"Theta Nix" 2/4- A Star Trek fanfiction
Warning: Super lame description of time travel ahead. It's really just as bad as “The Guardian of Forever”, maybe worse. Anybody who knows more about science than I do, please feel free to pipe up and tell me how I can make it less corny. Thank you:)
Part II:
“All things are due to you, and though on earth
it happens we may tarry a short while,
slowly or swiftly we must go to one
abode; and it will be our final home.
Long and tenaciously you will possess
unquestioned mastery of the human race.
She also shall be yours to rule, when full
of age she shall have lived the days of her
allotted years. So I ask of you
possession of her few days as a boon.
But if the fates deny to me this prayer
for my true wife, my constant mind must hold
me always so that I cannot return--
and you may triumph in the death of two!"
While he sang all his heart said to the sound
of his sweet lyre, the bloodless ghosts themselves
were weeping”
-Ovid's Metamorphoses, “Orpheus and Eurydice” lines 53-70
Breaking Star Fleet regulations never failed to thrill down Jim's spine. It was, however, less fun without Bones grumbling at his elbow, without Spock meticulously calculating the odds down to the seventh decimal point. Lying to the transporter techs had been easy. Being captain had its perks. Sooner or later, the hawk-eyed ones would figure it out...Uhura and Bones would track him down...but until then, he ran as fleet as foxes, soft-soled as shadows, in the capital building's bowels.
All of Theta Nix was still in slumber now. The Prime Minister was probably making love to his scaley little wife this moment. Jim tried not to think of that. The walls of all official buildings were blackish stone, eerily cold underground. Pierced now only by the single beam of Jim's pocket flashlight, the coal-toned rock gave the appearance of a great twisting gulf from which Hades' three-headed dog had burst. Goosebumps rippled through Jim from both excitement and the rising cold which gusted up to meet him.
The possibility of being court marshalled loomed over his head.
Losing the Enterprise.
That had been one of the things Bones leveled against him the day before, when the word “logical” had set Jim roaring.
“They'll take your girl away from you, Jim. Don't you love her more than anything?
Yes, Jim loved his ship. More than anything? A month ago, he would have thought so...
Though some moments seem ordinary while being lived and gain importance only in retrospect, sometimes you know what you are breathing now you will never shake. This, Jim thought snarkily, plunging into the darkness, was one of those moments.
“There comes a time where the individuating choice is made, the choice by which the either/or is established, validating the idea by which one chooses to live or die...and that choice is made in fear and trembling.”
()()()
Kirk had held Spock's body for almost an hour.
Or so they told him. At the time, he was time-numb.
He clutched Spock so tightly the Vulcan's bones bruised him. While stroking one cold cheekbone with his thumb, he pressed the other cheek tight to his chest, kissed the part of his sleek, blood-matted hair.
“Jim,” a disembodied growl rumbled overhead “Jim, let go of him.”
No.
He burrowed his face into Spock's stiffening shoulder, like a child hiding in its mother's skirt.
“Jim. Pleeese.” the growl cracked fearfully now. Warm flesh on each of Jim's shoulders. “Jim...come on, kid...there's nothing more you can do.”
Eventually, they pried him from Jim's jerking arms. Shaking uncontrollably, Jim elevated dead to his legs and half suspended in the world as a ghost he lingered... the world was acid-bright and white at the edges....
Spock's eyes were closed now. 'Maybe I closed them, maybe not', one of the few nerved fragments of Jim's brain mulled. It didn't seem to matter much either way. Someone (possibly Jim again) had wiped most of blood from the ashen face, but still inky green trickled from the corners of his mouth and eyes. The streaks from his eyes mirrored tears.
Jim tried clumsily to wipe off the blood with sleeves bloodier than the Vulcan. He smeared on him more green. The warm was leading him now. Numb to it all, he followed
White came down flat as snow and eternity and claimed Spock's face.
All faces lack features erased by sheets.
“Jim. Jim, look at me. I think you're in shock.”
“We'll get through this,” more hands. Different ones...long-fingered, silken, brown...cupped him gently. Honeysuckle perfume in his nostrils the salty copper blood scent. “We'll get through this Jim...” her face, pressed into his chest, began to shudder like a house with foundations yanked from underneath, arms coiling tight around his waist. “We'll get through this. We'll tough it out and get through this because that's what he would have wanted from us, what he would have expected...”
Unreality sharpened to hyper-real. His captain's gut kicked in.
This is real. It actually happened.
Oh my God....
Scotty wrapped his arms around Nyota, rocking her tenderly, as Jim's knees trembled and liquidized, dropping him in a chair McCoy barely pulled out in time.
()()()
The ship's computer had found a plethora of information about how Thetan time travel supposedly worked, without any comment as to whether or not it actually did.
Well, so it goes.
Jim was careful not to delete the search from his computer history, stilling his paranoia and leaving unlocked his quarter doors. If something went wrong, he needed Uhura and Bones to find him. He knew they would.
“ But if this goes right,” he had thought to himself, setting his PADD on his desk. “They will never, ever know.”
According to Thetan lore, Thetan rulers had used time travel to protect their people for millenia. The time paradox did not create an alternate universe, nor did rewinding time create a “second” traveler. After time had unraveled backwards, only the traveler his or herself could remember the events before the backturn. Therefore, once Jim prevented Spock from dying, only he would remember the Vulcan's death and its aftermath. No one else ever need know it happened.
In this way, the Thetan rulers had ensured that their people lived in the best of all possible worlds. A truly perfect world was impossible to achieve, Thetan philosophers warned. However, because all possible consequences of all possible choices could be experienced, the Thetan rulers were able to carefully siphen the course of events to create the most harmonious universe possible. Or at least, the least choatic.
But several centuries before the first contact of Earth, the last of the Thetan rulers had been overthrown by a gaggle of rebels. The Thetan homeworld had crumbled from a monolithic culture to a cluster of rival tribes, all neck-deep in disagreement with eachother. The tribes scattered across the galaxy. From what Jim understood, the Prime Minister and his cohorts were descendents of the original ruling tribe of Theta. They were but lowly traders now, content to run ploddingly this little, troubled colony without delusions of grandeur.
So it goes.
On the day of Spock's death, the Prime Minister had spoken of a 'time chamber' nestled deep within the bowls of the capital building, kept as a monument to an older, purer time. From what Jim understood, the Thetans had a sort of telepathy, much weaker than that of a Betazoid or even a Vulcan. The time-travel device was a sort of chair, from what Jim could make out through the awkward translation on his PADD (no match for Uhura's nuanced ones). The chair focused the Thetan's telepathy, strengthening it, and linked the lizard's consciousness to a higher plane. If the traveler could focus to the point where he could clearly imagine the other time-space, lose him or herself in the projection, become uncertain about his occupied time-space, he or she would experience a quantum collapse in his wave function and will be as likely stay in the current time-space as teleport to another space in the same time, or to another time in the same space, or to another time and space altogether. The timeline itself would fold over so that the chain of events would establish a logical reason for the traveler's location.
Jim was not telepathic, but he wasn't completely psi-null, either. Jim and Spock had mind-melded on several occasions, usually in emergency situations, but at least once in the depth of pure friendship. That night...
Anyway, through mind-melding with Spock, Jim knew that his mind was unusually sensitive for a human's. Spock had told him so. Besides, Jim set his teeth grittily, he was Jim T. goddam Kirk, the only cadet ever to cheat the Kobiyashi Maru, to become a captain at the age of 25, to boldly go where no one had gone before. “Physically impossible for humans”-for anyone-was not a barrier to anything he did.
()()()
“Admiral.”
“Captain.” (pause.) “Jim. I...I heard. It hasn't hit the press yet, but I was notified through official channels.” (pause.) “Oh God, Jim, I am so, so sorry...”
“Yeah. Well, it happens.”
“He was a real hero. One of the finest souls I have ever known. I am honored to have known him and to have had him as my first officer and science officer before he was yours...and I know you esteemed as deeply as I do.”
“Thank you, Admiral Pike.”
“...are you alright, Jim?”
“I'm the captain of a starship, Admiral. I have to be alright. I don't have a choice not to be.”
“Has Dr. McCoy checked you out? To be frank, you don't look like you are all here with me right now.”
“I'm all here. Spock's the one who took a shot through the juglar, not me.”
.
“Okay. Okay. Okay, Admiral...Chris. I'm not alright. I just watched my best friend die right in front of me without any reason, without serving any purpose...not even doing something heroic like saving me or the galaxy like the big damn hero I know he was...”
“Shussh. Shusssh. It's okay. This is a personal call, I'm not here as your CO, Jim. I'm waving you as your friend. And as Spock's. You've been Captain of the Enterprise for over four years now, you know what it's like losing crewmembers...”
“This is different.”
“Of course it's different, this is your first officer. Your friend. I...I know how close you two were. How much he meant to you. Spock and I had nothing but utmost respect for eachother, don't get me wrong, Jim. I would have taken a bullet for that Vulcan and I know he would have done the same for me. What you two had though...it was special. You two were a helluva team. That doesn't come across every...”
“...Jim?”
“You can cry in front of me, Jim, it's normal. Do you think I've never cried over an officer's death before? Hell, I've cried during eulogies I've given, right in front of everybody.”
“Okay. Okay. Well, alright then...now that you've got it out of your system...Jesus Christ, Jim, calm down.”
“...Jim?”
“Yeah...yeah...sorry...I just...I can't breathe, Chris, I feel like...I..just...got...stabbed...in the lungs...I c-can't breathe...”
“Jim....I have to ask...what was he to you?”
“W-what?”
“What...exactly was Spock to you?'
“Oh, Jim, oh my God I had no idea...I won't mention it. I won't tell a soul. God, I am so, so sorry...I sometimes wondered but I...God, I'm sorry.” Pause. “I know it's not enough. I..I don't even know what to say to you.”
“What are you talking about?'
“You don't have to talk to me if you don't feel like it. Just know I'm on your side, kid. I'm going to be on Vulcan II for the funeral, we'll talk face to face then. Take care, Jim. And Jim...get some sleep. You look dead on your feet.”
End comm.
()()()
“Whoever designed this building,” Jim thought to himself, holding his phaser stiff-elbowed in front of him as he crept, hunched, through the dark. “needed to see more old Earth action movies.”
All winding paths trailed directly to the time chamber, like all nerves leading to a brain. Part of Jim was half expecting an elaborate templesque room, like the pit in the climax of his favorite childhood movies; a glided, artifact strewn treasure trove splitting at the seams with Thetan history.
Not quite.
The Time Chamber was a low-ceilinged, rectangular room stiffled and flat as a cheap hanger. The stone walls, more chilled than ever, were black as pitch but in the stark white spotlight seemed gray. The single beam of light encased the room's sole object. A twisted rickety metal chair was in the center of the floor. It might have been a rust-gnawed piece of modern art, were it not for the wires which snaked up the back like fat pulsing veins, the button aglow on the right armrest. A thick metal ring crowned the head rest. Little needles rimmed the ring, glistening gossemer in the spotlight, like the paintings of saints's haloes Jim had hated as a child.
He became aware of something painful and profound in his ribcage, a thing strange and terrible and wonderful and forgotten. It was the sound of his heart, beating.
“Jskldjfkljlioe!”
Jim jumped as two chattering voices snapped the silence, spitting out syllables quick as machine guns. Two Thetan guards waddled towards him fast as their porky legs could manage, drawing weapons smoothly from their shoulder blades.
They were either very funny or sad or a mixture of both in a pathetic sort of way, depending on how you looked at it. Most things in life are, Jim reflected. He already felt guilty for what he was about to do.
He flicked his phaser to stun. For the first time in his life, Jim phased an innocent Federation citizen.
()()()
The night Spock died, Jim stayed up all night. Aimlessly about his quarters he paced, his mind unable to fasten to whatever work he tried. Spock's face swam before him. Somehow, Jim couldn't recall how Spock looked when he was alive, even though he had seen that face every day for the past four years. After several blurred hours, he could no longer recall exactly how Spock had looked dead, either. An inky tear streaked down a cold cheek. No other feature could form in Jim's mind. Those tears, and...those hands, fingers slightly curved and stiff-jointed, limp-wristed, perfectly still.
Moving unthinkingly, Jim found himself walking the familiar path between his and Spock's quarters. They had had Scotty install it after their first year, weary of looping around in the hall and buzzing another through when one wanted to spring an idea in the dead hours of the night. As Jim was something of an insomiac and Spock required less sleep than humans, many a night had been spent ping-ponging ideas, rehashing missions, or bonding over paperwork or chess. That is how it all started, all those years ago, when respectful distance and awkward respect had begun to fizzle into something bordering friendship...
Neck-hairs on end, Jim passed silent through the shadowy channel he knew so well, feeling strangely shamed, as if breaking into a stranger's home. The doors hissed open.
Spock's quarters were simply decorated, upholstered in Vulcan rust red. Several pieces of Vulcan art adorned an otherwise Spartan room:a mosiac of two warriors fighting, a lirpa on a mantal piece, a rustic pottery bowl. There was human art as well, including a Matisse Jim had always admired.Standard, Vulcan, and Terran books crammed, over-crowded on his bookshelf. Spock had shared Jim's love for real paper books, the kind in which you could breathe the musty, yellowing pages.
Smiling through tears Jim had not realized streamed down his face, he ran a gentle finger down one book's threadbare spine. He moved about the room without thinking, muscles making his decisions for him.
The chess set lay unmoved in mid-game. They had been playing, Jim realized, when the orders to go to Theta Nix had come through.
Jim found himself prying open the closet doors. Unlike Jim's clothes, unfolded, leaking from the sheelves, Spock's uniforms were folded squares in a row on the shelf. Gingerly, Jim lifted one of the blue command shirts to his face.
Crisp peppermint detergent. Star fleet standard.
Sick almost to vomiting, Jim abruptly dropped the shirt. Spock couldn't have done his laundry every day...not even he was that much of a neat freak...
There it was. A laundry basket squished in the corner. Nearly empty, yes, but...
A science blue, crusted with sweat, was crumpled on the basket bottom. Snatching it up, he pressed it to his face as if it were an oxygen mask. As he breathed deep, the floors rose up to touch his knees, the wall curved forward to brace his back. Jim's eyes closed and he leaned into the room's embrace, gaspig shakily. Coppery sweat the hint of pepper and iron like humans and maybe a touch of Uhura's perfume and lab formaldahyde and the smell of that glossy hair
Jim wondered if the scent was shampoo, or if Spock's hair just smelled like that.
Jim wouldn't know, having only smelled it once...
He barely slammed into the restroom before vomiting up pure stomach bile. He had not eaten all day. Finished, acid trail stinging his esophagus, he wandered back in, slumped up against the wall, and felt his eyes focus, wide-pupiled, on the mosaic.
Two warriors were tangled together in a knot of limbs and skin.
“What is that a mosaic of? Some scene from Vulcan's violent, pre-Surakian past?” Jim had asked once. Spock had edged a sideways glance, inclining his head a degree.
“No.”
“...are you going to tell me what it is?”
His mouth thinned.
“I think not.”
This had been in the budding stages of their friendship, when passing time together off-duty still felt artificial, when Jim still weighed each word knowing the wrong one could spike a Vulcan hissy fit. Funny, now, remembering all the misunderstandings...Jim had felt nothing but absolutely comfortable with Spock for years now.
No, it was more than just comfortable. Sitting here in this room, all those nights-sometimes working sometimes simply passing time-Jim and Spock had possessed an understanding which transcended all words. All Jim knew is that when they were alone together, a warm free liberated him and made him feel like the final riffs of the world's greatest song, like the horizon was flying towards him like credits on a screen, like his heart was infinite.
It was that feeling he had as a child his first summer in Tarsus before the massacre. When liberated of his mother and Frank, he had run barefoot and happy as though he owned the world. And there had been other barefoot kings of Tarsus, pigtailed daughters of the Universe, his first friends. He had been too young to understand why or that until Spock he would never feel that way again. Until those nights he stayed up talking with Spock, Jim never thought he could feel that way again, had even forgotten he ever knew the feeling. All Jim knew was in the summer of the amber fields, he loved being alive. All he knew was he belonged.
“Jim...what was Spock to you?”
Admiral Pike's almost shocked voice, rising in dawning understanding, echoed in his mind. At the time, Jim had been so occupied with screaming without sound, silently smashing his fists bloody against his own desk in white noise, he heard Pike without listening.. Now, slightly calmed, he thought back.
What was Spock to him?
My best friend. My brother-in-arms. My first real home.
But why the shock in Pike's voice? Why that sudden comprehension, the sudden rush of sympathy from a different vein? And “I won't tell anyone” What was up with that?
Then the mosaic popped up as though Jim was seeing it for the first time, rather than having stared at it blind-eyed for minutes.
The warriors were not fighting. They were making love.
A eyebrow arched gracefully. Flicked sardonically. Furrowed with its twin in concentration, the eyes beneath it utterly consumed with work. Fleet fingers ran smoothly over computers, seized chest pieces, curled around Jim's wrist, anchoring him to the side of a cliff. The details filtered to him now in fragments, details he had memorized without realizing. A thin liped mouth, a mouth Jim loved to make strain in effort to stay flat...
The darkest eyes Jim had ever known, sometimes mirrors, sometimes clear as the galaxy sprawled before the Enterprise monitor; infinite and freckled with worlds.
Oh my God.
“I love you.”
The confession popped out without warning. Draped in the darkness, Jim spoke to the room, alone nestled amongst bookshelves and shadow.
“I...I don't know how it happened, but I do. I don't know when it started or why I didn't realize it before now but I think...I think everybody else did and...oh my God, I love you.”
He repeated it again shakily, a hiccuping little dry sob shattering the last syllable.
“I really, really do.”
Gasping for air, he sucked deep into his aching lungs, speaking one last time as his legs grew able to bear his weight. He rose to his feet, staring wildly around the room one, long, last time.
“I love you,” he whispered once more for good measure, with the finality of an ending prayer.
Before slidding from the room, Jim paused and turned back towards the chess set. He folded the black queen in his hand, squeezing her so hard his finger ridges bled.
()()()
Slowly, still half-expecting security to leap from the shadows, Jim walked to the center of the room.
“It's a little late for doubt,” he chidded himself, squeezing into the too-small chair. His lowerback already ached. Carefully, he lowered the ring to crown his skull. Latches clamped down automatically on his wrists. The button pulsed emerald beneath his index finger.
Do I dare disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions....
He pushed the button. The needles sunk into his skull.
Which a minute will reverse
Next part...
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