative that would establish us as thought leaders. And rather than build out our current content site – which had thousands of daily readers – we launched a new blog with zero traffic.

While our existing blog had just won a coveted spot on Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blog list (and was a great conversion engine), it lacked that “oooh, let’s see what Agorapulse says about topic X” factor. Our writing was solid, well curated, and helpful for social media managers, but it wasn’t definitive.

Our writing was solid, well curated, and helpful, but it wasn't definitive. @kalnerwilliams. Read more>> Click To Tweet

In our space of social media marketing, we felt being definitive wasn’t merely pontificating about a new announcement from Google or commenting on how to use a new feature on Instagram. Becoming a definitive source meant taking the time to see if an original idea holds up in practice. That sounds a lot like the scientific method, doesn’t it? It only made sense that we called the project Social Media Lab.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 5 Brands Share Their Content Marketing Process

Conducting content experiments

We hired one full-time and one part-time “social media scientist” to test long-held social media myths that we were antsy to see proven right or revealed to be completely off base. These scientists spent months setting up and running the tests. During this time, we had nothing to show the public so it was a matter of waiting until we had posts about the experiment to push live.

On one fateful week in August 2017, after months of sweating, we published our findings on three tests. Within two months, two of those three posts ranked on the first page of Google for their chosen keywords. And during that time, our lab experiments got social media shout-outs from some of the biggest names in the industry.

We’re still evolving the model, but we’re confident we’ve hit a rich seam of original, data-driven insights.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How Content Influences the Purchasing Process: Tips for Content Marketers [Research]

Agile sprints used experiment

A sprint in Agile methodology represents the period of time you allocate to complete a finite number of tasks. In the development world, it’s common to have weekly sprints. In fact, it’s what our internal development team uses. In marketing, we set monthly sprints.

At the beginning of each month, we decide which activities we’d like to take on (or have been asked to take on). Each activity is given a level of effort (LoE) using the Fibonacci numerical sequence – called “story points” in the Agile world. At the beginning of the monthly sprint, we all get on a call to count the points and assess whether we’ve over- or under-extended ourselves for the month. If necessary, we adjust to ensure we can reasonably complete each activity.

We hold ourselves accountable for these tasks by hopping on a daily scrum call with our team. Each of us has about two minutes to share what sprint tasks we’ve completed since we last spoke and what we plan to do for the rest of the day. We also share what blockers – whether personal or work-related – are in the way of moving tasks forward. At the end of the month, we review each assigned task and explain the success or failure of getting it done.

With Social Media Lab, we are so keen on getting the word out about our experiments that content creation and content promotion get separate tasks and story points. Our lead scientist is responsible for the content from each experiment and I’m responsible for the promotion of each of those experiments.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Confused About Agile Marketing? Your Questions Answered [With Video]

The Science of Productive Content Marketing Team Meetings

Tech tools for content marketing sprints

Asana is our home base for all sprint activities. Our monthly sprint boards hold the LoE, tags, assignee, and latest status of each activity. As a team, we run through our Asana tasks at each month’s sprint kickoff meeting and retrospective. And each of us checks Asana a few times a week to make sure that we (and our direct reports) are on track to meet our goals.

Use a tech tool like @asana as a home base for all sprint activities, says @kalnerwilliams. #Agile Click To Tweet

We use Google Hangouts to conduct our daily scrums (our marketing team is spread across seven countries) and a Slack channel called “scrum” to log our daily tasks and blockers. Slack is particularly helpful if one of us can’t join the daily Hangout or if we’re running late to scrum. Since Slack is more of a “push” tool than Asana, I’ve integrated the two, meaning whenever a status is changed on a key Asana project, a message goes out to the team on a linked Slack channel.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Your Content Team Can Sprint With Agile Marketing

7 Best Practices (and Tools) for Managing Your Remote Content Team

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

A version of this article originally appeared in the February issue of  Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free subscription to our bimonthly, print magazine.

Be inspired and learn the inside story from successful marketing leaders from the main stage and dozens of breakout rooms at Content Marketing World 2018 this September in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today. 

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post What One Brand Did After It Created a Top 10 Blog appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

[hotspreadpage]

What One Brand Did After It Created a Top 10 Blog

What would you do with a blog that averaged 150,000 monthly views? Do tons more to drive leads, our team decided unanimously back in 2016.

Up until that point, we merely invited readers to consume our blog content, which focused on the latest social media trends. Readers were free to enter and leave the premises at any time. We didn’t ask for visitors’ email addresses in return for access. Even if we wanted to use in-your-face dropdowns begging for an address, we had no special content to offer.

Resolved to do better, in 2016 we began creating premium content monthly. We published lengthier e-books, practical templates, and how-to guides; we also posted blog content pointing to those premium assets. And we hired a full-time inbound marketing expert to generate leads through landing pages and nurture those leads through an evolving set of email sequences.

The results came quickly. Our premium content brought thousands of downloads and our email campaigns turned into a sizeable amount of free trial activations and subscriptions.

Still, we were restless. Was this the best we could do? Within a year, we knew we were ready for something more … something bigger. Yet instead of going deeper into the funnel to garner more sales, we chose to focus on the top of the funnel. We came up with a content initiative that would establish us as thought leaders. And rather than build out our current content site – which had thousands of daily readers – we launched a new blog with zero traffic.

While our existing blog had just won a coveted spot on Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blog list (and was a great conversion engine), it lacked that “oooh, let’s see what Agorapulse says about topic X” factor. Our writing was solid, well curated, and helpful for social media managers, but it wasn’t definitive.

Our writing was solid, well curated, and helpful, but it wasn't definitive. @kalnerwilliams. Read more>> Click To Tweet

In our space of social media marketing, we felt being definitive wasn’t merely pontificating about a new announcement from Google or commenting on how to use a new feature on Instagram. Becoming a definitive source meant taking the time to see if an original idea holds up in practice. That sounds a lot like the scientific method, doesn’t it? It only made sense that we called the project Social Media Lab.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 5 Brands Share Their Content Marketing Process

Conducting content experiments

We hired one full-time and one part-time “social media scientist” to test long-held social media myths that we were antsy to see proven right or revealed to be completely off base. These scientists spent months setting up and running the tests. During this time, we had nothing to show the public so it was a matter of waiting until we had posts about the experiment to push live.

On one fateful week in August 2017, after months of sweating, we published our findings on three tests. Within two months, two of those three posts ranked on the first page of Google for their chosen keywords. And during that time, our lab experiments got social media shout-outs from some of the biggest names in the industry.

We’re still evolving the model, but we’re confident we’ve hit a rich seam of original, data-driven insights.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How Content Influences the Purchasing Process: Tips for Content Marketers [Research]

Agile sprints used experiment

A sprint in Agile methodology represents the period of time you allocate to complete a finite number of tasks. In the development world, it’s common to have weekly sprints. In fact, it’s what our internal development team uses. In marketing, we set monthly sprints.

At the beginning of each month, we decide which activities we’d like to take on (or have been asked to take on). Each activity is given a level of effort (LoE) using the Fibonacci numerical sequence – called “story points” in the Agile world. At the beginning of the monthly sprint, we all get on a call to count the points and assess whether we’ve over- or under-extended ourselves for the month. If necessary, we adjust to ensure we can reasonably complete each activity.

We hold ourselves accountable for these tasks by hopping on a daily scrum call with our team. Each of us has about two minutes to share what sprint tasks we’ve completed since we last spoke and what we plan to do for the rest of the day. We also share what blockers – whether personal or work-related – are in the way of moving tasks forward. At the end of the month, we review each assigned task and explain the success or failure of getting it done.

With Social Media Lab, we are so keen on getting the word out about our experiments that content creation and content promotion get separate tasks and story points. Our lead scientist is responsible for the content from each experiment and I’m responsible for the promotion of each of those experiments.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Confused About Agile Marketing? Your Questions Answered [With Video]

The Science of Productive Content Marketing Team Meetings

Tech tools for content marketing sprints

Asana is our home base for all sprint activities. Our monthly sprint boards hold the LoE, tags, assignee, and latest status of each activity. As a team, we run through our Asana tasks at each month’s sprint kickoff meeting and retrospective. And each of us checks Asana a few times a week to make sure that we (and our direct reports) are on track to meet our goals.

Use a tech tool like @asana as a home base for all sprint activities, says @kalnerwilliams. #Agile Click To Tweet

We use Google Hangouts to conduct our daily scrums (our marketing team is spread across seven countries) and a Slack channel called “scrum” to log our daily tasks and blockers. Slack is particularly helpful if one of us can’t join the daily Hangout or if we’re running late to scrum. Since Slack is more of a “push” tool than Asana, I’ve integrated the two, meaning whenever a status is changed on a key Asana project, a message goes out to the team on a linked Slack channel.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Your Content Team Can Sprint With Agile Marketing

7 Best Practices (and Tools) for Managing Your Remote Content Team

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

A version of this article originally appeared in the February issue of  Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free subscription to our bimonthly, print magazine.

Be inspired and learn the inside story from successful marketing leaders from the main stage and dozens of breakout rooms at Content Marketing World 2018 this September in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today. 

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post What One Brand Did After It Created a Top 10 Blog appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

What One Brand Did After It Created a Top 10 Blog syndicated from https://hotspread.wordpress.com

[lucyariablog]

What One Brand Did After It Created a Top 10 Blog

What would you do with a blog that averaged 150,000 monthly views? Do tons more to drive leads, our team decided unanimously back in 2016.

Up until that point, we merely invited readers to consume our blog content, which focused on the latest social media trends. Readers were free to enter and leave the premises at any time. We didn’t ask for visitors’ email addresses in return for access. Even if we wanted to use in-your-face dropdowns begging for an address, we had no special content to offer.

Resolved to do better, in 2016 we began creating premium content monthly. We published lengthier e-books, practical templates, and how-to guides; we also posted blog content pointing to those premium assets. And we hired a full-time inbound marketing expert to generate leads through landing pages and nurture those leads through an evolving set of email sequences.

The results came quickly. Our premium content brought thousands of downloads and our email campaigns turned into a sizeable amount of free trial activations and subscriptions.

Still, we were restless. Was this the best we could do? Within a year, we knew we were ready for something more … something bigger. Yet instead of going deeper into the funnel to garner more sales, we chose to focus on the top of the funnel. We came up with a content initiative that would establish us as thought leaders. And rather than build out our current content site – which had thousands of daily readers – we launched a new blog with zero traffic.

While our existing blog had just won a coveted spot on Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blog list (and was a great conversion engine), it lacked that “oooh, let’s see what Agorapulse says about topic X” factor. Our writing was solid, well curated, and helpful for social media managers, but it wasn’t definitive.

Our writing was solid, well curated, and helpful, but it wasn't definitive. @kalnerwilliams. Read more>> Click To Tweet

In our space of social media marketing, we felt being definitive wasn’t merely pontificating about a new announcement from Google or commenting on how to use a new feature on Instagram. Becoming a definitive source meant taking the time to see if an original idea holds up in practice. That sounds a lot like the scientific method, doesn’t it? It only made sense that we called the project Social Media Lab.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 5 Brands Share Their Content Marketing Process

Conducting content experiments

We hired one full-time and one part-time “social media scientist” to test long-held social media myths that we were antsy to see proven right or revealed to be completely off base. These scientists spent months setting up and running the tests. During this time, we had nothing to show the public so it was a matter of waiting until we had posts about the experiment to push live.

On one fateful week in August 2017, after months of sweating, we published our findings on three tests. Within two months, two of those three posts ranked on the first page of Google for their chosen keywords. And during that time, our lab experiments got social media shout-outs from some of the biggest names in the industry.

We’re still evolving the model, but we’re confident we’ve hit a rich seam of original, data-driven insights.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How Content Influences the Purchasing Process: Tips for Content Marketers [Research]

Agile sprints used experiment

A sprint in Agile methodology represents the period of time you allocate to complete a finite number of tasks. In the development world, it’s common to have weekly sprints. In fact, it’s what our internal development team uses. In marketing, we set monthly sprints.

At the beginning of each month, we decide which activities we’d like to take on (or have been asked to take on). Each activity is given a level of effort (LoE) using the Fibonacci numerical sequence – called “story points” in the Agile world. At the beginning of the monthly sprint, we all get on a call to count the points and assess whether we’ve over- or under-extended ourselves for the month. If necessary, we adjust to ensure we can reasonably complete each activity.

We hold ourselves accountable for these tasks by hopping on a daily scrum call with our team. Each of us has about two minutes to share what sprint tasks we’ve completed since we last spoke and what we plan to do for the rest of the day. We also share what blockers – whether personal or work-related – are in the way of moving tasks forward. At the end of the month, we review each assigned task and explain the success or failure of getting it done.

With Social Media Lab, we are so keen on getting the word out about our experiments that content creation and content promotion get separate tasks and story points. Our lead scientist is responsible for the content from each experiment and I’m responsible for the promotion of each of those experiments.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Confused About Agile Marketing? Your Questions Answered [With Video]

The Science of Productive Content Marketing Team Meetings

Tech tools for content marketing sprints

Asana is our home base for all sprint activities. Our monthly sprint boards hold the LoE, tags, assignee, and latest status of each activity. As a team, we run through our Asana tasks at each month’s sprint kickoff meeting and retrospective. And each of us checks Asana a few times a week to make sure that we (and our direct reports) are on track to meet our goals.

Use a tech tool like @asana as a home base for all sprint activities, says @kalnerwilliams. #Agile Click To Tweet

We use Google Hangouts to conduct our daily scrums (our marketing team is spread across seven countries) and a Slack channel called “scrum” to log our daily tasks and blockers. Slack is particularly helpful if one of us can’t join the daily Hangout or if we’re running late to scrum. Since Slack is more of a “push” tool than Asana, I’ve integrated the two, meaning whenever a status is changed on a key Asana project, a message goes out to the team on a linked Slack channel.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Your Content Team Can Sprint With Agile Marketing

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Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

A version of this article originally appeared in the February issue of  Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free subscription to our bimonthly, print magazine.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post What One Brand Did After It Created a Top 10 Blog appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/03/brand-top-blog/

[archiveofprolbems]

Aesthetics of Resistance? Artistic Research as Discipline and Conflict by Hito Steyerl

What is artistic research today? At present no one seems to know an answer to this question. Artistic research is treated as one of the multiple practices which are defined by indefinition, constantly in flux, lacking coherence and identity. But what if this view were indeed misleading? What if we actually knew more about it than we thought? In order to discuss this proposition, let’s first have a look at current debates around artistic research. It seems as if one of their most important concerns is the transformation of artistic research into an academic discipline. There are discussions about curriculum, degrees, method, practical application, pedagogy. On the other hand, there is also substantial criticism of this approach. It addresses the institutionalization of artistic research as being complicit with new modes of production within cognitive capitalism: commodified education, creative and affective industries, administrative aesthetics, and so on. Both perspectives agree on one point: artistic research is at present being constituted as a more or less normative, academic discipline.

A discipline is of course disciplinarian; it normalizes, generalizes and regulates; it rehearses a set of responses, and in this case, trains people to function in an environment of symbolic labor, permanent design and streamlined creativity. But then again, what is a discipline apart from all of this? A discipline may be oppressive, but this is also precisely why it points to the issue it keeps under control. It indexes a suppressed, an avoided or potential conflict. A discipline hints at a conflict immobilized. It is a practice to channel and exploit its energies and to incorporate them into the powers that be. Why would one need a discipline if it wasn’t to discipline somebody or something? Any discipline can thus also be seen from the point of view of conflict.

Let me give an example: a project I recently realized, called The Building. It deals with the construction history of a Nazi building on the main square in Linz, Austria; it investigates its background, the stories of the people who actually built it, and also looks at the materials used in the building. The construction was performed by partly foreign forced laborers and some of the former inhabitants of the site were persecuted, dispossessed and murdered. During the research it also actually turned out that some of the building stones were produced in the notorious quarry of concentration camp Mauthausen, where thousands of people were killed.

There are at least two different ways of describing this building. One and the same stone used for the building can be said to have gained its shape according to the paradigm of neoclassicist architecture, which would be the official description given on the building itself. Or it can be described as having probably been shaped by a stone mason in concentration camp Mauthausen, who was likely a former Spanish Republican fighter. The conclusion is obvious: the same stone can be described from the point of view of a discipline, which classifies and names. But it can also be read as a trace of a suppressed conflict.

But why would this very local project be relevant for a reflection about artistic research as such? Because parts of this building also coincidentally house the Linz Art Academy. This building is a location, where artistic research is currently being integrated into academic structures: there is a department for artistic research inside this building. Thus, any investigation of the building might turn out as a sort of institutional metareflection on the contemporary conditions of artistic research as such.

In this sense: where is the conflict, or rather what are the extensive sets of conflicts underlying this new academic discipline? Who is currently building its walls, using which materials, produced by whom? Who are the builders of the discipline and where are their traces?

Discipline and Conflict

So, what are the conflicts, and where are the boundaries then? Seen from the point of view of many current contributions, artistic research seems more or less confined to the contemporary metropolitan art academy. Actual artistic research looks like a set of art practices by predominantly metropolitan artists acting as ethnographers, sociologists, product or social designers. It gives the impression of being an asset of technologically and conceptually advanced First World capitalism, trying to upgrade its population to efficiently function in a knowledge economy, and as a by-product, casually surveying the rest of the world as well. But if we look at artistic research from the perspective of conflict or more precisely of social struggles, a map of practices emerges that spans most of the 20th century and also most of the globe. It becomes obvious that the current debates do not fully acknowledge the legacy of the long, varied and truly international history of artistic research which has been understood in terms of an aesthetics of resistance.

Aesthetics of Resistance is the title of Peter Weiss’ seminal novel, released in the early 1980s, which presents an alternative reading of art history as well as an account of the history of anti-fascist resistance from 1933 to 1945. Throughout the novel Weiss explicitly uses the term “artistic research (künstlerische Forschung)” to refer to practices such as Brecht’s writing factory in exile. He also points to the factographic and partly also productivist practices in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union, mentioning the documentary work of Sergei Tretjakov, among many others. Thus he establishes a genealogy of aesthetic research, which is related to the history of emancipatory struggles throughout the 20th century.

Since the 1920s, extremely sophisticated debates about artistic epistemologies were waged on terms like fact, reality, objectivity, inquiry within the circles of Soviet factographers, cinematographers and artists. For factographers, a fact is an outcome of a process of production. Fact comes from facere, to make or to do. So in this sense the fact is made or even made up. This should not come as a surprise to us in the age of poststructuralist, metaphysical skepticism. But the range of aesthetic approaches which were developed as research tools almost 100 years ago is stupefying.

Authors like Vertov, Stepanova, Tretjakov, Popova and Rodchenko invent complex procedures of investigation, such as the cine-eye, the cine-truth, the biography of the object or photomontage. They work on human perception and practice and actively try to integrate scientific attitudes into their work. And scientific creation is flowing as a result of many of these developments. In his autobiography, Roman Jakobson describes in detail how avantgarde art practices inspired him to develop his specific ideas on linguistics.

Of course throughout history many different approaches of this type of research have existed. We could also mention the efforts of the artists employed by the FSA (Farm Security Administration) of creating essayistic photojournalistic inquiries during the Great Depression in the US. In all these cases, the artistic research is ambivalently co-opted into state policies – although to a different extent and with completely different consequences. Around the same time Tretyakov got shot during the Stalinist terror, Walker Evans had a solo show at the MoMa.

Another method of artistic inquiry, which is based on several related sets of conflict and crisis is the essayistic approach. In 1940, Hans Richter coins the term film essay or essay film as capable of visualizing theoretical ideas. He refers to one of his own works already made in 1927 called Inflation, an extremely interesting experimental film about capitalism running amok. Richter argues that a new filmic language has to be developed in order to deal with abstract processes such as the capitalist economy. How does one show these abstractions, how does one visualize the immaterial? These questions are reactualized in contemporary art practices, but they have a long history.

The essay as filmic approach also embraces the perspective of anticolonial resistance. One of the first so-called essay films is the anticolonial film-essay Les statues meurent aussi, by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, about racism in dealing with African art. The film is commissioned by a magazine called Presence africaine which counts as its editors people like Aimé Césaire or Leopold Senghor, main theoreticians of the so-called negritude movement in the 1930s. Only a few years later Theodor Adorno’s text, The Essay as Form, appears in which he ponders on the resistant characteristics of the essay as subversive method of thought. To Adorno the essay means the reshuffling of the realms of the aesthetic and epistemological, which undermines the dominant division of labor.

And then we enter the whole period of the 1960s with their international struggles, tricontinentalism and so on. Frantz Fanon’s slogan: “...we must discuss, we must invent...” is the motto of the manifesto Towards a Third Cinema, written by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino in 1969, in a context of dictatorship in Argentina. The relation of art and science is again explicitly mentioned in Julio Garcia Espinosa’s manifesto For an Imperfect Cinema (1969). Other methods of artistic research include situationist derive and workers inquiries, constructivist montage, cut-ups, biomechanics, oral history, deconstructive or surrealist anthropology, the diffusion of counterinformation as well as aesthetic journalism. Some of these methods are more easily absorbed into the art mainstream than others. Especially strongly dematerialized practices with pronounced modernist features are quickly absorbed into information capitalism because they are compressed, quick to absorb and easily transmitted.

It is no coincidence that many of the practices mentioned here have been dealing with classical problems of documentary representation from very different perspectives: its function as power/knowledge, its epistemological problems, its relation to reality and the challenge of creating a new one. Documentary styles and forms have forever grappled with the uneven mix of rationality and creativity, between subjectivity and objectivity, between the power of creation and the power of conservation.

It is no coincidence either that many of the historical methods of artistic research are tied to social or revolutionary movements, or to moments of crisis and reform. In this perspective, the outline of a global network of struggles is revealed, which spans almost the whole 20th century, which is transversal, relational, and (in many, though far from all cases) emancipatory.

It is a coincidence, however, that Peter Weiss´ Aesthetics of Resistance also mentions the main square of Linz: the site of The Building. He describes a scene in which members of the International Brigades in Spain listen to a broadcast of the enthusiastic reception for Hitler and the German troops on Linz’s main square in March 1938. But Weiss’ protagonist notices a very small (and entirely hypothetical) moment in resistance pointed out by the radio journalist: some of the windows on the square remain unlit, and the journalist is quick to point out that the flats of the Jews are located there. Actually, during the research it turned out that one of the Jewish families living there had dispersed to three different continents and two members of the family had been murdered. One of the latter was a person called Ernst Samuely who was supposedly a communist. After many ordeals, he joined a Jewish partisan group on the Polish border before disappearing. So, if we look at the Linz building from this point of view, we see that it dissolves into a network of international routes and relations, which relate to oppression but also to resistance: it relates to what Walter Benjamin once called “the tradition of the oppressed.”

The Perspective of Conflict

If we keep applying the global and transversal perspective to the debate around artistic research, the temporal and spatial limitations of contemporary metropolitan debates are revealed. It simply does not make any sense to continue the discussion as if practices of artistic research do not have a long and extensive history well beyond conceptual art practices – which is one of the very few historical examples to be mentioned, although very rarely. From the point of view of social struggles, the discontinuous genealogy of artistic research becomes an almost global one, with a long and frequently interrupted history. The geographical distribution of artistic research practices also dramatically changes in this perspective. Since some locations were particularly affected by the conjunction of power and knowledge, which arose with the formation of capitalism and colonialism, strategies of epistemic disobedience had to be invented.

A power/knowledge/art, which reduced whole populations to objects of knowledge, domination and representation, had to be countered not only by social struggle and revolt, but also by epistemological and aesthetic innovation. Thus reversing the perspective and focusing on discipline as an index of conflict also reverses the direction in which art history has been written as an account of peripheral artists copying and catching up with Western art trends. We could just as well say that many contemporary metropolitan artists are only now catching up with the complexity of debates around reality and representation that Soviet factographers had already developed in the 1920s.

Specific and Singular

In all these methods, two elements collide: a claim to specificity clashes with a claim to singularity. What does this mean? One aspect of the work claims to participate in a general paradigm, within a discourse that can be shared and which is manufactured according to certain criteria. More often than not, scientific, legalistic or journalistic truth procedures underly this method of research. These methodologies are pervaded by power relations as many theorists have demonstrated.

On the other hand, artistic research projects in many cases also lay claim to singularity. They create a certain artistic setup, which claims to be relatively unique and produces its own field of reference and logic. This provides it with a certain autonomy, in some cases an edge of resistance against dominant modes of knowledge production. In other cases, this assumed singularity just sexes up a quantitative survey, or to use a famous expression by Benjamin Buchloh, creates an aesthetic of administration.[1]”

While specific methods generate a shared terrain of knowledge – which is consequently pervaded by power structures – singular methods follow their own logic. While this may avoid the replication of existing structures of power/knowledge, it also creates the problem of the proliferation of parallel universes, which each speak their own, untranslatable language. Practices of artistic research usually partake in both registers, the singular as well as the specific; they speak several languages at once.

Thus, one could imagine a semiotic square*, which would roughly map the tensions which become apparent during the transformation of artistic research into an academic and/or economic discipline. Of course, this scheme is misleading, since one would have to draw a new one for every singular point of view which is investigated. But it shows the tensions which both frame and undermine the institutionalization of artistic research.

Artistic Research as Translation

The multilinguality of artistic research implies that artistic research is an act of translation. It takes part in at least two languages and can in some cases create new ones. It speaks the language of quality as well as of quantity, the language of the singular as well as the language of the specific, use value as well as exchange value or spectacle value, discipline as well as conflict; and it translates between all of these. This does not mean that it translates correctly – but it translates, nevertheless.

At this point, one should emphasize that this is also the case with so-called autonomous artworks, which have no pretense whatsoever to partake in any kind of research. This does not mean they cannot be quantified or become part of disciplinary practices because they are routinely quantified on the art market in the form of pricing and integrated into art histories and other systems of value. Thus, most art practices exist in one or another type of translation, but this type of translation does not jeopardize the division of labor established between art historians and gallerists, between artists and researchers, between the mind and senses. In fact, a lot of the conservative animosity towards artistic research stems from a feeling of threat, because of the dissolution of these boundaries, and this is why artistic research is often dismissed in everyday practice as neither art nor research.

But the quantification processes involved in the evaluation or valorization of artistic research are slightly different than the traditional procedures of quantification. Artistic research as a discipline not only sets and enforces certain standards but also presents an attempt to extract or produce a different type of value in art. Apart from the art market, a secondary market develops for those practices which lack in fetish value. This secondary value is established by quantification and integration into (increasingly) commodified education systems. Additionally, a sort of social surplus embedded into a pedagogical understanding of art comes into play. Both combined create a pull towards the production of applied or applicable knowledge/art, which can be used for entrepreneurial innovation, social cohesion, city marketing, and thousands of other aspects of cultural capitalism. From this perspective, artistic research indeed looks like a new version of the applied arts, a new and largely immaterial craft, which is being instituted as a discipline in many different places.

Radiators

At the end, let me come back to the beginning: we know more about artistic research than we think. And this concerns the most disquieting findings of the project around The Building in Linz. It is more than likely, that after the war, radiators were taken from the now abandoned concentration camp Mauthausen and reinstalled into the building. If this plan documented in the historical files was executed, then the radiators are still there and have quietly been heating the building ever since. A visit with an expert confirmed that the radiators have never been exchanged in the Eastern part of the building and that, moreover, some of the radiators had already been used, when they had been installed around 1948. The make of those radiators corresponds to the few radiators seen in contemporary photos of concentration camp Mauthausen. Now, of course, radiators were not in use in the prisoner's barracks. They were in use in some workrooms, like the laundry room. They were in use in the prisoner's office and the prisoner's brothel, where female inmates from another concentration camp had to work.

But what do we make of the fact that the Department for Artistic Research (its coordination office is located in The Building, according to the website) could soon find itself being heated by the same radiators, which were mute witnesses of the plight of female inmates in the concentration camp brothel? To quote the website of the Linz art academy, “artistic-scientific research belongs to the core tasks of the Art University Linz, and artistic practice and scientific research are combined under one roof. The confrontation and/or combination of science and art require intense research and artistic development in a methodological perspective, in the areas of knowledge transfers and questions of mediation. Cultural Studies, art history, media theory, several strategies of mediation as well as art and Gender Studies in the context of concrete art production are essential elements of the profile of the university.” What are the conditions of this research? What is the biography of its historical infrastructure and how can reflecting on it help us to break through the infatuation with discipline and institutionalization and to sharpen a historical focus in thinking about artistic research? Obviously, not every building will turn out to house such a surprising infrastructure. But the general question remains: what do we do with an ambivalent discipline, which is institutionalized and disciplined under this type of conditions? How can we emphasize the historical and global dimension of artistic research and underline the perspective of conflict? And when is it time to turn off the lights?

*)

                                                                  SPECIFIC

                            SCIENCE /                                              PUBLIC DEBATE /                             ART HISTORY                                       COUNTERINFORMATION

DISCIPLINE                                                                                                                    RESISTANCE

                            ART MARKET /                                      AESTHETIC AUTONOMY                             CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

                                                                SINGULAR

This text appeared first in mahkuzine 8, winter 2010, http://www.mahku.nl/download/maHKUzine08_web.pdf

[1] Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions”, in: October, Vol. 55. (Winter, 1990), pp. 105-143.

Source: http://eipcp.net/transversal/0311/steyerl/en

[kim26chiu]

The London Review of Books Is Required Reading

People often ask me how they can follow my career path into urbanism writing. I generally discourage that. But for those who are interested, it involves reading – lots and lots and reading. And not just on urbanism but not a wide range of topics. I can only make many of the connections I do because I’m tapped in a wide of range of things, most of which are like the parts of the iceberg underwater you never see.

As it happens, some folks also ask me what they should read or what I read.

One thing of course is to sign up for my exclusive monthly newsletter, where I include my hand-selected list of some of the best links I read that month.

One periodical that most people don’t read but should is the London Review of Books. Virtually all newspapers and periodicals are fungible at some level. They cover the same stories with the same slants and frames. But the London Review of Books is different.

The LRB does review books, but is unlike a typical book review. They often get the best or one of the best people in the world on the subject at hand to write the review. This sometimes backfires because of a de facto rivalry with the book author. But generally it works great. They also provide such in-depth summaries of the books in question that your rarely need to actually read them, non-fiction at least. This is important because realistically nobody can come close to reading all the books out there.

They also have longform essays on a wide range of other topics that bring perspectives you are unlikely to get elsewhere. Some of their articles are directly relevant to urbanism, such as this James Meek piece about a Cadbury factory that relocated from England to Poland.

The online version is subscriber only, but a number of articles are generally available for free. I want to share a selection of these free pieces from the current issue to give you a flavor of what you’ll get.

Malise Ruthven takes a look inside Saudi Arabia, its royal family, and its wealth.

The faith tradition that holds the Saudi system together – for now – is Wahhabi Islam, the iconoclastic creed of the 18th-century Islamic reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, whose pact with the Al Saud family led to the creation of the modern kingdom in 1932. Al-Wahhab’s stormtroopers, the Ikhwan, enabled Ibn Saud’s rise to power. They killed unarmed villagers regarded as apostates, thought nothing of slaughtering women and children, and routinely slit the throats of male captives. Contemporary accounts describe the horrors afflicted on the city of Taif in 1924, when the Ikhwan murdered hundreds of civilians, in a massacre similar to the violence committed by Islamic State or al-Qaida today. As an Arab witness wrote, Ibn Saud’s forces ‘normally give no quarter, sparing neither boys nor old men, veritable messengers of death from whose grasp no one escapes’. Some 400,000 people are reported to have been massacred by the Ikhwan during the early days of the Saudi state. The Wahhabi understanding of tawhid, the theology of monotheism or divine unicity, which forbids the veneration of any person or object other than Allah, is still used today to justify the ban on all forms of non-Muslim public worship in the kingdom, as well as the confiscation of non-Wahhabi textual sources such as Quranic commentaries brought in by pilgrims from South Asia, who have had them removed by the religious police while attending the Hajj. But tawhid, a theology that claims to be fundamentally opposed to polytheism, has an unexpected consequence. It mines the Islamic discourse to sustain a totalitarian outlook whose actual purpose is the preservation and enrichment of the tribal dynasty that owns and governs this enormous country in its exclusive interest.

Novelist Colm Tóibín takes a brief look at Barcelona, Joan Miró, Las Ramblas, terrorism, and tourism.

At that time the Ramblas was still the place where locals strolled in the evening. It had begun as a small stream whose channel was used in the dry season as a roadway. In the 18th century the stream was diverted and the Ramblas became a place to walk, with plane trees offering shelter. It is about the width of a four-lane street, with kiosks selling newspapers, flowers and (these days) ice cream, and some outdoor tables for bars, with two narrow lanes on either side, like an afterthought, for traffic. Although the pedestrian section is slightly raised, there is no real barrier between the lanes for cars and the boulevard for walkers.

Miró’s tiles were put down in an almost-circle at Plaça d’Os, just above the Liceu Opera House, near the Boqueria Market. Miró loved the idea that people would actually walk on his tiles, made in his customary colours – blue, yellow, red, black – and using some of his customary iconography. This was the first sign of a new spirit in Barcelona, which would use culture, civic pride and the idea of vivid street life to reimagine the city, giving rise, in turn, to the development of mass tourism.

Amia Srinivasan takes a fascinating and creepy look at octopuses.

Octopuses do not have any stable colour or texture, changing at will to match their surroundings: a camouflaged octopus can be invisible from just a few feet away. Like humans, they have centralised nervous systems, but in their case there is no clear distinction between brain and body. An octopus’s neurons are dispersed throughout its body, and two-thirds of them are in its arms: each arm can act intelligently on its own, grasping, manipulating and hunting. (Octopuses have arms, not tentacles: tentacles have suckers only at their tips. Squid and cuttlefish have a combination of arms and tentacles.) In evolutionary terms, the intelligence of octopuses is an anomaly. The last common ancestor between octopuses on the one hand, and humans and other intelligent animals (monkeys, dolphins, dogs, crows) on the other, was probably a primitive, blind worm-like creature that existed six hundred million years ago. Other creatures that are so evolutionarily distant from humans – lobsters, snails, slugs, clams – rate pretty low on the cognitive scale. But octopuses – and to some extent their cephalopod cousins, cuttlefish and squid – frustrate the neat evolutionary division between clever vertebrates and simple-minded invertebrates. They are sophisticated problem solvers; they learn, and can use tools; and they show a capacity for mimicry, deception and, some think, humour. Just how refined their abilities are is a matter of scientific debate: their very strangeness makes octopuses hard to study. Their intelligence is like ours, and utterly unlike ours. Octopuses are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.

The LRB often takes a look at parochial topics like some king from way back in the day, or some debate in contemporary London, that may or may not be of interest to you. If not, you can easily skip them. (As with the New Yorker, it’s difficult to keep up with the LRB, even though the latter is deceptively thin and only comes out every 2-3 weeks. So some skipping is generally needed).

Here’s one of those British pieces, a look at the life of Prince Charles.

At the age of 23 Prince Charles embarked with no great enthusiasm on a six-week training course at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. The course had been reduced from the usual three months for him, but it was long enough for Charles to realise that seafaring was yet another area in which he and his father had nothing in common. Prince Philip had a distinguished naval career. His son struggled with navigation, which he found confusing, and he didn’t much like the rough and tumble of life onboard ship. One exercise involved performing an ‘underwater escape from a submarine’: a not inapt image for a life spent trapped in a role he didn’t choose doing things he doesn’t like for people who don’t much appreciate them. That at least has often been his own view. He has made no secret of his difficulties or of the fact that his childhood was unhappy in many ways. An awkward boy who didn’t take after either his bluff father or his pragmatic, dutiful but distant mother, by the age of eight he was already worried about doing the right thing. Once, at lunch with the Mountbattens, Edwina Mountbatten explained to him that he shouldn’t take the stalks out of his strawberries because he could pick them up by the stems and dip them in the sugar. His cousin Pamela Hicks noticed a few minutes later that ‘the poor child was trying to put all the stems back on. That was so sad.’ ‘Sad’ is a word that has often been applied to the Prince of Wales, with every shade of intonation from empathy to contempt. It recurs here in books which are interesting more for what they reveal about the continuing narrative of the royal family and its symbiotic relationship with the media than for anything new in the way of facts.

Not everything is perfect, of course. The LRB has some definite biases that render their takes on various issues suspect. Israel-Palestine is one of them. You’ll quickly find out most of the rest yourself and adjust accordingly. (Hint: one of them is illustrated in the Barcelona piece).

However, I find the LRB consistently the best and most illuminating periodical I read. And no, they didn’t pay me to say this. In fact, I pay them to subscribe. If you want one reading suggestion from me that you’re not likely to get from others, it’s the London Review of Books.

  from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2017/09/01/the-london-review-of-books-is-required-reading/

[barb31clem]

The London Review of Books Is Required Reading

People often ask me how they can follow my career path into urbanism writing. I generally discourage that. But for those who are interested, it involves reading – lots and lots and reading. And not just on urbanism but not a wide range of topics. I can only make many of the connections I do because I’m tapped in a wide of range of things, most of which are like the parts of the iceberg underwater you never see.

As it happens, some folks also ask me what they should read or what I read.

One thing of course is to sign up for my exclusive monthly newsletter, where I include my hand-selected list of some of the best links I read that month.

One periodical that most people don’t read but should is the London Review of Books. Virtually all newspapers and periodicals are fungible at some level. They cover the same stories with the same slants and frames. But the London Review of Books is different.

The LRB does review books, but is unlike a typical book review. They often get the best or one of the best people in the world on the subject at hand to write the review. This sometimes backfires because of a de facto rivalry with the book author. But generally it works great. They also provide such in-depth summaries of the books in question that your rarely need to actually read them, non-fiction at least. This is important because realistically nobody can come close to reading all the books out there.

They also have longform essays on a wide range of other topics that bring perspectives you are unlikely to get elsewhere. Some of their articles are directly relevant to urbanism, such as this James Meek piece about a Cadbury factory that relocated from England to Poland.

The online version is subscriber only, but a number of articles are generally available for free. I want to share a selection of these free pieces from the current issue to give you a flavor of what you’ll get.

Malise Ruthven takes a look inside Saudi Arabia, its royal family, and its wealth.

The faith tradition that holds the Saudi system together – for now – is Wahhabi Islam, the iconoclastic creed of the 18th-century Islamic reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, whose pact with the Al Saud family led to the creation of the modern kingdom in 1932. Al-Wahhab’s stormtroopers, the Ikhwan, enabled Ibn Saud’s rise to power. They killed unarmed villagers regarded as apostates, thought nothing of slaughtering women and children, and routinely slit the throats of male captives. Contemporary accounts describe the horrors afflicted on the city of Taif in 1924, when the Ikhwan murdered hundreds of civilians, in a massacre similar to the violence committed by Islamic State or al-Qaida today. As an Arab witness wrote, Ibn Saud’s forces ‘normally give no quarter, sparing neither boys nor old men, veritable messengers of death from whose grasp no one escapes’. Some 400,000 people are reported to have been massacred by the Ikhwan during the early days of the Saudi state. The Wahhabi understanding of tawhid, the theology of monotheism or divine unicity, which forbids the veneration of any person or object other than Allah, is still used today to justify the ban on all forms of non-Muslim public worship in the kingdom, as well as the confiscation of non-Wahhabi textual sources such as Quranic commentaries brought in by pilgrims from South Asia, who have had them removed by the religious police while attending the Hajj. But tawhid, a theology that claims to be fundamentally opposed to polytheism, has an unexpected consequence. It mines the Islamic discourse to sustain a totalitarian outlook whose actual purpose is the preservation and enrichment of the tribal dynasty that owns and governs this enormous country in its exclusive interest.

Novelist Colm Tóibín takes a brief look at Barcelona, Joan Miró, Las Ramblas, terrorism, and tourism.

At that time the Ramblas was still the place where locals strolled in the evening. It had begun as a small stream whose channel was used in the dry season as a roadway. In the 18th century the stream was diverted and the Ramblas became a place to walk, with plane trees offering shelter. It is about the width of a four-lane street, with kiosks selling newspapers, flowers and (these days) ice cream, and some outdoor tables for bars, with two narrow lanes on either side, like an afterthought, for traffic. Although the pedestrian section is slightly raised, there is no real barrier between the lanes for cars and the boulevard for walkers.

Miró’s tiles were put down in an almost-circle at Plaça d’Os, just above the Liceu Opera House, near the Boqueria Market. Miró loved the idea that people would actually walk on his tiles, made in his customary colours – blue, yellow, red, black – and using some of his customary iconography. This was the first sign of a new spirit in Barcelona, which would use culture, civic pride and the idea of vivid street life to reimagine the city, giving rise, in turn, to the development of mass tourism.

Amia Srinivasan takes a fascinating and creepy look at octopuses.

Octopuses do not have any stable colour or texture, changing at will to match their surroundings: a camouflaged octopus can be invisible from just a few feet away. Like humans, they have centralised nervous systems, but in their case there is no clear distinction between brain and body. An octopus’s neurons are dispersed throughout its body, and two-thirds of them are in its arms: each arm can act intelligently on its own, grasping, manipulating and hunting. (Octopuses have arms, not tentacles: tentacles have suckers only at their tips. Squid and cuttlefish have a combination of arms and tentacles.) In evolutionary terms, the intelligence of octopuses is an anomaly. The last common ancestor between octopuses on the one hand, and humans and other intelligent animals (monkeys, dolphins, dogs, crows) on the other, was probably a primitive, blind worm-like creature that existed six hundred million years ago. Other creatures that are so evolutionarily distant from humans – lobsters, snails, slugs, clams – rate pretty low on the cognitive scale. But octopuses – and to some extent their cephalopod cousins, cuttlefish and squid – frustrate the neat evolutionary division between clever vertebrates and simple-minded invertebrates. They are sophisticated problem solvers; they learn, and can use tools; and they show a capacity for mimicry, deception and, some think, humour. Just how refined their abilities are is a matter of scientific debate: their very strangeness makes octopuses hard to study. Their intelligence is like ours, and utterly unlike ours. Octopuses are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.

The LRB often takes a look at parochial topics like some king from way back in the day, or some debate in contemporary London, that may or may not be of interest to you. If not, you can easily skip them. (As with the New Yorker, it’s difficult to keep up with the LRB, even though the latter is deceptively thin and only comes out every 2-3 weeks. So some skipping is generally needed).

Here’s one of those British pieces, a look at the life of Prince Charles.

At the age of 23 Prince Charles embarked with no great enthusiasm on a six-week training course at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. The course had been reduced from the usual three months for him, but it was long enough for Charles to realise that seafaring was yet another area in which he and his father had nothing in common. Prince Philip had a distinguished naval career. His son struggled with navigation, which he found confusing, and he didn’t much like the rough and tumble of life onboard ship. One exercise involved performing an ‘underwater escape from a submarine’: a not inapt image for a life spent trapped in a role he didn’t choose doing things he doesn’t like for people who don’t much appreciate them. That at least has often been his own view. He has made no secret of his difficulties or of the fact that his childhood was unhappy in many ways. An awkward boy who didn’t take after either his bluff father or his pragmatic, dutiful but distant mother, by the age of eight he was already worried about doing the right thing. Once, at lunch with the Mountbattens, Edwina Mountbatten explained to him that he shouldn’t take the stalks out of his strawberries because he could pick them up by the stems and dip them in the sugar. His cousin Pamela Hicks noticed a few minutes later that ‘the poor child was trying to put all the stems back on. That was so sad.’ ‘Sad’ is a word that has often been applied to the Prince of Wales, with every shade of intonation from empathy to contempt. It recurs here in books which are interesting more for what they reveal about the continuing narrative of the royal family and its symbiotic relationship with the media than for anything new in the way of facts.

Not everything is perfect, of course. The LRB has some definite biases that render their takes on various issues suspect. Israel-Palestine is one of them. You’ll quickly find out most of the rest yourself and adjust accordingly. (Hint: one of them is illustrated in the Barcelona piece).

However, I find the LRB consistently the best and most illuminating periodical I read. And no, they didn’t pay me to say this. In fact, I pay them to subscribe. If you want one reading suggestion from me that you’re not likely to get from others, it’s the London Review of Books.

  from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2017/09/01/the-london-review-of-books-is-required-reading/

[voyagerafod]

Star Trek Voyager: A Fire of Devotion: Part 2 of 4: Louder Than Bells: Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

    Lieutenant junior grade Harry Kim had been put in charge of the night shift on Voyager before, but he always took a certain amount of joy in getting to sit in the captain’s chair. The joy couldn’t entirely overpower the boredom though, which began to set in at hour four of the eight-hour rotation.

He found himself glancing repeatedly over at Samantha Wildman at the main science station, at Kashimuro Nozawa standing where he usually did at ops, at Sue Brooks sitting in Tom’s chair at navigation, and at Lydia Anderson at tactical.     “We should start a barbershop quintet,” he muttered.     “What was that, Lieutenant?” Brooks said.     “Oh, sorry, just thinking out loud. Anything interesting up ahead?”     “Permission to speak frankly sir?”     “Of course,” Harry said, wondering where this was going.     “Not a gods damned thing for light years near as I can tell.”     Harry sighed.     “Great. Well, great in the sense that nothing is going to kill us anyway.”     “Bored?” Samantha said.     “Like you wouldn’t believe,” Harry replied, standing up to stretch. “So, how has everyone’s day be-     “Sir,” Nozawa said, “something just popped up on long range sensors. It appears to be a ship, dead in space, no emissions. That’s why we didn’t pick it up sooner.”     Harry smiled. Finally, something to do.

“Interesting,” he said. “Brooks, drop us out of warp, but keep us at a safe distance from the object in case this turns out to be a trap. Put the ship on the viewscreen, full magnification.”     Harry gasped at what he saw.     “That kinda looks like a Starfleet vessel,” Samantha said.

“Yeah, but like an older one,” Harry said, stepping closer to the viewscreen, standing right next to Brooks’ seat. “If I remember Starfleet History 101, that design was abandoned back when the Enterprise didn’t have a letter in its registration.”     “If this is a long-lost vessel from the early days of Starfleet, that’s a huge find,” Brooks said. “Should I call the captain?”     “Definitely,” Harry said.

-o-

    The senior staff including the Doctor all filed out of the turbolifts, Seven of Nine following behind them. As each took their station, their fill-ins got up, but did not leave. They wanted to see this through, and Samantha couldn’t blame them. She nodded at Seven as she walked past giving her a quick smile before going to stand at the console behind the Captain and Commander Chakotay as they took their seats.

    “So, fill me in Harry, what did we find?”

    “I checked the records Captain,” Harry said, smiling. “and I had Nozawa run his scans twice to be sure. It’s definitely the NX-01.”     Janeway, Chakotay, and Paris all looked at Harry dumbstruck.     “For real?” Tom said.     “What’s the NX-01?” B’Elanna Torres said as she sat down at the auxiliary engineering console.

    “It’s a legend,” Chakotay said. “The first human-built ship that could hit warp 5. Even the Vulcans didn’t have that back then.”     “I’d read about how it went missing on its first mission. Never imagined it would be found in the Delta Quadrant of all places,” Tom said. “Any idea how it got here?”

    “I’m sure it’ll be fun to find out,” Janeway said, grinning. “Harry, pull up everything from the memory banks about the NX-01.”     “Already done captain,” Harry said.     “Excellent. Send that data to the briefing room and-”     A proximity alert alarm went off, cutting off Janeway’s order.     Now what? Samantha thought, turning back to her own console, and tilting her head at the readout.     “Captain,” she said, “I’m picking up chronotons. I think-”     Suddenly another ship filled the viewscreen, much larger than Voyager, blocking their view of the NX-01. Its hull design was Starfleet-esque but didn’t match any hull configuration she knew of.     “Captain, the other ship is hailing us,” Sam heard Harry say.     “On screen,” Janeway said.     The face on the screen was human. He wore a uniform style that Sam didn’t recognize but the insignia he wore, while wildly different from the one the Voyager crew had on their comm badges, had the familiar Starfleet delta that all ships had ever since the era of Jim Kirk.     “Captain. Looks like we meet again.”     “Braxton,” Janeway said. “Looks like you’ve moved up in the world of the 29th century.”     “You’re looking at the Federation time-ship Relativity, captain,” Braxton said. “And she’s actually been my ship all along, she was just undergoing refits the day I first met you.”

    “Which for us was actually the third time we met you. Time travel’s kinda funny that way,” Janeway said. “I don’t suppose you’ve come to tell us that Voyager is responsible for another temporal disaster of some kind.”     Braxton frowned. “Okay, you really are going to have to explain that one to me, Captain. But later. May I come aboard?”

“I’d like to know what this is about first, Captain,” Captain Janeway said, “with all due respect.”     “Fair enough. I would like to enlist your crew in helping mine solve once and for all the mystery of what really happened to the NX-01.”

-o-

    “Since some of you are unfamiliar with the NX-01 and its impact on Starfleet history and the Federation,” Captain Braxton said to the senior staff, minus the Doctor but plus Seven of Nine, as they sat around the table in the briefing room. “Let me give you a quick refresher.”     Seven took out her PADD, taking careful notes so she could fill in Sam on what she missed by not being in the briefing.     “Tom said it was the first ship to ever break Warp 5,” B’Elanna said. “If I learned about it in the academy before I dropped out I don’t remember that.”     “Well, the first ship built by any of the founding races of the Federation anyway,” Braxton said. “At the time even the Vulcans thought achieving that speed was too dangerous to attempt.”     “The 22nd century was not one of the more auspicious periods of our history,” Tuvok said. “many in the High Command were driven to paranoia and arguably even xenophobia as a side-effect of our long-running conflicts with the Andorians prior to first contact with humanity.”

    “That is more relevant to this than you realize, Mister Tuvok,” Braxton said.     “How so?” Janeway asked.     “The captain of the NX-01 was one Jonathan Archer,” Braxton said. “He, using his late father’s work on the warp five project, personally oversaw the ship’s construction and hand picked most of its senior staff. The problem though, simply put, was that he was bigoted towards Vulcans.”     “I don’t recall reading about that in history class,” Janeway said.     “I do,” Chakotay said. “apparently he believed that the Vulcans were holding humanity back by cautioning against the warp five experiments, and accused them of sabotaging his father’s work. The first working prototype wasn’t completed until after his father’s death.”     “Paranoid and racist,” B’Elanna said. “No wonder I’ve never heard of a Jonathan Archer High School.”     “Unfortunately there is a degree of truth to it,” Tuvok said. “Though only a small one. According to my own father who was teaching at the Vulcan Science Academy at the time, the Vulcan high Command did have access to some research that, if shared with our at the time new allies, the Humans, would likely have accelerated the creation of a working warp five engine by months if not years.”     “Possible,” Braxton said, “but not a certainty. What is certain is that while the drive itself was a success, the NX-01 ultimately was not. Three weeks into its mission, the NX-01 was lost in a nebula. A small amount of debris was found, but barely enough to account for one of the ship’s shuttlepods, let alone the ship itself.”     “Why was the NX-01 in the nebula? Was it a scientific mission?” Seven asked.

“No, actually,” Braxton said, “it was a first contact situation. The Borothans. A number of their ships were making a pilgrimage to a nebula their people considered holy in the time before they became a Federation member race. They invited the NX-01 and her crew along, so they went. Borothan sensor logs from the time show a small explosion beneath the NX-01 but not from it, at least from what we can tell, the footage is from very outdated sensor technology, plus degraded over time due to poor data storage. This was all pre-Memory Alpha, obviously.”

Braxton touched a button on the wall console and the sensor log began playing. It was distorted, but not so much so that Seven and the rest of the crew couldn’t make out what was going on. The NX-01, a flash of light that looked like an explosion, and the ship vanishing.”     “I don’t see any debris field at all,” Tom said.     “It was found by the Borothans,” Braxton said, “what little there was anyway, and turned over to Starfleet. They were very cooperative. Starfleet officials at the time believed that they feared they might be blamed for the NX-01’s disappearance. Obviously investigators didn’t want to rule that out right away, but it quickly became clear that they had nothing to do with it.”     “Okay,” Janeway said. “Some of this stuff we knew, some of it we didn’t, but that doesn’t explain why you want us to help. Couldn’t you simply go back in time and find out for yourself?”     “That’s the thing Captain, we already tried.” Braxton said. “The Relativity has cloaking technology, and before you ask, no I won’t say why we’re allowed to have those in my time, but when we went back, we followed the NX-01 to that nebula, and then watched it leave and continue on its mission.”     The senior staff all looked at each other, confusion showing on their face.     “How is that possible?” Chakotay said.     “And if the timeline was changed, why do we still remember the NX-01 has having gone missing?” Tom said. “I mean, it’s out there right now, on the other side of your ship,” he added, pointing at Braxton.

    “A common misconception about time travel that plagued humanity from when the concept was first theorized, up through to even the 25th century is that changes in the timeline would be felt immediately.” Braxton chuckled slightly. “Hell, you people probably still think a small paradox can destroy the whole universe.”     “Let’s not get into the minutiae of how time travel works,” Janeway said. “What I want to know is why enlist us to help?”     “The Relativity is a one-of-a-kind ship Captain Janeway, even in my time. The situation at that point in the 22nd century is already a mess, and us crossing our own timeline would be bad. Not a universe ender, like I said those don’t actually exist, but it could make things even worse.”     “Wait, what do you mean worse?” B’Elanna said.     Braxton sighed. “Here comes the part you aren’t going to like,” he said. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t like it either. But basically, the reason your history books and mine still show the NX-01 as being destroyed, at least for now, is because it needed to be. If we can’t find out what caused its disappearance over two-hundred years ago from where we are now, the Federation as we know it will either be radically different, or not exist at all. My people are still trying to figure that last part out based on the data.”     “I don’t like it,” Janeway said. “Because if you are saying what I think you are, you’re suggesting that whoever it is from my crew you want to enlist, they’ll be the ones who destroy the NX-01.”

    “The ship, yes.” Braxton said. “For the crew, if my people’s calculations work out they can be brought to the 29th century. We’ve done it before.

    “Still, that does mean their families back home will believe them dead. I don’t need to tell any of you here how difficult that will be for them.”

    “I’m sorry,” Chakotay said, “but this is all a hell of a lot to take in, and frankly you’re asking us to take it on faith when we don’t really know you.”     “Perhaps,” Tuvok said, “if you could explain why it is so necessary for the NX-01 to be lost, we would be more cooperative, Captain.”

    “Exactly,” Janeway said.

    “The short version?” Braxton said “If Captain Jonathan Archer returns home after a successful exploration mission in the NX-01, he’ll be more popular on Earth than ever. Consequently, his anti-Vulcan biases will start to seep into the public consciousness. Not in any obvious ways of course, but they’ll be there. The irrational distrust of the Vulcans will mean that when the time comes to start drafting the articles of the Federation, the Vulcans will either not be invited altogether, or will have their contributions to the charter undermined. The articles will be written by a more paranoid Humanity, and also more militaristic Andorians.”     “This is the short version?” Seven heard Tom whisper. B’Elanna nudged him to stay quiet.

    “There are many things that make the Federation great,” Braxton continued. “But the key component, the lync pin that holds it all together is the friendship between the Humans and the Vulcans. That’s where it all truly started, everything grew from that. If Archer becomes an icon, his paranoia about the Vulcans keeping humanity from reaching its full potential would spread enough to undermine that, and eventually, generations down the line destroy it completely.”     “Okay,” Harry Kim said, “this is going to sound brutal but I’m also bringing this up for the sake of discussion; why not just make Archer disappear? I don’t mean kill him, but just disappear him for awhile until the Federation has been founded. Why make the families of however many people were on that ship-”

    “Eighty-three,” Braxton said.     “Why make the families of eighty-three people suffer through the pain of never knowing what happened to their loved ones?” Harry continued.

    “Technically only eighty-one. Or eighty, depending,” Captain Braxton said.     “What are you talking about Braxton?” Janeway said, sounding increasingly frustrated.

    “I intend to send two or three Voyager crewmembers to the 22nd Century to board the NX-01,” Braxton said. “as replacements for three of the original crew members who will suddenly find themselves with other obligations they can’t back out of.”     “Why us?” Tom Paris said.     “Because history in the original timeline, the one where the NX-01 disappeared, the lost Federation starship Voyager found its remains in the Delta Quadrant, before continuing on its journey home.”

    “Wait, you’re saying we make it?” Harry said, trying and failing to suppress a smile. “I’m surprised you’re telling us this.”     “Your logs certainly do, but for obvious reasons I can’t say whether anyone or anything else did.” Braxton turned to the wall console again and pulled up three personnel profiles. Based on the uniform designs Seven deduced that there were NX-01 crew members, and the uniforms were standard issue for Starfleet in that era.

    “My people have determined that these three individuals not being on the NX-01 on its first and last mission will have negligible impact on the history of the Federation in either direction; positive or negative,” Braxton said.     “Hang on,” Janeway said. “you’re getting ahead of yourself here. We haven’t agreed to actually help you with this. You are giving us a lot of information real fast, and I don’t like it. Have you ever heard of the Gish Gallop?”     “Can’t say I have Captain,” Braxton said. “It must be a phrase that didn’t survive into my time.”     “It relates to an even older Earth saying,” Janeway said, now standing with her arms crossed. “If you can’t dazzle them with details, baffle them with bullshit.”     “Crudely put,” Tuvok said, “but the Captain is correct. You do seem to operating under the presumption that we will accept what you are telling us at face value.”     “Let’s not forget that the first time Braxton met us he tried to blow us up,” B’Elanna said, looking at the Captain as she said it.     “What?” Braxton said, sounding shocked.     “It was an alternate timeline thing, Captain,” Chakotay said. “It’s a bit complicated but the version of you who brought us back to the Delta Quadrant from 1990s Earth was different from the rather disturbed and violent version of you who caused us to end up there in the first place.”     “You’ll have to fill me in on the details of that,” Braxton said.     “Short version?” Janeway said. “When I break a time loop it stays broken.”     “Impressive,” Braxton said. “Well, in that instance I can see why you might have concerns about my presence here and what I am asking of you.”

    Captain Braxton did the best he could to explain the details that Captain Janeway had inartfully asked for, but some of the terminology he used to describe his ship’s technology went even over Seven’s head, and she knew more about temporal mechanics than anyone on the ship. She could tell that Janeway and B’Elanna were trying to keep up, and that whatever Tuvok was thinking he wasn’t letting show, but Chakotay and Harry just kept looking at each other as if each were silently asking the other if they understood what Braxton was saying.

    “Okay, Braxton,” Janeway said. “Wait outside, let me talk it over with my crew. I’ll let you know what we decide.”     “Very well then,” Braxton said, stepping out of the briefing room.

-o-

    Nearly a half hour after discussing the matter, the senior staff filed out of the briefing room back on to the Bridge, where Braxton was waiting.     Captain Janeway nodded at Braxton, who smiled.     “Thank you, Captain,” he said.     I’d better not regret this, Janeway thought.     “I took a look at the NX-01 crew members you selected to have my people replace for your mission. Commander Chakotay can compile a list of ideal candidates.”     “Knowledge of 22nd century history would be best if possible,” Braxton said. “Part of why we’re recruiting you is that era is closer to you than it is to us which decreases the possibility of error. And before you ask, we did consider approaching people from that time, as well as the 23rd century. I can show you the results of our study if you like, but simply put 24th century Starfleet officers are the best choice based on mission requirements.”     “I will want to see that,” Janeway said.     “It occurs to me, Captain,” Braxton said, “that Commander Chakotay himself would be a suitable substitute for Lieutenant Malcolm Reed. He was NX-01’s tactical officer in the main timeline, and Chakotay did teach tactics at Starfleet Academy before leaving for the Maquis.”

Janeway turned to face her first officer. Her look conveyed the question without saying it aloud. Chakotay nodded.     “Alright then,” Janeway said. “That just leaves communications officer Hoshi Sato and science officer Richard Mulder.”     “I would only need one more person, Captain,” Braxton said. “I’m sure two of your crew would be enough, we only had three names as those were the ones deemed safest to replace.”     “Just how are you going to replace them, if you don’t mind my asking?” Chakotay said, a question Janeway was thinking herself.

“It will depend on the person,” Braxton said. “A non-lethal contagion requiring a few days quarantine is always an option, though my people are capable of finding less drastic measures. Sato will be the easiest to remove from the equation, as her records show her to be a hypochondriac. To be honest, one wonders what Archer had to do to convince her to leave Earth at all.”     “Captain,” Seven of Nine said. “Since the universal translator was in its infancy at that point is history, my cortical implant could be modified to work as one and allow me to pose in the role of a communications specialist.”     “I imagine your Borg implants would raise a few red flags, Seven,” Harry Kim said.

“We can hide those,” Braxton said. “we can cover up the Commander’s face tattoo as, well, since Starfleet was far more strict regarding body modifications in that era.”

“Okay, that’s two down,” Janeway said. “We only need one more.”     “That leaves the science officer,” Braxton said. “As Voyager is a science vessel I suppose that means nearly anyone on board would be a good fit for that role.”

“According to the file we have on Lieutenant Mulder,” Janeway said. “his field of expertise was xenobiology, one of the few humans in that field at the time. He even interned for a year at a Denobulan run endangered animal reserve.”     “Samantha Wildman’s field-” Seven of Nine said, but was cut off.     “No,” Samantha said, looking panicked. “No no no. I am not a spy, I have no training in undercover work. Forget it.”

“No one’s making you, Sam,” Janeway said. “But Seven is right, that is your field. You’d be a better choice than someone who isn’t and would have to fake it.”

“Not to mention that your relationship with Ensign Seven of Nine would add credibility to the cover,” Braxton said. “The less an agent has to lie about, the easier the facade is to maintain. If you and your wife-”     “Fiancee,” Sam corrected.     Braxton took out what looked like a PADD, presumably its 29th century equivalent, and ran his finger along the screen.     “Oh, right,” he said. “that hasn’t happened yet. My apologies.”

“Not necessary,” Seven of Nine said.     “Anyway,” Braxton continued. “whoever we have fill in for the science officer doesn’t need to be well versed in xenobiology. The goal isn’t to take on the officer’s identity, just to be positioned as the ideal alternative to them in order for Archer to have to take them on as his second choice. Same goes for Reed and Sato. You aren’t posing as them, you’re posing as officers with similar qualifications.”     “In that case,” Janeway said, “perhaps someone with a degree in astrophysics would be a good fit. Tom?”     Tom Paris didn't respond right away, seeming to ponder the question.     “Makes sense,” he said. “Plus I’m a history buff, so my knowledge of the era would prove helpful to the team as well.”     “Actually,” Chakotay said. “I think maybe Ensign Wildman should join the mission.”     “What? Why?” Samantha said.     “Seven of Nine’s Borg mannerism and speech patterns would likely draw suspicion onto us,” Chakotay said. “At the very least people will notice. Humans tend not to talk like that most of the time outside of certain contexts.”     “This is relevant because?” Janeway said, wondering where Chakotay was going with this.     “I’m sure we’ve all noticed that Seven tends to behave more, to put it bluntly, human, when she’s around Sam,” Chakotay said.     “Are you suggesting I be removed from the mission if Samantha doesn’t agree to join?” Seven of Nine asked. If any other crewmember were asking that question Janeway would believe they were offended, but Seven was likely only seeking clarification.     “No,” Chakotay said. “Merely making a suggestion that could improve the mission’s chances of success.”     “Fine, I’ll go,” Samantha said. Everyone on the bridge turned to look at her. “Why is everyone so shocked?”     “You just seemed pretty adamant before, Sam,” Harry said.

“Yeah, well, after this year I don’t want to take any chances. I’ve almost lost Annie twice already, I don’t think I could live with myself if something bad happened to her two hundred years in the past if I had a chance to prevent it.”     “I assure you, Ensign Wildman,” Braxton said, “we’ll have a temporal transporter lock on them at all times.”     “Temporal transporter?” Janeway said. “Just how does that work?”     “I can explain in detail later. The only downside to the device is that it’s relatively new to my ship. So far we have been unable to transport more than one person at a time. The team definitely will need to know that going in.”     “You should’ve told us sooner, frankly,” Janeway said. “In fact, I get the feeling there are a lot of things you aren’t telling us yet.”     “This is true, Captain Janeway,” Braxton said. “but as long as the mission goes even half as well as planned, none of it will be necessary for you to know. Telling you now would just put undue pressure on you and your crew.”     “I think that’s my call to make, not yours,” Janeway said. “You said yourself, the space-time continuum isn’t anywhere near as fragile as people in my time think it is, if I remember correctly.”     “True,” Braxton said.

“So,” Janeway continued, arms crossed and stepping forward so she was face to face with Braxton, “you are going to come back into the briefing room, with myself and the three volunteers for the mission, and you are going to lay out everything. This is non-negotiable.”

-o-

Week One…

    Samantha leaned back and sighed contentedly. She was back on Earth. Earth in the 22nd century, and she was here on an undercover mission, something that she never would have believed was possible, but it was Earth nonetheless. She looked over at Seven, her Borg implants now invisible thanks to the work of Braxton’s crew, and wondered for a moment if Seven had dozed off. The soothing sound of ocean waves had nearly lulled her to that point several times.     “Doctor Wildman?” a voice she recognized from archive files that had been played for her and the rest of the undercover team a few days prior said.     Here goes nothing, she thought, nervous she would somehow accidentally blow her and Seven’s cover.     “Yes?” she said, pretending not to recognize Captain Jonathan Archer.     “Jon Archer, Starfleet,” he said, extending his hand.     “Archer? As in, Warp Five engine Archer?” Sam said, feigning excitement. “A pleasure to meet you, Captain.” She reached over and nudged Seven.     “Annika, you awake sweetie?”     “Hmm? Oh, sorry, did I- Captain Archer?” Seven said. “What brings you to Ibiza?”     “Sorry to interrupt your honeymoon, Ensign Hansen,” Archer said, smiling. Samantha had to admit the man had a certain charm to him. Had she not known deep down that this man had a deep-seated paranoia against the Vulcans, she might find herself falling into the trap of liking him. “I’m actually here to recruit you. Both of you actually.”     “Oh?” Sam said.     “I need a new science officer and communications specialist for the NX-01. We’re due to launch at the end of the week, and sadly I’ve had several officers have to bow out. I got lucky that two of the names near the top of both lists happened to be in the same place.”     Archer was referring to Sam and Seven’s cover identities, modeled very closely on their real ones, even keeping their names, or birth names in Seven of Nine’s case.     “I’m flattered,” Samantha said, remembering the script that Tom Paris had prepared for her for this moment. Don’t say yes right away, he’d said. Make Archer work for it. “But Annie and I just got here. We haven’t even been married a full twenty-four hours yet.”     “I understand,” Archer said. “and if I had more time I wouldn’t even be here. But Starfleet Command is really pushing for a launch this Saturday.”     “To coincide with Zefram Cochrane’s birthday, I heard about that,” Seven said. “I think we should take him up on the offer honey. I mean, a honeymoon in Spain is wonderful and I love you for suggesting it, but a honeymoon in space? How can we pass that up?” Seven put on an excited smile.

    Damn you’re good, Sam thought. She nearly believed that Seven was as excited as she had been told to look.     “Good sell, Seven,” Tom’s voice came through on the implants in their ears.     Archer smiled. “Not many people can say they spent their honeymoon in space.”     Sam sighed. “Captain, I appreciate the offer really, but there’s one slight problem. I’m not Starfleet.”     “I can grant you a field commission,” Archer said. “It’s nothing new, my first choice for communications officer, no offense Ensign, wasn’t Starfleet either. She’s a teacher in fact.”     Sam looked at Seven, who was putting on a masterful “oh please oh please oh please face” that Naomi had taught her. Samantha felt a twinge of guilt at having to leave Naomi behind, and it broke her heart that she wouldn’t be seeing her daughter for almost a month, but Braxton had sworn to her that in her downtime on the NX-01 he could arrange for a private communication with her from time to time and that there was no way the NX-01 relatively primitive communications technology could intercept.     “May I ask why me?” Sam said.     “Because you are one of the handful of Human scientists to have ever studied plant and animal life on other worlds,” Archer said. “Now you may be thinking why not an astrophysicist, or some other branch of science, but you don’t need to worry about that, you’ll have a decent team working under you. If something’s outside your field of expertise, you can just tell me who to bring with me on an away mission. Your profile said you showed some leadership skills.”     “Well,” Sam said, putting on a smile that she hoped looked both genuine and humble, “I’ve had to take charge of a situation from time to time.”     “And you did a great job,” Seven said, gently rubbing Sam’s shoulders. “Imagine what this could do for your career when we get back. Serving on the first Warp Five ship will look great on the resume.”     “Alright, I’m convinced,” Sam said.     “Great,” Archer said. “See you in San Francisco on Saturday, 0630 hours. That’s a few days off so enjoy your honeymoon ‘til then.”     As soon as Archer was out of earshot Sam let out a sigh of relief.     “Seems to me like he bought it,” she said.     “Agreed,” Seven of Nine said. “Has Commander Chakotay already been enlisted by Captain Archer as well?”

    “He has,” Braxton’s voice said in both women’s ears. “Yesterday. He’ll only be a Lieutenant on the NX-01 when you meet him, so be careful about that. His cover story is that he was on the command track until he took a long sabbatical when his father passed away. Like I said, basing your covers partially in truth makes them easier to maintain.

    “As for now, do what the Captain said. You’ve got a few days, might as well enjoy them. If Ensign Paris or anyone from my crew has anything they think they’ll need to pass on to you we will. I’ll mute the communicators so you two can be alone.”     “Thank you, sir,” Sam said. “but first, Tom?”     “Yeah, Sam?”     “Tell Naomi I said good night.”     “I will.”

-o-

    Seven of Nine and Samantha Wildman got to go to the beaches of Spain, Chakotay thought as he went over the defensive systems of the NX-01 while it sat in spacedock, while I have to run calibrations of phasers so old they didn’t even call them phasers yet.

    The task, though not exciting, was at least a challenge, so he wasn’t bored. The only hard part for him was making sure that his calibrations were not too good for the time period. Chakotay knew full well he could improve the accuracy and decrease the power consumption of these ‘phased cannons’ exponentially, even using the period technology at his disposal, but he had to settle for a mere 5% improvement.     “How’re those calibrations coming along, Lieutenant?” the voice of the NX-01’s chief engineer said. Commander Charles Tucker, whom Captain Archer had referred to as Trip when he’d introduced the two, climbed up the ladder from where the antimatter missiles were stored. Chakotay wondered why he’d been down there, and made a note to check later.     “Done,” Chakotay said. “Just triple checking them. One can never be too careful when it comes to weapons as powerful as these. It’d look bad on my performance review if the captain asks me to disable an alien ship and we end up blowing it to pieces instead.”     “You expect we’ll see combat out there?” Tucker said. “According to the Vulcans it’s mostly friendlies in the direction we’re headed, and those that aren’t aren’t much of a threat.”     “Is that the Vulcans praising us,” Chakotay said, “or insulting them?”     “Could be both,” Tucker said with a shrug. “Don’t let it get around Lieutenant, but while I find the Vulcans can be pretty smug sometimes, I don’t think they’re all that bad. Not that I’d ever say that to the Captain mind you. And neither should you.”     “My lips are sealed, sir,” Chakotay said.     Tucker shook his head. “I doubt I’ll ever get over someone older than me calling me sir, Mister Chakotay. I understand why though. Were you and your Dad close?”     “Be as honest as you can,” Braxton’s voice said into Chakotay’s implant, but Chakotay already knew that.     “Sadly no,” he said. “That’s part of why I took it so hard when he passed. He never approved of me joining Starfleet. He wanted me to stay in South America with our tribe. By the time I even knew he was ill, it was too late to try and mend fences.” Tucker sighed and put a hand on Chakotay’s shoulder.     “Well, hopefully he’s proud of you now, from wherever he is,” he said. Chakotay nodded.     “Maybe,” Chakotay said.

-o-

    “Wow,” Samantha Wildman said as they approached the NX-01 in a shuttlepod that Captain Archer piloted himself, with Samantha, now wearing the same period appropriate style of uniform that Seven was wearing, but with a different color trim to denote her rank and department. It was amusing that even though hers was only a field commission, she now technically outranked Seven of Nine as far as their cover went.     “I hope you don’t intend to abuse your rank, Lieutenant,” Archer had said while the three had still been standing by the landing pad on Earth. She and Seven had shared a look. Archer simply shook his head and laughed. “Forget I said anything,” he’d added.     It looks so different, Sam thought. It’s amazing how much of a difference working lights can make. She looked back at Seven, who was making a show of reading the report Archer had given her on the NX-01’s translation system, the very crude precursor to the universal translator that Sam had to admit she had taken for granted over the years. The fact was Seven, due to her Borg implants, still retained the knowledge of the languages of every species the Borg had assimilated while she was a drone. Whether or not she could speak them was another matter; Seven had insisted that she could, but not as easily as she could recall other details, in addition to details such as context, dialect, and accents.

    “Fun read, babe?” Sam said.     “Interesting,” Seven said. “I look forward to seeing this system in action.”     “The woman who was my first choice for communications officer,” Archer said, “Hoshi Sato, actually helped develop it. Shame she can’t join us, but she was always a bit on the paranoid side, and when she got food poisoning of all things the week before launch, she took it as a bad omen and bailed on me. Her loss though. Once we’ve gone past what even the Vulcan’s consider known space there are going to be a lot of new languages I just know she would’ve loved to learn about.”     Sam could still hear the inflection that Archer put on the word ‘Vulcans.’ It was subtle; so subtle that she wouldn’t have picked up on it had Seven not pointed it out to her first. She smiled, pretending she didn’t hear it.     “So, why is it still called the NX-01?” she said, asking a question that she’d actually wanted to ask in her pre-mission briefing but had failed to ask due to nerves. “Seems to me a starship should have a proper name instead of just a designation.”     “Starfleet Command couldn’t agree on one,” Archer said. “Too many Admirals wanting to get credit for being the one who named her. So they decided that if our first mission succeeds, since I helped build her, I’ll get to pick the name.”

“What are you going to call it?” Seven said.     “I’ve got it narrowed down. Remember the old space shuttles? Early spacecraft, the United States used them to send astronauts into orbit for scientific missions. I think I’ll name her after one of those. Columbia, Endeavour, Enterprise, one of those.”     Sam smiled and nodded, though it was hard for her not to associate the name Robert April with the title of ‘first Starfleet Captain of a U.S.S. Enterprise.’ I wonder what the NX-01 would’ve been named if it had made it back, she thought.     “Archer to NX-01, request permission to dock,” Archer said after pushing a button on the console in front of him.     “NX-01 flight control to Shuttlepod One, you are clear to approach,” an unknown voice replied. “Hold position while we extend the grappler.”

-o-

    Seven of Nine had made sure her ocular implant was modified to search for explosives without having to carry any extra equipment on her. This proved to be a nearly mission compromising mistake as she, Sam, and Archer made their way to sickbay from the shuttle bay. The path took them past the area of the ship where the antimatter missiles, crude precursors to the far more precise photon torpedoes, were stored, and the blinding flash all that relatively poorly shielded explosive material made as she came around a hall made her flinch. Luckily, Archer was not looking right at her when it happened, and Seven was able to regain her composure quickly.

    Captain Archer stopped a young woman who was going the opposite direction down the corridor.     “Ensign Cutler, would you go ahead and take our two new crewmen to see Doctor Phlox?”     “Of course, sir,” Cutler said. “You must be our new science and communications officers,” she added extended a hand to both Seven and Samantha.     “Samantha Wildman,” Sam said. “And my wife Annika Hansen.”     “Welcome aboard, both of you. Have you been assigned crew quarters yet?” Cutler said.     “Dammit, I knew I forgot to do something,” Archer said. He gave Seven and Sam an apologetic smile. “I’ll take care of that myself, Cutler, since it was my faux-pas. Just have them get their check-ups, and then we can be on our way.”     “Yes, sir. This way ladies,” Cutler said. Seven allowed Sam to get a few steps ahead of her so Seven could try to surreptitiously scan the parts of the ship they were going through, looking for any sign of some kind of bomb that could be to blame for the NX-01’s loss in the original timeline.     “Okay,” Braxton’s voice said into Seven’s earpiece. “Based on our data on Phlox, he’s very unconventional as doctors go. heavy into non-traditional medicine, but as far we know nothing he has is going to harm you. It will be disgusting however, so don’t feel you have to hide your revulsion. He’s probably used to it at this point.”

    Seven, Sam, and Cutler arrived at sickbay just in time to see Commander Chakotay leaving.     “Ah, Mister Chakotay,” Cutler said. “Samantha, Annika, this is Chakotay. Our new tactical officer.”     “A pleasure to meet you,” Samantha said.     “Likewise,” Seven added. Chakotay smiled and nodded.     “Welcome aboard the NX-01 ladies. Ready to make some history?” he said.     “Oh absolutely,” Samantha said, enthusiastically shaking Chakotay’s hand as though they’d never met before.

    “Good. Don’t worry too much about the Doc, he promises he’ll only use his leeches if there’s an emergency,” Chakotay said, before saluting and heading down another corridor.     I hope he’s joking, Seven thought.     “I really hope he was joking,” Tom Paris’ voice said in her ear.

    “Doctor, two new guinea pigs for you,” Cutler said in a jovial tone.     “Ah, good, always nice to meet new potential victims.” Seven was still behind Sam. She moved to Sam’s side to see a Denobulan, Species 7611, with the largest smile she had ever seen on any sentient being capable of smiling.

    “I was unaware that Starfleet allowed non-humans to serve on their ships,” Sam said.     “Normally they don’t,” Doctor Phlox said. “But Captain Archer happens to be a friend of mine, so he requested me. It doubtless helps that I have more experience treating injured and sick non-humans than any human doctor does currently, though I’ve no doubt that will change soon. Your species is made up of remarkably quick learners.”     “Careful,” Cutler said, still smiling. “this one’s a charmer.”

    Seven got the impression that something was going on between these two, but decided that was none of her concern.

    “I just need to run a routine physical,” Phlox said, “so go ahead and take a seat on one of the beds, one each please.”     It was only then that Seven noticed the animals. Cages, tanks, all sorts of enclosures holding varying types of mammals, fish, insects, and other creatures she did not recognize.     “Is this,” Seven said, also finally noticing the smell, “sanitary?” Sam nudged Seven gently as she often did when she felt that Seven needed to briefly cease talking.

    Phlox, however did not seem offended in the slightest.     “Don’t worry,” he said. “they’ve all been through necessary decontamination procedures. I use some of them for research, all very humane. Some have properties in them that can be used as medical treatments. And, a few of them are simply pets.”

    “I love animals too,” Samantha said.     “I’ve heard,” Phlox said. “I imagine we will much to talk about over the coming weeks. Now, while normally I love small talk, I do have to get this last round of physicals done in the next hour so Starfleet will allow us to launch on time, so I will get to work on the check-ups for yourself and your lovely wife.”

-o-

Week Two…

    Chakotay stared at the ceiling in his quarters, having doubts about the mission. The NX-01 was seven days out of spacedock, and the only exciting thing that had happened was first contact with the Xyrillians. It was a big deal for the people of this time of course, but for him, he’d had a Xyrillian bunkmate during his first starship posting, and another Xyrillian had briefly flown with him in the Maquis before going to another colony in the DMZ to help there.

    He also had found nothing that pointed towards what could possibly have caused the accident or sabotage or whatever that had led to this ship ending up being found by his people over two-hundred years later.

    But worst of all was his budding friendship with Trip, the chief engineer. Braxton had warned him, as well as Seven of Nine and Samantha Wildman, about getting attached to anyone on this ship, but with a mission that was going to last almost a month, that was just unrealistic. Samantha and Seven themselves seemed to regularly spend their lunches in the mess hall dining with Ensign Cutler, as well as Travis Mayweather, the NX-01’s helmsman.

    Since he was alone, he decided to go ahead and talk to his controllers aboard the Relativity directly.     “Are you sure there’s nothing we can do for them?” Chakotay said.     “History records them as being lost,” Braxton insisted, as he did every time Chakotay broached the subject. “And they don’t just suddenly turn up in the 24th century either. I’m not going to rule out finding a home for them in the 29th, but that wholly depends on what the cause of the disaster is. I’m sorry Commander, but those are the cold hard facts.”     Chakotay sighed. This was the third time he’d had this conversation, and it was to Captain Braxton’s credit that he didn’t get annoyed at the repetition he supposed. Everyone on this ship apart from himself, Seven, and Sam were going to die in about a week, and there was nothing he could do about that. He would perform his duties, but there was no rule that said he had to like them.

-o-

    Seven of Nine closed her eyes and smiled as Samantha rubbed her shoulders.     “This mission cannot end soon enough,” Sam whispered. Seven agreed. While both Captain Braxton and Tom Paris had sworn that they didn’t leave the sub-dermal communicators on non-stop, the couple could not bring themselves to be intimate while they were still in the 22nd century. Only the fact that they had gone more than a week without sex before helped them any, but on Voyager it was different; there was a child in the equation, in addition to Seven’s budding friendships with several members of the crew.

    Aboard the NX-01, it was just simply frustrating.

    “I am starting to regret volunteering,” Seven said. “At this point, with no sign of any equipment failures or sabotage to explain the disappearance of the NX-01, it looks increasingly likely that we’re in a time loop.”     “And that we have to be the ones to make it go missing,” Sam said. “I am not looking forward to that, at all.”

    “Nor am I,” Seven said.

    The sound of the door chime interrupted the somber conversation.     “Enter,” Sam said, looking at the chronometer and wondering who it might be at his hour.

    Doctor Phlox entered, smiling, his hands behind his back.     “Lieutenant Wildman, can I speak with you privately?” he said.     Sam looked at Seven. Seven subtly shrugged.     “I suppose that’s alright,” Sam said. “where-”     “Sickbay, if you please,” Phlox said. For some reason, he seemed to be making an effort not to make eye contact with her, keeping his focus on Sam.     Is he on to us? Seven thought, searching her memories for anything she might’ve done to accidentally reveal any of her cybernetic implants. Or just me?     “Yeah, sure,” Sam said. She touched the back of Seven’s neck. “See you at movie night?”     “Yes,” Seven said, smiling. “Tucker says we’ll be watching a film called Forbidden Planet. The title intrigues me.”

    “It’s a good film,” Phlox said. “The gender politics are incredibly backwards, but I understand that was sadly normal for humans at the time it was made. I saw it during my time on Earth, before I met Captain Archer.”     “Sounds interesting. I’ll meet you there. Love you,” Sam said.     “Love you too,” Seven said.

-o-

    “So, what did you want to talk about?” Sam asked Phlox.     “How long have you known your wife, Lieutenant?” Phlox said.     “Two years,” Sam said. She was rounding up considerably, but it was a mostly accurate statement.     “Remember a few days ago when one of my pet bats accidentally scratched her?” Phlox said.     “Yes,” Sam said, glowering. “I also remember reading you the riot act over letting a freaking bat fly around sickbay.”     “I was examining her, the bat I mean, after the incident, and I found something in your spouse’s blood that concerns me,” Phlox said.     Uh oh, Sam thought.     “Uh oh,” Tom Paris said in Sam’s earpiece.

    “Several years ago,” Phlox said, “when I first came to Earth, I was brought in to consult on something that had been found in the northern polar region of the planet. Along with some debris from a ship that had presumably crashed there years before, we found the frozen bodies of several humanoid, cybernetic beings.”     “Interesting,” Sam said, afraid she knew where this was going but not wanting to give away anything. “But what does that have to do with my wife?”

    “When I examined the bodies, I found inert nanotechnology inside them,” Phlox said. “I was sworn to silence by Starfleet Command about it, I’m risking my good standing with Earth as well as my position on this ship by talking to you about this. I’ve never even told Captain Archer. But I may be forced to, because I found that same nanotech in the blood on my bat’s claws.”     Sam shook her head and laughed, hoping the laugh came across as genuine.     “Are you trying to tell me that Annika is secretly a cyborg?” she said. “That’s ludicrous. If that’s so, why didn’t you find any during your exams when we first came aboard?”

    “She may have been able to hide it,” Phlox said. “The nanotech I found in her bloodstream was inert.”     “Also,” Samantha said, stepping closer to Phlox in what she hoped was an intimidating gesture, “if you actually think she’s a cyborg infiltrator of some kind, why would you tell me this? For all you know I could be one too.”     “I considered that,” Phlox said. “That’s why I palmed one of the utensils you used at dinner in the mess hall the other night.”

    “That’s kinda creepy,” Tom’s voice said. Sam had to bite her lip to keep from verbally agreeing.     “I scanned that and found no sign of nanotechnology,” Phlox said. “That’s why I believe I can trust you. I think-”     “I think you should just drop this, Doctor,” Sam said forcefully.     “I don’t,” a voice behind Sam said. She turned around to see Captain Archer standing there, with two armed officers standing behind them. One of them was Chakotay, who did not look happy to be there. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to compromise the mission, but for Sam this was a bridge too far.     “So you lied about not having told the Captain yet,” Sam said to Phlox. “You just wanted to keep me out of my quarters.”     “I’m sorry, Samantha,” Phlox said.     “Shove it,” Sam said. She was tempted to just ask Braxton for an extraction, but the problem of the temporal transporter only being able to take one person at a time had not yet been solved.     “Doctor, escort the Lieutenant to the brig,” Archer said. “We’ll be bringing Ensign Hansen with us to join her shortly, and we can begin the interrogation.”     “Shit, shit, shit,” Tom muttered. “Captain Braxton?! We’ve got a problem!”     Sam nearly flinched when Tom yelled, apparently not realizing how loud he was being so close to the communicator. She tried to think of something, anything she could say that would stop this. Maybe if she were an experienced spy like Tuvok, a tactician like Chakotay, or as analytical as Seven of Nine she would’ve, but instead she just sighed.     “Fine,” she said with anger in her voice. Although she directed the anger in Archer’s direction, it wasn’t him she was actually mad at, but he didn’t need to know that. She was mad at Phlox for the invasion of privacy with the utensils, mad at Braxton for dragging Voyager into this mess, and mad at herself for going along.     “Okay, don’t panic Sam,” Tom said. “I let Seven know what’s going on.”     As soon as Tom finished his sentence, the door to their quarters opened, and Seven stepped out, wearing her uniform in casual mode, as she always did on movie night. Seven sold a look of confusion that Sam would’ve thought was real had she not known better.     “Sam, honey, what’s going on?”     “Mister Chakotay, Mister Nava, take them to the brig,” Archer said. “The Doctor and I will join you shortly.”     “It’s okay baby,” Sam said. “It’s all a misunderstanding I’m sure. We’ll get it cleared up.” She turned and glowered at Phlox. “And believe me, heads will roll over this.”

-o-

    Chakotay had to fight the urge to just bust Sam and Seven out of their cells in the brig himself and try to get them all off this ship. As Braxton had pointed out to him, there weren’t really any options. The NX-01’s own transporters weren’t as reliable as Voyager’s, and even if they were there was nowhere nearby they could beam to. The shuttlepods had no FTL drive and no shields; stealing one of them would only get them killed. That left the temporal transporter, which could only take one person at a time and had a recharge cycle of ten seconds, during which the increasingly paranoid Archer could do something rash to whoever wasn’t lucky enough to be extracted first.

    “Jon thinks maybe the Vulcans have something to do with this,” Trip said to Chakotay while the latter was doing yet another inspection of the warp drive for any signs of tampering under Archer’s orders.     “He hasn’t said anything to me about it,” Chakotay said, “but I can believe that. That he would think that I mean. Didn’t Doctor Phlox say that the nanotech he found was centuries ahead of anything the Vulcans have?”

“He did, and I looked at those samples myself. No way is that Vulcan tech,” Trip said. “I just wish Jon would listen to reason, but this whole thing with Annika Hansen has him really on edge. He’s still waiting on orders from Starfleet Command on how to handle the interrogation.”     “That’s the thing about paranoia,” Chakotay said. “It’s impervious to logic.” Chakotay turned off his scanner. “Third check confirms, no signs of any explosives, no nanotech, not even a tracking device. If I wasn’t afraid he’d toss me in the brig too…” Chakotay let the thought hang. He looked at Trip, who just sadly nodded. Archer’s own best friend was starting to turn on him.

I wonder if we even need to let the NX-01 be destroyed or go missing, Chakotay thought. At this point even Archer’s own best friend has trouble with him. Not exactly the charismatic icon that Braxton was worried would spread anti-Vulcan bias.

“Archer to engineering,” Archer’s voice said over the loudspeakers.     “Yes, Captain?” Trip said.     “Mister Tucker, we’re returning to Earth,” Archer said. “Starfleet Command wants to handle our prisoners there. They’ll be calling in experts on interrogation, which we lack. Can the warp 5 engine handle a prolonged trip? I’d like us to get back there faster than we got out here.”

“I wouldn’t want to push it Captain,” Trip said. “But since we stopped a few places along the way, all we have to do is not stop there again on the way back and we can easily make the trip in only ten days at Warp 4.”     “I want us back there in one week,” Archer said. This was not a request.     “Okay. I think we can keep up a speed of Warp 5 non-stop for about,” Trip took out a device similar to the PADDs that people in Chakotay’s time used and began making calculations. “About sixteen hours. Drop to warp 4 after that, we can be home in, let’s see here, seven and a half days. That’s the best I can give you without risking tearing the ship apart.”     “Twelve hours is better than three days,” Archer said. “I’ll take it. Prepare the engine, we’re leaving now.”

    So much for getting to see first contact with the Borothans, Chakotay thought.

    “Commander,” Braxton’s voice said into Chakotay's earpiece. “We’ve got a plan, but first you need to get Mister Tucker somewhere where we can beam him to the Relativity with nobody seeing. Contact us immediately once you succeed, and further instructions will follow.”

-o-

    Seven of Nine looked up at the ceiling of her cell, lying on the very uncomfortable bed. She had to admit she had a certain respect for the design of the NX-01’s cells. Similar to the ones on modern Starfleet ships, but using a transparent aluminum wall with small holes cut in to allow air and sound to travel in and out. Most importantly for the safety of the crew, while inconvenient for her at the moment, was that a wall doesn’t simply shut off if there were to be a power outage.

    She could see Sam, sitting against the wall and being visibly depressed in the cell across from hers. She wanted to comfort her, but Archer kept guards in the brig with them 24/7, and they were under orders to not allow the prisoners to speak to each other. Only the occasional presence of Tom Paris, Captain Braxton, and even occasionally Naomi on their ear-pieces, patched in a shared frequency so they both could hear at the same time, kept them from feeling isolated.

    The crews of both the Relativity and the Voyager were working on a way to safely extract them, but Seven could tell from how they’d spoken in the almost twenty-four hours since Archer had put her and Sam in here that both Braxton and Janeway were nearing the point of just scrapping the mission, using the temporal transporter, and hoping for the best.

    I should never have agreed to this mission, Seven thought. All of this is my fault. Had I not volunteered my Borg nanoprobes wouldn’t have ended up on the claws of that stupid pet of that questionable doctor and the whole operation wouldn’t be compromised. Worst of all, the woman I love is sitting in a damn jail cell, not allowed to talk to anyone. She must be so scared, and I can’t even tell her I’m sorry.

    “Hey, Chakotay,” she heard the current guard, Ensign Nava, say.     “Hey, Jerry,” Chakotay said. “I’m here to relieve you.”

    “Aren’t you a little early? Your shift isn’t for another half-hour.”     “I know, but I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep. Have the prisoners said anything?“     “No sir,” Nava said. “Permission to speak frankly?”

“Go ahead,” Chakotay said.     “I know the nanotech thing is suspicious and all, but this all seems a little extreme. If we absolutely had to cut them off from the rest of the ship, shouldn’t confinement to quarters have been enough? And if both of them are spies or whatever then doesn’t keeping from talking to each other accomplish nothing? They’ve had weeks if not longer to get their stories straight.”     Seven got up and went to the transparent barrier. She could see Chakotay and Nava speaking to each other, though Nava’s back was to her. Chakotay made a show of looking around to make sure no one else was around.     “I happen to agree, Ensign, but these are the Captain's orders. We’re heading back to Earth, we can file a protest with Starfleet Command once we get there.”     “Understood. Enjoy your shift, sir,” Nava said, saluting as he handed his phase pistol and a datapad to Chakotay. Once Nava was out of sight, Chakotay manipulated some controls on a nearby console, and the barriers to both occupied cells slid open.     “Chakotay to Tucker,” Chakotay said into a handheld communicator, “we are a go.”     “Got it,” the chief engineer’s voice replied. “I’m on the way to the shuttlepod bay right now. Make sure internal security goes down before I get there so Jon doesn’t know I went willingly.”     “You say that like this is the first time I’ve had to stage a kidnapping, Trip,” Chakotay said with a wry grin.     “Commander,” Seven said. “What the hell is going on?”     “You took the words right out of my mouth, hon,” Sam said.

“I can explain,” Chakotay said. “Wait, never mind, not enough time, I’ll summarize. You two were able to take advantage of a power failure that caused the doors to open, kidnap Chief Engineer Tucker, and steal a shuttlepod.”     “What power failure?” Seven said.     “The one that’s going to happen in a few minutes because I sabotaged the engines,” Chakotay said. “Now get going, Trip will meet you at the shuttlepod bay.”     “Then what?” Sam said. “The shuttlepods don’t have FTL.”     “It’s taken care of, now start moving.”     “C’mon, Annie,” Sam said, taking Seven’s hand and moving towards the door.     “What about you, Commander?”     “I’ll get arrested and thrown in one of those cells over there, but don't worry, that’s part of the plan.”     Almost as soon as Chakotay finished that sentence, the ship shuddered as it suddenly dropped out of warp. The lights blinked out, quickly replaced by the familiar glow of emergency lighting.     “Go, go, go!” Chakotay yelled at them. The two women bolted for the door and made their way as quickly as possible towards the shuttlepod bay, coming across a pair of unconscious crewmen along the way, and resisting the urge to help. When they arrived at the bay, the door to Shuttlepod One was already open, Commander Tucker leaning out and motioning for them to follow him in.     “C’mon, hurry. I stunned those crewmen over a minute ago, it’ll wear off any second.”     “Commander,” Sam said, “Why are you helping us?”     “I’ll tell you the whole story if my own best friend doesn't blow us all to hell first,” Trip said, taking the controls as the door to shuttlepod sealed, and the shuttle bay door beneath it opened. “And also assuming that the trick Captain Braxton and Ensign Paris came up with works.”     “How do you-” Sam started to say, but the shuttlepod shuddered as the magnetic clamps released, and the artificial gravity of the ship allowed it to drop through the open bay door, at which point Trip fired up the engines and began flying straight ahead at full speed.     “Voyager to away team, stand by,” Captain Janeway’s voice said over both Seven and Samantha’s ear pieces. “and don’t panic,” she added.     “Commander Tucker, do you-”     “I heard,” Trip said. “They gave me one of those subdermal communicators too. Trust me, I’m not doing this lightly. Jonathan Archer is still my best friend. I wouldn’t betray him over just a hunch.”     Seven understood. Commander Tucker had been brought to the Relativity by way of the temporal transporter. How much detail he was given she didn’t know, at least not yet, but whatever Braxton and Janeway had divulged to him was enough to make him do something that Seven herself would’ve considered impossible; openly defying Captain Archer.     Well, not openly, Seven thought, correcting herself. As far as Archer is concerned we kidnapped Mister Tucker when we took the shuttlepod. Assuming the plan worked, Archer probably thinks we-

“NX-01 to Shuttlepod One, power down or you will be fired upon,” Archer’s voice said over the comm. It was a much more reserved tone than Seven would’ve suspected. “Annika, Samantha, whoever you work for, I’m not going to let you get away with taking my friend, my chief engineer, to them. I want him back alive, but if losing him is what it takes to make it clear to your superiors that Earth is more than capable of doing what it takes to defend itself you-”     “Annie, look!” Sam yelled, pointing out the front viewport.     A spatial distortion, exactly like the one that preceded the arrival of the Relativity in the Delta Quadrant in Voyager’s path, appeared, and a ship came out. It wasn’t the Relativity though, and at first glance it didn’t seem to be Voyager either, but Seven’s ocular implants told her what NX-01’s crude sensors wouldn’t.     “Son of a bitch” Sam said, “they made Voyager look like a Kazon ship!” Seven smiled. Even without technology to aid her, Samantha had quickly pieced together what little information she’d been given by Chakotay and Trip. Seven reached out to take Sam’s hand, but the tingle of a transport beam locking on to her kept her from completing the motion.

-o-

    Captain Janeway stood next to Ensign Todd Mulcahey as he manipulated the transporter controls. Soon, Seven of Nine, Samantha Wildman, and the NX-01’s chief engineer Charles Tucker all stood on the transporter pad. The two former quickly embraced each other, while the latter looked around with a sense of wonder.     “Good work, Todd,” Janeway said.     “Thanks, Captain,” Mulcahey said.

“Welcome aboard the Federation starship Voyager, Mister Tucker,” Janeway said.     “Please, call me Trip,” Tucker said. “I’m glad I could help you get two of your people back.”     “Okay, Trip,” Janeway said smiling. She turned to Seven and Sam. “You two alright?”     “We’re good Captain,” Sam said. “Not being allowed to talk to each other was rough, but we weren’t mistreated otherwise.”     “Jon Archer’s a lot of things,” Tucker said, sounding slightly sad. “but even he wouldn’t stoop to torture. I just hope your First Officer is doing alright, we easily could’ve fit him in the shuttlepod.”     “I know,” Janeway said. “But you were there when we came up with the plan. If Chakotay can get through to him, we can send you home, the Relativity can go back to the 29th century, and me and my people can get back to our journey.”     “What exactly is this plan I keep hearing about?” Seven said. “Now that we are back on Voyager I assume there is time for an update.”     “How about you guys go talk to your daughter first,” Tucker said. Seven and Sam looked at him in surprise.     “How did you-” Sam said.     “Time travel,” Tucker said. “I was on the Relativity for a few days, but only a few minutes passed on the NX-01. I learned a lot in that time.”     “Don’t dwell on the logistics of that too much, Sam,” Janeway said. “It’ll give you a whopper of a headache.”     “Temporal mechanics usually do, ma’am,” Sam said.     “Naomi’s in the mess hall with Neelix. Go see her, then report to the briefing room in two hours. Mister Tuck- Trip, would you like a tour?”     “I’d love to. Can we start with engineering?”     “Of course,” Janeway said. “I’ll take you personally.”

“Thanks, Cap,” Tucker said. “Can’t wait to see what an engine capable of pushing Warp 9.975 looks like. It must be massive.”

“Depends on how you define massive, but I think you’ll be impressed,” Janeway said as she and Commander Tucker exited the transporter room together.     “You know,” Tucker said, “I can’t put my finger on why I feel this way but somehow your ship just seems, what’s the word I’m looking for here? Warmer. Yeah, it seems warmer than the Relativity somehow. Not temperature wise, I mean, I don’t know. This is gonna drive me nuts.”

Janeway shrugged.     “Well I can’t help you there,” she said. “I’m too biased. This isn’t just my first command, it’s also been my only home for almost five years.”

“Good point,” Tucker said.

-o-

Chakotay knew for the most part what he was getting into by allowing himself to be caught after helping Seven of Nine and Samantha Wildman escape. Had he known however that in addition to being put in one of the cells in the NX-01’s brig he’d also be strapped to a chair while Doctor Phlox injected him with a crude truth serum derived from the excretions of some of his lab animals, he might have suggested some alterations to the plan.     “You know what’s ironic about this?” Chakotay said to Phlox and Archer as they stood over him, and his vision started to blur as the serum kicked in. “I wasn’t going to lie anyway. My mission’s already been compromised.”     “I don’t think that counts as irony, Mister Chakotay,” Phlox said.     “If that is your real name of course,” Archer said.     Chakotay did not want to laugh, but thanks to the drug he couldn’t stop it.     “‘If that’s your real name,’ ha. You sound like a bad guy from a bad holonovel,” Chakotay said. Archer’s facial expressions showed that he was getting angrier. Chakotay thought for a moment that Archer might punch him, but Phlox gently placed a hand on Archer’s shoulder, at which point the latter stepped back slightly.     “Okay, the truth then,” Archer said. “Are you working for the Vulcans?”     “No,” Chakotay said.     Archer looked at Phlox. Phlox nodded and ran a medical scanner over him.     “The serum is working, he’s telling the truth Captain.”     “Well, Phlox, I owe you an apology on that one. You were right about the nanotech being beyond what the Vulcans have now.”     “You were being cautious Captain,” Phlox said. “With the safety of the ship at stake, I took no offense.”     “Speaking of the safety of my ship,” Archer said, “what was your mission Mister Chakotay?”

“To find out what caused the disappearance of the NX-01,” Chakotay said, feeling a little sleepy now. “One of Starfleet earliest unsolved mysteries. We never knew if was sabotage, an accident, a spatial anomaly…”     “Hold it right there,” Archer said, leaning in so close that Chakotay could smell his aftershave, which wasn’t very strong, so he was very close indeed. “What happens to my ship?”     “I told you, we don’t know,” Chakotay said, the serum keeping him from hiding his frustration. “That’s why Sam, Seven, and I were here.”     “Who’s Seven?” Phlox said.     “Seven of Nine,” Chakotay said, “A former Borg drone we rescued almost two years ago. She only went by Annika Hansen on this mission, though she lets her fiancee call her that too.”     “Hmm,” Phlox said. “Interesting. Using an engaged couple to pose as a married couple. Makes a certain amount of sense. And I assume that the Borg is the name of the race those humanoid creatures we found near the North Pole belong to?”     “Yes,” Chakotay said, unable to stop himself from telling Archer and Phlox literally everything he knew about the Borg, right down to how many ships were lost at Wolf 359. Archer and Phlox looked increasingly horrified.     “So what were they doing on Earth a hundred years ago?” Phlox asked.     “No idea,” Chakotay said. “maybe it was a crashed scout ship that the collective never came to retrieve. It’s not unheard of.”     Phlox checked his scanner again. “The serum is still working, Jonathan. He’s still telling the truth.”

“I see,” Archer said. “That doesn’t explain though why your shipmates kidnapped my chief engineer.”     Don’t tell him, Chakotay thought, fighting with his own mind and mouth. Don’t tell him don’t tell don’t tell him don’t-     “Trip helped us, we faked the kidnapping so you wouldn’t try to blow up the shuttlepod before Voyager could beam them off.”

Dammit, Chakotay thought.     Archer looked stunned, and Chakotay couldn’t blame him in the slightest. Archer looked at Phlox who sadly nodded.     “What did you to him? Bribe him? Threaten his family? Brainwashing? What?!”     “We showed him what would happen if the timeline changed too much,” Chakotay said, now having trouble keeping his eyes open. “In theory, we could save the NX-01 and Starfleet and the Federation wouldn’t be any worse off for it, time is not as fragile as people think it is.”     “The Federation?” Phlox said, but Chakotay kept going.     “If Jonathan Archer returns to Earth as a successful leader of a successful mission, his popularity will allow his anti-Vulcan bias to spread and become mainstream.”     Archer grabbed Chakotay by the collar of his uniform.     “So the Vulcans are involved, just not this century’s Vulcans!”     “They didn’t sabotage your father’s work, you racist idiot,” Chakotay said, the racist idiot part he added freely without any prompting from the truth serum, all respect he might have had for Archer at one point now completely evaporated. “The bond between Humanity and the Vulcans is the core of the Federation as I know it. Yeah, we make mistakes, even in the 24th century. I even left it for a time because of one of them, but I came back partly because for all its faults I still believe in its core values, even if it doesn’t always measure up to them. If you are allowed to return to Earth as a hero, we’ll lose that. Best case scenario, we still survive the coming Romulan War, but weaker and more afraid. Worst case, we all die without the Vulcans there to aid us.”     “Shut up,” Archer said.     “I was supposed to convince you that the NX-01 needed to return to its original course,” Chakotay continued, “for the sake of history, which was mostly true so I wouldn’t really have needed to lie at all. Exaggerate maybe, but that’s about it. Then when we got to the nebula, if need be, we’d make the ship disappear ourselves, and Captain Braxton would find a home for you and your people in the 29th century, and history would go on as normal. But thanks to one stupid bat, you’re heading back to Earth more paranoid than ever.”

“Shut the hell up,” Archer said through clenched teeth.     Chakotay laughed.     “I suppose it all works out in the end though, doesn’t it? After all, this ship hasn’t finished its original mission, you’re returning to Earth early, and with two of your prisoners having escaped. Command will be forgiving, they’ll know as well as you do that you couldn’t have seen Trip helping us coming. But public opinion on the other hand-”     Archer punched Chakotay so hard that the chair he was strapped to fell over. Chakotay felt his head impact against the deck, and his vision became more blurry than it had already been.     “You’ve recorded everything?” Archer said.     “Yes sir,” Phlox said.     Sir, Chakotay thought. Not Jon, or Captain. I wonder if that means something.

“We’ll bring him, and everything we have to Starfleet command,” Archer said. “The data from the truth serum, Annika Hansen slash Seven of Nine’s blood, the sensor logs from that ship that I guess was Voyager, all of it. I am concerned only about the present. If we and the Vulcans are all besties in the future, fine, but as long as I’m alive, I will not treat them like anything other than the smug bastards who held us back. If they’d helped us, my Dad would’ve lived to see a working Warp 5 engine.”     “What if Starfleet decides that ensuring we do become allied with the Vulcans, and forming this Federation that Mister Chakotay was talking about, is the correct course of action?”     “They won’t,” Archer said. “Humans don’t like being told what to do.”     “Few sentient races do,” Chakotay heard Phlox say before unconsciousness overtook him, “Whatever Starfleet Command decides, you have my support Captain.”

-o-

    “Not good,” Tom said as Chakotay’s vital signs dipped. He was still alive, at least according to the monitor on the bridge of the Relativity he sat in front of.     “”In more ways than one,” Captain Braxton said. “The whole plan was for Chakotay to do a hard sell to convince Archer to let go of or at least ease up on his hatred towards the Vulcans.”     “I remember, I helped come up with it,” Tom said.

    “The temporal transporter has been fully recharged for hours. I think we should just get him out of there and come up with another plan,” Braxton said.     “Well, maybe not,” Tom said. “I mean, yes, get Chakotay the hell out of there, but I think he might be right. Archer coming back early, with multiple prisoner escapes and a wild story about people from the future, he’ll be dismissed as a raving lunatic.”     “If it were just him maybe,” Braxton said. “But Archer’s crew will back him up, as will their samples of Seven of Nine’s nanoprobes, and the recording of Commander Chakotay’s interrogation, and the sensor logs of the holo-disguised Voyager.”     Tom had to admit the captain was right, and this whole mission had gone completely sideways in spite of all the advanced technology and combined experience on undercover operations and time travel that the two Starfleet crews brought to the table.     “Unless,” Braxton said, interrupting Tom’s internal lamentations. “Unless we do something drastic. Wait here, Ensign Paris, I need to consult with my team. Braxton to all senior staff, report to the briefing room.”     “Uh, sure, okay. I’ll just sit here. Doing nothing,” Tom said. He soon found himself alone on the bridge of the Relativity. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, he began quietly singing to himself.

    “I've seen all good people turn their heads each day, so satisfied I'm on my way…”

-o-

    Seven of Nine sat next to Commander Tucker in the briefing room, Samantha having chosen to sit out the remainder of this operation to spend time with Naomi on the holodeck. If the Captain was bothered by this blatant disregard of her order, she gave no sign of it.     “I’ll make this brief,” Janeway said. “This mission is completely FUBAR.”     “FUBAR?” Seven said. “I am unfamiliar with that term.”     “I’ll explain later,” Harry Kim said.     Janeway filled Seven, Harry, Tucker, Tuvok, and the Doctor in on what had happened to Chakotay, and how the original plan to talk Jonathan Archer out of his anti-Vulcan biases had been compromised.     “Do we know the nature of the serum used on the Commander?” the Doctor asked, sounding worried.     “Unknown,” Janeway said, “apart from dizziness and a slowing of the heartbeat. We know he’s alive but unconscious as of our last update.”     “I can’t believe that Jon would do this,” Tucker said. “I’ve known him for years, this just doesn’t seem like him. I mean, he had his issues with the Vulcans, but I honestly thought he had that under control.”     “I can’t believe a doctor would go along with this,” the Doctor said. “This Phlox seems to have very loose interpretations of the Hippocratic Oath.”     “According to Ensign Paris,” Janeway continued, “Braxton’s holed up with his senior staff over on the Relativity to come up with another plan. Until then, there’s not much we can do except come up with some ideas of our own in case Braxton’s people fail. Again.”     Seven wondered if there were anything she could’ve done differently while she was undercover on the NX-01 that could’ve avoided this situation.

    “Seven?” Janeway said. “Any thoughts?”     “Regrettably none, Captain,” Seven had to admit. “Captain Archer seemed like a reasonable, rational individual for the most part. The only point of concern Samantha and I had is the same one that Captain Braxton had; his belief about the Vulcans undermining his late father’s work.”     “I always hoped he’d get over that,” Tucker said. “Have we considered just using Braxton’s temporal transporter to bring Archer forward? Hell, maybe that should’ve been done sooner.”     “I am inclined to agree with Mister Tucker,” Tuvok said, speaking up for the first time since the meeting started. “However, that is only with the benefit of hindsight. Temporal mechanics is outside my field my expertise, so I deferred to Captain Braxton’s experience in the field.”

    “I think our biggest mistake was letting Braxton run the operation when it was my people involved,” Janeway said. Seven felt inclined to agree, though chose not to say so out loud. “I should-”     “Bridge to Captain Janeway,” the voice of Sue Brooks said over the com. “The Relativity just opened another temporal rift, but they aren’t going through it. Sensors are detecting another ship though. It looks like the NX-01. Er, another NX-01 I mean.”

    “What the hell is Braxton doing?” Janeway said, echoing similar thoughts in Seven’s head.

-o-

Week Three...

    “Mayweather, report!” Captain Archer yelled.     “Another anomaly sir,” Travis Mayweather said from his navigation console. “Like the one that alien ship that grabbed Commander Tucker and the escaped prisoners came thorugh, but right in front of us. I couldn’t turn in time, inertia is taking us right through it.”     Except it wasn’t an alien ship, Archer thought. It was one of Starfleet’s, just from the future with a holographic camouflage. Am I really that much of a monster in history's eyes?

    “Red alert. Prepare to be boarded,” Archer said, taking his captain’s chair. “Arm phase cannons and antimatter missiles. I’d rather pick a fight I can’t win than let some arrogant pricks from the 29th century tell humanity in the here and now what we’re supposed to do. The future isn’t written for us, isn’t that right. Mister Mayweather?”     Travis didn’t answer right away, and that concerned Archer a good deal. He was about to repeat the question when the helmsman tentatively answered.     “I don’t really believe in destiny. sir. We make our own fate.”

    “Mister Nava, as soon as we exit this portal, open fire on the nearest vessel,” Archer said.     “Sir?” Nava, sitting at the console that Chakotay had sat at for the past two weeks.     “Did I stutter, Ensign?”     “No, no sir,” Nava said, sounding very nervous.     “Don’t worry, Ensign,” Archer said. “they won’t try to destroy us, they’ll want their man back.”     “I’m not sure we could stop them from taking him sir,” Nava said. “If you’ll forgive me for being so blunt.”     “Apology accepted Mister Nava,” Archer said. “Just do your job.”

-o-

    When Captain Janeway entered the bridge, Tom Paris was there, looking confused.     “Tom?” Janeway said.     “Captain, Braxton just had me beamed over here a few seconds ago,” Tom said. “I have no idea what they’re doing.”     “I do,” Janeway said. “They’re bringing the NX-01 here. Take your post.”     “Yes ma’am,” Tom said, sitting down as soon as Ensign Brooks vacated the navigator’s chair.     “Captain,” Trip said, “let me try talking to him. He’s still my friend, maybe he’ll listen before doing something rash.”     “Actually,” Janeway said, “I’m a little more worried about Braxton doing something rash at this point.”

    “The NX-01’s weapons are powered up,” Harry said.     “They have locked onto us, Captain,” Tuvok said.     “Shields up,” Janeway said. “Even outdated weapons can penetrate an unprotected hull.” She turned from looking at Tuvok to look back at the screen, and watched as the NX-01 unleashed its first volley, which impacted harmlessly against Voyager’s shields. “Hail them,” she said.

    “Channel open,” Harry said.     “Captain Archer, this is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the starship Voyager. Please-     “Spare me, Captain,” Archer’s voice responded.     “Can we get a visual?” Janeway said to Harry.     “Let me save you the trouble, Captain,” Archer said. Soon the image of the bridge of the NX-01 filled Voyager’s viewscreen, Archer at dead center, seated in the captain's chair. “I demand that your ship, or the other ship, whichever one it was that brought us here return us to our time immediately.”

    “That would be the other ship,” Janeway said. “The one you aren’t firing at. Cease fire, and I’ll arrange a meeting with Captain Braxton. This nonsense has gone on long enough and we need to settle this. We have something in common Captain; a desire to read a certain 29th Century Starfleet officer the riot act.”     “Read him the riot act?” Archer said with an angry short laugh. “You still use that phrase in your century?”     “Just power down your weapons,” Janeway said. “Braxton and I will meet you on your ship. We’ll exchange ourselves for my first officer.”     “Chakotay?” Archer said. “Fair enough I suppose. Mister Nava, cease fire, and have Mister Chakotay brought to the bridge. I will meet with you and Captain Braxton here in twenty minutes.”     “I’ll come too, Captain,” Tucker said. “Maybe I can hel-”     “Don’t bother, Commander Tucker,” Archer said, “you’ve made your choice. Enjoy your new friends on Voyager.”     “Jon, I can-”     The viewscreen went back to the view of the NX-01, already having ceased firing its weapons.     “He cut us off,” Harry said.     “I can see that,” Janeway said. “Open a channel to Braxton. He’ll be joining me if I have to drag him over there by his ears.”     Janeway glanced over at Commander Tucker, who looked utterly defeated.     “I’m sure he’ll forgive you in time,” Janeway said. Tucker sighed.

    “I hope so. I’d hate to think that helping you cost me my best friend,” he said.     “Stay here for now, Trip,” Janeway said, walking over to put a hand on Tucker’s shoulder. “I’ll do my best to get you back to your ship.”

-o-     “Just what in every known sentient race’s version of Hell were you thinking Braxton?” Janeway yelled as soon as she was standing on the transporter pad on the Relativity.     “Removing Jonathan Archer from the equation and ensuring the existence of Starfleet,” Braxton said, looking defiant. “The plan, before Archer decided to shoot first and ask questions later, which I swear was not something we expected even with his increased paranoia, was to bring him here long enough to exchange Mister Tucker for Mister Chakotay, then bring the NX-01’s crew to the 29th century and leave the ship itself here.”     “It was a stupid plan, Braxton,” Janeway said. “Quite possibly one of the most idiotic blunders I have ever seen in my life. And I’m equally stupid for having gone along with you in the first place, for letting you drag me and my crew into your mission. Just how far have Starfleet’s standards fallen in the five hundred years from my time that someone like you gets made Captain of the most advanced ship in the fleet?”     “What gives you the right to insult me on my-”     “Get your ass on that transporter pad now, Braxton,” Janeway said. “We are going over to the NX-01, we are going to have a civil chat with Captain Archer, and we are going to clean up your goddamn mess!”     Janeway knew that Braxton had the upper hand here; his ship, and technology far in advance of her own, but she hoped that with enough righteous fury thrown in his direction, he would buckle and go along with her instead of trying to take control of the situation again, in which case he would almost certainly make things worse.

    “Very well then, Captain. Chief?” Braxton said to the Cardassian standing at the transporter room main console. “Beam us directly the NX-01’s bridge, as per Captain Archer’s request.”     “Yes sir,” the transporter chief said.  

-o-

    Chakotay rubbed at his temples, glad that his hands were free to do so. He was on the bridge of the NX-01 again, but this time as a prisoner, with Ensign Nava having a phase pistol set on stun pointed at him.

    The familiar sound of a transporter beam got him to focus his still somewhat blurry vision, a leftover side effect of Phlox’s truth serum, and soon a very angry looking Captain Janeway, and a somewhat embarrassed looking Captain Braxton were standing in front of the NX-01 viewscreen.     Nava, Archer, and Mayweather all turned to point their phase pistols at the two other Captains.     “Stay right there,” Archer said. “Mister Nava, check them for weapons.”     “We came unarmed,” Janeway said, her hands already up. “We just want to talk Captain Archer. Starfleet Captains to Starfleet Captain.”     “I don’t recognize the authority of future Starfleet officers,” Archer said. “Far as I’m concerned, neither of you exist yet. The only reasons I’m not throwing you two in the brig right now are one, I’m sure your people could easily just snatch you without any resistance, and two, because I’m a man of my word. Have Voyager beam Mister Chakotay back, and we can start talking, though I make no promises that I will go along quietly with anything you propose.”

    “Captain, I-” Chakotay started to say, but Janeway cut him off with a look.     “Janeway to Voyager, lock on to Commander Chakotay and beam him directly to sickbay.”     “Aye, Captain,” Chakotay heard Harry Kim’s voice say, and before he could protest, he felt the tingling sensation that came with a transporter beam in progress.     I hope you can get him to calm down, Chakotay thought, as his component atoms were broken down for transport. This mission has been a real cluster-

-o-

Once Chakotay was gone, Archer nodded at his people to put their phase pistols away, while he did the same. He sat back down in the captain’s chair and crossed his legs.     “So,” he said. “Talk.”     “Since you already know the reason my people were on your ship in the first place,” Janeway said, “I’ll skip to the chase. Captain Braxton’s plan is to take you and your crew into the 29th century in order to preserve the current timeline. What I hope to accomplish, on the other hand, is to assuage your concerns about the Vulcans so you and your people can go home, and history can carry on as normal, only with you and the crew of the NX-01 getting to take part in it.”

“I don’t like either of those, Captain Janeway,” Archer said. “Though I must admit, you must be quite persuasive to keep Braxton from just taking control of the operation, given his ship is clearly superior to yours and ours put together. I doubt we could stop him if we tried.”

“I,” Braxton said, pausing, and sighing before starting over. “I concede that I handled this operation badly. I chose the Voyager crew because of past experiences with them, rather than finding experts on 22nd century history from my own time. Time travel has been done by humanity since the mid 23rd century, and that’s just the incidents we know of, but it’s only been within my lifetime we began to understand it. I accept responsibility for my failures, clearly my crew and I still have a great deal to learn.”     “That was very big of you, Braxton,” Janeway said, though Archer wondered if he heard a hint of sarcasm in her reply.     “I have listened to your proposals, or at least the summaries thereof,” Archer said. “And I reject both of them. I demand me and my people, sans Commander Tucker who would only face dishonorable discharge and possibly jail time if he came back with us, be allowed to return to our time. We also humbly request any and all information you have about this race called the Borg, and any data you have on any technologies the Vulcans have at this time that they aren’t sharing with us.”

“You can’t be serious,” Braxton said. “That kind of information in your hands, I don’t even want to think about the chaos that could wreak on the history of the Alpha Quadrant!”     “For once I’m inclined to agree with Braxton here,” Janeway said. “The Vulcans are our longest lasting allies. Your judgment is clouded by-”     “I know they didn’t sabotage my father’s work,” Archer said, standing up. He stepped forward so quickly that Braxton flinched, and Janeway visibly struggled not to. “I drugged your XO, remember? But it doesn’t matter, they still could’ve helped us. They have always been reluctant to share with us what we need in order to thrive out here.”     “The Vulcans were not at their best in your time Archer,” Janeway said. “My tactical officer, Tuvok, is Vulcan. He’s also my oldest friend. It’s not easy for him to admit his people’s shortcomings. They are the mirror of us in that regard, sometimes we humans fall into the trap of exaggerating our own mistakes of the past. We almost paint ourselves as monsters, as if that somehow makes how far we’ve come as a species more impressive than it already is.”

“What are you talking about?” Archer said, unsure whether or not Janeway was trying to pull a fast one on him.

“My point,” Janeway said, now stepping forward so that she was practically nose to nose with Archer, “is that at this time, in their history, the Vulcans had been in a prolonged conflict with a race called the Andorians. They don’t want to admit it, but the constant back and forth between cold and hot wars have left them as paranoid as you are. They’re slow to trust us. And yet, even with that paranoia, they still saw enough potential in us to invite us to the galactic table. Think about that for a second before you condemn them. As for the Andorians, before you ask, humanity goes a long way towards settling that conflict, and they end up being one of the other four founding races of the Federation, along with us, the Vulcans, and the Tellarites who you also haven’t met yet.”     Archer did not want to admit it, but he believed Janeway. That should’ve made him feel better, deep down he knew that. Instead though it made him angrier, so angry that he took a step back away from Captain Janeway in order to avoid screaming at her.     “They could’ve just told us this,” he said. “They could’ve just explained why they had legitimate concerns about sharing their knowledge.”     “Yes,” Janeway said. “Remember Tuvok, the officer and friend I told you about? He’s the one who explained that to me. The Vulcans of my time know they could’ve handled things better. But they also know, and so do I, that letting such past mistakes rule your thinking, especially when you have more than made up for those errors with great deeds that have benefitted billions, is illogical.”     “Illogical,” Archer said with a laugh. “That’s their word.”     “Right, like no human ever used that word back before we even knew there were other races in the galaxy,” he heard Braxton mutter.     “Braxton?” Janeway said. “You’re not helping.”     “If you two are finished bickering,” Archer said, louder than he’d meant to, “can we get back to the matter of my demands?”

    Janeway sighed.     “As much as I hate to admit it, Captain Archer,” she said, suddenly avoiding eye contact, “Braxton is right about one thing. Your anti-Vulcan biases are a threat to our way of life. Even if we send you back as per your request, we’d be obligated to do something to undermine your standing with the public back on Earth. Assuming that my First Officer is wrong and that’s not already happening.”

    “Maybe,” Archer said, after taking a deep breath to try and calm himself. “Maybe not. We do still have Chakotay’s recorded confession, and the medical data on the truth serum. We also still have some of Annika Hansen slash Seven of Nine’s inert Borg nanoprobes. Starfleet Command will believe me about the spying being done on us by our own people from the future, and they will work to ensure that we don’t-”     “This is pointless,” Braxton said, slapping the insignia on the chest of his uniform. “Braxton to Relativity, start beaming-”     Archer pulled out his phase pistol and fired so fast that for a split second he was afraid that he had put it on the kill setting. Janeway looked shocked, but made no move to contact her own ship, at least none that he could see. Archer saw that Mayweather and Nava looked equally shocked, the former even looking downright terrified of his own commanding officer     “Captain,” she said.     “Shut up!” Archer said.     “Relativity to Braxton,” a voice said, coming from Braxton’s chest. “Captain, are you there? What happened?”     “Archer to engineering,” Archer said. This had all gone too far. There was no going home, but he refused to be dropped into the 29th century like some kind of homeless refugee. “Initiate self-destruct process. Authorization Archer Gamma Zeta Six.”

    There was a brief silence, then the assistant chief engineer, his voice cracking, said “Aye sir. Time?”     “As soon as it’s ready to blow, do it,” Archer said. “We can’t give those other ships out there time to grab us.”     “Aye, sir.”     “Captain, you can’t do this,” Mayweather said. “This is insane.”     “I’ve made my decision, Ensign,” Archer said. “I will not let this ship be taken by-” Archer suddenly felt an unfamiliar tingling sensation on his skin, his voice suddenly locked in place, his rage going, his body enveloped in light and suddenly-

-o-

    “All NX-01 personnel, as well as the Captain and Braxton, are in Cargo Bay 1,” Harry Kim said.     “Good job Harry,” Chakotay said, sitting in the captain's chair on Voyager's bridge, still in his 22nd century era uniform. “Tuvok, can we disable the NX-01’s self-destruct from here?”     “Negative,” Tuvok said. “attempt to take control of their systems from here have failed. Their systems are simply too primitive to be compatible with-”     A flash on the viewscreen cut the tactical officer off. The brightness of the explosion that tore the NX-01 apart was filtered out by the viewscreen. Chakotay watched sadly as the debris that flew outward impacted harmlessly on the Relativity’s shields, or pierced the already broken hull of the other NX-01, the one that Voyager had come across less than a month prior.     “Janeway to security, I need a team in the cargo bay to subdue Captain Archer,” Janeway’s voice said over the com. In the background Chakotay could hear Archer’s voice, ranting, screaming, threatening everyone around him.     “On my way, Captain,” Tuvok said.

    “I’ll come with,” Trip said. “I might still be able to get through to him.”     “Go,” Chakotay said. “And good luck Trip,”     “Thanks, Commander,” Trip said, following Tuvok into the turbolift.

-o-

    Janeway put herself between Archer and Braxton’s still unconscious body. As the rest of the NX-01 crew, looking confused at their surroundings and many huddling closer together than they already were, stood back, Archer’s ranting began again. His crew simply watched in silence as he became increasingly incomprehensible, each new theory about why this was happening to him more ludicrous than the one before it, and he seemed to have a new one every thirty seconds. Phlox had tried to calm him down once, and had a phase pistol pointed in his face for the trouble.

    The cargo bay doors opened, and Tuvok, Commander Tucker, and a small security detail walked in, their own weapons drawn.     “Captain Archer,” Tuvok said, calmly but forcefully. “Please put down your weapon.”     “This is set to kill,” Archer said, now pointing it at Janeway. “Send me and my crew back to our time, or I will-”     Tuvok was faster. He fired his phaser, and Archer fell backwards, dropping his phase pistol. Many of the NX-01 crew members jumped back in shock, but Phlox and a young woman ran to Archer’s side.     Trip Tucker shook his head, and looked sadder than Janeway had seen him yet, more so than on the bridge not more than an hour ago.     “Mister Tucker?” she said, walking over to him. “Are you alright?”     “How would you feel if you just saw your best friend and commanding officer threaten an unarmed fellow officer while screaming at the top of his lungs?” he said.     Janeway had no response to that.     “Captain,” Tuvok said. “Doctor Phlox and Ensign Cutler from the NX-01 insist on escorting Captain Archer to sickbay, and are being quite hostile over the matter. Shall I have them escorted to the brig?”     “No,” Janeway said. “Go with them personally, and once Archer is awake put him in the brig. Trip, stay here with your people. Try to keep them calm.”     “I’ll do my best, Cap,” Tucker said.     “Do that,” Janeway said. She tapped her comm badge. “Bridge, contact the Relativity. Tell them Braxton is alive but injured. Let them beam him directly to their sickbay.”     “Understood,” Chakotay’s voice replied, not pressing the matter any further.     Janeway left the cargo bay alongside Tuvok, who then followed Phlox and Cutler as they carried Captain Archer down the corridor. Once they were out of site, Janeway leaned against the bulkhead, and groaned.     “I am so sick of all this time travel shit,” she muttered to herself. “If I never see another time machine in my life it’ll be too soon.”

-o-

    The Doctor did the best he could not to throw snide remarks in the direction of Doctor Phlox, especially since the later of the two Doctors was clearly upset, not just over seeing his Captain get shot but also over the deaths of all his animals aboard the NX-01.     “Captain Archer will be fine,” he said to the Denobulan doctor and his human friend as they stood by Archer’s bio-bed. “I will have to ask you to step aside now though. Mister Tuvok will be putting him in the brig.”

    “Is that absolutely necessary?” Phlox said.     “Phlox, he threatened their captain,” the human, Cutler, said, putting a hand gently on Phlox’s shoulder. The friendly gesture did little to calm the other doctor down.     “Doctor Phlox,” the Doctor said, “surely you’ve noticed that your commander was growing increasingly unstable in recent days. You had an obligation to the safety of your shipmates that should supercede your loyalty to your friend.”     “What would you know about loyalty?” Phlox said. “You’re a hologram. A highly sophisticated one I admit, to be able to administer such a complex sickbay by yourself, but still.”

    The Doctor rolled his eyes.     “I can’t be appreciated for my talents in any century can I?” he said.

    “Okay that is enough,” Cutler said. “How exactly is more bickering supposed to fix anything? It’s been people shouting or condescending at each other left and right that got us all in this mess in the first place.”

    The Doctor was ready to reply, but he saw the sickbay door open. Captain Janeway walked in, Tuvok only a step behind her

    “What got us in this mess,” she said, “is old fashioned human arrogance. It makes me sad to see we still can fall victim to it even five hundred years from my lifetime. Doctor, is Captain Archer well enough to transfer to the brig?”     “He is, Captain,” the Doctor said, ignoring Phlox’s angry glare.

    “I suppose you’ll want the rest of us in the brig too,” Phlox said.     “Don’t tempt me,” Janeway said. “Especially not after what you did to my first officer. But no, the rest of the NX-01 crew is free to move about, though they won’t be allowed any access to ship’s systems. That includes you, though Commander Chakotay has a lot of friends here who aren’t quite as forgiving as I am.”     Phlox’s face went expressionless.     “I will take that under advisement,” Phlox said.

    “Good,” Janeway said. The Doctor went over to Archer, and using a hypospray woke him up. He had restraints in place just in case, but the Captain turned prisoner only let out a resigned sigh, after which Tuvok and the Captain escorted Archer out, Phlox following a respectful distance behind.     The Doctor was rather surprised that Cutler had remained behind.     “Doctor,” she said, “if you don’t mind my asking, why is this ship’s chief medical officer a hologram?”     The Doctor smiled.     “I’d be more than happy to share my story with you Miss Cutler. It’s nice to see that there were some reasonable people on board the NX-01.”     “Be fair, Doctor,” Cutler said. “It’s not that we’re unreasonable. Captain Archer's, well, issues with the Vulcans aside. But we have experienced some rather unreasonable things lately.”     “That is a fair point,” the Doctor admitted. He opened his mouth to start telling Cutler about how he’d first been activated aboard Voyager, but then a thought occurred to him, though he imagined he would have to argue with Braxton over it. “Tell me, Miss Cutler, do you perchance have any training as a nurse?”

-o-

    Captain Janeway stepped out of the turbolift onto the bridge, feeling somewhat less tense and angry over the whole situation. She looked over at Chakotay, who still had not yet changed out of the period appropriate uniform he’d been wearing when he was rescued.     “Captain,” he said. “Any more problems with Archer?”

    “Tuvok has him in the brig,” Janeway said. “Trip is in the cargo bay with the rest of the NX-01 crew. Any word from the Relativity?”

    “Not yet,” Chakotay said.     “Hail them,” Janeway said.

    “Aye Captain,” Harry Kim said. The viewscreen changed from a view of the debris field of the former NX-01, with only part of the Relativity visible on the right-hand side, to that of the Relativity’s bridge, and her first officer, Lieutenant Juel Ducane, sitting in the Captain’s chair.     “Captain Janeway,” he said, “good to hear from you. I take it you have the situation well in hand?”     “As well as can be expected,” Janeway said. “Has Captain Braxton not yet recovered?”     “He has actually,” Ducane said. “Captain Archer’s weapon was only set on stun. However, Braxton has decided to recuse himself from the remainder of the mission. He left me explicit orders to follow your lead.”     “Good,” Janeway said. “If he kept trying to fix things the way he has been we’d end up with humanity being a slave race to the Gorn or something.”

    “I think it’s safe to say we can’t really return any of the NX-01 crew to the 22nd century without causing any serious problems,” Janeway said.     “Maybe not, Captain,” Ducane said. “The version of the NX-01 you found earlier this month is still there, and it appears all its escape pods are relatively intact all things considered.”     “I think I see where you’re going with this,” Janeway said, “but if we return the escape pods to the area and time we brought them from will there be any ships nearby that can rescue them?”     “According to our records there should be at least two human-run freighters and one Vulcan long range exploration vessel that could reach them before their emergency supplies ran out,” Ducane said. “We would simply need to convince the NX-01 crew not to tell Starfleet command about what really happened. Also, I think we’d need to bring Captain Archer, and probably Doctor Phlox as well, with us to the 29th century in order to reduce the risk of timeline contamination.” Ducane suddenly looked down and rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Or rather, worse contamination than we’ve already caused.”

    Janeway did still feel resentment over the pain caused to her crew as a result of this whole operation, but none of that was on Ducane. All her ire was saved for Captains Archer and Braxton.     “Agreed,” she said. “I’ll consult with Commander Tucker, and we’ll talk to the NX-01 crew. Have your people begin fixing up the escape pods.”     “Right away Captain,” Ducane said. The communication ended, and the viewscreen returned to its original view, after which Harry Kim said something very similar to what Janeway was thinking at that exact moment.     “Why couldn’t he have been in charge of this mission instead of Braxton?”

-o-

    Naomi Wildman had heard her mother say that she was too good at sneaking around the ship, and that she didn’t want her to do it anymore. She felt guilty about doing it now, but she wanted to talk to the Starfleet captain from the past. She wanted to know why; why he hated Vulcans so much, why he put her mom in jail, why he blew up his own ship, all things that Naomi just could not wrap her mind around.

    She managed to get to the brig, but Lydia Anderson, who was on guard duty for this shift, stopped her from going up to the force field around Archer’s cell.     “You’re not supposed to be down here, Miss Wildman,” Anderson said. “Does your mom know where you are?”     “She’s asleep,” Naomi lied, her mother actually being in the lab on the same deck as sickbay. “I just wanted to ask Captain Archer some questions.”     “Let her stay,” Jonathan Archer said, lying back on the bed of his cell, looking up at the ceiling. “It’s not like I can do anything to her behind a force field, and with an armed guard standing by. Oh, and also she’s a friggin’ child. Has anything I’ve done suggested I would ever hurt a kid?”     “You blew up your own ship,” Anderson said, “just ‘cause it flew through a temporal rift. That to me does not suggest a stable personality, sir.”     “I like how you managed to make ‘sir’ rhyme with ‘jackass’ there,” Archer said. “Well done.”     “Naomi, come on,” Anderson said. “Don’t make me call your mom.”     “Ask your question kid,” Archer said.

    “Did you really blow up your own ship?” Naomi said.

    “Yep,” Archer said.     “Why?”     Archer sat up and looked sad.     “I don’t know,” he said. “I know why I think I did it, but maybe that’s not really why I did it. Know what I mean?”     “No,” Naomi said. She looked up at Anderson. “I’m gonna go now,” she said to the security officer.     “Good idea,” Anderson said.     “Naomi?” Archer said as Naomi started walking towards the exit. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t arrest your Mom and her girlfriend to be mean. From where I was sitting it looked like they were spying on my people, and a good Captain protects their crew.”

    “I know,” Naomi said. “Captain Janeway says that too. I don’t think she’d blow up Voyager just because she was mad though. She hates time travel too, but we’re still here.”     Archer nodded, and went back to lying down. Naomi shook her head and left, feeling sorry for the Starfleet captain from the past. She hoped he would get better.

-o-

Seven of Nine wondered what had happened to Archer during his time in the brig that made him so passive as he stood on the transporter pad next to a pair of security officers from the Relativity, as well as Doctor Phlox. She also wondered why she had decided to be there along with Captain Janeway, Commander Chakotay, and Commander Tuvok.

The rest of the NX-01 crew had decided to go along with the escape pod plan, and had promised not to reveal anything about the future to the Starfleet of the time, though some had required some coaxing as well as the aid of memory erasing drugs. Archer and Phlox however, were both deemed too dangerous to be allowed to return. They would not face any jail time once they got to the 29th century, but they would not be allowed to serve in Starfleet. According to Lieutenant Ducane, there were training programs and support groups for “temporally displaced persons” that the two could join and hopefully lead fulfilling lives.     “For what it’s worth, Captain,” Janeway said, “I’m sorry that it came down to this.”     “Tell me, Captain,” Archer said, “in the original timeline, the one where my ship was destroyed and ended up out here in the Delta Quadrant, did you or Braxton ever find out what really happened to us that day?”     Janeway sighed and shook her head.     “That sadly remains an unanswered question,” she said. “Braxton’s looking to take an early retirement I hear, so that’s going to be on Ducane to figure out I suppose. I imagine he’ll have better luck. He had a good role model in the sense of learning how not to handle a time travel operation.”     Archer laughed at that, the first time that Seven had seen him show any signs of joy since before he’d had her and Sam arrested. Seven moved behind the transporter room console which was unmanned due to a shift change. Had she not come along with the Captain and Chakotay one of them would likely be operating it instead since whoever was supposed to take over next wasn’t there yet.

“Well,” Archer said. “Let’s get this over with.”     “Agreed,” Phlox said. “Once this is over I hope to never see another time travel device for as long as I live. And that is a long time as you may well know.”     Seven looked at Janeway, who nodded. Seven began manipulating the transporter controls, and soon they were gone. The Relativity had already sent the rest of the NX-01 crew back to the 22nd century, along with most of the debris from the destroyed ship. Trip had gone with them, as had Ensign Cutler, though rumor had it both had toyed with the idea of staying on Voyager.     “Well,” Chakotay said, “glad that’s finally over. Do you think we’ll ever see or hear from the Relativity again?”     “Ducane wouldn’t make any promises,” Janeway said. “but he did say it’s doubtful it’ll happen as long as it’s his ship. I hope he’s right.”     “As do I,” Seven said.     “So, Seven,” Janeway said, as the three of them left the transporter room. “what did you think of Earth?”     “It’s my understanding the parts of it I actually saw have changed very little in the two hundred years since I was there,” Seven said. “Perhaps one day, Samantha and Naomi and I can see for ourselves. I am more disappointed I didn’t get to see too many other worlds while I was there. I would’ve liked more opportunities to compare and contrast data from that with Federation historical archives, possibly correct any inaccuracies.”

Janeway chuckled.     “You know Seven,” Chakotay said, “I never had you pegged for a history buff.”     “I am hoping to ascertain how an era of humanity that produced some of its most respected individuals could also produce someone as troubled as Jonathan Archer,” Seven said. “Or for that matter how someone so troubled would be given the chance to captain what was at the time the Human race’s most advanced starship.”

    “Nepotism maybe?” Chakotay said. “The ship’s core feature was its engine, which was based largely on his father’s work.”

    “Possible,” Seven said. “though I doubt that would be the sole reason.”

    “The only person who really knows the answer to that is Archer,” Janeway said. “And he was never going to tell us. He probably can’t even admit it to himself, let alone others. I wouldn’t put any of that on the 22nd century though. For all our gains as a species, humanity still has its metaphorical warts. Even in our time. Still, I do hope that Jonathan Archer is the last Starfleet captain I ever meet who has lost his way.”

    “I’ll drink to that,” Chakotay said.