Chapter Text
0.
Odo comes out of his regeneration cycle, forming his body in the middle of his quarters. He promptly heads to his office, reviewing the schedule for today. The main thing he has to worry about is the arrival of Vedek Berat and several monks from his temple. The vedek is coming to take custody of the Orb of Wisdom.
In the morning he meets with Deputy Arna to confirm the details for today's security arrangements, and then with an engineer who has been assigned to do some low-priority repairs to the security systems in the upper pylons. While Arna goes to greet Vedek Berat, Odo has time for a quick circuit around the Promenade to make sure everything is orderly -- a larger-than-normal crowd has already gathered around the Promenade shops and the station shrine in advance of the Orb being transferred to Berat's monastery, it seems.
Around 1200 hours, a short service is held in the shrine and then the ark, on a litter borne by two members of Berat's order, comes through the entrance and begins its parade along the Promenade and toward the docking ring.
Odo and his officers manage the crowd, making sure there's enough space for the vedek and the orb-bearers to walk unobstructed.
Odo throws a glance around the Promenade, taking quick stock of the current situation when he sees the rear orb-bearer's foot twist and she stumbles. For a split second, Odo thinks she will manage to recover her footing, but then the litter jerks and tips, launching the Orb of Wisdom into the air.
"Careful!" Odo says, lunging for the ark. He almost manages to catch it, but it falls just beyond the reach of his hands. The corner of the box hits the ground and the casing flies open. Odo sees the glow of the Orb within for a brief moment before the whole world goes white and silent.
"Chief...?"
All at once the sights and sounds of the crowded Promenade fill Odo's senses. He blinks up at the faces of Officers Simena and Yda who are staring down at him with confused expressions on their faces. He's lying on the ground, he realizes. "What happened?" he asks.
"Your body completely disappeared for a few seconds. And then you reformed like this." Simena points at him.
They both give him a hand to help him stand.
"Are you all right?"
Odo flexes his hand, then reforms it into a series of shapes. His shifting is fine; his form feels fine. "Yes, I think so. What about the orb?"
Vedek Berat and the orb-bearers are already working on checking the ark, making sure the Orb is still nestled safely inside, and then carefully straightening the casing and pressing the doors closed to make sure they shut securely.
The vedek sighs in relief. "I will need to give it a closer look, but it seems unharmed." With the Orb securely placed on the carrier, he reaches out to touch Odo's arm. "Did you have an experience?"
"What?" Odo asks, still a bit disoriented.
"I was wondering if you had any visions. When people come in close contact with an Orb, sometimes it grants them a vision."
"No," Odo says, "I didn't see anything." If anything, he seems to have blacked out.
Before he realizes what is happening, Vedek Berat grabs hold of his ear.
"Hm," he says. "I don't quite know what to make of your pagh. It is very odd, but I suppose it seems strong enough."
"Are you done?" Odo asks, vaguely irritated at having his pagh checked through his fake ear. How funny that on the few occasions someone has tried to read his pagh, it has always been "odd."
The vedek releases his grip on Odo's ear. "My apologies, but it's only proper to check someone's pagh before they interact with an Orb. Or after, if that isn't possible."
With the Orb and its bearers back in their proper place, the procession continues on its way, Vedek Berat saying a last few words to the crowd before he and his entourage board the shuttle going to Bajor.
With that done, Odo and his officers go back to their normal routine. Odo has enough time in the afternoon to stop by Quark's a couple of times just to make sure he isn't up to anything. The slightly larger crowd aboard the station today has got the Ferengi in a good mood, Odo can tell.
The rest of the afternoon passes uneventfully. It's a quiet day in terms of Odo's duties, and in the evening, Odo spends a couple of hours in the holosuite kayaking with Chief O'Brien.
Or at least, that was the intention. Less than an hour into the particularly intense session, O'Brien suddenly drops his paddle as if it's made of fire and lets out a strangled sound of pain.
"This damn shoulder!" he curses.
A quick glance reveals that it's dislocated. Odo immediately halts the program and uses his badge to alert sickbay of the injury. Then he helps O'Brien walk out of the holosuite and downstairs. They run into the doctor just outside of Quark's, coming to meet them.
Doctor Bashir does a quick scan. "Looks fairly minor," he concludes. "Relative to your last injury, that is. Come on, let's get to sickbay so that we can get that fixed."
"Sorry about that, Odo," O'Brien says, later, when they get to sickbay and he sits down on a biobed.
"Why are you apologizing?" Odo replies. "You're the one who got injured."
"Well, I'm sure you were looking forward to a nice relaxing two hours on the rapids, in nature, not -- OW!" Bashir pushes O'Brien's shoulder back into its socket. "Not a trip to sickbay halfway through," he continues, wincing.
"It's all right, Chief. I just hope your injury isn't serious."
The doctor checks the range of motion of O'Brien's shoulder and runs another scan. "Nothing I can't fix up right now," he says, "but really, Miles, you need to stop pushing yourself so hard or you're eventually going to need another surgery. Have you been doing those stretches I recommended?"
"Yes!" O'Brien says, indignant.
Bashir gives him a look that indicates that he gets told that by patients a lot.
"I swear! I have!" O'Brien insists.
"Well, no more kayaking for at least a week -- doctor's orders." After that, he releases the chief.
Satisfied that O'Brien is fine, Odo heads back to his quarters a bit earlier than scheduled, and spends some time reading and practicing his shifting before finally turning in, reverting fully back to his liquid state in the center of the living room in his quarters.
⌛
1.
Odo emerges from his regeneration cycle and forms his body in the middle of his quarters. He promptly heads to his office to go over the day's schedule.
The process is more difficult than he expects. First, the computer pulls up yesterday's schedule. Then when he switches to today's schedule, the computer pulls up an outdated version that's missing the edits he made yesterday. That's when he notices the date on the display -- stardate 49183.2.
That's not right. That's yesterday's date. Are the computers malfunctioning again? It's a very minor issue, though -- Chief O'Brien probably has his hands full with more disruptive maintenance issues.
While he's puzzling over this issue, Deputy Arna walks into his office with a PADD and takes a seat in front of his desk. Odo sets aside the computer issues for now to ask her what she needs.
"Oh -- I... I thought we were meeting to discuss the security arrangements in place for Vedek Berat's visit to the station." She waves the PADD at him.
Odo blinks. "I wasn't notified that Berat was visiting the station again," he huffs. "What kind of security arrangements are needed?"
Arna gives him a puzzled look but hands over the PADD.
Odo skims the document and now he's puzzled too. "The Orb of Wisdom? But didn't we transfer it into Berat's custody yesterday?"
"Mm... no...?" Arna says slowly, uncertain. "I'm pretty sure it was today." She pulls up today's docking schedule and points to an entry. "See? The vedek's ship is docking at 1015."
But this is yesterday's schedule, Odo inwardly protests. Despite what the computer seems to think. And his deputy. A feeling of unease begins to surface in Odo. He quickly approves the security arrangements and checks with the people he met with yesterday and the people he was supposed to meet today -- all of them are under the impression that today's date is 49183 and that the vedek didn't visit yesterday.
Odo huffs, perplexed at this situation he's found himself in. Everyone else seems to be under the impression yesterday never happened, so -- what? Odo imagined the whole thing? A very detailed and vivid hallucination?
The vedek arrives; the service is held in the shrine; the orb-bearers from Berat's order parade the Orb down the Promenade. Just like yesterday, the rear bearer trips and the Orb slips from its carrier. Odo sees it all happen and this time he morphs his body, stretching it further, and easily catches the Orb and eases its fall.
Officer Yda breathes a sigh of relief. "Nice catch, Chief."
Odo carefully replaces the Orb on its platform. "Yes," he says uncertainly.
What is this? he wonders. He changed the events from yesterday. Was that supposed to happen? Was he... supposed to have done that?
Like yesterday, the afternoon is uneventful. Odo stops by Quark's just to check if the bartender remembered any of the events of today happening before. Quark gives him a puzzled look before comparing the procession today to the last time an Orb was transferred off the station -- the Orb of Prophecy.
It's not what Odo was looking for. He returns to his office, half-heartedly filling out paperwork he is certain he filed yesterday, and anxiously checking tomorrow's schedule, as if being sufficiently knowledgeable about tomorrow will somehow sort out this situation.
He's so engrossed in his work that the doors slide open and it's Chief O'Brien in his kayaking gear. "Coming, Odo?" O'Brien says. Behind him, the beta shift deputy is patiently waiting to relieve Odo of his post in the security office.
It takes Odo a moment to remember his evening engagement and to realize that it is evening. His shift was meant to end half an hour ago. "Ah yes, of course," he finally manages to say. Kayaking is the last thing on his mind at the moment but he doesn't want to back out of his engagement with the chief.
He quickly leaves a note for himself tomorrow, closes up his files, and hands things off to his deputy. Together he and O'Brien head to the holosuites on the upper level of the Promenade.
Just as they're about to go inside, Odo hesitates. "Chief, maybe we should go down a difficulty level today."
"What, don't think we can handle it?"
"I'm merely worried that you might injure your shoulder."
O'Brien laughs. "Oh, don't worry, Odo, my shoulder's actually in great condition. I've been doing exercises to strengthen it -- between the surgery and the exercises, it's actually the healthiest it's been in years."
Odo lets out a sigh. "If you're sure..."
While they're kayaking, Odo tries his best to get them through the part where O'Brien pulled out his shoulder the last time, but he's unsuccessful. At about the same place in the river, O'Brien's shoulder pops out again, and Odo immediately presses his badge to alert the infirmary.
The events play out very much like his previous experience of this day, with slight alterations.
"Guess you were right about my shoulder," O'Brien says in sickbay, wincing as he waits for the doctor to move the joint back into its socket. That's different. But the exchange between Bashir and O'Brien about the shoulder exercises still plays out, nearly word for word. Finally, O'Brien is sent home to rest his shoulder, and Odo returns to his own quarters, unsettled.
Why does he remember all this happening before, so vividly? Did he have some kind of premonition of today's events? Did his actions today perhaps prevent something that should not have happened?
He's too restless to do anything right now, in his unstructured free time, but the prospect of regenerating also unsettles him. He instead spends the time pulling up reading material related to the Orbs. Something happened to him the first time the Orb fell from its holder, and he searches documents related to the Orbs and records of orb experiences to see if there's a description of a similar thing happening.
There's all sorts of tales involving Orbs -- people who spoke with heroes of the past, people who saw their whole life unfold but then later had almost all of it slip away, people who met a distant descendent, people who glimpsed a fantastical world filled with strange beings that they couldn't comprehend, someone who claimed to have seen the end of time. Many quite dubious and uncorroborated.
A few hours later, he's only scratched the surface but he's tired, approaching the latter end of his cycle and so he slips into his regenerative state.
⌛
2.
Odo emerges from his regeneration cycle in the middle of his quarters.
"Computer, what is today's date?" he asks immediately.
"It is stardate 49183."
Odo drags a hand across his face, a feeling of worry slowly spreading through him. This can't be happening. He goes to his office, and the computer there confirms the same date, all his files reset to the way they were at the beginning of yesterday, the note he left to himself missing. He asks everyone he encounters on his patrols if they remember experiencing this day before, if anything feels familiar, and they give him shrugs and puzzled glances.
At the first gap in his schedule, after talking to enough people to get a consistent answer, he immediately goes to Sisko and explains his situation. As a test of his theory, while the Orb of Wisdom is being transferred from DS9's shrine, he watches it from the sidelines with the captain and the major. "The rear bearer will trip and the Orb will fall," Odo predicts. He points to the orb-bearer just as it happens.
Like in the first time he experienced this day, the ark falls from its carrier, its corner hits the floor and its doors fly open. This time, there is no blinding flash of light, just the glimmer of the Orb within, partially hidden by the casing. The vedek, the orb-bearers, and the security officers scramble to make sure the Orb is okay.
"That's happened every time now -- three times. You're sure it's not familiar? You don't remember those other times?"
Both Sisko and Kira shake their heads, but they're both convinced that something is wrong. The captain assigns Dax to figuring out what the problem is and instructs Odo to report to sickbay for a full scan.
Once in sickbay, the doctor runs a scan, and he and Dax peruse the results together.
"It's certainly different from his last scan," Bashir says, referring to Odo's morphogenic matrix, squinting at the images in puzzlement. "I just have no idea what that means."
They switch to another set of readings.
"It's like his matrix has been completely reconfigured," Dax says. "But it seems stable at least?" She and Bashir might as well be saying his pagh is odd -- it has just as much meaning to him. Dax turns in her chair to face Odo. "When did this start?" she asks. "I mean, I know today but I mean, did anything out of the ordinary happen?"
"Well..." Odo hesitates. "On the first day -- the first version of this day -- when the Orb of Wisdom fell off its platform, I tried to catch it and... Officer Simena said my body disappeared for several moments and then reformed. I don't recall any of that -- all I remember is the world going away for a few moments."
"Your body 'disappeared'? What does that mean?"
"I don't know -- I assume I just vanished. Disappeared from sight."
"And during that time, you just... had no recollection?"
"No, I remember the world going white -- similar to a very bright light. And then when it was gone, I was lying on the ground and people were staring at me."
Dax purses her lips in thought. "Could it be that you temporarily mingled with the Orb somehow?"
"I... don't know," Odo says.
"Did Simena say anything else?"
"No, I -- I didn't ask him to elaborate, and it hasn't happened in the cycles since then. So, I..."
"You can't really ask now," Dax finishes, humming thoughtfully. "Some kind of interaction between your body and an Orb of the Prophets...? That seems like a fair working hypothesis, at least until we have more to go on. Do you have any idea what triggers the time reset?"
Odo hesitates. "I can't tell. I regenerated both times around 2300 hours, and when I came out of my regeneration, time had already been reset."
"Have you tried regenerating earlier in the day?"
"No."
"Try it now." Dax nods to Bashir, who holds up a tricorder to take readings while Odo regenerates.
⌛
3.
Odo emerges from his natural state in the middle of his quarters.
The commander and the doctor are nowhere to be seen.
Odo lets out a curse under his breath.
He takes a moment to confirm the date -- it is, of course, 49183.2 -- and then goes straight to Ops. Captain Sisko's shift doesn't start for another hour but Odo patiently waits as the night shift gets relieved by the alpha shift.
Sisko enters Ops and as he gets his morning raktajino, Odo explains his situation:
"Captain, I think I'm stuck in some kind of... time loop. This is the fourth time I've experienced this day, and I seem to be the only one who remembers the previous loops, and time seems to reset whenever I regenerate."
The captain listens to all this with a calm expression on his face, probably helped by the fact that he still seems to not be fully awake. "Sounds like quite the situation," he says wearily. "Can you tell me anything more? How did this happen?"
"I... We're not sure, but I had an encounter with the Orb of Wisdom when it was -- well, when it will be transferred off of DS9 later today. Ever since then, I haven't regenerated without being returned back to the place and time when I last came out of regeneration. And now I'm a bit reluctant to try again."
Sisko nods. "Dax?" he says. "What do you think?"
From her station where she's been listening attentively to the whole conversation, Dax purses her lips in thought. "Well," she says slowly, "it looks like I just need to figure out how orbs that we don't understand interact with a lifeform whose biology we also don't understand." She pauses to give a playful shrug. "Ought to be simple enough," she adds lightly.
Sisko gives her a grin in return. "Then get to it, old man."
Odo once again gets a full scan. As the doctor takes the measurements, Odo explains to Dax everything he knows so far, including what happened the last time he regenerated. He also explains that whatever data they gather, any progress they make, they'll probably need to explain it to him in terms he can understand because otherwise it will be lost the next time he has to regenerate.
"So when you regenerated, time immediately reset?"
"Yes. That's how I experienced it at least."
"And you also returned to where you were at that time?"
"Yes."
"Have you tried recreating the exact series of events that led to the encounter with the Orb?"
"No... not yet." It's the obvious thing to try but he wanted some advice from the lieutenant commander on what could be going on first, and Dax agrees that was a good call.
With the scans complete, Dax and Bashir comb through the data, once again mentioning the differences they're seeing in his matrix.
"It would be good if we could get a scan of the Orb as well," Dax muses to herself. "Odo," she says, turning to him, "how does your regeneration work?"
"What do you mean?"
"Are there intermediate states between your shifted form and your natural state, or is it binary -- either one or the other?"
Odo pauses. He's never really thought about that before. "I suppose it's mostly instantaneous, except with one intermediate stage in between. I have to relinquish my current form first, and then rather than adopt a new one, I go into my natural state."
"Do you maintain consciousness when you're regenerating? Are you aware of the passage of time?"
This question he knows the answer to, although it's been a long time since anyone has asked him the question, Dr. Mora being the last person he's had to discuss this with. Since leaving Dr. Mora's lab, he has always considered his regeneration cycle to be somewhat of a private matter, but he supposes it is now directly relevant. "I lose most of my consciousness when regenerating, and I'm not aware of time passing until I'm finished. I suppose a serious disturbance to my form could force me out of my regeneration cycle prematurely, but I haven't experienced anything like that so far in this... loop."
"So you don't know exactly when or how time is resetting."
"Yes. It feels to me like a normal regeneration, except the time and place in which I emerge is, well, wrong."
The doctor hops into the conversation. "So you feel rested, then, Constable? No fatigue or discomfort, physically-speaking?" It's clear he's speaking as a doctor, concerned with any possible debilitating effects on Odo's physiology.
"None that I notice," Odo answers.
"Tell me straight away if any of that changes," the doctor says. He and Dax then consult with each other again before proposing that Odo should try going partially into regeneration, or at least as close as he can without losing consciousness.
"We need to collect as much basic information as we can about what's going on with your physiology and this timeloop without actually triggering the restart," Dax explains to him, "so start off slow."
Odo does as he's told, simply shifting his form back to a liquid but without sinking into his regenerative state. He reforms his body and the doctor and the lieutenant-commander take a look at the new set of readings.
"It's the same structure," Dax notes. "It's good to know your shifting is unaffected at least. Is there any way you can inch closer to regenerating without actually regenerating?"
"I can try." Odo repeats the process twice, trying to get close to that feeling he has when he regenerates but without fully sinking into it.
"That's about the limit," Odo says after he reforms, relieved that he's still here and not back in his quarters at the beginning of the day.
"Well on the negative side, all the scans have the same result," Dax says, pointing out on a side-by-side comparison what she's looking out for. "But on the positive side, we know that you can safely shift that far without resetting the loop, I suppose." Her brow furrows as she taps her finger against the surface of the desk, deep in thought. "But I really wish we could get a scan of what's happening when you regenerate. Well, for now, we should check to see if anyone else on the station is also affected." She taps her badge and requests the captain.
"Dax, what is it?" comes Sisko's voice.
"Benjamin, could you make a station-wide announcement to see if there's anyone on board the station who's also experiencing any kind of temporal anomaly?" she asks. "And ask the same thing of any visitors to the station, especially anyone who might interact with the Orb of Wisdom today."
"Of course," Sisko says and then closes the line.
Dax then goes to the science lab to run a bunch of scans to see if there's anything indicating that the timeloop might be affecting the station more broadly, and somehow Odo is the only one who is aware of it.
"It would be good to thoroughly check for that possibility, just in case," Dax explains. "We wouldn't want to waste time following the wrong theory."
The hours of the morning and afternoon slip by as the lieutenant-commander explores the possibilities. The Orb of Wisdom is once again transferred off the station; at Dax's recommendation, Odo stays away, leaving the work of crowd management to Arna. In the early evening, Sisko confirms that one of the orb-bearers tripped and the ark fell onto the ground; he also informs Dax that he hasn't received any reports of odd temporal phenomena from anyone else on the station.
"It's late," Odo says to Dax after Sisko leaves. She's been working on his problem since the early morning, running tests and generating theories and trying to eliminate some of them, and explaining what she's doing.
"No worries," Dax says, taking a sip of her fourth raktajino today. "I want to keep working. I'd really like to get to the bottom of this."
At that moment, the doors to the science lab open and Chief O'Brien pops his head in. "Hey, Odo, you still interested in kayaking?"
Before Odo can answer, Dax pipes up. "Ooh, kayaking," she says with a smile. "Go on ahead -- I'll fill you in when you get back."
"Are you sure you don't need me?" Odo asks, dubious.
"Have fun," Dax insists. At Odo's hesitation, she adds, "Unless you're all kayaked out."
"It's not that. It's just..." Odo starts. "Chief, are you aware that I seem to be stuck in some kind of... time loop phenomenon?"
"Yeah, the captain mentioned that earlier."
"Well... in the previous version of this day, when we went kayaking, you pulled your shoulder out."
"What?" O'Brien asks, dismayed. "Really?"
Odo nods, and O'Brien takes a moment to consider it. "Maybe we should go down a difficulty level," he says. "Take it easy today."
"That would be wise."
The two of them go to the holosuite. O'Brien sets the difficulty and the two of them enter and get into a relaxing rhythm. After a long day of having theories and scientific concepts he doesn't understand thrown at him, a short break filled with mindless exercise is welcome.
Then, half an hour into the program, O'Brien dislocates his shoulder.
With a sigh, Odo presses his badge. "Odo to sickbay -- we have an injury in the holosuite."
After O'Brien gets treated, Odo returns to the science lab and works another few hours with Dax until he can feel the beginnings of fatigue settling into his body, at which point Dax summarizes the last set of tests she's done and suggests a list of things he could try in the future if he continues to loop. Then she wishes him luck and encourages him to recruit her help in the future, and goes to turn in herself. When she leaves, Odo sinks into his natural state.
⌛
4.
Odo emerges from his regeneration cycle in the middle of his quarters.
As instructed by Dax, the first thing he tries to do is to recreate the very first version of this day. Any small detail could have an important knock-on effect, so he meticulously tries to match everything to how it went the first time -- he meets the same people at the same time, says the same lines, makes a circuit around the Promenade in the same order.
When the Orb of Wisdom is being transported, he tries to stand in the same place he was before, as best as he can remember, reaches out with the same timing, lunges, just barely misses the ark...
The ark's corner hits the floor and the doors pop open, just like before. Odo glimpses the bright dancing light of the Orb within... but something is wrong. He sees the case fall to the ground on its side, and the vedek and the orb-bearers rushing to set it right and check for damage. There's no overwhelming light that fills the world, no disappearance. Simena and Yda don't take any note of Odo as they scramble to help the others.
Forget about undoing whatever happened to him -- the odd incident didn't even happen again. He can't even press the others for more detail on what happened when his body disappeared because he didn't even disappear this time.
Was there a slight difference in his timing? Would small random variation be enough to be the difference between triggering the incident and not? Or did the problem lie elsewhere? With an annoyed huff, Odo sinks into his regeneration.
⌛
5.
As he expected, he comes out of his regeneration in the middle of his quarters. Just to be sure, Odo makes another attempt, trying his best to replicate the exact incidents of the first day. But again, there is no interaction with the Orb when the ark flies open, no blackout, no disappearance. It's probably too early to come to any conclusions, but it strikes Odo that if he did have some kind of orb experience that first time, then perhaps he is still inside that experience -- that would explain why his attempts to trigger the original event aren't having the same effect. His interactions with the Orb now would be nestled inside another, different interaction with the Orb. Or possibly he's just missing something important. He trusts Dax has the best chance of figuring it out.
⌛
6.
Odo emerges from his regeneration cycle in the middle of his quarters, and goes to inform the captain of his situation the moment he comes on duty. The conversation goes much like before, down to Dax's quip about the Orbs and his biology and Sisko's amused, familiar, "Then get to it, old man."
The two of them must pick up on Odo's awkward observation of their exchange because Dax adds, "Let me guess... You've heard us say that before."
"Ah, well... Yes. I have," Odo admits.
"Our apologies," Sisko says with an amused but somewhat contrite expression on his face. "I imagine attempts at wit get a bit tiring when you've heard the exact joke before."
"Well, it's not your fault--" Odo begins, unsure what to say. It's only the second time he's heard it, but who knows how many times this exchange will happen? In any case, though, it's certainly true that he can't blame the captain and commander for their joking dynamic and the first reaction they have to learning about his situation.
Waving away Odo's awkward attempt at a response, the lieutenant commander ushers Odo to the sickbay. Along the way, he fills her in on the main findings so far: the features of his first scan that were worthy of mention (she and the doctor still take a scan just so they have a complete set of data to work with), as well as a summary of the other scans related to his regeneration. The current lack of other people experiencing temporal phenomena; the scans Dax did last cycle to see if there were any subatomic particles that were out of the ordinary in or around the station; the result of his own attempts at replicating the accident.
After he's done, Dax begins to throw out suggestions in rapid succession. "We should try to get a scan of the Orb. Have you tried putting some distance between yourself and the station and seeing if you can still regenerate?" Odo shakes his head and Dax purses her lips as she studies the scans again. "What do you think, Julian -- could chronitons be responsible for the changes to Odo's morphogenic matrix?"
"Chronitons? Wouldn't the scan have picked them up?"
"They're difficult to detect normally, and who knows how interacting with Odo's form might change whether our scanners can detect them. Let me see if I can reprogram the scanners to pick them up, if they're there."
Dax spends the next few hours reprogramming the computer several times and rerunning the scan in search of the chronitons she thinks might exist in Odo's matrix.
After failing to get any results, Dax lets out a sigh and decides that it's time to come up with a new theory.
"I'll think about it over lunch," she says. "Coming with?"
Odo of course doesn't need to remind Dax that he doesn't eat. It seems more of a social invitation. Before they head to the replimat, though, Dax takes a detour to stop by the Bajoran shrine. It's almost time for the pre-transfer service and people are trickling in. "Have you tried preventing the Orb from falling at all?" Dax asks Odo.
Odo pauses. He's caught the Orb, but he hasn't tried preventing it from falling entirely. He tells Dax as much, and she ducks into the shrine in order to find the orb-bearers and give them a heads up. "It's worth a try," she says before she leaves.
Left by himself at the entrance, Odo takes a quick glance around the Promenade, taking in the movement of people, and instinctively telling a pair of boisterous Bajoran teens to slow down even though he's not on duty. When his gaze passes over Quark's, he sees the proprietor standing in the entrance, giving him a quick jerk of his head in a way that indicates he wants to talk to Odo.
With a sigh, Odo walks over.
"So, how is solving your timeloop problem going?" Quark says when he approaches.
Odo frowns at him. "How do you know about that?" he asks. He hasn't told him, and today, the captain didn't even make a station-wide announcement mentioning time-related experiences.
"I hear things," Quark says with a smile. "So what's it like, getting to work with Commander Dax?" He nods toward the entrance to the shrine across the Promenade, where the lieutenant commander has reappeared with one of the orb-bearers, her hands clasped behind her back.
From this distance, Odo can just barely make out part of their conversation over the bustle of people. The orb-bearer sounds anxious and Dax is telling her everything will be fine.
"She's good at her job," Odo answers. "She's been very competent and helpful."
It's only when Quark follows his question up with "I wish I had a weird science problem for Dax to work on with me for hours on end..." that Odo realizes that Quark wasn't asking about the lieutenant commander's professionalism. Quark continues, "If I were in a timeloop, you know what I'd do?"
Odo sighs. "What?"
"I'd use it to figure out how to get with whomever I wanted."
Odo rolls his eyes. "Of course you would, Quark. You're disgusting." He has hope, however, that someone as sensible as the lieutenant commander would surely thwart Quark's hopes very persistently.
"You're really saying you're not interested at all?" Quark presses.
"I'm not."
"Well, you should be." At Odo's highly skeptical expression, Quark turns around to face him fully. "No, really, Odo, think about it," he insists. "It's a timeloop, right? Incredibly boring. But the one upside is, there's no consequences to any of your actions."
Odo crosses his arms. "So you can commit as many crimes as you like and never face any consequences -- is that what you're saying?"
Quark gives him a scowl. "What I'm saying is that you can make as many mistakes as you like without worrying about them following you for the rest of your life." He raps Odo gently with the back of his hand. "Mistakes are good teachers. I'm saying it's an opportunity for low-cost learning experiences."
"The only thing I'm interested in learning about at the moment is how to get out of this loop," Odo says frankly. His whole effort since the moment he realized what was happening has been dedicated to that goal.
Quark shrugs. "Your loss. You're gonna find a way out of the loop too quickly and then lose out on all those valuable learning experiences. But, hey, it's your timeloop."
At that, he ducks back into his establishment and returns to his work. Odo sighs, thinking about how only Quark would have such a flippant attitude toward being stuck in a timeloop.
⌛
7-42.
If only Quark were right about finding a way out of the loop too quickly. None of the changes he or Dax made in the previous loop seem to fix anything.
Odo tries other things, carefully keeping a mental note of the results. He and Dax try getting on a runabout and putting as much distance between them and DS9 -- he comes out of his regeneration back in his quarters on DS9. He tries parking a runabout in the wormhole in an attempt to contact the wormhole aliens -- they don't respond. He tries viewing the Orb, multiple times -- an arduous process that involves getting permission from both Vedek Berat and Vedek Tonsa and Odo getting his pagh checked before he is allowed to view the Orb (it is of course still "very odd"). The Orb sparkles but he doesn't have anything that counts as an "experience." He tries having no contact with the Orb for many cycles in case something about the proximity is what is affecting his ability to regenerate normally. He and Dax have both combed through records of orb experiences, trying to see if they contain some kind of hint at what this looping could be and how people in the past have managed to escape; the few promising things they've found have had no success.
Whenever he can, he gets a full scan from Dax and carefully relates a summary of the findings to her when they next meet. With each iteration, his briefing of Dax gets longer as he has to recite from memory all the avenues they've tried and any theories she's put forward from previous timelines. She's still trying to put together all the information she's gathered into a concrete theory but between the Orbs and his odd biology, she's basically shooting in the dark, and nothing she's tried has been successful at ending the loop.
⌛
43.
"I feel this should be easy," Odo says to Kira after briefly explaining his current situation. "Am I -- are we -- missing something obvious?"
Kira looks at him, at a loss for advice. "I don't know. No one understands how the Orbs work, and the Prophets are even more mysterious."
Odo laces his fingers together, leans heavily on his elbows as they rest on his desk. "Do you have any... insight, Nerys?" he asks, speaking to her not as a superior officer but as a civilian, a Bajoran -- a devout one. "Could the Orb be trying to... I don't know, teach me a lesson?" It was the one the Bajorans had named the Orb of Wisdom, whatever meaning that had. Odo was in no way spiritual, but perhaps thinking about his situation from that perspective could nevertheless be productive.
Kira shakes her head. "I wish I could say. It's certainly possible, although I've never heard of this kind of thing happening."
Odo hangs his head heavily on his hands, trying to think of a course of action and coming up with only dead ends and random ideas with dubious chances of success and nothing else.
"Odo, are you holding up okay?" Kira asks in a concerned voice. "I mean, maybe you should take a break?"
Odo looks up at her. "A break?"
"How long have you been at this?"
"I've been trying to solve this problem for over 40 cycles now."
Kira stares at him, wide-eyed. "Forty cycles? Odo, you need to take a break. No one is supposed to work for 40 days straight, especially not when they're experiencing something as stressful as this."
Odo is quiet for a moment. Not all those cycles were full ones, but he sees Nerys's point. He had just been trying to solve this as quickly as possible, but he sees what she means about needing time off work, especially since it seems far from a trivial matter, solving this problem. "What do you suggest I do?" he asks.
Nerys's eyes soften, and something in Odo warms at seeing that look of concern in her eyes. It reminds him that she's not just a colleague and not just a devout Bajoran; she's a friend, his closest friend.
"Maybe you should spend a cycle just doing something fun," Nerys suggests. "Something to help you destress. You don't have to solve this problem right away, you know."
Odo turns her suggestion over in his mind. He could arrange something like that. Maybe that's even the lesson the Orb wants him to learn -- to let go and just enjoy things.
⌛
44.
Odo entrusts the handling of all the day's security arrangements to Arna and gets on board a shuttle going to Bajor. At this point in Bajor's orbit, it takes roughly four hours in total to get to the planet from DS9, taking into account time spent embarking and disembarking.
Once he gets to the planet, though, he realizes how long it's been since he's seen a blue sky, seen sunlight filtered through atmosphere and clouds, felt dirt and grass beneath his feet. There's so much space here on the planet, and Odo takes advantage of it by shifting into forms that are too large or fast or disruptive to be usable on a station like DS9.
He enjoys the day spent taking advantage of Bajor's sights and amenities and the best part about it, ironically, is that he doesn't even need to take the long way back to DS9. When he's done, when he can feel the desire to enter a lower-energy state seeping through his form, he just sinks into his natural state.
⌛
45-91.
...And comes out of his regeneration cycle in the middle of his quarters, as he expected.
The next few cycles, he formulates a schedule that he thinks will be more long-term sustainable, featuring regular mandatory rest days, which he uses to explore parts of Bajor or to practice his shifting or to read something interesting he hasn't had time for. He's thankful for Kira's suggestion -- just because he's stuck like this doesn't mean he has to put his whole life on pause until he fixes it.
The cycles are filled with more failures, and more days of relaxation. At least there always seems to be more things that he or Dax can try. This is taking much longer than he expected to fix but for now at least, he's managing to live in this loop.
⌛
92.
Odo comes out of his regeneration cycle, forming his body in the middle of his quarters.
For some reason, this morning, something Quark said in a cycle long ago comes back to him, about learning experiences that can be had in timeloops. And something Kira said as well, about not needing to fix the timeloop straight away.
He pauses to deliberate over whether to do it, but comes to a decision surprisingly quickly. There's just the matter of how to go about it. He makes a plan: he goes about the day as if it's a normal day, meeting with Arna as he's done many times before. After that, he then takes a trip to Ops, where Kira greets him with a smile.
"Good morning, Odo. How can I help you?"
"Ah, Major," Odo starts as he tries to think of what exactly to say. "At your earliest convenience, can I speak to you privately?" Best to keep it professional in this office, to avoid embarrassing her, or him.
She presses a few more buttons on the panel she's looking at and then looks up again with a smile. "I'm free now."
The two of them take the turbolift to Odo's office and Kira sits down in the chair in front of his desk. "What's up?"
"I..." In his head, Odo hears Quark saying, no consequences. "I was wondering if you and I, uh, we... might spend some time together. Outside of work."
"Oh?" Kira leans forward, interested. "What kind of thing did you have in mind?"
"Well... I, I was thinking..." No consequences. "A date," he blurts out. "That we could go on a date."
Kira's eyes widen. "Oh," is all she says for a moment, a soft exhaled sound of surprise rather than a word or complete thought. "A... A date," she manages to say a moment later, the corner of her mouth pulling up into a puzzled half-smile -- it's obvious that this isn't at all what she was expecting from this conversation.
Inwardly, Odo cringes. He has no idea what she'll say next. Well, whatever she says, Odo knows that it will be a valuable thing for him to know. A learning experience, as Quark put it.
Kira is still staring at him with a questioning look, and Odo realizes that she has no context for this request for a date -- she doesn't even have an inkling about his feelings. "I've, uh, I've wanted to ask you out for a while," Odo explains. "I just didn't really know how -- wasn't sure if it would be... appropriate." Was this too much information? "I... I know, after Bareil... his -- I mean, I thought you might still not be over..." This was definitely too much information. He shouldn't have brought up Bareil. Odo pauses and sighs. "I'm sorry, let me... start over." It would be just his luck if the timeloop ended this time around, and he'd have to live with having had this conversation.
"No, it's all right, Odo," Kira says. "But, uh..." She cocks her head a bit to the side and looks at Odo as if seeing him for the first time, that puzzled, nervous smile still pulling at her lips. "I... well, I'd need to think about it."
Odo nods, and Nerys gets up from her chair and takes a few steps toward the door before pausing, her knuckles tapping idly against her thigh in thought. Then suddenly, she turns around to face him again, a bright look on her face, her shoulders giving a carefree shrug. "You know what -- what the heck, let's do it. But," she points at him, "we're friends, and we're colleagues. However the date goes, I don't want anything to mess that up."
Surprise and relief mingle in Odo's body. "Yes. Yes, of course. I feel exactly the same."
"When's a good time? Tomorrow night?"
Odo hesitates, but of course he knows what he has to say. "Could we do tonight?"
Kira considers it. "All right, sure. Tonight." She gives him a smile and Odo feels like he might melt right there on the spot.
Of course, now he has to worry about going on a date with Nerys without embarrassing himself. He hears Quark reminding him: No consequences. Learning experience.
Before the date, Odo spends a few moments wondering if he should wear something other than his uniform before deciding that he can just wait until dinner and take his cues from whatever Nerys is wearing, maybe even just ask her directly if she prefer that he change into something else, since it's not inconvenient for him to just shift a new outfit on the spot.
He has to cancel his kayaking session with O'Brien, which he feels a small twinge of guilt about because he knows that if he pulls out of kayaking, the chief will go by himself and will pull out his shoulder like he always does. But it's only a little bit of guilt because it's not like Odo being there makes it any better. He just always feels like maybe his actions have some chance of preventing it from happening, if he could only figure out the right set of things to do or say.
He and Nerys meet at the restaurant across from the import office, a place that Nerys says has some decent Dahkur-style dishes. Not like that has any meaning to Odo but he's here for the company.
Nerys shows up wearing casual clothes -- a knit top over a long-sleeved shirt, with a pair of grey trousers and heeled boots.
"You look nice," Odo says, just blurting out the first thought that comes to mind.
"Thanks," Nerys says, giving a nervous smile as she idly smooths down the hem of her top. "You look--"
Before she can finish her sentence, Odo shifts an outfit to match, in the same general style and in similar colors.
Nerys blinks. "...That's a neat trick," she says.
Odo knows Nerys well enough to know that there is no malice in her words. Still, it has the predictable effect of making him feel a bit more visible than normal, which is surprisingly not all bad of a feeling. He quickly clears his throat and indicates the entrance to the restaurant. "Shall we?" he asks.
They enter the restaurant together and are seated. Nerys picks up her menu while Odo leaves his lying on the table. After ordering food, the two of them slip into the comfortable act of talking about work -- Nerys fills Odo in how things went in Ops today and Odo listens without telling her that he already knows, because that would involve telling her that he's experienced this day dozens of times from various angles.
Halfway through a sentence, Nerys shakes her head. "What am I doing? We're on a date! Let's talk about something other than work."
To be honest, Odo would gladly listen to Kira read the station's operating manual out loud. But he understands the point she's making -- this is a chance to get to know each other outside of the realm of the professional.
Kira takes a moment to push the food around on her plate, then glances back up at him, a somewhat sheepish smile on her face. "To be honest, I had no idea you had an interest in this kind of thing." She indicates their surroundings with a motion of her head -- the low lighting, the ambient music, the other diners. "I thought you didn't care much for... any of this."
"You're not... wrong," Odo says hesitantly. How did he explain it? He had spent so much of his life utterly indifferent to love and intimacy and all the ritual around humanoid coupling... and yet, Kira was an exception. He couldn't even begin to explain why. He settles for saying, "For some reason, with you, it's... different."
Nerys looks almost shy, hearing him say that. It's so strange. The Major Kira he knows so well is confident, assertive, someone who knows exactly what she wants and exactly what she thinks about people. But this Kira seems much less certain. Undecided. It's not like this Kira is bad in any way, but it makes Odo nervous. In some way, he must have been relying on her decisiveness to help him navigate this strange new situation. But as it is, it feels like the both of them are just floundering, looking at each other and wondering what direction all of this is going.
In the awkward silence, Odo takes a moment to think about what it is that dates are for anyway. He's never really had to think about it because he never thought he would actually go on one. He had mainly asked Nerys out just to see what would happen. But if he were to think about it, it seems that the purpose of dates is perhaps to assess long-term compatibility, and to see if romantic feelings develop, and perhaps partly just for the pleasure of spending time with someone you like. Of those three things, only the third feels within Odo's reach. He isn't even sure if he's romantically compatible with anyone, and he has no idea what to do or say to instill romantic feelings, or if anything he does could have such an effect.
He wishes he had some more experience with how dating works in general. Weirdly, that's something he could get in this loop, if he wanted to. He's not sure if he really wants to, though. Just take this one step at a time, he thinks. For now, today, all that matters is this experience, just enjoying himself.
Odo inquires how the food is, and Nerys spends a few minutes commenting on how she likes how the food here is prepared more like dishes she was used to growing up, especially the way mapa bread is done, because they put in riki seeds. "It makes it more bitter, which is how mapa bread should be," she says, then hesitates. "I'm sorry, this is probably very boring for you."
"Not at all," Odo assures her. "I can't taste things, but I find it fascinating to hear how humanoids experience flavor and what they seek out in foods." Maybe more than that, he just likes hearing about how Nerys grew up and what things she has strong opinions about.
Nerys talks a bit more about what kinds of dishes are staples in Dahkur, but after that she quickly moves on to asking Odo about what he likes to do in his free time.
"Well, I... I sometimes read novels. Chief O'Brien likes to lend me detective stories." He doesn't feel too weird about admitting that -- that's almost relevant to his work. Even though he's been branching out a bit in his personal life, it still feels strange to admit he does anything for purely recreational purposes. But it also feels strange to admit to having no life outside of work either. He wonders if that makes him seem dull, flat.
"You like solving the mysteries?" Nerys guesses.
"Well, some of them are easy to figure out, especially once you understand the rules of the genre. It's more that I like the characters." He spends some time explaining the features of the genre and the way different novels combine and make use of them, and Nerys seems to find the discussion interesting.
All in all, the time passes pleasantly. Once Odo decided to just enjoy the time spent together, it made everything even lower-stakes than going on a date in a timeloop already was, and he found the conversation similar to the way it was when he and Nerys spent time together during work, except that they talk about more personal things and they do it in a more relaxing environment. It's... nice.
"Well," Nerys says, some time after she's finished her food and when there's a lull in the conversation. "I suppose we should head out."
"Yes, of course." They both get to their feet.
"Can I... walk you home?" Odo asks tentatively. He has no idea if that's an appropriate thing to ask. He doesn't know if it indicates he intends something more. But all he means by it, all he wants, is just to spend a bit more time with Nerys.
Kira looks at him. "Sure. That'd be nice," she says with an easy smile.
They walk to the habitat ring together, the conversation going back to work again. Nerys complains about all the meetings she has lined up tomorrow. Odo can't quite join in her complaining since it would be a miracle if tomorrow's meetings actually happened; he can hardly remember anymore what meetings he has scheduled for the day after this since it's been so long since they were relevant.
They come to a stop outside of Nerys's quarters and before she goes inside, she takes a moment to thank Odo for asking her out. "This was nice. A bit weird but definitely... nice. Maybe we can do this again sometime?"
She looks at him hopefully, and Odo nods blankly, the very concept of an again difficult for him to process for more than one reason. She then disappears into her quarters and the doors shut behind her.
Odo returns to his own quarters. He still has a bit of free time in this cycle and he spends it just mentally running over particular moments in this cycle -- all the stumbles and mistakes, the awkward moments, Nerys's tentative smiles. He still doesn't know if this cycle was successful in the sense of determining whether Nerys feels the same way about him as he feels about her, but all in all, Odo thinks that he wouldn't mind if he has to keep this loop, mistakes and all.
⌛
93.
The loop doesn't end, of course. But Odo is practically floating nevertheless as he goes about the same old day, once again going to Sisko to inform him that he is in a timeloop, telling Dax the results of the last loop, the one before he got that strange idea to ask Nerys out.
If he seems oddly cheerful for a man who has failed ninety-something times to escape a timeloop, neither Sisko nor Dax remark on it.
Quark finds his good mood offputting, though. "Dare I ask what's got you in such good spirits today?" the Ferengi asks him with suspicion the moment Odo enters his bar to take a short break.
"It's none of your business," Odo says with a smug smile.
Quark breathes a sigh of relief. "Good," he says, going off quickly to serve another customer.
Odo can't really discuss it with anyone, but the last cycle was truly informative. He found out that Nerys is open to a new relationship again, that she's open to a new relationship with him, that he can make a lot of mistakes, and that doesn't entirely kill his chances. Of course, that's about as much as he can tell about the possibility of a relationship between them from within this timeloop -- the question of whether it will work out long-term, he can't answer, but now he knows something incredibly important that he can take with him once this timeloop ends. And that will give him the ability to answer those other, unknown questions.
He throws himself with renewed fervor into the tasks of gathering the data Dax needs, brainstorming possible avenues, doing the work to try them out -- whatever is needed in order to escape this loop.