Cradle: A Christmas Tale

I have to be honest. When Mary first told me, I was a little upset. 

We had known each other since we were kids. I thought I knew her as well as I knew myself. When she agreed to marry me, it was the most natural thing in the world, and I never expected any kind of surprise. Certainly not to hear her tell me, one day, that she was pregnant, before we ever had a chance to consummate, before the wedding could take place, while she was away, while she was off helping take care of her kinswoman.

So of course I felt betrayed.

We never argued about it. I’m sure she knew how I felt. She knew me as well I knew her, of course. What I did was bury myself in my work. This wasn’t so unusual, in one sense. These were hard times, after all. It wasn’t so easy to be a Jew, which was why so many of us yearned for the Messiah. 

Later, when I understood who our child was, I did feel a little foolish.

I set out to make a cradle. I chose the wood, as sturdy as I could find (and that took some doing, which meant some traveling, which I was very ready to do, which in hindsight was probably the worst of what I did), and I set about my business. I told her nothing about it. I just kept myself busy.

Later, as her term progressed, the Romans insisted we travel for the census. I was devastated. I certainly wasn’t going to lug a cradle around. This did nothing to help my mood. I tried my best. By this time I better understood what was happening, but that didn’t fix everything. Things aren’t easy to forget, sometimes. Not when you don’t react well the first time. She was an angel, and I wasn’t, but she wasn’t perfect. Full of grace, certainly. Well, as I said, we never argued about it. But she knew. Of course she did. She became quiet for her own reasons, and she had every right.

So it was a quiet journey. There were so many travelers because of the census we couldn’t find a place to stay. Now I felt humiliated. I had let my pride get in the way. There was no use denying it anymore. Maybe I had never been good enough for her. Maybe I could never be a good enough father.

We were shown a stable. It was cold that night, and then she went into labor. I was frantic. I looked around, and found a box stuffed with hay for feed. It was about as crude as any carpentry I had ever seen, and then I realized, this had been my work, one of the first things I had ever made. I recognized all the details. I was ashamed all over again.

But then I reconsidered. I mean, what were the odds?

I had been prepared. I had been ready. Even when I failed, when I spent all that time being unworthy, somehow I had set in motion preparations for this exact moment. I had made a cradle we could use after all. I had done something right.

From that moment, even before she gave birth, things were different. I think she knew. I think she saw new strength in me, just at the right moment, just when she needed me most. There was a new grace about her, and our son came into the world, and we were a family, and the moment I saw him, my world transformed. I had been so busy resenting things I had never even considered being a father, what that meant, how it would change everything. I had never thought about being a father. I had never been very good around children. I didn’t think I had it in me.

It wasn’t just who he was, but rather something in me, when I saw him for the first time, when I held him in my arms. I was in love all over again.

I treasured every moment from then on. I mean it. There was no longer any doubt, not in my mind, Mary’s, and certainly never my child’s, certainly nothing I ever saw, even before I knew, I understood, and that was a process for both Mary and myself. It’s one thing to be told something, another to experience it, to see it take shape, to see your child’s future emerge before you, to see that he is as special in the world as he is to you.

We worked alongside each other when he was old enough. He would say the most astonishing things, earlier than most children learn to speak, just as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He was smarter than me, smarter than Mary, and it was just idle chatter, busy talk, while we worked.  I loved him more than anything.

Mary always understood him better. Of course she did. Eventually she even knew what to do with him, which was just to encourage him out in the world. I watched, continually astonished. I had no further part to play. I was the carpenter, the cradle, he outgrew. 

But I was always proud. I never boasted. I didn’t feel worthy. One day, he said to me, “Forgive yourself.” I had never told him about my doubts. He just knew. He seemed to know everything. Even when we worked alongside each other, I never had to teach him anything. He just set about alongside me. Maybe I made it easy for him, maybe I encouraged him by always involving him, including him, talking about what was important to me. That’s something he always seemed to know about anyone he met, what was important to them, which became important to him, too.

So in a small way I had a part in who he became. I like to think so, anyway.

I never did forget about that night, about the miracles that took place. One of them was just for me, the culmination of a different journey. When Mary would kid me about that old box I would insist on lugging with us, I would join in, make a joke or two myself, but I kept that thing the rest of my life. It was the cradle of everything.

Star Trek: Holmes to Grayson to Spock

Sherlock Holmes fakes his death in 1891.  In the period that follows, he secretly has a relationship that leads to the birth of a son, Ryland, who becomes a soldier in the British army during WWI.

Ryland adopts the Holmes surname by the time his son Alwine is born in 1914.  Alwine is a Member of Parliament, in recognition of his grandfather's considerable reputation, and his own inherited faculties, and he is among those who support Winston Churchill during the years of WWII.

Laiken Holmes is born in 1938.  She works for MI6 during the Cold War, meeting the American spy Tom Grayson, whom she marries in 1956.

Newland Grayson is born in 1958.  He enters the world of computers, which are fast blossoming in his formative years.

Wolcott Grayson is born in 1980.  He follows the family business of his grandparents, navigating the aftermath of the Eugenics Wars as an agent of the CIA.

Marwood Grayson is born in 2007.  In his adult years, WWIII has begun, but he works the home soil as an ordinary detective, following a much older family tradition.

Ewald Grayson is born in 2032, and initiates a family tradition that continues for the next two generations (Byford, born in 2054; Edric, born in 2078) by serving as a United States senator.  He's the second of the Graysons whose life is defined by WWIII.

Sherwin Grayson is born in 2103.  His grandfather Byford was a boy when First Contact occurs, but for him life with Vulcans and the interstellar community is routine.  Like his great-great-grandfather Marwood, Sherwin is interested in the fantasy legacy, and opts for a return to the informal, private detective occupation shared with their distant ancestor Sherlock.

Bromley Grayson is born in 2135.  He works as an ambassador to Vulcan.

Amanda Grayson is born in 2168.  She becomes a school teacher, but can never escape the shadow of her father, whose activities frequently bring Sarek of Vulcan to their family home.  Amanda and Sarek fall in love.

Spock is born in 2230.  Amanda is keenly aware that her son is the child of two worlds, and that his Vulcan side will often dominate him, but she frequently reminds him of his human heritage as well.  The many generations of her family sometimes seem trivial to the young Spock, but he grows to appreciate the printed adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as written by his friend and colleague John Watson.  He finds Sherlock's analytical mind to be surprisingly logical (although at times, quite human), and this is one of the ways he is, in the privacy of his own thoughts, able to reconcile his heritage.

Although, many years into his Starfleet career, when he references his ancestor, obliquely, he is quite justified in believing few will make the connection, or appreciate it, as he does.

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In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Spock quotes the Holmes axiom, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."  The Holmes connection is likely inspired by director Nicholas Meyer, who earlier in his career had also directed The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, which is of course a Sherlock Holmes movie.  Meyer first directed a Star Trek film with The Wrath of Khan, in which Spock meets a premature end, mostly to accommodate Leonard Nimoy's wish to cease performing the role.  Then Nimoy, and Spock, return anyway.  Meyer has for years insisted the death should have been final, which is ironic, given that Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had arranged a similarly premature death, only to bring him back, too.  The irony concludes with Star Trek Into Darkness, which evokes Wrath of Khan, including a death scene, which fans have been discontent about for years, even though it pivots the scene around themes relevant to the story around it, just as the original had, with no particular need to suggest finality.  

Star Trek: The Metamorphoses

 In 2119, Zephram Cochrane opens the first warp five complex, his last public appearance before heading off for a retirement that would shortly end in the last time history hears from him until Kirk discovers Cochrane alive in 2267.  He's been presumed dead after transmissions cease from his solo J-class starship journeys launched from Alpha Centauri, where he'd been living in his later years.  

Here's where things become a little complicated.  It'd be easy to take Cochrane, and the Companion, at their word, that the man Kirk meets is in fact Zephram Cochrane.  But the truth is far stranger, as it tends to be.

In 2161, Charles "Trip" Tucker III dies saving Jonathan Archer from a band of space pirates.  Everyone knows this.  Everyone except the people who like to claim his death was faked and he in fact became an agent for Section 31, becoming integral to their efforts during the Romulan War.  Which is of course sheer nonsense.

He didn't fake his death.  He died.  But the Companion brought him back.

By that year, Cochrane had been living with the Companion for nearly forties years, and by Kirk's perspective still had nearly a hundred years yet together unquestioned.  This is a lot of time.  The Cochrane Kirk meets is youthful, younger, apparently, than even the Cochrane who conducts the first successful warp flight in human history in 2063, when he was in his thirties but looked like he was in his forties at least, due to the rigors of life post-WWIII, where he scrapped for a living in Bozeman, Montana.  The Cochrane Kirk meets, then, is in his early twenties, still arrogant enough, when he was that age, to believe anything is possible, not yet the cynical man who made history, who made Earth's first official contact with Vulcans.

The Cochrane in 2161 was, chronologically, already over a hundred, having accomplished great things and then been deposited in an out-of-the-way planet where he could dwell on the youthful ideals his life had brought him back to, but with all the experience that led him there, his every need met by the Companion.  He had ceased questioning the arrangement years earlier, and yet...

The Companion knew.  Even if Cochrane himself didn't, things needed to change.  Cochrane itched ceaselessly for some new challenge.  For all he knew, humanity could still very much benefit from his talents.  He was cut off from the outside world, had no clue Starfleet existed, much less the state of human/Vulcan affairs.  The Vulcans he knew had made humanity bitter, and Vulcans themselves constantly having to mask annoyance, a relationship that jarred with Cochrane's hopeful outlook.

So the Companion sought someone who might alleviate Cochrane's distress.  That someone had just died, but such distinctions were trivial to the Companion, who brought Tucker back to life, and introduced him to Zephram Cochrane.  The Cochrane Tucker met looked every bit his age, looked tired, looked old, but still vital, in the mind.  Cochrane bombarded him with his many questions.  He listened, astonished, at news of the Xindi conflict, the Temporal Cold War, the budding Federation, how far Cochrane's pupil Henry Archer had pushed warp theory, and his son Jonathan, humanity's relationships among the interstellar community.  

And he confessed that he had his doubts about life with the Companion.  Tucker listened.  Tucker had spent a colorful Starfleet career confronting all manner of outlandish situations.  To him, life with the Companion almost seemed...natural.  He understood that he had died, and was happy about the circumstances in which it had happened.  He had no interest in changing what his friends thought had become of him, of resuming an old life that had had plenty of unwelcome complications.

So he proposed something to Cochrane, and then to the Companion.  He would take Cochrane's place.

Cochrane found himself relieved.  He would get what he wanted, and so would the Companion, and so would Tucker.  Of course it meant his death, but he was ready.  He was more than ready.  And so that's exactly what happened.  And for the next hundred years, Tucker lived with the Companion, and he lost himself, happily, in the process.

When Kirk came upon this planet, he found Tucker and the Companion, and all the clues suggested Zephram Cochrane.  Tucker was, of course, listed as having died quite conclusively.  This was an age in which so much information was available, it was impossible, even with all of it easily at hand, for anyone to know enough to tell the difference in such circumstances.  Like any age, really.  So no one questioned if Zephram Cochrane didn't look like Cochrane, and actually looked a great deal like, well, Charles "Trip" Tucker III.  And Tucker was happy to play the role.  And he was happy, one last time, to play out a screwed-up situation, and then live on with the Companion, for the foreseeable future...

Kirk solved one mystery.  He left behind a much bigger one, but one that had already happily resolved itself.

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Do yourself a favor and rewatch the classic Star Trek episode "Metamorphosis" and tell me that the actor playing Cochrane, in hindsight, doesn't look and sound remarkably like Connor Trinneer, who played Tucker in Enterprise.  Watching it myself, recently, it instantly brought the idea of this story to mind.

Fantastic Beasts: A Scenario for 4 & 5

Today is Harry Potter’s 42nd birthday. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore was in theaters earlier this year, and was received, somehow, even less well than its predecessor, Crimes of Grindelwald. This puts into doubt whether the films continue. The following is a version of a possibility suggested by the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, in which Harry’s son Albus Severus Potter gets into (time travel) trouble. This will not be an attempt to write out fan fiction, but rather sketch a scenario.

Fantastic Beasts: A Game of Quidditch

The years pass. Newt Scamander settles into a quiet existence of searching out fantastic beasts and writing. It is a lonely one, as he has never reunited with Tina Goldstein. He’s left his American adventures behind. Dumbledore’s last request of him was to, if he could, track down a hippogriff that has been sighted in the Romanian countryside, apparently nesting with the dragons. His brother Theseus visits, one day, and suggests attending the Quidditch World Cup. They depart for the festivities with a woman named Joanne Weasley, who’s been assisting Newt.

Meanwhile of course Grindelwald is still hard at work. The world has plunged into war again, and he has entrenched himself into the European theater as well, and once more pursuing the same beasts as Newt, the same hippogriff. But it’s not the hippogriff he seeks but rather its rider. He is alone, now, but unbowed. He, too, decides to attend the World Cup. Tina Goldstein pursues him.

At the World Cup a most unexpected match is being played between British and American teams. Americans are hardly known for their interest, or prowess, in Quidditch, and their best player, Linfred Stinchcombe, was totally unknown prior to this season, and yet they are now the favorites to win.

The match is spectacular, and Stinchcombe, as Seeker, plays brilliantly. The only blemish on the day is when the sky darkens immediately on the American victory, sending happy spectators home in dampened moods. Dumbledore has met Newt and friends at the pitch, and suspects something sinister, and Grindelwald specifically, but can’t prove it…

Grindelwald has pulled Stinchcombe aside, in all the confusion, and tells him he knows who he really is, a time traveling Albus Potter, and that he knows how long he’s struggled to find his place in the world, and that of course Grindelwald can help him find it. He once again raises the specter of the atomic bomb, now imminent, and the last piece of the puzzle, a Japanese wizard named Musashi who lives in Hiroshima, who will help Grindelwald and Albus achieve their goals.

Tina observes all this, but is discovered by Grindelwald in the process, and is quickly overwhelmed by his attack, but the timely intervention of the hippogriff they’ve been seeking, who is of course Buckbeak, sends her on her way, into the waiting hands of Newt and friends.

Who must now prepare for their final confrontation with Grindelwald, as they head toward a collision course with history. But not before being joined by one more party… Harry Potter himself.

Fantastic Beasts: The Boy Who Lived

This final installment begins with watching Albus having one last argument with his father and escaping with Buckbeak into the past, and Harry following after him, arriving in Hiroshima, where he meets the supposed wizard Musashi, who is really a Muggle, a baker, like Jacob, who in fact had a business with Jacob and Queenie until the war sent him back to Japan. 

Newt and Tina are tasked by Dumbledore to find an Ouroboros, a fantastic beast capable of shielding them from the blast of an atomic bomb, living somewhere in the islands the Americans and Japanese are currently fighting across.  They are finally forced to reconcile as they navigate the dangers, and once and for all fall in love.

Harry and Dumbledore have the strangest reunion ever. Harry tries to explain everything that will happen, but Dumbledore is evasive, yet somehow suggests he knows, and they instead talk about Albus, and through Dumbledore, Harry makes his own peace with the struggles he and his son have had.

Albus, meanwhile, is in the thrall of Grindelwald, and as they arrive in Hiroshima, not even the truth of Musashi’s existence, or Jacob and Queenie intercepting to protect him, changes this, until Harry and Dumbledore appear, with Newt and Tina close behind. 

Harry says he trusts his son, that he will make the right choice, and Albus realizes he’s been making the wrong ones, and an enraged Grindelwald strikes, and Dumbledore at last engages in his famous duel, and the bomb drops on them, and the Ouroboros shields them, and…

The goodbye is Newt’s. He’s sad that the Ouroboros had to sacrifice itself in order to shield them, but he’s happy that everyone gets a second chance to get things right. Musashi, Jacob, and Queenie decide to stay in Hiroshima, to rebuild in the ashes, Harry and Albus ride Buckbeak back to their own time, and Dumbledore heads back to Hogwarts, inviting Newt to a teaching position. 

Which he declines, to instead head off into the unknown, with Tina.

So Loved the World

He believed.

He was an old man, when he died. He was a young man when he first began to live. He met a man named Jesus, with whom he traveled for a few years, until the execution, and then he carried on the mission.

At the time of the execution he was in his early twenties. Together with his friends, he spent a decade spreading word about Jesus. In time he went about this on his own, with those he had gathered around him, when communities based on the Way began to form, outside the immediate reach of these original friends. When the persecutions began in earnest and executions became a common occurrence based on followers of the Way, and he was sent into exile, he found a new calling, a new voice.

Which is to say, he began to write.

It was a few decades into the movement that letters began to circulate, after these communities solidified. The letters kept these communities in contact. Some were written by a man named Paul, who joined the Way years after the execution, who had never known Jesus in life. And some were written by those who had known Jesus.

The friends had not been of an overly literate manner. Many of them had been fishermen. As the Way progressed, they found those who filled in the gaps of their experience. The one I followed, by the time I met him, as I said, he had found his voice. Sometimes it takes time. Often we are told to believe that talent is inherent, that it needs to exist in some recognizable fashion in order to be nurtured. Sometimes it simply appears. Sometimes it is inspired by forces that cannot be rationally explained. We came to believe such things. We believed in God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Some of us because of a man we found beloved.

He wasn’t always easy to love. He could be irascible. He had a peculiar sense of humor. If you didn’t understand it, if you didn’t understand him, you might get the wrong impression. He never hid from his reputation. Instead he would joke about it, or deflect. He’d say it was Phillip, not himself, who was the cause of all the mischief. This was funny, to me, in part because Phillip had been dead for years at this point. 

But he understood things better than anyone I ever knew. His words became like angels. He was a poet. He would say he learned from the master. If you want someone to remember something, tell it in a way that’s impossible to forget.

He was always telling us about Jesus. By this time there were stories about Jesus, about his life, circulating, to explain him to those who had never known him, who saw these friends spreading the message and perhaps might think it was them and not Him they should thank for it. It could be difficult, to reconcile the things said about Him. To many of us, he was God, and to the friends, he was Jesus. In the stories, he was both. But only in the words of my friend was this truly evident.

Over the years, over the decades, the more the Empire sought to stamp us out, the harder it became. Many of us expected Jesus to return in our lifetime. There were those who believed this was the whole point of our faith. There were many, and are, who confuse what our faith is about. They are the ones who struggle over whether Jesus was God or man. They miss the point, but at least they believe, although I confess I sometimes wish their faith was stronger.

My friend saw many things, and he amassed a great many followers, although he never for a moment let it reflect off himself. He kept the emphasis on Jesus. As the years progressed, and as he approached his death, the last of the first generation, he was in his nineties, but you wouldn’t have known it to see him. People often assume everyone ages the same. But some who are old are still young, and he was one of those. He never tired. 

He died seventy years after the execution. A lifetime. He never forgot a moment of his earliest years, in the footsteps of Jesus. Those of us gathered around him, we were writing our own letters, keeping the faith, the Way, and some of us were on our way to much more violent deaths, shorter lives, but no less consequential in our devotion to Jesus, in the face of an empire, Babylon, awaiting a glorious future, not in this lifetime, in this life, but in a different kingdom altogether. We believe in a life that can endure, that seeks the best of humanity, even in the midst of the worst, because God so loved the world he gave us Jesus, himself, his only son, the Son of Man, to an execution, a reconciliation, a new baptism, an affirmation, to wipe away forever the sins of the world, for all time, from the face of the earth, even as we continue to stumble and fall, to fail.

And I believe this because of my friend, who never gave up, who was old when he was young, and young when he was old. We should all be so lucky.

Still, I Believe - An Easter Tale

Still, I believe.

He just died. I stood at the foot of the cross with his mother. We stood there and watched the end of his life. I can’t really begin to process this. I listened to him talk about this moment, this day, long before any of the events that led up to it ever began. This isn’t the first one I ever witnessed, but…

I grew up with parents who made me believe the world was mine. Even when I started listening to the Baptist, this was the focal point of my life. A lot of us followed the Baptist not because of what he had to say about the messiah, but because he was himself magnetic. And that was why I followed him, too.

I can’t say his name right now. I don’t think I deserve to.

I found him magnetic, that’s why any of us followed him, if we were being honest. We certainly didn’t to have him explain, in his various ways, how badly we’d been failing, and continued to fail, even as we followed him. 

But even that wasn’t nearly humbling enough for me. Me and my ego. I thought, and never mind about my brother, because, and this isn’t because of ego, but, as I try to process what I just witnessed…that in order to follow such a man, to recognize his greatness, it could only be a credit to my character, that it spoke about me, my ability to recognize him for who and what he was…People would say about me, surely, what a good judge of character I am, how wise it was for me to attach myself to a great man, surely destined for truly great things…

What I could get out of it…

Sometimes you listen but you do not hear, look but do not see. You don’t realize how strong a pull the past has on you. My parents…they did what they thought was best for me. What I am beginning to realize, perhaps, is that what is best for me isn’t necessarily what’s best for others.

That’s what he was always trying to help us understand. And he just…He just died. He died because he loved the world. I can’t understand this.  He died because he loved the world. I’m trying to make sense of this. 

He died. Even after he told us this would happen, I don’t think any of us truly believed…What does this mean for tomorrow? I know what he told us…Not tomorrow but the day after.  But what about today? What happens today? How do you believe in tomorrow when the worst day of your life has just happened? How do you continue to believe you found the meaning of life when the world has just determined that it must have been wrong, very wrong, so wrong that it had to be expunged…

I spent years with this man. And he was a man, he was my friend, and most of the time I spent with him was like spending time with anyone. When he spoke, when he really spoke, his words were impossible. Listening to him then, it was as if there was no point listening to anyone, anything, ever again. This was a man who understood life better than anyone who ever lived, and somehow he was always better than anyone, and yet still understood…Completely impossible. I still can’t understand…

And to most of the world, despite the words, despite the miracles, he was almost completely anonymous. He was not a temple rabbi, he was not a king, he was not a governor. He was not friend to any of these. Not because he couldn’t have been. But because they had every reason to ignore him. And someone like me, when I finally got out of my own way, every reason to listen.

And I’m only now just beginning. Now that the words have stopped. Now that his body lies cold. What happens from here? I don’t know. They ended his threat. None of us are remotely his equal. How do we keep his work going without him? I listened, all those years, and I listened to his last words…They sounded definitive. Final. 

And yet, listening, as I am now, in the memories, I hear his message, and remember how he changed me. Took away my ego. It would be very tempting to say the world revolves around him, even in death. I don’t think this is what he would want, though. Remember him. But honor him in keeping his words alive. Believe.

He lies dead, and still, I believe. He saw a world that was possible. He saw the possible in the impossible suffering. He died for this. He died because he loved us. I know it doesn’t seem to make sense. For who he was, what he was, to die because he had faith in us…

It was terrible. The suffering, even knowing so many had been crucified before and many more will after him, knowing that he accepted this, even while it was happening, I didn’t know if I was strong enough. To witness. 

He spoke to me, from the cross. He called me a son. I have always been a son. But not until today did I understand what that meant. And he called me a brother. I have always been a brother. But not until today, when I lost my brother, did I know what it meant.

He didn’t ask anything more from me than to embrace my family. But I am only beginning to understand what a family is. And how hard it is to embrace it. You lose the member of the family who was most important to you, but you don’t lose the family. You can never lose the family. 

I…Even now, at the end of the world, I have a family. And this is what is going to make tomorrow possible. And the next day. And the next.

Still, I believe.

Star Trek: Starling - A Eugenics Tale

 (note: this story takes place immediately before the events of the Voyager two-part episode "Future's End")

Henry Starling had done it.  He had successfully buttressed the Western hemisphere from the awful effects of the Eugenics Wars, and he owed it all to a starship that had crashed in his backyard, a starship that hailed from the far future, and given him an edge in the budding wars of the future, the wars of the mind, of technology...

In the Asian lands there had been a man named Khan, and he had dominated the power struggles there in ways the modern world had not been prepared for, the product of genetic engineering that made him stronger and smarter than any man who had ever lived.  And he had not been the only one.  There had also been a man named Vlad, who had done much the same throughout the Baltics, and had designs for...elsewhere.  This was to say nothing of the African theater, where the worst of...everything, had occurred.

But Starling had at last won.  He had designed the ship that sent the survivors of these...men, into space.  Banished.  Forever.

It was Vlad who had considered himself Starling's rival.  In the United States of that time, its presidents had emerged from the Cold War with the chilling knowledge that they were equally forced to confront these supermen, and only one of them, the one called Vlad, had set his sights directly on them.  He scoffed at the presidents.  He saw them come and go, small men who depended on elections to gain power, and who were so easily undermined in the courts of public opinion.  But he saw Starling as different, obviously.  He saw Starling as having true power.

Starling, who had ushered in new ages of innovation for decades, who had significantly aided the NASA programs and their successes, not a single failure! in an endless procession of missions into space.  Vlad had seen this as the new frontier, and that for all their power his brethren held no sway in that realm.  They played checkers while Starling played chess.  And so he positioned himself against Starling.

What Vlad couldn't know was that Starling spent much of his time obsessing over someone else entirely, a man named Braxton, the pilot of the starship that had created his technological empire, who had gone missing, and had never been found, off the grid, even Starling's.  And Starling could not allow this to continue forever, for a Braxton left to his own devices would surely one day pose his own threat, one far deadlier than any superman...

It was this distracted Starling who blinked as Vlad set the world on the brink, set a course for invasion, the spark that would light the fire of another world war, while the latest president struggled to come up with a response.  Vlad even proposed a fight, an actual, physical fight, not against the president, but Starling, one he knew beyond question he would win.  No one, in the real world, need possess physical prowess anymore, not to enjoy power, and this Vlad had realized before even Khan, had so frustrated him, and he saw the laughable prospect of a fight with Henry Starling as exactly the image that would win him the world...

But Starling, his eye on a man who in all likelihood was currently living the life of a homeless bum, separated from all his advantages, had already developed the only weapon he needed, a new ship, a ship that could place all the supermen in stasis and then off into the deep reaches of space, and then...He turned his eye toward the world, the mundane, ordinary world, long enough to catch the crisis unfolding on the news, and the challenge issued by Vlad against him.

And he accepted!

So of course he cheated.  Shamelessly.  Vlad never saw it coming.  Starling pulled a gadget out of his pocket, casually, and unexpectedly fried the life right out of Vlad, in an instant.  Starling hadn't meant to kill him, just as the warlords in Africa hadn't meant to starve out their superman, along with everyone else, but that's how it turned out.  Starling didn't understand all the technology, even decades later, that he'd stumbled upon, modified, exploited, developed over the years, inventing the modern world.

Which, very soon after he'd won, sent the last of them into space...the future caught up with him.  And then, a few years after that, another world war did happen.  But, in a missile silo, in Montana, a man had tinkered with his own vision just long enough to invent humanity's quantum leap, the warp engine, the one thing that always eluded Henry Starling, and...