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

by David A. Goodman

  “For how long?”

  “Three months, perhaps a year,” he said. It was absurd—I couldn’t leave the Enterprise for such a length of time. I had to refuse, and when I finally told him, he was furious. His anger at me for my decision all those years ago came flooding out.

  “I gave you the opportunity to become the finest archaeologist of your generation. Your achievements could have outstripped even my own, but no, you decided to reject a life of profound discovery. You walked out on me.”

  He left on his ship. I had hurt him, again. He had been like a father to me; perhaps because I’d been rejected by my own father, I had rejected Galen, but I prefer to think that I just wanted another path.

  Soon after, we received a distress signal from him. Yridians boarded his small craft, and they killed him. I never did learn what his discovery was, and knowing the man as I did, I’m sure it would live up to his description as “profound.”1 But I will always live with a little doubt that if I’d gone with him, I might have saved his life.

  It was another overwhelming loss for me, one of thousands of deaths that had occurred since I’d become Captain of the Enterprise. Many would wonder how I could keep all the losses from being too much for me, yet it was those deaths that kept me going; only by committing myself to the work of Starfleet and the Federation could I justify in my own mind the sacrifices of others. I had made mistakes, some of which had resulted in casualties, but I did not, would not, let regrets consume me. I had a bargain with the dead; I would keep working, and they would remain quiet. I owed them.

  * * *

  “It was… fun…” James Kirk said. His expression changed. He seemed to see something in his mind’s eye that scared him. “Oh my…” he said, and then he was gone.

  I’d only just met him, a man history had believed to be dead for 80 years, returning like King Arthur to save us. Unfortunately, our efforts to defeat Dr. Soran2 led to Kirk’s second death.

  I had been inside a temporal Nexus, a strange parallel reality that provided the image of a contented life. My own experience was a Christmas I had never had: family, wife, children, gifts, a tree... It was warm and wonderful, and I knew it wasn’t right. I wanted to stay, but the voices of the dead would not let me.

  “This isn’t real,” I said.

  “It’s as real as you want it to be.” It was Guinan, or an echo of Guinan who had been in the Nexus once. The mysteries surrounding her never ceased, and, like so many times in my past, she was there to guide me, like a mythical guardian angel. She led me to Kirk, who was also in the Nexus. Though he wasn’t easy to convince, he agreed to leave with me, and help my mission. I would not have succeeded without him.

  We were on hard, rocky terrain on the planet Veridian III. It would be impossible to dig him a grave, so I gathered large rocks and placed them around and on top of his body. He and I had worked together to defeat a common enemy, and I felt I was a part of the adventures I’d read about as a child. But it was so brief, it only served to make me want to get to know him more. In my short time with him, I didn’t find anything unusual about his intellect or personality beyond a kind of boyish energy. Our plan to defeat Soran wasn’t clever or complicated. More than anything, the experience showed me that I’d come into my own as a starship captain. Though I had held Kirk up as a hero, I had as much to contribute to the situation as he did. We were equals.

  When I’d beamed down to Veridian III, the Enterprise had been in orbit and a Klingon warship was nearby. After we had defeated Soran, and I’d buried Kirk, I signaled the Enterprise, and they sent a shuttle to pick me up.

  I was surprised to see Riker piloting the shuttle.

  “Didn’t I leave you in command?”

  “You did,” he said. “I have some bad news. I felt I should bring it to you myself, since I’m responsible.”

  “The Enterprise?”

  “It’s gone,” he said. “The Klingons penetrated our shields. We had a warp core breach. I was able to separate the saucer section, but it crashed on the planet.”

  “Casualties?”

  “A lot of injuries, no deaths.”

  “We can be thankful for that,” I said. I’d just lost another ship, and some of the same insecurities invaded: did I make a mistake? Was there anything else I could’ve done? This time, the answer came back quickly: no. I then looked over at Riker. I could see he was troubled—I realized I’d gone through this before, but he hadn’t. I had a dozen questions as to what exactly happened, but I decided they could wait.

  “You can give me a full report later; I’m sure you did everything you could,” I said.

  “I’m not so sure,” he said. I could hear the self-recrimination in his tone.

  “Will,” I said, “they put us in charge of these vessels, they train us as best they can to be emissaries of peace, to avoid conflict… but there will always be those who look to war and violence for their solution, who operate out of greed and self-interest. We can’t blame ourselves for their occasional success. Just be certain the moral arc of history is on our side.”

  “Very philosophical for a man whose first officer just wrecked his ship,” he said.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I spent the afternoon saving the Galaxy with James T. Kirk. It balances out.”

  I wish I had a photograph of Will’s expression.

  * * *

  “There she is, Captain,” Commander Shelby said. Shelby and I stood in the operations center of a dry dock at Utopia Planitia, looking out over a new ship that was almost completed. She’d originally been designated as the U.S.S. Sentinel—one of the new Sovereign class—but in the wake of my ship’s destruction, they renamed her the Enterprise.

  And they were giving it to me. This time I wasn’t court-martialed for losing the ship. By stopping Soran, we’d prevented the deaths of millions, and that seemed to be enough for the Judge Advocate General.

  “It’s lovely,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I meant it. The ship was larger and sleeker than my Enterprise, but in my personal assessment it was missing some of the charm. I’m sure that was my own sense of nostalgia for something I’d lost, and kept it to myself, as I didn’t want to insult Shelby. A few years earlier Shelby had served on the Enterprise, and had come back to Starfleet Command to supervise ship design and construction in the wake of the conflict with the Borg. The Sovereign-class ship had been one of her projects.

  I gave the crew the option of coming with me, since some of the senior staff were certainly eligible for their own command. All but one decided to wait for the Enterprise- E to be completed. It was a surprise when Mr. Worf turned down my offer to be chief of security, even with a promotion in rank. I decided to go to see him at his parents’ home in Kiev.

  “I told him to take the offer,” Sergey Rozhenko said. “Why would you leave Starfleet?” We drank hot tea in glass cups, having just finished a meal of beet soup and roasted potatoes.

  “Father, please,” Worf said. “I didn’t say I was leaving Starfleet.”

  “Then why not go with the captain to his new ship?”

  “Sergey,” Helena said, “perhaps we should leave them alone to talk.” She got up and began to pull Sergey out of the room with her.

  “I just asked a question,” Sergey said. “Is it so hard to answer a question?” When they left the room, I smiled at Worf.

  “They love you very much,” I said.

  “I am very fortunate,” Worf said.

  “Whereas I am not,” I said. “I would like to hear the answer to your father’s question.”

  “I owe you that,” Worf said. He got up and went to the window. “For my whole life, I’ve looked for a home. Khitomer and my birth parents were taken from me. I’ve never been fully comfortable in either the human world or the Klingon world. I sought to find my place in the universe. I finally found it… and it was taken from me again.”

  I didn’t realize how profound the loss of the ship would be to someone like Worf. He was in mourning. />
  “We may be able to rebuild that place on a new ship,” I said.

  “Forgive me, Captain, but there is a Klingon saying,” Worf said. “Pagh yijach Soch jatqua.”

  I laughed. I had studied enough Klingon to translate it.

  “I believe the Klingons have appropriated ‘You can’t go home again’ from the Earth author Thomas Wolfe.”

  “Impossible,” Worf said. “Kahless said it when he returned to Quin’lat after the battle with the Fek’lhri…”

  “Point taken, Mr. Worf,” I said. “But if you ever want to come back, there will always be a place for you.” I soon took my leave and began my walk back to the transporter station in town. I thought about how Worf felt: the Enterprise- D had been my home too, and I wondered whether what I said was true, whether I could recreate the same sense of home on a new ship. I remembered going back for my second tour on Stargazer and not being able to recapture the feeling of the first. This would be different, I thought.

  As I contemplated the nature of home, I fancied I heard a voice. It belonged to a woman, very faint.

  “You’ve only had one home,” she said. I searched the area for the source of the voice, but couldn’t find it. It spoke again, and I realized the voice was in my head.

  “Stop looking for me, I’m not there, Locutus…”

  I subconsciously recognized the voice, but I pushed it away: I did not want to remember. It was the voice of the Borg queen. The memories of her had been repressed, the trauma of how she’d used me too difficult for me to face. The Borg were on their way.

  A year later, they would return. My crew on my new ship were tested as they never had been before. But we defeated them, and it would lead to my favorite captain’s log:

  Captain’s Log, April 5, 2063. The voyage of the Phoenix was a success… again.

  This is, as every child knows, First Contact Day, the day Zefram Cochrane flew his own spaceship, the Phoenix, past the speed of light, and caught the attention of a passing Vulcan spacecraft. Humans and Vulcans met for the first time, and it would eventually bring humanity to the stars, where they would help found the United Federation of Planets.

  And I got to witness it.

  And it also almost never happened.

  The Borg attacked Earth by going into the past. The Enterprise followed them, to stop their plan to assimilate Earth in a more vulnerable period, thus preventing First Contact. They were trying to erase the Federation from history. I began to understand their obsession with us: we were the only people who’d slowed their previously relentless success in assimilating other species.

  “Destroy them,” the Borg queen said. This time, she wasn’t saying it to me; I was strapped to a table in engineering, where she planned on turning me into a drone. She was giving the order to Data, whom she had apparently seduced by grafting human skin on to his body. We were watching the Phoenix about to go to warp. Data fired a volley of quantum torpedoes. They headed right for the primitive ship.

  “Watch your future’s end,” the Queen said.

  The torpedoes closed in… and missed. Data had fooled her; resistance hadn’t been futile. Data smashed a plasma coolant conduit, and the green super-hot gas swamped engineering, killing the Queen and all her drones. We had won, again.

  Data and I left engineering, and headed toward the transporter room to reunite with our crew on the surface.

  “Captain,” Data said. “You had not mentioned the Borg queen in your report on the Borg from your previous assimilation.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I think I repressed my memory of her. But she was on that original cube.”

  “Which was destroyed,” Data said. I knew what he was getting at.

  “Yes,” I said. “She survived. And she may survive again.”

  “This time,” Data said, “we must remember to include her in our report.”

  Later, we waited at the Montana missile silo with the rest of the crew and the hero of the day, Zefram Cochrane. He’d just returned in his warp spaceship. His support crew had consisted of Riker and La Forge. He wasn’t quite what we expected.

  “Now, you’re saying this is going to be in the history books,” Cochrane said. “How do you spell your names?”

  “R-I-K…” Riker said, then, catching a disapproving glance from me, he smiled. “Just joking. If anybody asks you don’t remember our names.”

  “What are your plans now that you’ve completed this trip?” I said.

  “You said the aliens were coming, do you think they’ll pay me a lot of money for my ship?”

  “I do not,” I said. “The Vulcans aren’t interested in money.”

  “Oh,” said Cochrane. “That puts a little crimp in my plans. What do the history books say I do next?”

  “It’s a little vague,” Riker said. “Best play it by ear.”

  “I don’t think these aliens are going to show,” Cochrane said. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Just hold on,” Riker said. He indicated the sky as the familiar design of a Vulcan scout ship broke through the clouds.

  “Holy shit,”—this from Cochrane.

  * * *

  “So Shinzon, the Praetor of the Romulan Empire,” Admiral Janeway said, “was your clone?” She sat in my ready room, having come aboard the Enterprise to receive my report after we’d returned to Earth from Romulus. It was an interesting experience reporting to her; several decades ago I’d had to report to her father. She was much more affable.

  “Yes,” I said. “It would appear someone in the empire got hold of my DNA and embarked on a project to replace me.” I understood her disbelief.

  I myself had confronted this younger copy of myself, and I still had trouble accepting it.

  “Wouldn’t it take some 50-odd years to grow a clone that could be mistaken for you?”

  “They were able to accelerate his age,” I said. “But there was a change in government, and the project was discarded. They exiled him to the dilithium mines on Remus.”

  “And yet from there he was able to rise to power and overthrow the Romulan government.”

  I nodded.

  “I suppose he had the advantage of good genes,” Janeway said. I smiled, but the encounter had disgusted me. I had seen some of myself in Shinzon’s ambition, but his upbringing had led him to be sadistic and Machiavellian. He had successfully conspired to kill the entire Romulan Senate, and start a war with the Federation. In our conflict, he’d killed a good portion of my crew, including one of my closest friends. Janeway read my expression, and regretted her remark.

  “Sorry, Jean-Luc. You are not responsible for his actions.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “You’ve suffered terrible losses,” she said. “It must be especially difficult given the death of Commander Data.” Difficult did not cover it; it had been traumatic. Data had rescued me from Shinzon, and in doing so sacrificed his life. I had always taken comfort in the fact that Data would outlive us all, and become a living witness to the history we all shared. He had been my companion for a very long time, and I wouldn’t let him go so easily.

  “He left us a remembrance,” I said. I tapped my communicator. “Picard to Bridge, please send in B-4.”

  A moment later, B-4 entered. B-4 was a prototype of Data that we’d discovered on the mission. Before Data had died, he had downloaded all his memories into this avatar.

  “Hello,” B-4 said.

  Janeway stood up and shook B-4’s hand. “It is nice to meet you.”

  “Why?” B-4 said.

  “His positronic brain is not as advanced as Data’s,” I said. “He may never be at the level Data was…”

  “Oh my goodness, this is pathetic.”

  I turned; it wasn’t Janeway. In her place was Q.

  “Q, what the hell are you doing? Where’s Admiral Janeway?”

  “I sent her to a Kazon prison camp in the Delta Quadrant. I’m kidding, take a joke. She’s fine.”

  “What are you doing here?”


  “I’m here to express my condolences,” Q said. B-4 held out his hand to him.

  “Hello,” B-4 said. Q looked him over with disgust, then turned to me.

  “Are you really willing to put up with this?”

  “Q…” I stepped forward, raised my hand. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” He stared at me and smiled that Q smile. I knew what he intended, and it seemed wrong. I had to try to stop him.

  “I respect Data’s sacrifice,” are the words that came from me but I didn’t mean them. Q had the power, and I was tempted. Very tempted.

  “You know, normally I would force you to ask me to use my power,” Q said. “But I’m not doing this for you… I’m doing this for me. I miss him.”

  “Why?”

  “Shhhhh…” Q snapped his fingers. He was gone in a flash, and Janeway returned.

  “Jean-Luc,” Janeway said. “What happened?” But I wasn’t looking at her. I was focused on B-4. The android’s childlike expression was gone, in its place a much more familiar, confident bearing.

  “Data, is it you?”

  “I believe it is, sir,” said Data.

  Data was back, and very much himself. There was something about this event that put my entire life in perspective. Q knew this was what I wanted, and I had not protested forcefully enough to stop him. Usually, my moral compass was clear on issues like this, but I’d lost some of my bearing. I couldn’t see what was wrong with this, because I didn’t want to have to accept the loss of Data as I had had to accept the loss of so many loved ones before.

  The ship continued on, but it wasn’t the same. Worf had been right, I had to relearn the lesson that I couldn’t go home again. Riker and Deanna had married soon after he’d been offered his own command, and they left. Geordi and Data had stayed behind I think out of loyalty to me, and I felt I was holding them both back; they both could have had their own ships.

  I had been in space too long. It was time to step down, it was time to move on.

  One morning I was telling all this to Beverly over our regular breakfast, as we sat together on the couch in my quarters.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.