Looking up into the sky, he could see the frozen image of the nexus, the writhing ribbon of energy having passed through the planet’s upper atmosphere instead of being diverted as Tolian Soran had planned.
Time stood still.
Kirk felt none of the pain that he should surely have been experiencing, given the extent of the injuries he had suffered in the fall. He imagined what the inside of his own body must look like, with broken bones and ruptured organs.
Claymare’s words, and the meaning behind them, suddenly became clear to him. He was being given one final opportunity to reflect on what he had seen. It was up to him to take the last step after making peace with himself and with what lay ahead.
A sigh escaped his lips. Considering what was about to happen, he felt oddly at ease. Was he afraid of dying?
No.
Having faced death countless times during his life, it was a possibility James Kirk had deemed an acceptable risk when weighed against the opportunities a life in Starfleet had given him. How many new worlds had he explored? [82] How many fascinating and varied new races had he been privileged to meet? How many times had the crew of the Starship Enterprise been on hand to save the day? More than he could easily count. He and his crew had literally saved the planet Earth and its inhabitants from certain destruction on two separate occasions. They had played a vital role in the beginnings of a peaceful relationship with their former enemies, the Klingons. He had traveled through space and time and lived a life most would consider ripe material for adventure fiction.
He had always known that a career in Starfleet would force him to forgo many of life’s pleasures, intangibles that many others had discovered. Were there regrets? Certainly, but those were beyond his ability to change now. He had made his choices and would now have to keep faith that history and destiny would judge him fairly based on those decisions as well as the repercussions they had caused.
Part of him longed to live on, to see what exciting possibilities the future held. What he had already seen and been a part of had only been the beginning, his experience in the nexus having brought that realization to him with startling clarity. It had given him the opportunity to meet the future in the form of Jean-Luc Picard, this twenty-fourth-century captain of a Starship Enterprise. Though he’d known Picard for only a short time, Kirk instinctively felt the other man to be a more than capable Starship captain. Picard was the embodiment of everything represented by the Federation and Starfleet.
Kirk believed that with men and women such as this man Picard, the future was in good hands. He could rest, knowing that his efforts, as well as those of others that had come [83] before him, had paved the way for an even greater adventure.
He had indeed made a difference.
STARDATE 48649.7
Jean-Luc Picard looked down through the twisted wreckage of the fallen bridge and into the face of James Kirk. He could see the life draining away from behind the powerful hazel eyes. The injured man was struggling not to give in to the immense pain his wounds had to be causing. Picard desperately wanted to do something, anything, to help, but he knew in his heart the man was wounded mortally.
“It was fun.” Kirk uttered the words with a small smile. Was this contentment that Picard saw?
Then, the smile was replaced for the briefest of moments with a look of confusion. Picard could not be sure, but he thought it was the look of someone who was finally, ultimately realizing the end was near.
Just as suddenly as it had disappeared, the tiny smile of satisfaction returned. All signs of tension left Kirk’s face.
“Oh my,” he whispered, and then his body went limp, his eyes closing forever.
Picard watched the other man’s body relax for the final time, profound sorrow threatening to envelop him. Though James Kirk had come forth to triumph one final time, the mystique and legend that surrounded him had not been enough to save the man this time.
As the emotions verged on overcoming Picard, a strange sense of ease caught him momentarily. A realization became apparent: Kirk had died doing what he had always done. He [84] had thrown caution to the winds in the defense of others. It was what had made him a legend; therefore it was a fitting end for a legend.
Several hours later, Picard stood next to the rather austere grave site he had fashioned for his companion. He gazed down at the simple pile of rocks and at the shining gold Starfleet insignia, the sole identification for the otherwise anonymous tomb.
Would Kirk have approved? Picard wanted to think so. He didn’t believe the various myths surrounding one of Starfleet’s most dynamic figures. Having risked life and limb standing next to the man, he had evidence to prove there was more to Kirk than simple glory seeking.
Don’t let them promote you, don’t let them transfer you, don’t let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship because, while you’re there, you can make a difference.
Kirk’s words had merely given voice to his deeds, the actions of someone with an insatiable desire to do what was necessary, what was right, regardless of the personal risk. In hindsight, Picard now believed Kirk’s career stood for one thing: You only live once. Make it the best life you can. Be able to look in the mirror and tell yourself, “I did my best today.”
“And the predator be damned,” Picard whispered. His woefully short friendship with James Kirk had taught him a powerful lesson.
It was a lesson Picard vowed he would remember.
What Went Through Data’s Mind 0.68 Seconds Before the Satellite Hit
Dylan Otto Krider
For an android, that is nearly an eternity ...
—Data, Star Trek: First Contact
I am an android and, as such, capable of performing multiple tasks, using a variety of techniques drawn from my data banks. I must admit that in my quest to become more human, I have found this to be the greatest barrier to my understanding of human psychology. In the time it takes a representative human to say a word of an average length of 1.27 syllables, I have chosen, researched, and performed anywhere from 5 to 2,172,763 mental assignments, depending on their varying degrees of involvement and complexity. This is what allows me to document these proceedings as I am doing now, and store them in a detailed report for future reference.
Anytime I witness or take part in an event of some significance, I am required to make a detailed report to be [88] reviewed by the captain, which is then to be sent to Starfleet Command. This is a task for which I am well suited, since my positronic brain allows me to catalogue each of the mental assignments as they are being performed, and then separate and categorize them in standard delineated text format so that it is easily understood by other beings such as humans who, in my experience, are basically only capable of concentrating on one major thought function at a time, though I have found this to be more true of human males than of females of the species.
Captain Picard and Starfleet Command are well aware of my mental abilities, but I state them again here because of their relevance to the current situation, and because in my observations of human communication, I have become aware that humans often restate obvious and generally accepted information when it fits the context of the situation.
Today in Ten-Forward, I have logged one such instance into my memory banks. Counselor Troi was sitting across from me at the table eating a chocolate sundae. After ingesting a large spoonful, she made a moaning sound very similar to those made by human females in the act of copulation (it should be noted here that I have never personally heard Counselor Troi in the act of sexual intercourse, but I am well versed in humanoid sexual behavior, and have found no evidence to suggest that half-Betazoids should differ greatly in this respect). When she had finished, she then said to me, “I love chocolate.”
“I am well aware of your affection for chocolate desserts, Counselor,” I replied, and reminded her that she had informed me of this fact many times and, as an android, I was incapable of forgetting. Counselor Troi then responded [89] by making an amused fa
cial expression of the kind I often see on crew members’ faces after I have said something, though factually adequate, that demonstrates my lack of understanding of human behavior.
“I am not saying it to impart information, Data. I am simply stating how I feel.”
My restating of the fact that I am an android, capable of multiple calculations simultaneously, however, has nothing to do with how I feel since, as such, I am incapable of emotion. My restating of these obvious physical traits is motivated more by my desire to create a complete and thorough report.
At the present time I am calculating the density of the stellar cores of the twelve closest star systems, optimizing my lower memory banks, compiling a list of chores to be done to prepare for this evening’s bridge game, and deriving the formula for the average speed of the Arcturian wildebeest. I have also just composed this poem:
Ode to the Fractal
You found randomness
Predictable
and gave catastrophic significance
to the butterfly
You found patterns in a Universe
Sporadic
and brought beauty to
logic
in a world where chaos
reigns.
[90] Of course, the majority of my brain function has been devoted to the small Vandalayan satellite which will destroy the Enterprise in approximately 0.68 seconds. Proper Starfleet protocol requires me, upon recognizing a state of emergency, to:
Notify the captain
If the captain is unavailable, notify the next highest ranking officer in charge
Formulate a proper course of action to suggest to the captain/superior officer, if needed
Ready myself for further orders
Due to the limitations of verbal communication, the fastest possible speed with which I can relay the present situation with a reasonable probability of being understood would be 1.43 seconds, assuming I use the most economical word choice, which according to present calculations is, “Collision! Mark 4.25, Starboard!” This does not take into account the amount of time needed for Captain Picard to register my warning, plot a course of action, relay the proper order, and for the recipient of the command to react accordingly. Considering that the past few weeks have been uneventful, and there has been nothing to suggest to the captain that anything out of the ordinary is to be expected, I would also have to account for a moment or two of hesitation. All of this makes conforming to usual Starfleet protocol, from all calculations, highly undesirable.
Yesterday, when Lt. Barclay pierced his boot with the tip of his fencing sword, he exclaimed, “I think I just hurt [91] myself,” which would be another example of humans stating the obvious. Geordi and I had joined him on the holodeck for a chapter of The Three Musketeers, and Lt. Barclay had brought his own foil for the occasion. We came upon a band of thieves and Lt. Barclay had fought them off brilliantly, as the computer was programmed to allow him to do. Then in a triumphant gesture, Lt. Barclay drove the sword down into his foot, and leaned on it like a walking stick, smiling with some difficulty, and after a few seconds, said: “I think I just hurt myself.”
This was quite obvious since Lt. Barclay had not used a holographic foil which the safety features of the computer could have compensated for. So I said: “I am quite aware of that, Lieutenant. Do you require medical attention?”
To which Barclay replied: “I really think I hurt myself.”
It may occur to the reader of this report that it might be difficult, with the speed of an android brain, to acclimate to the relatively slow and clumsy method of verbal communication. It is true that I am able to exchange millions more bytes of information through a direct link with the computer than through an equivalent time spent in conversation. However, although I do not suffer from what humans call boredom, as an android, I do have an innate desire for efficiency, so I often perform thousands of other mental tasks during standard verbal communication, which can include calculations, diagnostics, or memory optimization. After the first few words of any sentence, I often know with a high probability of accuracy what the rest of the sentence will be [92] before the sentence can be finished, but am forced to politely wait for the sentence to reach completion. For those periods of time that I am lacking tasks to perform, I devote my mental resources to more creative tasks, and am even equipped with several internal logic games which can be used to bide the time.
In an effort to better understand human psychology, I will often shut down most of my mental functioning and operate at a fraction of capacity, so that I can, through the use of time-consuming mathematical problems and subroutines in my neural net, perform at a speed that is more equivalent to that of humans. To date, my experiment has been successful, and for day-to-day behavior, I have been better able to interrelate with the other members of the crew. Of course, in times of emergency, I am able to immediately switch back and operate at full capacity, as I am doing now.
The Vandalayans are a peaceful species known for their hospitality, yet unspectacular in most other areas. They are poor, with postindustrial technology that excels only in one area, namely the design and construction of subspace satellites, used mostly as telescopes to observe signals from very distant galaxies, with a resolution far beyond that of current Federation technology. What makes them unique among satellites of their type is that they use a technique similar to that of the VLA (Very Large Array) from Earth history. In the Earth model, humans found that they could use telescopes placed around the globe and connected through computers so that the operators could collect and correlate the respective images, allowing the telescopes to operate as one [93] very large single telescope the size of the Earth. The Vandalayan satellite differs in one important respect: instead of linking the images of many smaller telescopes, the Vandalayans simply collect the images from one single satellite.
The Vandalayan satellite does this by creating a tear in the fabric of space which works somewhat like a wormhole, allowing the satellite to travel to various locations about the galaxy far more quickly than even the fastest starships. By calculating the speed that an image or radio signal will travel from a distant galaxy—the speed of light—the Vandalayans are able to cause the satellite to jump from location to location so that a single satellite can arrive at each place the instant the image arrives, collect it, then move on to the next one, so that in effect, instead of creating a telescope the size of the Earth, the Vandalayans have created a telescope the size of the galaxy.
The advantages of this technology far outweigh any disadvantages, the only one of any consequence being that on the minute chance that the satellite should appear in the path of a craft outfitted with warp drive, the subspace tear will also pierce the craft’s warp field, essentially shattering it and scattering pieces of the craft throughout the galaxy. In the case of the Enterprise, the most probable end locations of the debris after the moment of collision, assuming it breaks apart into four major sections, are empty space in the Delta Quadrant, the Alurian nebulae, just outside the galactic halo, and Alpha Epsilon V, which is unfortunate since the resident species is prone to mistake any unusual, bright celestial lights for signs of a coming apocalypse.
[94] OPTIMIZATION: COMPLETE
RESULTS: 1.323 X 1012 sectors scanned, 33 bad, 33 repaired
MEMORY CAPACITY REMAINING: 99.99%
NEXT SCHEDULED OPTIMIZATION: Stardate 42945.4
Another drawback to the Vandalayan technology which I had forgotten to mention is its puzzling inability to transport biological tissue. To date, all attempts to transport living matter through the subspace tears have failed, which would present another problem to the Enterprise in the unlikely event that she would be thrust through the tear in one piece. Another side effect of the tears is an unusual subspace signal which emanates, anywhere from 0.6 to 0.7 seconds before they form, which allows the tears to be picked up by the Enterprise’s short-range sensors. Due to the constraint of time, I have had to override Starfleet protocol and act indepe
ndently by configuring a subspace signal to broadcast through the Enterprise’s communication systems to the location where the tear is set to appear, and send it through a short, high-energy pulse sufficient to deflect the tear out of harm’s way with only a minimal loss of resolution, while still having time left over to compose another poem:
Untitled 3,567,364
Vandalay, Oh, Vandalay
how sweet you are on neural
path-a-ways
Oh, Vandalay,
sweet Vandalay
Dylan Otto Krider 95
won’t you please take
me a-way?
out to the stars and
back-a-gain?
When the sensors confirm that the Vandalayan satellite has been safely diverted, I stand and start to walk away from my station, but the look of the captain prevents me from continuing any further.
“Yes, Mr. Data?” Captain Picard asks.
“May I be excused, sir? I must download an incident report to Starfleet.”
The captain’s brows have drawn together at the bridge of his nose, and he squints. “Data, incident reports are only filed on the occasion that the Enterprise has been placed in a situation of extreme danger. ...”
This is another example of humans stating the obvious. I have logged it into my memory banks.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, sir,” I say, adding, “not any longer.”
The captain lifts his eyebrows and takes a deep breath, then exhales. “Well, I will very much look forward to reading it.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, waiting for the slight nod of his head which grants me permission to make my way onto the turbolift.
STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds I Page 8