STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JEAN-LUC PICARD

by David A. Goodman

  From the beginning, the Queen seemed interested in me. I knew I was some kind of plaything. Soon after the Borg had taken me, we had disabled the Enterprise in battle. But we had stopped short of destroying it. She left them alive to tease me. The collective responded to her control, and she had convinced it that the Enterprise wasn’t a threat. But there was something else. She had complete control of me, yet she wanted something more. She wanted me to give myself to her. I thought that I had lost myself to the Borg, but the fact that the Queen wanted me in a way she wasn’t experiencing meant that some part of Picard had managed to hold himself back. At the time, however, I felt I’d lost. Especially as she took me further apart, forcing me to fight, to defeat my own people.

  I saw the ships spreading out around the cube from several different angles. It was a strategy I recognized from both my Starfleet training and my recent briefings. They would attack on multiple fronts, searching for signs of weakness. The lead ship, coordinating the attack, would determine where the weak spots were and move ships to concentrate fire in that area.

  “We will counter this strategy,” the collective said. I couldn’t keep anything from them. They were both reading my mind and they were my mind.

  I turned to the viewscreen. I was being seen by all the starships who were now closing in. And, in turn, I was looking into the bridges of all those ships as their captains and crews stared at the man they once knew as Jean-Luc Picard.

  Admiral Hanson on the bridge of the Fearless… He looked determined, hiding his sadness that he was about to try to kill me. The Vulcan captain Storil on the bridge of the Saratoga, passionless, ready to do his duty. My old communications officer Chris Black, in command of the Bonestell. He looked confused, far from certain that he was doing the right thing.

  Robert DeSoto, on the Hood, his affability gone.

  Marta Batanides in command of the Kyushu. Heartbroken.

  Corey Zweller, on the Melbourne. I hadn’t seen him in so long; no longer the young man I had known. Aged, rugged, tired.

  Cheva on the Roosevelt. Tears in her eyes as she gave the order to fire all weapons.

  “Destroy them,” the Queen said.

  I did. All eleven thousand.

  1 EDITOR’S NOTE: Farpoint Station was in fact not a building, but an unusual energy creature that had the power to alter matter. It had been captured and enslaved by the inhabitants of Deneb IV, and forced to assume the shape of a ground facility that the inhabitants wanted to allow Starfleet to use, in exchange for payment. Once Picard discovered the truth, the creature was released and never seen again.

  2 EDITOR’S NOTE: DaiMon” is a Ferengi equivalent of a starship captain, although in their culture a more accurate parallel would be to a chief executive officer of an old Earth corporation.

  3 EDITOR’S NOTE: Bok had acquired an illegal mind control device, which he used on Picard to get him to pilot his old ship to attack his new one. Bok was unsuccessful, and since there was no “profit” in revenge, his own people removed him from command.

  4 EDITOR’S NOTE: Tasha Yar was murdered by Armus, a strange being who was created when the inhabitants of Vagra II developed a means of ridding themselves of all that was “evil” within themselves. This “evil” formed itself into Armus, a bitter and lonely creature who took amusement in Yar’s death.

  5 EDITOR’S NOTE: Indeed, Dr. Pulaski actually replaced Captain Picard’s artificial heart in emergency surgery, saving his life.

  6 EDITOR’S NOTE: It seems that Captain Picard has forgotten that the Legarans were first encountered by James Kirk during his second five-year mission on his starship Enterprise. For reference, see The Autobiography of James T. Kirk.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?” Riker said.

  “Everything,” I said. “Including some rather unorthodox strategies from a former first officer of mine.”

  Riker smiled. I was in Data’s lab, naked and infested with Borg implants. Riker had rescued me from the Borg cube. Through me, Data had been able to access the collective, and destroy the cube before it could attack Earth. But I still remembered all the destruction I’d caused, and all of the friends I’d killed. Joking with Riker was an attempt to avoid my pain, which was too much to bear.

  I was taken to sickbay, where over the next several hours Beverly removed every trace of Borg technology from my body. Guinan came to see me while I recovered.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Almost myself,” I said. “Riker says you were of enormous help to him.”

  “I knew he’d rescue you,” Guinan said. “You and I have a date.”

  “We do? When?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said with a cryptic smile. “Get some rest.” And with that, she left. I didn’t know what she meant—Guinan had an air of the unexplained about her, which she enjoyed cultivating.

  I was back on duty in a day. I was tired but human again. The Enterprise returned to McKinley Station for repairs, which would take six weeks. Crewmen were free to go to Earth for shore leave. I stayed aboard, however, meeting with Counselor Troi regularly for the first few weeks.

  “Did you have another nightmare last night?” she said, as we began one of our sessions.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  “Some of it,” I said. The nightmares I’d been having were stark remembrances of recent events, with only a little bit of the usual dream confusion. “The U.S.S. Roosevelt was crippled and drifting toward the cube. The collective sent drones to assimilate the survivors.”

  “Did you know anyone on the Roosevelt?”

  “Its captain, Cheva…”

  “She served with you on the Stargazer.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I watched in the dream as the drones took her off the bridge and injected her with nanoprobes.”

  “Do you remember that really happening?”

  “I believe so,” I said. “Although in the dream I was physically next to her. She looked at me and asked me to help her. And I put my hand on her shoulder and said something.”

  “What did you say?”

  “‘Resistance is futile,’” I said. “I whispered it, it was gentle, like I was trying to tell her not to fight. And then two dead hands pulled her away from me.”

  “Did you see who the hands belonged to?”

  “They were mine,” I said. “I was staring at myself as a Borg.”

  The nightmares were all like this, some obvious imagery tied in with the traumatic events I’d experienced. We talked through these dreams every day, and it helped; the nightmares eventually ended. I felt more rested. Deanna suggested that I consider taking a little shore leave on Earth. I thought I didn’t have anywhere I wanted to go.

  Then I got a note from my brother’s wife, Marie. Robert had married her almost ten years before, and she would periodically write to me. I had given her perfunctory responses, but this had not stopped her from writing. She had told me about Robert, and the son they had. She’d been spurred to write the most recent note when she heard about the Enterprise staying in orbit for repairs. She was inviting me to come visit. I decided to accept.

  A few days later, I was walking from the village toward the vineyard. It was a beautiful spring day. Along the path, I was met by the vision of my brother at seven; it was my nephew René. He, however, seemed much more pleasant than Robert ever was.

  “You know,” he said, after we’d walked and chatted for a minute, “you don’t seem so arrow… arrow… you know…”

  “Arrogant?” I said.

  “Yes, arrogant. You don’t seem that way to me. What does it mean anyway, arrogant son of a—”

  “Let’s talk about that later, shall we?”

  René led me to his mother, Marie, a beautiful, elegant woman who gave me a heartfelt welcome. She stood in front of the family home, unchanged in all these years.

  “Robert can’t wait to see you,” she said.

  “So René tells me,” I said.
“Where is he?”

  I found Robert in the vineyard, tending to his grapes. As his son was the image of him, Robert was the image of his father… our father. Even down to the hat he wore to protect him from the sun. He sensed me approaching.

  “So, you arrived all right,” he said. “Welcome home, Captain.” It was cold and distant. What I expected, and yet, still not what I was hoping for.

  I stayed a few days at the vineyard. Though Robert was his critical self, I found myself not wanting to leave; Marie and René were the warm familial embrace that had been missing for me since my mother’s death. I was beginning to think that I didn’t need to return to the Enterprise. Marie made several overtures to me moving back home, and I began to think I could finally have that simple life that had always eluded me. Looking back, it was obvious I was hiding from my feelings. On some level I knew that.

  I also, unfortunately, took the opportunity to indulge in the family wine. For the recent years I’d been in Starfleet, most of the cocktails I consumed were made of synthehol, which did not have the deleterious effects of alcohol—you could always stay in control. Not so with the family wine. I had gotten through a bottle one afternoon, when Robert came in. He joined me in a glass.

  “What did they do to you?” he asked. I didn’t want to tell him about what I’d been through. I got up and went outside.

  “Why do you walk away? That isn’t your style,” he said. He had followed me; he seemed to be looking for a fight. I realized later the truth of it: he was looking for a fight, but to help me. I was in a drunken fugue, barely maintaining my control.

  I really don’t remember exactly what happened. He taunted me, called me the great hero who’d fallen to Earth. I heard his jealousy and resentment towards his responsibility to look after me. But I scoffed at it; to me he’d always been a bully, and now, my years of anger combined with alcohol took over.

  I hit him.

  We fell through the vines and wrestled in the muddy irrigation ditches. The fight did not last long, not because either of us prevailed, but because we both quickly realized the ridiculousness of two grown men rolling around in the mud. We started laughing at our immaturity. I couldn’t ever remember laughing with Robert. The laughter died down.

  “You’ve been terribly hard on yourself, you know,” he said. In that moment, I saw Robert understood me, like no one had. The sorrow and guilt poured out of me. The Borg had shown what a fraud I was.

  “So, my brother is a human being after all,” he said. “This is going to be with you a long time, Jean-Luc. A long time.” In that moment, I realized how much I missed Robert. I missed Robert.

  We got up out of the mud, and he put his arm around me.

  “There’s something I want to show you,” he said. He led me into the house, and went to the hall closet. He took the giant metal key ring that opened the door to the basement, and I followed him down into our family museum.

  We walked along the hallway of the famous relatives, until we got to what had been the end. Now there was a portrait of Robert.

  And next to it, a portrait of me in my uniform, smiling, arms folded.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I had it made,” he said. “The first Picard to leave the solar system. I think Father would’ve approved.”

  I soon returned to the repaired Enterprise, fully repaired myself. Robert had become the brother I’d wanted. Maybe even the father. I realized that I needed Robert; he was the only one left in the world who knew me before I’d become “Captain Jean-Luc Picard,” the only person I could show true weakness to.

  A few years later, Robert would die. It was a profound tragedy: Robert had maintained the primitiveness of the family home, a primitiveness that made it dangerous, and he and René were killed in a fire in the barn. It is the greatest regret in my life that I took so long to try to fix our relationship. I’d stayed a child too long, angry at how he treated me, and missed out on getting to know him, truly getting to thank him for all the times he was there looking after me. He was the last connection to my childhood, to my family, and he was gone.

  * * *

  A few weeks later, Wesley was finally leaving to attend the academy. Various circumstances had kept him from joining, and in the intervening years I’d given him a full promotion to ensign. But now was the time. On his last day on the ship, there was a goodbye party for him in Ten-Forward.

  I noticed Beverly standing alone, watching the proceedings. I went over to her.

  “Sad to see him go?”

  “It’s difficult,” she said. “He’s so clearly a young man, but for me it’s as if my five-year-old Wesley is leaving me.”

  “He’ll be back,” I said, although I wasn’t sure that was true. I looked over at Wesley standing with Riker, La Forge, and Worf. La Forge was telling some story that they were all enjoying.

  “I want to thank you, Jean-Luc,” she said.

  “Thank me? For what?”

  “He didn’t have his father,” she said. “But thanks to you, he’s had a family, filled with love. You helped me raise him.” The group with Wesley shared a loud laugh. Beverly gestured toward them. “And he’s had the most incredible role models.”

  “He was born to the best one,” I said. “His mother.” She looked at me and smiled, tears welling in her eyes. Though it was in public, I gave in to the urge to hug her.

  There was something about that moment that changed our relationship; we began to spend more time together. We began a morning ritual of breakfast. It wasn’t in any way romantic, but our past had slipped behind us, and we could enjoy the present together.

  * * *

  “Indeed, you’ve found him, Captain Picard.”

  I stood in a cave with Data. We were on another undercover mission, disguised as Romulans, on the planet Romulus. In front of me was a man I hadn’t seen in 40 years, and though I was at his wedding, we’d never actually spoken.

  Spock.

  “What are you doing on Romulus?” he said.

  “That was to have been my question of you, sir.” Spock, now a Federation ambassador, had disappeared four weeks earlier, and then shown up on one of Starfleet Intelligence’s long-range scans of Romulus. Command was concerned that he might actually be defecting, and Data and I had been sent on a mission to find him. Our excursion to Denobula all those years before had not been forgotten by the Admiralty.

  We were successful in tracking him down, but he initially refused to reveal his reasons for coming to Romulus. Yet, I also had to deliver some profound news to him. News he seemed to anticipate before I could tell him.

  “Sarek,” he said. “Sarek is dead.”

  Sarek had died shortly before our arrival on Romulus. At the news of his father’s passing, Spock opened up to me: he revealed he was trying to facilitate a reunification of Romulus with its ancient homeworld of Vulcan. It was a mission that had incredible ramifications for the Federation—it would literally redraw the quadrant.

  Spock wanted Data and I to leave, but I refused. We could not depart in the midst of such a delicate mission, one that the Federation had in no way approved. On top of which, Ambassador Spock was one of the single most important individuals in the Federation; I had to do my best to protect him. So we stayed to assist him.

  As we spent time with him, I learned we had much in common. Despite the philosophy of logic that Spock followed, he was also ambitious—he was now the most famous Vulcan in the Federation, even surpassing his father. But, ironically, he had sought approval from that father who would not, or could not, provide it.

  Spock’s mission did not succeed while we were there, but he wanted to stay on Romulus and continue his work. As we parted, we talked about his father, and he told me something that I already knew: he and Sarek had never chosen to mind-meld. I offered him a chance to meld with me, and touch what Sarek had shared.

  He placed his hand on my face. I felt our minds drawn together…

  I saw events from a shared past. It was a
strange experience, like two different cameras filming the same scene. A young Vulcan boy, crying after being bullied, his father standing by impassive, and the father’s internal struggle to maintain composure, while feeling fear for his son, worry, sadness.

  The father’s pride as his son helped rescue the Federation president from assassination.

  The son, standing at his own wedding, looking out at his father in the audience; the father’s secret joy at his son’s happiness in that same moment.

  Then I saw Spock in the cave, melding with me, closing his eyes in emotion. I was giving this son a profound gift, a gift I’d never had.

  * * *

  “Dad, what’s a ‘dollar’?” Meribor said. She was my daughter, ten years old.

  “It’s a unit of currency,” I said.

  “And what’s a ‘big yellow taxi’?” Batai said. He was my son, four.

  “It’s like the carriages that we use to get to other towns,” I said. They were referencing song lyrics I’d written out for them. Lyrics I remembered from my previous life. Data had sung it once on the bridge. I had found it quite affecting, so I had looked it up in the ship’s database, and had learned the lyrics. In my new life, I had taught myself to play the tune on my flute, and was now teaching the song to my children.

  My children.

  Years before, I’d found myself on this planet that the natives called Kataan. I had no idea how I got there, and there had been no sign of the Enterprise. To make matters more complicated, everyone on this world saw me as someone named Kamin. I thought I’d somehow been transported and looked for any way to return to my ship. For five years, I studied the night sky looking for some clue as to where this planet was. I was living with a woman named Eline, who claimed to be my wife. She loved me despite my insistence that I came from somewhere else. I did my best to hang on to Picard, but the world I was on and the day-to-day experiences of this peaceful, friendly people, who showed me love and respect, pushed Starfleet from my mind. I gave in to Eline’s love and forgot my old life.