“That’s what we’ve really gained from this. We’ve recovered the memory of a lost era of the universe. Even if we don’t understand it, we’ve ensured that it lives on. That was what the plasma beings needed more than anything else, what drove them to strive so desperately to make contact. All they wanted, in the end, was to be remembered. What else do any of us ultimately have?”
Cartwright cleared his throat. “Yes, well, I’m still not pleased that you and Mister Shastri defied Starfleet orders in the name of that noble philosophy. However, I’ve been in consultation with Director Simok of the Department of Temporal Investigations. According to their Doctor T’Viss, Commodore Reppert’s fears of disruption to the timeline were in error. As Simok explained it to me, with so many interactions and events occurring in those first few accelerated minutes, so many species evolving and going extinct, any change to the history of one or two such civilizations would have been infinitesimal on the scale of the entire universe.”
“Logical,” Spock said. “After all, we had previously believed the universe to be in thermal equilibrium in that era, uniform and lacking in the dynamism necessary for life and activity. Therefore, whatever changes occurred in that era must have evened out to insignificance on the cosmic scale.”
“In any case,” Cartwright went on, “since the basis for that order was in error, Starfleet will not be penalizing either of you for violating it. It would look bad after you both saved the Earth.” He met both their eyes sternly. “On the other hand, none of this would’ve happened to begin with if you had followed Reppert’s orders and halted your research at the Academy. So it cancels out. Don’t expect any commendations for this.”
Once Cartwright dismissed the briefing, Uhura and Shastri walked out hand in hand, splitting off from Kirk, Spock, and Scott as they discussed repairs to the Enterprise. “So,” Shastri ventured, “we basically saved the galaxy. Does that happen a lot in Starfleet?”
She smiled. “Not as often as the vid dramas suggest. But often enough that it sometimes keeps me awake at night.”
“Hmm. I was right to become a civilian, then. There are much more enjoyable ways to be kept awake at night.” Realizing what he’d said, he cleared his throat and let go of her hand.
But Uhura laughed. “Jen, don’t be embarrassed that our friendship includes a taste of intimacy. It’s over now, but it happened. It meant a great deal to both of us at the time, and there was nothing about it that we should regret or be ashamed of.” She took his hand again. “I’ve learned that we should honor our memories. Celebrate them, cherish them, not hide from them.”
He smiled and nodded, clasping her hand in both of his. “You’re right, Nyota. God, it’s good to have you back. Even if you’re not quite the Nyota I knew. But then, I’m not the Jen I was.”
“I’m proud to know the Jen you are now. You really came through when it counted.”
They emerged onto the grounds of Headquarters, gazing up at the clear sky. The world felt normal again, like all the pieces were mostly put back into place. Everyday life was resuming, as it always did.
Shastri turned back to Uhura. “Speaking of cherishing our memories, I need to go back home and make some new memories with Sudo and Kiran. This is the longest I’ve been away from them since Kiran was born.”
“I understand.”
“So what about you?”
She smiled, understanding what he was nudging her to do. She still remembered only fragments of the events they had experienced together as friends, but she recognized every nuance in his voice, every unspoken sentiment and implication, as if they’d never been apart. It was immensely comforting.
“Yes,” she said in answer to his tacit suggestion. “I’ve got a few weeks of leave saved up. It’s about time I used them properly. I’m going home, to be with my family.
“It’s time for me to build some new memories of my own.”
Starfleet Academy
“Do you really have to go?”
McCoy walked alongside Ashley Janith-Lau through the Academy gardens, watching the students as they passed by—some jogging or doing t’ai chi, others chatting and laughing as they caught a quick lunch between classes, others studying under the shade of the same elm tree that McCoy remembered as a popular study spot from his own day. Perhaps the students were more subdued than usual, still absorbing the tragic events of the past week, but their lives and their studies had to go on regardless. At least, they would for most of the students.
“I mean, we’ve only been dating a few weeks,” he went on. “I was just getting the hang of it again.”
“Oh, I think you did fine from the start,” she teased, tousling his hair. “Believe me, I’m not crazy about it either.”
“Then why does it have to be you? I agree the Warborn deserve someone to offer them support and guidance, someone to speak for them now that Rakatheema’s gone. But there are others in your organization who could do it.”
Janith-Lau looked at him skeptically. “I’ve heard your Enterprise stories, Len. You, Jim, and Spock are all extraordinarily terrible at delegating responsibility. So don’t act so surprised that I want to do this myself.”
“I suppose you do have a point,” McCoy muttered.
“But seriously… if I’m truly committed to peace, I can’t limit myself to speeches and rallies and protests. Sometimes it’s about individuals. Those five survivors—especially Portia—have a real need for some kind of peace in their minds, their hearts.” She shrugged. “Even if it’s peace with being a soldier, a warrior. But they need to find it first, to build it within themselves.
“I saw how lost they were when they took us hostage. It wasn’t an act of hate or bullying, but of desperation. They didn’t know how to cope with a crisis beyond using force. They knew it was a bad idea, but it was all they had.” She smiled and shrugged. “I felt that, in a weird way, they were hoping we could give them answers. I mean, I know they wanted answers about the murder, but it felt like that was just the excuse. They needed guidance. Not on how to be a Starfleet officer, but on how to be themselves. That has to come first. And their prior upbringing didn’t provide it.”
McCoy pursed his lips, thinking it over. “I suppose that’s a worthy challenge for a pediatrician, as well as a peacemaker.”
She hugged him. “Don’t worry. Vulcan isn’t that far. We can still see each other from time to time.” She pulled back and smiled. “That is, if someone else doesn’t snatch you up first. I won’t demand you be faithful to me or anything.”
“We never really got that far anyway.” He met her eyes with regret. “But I was open to the possibility.”
She gave him a long valedictory kiss. “Maybe someday.”
Once she went on her way, McCoy started back toward the main campus, spotting Kirk waiting for him along the path. “Too bad,” the admiral said. “I was rooting for the two of you.”
The doctor glowered at him. “You were just getting revenge for me trying to play matchmaker with you.”
“I don’t deny it.”
He sighed. “I dunno, maybe it’s for the best if we just focus on our careers from now on. We’re both getting a bit too long in the tooth for our fancies to turn to thoughts of love.”
Kirk grew contemplative. “I don’t know, Bones. Ashley came into your life when you weren’t even looking. Maybe we should just live our lives without expectations and be open to the opportunities that come our way.”
McCoy looked around them at the students passing by. “I suppose even here, there are new things to discover.”
“That’s what an academy is for, Doctor. It may not be the Enterprise, but it’s still an adventure.”
Acknowledgments
Uhura’s storyline in this book builds out of Star Trek: “The Changeling” written by John Meredyth Lucas. Nomad’s erasure of Uhura’s memory in that episode was treated as an afterthought, with the personal consequences to Uhura completely glossed over, so I felt this was a story that was overd
ue to be told. I know of two prior stories that explored the aftermath of Uhura’s memory loss: “See No Evil” by Jill Sherwin in the prose anthology Star Trek: Constellations and “Communications Breakdown” by Christine Boylan and Bettina M. Kurkoski in the comics anthology Star Trek: The Manga—Kakan ni Shinkou. Both those stories focused on Uhura’s professional recovery, leaving room for me to examine the more personal consequences of her memory loss. Living Memory is consistent with both stories, though there are a few slight inconsistencies between the two (the ship is in greater need of repair in “Breakdown,” and both stories claim to be Uhura’s first away mission after Nomad).
Little has been established about Uhura’s family and personal life over the years. I’ve drawn on bits and pieces from various sources to build her biography and family, though I’ve assembled the ingredients in my own way. Uhura’s mother, M’Umbha, was named in a deleted scene from “The Man Trap” written by George Clayton Johnson and referenced in The Star Trek Concordance by Bjo Trimble. Her name appears to be a variant spelling of the Zambian name Mumba. Her father’s name, Alhamisi, (Swahili for Thursday, presumably the day he was born) and her grandfather’s name Uchawi (Swahili for sorcery or witchcraft, perhaps a nickname) both come from Star Trek Log Ten by Alan Dean Foster. Foster also established that her birthplace was Kitui, Kenya, and that her brother was a doctor at “Makere” [sic] University Hospital, though his name was given there as David. The name Malcolm for Uhura’s brother comes from Star Trek II Biographies by William Rotsler, the source of Uhura’s first name, Nyota. Rotsler also established Uhura’s younger sister, though he named her Uaekundu, a name I could find no real-world origin for, so I went instead with Samara, the first name given to Lieutenant Uhura by the FASA Star Trek role-playing games in the 1980s. Rotsler proposed Damu Pua as Uhura’s father’s name, but as that apparently means “Bloody Nose” in Swahili, I treated it as a nickname.
Rotsler gave Uhura’s birthplace as Nairobi, and several other sources have established it as her home. Star Trek: The Lost Era—Catalyst of Sorrows by Margaret Wander Bonanno established that she lived in Mombasa as a child and vacationed with her grandfather in the country. I’ve tried to reconcile these different origins. Mombasa is a major port city (and home to a space elevator terminus in the HALO game universe), so it made sense to establish it as a center of interstellar travel and commerce.
The premise that Uhura’s father was lost in space when she was twenty comes from the 1978 Bantam Star Trek novel The Starless World by Gordon Eklund, though I have disregarded other elements from that novel (such as her father later turning up alive at the center of the galaxy). Uncle Raheem was established in the untitled issue 18 of IDW Publishing’s Star Trek Ongoing by Ryan Parrott and Claudia Balboni; though that series was set in the Kelvin Timeline, Raheem would have been born well before the timeline split and thus should exist in both realities. Ironically, in Kelvin, he was the one lost in space.
Of Uhura’s previous starship postings, the Azrael comes from Rotsler, the Ahriman from Tears of the Singers by Melinda Snodgrass, and the Potemkin from the video game Star Trek: Starship Creator. The starbase posting is my own innovation, just to mix things up.
M’Umbha Uhura’s job as a legal advocate for elephants was loosely influenced by the Afrofuturist novel Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds, as well as by the growing scientific evidence that elephants are conscious, intelligent beings. Star Trek has shown us the sentience of humpback whales in The Voyage Home and alluded to dolphin personnel on starships in The Next Generation and Lower Decks, so it stands to reason that the Federation would also do its best to respect elephant personhood and rights.
The ancestor who changed the Kenyan family name Uhuru to Uhura to “soften” it is an allusion to how Gene Roddenberry and Nichelle Nichols devised the character name, according to various sources. I tried to come up with a more Afrocentric justification for the vowel change, but there’s no basis for such a thing in Swahili as far as I could determine.
The Earth colony on Altair VI was established in Star Trek: Enterprise—Kobayashi Maru by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels. The native population on Altair III was alluded to in Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Encounter at Farpoint” and depicted (vaguely, as robed and hooded humanoids) in DC Comics’ Star Trek: The Next Generation issues 67–70 by Michael Jan Friedman and Deryl Skelton. I’ve attempted to reconcile them with the mention in “Amok Time” of a peace settlement at Altair that would send ripples as far as the Klingon Empire.
Cadet Peter Preston was played by Ike Eisenmann in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, established in that film’s script and director’s cut as Montgomery Scott’s nephew. Scott’s dislike for Peter Preston’s father was established in DC Comics’ Star Trek (Volume 1) Annual #3, “Retrospect,” by Peter David and Curt Swan. Peter’s adventures bear a certain resemblance to the experiences of Eisenmann’s character in the short-lived 1977 NBC television series The Fantastic Journey, story-edited by Star Trek’s D. C. Fontana.
My placement of the tractor beam control on the movie-era bridge is conjectural. The original set plans show that it was intended to be a fold-out console adjacent to the engineering station, but this was never built. The forward starboard station is labeled on the set as “gravity control,” and its console is repurposed from what was meant to be a bridge transporter station, with controls for aiming and operating a beam. Thus, it seemed a logical place for the tractor beam control. Thanks to Donny Versiga for his detailed digital reconstructions of the movie sets, which have been of invaluable assistance for the bridge scenes in my past two novels.
The song “Two Moons” is my own composition, written in the late 1990s for an early iteration of the Troubleshooter universe featured in my novel Only Superhuman and various short stories. It was conceived as a colonial Martian pop song using the orbital dynamics of Mars’s moons Phobos and Deimos as an extended metaphor. As Uhura said, the lyrics seemed appropriate here.
S’rrel is the name the Decipher role-playing games proposed for the brown-furred Caitian counselor from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Joel Randolph is the name given in that film’s script to the Yorktown captain ultimately played by tennis star Vijay Amritraj. The Starfleet Headquarters set seen in that film was called the major missions room (uncapitalized) in Vonda N. McIntyre’s novelization.
The (apparent) destruction of the original Solar L5 colonies was depicted in The Lost Era: The Sundered by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels. Mizuki City is named for the director of the Vanguard L5 colony from that novel.
The physics of the primordial universe, vacuum energy, and quantum wormholes depicted herein is largely grounded in reality. However, theory tells us that the primordial plasma was in thermal equilibrium, too uniform for anything like life to emerge. I’ve fudged things a bit to suggest that the transition out of that phase was turbulent enough to allow complexity.
My portrayal of Arcturians is based on their depiction in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Costume designer Robert Fletcher’s notes on the species described them as a race of identical clones that could be bred swiftly and used as Federation infantry. This is incompatible with later depictions of the Federation and too similar to the Jem’Hadar (as well as the Clone Troopers in Star Wars), so I revamped the idea into something more distinctive. I originally intended to feature the Arcturians in my Star Trek: Enterprise—Rise of the Federation series, hence their historical connection to Captain Shumar of the Essex and the conquests of Maltuvis.
Admiral Chandra appeared as a captain in Star Trek: “Court Martial” and The Captain’s Oath. His first name, Nensi, comes from his Kelvin Timeline counterpart, glimpsed as a member of a Starfleet Academy panel in the 2009 film.
The fan wiki Starbase 118 provided inspiration for the structure of the curriculum at Starfleet Academy. Other aspects of Academy operations and administrative structure were based on the United States Naval Academy (for instance, having a civilian academic dean). Some of the pro
fessors mentioned were nods to my own favorite college instructors, while others were borrowed from a Wrath of Khan set graphic.
Greg Cox’s novel To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh established that the presence of Khan’s people on Ceti Alpha V was classified by Starfleet, explaining why the Reliant crew was unaware of their presence in the system.
I’d also like to thank the fans who once again helped me through a serious financial crisis with their donations, in return for which I’ve included various vessel, planet, institution, and characters names that a number of my donors suggested. Thanks to Byron Bailey, John Ballard, Eli Berg-Maas, Kimberly Blackwell, William Craig, “E D,” Ricarda Dormeyer, Kelli Fitzpatrick, Robert Greene, Ensley Guffey, Dominik Patrick Hug, Casey Lance, Cooper Long, K McCann, Ronald Mallory, Brad Murray, Christopher Nelson, Danielle Pajak, Linn Payne, Alexander Perry, Scott Saslow, Darryl Schnell, Adam Selvidge, Gavin Sheedy, Jeffrey Singer, Benjamin Wert, Mybrid Wonderful, Paolo Andrea Zaccheddu, Robert Ziegler, and anyone else I’ve left out.
Finally, I extend thanks and remembrance to my uncle Clarence Preston Bennett (1929–2021), who asked me to name a “good, kind, wonderful” character in memory of his long-departed wife, Janith Ashley. I regret that he never got the chance to see the result.
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About the Author
Living Memory Page 29