Same Blueprint, Different Ruins
Posted on Wed Jul 16th, 2025 @ 4:51pm by Lieutenant Commander Angus Murphy
1,590 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
A Day In The Life
Location: Various
The communique had come in marked priority and highly classified. Routing override. No sender name, just a Starfleet Command seal and orders tagged with Captain's eyes-only clearance -- and Murphy's.
It didn't sit right, but he couldn't not go.
[Shuttle Leia-Jolot, enroute]
"Starbase 57." He'd muttered the words to himself for the fifth time as the shuttle cleared the Majestic's landing bay and then clear of the Deep Space 9 traffic lanes before jumping to warp.
Opposite him, Noble Cravens was already half-nodding off, head bobbing with every subtle shift in the shuttle's trajectory. Murphy eyed the younger engineer for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
"You think this is about the gravitic relay tests?" Cravens asked suddenly, as if his body had just realized it was supposed to be awake.
Murphy gave a short grunt. "Not unless they got a relay wrapped around a temporal event and a war crime."
Cravens blinked at that, uncertain if it was a joke. With Murph, they rarely were.
The shuttle ride was quiet. Murphy preferred it that way. His fingers traced the edges of the black wedding band out of habit. He wasn't even thinking of Patrick -- not really. The ring had long ago stopped being about who it was for and started being about who he had been.
"Something's bothering you, sir," Cravens said after a stretch of silence.
Murphy tilted his head but didn't look up. "You want to pass the next eval, don't psychoanalyze me."
Cravens shut up. That was fair.
They docked at Starbase 57 just after 1800 hours.
The corridors were all way too clean with an uneasy silence. The station's usual bustle felt muted. There were too few personnel for the shift cycle, and Murphy didn't like the way security seemed just a little more present than usual -- not enough to be a lockdown, but enough to suggest someone, somewhere was nervous.
They were met by a lieutenant in medical blue who gave his name too quickly and led them down three decks without offering further explanation. Murphy followed, jaw tight.
He was not briefed.
He was not asked.
He was summoned.
And the only thing that would warrant this kind of cloak and dagger summoning for a Chief Engineer -- especially one with Murphy's clearance -- was something personal. Or something classified. Or both.
The medical wing wasn't lit right.
Too many diagnostic bands still active, too much static hum in the environmental filters. The air tasted like ionization and antiseptic, and Murphy hated it instantly.
"You need to prepare yourself," the lieutenant said, pausing just outside a privacy-sealed room. He turned to Cravens, "And you'll need to stay out here."
Murphy turned sharply. "For what, exactly?"
Instead of answering, the lieutenant stepped aside and keyed the door.
There he was.
Sitting on the edge of a biobed, hunched forward like a rusted hinge, was Murphy.
Not him, but... him. Same face. Same build. But paler. Hollow. The red hair thinner, the beard unkempt. Eyes that looked like they'd seen too many suns burn out and too many people fail to come back.
Murphy didn't move. Neither did the man in the room.
They stared at each other for a long, suffocating moment. The silence was wrong -- not thick, not charged -- just empty.
Murphy could feel Cravens' breath catch behind him.
He didn't look away. Not yet.
He took a single step forward, voice like gravel and steel. The door slid closed, leaving Cravens behind and just himself, himself, and the doctor in the private suite.
"...Who the hell are you?" Murphy asked.
The other man looked up.
"I'm you, Murph. Or... I was. Before everything went sideways."
Murphy stood still -- arms crossed, weight balanced, jaw tight. His stance screamed controlled. But inside, something had started to spiral.
The man across from him -- this other Murphy -- met his eyes with none of the defiance Murphy expected. No swagger. No sharp retort. Just a quiet resignation.
"You said you're me," Murphy said flatly. "What the hell does that mean?"
Alt-Murphy smiled, but it was the kind that had nothing warm left in it. "Not the version you know. Think of me as a fork in the road that went straight into a goddamn cliff."
He shifted slightly on the biobed, wincing. Murphy noticed then -- the slight tremor in his fingers, the bandage wrap under the neckline of his gown, the faint bruising along his jaw.
"Where are you from?" Murphy asked, softer now.
"A version of the Majestic that never made it out of the Kraylon Expanse. That ship's gone. Most of the crew... gone with it." He laughed, bitter. "I made it out. Eventually. Not sure if that was luck or punishment."
Murphy's stomach coiled. He moved closer, pulling a chair from the wall but not sitting. His hand hovered over the backrest.
"What happened to you?"
There was silence again. Alt-Murphy tilted his head.
"You remember the quantum filament anomaly that tore through Decks 5 through 9 two years back?"
Murphy nodded. "Sure. We contained it in thirty hours."
Alt-Murphy gave a slow, pained nod. "We didn't. We -- " his voice caught, and he swallowed, " -- we lost containment. The ship was... fractured. Time, space, crew." He paused, looked down.
Murphy felt the cold flood his chest.
"A lot transpired in little time," Alt-Murphy continued, glancing toward the doctor. "They don't want me to talk about the details, but there's no one else left." He looked up, finally -- eyes pale green, haunted. "I'm not your ghost. I'm the version that never got the lucky break."
Murphy sat. He hadn't realized he'd dropped into the chair until he was already in it. The anger had bled off somewhere in the telling.
"Why me?" he asked, voice low. "Why am I here?"
"I don't know," Alt-Murphy said. "Maybe someone thought you'd understand. Maybe someone thought you'd break, too."
Murphy shook his head, fingers steepled against his mouth. "This can't get out. The crew -- "
"Don't know. Starfleet says I'm a 'classified anomaly.' Nice label for a person, huh?"
The silence settled again.
Then Murphy, ever the engineer, asked the question that had nothing and everything to do with grief:
"...Are we stable?"
Alt-Murphy smiled again. This time, it almost hurt to see. "Define stable, Chief." He motioned to Murphy's left hand. "You... you married Patrick then?" Genuine warmth seemed to radiate from the hopeful question.
Murph went numb at the question. He'd put the wreck of a marriage behind him and now-- how does he explain, how does he shatter this man's heart again? "It's... it's umm complicated," subconsciously he covered the ring with his other hand.
"He's gone too," Alt-Murph read his own signals.
"He's still alive and well," Murph said quickly. "Things just didn't work out in the long run."
"None of us get out unscathed, it seems," Alt-Murphy said simply.
"I suppose so." Murph slid the band off his finger, swallowed hard, and held it out. "I know you're not the same person anymore and Patrick isn't either, but this might mean more to you than it does to me. Something that should have been yours. Maybe you would have made it work?"
"Probably not. We're unlucky like that," Alt-Murph took the ring and held it to his chest. "Thank you, though."
[Main Shuttlebay, Starbase 57]
The shuttle hummed quietly on standby, its nacelles glowing softly against the deck plating.
Murphy stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the final pre-flight checks cycle through on the external display. Noble Cravens was securing his duffel, but his eyes kept darting back -- like he didn't want to be the one to start the goodbye.
"You sure you don't want me to stick around?" Noble asked, breaking the silence.
Murphy snorted. "What, and miss the department turning into a clown rodeo without us both there to hold the reins?"
Noble offered a half-grin. "Briggs tried to recalibrate the phase regulators while I was gone last time. Took me three days to undo his 'fixes.'"
"Exactly," Murphy muttered. "You leave them too long and they start thinking they're clever."
He wasn't meeting Noble's eyes, not quite. Not out of rudeness — out of something else. Thoughtfulness, maybe. Weariness. He looked like he hadn't slept since the first encounter in the med bay.
Noble adjusted the strap on his bag. "So... you're really going to Boradis III?"
Murphy nodded slowly. "Yeah. 'Angus'," he used the name carefully, like it felt strange in his mouth, "needs time. Familiar places. People who won't ask the wrong questions."
"You think your family's ready for that?" Cravens asked skeptically.
Murphy shrugged. "Hell no. But ready or not, they'll do what needs doing. Just like always."
He finally looked up, squarely at Noble now. "And I'm not letting him face it alone."
A beat passed. Noble's jaw shifted like he had something to say, then decided against it.
Instead, he just offered, "I'll keep the engine room warm."
Murphy smirked. "And keep Briggs from blowing it up."
"I'll try. No promises."
They stood there another moment-- long enough to mean something, short enough not to get awkward. Then Noble extended a hand.
Murphy shook it. Firm, steady. No extra words.
Noble turned, took three steps toward the ramp, then paused.
"Hey, Murph?"
Murphy tilted his head.
"You're not him."
A pause.
"I know," Murphy said.
But even as he said it, he wasn't sure which version of him he actually meant.
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