Patin's Lesson 99 – Spin the Dial

Posted on Mon Nov 10th, 2025 @ 6:29pm by Patin

966 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Character Development
Location: Celestial Temple

A story of curiosity, consequence, and the art of stirring eternity.

The Celestial Temple hung in its eternal hush, endless light bending in slow, lazy ribbons that sang the geometry of forever. For once, Patin wasn’t talking. That alone should have been a warning.

She sat cross-legged on a ripple of starlight, boots dangling into the void. Around her, the Prophets murmured their usual paradoxes in a gentle, ceaseless chorus. Time. Choice. Becoming. The words looped like a lullaby written by philosophers who’d never had a good drink or a bad night.

Patin yawned.

“Look, I love you lot,” she muttered, “but if I have to hear one more version of it is, it was, it will be, I’m going to un-exist myself out of sheer boredom.”

Boredom is… irrelevant.

“Yeah, that’s what you said about sleep, and yet I’ve caught three of you napping mid-sermon.”

The light shimmered, like embarrassed gods clearing their throats.

That’s when she saw it, the Time Dial. A wheel of radiant currents hovering at the edge of perception, spinning in slow cosmic rhythm. It wasn’t supposed to be touched. It wasn’t even supposed to be noticed. Naturally, that meant Patin immediately wanted to touch it.

She rolled her shoulders, cracked her knuckles, and grinned. “Well… what’s the worst that could happen?”

Patin...

Too late. She reached out and flicked it. The Time Dial spun.

Sound became light. Light became scent. The Temple trembled like a drum skin, and the Prophets’ voices warped into overlapping choruses of was-is-will-not-yet.

Patin, of course, laughed. “Now that’s more like it! Bit of movement!”

Reality unfurled, not in a straight line, but in a spiral of Bajors.

Each rotation was a glimpse of a possible tomorrow. One turn showed a Bajor gleaming with crystal spires and orbital shipyards, peace humming through the air like a well-tuned engine.

Harmony achieved.

“Yeah,” she said, shading her eyes. “But look closer, no dirt under their nails. No laughter either. Looks sterile.”

Another spin, war. Cities burning again, skies full of Dominion remnants and broken promises. Her stomach tightened. “Well, I recognize that tune.”

You see patterns where none exist.

“That’s called trauma, sweetheart. We mortals do patterns like you do riddles.”

Another flick, a Bajor of farmers and poets, simple, slow, serene. Children played in streets that curved like memory. She squinted.

“Cute,” she said softly, “but a little too perfect. You ever notice how peace looks lonely when it finally gets what it wants?”

Peace is the goal.

“Sure,” Patin said, “but struggle’s the spice. Without it, you end up bland. Like soup without salt. Or men without humor.”

The Prophets hesitated, uncertain whether to correct her metaphor or her theology.

She spun again.

Now the visions tangled, timelines bleeding into one another. She saw her old comrades, distorted through legend. Nozzie, rendered as a saint, glowing halo and all, or as a warlord queen in another strand, commanding fleets from orbit. Patin snorted. “Ha! I can’t wait to tell her that one.”

She saw echoes of the Sunfire’s descendants, star-pilots, explorers, some noble, some fools, all trying to outfly their ghosts. In one vision, a freighter bore a sigil shaped like her own bootprint. That made her laugh and ache at the same time.

Then came the ones that hit harder:
Children she never had, running across dusty courtyards, their laughter echoing through lives she’d never lived. A husband’s face she couldn’t quite focus on, just the warmth of a shared moment before the next siren, the next escape. A future where she died quietly instead of loudly.

Her voice faltered. “Ah. So that’s the price of curiosity.”

You should not look.

“I’m just peeking. Promise.”

There is danger in knowledge unearned.

“There’s danger in everything,” she said, wiping a tear she didn’t remember growing. “Besides, if you’re immortal, you ought to take notes. This is what loss looks like when it doesn’t end you.”

The dial began to slow, its edges glowing white-hot with potential. The visions faded, folding back into mist. She caught the wheel in her palm. It thrummed, pulsing with the heartbeat of every life she’d just seen.

“See?” she whispered. “Still intact. Little scuffed, maybe, but good for another round.”

You cannot undo what was seen.

“Didn’t plan to. Just wanted to remember what forgetting feels like.”

For a moment, the Celestial Temple felt smaller, almost intimate. The Prophets’ voices softened, less thunder, more breeze.

Perhaps… curiosity is a wound.

Patin smiled crookedly. “Yeah. But it’s the kind that scabs over into wisdom, if you don’t pick at it.”

You have changed the current.

“Only stirred it. You’ll settle. You always do.”

When all was calm again, Patin stretched and conjured a small metal cup of her favorite slow-brewed liquor. She swirled it, savoring the smoky sweetness that only existed because she willed it to.

“To curiosity,” she toasted softly, “the mother of all messes.”

And of all creation.

She blinked. “Was that… agreement?”

It is… acknowledgment.

“Close enough.”

She tipped the cup toward them, drank, and exhaled a lazy ribbon of vapor that twisted through eternity like incense.

Somewhere, a ripple of laughter moved through the Temple, hesitant, unfamiliar, divine.

Patin grinned. “See? You’re learning. That was a chuckle. You’ll get to belly laughs one century or another.”

The Time Dial pulsed once more, like a satisfied heartbeat. Then all was light again, quiet, endless, and maybe, just maybe, a little less certain.

TBC

 

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