Star Trek '12: 2712 AD - Future Guy

He really hated his father.

For lack of specifics, we will call the father “Levon Helm.”  There are very few things known in any period of the man known as “Future Guy.”  His father Levon knew even less about him, and that was why he hated him.  In fact, he held him in contempt.  The future was the same as the past to him, as it was to any civilized culture of that time.  It was he who saw its truest potential.  He did not start the Temporal Cold War, but he saw its wicked potential, as surely as if it were architectural designs for what Starfleet was calling the Hall of Time, on the old Academy grounds in San Francisco.

Let’s further humor ourselves and call our humble protagonist “Rooney.”  There has always been speculation as to which race he was, but Rooney even by this name could be anyone.  That’s Rooney’s greatest trick, other than the outright genetic manipulation of the Suliban to be his agents at his chosen arena, which he determined to be the formation of the Federation because it was least likely that Starfleet would look there, with too many conflicting interests for enough lucidity.

Simply put, in his own time, Rooney could not have avoided Starfleet temporal agents if he tried.  He lived three centuries before his greatest enemy, but already three centuries earlier investigations had begun in earnest, even if regulation had not yet been initiated.  If he attempted to operate in any of the periods where an agent existed in real-time, Rooney would have failed before he even began.  That was why he branched out to a time where civilization was advanced and spread enough to be manipulated without itself being aware of the fact, because the truth was, no agent could be a success without indigenous allies.

He correctly gambled that an isolated captain on an isolated ship could not thwart his efforts to any significant degree, even when they met face-to-face, on multiple occasions.  Rooney eliminated his only real rival in the conflict by sending him to the very planet this captain originated from, in a period of so little consequence that his presence could be corrected and his threat made obsolete in one effort by the human captain.  There had once been speculation that Rooney himself had led himself into this trap, but it could hardly have been likely for a genius.

When he wasn’t busy strategizing, Rooney suffered to think of Levon Helm, the inspiration for his grand designs.  Just as the universe was undergoing a series of drastic changes at the time, Levon was beset by his own problems, an inability to remain solvent, a failure at everything he pursued, unable to support Rooney and his budding abilities.  Rooney hated him for it, resented him, believed him to be a saboteur, and in fact used him as subconscious motivation, perhaps one day to travel back just early enough in time to correct this blight on himself, and perhaps improve his own abilities, unless his was the misfortune to eliminate himself in the process, should Levon prove so great a success that he did not have the time for offspring, or even neglect.  He had never been a tyrannical parent, never had any vision, so far as Rooney had ever noticed.  Perhaps, just perhaps…Rooney ought to thank him.

Was that right?  Is so, might it cast into question all of Rooney’s dreams?  Had he plotted the course of his life and all of history on a need to undo something that would alter himself?  He had always been a conflicted man, even in the midst of his glorious, subtle triumphs, and had avoided scrutinizing his motivations for fear that such conclusions might be reached.  He had always assumed that his father’s embarrassment spoke for itself, and that he could pin all his frustrations on it without reserve, and yet, the one moment he looked too far into the abyss, as it were, the abyss did indeed look back.

That was the long and short of it.  Rooney stood back from a desk cluttered with temporal maps, and wiped away the digital ones that hung in the air before him.  He was due for another confrontation with the captain, and suddenly he braced himself, unable to enter the temporal chamber.  Perhaps in another day clarity would be restored…