TWG - Star Trek: The Original Series - A Far Better Resting Place

Star Trek: The Original Series
A Far Better Resting Place
by C. Edward Sellner
(cesaprod@aol.com)

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us...."
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

James T. Kirk stood on the edge of the broken stone, letting the arid breeze of dusty air swirl about him then meander its way on past the sloping edge, running down into the valley below. The constantly overcast skies loomed above with threat of a rain that would never come. They were dust clouds, swept into the upper atmosphere by the windstorms that swept the planet, filling the skies with a perpetual gray. It looked as if the air should hold a chill to it, but it was warm instead, warm but dry. Kirk breathed deeply and looked for a long while at the rather leveled, unusually flat stone which stretched out in front of him, its rough and broken edges coming to his feet. It was an unremarkable stone in every way except for one. Kirk then let his eyes wander up the jumbled cliff face, made of layers of rock. He found the still raw hole which the stone at his feet once occupied. The years and the wind had smoothed some of the edges, calmed some of the fractured rock into gentler curves. But it was still raw and gaping in its own way, much like the hole that still sat in Kirk's heart and gut. One of many.

The voice, that voice...it couldn't be! A voice that once had always brought a smile, until those last days when it invoked an almost consuming terror. His voice. Kirk turned slowly, unable to restrain the look of utter shock that spread over his features.

"Well Scotty, give it to me straight." Kirk walked alongside his chief engineer as both surveyed the scorch marks and damaged machinery that ran along the engines, specifically, her warp core. The entire chamber only hours ago had threatened to become an overwhelming conflagration that might rip the very ship apart. Now, with the fires out and the debris cleared from its cavernous reaches, it was beginning to look salvageable once more.

Kirk and Scott exchanged looks and each a brief smile. It was the calm comfort and assurance between two old friends who had stood together in duty and battle many times. This last time, there had been moments of tension, almost the casting of blame, followed by a tragedy that somehow, at some point, they had convinced themselves, on some subconscious level, would never happen.

A distance, an awkwardness might have descended, but not here, not amongst true comrades. Kirk knew Scott's anger at losing so many of his cadets, young promising engineers he had himself trained, including the Scotsman's own nephew. The admiral also knew some of that anger had, however briefly, been pointed right at him for daring to engage under current circumstances. But Scott also knew that the lifelong friend that had died in these chambers, just a few dozen feet away was closest of all to Jim Kirk. The engineer knew he would not hold anything against Kirk that the man did not already hold against himself a hundredfold. He also knew that that man, in the end, could not have done one thing differently to change the ending of this mission, not one thing.

"More specifics, if you don't mind?" Kirk glanced over at the radiation chamber, shuddered briefly and looked back at Scott.

"Most of it's repairable with what we have and wouldn't really interfere with us gettin' on home. The fire damage, the cracks and stress points that need to be shored up along the regulators and secondary engine housing, normally not a thing to worry about."

"Why do I sense a 'but' in there Scotty?" Kirk asked looking straight at the man, a little weary of what he was beginning to feel as avoidance.

Scott swallowed and looked over at the radiation chamber, nodding to it. "Captain Spock's, well, what he did...it might have saved our lives in the moment, but alas, it wasn't enough for the long haul."

"What do you mean?" Kirk asked, his own gaze following over to the chamber where about twelve hours earlier...he had said goodbye.

"The warp engines were able to temporarily re-engage, long enough to get us out of range of the Genesis explosion, but, to be blunt, they've naught been patched up but with bandages, when what they really need is surgery. The core should hold, so we should not have to worry about a breach, but the intermix couplers and flow matrices are way out of alignment from the shots that Reliant hit us with, and forcing them to jumpstart, well, it might have saved our lives, but it only worsened the structural damage throughout the main engines. There's micro-fractures running all through the thing now." Scotty shook his head. "And I can't overhaul a warp core out here in the middle a'nowhere."

"And the Mutara Sector is also a good ways away from Federation ports or stations with any capacity to repair us."

"Aye sir. The only place out here is Regula I, and we all know how gutted Khan and his cronies left that place. I doubt for certain there's a tool left we could use, if there were any to begin with, Regula being a Science Outpost it probably had minimal engineering facilities anyway."

The engineer turned his gaze back to his precious engines, stroking his mustache briefly. "If we keep it at lower warp speeds, we might get another day's worth of cruising out of them, maybe two, then the fastest we'll be able to go after that, with all due respect, would be as fast as me gettin' out and pushin' Admiral sir."

"Aye, that will do as well, but the nearest destination to here we could go and repair anything would be about three years away."

"Aye, under the best conditions, but especially with the shape she's in sir. No matter how you try it, the additional stress on the core could end up in a breach with the mess she is now."

"Will breach her for sure. There are too many fractures along the inner chambers. If we try shoving those bairns out now, it will be like shoving a screw through a nail hole and she'll blow as sure as we're standing here.

"Mr. Scott, over the years I've learned that when you talk this long about what can't be done..."

"It's usually because you have another solution that you're waiting to spring on me."

"Weeeellll, now that you mention it..." And the old engineer smiled a warm smile but his eyes were sad.

"Gary?" Kirk felt his legs threatening to fold out from underneath him. He felt his heart pounding against the inside of his chest as if threatening to explode outward. He felt a rush of emotion from fear to hope, from hatred to compassion and all in between storm through his mind and his soul. "This isn't possible, it can't be." Kirk took a cautious step and decided against taking another as he felt partly like he might fall over if he did. "You're dead?"

Standing before him was a man from his past, a ghost, a memory. Standing before him was the man whose body should have merely lain under that utterly unremarkable flat stone at his uncertain feet. James Kirk knew this, because he had been the one that had 'dropped' the stone on him, buried him in a crushing rain of rock cut loose by an old-style phaser rifle, killing this man who had been his best friend. Yet, somehow, there he stood, just as young and roguish, with his slightly mussed brown hair, ruddy complexion and exuberant smile that couldn't possibly have seemed so young twenty years ago. Yet, there he stood, still dressed in the faded gold pullover that he had worn the day he died, no, the day he was killed, though now it was unsullied by dirt or blood as it had been then.

"Surprise!" Gary said, carelessly, as if at a badly planned party of one. "Betcha didn't see this one coming did you Jim?"

Kirk almost burst out laughing, but then he almost burst out crying as well, or perhaps screaming. He couldn't be sure in the turmoil that raged inside of him. "So, was this the breaking point?"

"Are you a delusion, or were you never really dead?" Kirk spat out, regaining what he could of his command voice.

"Well...actually..." Mitchell looked about, as if to see if anyone was listening. "I have to go with 'c' on this one."

"I did die, no doubt about that. But I'm not a figment of your imagination either. I am who I seem to be...Gary Mitchell, Lieutenant Commander, USS Enterprise, serving under Captain James R. Kirk."

For a moment Mitchell looked confused, and then the look faded to be replaced once more by that mischievous smile. "Well then, one more reason I'm glad I didn't succeed in killing you back then."

Kirk looked up at him and cocked his head slightly as if to ask for more explanation.

"Wouldn't it have been a real shame if your actual tombstone had your name spelled wrong?" Gary Mitchell began laughing and despite himself, despite all that cried out in him, despite the concern of threat, the tinged fear of madness, despite it all...James Kirk laughed as well.

Kirk looked up from his book, A Tale of Two Cities, as the doors finished sliding shut effortlessly, behind the sudden intruder, once more sealing Kirk's private quarters from the brighter lit halls beyond. "Please Bones, come on in, and make yourself comfortable...good to see you too."

"I don't know who to relieve of duty first, that crusty old engineer below decks for suggesting it, or the default captain of this boat who should know better than to try it."

Kirk was not sure whether the good doctor was joking, or whether he was serious. Bending more effort to figuring it out, he closed the book on a cloth marker and slipped off the antique glasses he had been using to read it. "My vote would be the engineer."

McCoy smiled, letting go the look of rage that had sat on his face since his entry. "Nah, engineers don't understand a thing unless it's got gears and sprockets. Can't blame them for that."

"Have damn few times they can choose to not do something they know better than to do."

Kirk then returned the smile and leaned back in his chair. "Which, of course, gives doctors the opportunity to remind them incessantly that they shouldn't be doing it anyway...?"

With that McCoy smiled broader, and brought from behind him a jade bottle filled with a sloshing sky blue liquid. "I think you've finally figured it out Jim. Let's celebrate."

Kirk set the book and reading glasses aside, and rose from his angled chair at the corner of his quarters and walked up to McCoy who handed the bottle over. "Romulan ale Doctor? Didn't you already give me a bottle recently?"

"I did indeed, but I'm not giving you this one, I'm sharing it with you, for one very important reason."

"Ahh." Kirk smiled as he gestured to a couple chairs about a small conference table in the center of the quarters. As McCoy stepped across he picked up the book Kirk had been reading moments earlier and looked appreciatively at the leather-bound cover. Kirk walked over to a small sidebar and pulled up a couple glasses.

McCoy glanced up at Kirk, who had turned to face him. The Doctor cocked one eyebrow slightly up. "What else would you be doing with a book?"

Kirk huffed slightly tuning his back to the Doctor and then walked to the table with the glasses, which he set up in order to pour. "I'm just saying I had the book out in order to read the story."

McCoy gingerly opened the old pages to the cloth bookmark and scanned the text. His eyes stopped when he found the line he knew would be there. " 'It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before. A far better resting place that I go to then I have ever known.' Sounds familiar."

Neither man moved in the quiet quarters. The silence became almost endless in those moments. Then gently, reverently, perhaps as much for the antiquity of the book, as for the almost sacred status it now had as the final gift from Spock to his best friend, McCoy closed it and set it back in its resting place.

James Kirk did not turn around, but his shoulders slumped, the bottle of ale, tilted to pour, was set back heavily, and a sigh escaped his lips that seemed to echo from the bottomless well of his heart. "I feel old Bones." Kirk straightened, breathing in, steeling his jaw, grinding his teeth to keep himself steady. "I feel so damn old."

McCoy lowered his head, letting his eyes come around to Jim Kirk, but stood his ground. "That's not what you said on the bridge a few days ago."

"It was different...standing there, looking into...into creation itself, it was like a new beginning, like witnessing the birth of life itself filled with infinite possibilities. Anything, no, everything seemed possible, there seemed to be new frontiers still, new hope for a brighter tomorrow. How could someone look into that cosmic beauty and not feel young?"

"Now I'm just reminded everywhere I turn how much death seems to follow me. How it always has, and how it seems it always will."

There was now no trace of the humor left between the two men. There were grim memories, deep loss and a profound pain that instead echoed between them, both of them had been close to Spock, each in their own way. But there was something more here with Kirk, a deeper pain, an older loss. "Gary Mitchell?"

Kirk turned, suddenly. He was surprised, but not really. "Then that's what this visit is about? I didn't even realize you knew. It was before you came on board."

"Maybe, but Starfleet requires these pesky things called files. I read it in the reports from Delta Vega the first time the Enterprise went there."

McCoy walked past Kirk who still stood tightened, poised as if to either strike or hold himself together despite overwhelming forces to the contrary. The doctor took the bottle and filled both glasses, then turned and handed one to Kirk who seemed at least to let go his defenses, if only barely. "I knew. I always read a captain's file first whenever I'm assigned to a ship. They're the most critical person on board to know, physical health wise and mental health wise."

"There you're wrong. The proper answer is: you never said anything to me about it; I simply never pushed the point. It was your personal business, not my place to meddle."

Despite the raging emotions in him, Kirk couldn't help but smile as he looked at his friend with a shocked expression. McCoy took a healthy swig of the ale and then noticed Kirk's look. "I was young and idealistic then. I've since learned if I don't meddle, things don't get done."

Kirk chuckled, took a healthy swig of his own drink and then walked toward the observation port of his quarters. "So, twenty years later, now you come to meddle?"

"Twenty years later, when this ship has just lost its captain, our best friend of two decades, and is now headed to the only Federation spot within range of our dying warp engines so that our engineer can fix them using the antiquated machinery of the lithium cracking station there, which just happens to be your other best friend's grave."

"Oh, not fix, as Mr. Scott has let me know to no end, its only using better bandages so we can limp the greater distance to a hospital."

McCoy stopped with the glass half raised. "Damn it Jim, he's an engineer, not a doctor, tell him to stop using medical analogies or else."

Kirk turned, half smiling. "Else you'll show up to harass him, but come with a bottle of Romulan ale?"

"Are you kidding? I wouldn't drink this stuff with Scotty; he'd out-drink me in no time and end up getting the larger share." McCoy downed his glass and poured another. "You I can compete with."

"Besides," McCoy added, edging his lead a bit more with another sip. "You're changing the subject."

McCoy shook his head. "You're out of luck on that front. The last of the more serious wounded were transferred aboard the Horatio when it rendezvoused with us an hour ago, and the last left in my care was discharged twenty minutes ago. You have my undivided attention Admiral, sir."

"What do you want me to say Bones? Yes, we're going back to Delta Vega to use some of the shielded equipment from the lithium cracking station to shore up the warp core on the ship. Yes, it's where we stopped to maroon, and where I eventually killed Gary Mitchell, my best friend from Starfleet Academy, and where I made the first command decision that cost someone dear to me their life. Yes, coming here immediately after losing Spock, also as a result of my command decisions is... is making me..." Kirk looked at McCoy, for a single moment as if he might break down, then he lifted his more than half empty glass and drained it, "want to out drink you and Scotty put together."

Kirk filled the glass and walked back to the view port. His face eased a bit. "Gary was like a brother to me. He saved my life once, took a poisoned dart meant for me while we were on assignment on Dimorus. He introduced me to Carol, did you know that?"

Kirk smiled. "He was trying to distract me, and 'loosen' me up when he was a first year cadet and I was his lieutenant instructor. He hoped to get by easy in my class."

Kirk laughed slightly, then swished the ale in his glass a bit, then took another draught of the strong liquor. "No. Gary was younger than I was, but always seemed so much more confident. He loved life and was so eager to live it. I was a couple years ahead of him in the Academy, and I may have risen in rank faster than he did...but..."

"It was like he was always looking out for me. I was the young, serious, focused..." Kirk cleared his throat, "perhaps a bit obsessed Starfleet career officer. While Gary seemed to be the wiser, more experienced journeyman of life."

"He always acted like he would forget the 'T', but he once told me it was because he always seemed to be asking me questions, and in the Academy, he always called me by my more formal name. So, it was 'James are you grading this on a curve? James are you letting me lead the exercise? James are...james are..." Kirk's words trailed off. "It was one of many inside jokes we had."

Sulu's voice came over the intercom. "Admiral, we'll reach Delta Vega now in twelve hours, the first engineering teams are prepping for beam-down. You asked to be notified."

"Yes, Mr. Sulu, have a security detachment assigned to them, one guard per engineer. I intend to accompany them myself and ensure the planet is secure."

A slight pause from the intercom, but then the voice of Hikaru Sulu once more came through. "Understood Admiral, bridge out." Sulu had been there that day.

Kirk turned to the doctor, once more a captain. "Gary Mitchell was left on that planet Doctor."

Kirk looked at his glass, and then set it unfinished on the shelf of the view port. "Maybe so, but for a while, he also claimed to be a god. Gods have been known to come back from the dead." Kirk then walked straight out of his quarters, no pause in his step, no emotion in his stride, once again, despite everything, strictly a captain.

Mitchell's laughter sounded so real, so genuine. Kirk's while a bit more restrained was just as genuine, just as real. But finally Gary Mitchell, or at least the reasonable simulacrum of him, stopped laughing, took a deep breath and looked over at the older man in front of him.

Kirk stopped laughing as well, straightened himself, but still left the traces of a smile hovering about his mouth. "Should I be Gary?"

Gary Mitchell smiled deeply and shook his head 'no'. "Of course not, it's me...really me James."

Kirk looked up and down at the man. It did seem to be. His physique, his body language, his gestures, his voice, his eyes... "It seems like it, but..." Kirk centered all his focus as a Captain, an Admiral, and a man who had faced death more times than he could count all in order to voice one word, "how?" It was one word, but a word fraught with levels of meaning that could barely be grasped, a single worded question that dared the whirlwind of the answer to come.

Mitchell looked at Kirk, his eyes gleaming, light of the shrouded sun sparkling in the brown warmth there. Then Mitchell answered such a deep question with a shrug, a smile and a curt "Does it matter?"

Kirk smiled, brought his own shoulders up and then nodded. "Yes Gary...it matters."

Kirk stared a moment at the man, icily at first, but then the ice warmed. "No. I don't. I'm surprised myself."

Kirk looked again at the impossibility he was beginning to accept in front of him. "Before...when..."

Kirk stopped and nodded briefly. "Your eyes, they had turned silver, and your voice, something was different about your voice."

Gary looked puzzled a moment then nodded appreciatively of the insight. "You remember?"

Gary Mitchell once more stopped short, and this time, just as genuine and deep a frown spread on his face. He finally nodded and turned half away, as if shamed. "I suppose not."

Gary Mitchell looked back at his old friend, now also much older than the man he appeared as, and his face deepened in a look of compassion and understanding. "I'm here for you, Jim."

Carol Marcus walked outside the facility of the station and saw Jim Kirk standing off by himself. She crossed her arms against the wind and walked over to him. "How are you doing?"

Kirk smiled. "Everyone keeps asking me that." He turned to her and reached out a hand, which she gently took.

"I'm fine Carol, really. The security precautions were a good judgment call, even though we apparently don't need them, coming here was the only choice we had-"

"Jim Kirk, I'm not talking about your command decisions." Marcus said somewhat offended by the clumsy dodge she had just experienced from the man in front of her. It reminded her a bit too much of their mutual past.

"I'm doing it again, aren't I?" Kirk squeezed and let go of the frailer hand in his own.

"You know, you and David could have transferred to the Horatio and returned a lot quicker."

"Carol." Kirk said, a bit louder then intended. "I didn't mean it that way, I simply meant...damn. I don't know what I mean."

Carol Marcus nodded. "We stayed because David wants to get to know his father. I can't keep that from him any more Jim."

Carol looked at him, and despite all the years, still knew him well enough to know his thoughts before he could speak them. "Your son, who you never would have had if Gary hadn't introduced us." She smiled wistfully, remembering those days long gone.

Jim Kirk felt yet another twinge of guilt. Guilt over so many things. It seemed all his demons were finding their voice in these days.

Kirk looked off to the mountains where he knew that flat stone lay and shook his head. "It's been twenty years, if I haven't made peace..."

Kirk shook his head. "No. Starfleet ruled the planet off limits in case Gary...in case he came back."

"Was that because you as a captain thought he might?" Kirk and Marcus met eyes and there was fire there. A fire of passions, long and painful memories and a fire of fear. "Or was that because as a man, you were afraid he would? Were you as afraid of him as you were of me, of facing what had happened?"

"Yes. Yes you did. I was probably wrong for making it and you for accepting it. But Gary... Gary made his choices as well and you did what you had to."

Kirk looked at her, smiled appreciatively. "I suppose it couldn't hurt." He walked away, one more time, walked away from her, but this time, the relationship would not end.

"That's not good enough Gary. You know that." Kirk snapped. He found his fire coming back, his determination. Perhaps he felt no fear, but perhaps that was because of Gary's power. Certainly a man who could create a paradise with a wave of his hands could change the color of his eyes.

The dust had long settled. The rocks and stones had long grown still, and the presence of paradise, however small it had been, was gone, rotted and dried up in the lifeless winds of Delta Vega.

Only two graves stood to mark the presence of gods, gods who in the end were all too human.

Then a brilliant white light sparked into existence and from it a figure all in white stepped out and surveyed the area about him. He looked at the twin graves, shook his head with a faint, quirky smile, and then snapped his fingers. Two more bursts of light flashed into the air, and then left two figures standing on the collected stones of their graves.

"Gary Mitchell I presume? And the beautiful Dr. Elizabeth Dehner? Welcome back."

"Stop it Gary!" Kirk felt the rage race through him. "Don't give me religious allusions. You're not a god, this..." he stabbed a hand at the flat stone grave marker, "this was not a miracle!"

Gary stopped. "No, that was a nightmare. I had no understanding of what was happening to me. What's allowing me to be here now... that's the miracle."

Gary smiled. "Straight answers Jim...Yes sir, Captain sir... or should I say Admiral?"

Mitchell then raised a hand and shook his head. "Alright, alright, it's the least I owe you." Gary sat down on his grave marker and gestured for Kirk to join him. "You know there are incredibly powerful beings out there, you've met a good number of them. Trelane, Apollo, the Organians, the Melkotians, the list goes on and on. All of them are beings sometimes so powerful that they could wipe out entire star systems, entire species with a thought."

"Many of them were at one time just like us Jim: mortal! Flesh and blood that evolved into pure thought, or pure energy. They evolved and some lost their way, others lost touch with what it was like before." Mitchell then paused, a smirk on his face. "Some just lost touch period." Kirk returned the look. "But all of them Jim, all of them found something special in us, us mere and lowly humans. Whether those were the ultimate reasons Apollo and his people settled on Earth, or Trelane observed it for so long, or for the Organians to be enforcing the treaty with the Klingons...all of it for one reason."

Jim Kirk looked at his friend now with deep feelings of wonder and curiosity. "What?"

"This." Gary's face grew deep, serious, thoughtful, and then he extended his hand, palm up.

James Kirk felt a welling of emotion and memory. He looked into the eyes of his friend, and then took the hand.

"The bond between people. Call it love, brotherhood...friendship, that which binds us together and inspires us to dream, to hope, to believe."

Mitchell locked Kirk's hand, turning it into a clasp, pulling it close and leaning toward Kirk. "It scares some of them Jim, scares some of them more than a thousand species of their own kind. Others it intrigues, others it inspires, others find it confusing, but all of them share one reaction..."

Kirk looked and knew this was Gary Mitchell, the strength of the clasped hand, the fire in his eyes, that passion for life. "What?"

"They realize it's what makes us who we are, and that nothing, no amount of power can ever really break this." To emphasize his point, Gary slapped his other hand on the back of Kirk's. "This bond survives anything and everything. Even death."

"Yes, Spock realized it to when he touched V'ger, and even that entity, as powerful as it was was humbled in the presence of compassion."

Kirk turned back. "How do you know all this? All those encounters...they all happened after you died."

Gary shook his head. "Yes, but after you left, one of those beings, a member of a continuum of life so far beyond human understanding that we don't even have words for it, appeared and brought Elizabeth and me back. Elizabeth chose to go on to what awaited. I chose to stay with this being, I wanted to learn so much, and I found he did to. Our powers, Elizabeth's and mine were similar enough, or on scale enough to actually attract their attention, and so this one came through into our reality. We made a deal, he would teach me how to channel my power and become more like him, able to control it without being consumed by it, or losing my mind to it, in exchange, he wanted me to teach him more of what it meant to be human. Even more importantly, he wanted me to show him what the best of humanity had to offer."

Gary smiled. "I couldn't think of anyone better to represent humanity, then my old friend James T. Kirk."

"No, you don't get it." Kirk turned and there were tears threatening at the corner of his eyes. Pain, sorrow, all welled up inside him. "I killed you, how could you have seen me as the best of humanity? A man who would kill his best friend?"

Gary Mitchell's face had a momentary look of confusion which then passed. "You blame yourself for my death?"

Kirk almost broke down in that moment. He breathed deep, steeled every muscle in his body. "I was responsible."

Gary Mitchell's own face turned angry. "Responsible for what? For taking my life? For killing me?"

"No James...don't you get it? I was dead already, what made me Gary Mitchell was being consumed in the power I possessed. What little was left of me, that which was truly Gary Mitchell was trapped inside watching in horror!" His words were near screams now, words torn by decades of guilt and pain. "I killed Lee Kelso and had to feel his death in my mind. I nearly killed you...I would have killed you, I would have killed my best friend." The yelling drifted into whispers, which fell into silence, then, "I would have swatted the Enterprise out of the sky. But you...you cared enough to stop me."

Kirk trembled but felt a flood of relief though his body, and when Gary Mitchell rested a hand on his shoulder and whispered, "There is nothing to forgive, but if it helps you, I do...I forgive you, and thank you and would ask you your forgiveness for turning on you."

James Kirk turned. He felt laughter trying to burst from him, behind the veil of tears and pain that had wrapped so tightly about him. What ended up showing was a warm smile that held a lifetime of memories. "I forgave you already."

Gary Mitchell fought back his own tears and nodded. Then smiled and chuckled. "So, that's done." Both men laughed. "You got some time? Well, actually, you got all the time we want, I'll return you to the moment you reached this mountain when we're done." Mitchell smiled, turning to the edge of the slope before them, putting an arm around Kirk as to guide him. "So tell me, you getting back together with that cute little blonde lab technician?"

Kirk found himself laughing deeply as the two men turned and casually walked away, neither really noticing as they walked off into the open air.

On the surface of the newly formed and newly christened Genesis Planet, the wild forces of creation still played like a symphony. Plants sprung whole from the formerly barren landscape, like a rippling green carpet unfolding into luxurious richness. Dark and empty skies danced with forming clouds that gathered, swirled, dispersed and sailed through on the stirring winds. Water seemed to literally flow from the air, pooling into lakes, streams, rivers and indeed, even an ocean or two. Mountains thrust upward from crust, which had only days before been naught but gaseous matter of the Mutara Nebula, and was now the foundation of a world.

In one location, jungle had already sprung up thickly, but the lush undergrowth wrapped about one aspect of the varied landscape, the one thing that oddly enough predated the very existence of this world: a single, sleek, black torpedo casing. It sat amidst the swirling winds and storms in a strange, almost surreal peace.

Then, almost lost in the sparking energy of lightning and other primal forces being unleashed, two other single bursts of white light flared out into jungle. They brightened in intensity to blinding brilliance, and then just as quickly were swallowed, leaving behind only their source: two human figures.

But these beings that stood there in that place and time were far from human. One form was but the memory of the man the being once was, a young man with ruddy complexion, slightly mussed brown hair, and a deep smile on his face, dressed in a faded gold pullover and black uniform pants and boots. The other was merely an illusion of a man, tall, pale, a quirky smile on his face, and darker but smooth hair. He wore all white, exotic cut clothes that seemed to shimmer in the flashing light.

The two beings walked through the thick undergrowth, it merely parting before them by some unseen command that reshaped nature itself. The memory stepped before the sleek casing and merely looked expectantly at it. The illusion spent more time looking about.

"Almost impressive." The illusion said, looking back to his companion. "But very dangerous. It looks like your species still hasn't learned not to play with power beyond their understanding."

The memory looked over with a smile. "They never will, really. They'll continue to strive for greater things, greater awareness, and greater knowledge. Sometimes...they'll go wrong, its part of the journey."

"Hmmmm." The illusion seemed to give a moment's thought to the words. "Perhaps, but, it may be something that has to be dealt with at some time."

"I'm sure humanity will do just fine." The memory smiled broader and turned his attention back to the casing.

The illusion chuckled. "Perhaps. But you know when you leave, I'm going to have to just continue my studies on my own, without the limitations of our deal."

The illusion cocked his head slightly and a questioning look passed over his face. "Why my dear friend, whatever could you possibly be attempting to imply?"

"You leave Kirk and all those of his crew and life alone, that was part of our deal."

"Oh, I'd almost forgotten, but please don't worry about it. I'm sure a generation or so will pass before my interest builds enough to draw me back once more. I think then they'll be better suited to my attentions anyway."

"And this," the illusion gestured to the object of the memory's attention. "What is this all about? First insisting on using your powers to stabilize that katra trapped within a human mind, where it surely would have dissipated in hours, and now bending it once more to stabilize the forming genetic soup inside this...thing."

"No, I can't say I do. This particular mortal had no love for you...or for anyone for that matter, and he was the one that argued the hardest for you to be destroyed as I recall. Yet you're laying the groundwork for him to come back. Why?"

The memory chuckled and crouched next to the container, letting his hand rest on the smooth surface, stroking it gently. "I'm not doing it for the person inside here. I'm doing it for Kirk."

The illusion stopped, letting the words he had been about to speak die on his lips. "Kirk? I thought your time with him talking was for Kirk."

"What, the conversation he won't be able to remember, one of your tenets of our agreement?"

Soft light flowed from the memory's hand, lacing through the material of the casing, filling it. Then the memory stood. "No, that conversation was for me, my chance to say to goodbye."

"This is my gift for my best friend." The memory smiled a genuine and deep smile and then both figures faded once more into brilliant light that another moment was gone.

And left alone, that casing rocked gently...then the locking mechanism cycled, letting a young, fragile, hand tentatively lift away the cover...and a miracle to come about.

"She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be."
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)