I have made some assumptions about the timeline for this fiction as there seem to be some inconsistencies in Canon dialogue. During Azati Prime Captain Archer says that he gave the order to create the clone a month before. The date of The Council is 12 February. Based on dialogue, that is 3 days after The Forgotten, which was two days after Azati Prime. According to dialogue that would make Similitude the beginning of January, which is impossible as Proving Ground which came 3 episodes after Similitude, occurred at the beginning of December. Because Trip would have needed some time to recover from his accident it makes more sense to me that Similitude was at least a month before Proving Ground which would coincide with the beginning of T'Pols trellium addiction.

This is my first ever Fan Fic - be kind.

Naturally I own non of it - it all belongs to CBS.

Prologue: To the left

"you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby ... changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole" Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Vocation of Man (1800)

The Temporal Agents of the future could probably have traced each ripple through space and time that resulted in the changes. In all probability the history of this Enterprise over the past 6 months in the expanse was riddled with small events that differed in unmeasurable ways from their time traveling counterparts whose descendants still roamed the expanse. But if a comparison of the records of the two enterprises was made, it would be this point which would be highlighted as significant. In that other timeline it may have been that the chief engineer had not sustained that particular injury at that exact time necessitating the visit to the sick bay and his binary options upon leaving. Maybe in that other timeline a passing colleague had directed his attention right and his feet had followed. Perhaps the other chef had made Pecan Pie that day and the Commander's desires had been directed more to the mess hall. Whatever the magnitude of the eventual outcome, if the Temporal agents of the 29th century had taken the time to study the timeline, it seems they found no reason for a large scale intervention. Either in the original timeline, when NX-01 passed through the sub-space corridor to be thrown back in time, or in this one where Commander Tucker was just leaving sickbay after treatment for a minor burn and Sub-Commander T'Pol was in Cargo Bay 2.

Whatever the exact point of difference, the butterfly that first beat it wings 117 years earlier and began a series of cascading changes through time and space, in this moment, produced the crucial effect. Commander Tucker upon leaving Sickbay had a choice. Left: to collect the required part from cargo bay 2 in order to repair the relay, that upon blowing out, had caused his most recent encounter with Dr Phlox's menagerie; or right: to the mess hall to take some "medicine for the soul" in a probably futile effort to find relief from the crushing grief of inconsolable loss, the mounting pressure of holding complex machinery together in a hostile and unfathomable environment, the dragging fatigue of sleep deprivation, and the incomprehensible feeling of betrayal by those he trusted most. Faced with a choice between duty and indulgence the Commander's thought process in this timeline took him left towards duty which would immediately result in a certain salvation for the long term health Sub-Commander T'Pol, and later, the lives of 2 starship crews and, perhaps, a piece of the soul of the Captain of the Enterprise.