Star Trek '12: 3112 AD (Conclusion) - And Vulcans Again

A Vulcan by the name of Sallek tinkered with a new starship design, a retrofitted dorsal carrier.  For many years, Vulcans had been excluded from the intergalactic community, mostly by choice but also through their inability to adapt.  No doubt many of them had seen it coming, perhaps by as many as three millennia, perhaps someone in Sallek’s own line, and perhaps they had made peace with it.  The times were always changing, but Sallek preferred to believe that they remained comfortably familiar, even in the midst of radical reform.  He himself had always tried to lead a simple life, something many of his brethren had elected to forego, always filling their days with complication, always verging on chaos, even if they believed their efforts to represent basic Vulcan logic.  Sallek didn’t believe most Vulcans had the first clue of basic Vulcan logic.  It was a lost art almost from the beginning.  Still, what was he to do about it?

As it turns out, nothing.  He instead led a humble life, and tinkered away at his technical manuals.  He often chatted with his human friends via subspace, an antiquated but amiable way to communicate.  He tried to keep up on current events, but with so many reporting agencies, it was difficult to settle on the best one to follow, especially since none of them were comprehensive.  He decided not to worry about it.  There were plenty of things to worry about, besides, not the least was his own continued well-being, which could never be assured.  There were so many elements working against each other in the universe, and in their efforts to be successful in this venture, they often discovered that it was easier to ignore the small things that got caught up in their affairs, caught up and lost and abandoned, chewed up and spit out, became the victims of circumstance and their own inability to adapt.  Yes, Sallek believed that his very decision to lead a simple life kept him safe from such concerns, but in fact, he also knew it made him specially vulnerable.

So yes, he worried about it, but he also tried not to.  He figured there was enough space to go around, and that there were enough good people where even the worst of calamities might eventually be dulled.  Life was full of complications and possibilities, but some things always remained the same.

Star Trek '12: 3012 AD - Daniels

He forgot to study for the test, and so he traveled back in time to make up for his lapse of judgment.  Actually, it should be noted that young Daniels did not always cheat like that, but every now and again, it was worth the risk.  These days they didn’t monitor activity like that too closely.

There was much to be taken for granted, even though there were many more complications to life these days, at least so it may have seemed had Daniels reached the higher grades already, where he might be asked to write a paper on the comparative analysis of millennia.  These days, history was arguably the primary subject each student studied.  It dominated everyone’s interests.  For Daniels, it had always been a boring necessity, something so commonplace that he took no real pleasure in it.  It was this detached attitude that would eventually make him a perfect candidate to become an agent of the Temporal Cold War.  He would not lose his head at the first meeting with some long-dead celebrity.

It should be noted that for most people these days this was an entirely common temperament, but there was now such a high degree of accessibility that there was a very serious and sober physiological monitor that reported the exact level of stimulation to a given experience.  It was not one of the cooler toys, but it was most effective.  You couldn’t very well let someone go off and affect the past because they couldn’t keep a level head.  In a time where travel had become less than linear, very few mistakes happened.

Young Daniels didn’t tend to appreciate much of this, however, and so maybe that’s why his older self tended to visit him on a fairly regular basis.  This did not on a whole affect his opinions, but it gave comfort to the older Daniels that he was at least thinking about it, because while you may retain a certain amount of opinions as you grow older, you don’t retain specific thoughts, and neither Daniels liked to keep a record of those, even though these days virtually everything was marked down in some sort of ledger.

Upon every visit, the young Daniels would ask the older Daniels if there was something important that was about to happen.  The young Daniels already knew the answer, as it had been the same every time he asked this question, but the only amusement he gained from these visits was all the squirming his older counterpart exhibited.  Young Daniels knew that he would never be comfortable explaining himself, both from himself and from these visits, and it was almost comforting to know that it would never change.  Repeating the exercise was the only sense of control he had over the visits, which never ceased, and wouldn’t until it was him on the other end.  This was another way in which Daniels learned temperance.  These days there were very interesting lessons to learn.

If Daniels were interested in his studies, he might have concentrated a little more, and yet it was all so boring, so routine, that he struggled mightily.  He understood it well enough, but he wanted to be surprised, and didn’t consider that these days it was meant for life to have anything but occur until he had in fact become his older self.  That was when he discovered the real reason for the visits, undertaken between trips to the distant past, nearly a millennium ago, during which he was meant to ensure the foundation of his present reality, with identically similar visits to a man he was very distantly related to, but who for all intents and purposes was both a father and child figure for him.

It was during these days that Daniels finally knew the thoughts he himself was having during the visits to his younger self, trying to imagine what that man really thought of him, if he shared the same opinions as the young Daniels, baffled and annoyed and probably mystified, too, but knowing that they would continue to happen.  The older Daniels was almost pleased to know that there was a connection between these two distant figures, and wondered if that was something he was meant to have learned in school.  He asked his younger self this question, each and every visit, and received the same response he was himself forced to give whenever the young Daniels asked if there was a specific reason for the visit.  He had to give the man an answer each time, and he didn’t like that one bit.  Maybe the man felt the same way, and maybe he should have been formulating a question for the man.  Maybe that was the whole point of their relationship, of his whole life, and he’d just never realized it before.

Well, these days it was hard to tell.

Star Trek '12: 2912 AD - "Living Witness"

Aberdeen was hesitant to report his findings.  He’d just discovered physical proof of the existence of a starship said to have caused immeasurable devastation seven hundred years ago.  The reason why he was hesitant was that he did not believe the stories that surrounded the starship.  He believed that they had been manipulated to justify a continuing social injustice he sincerely wanted to be overcome.

Yet he could not ignore his findings either.  There would be outrage if it was found out that he suppressed them.  One way or another, someone would find out, and they would accuse him of the very crime he had hoped to avert, the support of an agenda.

Progress had been glorious, but it had also been stagnant since the time of the starship’s appearance.  It must be said that there was peace now that hadn’t existed before.  But it was peace built on a foundation of lies.  Aberdeen did not want to be a part of it.  How then had he stumbled into this position?  He was an itinerant dreamer, and so was forced into more practical concerns in order to make a living.  He supposed that mining would be a harmless way to make a living, locked underground and basically lost to the world.  There was no reasonable expectation that something like this would happen.

So it was that the very man who could usher more than one revolution had found himself in such an unwanted position.  Aberdeen was also a self-professed coward.  He loathed and feared others, his faith in his own kind trampled by years of bad breaks that betrayed a selfish nature he abhorred.  Was he no better than anyone else?

In the end, the decision was made for him.  A supervisor came by and caught a glimpse of his discovery, and roughly shoved Aberdeen out of the way, didn’t wait for an explanation, and certainly not for his thoughts on the matter.  Aberdeen was quickly forgotten in the rush to capitalize on this stroke of fortune, this vindication of the popular belief that a starship full of strangers had brought destruction and unexpected peace to his world.

He secretly hoped that there was still a chance that all would be well in the end.

Star Trek '12: 2812 AD - Braxton

Braxton already knew what would happen to him before he began anything.  It was there in the history books.

By this point in history you will be encouraged to censor.  The first thing you will want to censor is, of course, history, as it will be entirely possible that even an idle survey will reveal things you yourself have done, in your own future but clearly in the past, because the ability to time travel is a matter of course.  Before you have the ability to make these decisions for yourself, your parents will make them for you, and it is common for parents to lack discretion, so there are warrants taken out all the time for parents against their own children, lest they pollute their potential.

…Well, presumably all of this is easier to understand in 2812, when all these rules are common, all these realities a part of everyday living.  Just as you will learn to ride a bike today, tomorrow you will learn these things.

When you break these rules, there is counseling available to help you cope.  If you want to forget what you’ve learned about yourself, what becomes of you, there are hypnotherapies available, quite effective, except there are always lingering elements.  There will always be a part of this unfortunate knowledge in your subconscious.

Presumably, Braxton entered the time service because of what he’d learned.  Perhaps he somehow believed that he could prevent his awful fate from happening.  And possibly he had many instructors who tried explaining why it was unlikely.  For everyone who has made a paradox, and perhaps an alternate reality, in such efforts, there are many others who have proven the rule that time is time no matter how it is experienced.  It is a strictly causal affair.  You have a better chance of winning the lottery, coming face-to-face with Big Foot, than altering your fate, no matter how convoluted you’ve made it.

This does not preclude the concept of free will.  You will always make your own decisions.  It’s just that, from an objective standpoint, everything that will ever happen has already happened, and it’s only from first-person perspective where it still has yet to play out.

Braxton’s fate, of course, was to eventually travel back in time to 1967, where he would lose his timeship to the ambitious Henry Starling and his mind to various temporal integrations necessitated by his obsession with a lost Starfleet crew in the Delta Quadrant.

To those who don’t understand it, time can be a terrible thing.  Braxton was supposed to not only understand, but police it.  It was his life that proved time travel had not yet been perfected.

He of course, did not know this.  As with any other contemporary to an established idea, he believed that everyone already knew everything they needed to.  The fact is, he never even knew of his own participation in the Temporal Cold War.

Braxton never recovered from temporal psychoses.  He did, however, manage to enjoy himself in odd moments during his time, mostly when he stopped taking everything so seriously.

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…

Star Trek '12: 2612 AD - Founders

A long time ago in a part of the galaxy known as the Gamma Quadrant, many ambassadors were sent forth from the Founders to explore the nature of the universe.  These ambassadors were a little unusual, in that they were infants, not knowing even their own kind.  It was the wisdom of the Founders to choose them for this service so that they could discover themselves at the same time as discovering the circumstances in which they found themselves, so as to form an unbiased opinion.  Always they would feel the call home, to discover their own origins, and report what they learned, but they would be untainted by prejudice.

This would always be ironic, because the Founders themselves had allowed themselves to be corrupted by their own past.

A long time from now, one of these infants will return.  He will be the last of them, and he will be one of the very few of those who were sent away to make it.  In many ways, these ambassadors will have mirrored the original experiences of the Founders, the ones that helped form the Dominion, which terrorized the galaxy for a time, eventually to be defeated by an inversion of itself, and through another reunion with one of its own.

This particular infant, this particular ambassador, spent five hundred years on his own.  He did not know sentient life for all that time.  He observed space all the same, and came to know many wonders, saw manipulations from a thousand different forms, the secrets of nature, decay and creation unfold on an unimaginable scale, with unmatched subtlety, a ballet of atoms and elements.  There were times when he could see the unseen forces, the unknowable architects, interpret the unthinkable in the tiniest acts.

Then one day it was snagged by a passing starship, caught in the exhaust port, unable to resist a sudden curiosity, half-deliberate and part accident, spending a week exploring the mechanics before even considering interacting with the inhabitants, perhaps because he had no conception of them, too complex and terrifying to contemplate.

The poetry of the hardware fascinated the changeling to no end.  He was more experienced than almost any other being in the universe, yet in no practical way had he ever conceived of such things.  There was much recognition, the changeling slowly realized, and he spent several more weeks replicating these discoveries.  This was something he could understand.  It was the conspiracy of human life that baffled him.  It was entirely foreign to him, the infinitely more complex nature of bringing the whole engine together.  Had he known these beings believed thought to be the essential ingredient of life, he would have laughed for the first time.

The riddle of expression was what bothered him most.  Forced to create it for himself, the changeling did not know where to begin.  He had no inherent form.  He had only ever observed.  He knew the ingredients, but he had no idea how they tasted when put together.

He fashioned himself into the most simple thing he could think of, a communications badge, and allowed himself to be worn by one of these individuals, and spent a month like that, fulfilling a function and observing, completely mindless to its significance, and perpetually unconvinced that he would ever make sense of anything that happened.  He picked up the language, mastered it, yet remained silent, as he had been since he first became aware of himself.

One day the woman to whom he had been attached went on a mission and was shot, and it was he himself who was hit, and he uttered his first sound, a scream, and the woman didn’t even register his existence, believed until the day she died that she was the one who’d made the sound.  She never even entertained another possibility, though her colleagues continually suggested that she had been mistaken, even though they couldn’t explain it themselves.

He started making communications, conversations, mimicking her voice, and though it caused a little more confusion, it was also basically ignored, more of himself that remained hidden from the world he believed he would never truly know.

The pull began without him noticing, something that had been going on all his life, but kicked into gear when he had to give up the communications badge existence, when the woman died and the badge was stuck in a drawer.  He didn’t want to live in a drawer, so changed forms, and felt the pull.  It was irresistible.  It was undeniable.

He shot through the stars.  He went through the wormhole.  He briefly acknowledged the Prophets.  He landed on the current homeworld of the Founders.  He didn’t think he had much to tell them.  But he was finally home.

Star Trek '12: 2512 AD - Starfleet

Alexander Chase never wanted to be first officer of anything, but it was the only way to reach the captain’s chair.  At least, if he was lucky, that might be the case again.  Starfleet had seen better days.

Serving under Captain Winick was proving to be a lot more interesting than he’d thought.  After years of idling on Academy grounds, waiting for a position to open in one of the few ships still in service (which did not guarantee that they were in working order), Chase was surprised when Winick contacted him directly.  Maybe that’s how it used to be done, too, when the fleet had a mandate, a purpose, hell even a Prime Directive.  There were more officers than could find work, so most of them sat around doing civilian jobs when someone bothered to hire them, or just sat around, which was the last thing Chase wanted to do, but he couldn’t avoid doing, because the Great Bird of the Galaxy had not only died, but left no next of kin, no will, and definitely no successor, and so everything fell apart.

It had been a pretty good run, all told, several centuries of exploration and making friends out of enemies and making contact with the unknown, surviving every challenge, upholding an ideal and a dream, and producing some of the finest individuals to ever travel the stars.  Decline comes to everything, even Starfleet, even the Federation, whose Council had not met in more than half a century.  The only reason the fleet was still active at all was because the remaining ships had not completely fallen apart.  The problem was a deficiency of great men.

At some point observers had stopped looking for them, and when they started overlooking great men, great men stopped appearing.  There was no longer any incentive.  Chase had been surprised by everything about Winick, whose career he had never seen reported in any of the news services, which squawked incessantly about inane events of the day and tracked things that could be made to sound like crises, but ignored anyone who might actually make a difference.  He’d stopped believing such individuals were possible.  Winick was bold enough to make her interests plain.  She cut through all the bullshit and asked Chase directly if he’d like a job.  She’d fired her last commander.

“Come work for me and you’ll see the future open before you like a sunrise,” she’d said.  Chase believed her.

The ship was predictably unimpressive, of a famous lineage but hardly capable of living up to it, even under Captain Winick.  There was only so much she could do, operating with a crew of fifty, the best Starfleet could afford any vessel these days, just enough to keep it running, keep it in space, as long as the fuel held out.  Winick had him take a tour of the whole ship, and asked him how many of the positions he could fill in a pinch, and Chase had to admit that his knowledge was shallow.  She seemed to understand, but said she valued his honesty most of all.  Still, he’d have to learn, and pull double-shifts until he did.  There wasn’t much sleep on a ship like that anyway.

No, he didn’t want to be first officer.  He craved the captain’s seat, wanted to make a difference, wanted badly to prove great things were still possible.  Yet he learned under Winick that great things could be defined in small gestures.  They visited the new Vulcan homeworld, helped reopen Romulan mining operations, brought the Vidiians to the Gamma Quadrant, introduced Klingons and Hirogen, even helped the Ferengi market get back on its feet, taught Andorians and Breen about beaches.  They visited countless worlds, saw innumerable wonders.  Winick announced that she was retiring.  Would Chase like that seat after all?

Before he wouldn’t have hesitated.  The old him had almost passed on the assignment in the first place, said it was beneath him, would have spat in her face to finally condescend him with the one thing he’d always wanted after holding him back for years.  The truth was, he was still young.  The universe was old, and he was young.

“I will show you a glorious sunset,” he finally replied.

(Based on the aborted STAR TREK: FINAL FRONTIER animated series.)

Star Trek '12: 2412 AD - Nexus

A ribbon of brilliant light flashed through the sky, and Ellis stared up in wonder.  It was the outward manifestation of the Nexus, a gateway to the reality of your choice.  Federation scientists had been studying it for years, ever since the report of Jean-Luc Picard that said James T. Kirk, or a version of him, could still be found there.  Kirk was a Starfleet legend, who saved the galaxy a hundred times over, died twice in the line of duty, thanks to the Nexus, and the best part was, having once entered this portal, there remained a copy of him inside it, as Picard noted of an El-Aurian friend of his.  The best part was, since Picard had entered the Nexus himself, there was a copy of him there, too.

Ellis had been fascinated by the notion of meeting his hero from the moment he’d read the report, part of standard Starfleet Academy paradox training, the last course of study he’d undertaken before dropping out to further explore the possibility of experiencing the Nexus himself.  Thanks to standard spatial analysis, he knew precisely where and when the Nexus would next appear, and he intended to be present, no matter the risk.

He knew that he could not simply pilot a ship into the ribbon, that the ribbon had to be the inciting factor, otherwise he would simply be smashed into oblivion, and lose his chance and life on a reckless and meaningless collision.  He signed aboard a Niberite Alliance trade vessel at the first opportunity, and used his spare time to calculate the best possible location for him to wait when 2412 finally came.

He ended up choosing a small moon in the Rigel system, where he could wait in an old mining outpost.  The moment it passed overhead, Ellis hopped into his shuttlecraft and took off, hoping he could pull ahead of it without being affected by its gravitational force, which had wrecked many other ships in the past, including the one Kirk was helping to commission during his first encounter with the ribbon, and first death.  Since by its nature the Nexus could not be tracked by conventional methods, this was the best he could hope for, counting on blind chance.  He did not want to risk the mania others had succumbed to on similar quests.

The shuttlecraft was rocked violently, but Ellis held his composure.  He’d made enough modifications to ensure his safety on this voyage, adapting Tholian technology in what he considered to be clever and innovative ways, perhaps prize-winning, if he failed in his real goal.  Still, the vibrations were brutal, and Ellis found that he was glad that there had been little time to eat that day.  His nerves, already getting the best of him the night before, so that he’d gotten little sleep on top of missing several other meals, were attempting to match the pull of the ribbon, so that he was no longer sure what caused his own movements.  His mind was too fuzzy to be sure of anything.  That was why he’d planned it out well in advance, so he would not have to rely on himself in the moment, much less the possibility of a malfunctioning computer.

Finally, Ellis thought that he could feel the ribbon itself, even through the bulkhead, its dazzling heat a kind of comforting embrace.  Control panels all around him were starting to pop, sending electrical fires and smoke into the cabin, threatening to suffocate him, and he could not control his shaking hands long enough to suppress any of it, much less utter a verbal command.  The view outside the nearest port was too blinding, and Ellis was afraid that he was going to pass out.

It was almost like a gentle nudge, the faint sensation that radiated all around him, and suddenly Ellis was back at the Academy, sitting in class and studying that report again, and he looked up, lost in thought, and almost didn’t register the fact that his instructor was holding court with a colleague, ignoring the cadets, lost in some shared adventure, something about jumping horses over a ravine, some kind of miracle, and a smile came over his face.  He had made it.

Star Trek '12: 2312 AD - Humans

Marty Pressman was an engineer in Starfleet.  He’d worked on starship design theory for a couple of years before he became frustrated with the fundamental flaw of the program, and that was the moratorium on cloaking devices.

Everyone knew that the Federation had signed a treaty with the Romulan Empire forbidding it, but Pressman didn’t particularly care.  He knew what he wanted and didn’t like to be told he couldn’t have it.  So instead of conforming to expectations, he started to rebel.  He spent late hours pouring over documents about the treaty, its specifics, exact wording, history, alternate theories…His superiors started asking him questions, even though he was careful, and it was only a matter of works before he was called to speak with the captain, and during this little chat he was informed that the Romulans had learned about his activities, and Starfleet was not at all happy about that.  At the very least, he was told, he should have cleared this interest with his immediate supervisor, if not the chief, if not the captain himself.

Pressman asked if he could speak freely.  The captain allowed it.  Pressman hesitated for a moment, and then decided that he might as well seize the opportunity.  He started by asking if the Romulans really had a right, or if the Federation had a right, to make such judgments.  Was the price of peace really at the cost of progress?  Was it not Starfleet mandate to expand the horizon, rather than diminish it?

He started to feel a little giddy.  The captain said nothing, so he continued.  Surely there were secret programs, some agency or another, who were already working on it, or perhaps there were officers who had already cracked the code, or other species who would share the secret.  Romulans couldn’t be the only ones who possessed the technology.  In fact, he suggested, there must be several, if not hundreds, members of the Federation.  There were similar methods he knew of that Starfleet did allow.  Would it really be such a stretch to expand them, to work around the treaty?

He began to grow more bold.  The captain remained silent.  He continued.  Was peace with an empire that had now been silent for decades really worth the cost to the future?  Was not the foundation of the Federation built on the exchange of ideas, rather than stifling them?  Had not humanity itself struggled with Vulcans over this very issue for more than a century?

The captain finally spoke.  He said that Pressman was a valued member of his crew, with a promising career.  He would make many valuable contributions to the fleet, no doubt.  Except in this area.  It was vital that he put this behind him, and that he do it then and there.  Surely he must understand the need for security, the need for compromise?  Many individuals had looked into these matters before him.  The Federation had not signed the treaty lightly, but with great cost of life, and with utmost integrity.  Surely that was worth preserving?

Pressman knew when he was dismissed.  He saw the bored expression in the captain’s eyes.  He waited to be dismissed, and watched as the captain reviewed a data pad.  Finally, there was a slight nod, and Pressman stepped out of the ready room, and onto the bridge of the ship, where the helm officer, a friend of his, smiled weakly at him.  He continued to the turbo shaft, passing the science station, and thought glumly about what the captain had just told him, in so many words that he should mind his own business.  He stepped into the lift and gave the command for engineering.  He stood quietly for a moment, the doors opened again, and he walked into the busy hub of activity that did not hold anything for him, not now.

He knew he would not be promoted.  He thought of his young son Erik, attending primary school on Rigel IV.  If he stopped now, the boy would not be affected by these decisions, might still have a chance at a better career than him, perhaps be able to fulfill this mad dream.

Pressman continued in a haze for the remainder of the day, doing his job mechanically, which was the only way he’d survive from now on, no longer believing in anything, hoping for another war with the Romulans, or that the Klingons would do it, or that some miracle would happen and the universe would suddenly start making sense.  He started making private notes of everything he’d seen.

Star Trek '12: 2212 AD - Horta

Orczy is not much of a mining technician, but even he can tell when something is going wrong, specifically that there seems to be a lot more mining going on than be strictly accounted for in the budding operation here on Janus VI.

Orczy is a budding journalist, although he struggles to report anything that others might consider to be news.  For instance, rather than cover the mining scandal (so far as he sees it) these last few weeks, he’s been submitting articles on excessive perspiration, another problem he’s noticed, but is a problem only for Orczy, as he has been trying to get his hair just right and all this perspiration has been hindering him.  He feels it is to do with the planet and its faulty terraforming, and although he had to go through a laborious process to get this position in the first place, he has been complaining about it almost from the start.

For instance, he wrote his first article about the indecent levels of humidity in the air, and this was rejected on the grounds that there was nothing to be done about it.  He submitted a few more on the same topic, in case the first and then the next several had been lost.  Then he switched tacks and decided to try some different perspectives.  That’s the sort of thing journalists should do, Orczy knows.  They should also have nice hair, or so he thinks.  He has trouble convincing others of this.

He’s also having a hard time getting anyone to believe that there are a great deal more tunnels beneath the surface of Janus VI than there should be, possibly because he is more eccentric than a Breen hairdresser (it is a noted rumor that all Breen are in fact bald).  He talks about this with the rate of someone trying for a record, although he has made no progress at all in getting anyone to listen.  He suspects that it is because of the excess moisture in the air.  It makes everyone crazy, except Orczy.  He maintains razor-like focus, even when his hair isn’t doing what it’s supposed to, which is most of the time.  Back on Earth he let everyone know that he had the best hair in the galaxy.  It was suggested more than once that perhaps he ought to get out there and prove it.

Orczy wanders about doing nothing much at all most of the day, and that may also affect his reputation somewhat, aside from his criticisms of sweating too much, writing articles of utter nonsense, going on about his hair, and reporting that there are too many tunnels beneath the surface.  More than one person has suggested he make an inventory of all the tunnels, and preliminary surveys of Janus VI before the mining operating even began already suggest there to be thousands.  Finding an exact number could take some time, but few people can be found to complain about the lack of Orczy that would result from such an effort.  No doubt he could be lost for decades!

You might be asking yourself if Orczy has any friends, and Orczy would have one answer that would in many ways contradict reality, but it is also worth noting that he is rarely wrong in his observations; it’s just that he’s exceptionally annoying about it.  He mainly signed up for the mining operation because Blakeney would be going, an old friend of his who has the best hair Orczy has ever known, and perhaps his obsession with her can best be described as a form of jealousy.  It should be noted that “friend” would be exaggerating a bit, and perhaps even “acquaintance,” as their relationship has chiefly revolved his increasingly failed attempts to get a friendly word out of her.  Mainly, it’s Orczy going on about how much he loves her, and Blakeney restraining herself from punching him.

So that’s as much of the social aspect of Orczy’s life as you’ll need.  You should probably know upfront that he isn’t wrong about the number of tunnels, but it won’t be for several more decades until anyone knows what the hell he’s talking about.

Star Trek '12: 2112 AD - Kal Dano

Risa is the greatest planet in the galaxy!

Ahem.  If that is not sober enough a statement for you, let me clarify: it’s the only planet where any alien species can find something that pleases it, provided that they find leisure activities pleasing.  There were some efforts early on in its existence to provide interests outside of leisure pursuits, but there were too many complications, and thus the concept was abandoned.

Unfortunately, Kal Dano did not get the memo.  He believed that it was still a fine destination for things like ultimate weapons, which is the only way the Tox Uthat can be classified.  It is indeed an ultimate weapon, a doomsday device so incredible in its destructive ability that Dano was forced to find a new home for it, since its original one proved, as Risa had for things other than leisure activities, completely unfit.  Or perhaps Dano was simply a thief looking to stash his goods away for a moment.  Perhaps we may know for certain in time.

Which one of our attendants came across Mr. Dano first is still a matter of dispute, but there was a great amount of excitement.  He announced himself to be a time traveler, which is not unheard of on Risa, but we tend to regulate our guests so that they do not bring things like ultimate weapons along with them.  At any rate, it was explained to him several times that possessing such a thing was inappropriate, and that he would have to dispose of it.  Naturally he was not accommodating to our suggestion, and soon gave a wild chase to many members of the staff.  Later versions of this will no doubt allow anyone who may learn of it to assume that he simply appeared, dropped off the Tox Uthat, and departed again, but rest assured that while we are by definition lax in most standards, we take security quite seriously, as it’s our basic responsibility to our guests, and we have quite a few gadgets left over from our aborted experiment to be able to provide all levels of security for them.  Less responsible hosts might consider a business partnership with the Orion Syndicate, but that’s not the policy or the interest of the governing council on Risa.

But yeah, we could do quite a few interesting things if we liked.  We would have confiscated the Tox Uthat if we’d wanted.  It was entirely within our rights, and we’d hardly want unsuspecting guests to stumble onto something like that.  It would certainly ruin someone’s vacation!  As it is, our agents eventually caught up to Mr. Dano and we came to a mutual agreement.  While we no longer condone the presence of such things as a matter of course, we are not unreasonable.  We wouldn’t be very good at our jobs if we were!  Instead, we made sure that only those truly committed to it might discover the Tox Uthat, something Dano himself seemed perfectly satisfied with, as he himself had the ability to monitor it to a greater degree than we could, being privy to the historical records as he is, from whichever century he’s from and happens to linger.  It was suggested by our chief of tranquility that he might be an agent of the Temporal Cold War, but most of us dismissed the notion.  But you never know.

Actually, I don’t know why I’m going on about all this.  Some of us are far more excited at the prospect of humans finally reaching our humble planet.  They’re been traveling the galaxy for a good number of years now, but they’re incredibly limited in their propulsion systems at the moment, though rumor has it they’re close to a breakthrough, as long as the Vulcans leave them alone long enough, or maybe if the Klingons finally pay them a visit, if they’re worth it.  I have a wager going that the term “Starfleet” won’t amount to much, but then, someone said Kal Dano mentioned it, so what do I know?

Anyway, I’m sure none of this interests you.  Care for a horga’hn?

Star Trek '12: 2012 AD - Nacene

Eight hundred years earlier things were a little simpler.

Well, that would be the myth.  Except, sometimes, we know better.  Sometimes we’re able to see the past with clarity, without rose-tinted blinders, and we know that things were no better then than they are now, and maybe that’s why some people are always depressed, why they can’t find any positive meaning in their lives.

Well, the Caretaker, as such he had begun to consider himself, and would consider himself for another three hundred years, until his death, knew better.  Suspiria was finally leaving him.  It wasn’t anything that had happened recently, or had been developing for several hundred years, or even the incident that had brought them to this predicament in the first place.  It simply happened.  Most things that happen are exactly like that, actually.  There’s no reason.  You can certainly learn a lot about what happened before it if you look, but that doesn’t mean it had anything, in the end, with what just occurred.  Every moment in time is precious and alone and of itself.

There’s no reason to look deeper, to forge connections, to map everything as if it all had a single thread running through it.  There are patterns, is all, and perhaps it’s wise to know what they are, but if there’s a meaning, then that’s a matter of interpretation, not fact.

The fact was, Suspiria wanted to try something new.  All the Ocampa who left with her did.  In fact, they wanted to return to old ways, just as she did.  The problem neither of them realized was that they were leaving essential elements of what would have helped make that possible behind.  None of the Ocampa who departed could truly understand or appreciate what their ancestors had once had, because they were leaving the last remnants of context behind.  They would be starting over, believing that they were reviving old practices and old abilities, when in fact they were creating new ones.  Suspiria was not in the least interested in helping them grow.  For her, they were a matter of convenience, just as she was for them.  The same was true, of course, for her.  She had never known a life on her own, and yet there she would be, on her own, without her companion for the first time in her life.  The relationship she had with her chosen Ocampa was nothing like the one her companion had with the rest of them.

The Caretaker knew that.  He understood what would happen to her, even if he mourned both these losses for a very long time, and why he knew with a certainty that she would outlive him, and why he gradually forgot what that would mean, why he had known why she left, why he would forget that it only made sense, that they were no longer as similar as they had once been, why they had drifted apart, why so many things had and would continue to change.

He tried to put it past him, the heartbreak, the useless feeling gnawing at the pit of his stomach, the uncertainty about the future, but found that he was unable.  He had a purpose, and perhaps had already lost himself in it, and perhaps would remember one day that the only true path to the future was remembering to regain himself, if only for a moment, so that all his work, his triumphs and failures, would mean something again, that his efforts would not be in vain, and he could once again tell himself that he hadn’t caused more harm than good.

Perhaps he could find a new companion, a replacement, someone to lighten the load, who would understand him better, and perhaps they were far away and perhaps they were close.  He had to try…

Star Trek '12: 1912 AD - Xindi

Who else but the Reptilians would’ve begun the fractioning of Xindi harmony?  Actually, there’s some debate about that.  It was very much likely to have been the Avians.  The Avians were the ones with ambition.  The Avians were the ones who dominated Xindus for centuries.  They had the greatest numbers, and their ability to fly gave them an advantage over the others.  They couldn’t know that they provided so much inspiration to those who would become their competitors.

The others were all beholden to certain environments.  The Aquatics, certainly, but so, too the Arboreals, the Primates, the Insectoids, and yes, the Reptilians.  They were all…terrestrial, bound to Xindus, its surface elements.  The Avians were careless.  They never even considered anything more than they had.  They seemed to have everything.

So it was the Avians, yes, but it was also the Reptilians, because they were the first to have ambition, the first to know jealousy.  But they lacked ability.  The Primates were good for that.  They were the first ones the Reptilians consulted.  This alliance gave birth to the first means of artificial flight.  It gave birth to the first Xindi starships.  The Primates depended on the Arboreals for some of the logistics, and the Aquatics for some overall strategy.  Who else but those exist in their own world but are removed from another to think of what to do next?  The Reptilians didn’t count on the agitation of the Insectoids.  They really should have.

The more everyone started working together on a common cause, the easier it was to provoke them.  The Insectoids were good for that.  They buzzed into as many ears as possible.  So while it can be said that it was the fault of the Avians, or that it was the fault of the Reptilians, it was also the fault of the Insectoids.

But who’s to say how a war begins?  Usually the necessary spark is the least relevant element.

The fact remains, six differences species, six different races, all of them Xindi, couldn’t get along anymore, and so a war resulted, one that was to last for a hundred years, cause the destruction of Xindus, the extinction of the Avians, and worse.

If you could ask the Avians if they knew it was coming, would they even have a clue?  Often those in power are too consumed with their own power to know what’s actually going on.  While everything works in their favor, they think they’re impregnable.  The more paranoid are always acting in what they believe to be their best interests, but they have bad instincts, and so usually affect the opposite, and sabotage themselves.  The Avians might be seen as victims, they might never have even done a single wrong to any of their brethren, or they might have been the direct provocateurs of the war, and thus had their fate coming to them.  I guess as history goes, it doesn’t really matter.  It happened.  It helps to know why, but it doesn’t change what happened.  Those who care know.  Do you care?

Star Trek '12: 1812 AD - Trelane

Trelane was a child.  Let’s just get that out of the way.  He barely understood what he did centuries later.  It stands to reason that he didn’t understand what he was doing when he looked to Napoleon Bonaparte for a bit of inspiration.

By the time Trelane observed him, Napoleon was close to losing it all.  But that also meant that he was close to having it all, too.  For many people, Napoleon was just about one of the most dangerous men in history.  He was a conqueror of the first order.  Trelane didn’t really get that, obviously.  What he saw was a human who seemed to be capable of anything, and very few compunctions.  What kind of impression of humanity would you have if you used Napoleon as your model?

This was what Trelane learned: that it was appropriate to take what you want, and that you get what you deserve.  It’s a pity that he didn’t look on at Napoleon just a few years later, because he really did lose everything, just when it seemed like he would have everything.  In fact, Napoleon was an excellent model for someone like Trelane, a veritable infant.  This is not to judge Trelane, or to judge Napoleon, but to say that it’s appropriate that immaturity embraced without question the splendor of so ruthless a figure without truly comprehending it.  What Trelane had and what he recognized was power, and so that was why he admired Napoleon, and why he didn’t bother to question whether he understand the man at all.  He didn’t have to!

From his perch he was greatly amused by what he saw, and all men who observe from perches are, and never stop to think about their entertainment.  It’s fine to be amused, but it’s a better thing to know what amuses you, and why.  Trelane didn’t do this because it never occurred to him.  He was king of his own world, and so was Napoleon, and oh if he’d only known what would happen!

But that was not meant to be.

Star Trek '12: 1712 AD - Chez Sandrine

The doors of Chez Sandrine were due to be opened, but its proprietor hesitated, for just a moment.  In moments the culmination of her dream was about to be fulfilled.  She had envisioned a hangout where it wouldn’t matter where you came from, who you were, but rather that you could just have a good time.  It was certainly a time in French history where everything seemed possible, and that there would never be an end to it…but the proprietor wondered.

Chez Sandrine had nothing to do with the rest of the country, the rest of the empire, but the proprietor knew that it had only been possible because of these wild, unabashed, and unprecedented successes, the culmination of other dreams and an unconquerable belief that France was the center of the world.

But was it really?

There was that endless feud with England, a rivalry that seemed to stretch far beyond the horizon and used every excuse to continue (and God only knew how it would expand in the New World).  Would an Englishmen be welcomed in Chez Sandrine?  The proprietor, now that she supposed, hadn’t really thought of that.  But hadn’t her vision been all-inclusive?  Had she really considered qualifiers, even if exceptions would include Englishmen?  And if she allowed that, how many more compromises?

That’s why she now hesitated.  For so many months she had pursued her vision, her dream, with a single-mindedness that had surprised even her, but she had once been told that this was the only way to succeed.  But it was also the only way to fail.

Was it really just an ill-advised mistake?  Should she close the doors before they were even opened?  And really, what would be the difference?  Who would even remember Chez Sandrine, in the grand scheme?  It was one silly little girl’s folly, probably wouldn’t even last a year, and if it did, it would be in corrupted form, no longer holding fast to her ideals, the necessary blight that all victories must bear.  Utopias only exist in the past, in someone’s imagination, where they belong.

She was about to walk away, turn her back on the whole enterprise, ignore the journey that had brought her to this moment, when she heard something just on the other side of the door.  Curious, she looked outside the window, and was surprised to see a crowd waiting.  One of the impatient would-be patrons had thrown a rock, and she could only guess how seriously.  It had caused no damage that she could see from the inside.  To further investigate, she would have to go outside.  And, effectively, open Chez Sandrine.

Curiosity got the best of her.

She graciously bowed to her customers, remaining silent, a fairly curious greeting for a passion project, and let each of them enter, closing the door behind them.  There were waiters to take orders, after all, so it wouldn’t be considered too rude, and games to pass the time, including a pool table that seemed to sit at the center of the floor.  She heard the tell-tale crack in moments, while she stooped to examine the building for a ding.  She saw nothing.

She stepped back in minutes later, after catching her breath, pretending that everything was fine, and maybe it was.  She let her worries evaporate in the smoky air being filled by all those who were enjoying Chez Sandrine, as if nothing at all had just occurred, just another moment in a long series of them, and her dream had always existed.

And maybe it had.

Star Trek '12: 1612 AD - Flint

He had already lived for a very long time, and assumed many names.  At the moment, he was attempting to be anonymous, and so his identity didn’t matter, although as usual, during such times he took the generic name Flint, one he’d used countless times already and no doubt many times again, for however long immortality lasts.  (It seems funny to say such a thing, but even someone with such a life finds it difficult they’ll actually live forever.)

But since he’d already lived for a very long time, he was most interested in those individuals who might be able to challenge his intellectual achievements, and so when his time wasn’t spent trying to discover such individuals, it was spent in their company.  This time he happened to be sharing dinner with Galileo.

Galileo, he knew, was already deep in the work that would gain him the wrong kind of attention from the Church, something he himself had managed to avoid under similar circumstances as da Vinci.  What Galileo lacked was the imagination to humor both science and the human imagination at the same time, but Flint did not look down on him for this.  He recognized the man for what he was, a genius, and that was all that mattered.

During most of the dinner they ate in silence, having already come into friendly terms with one another, and so pleasantries were not needed to enjoy each other’s company.  Every now and again Galileo would smile awkwardly at him, perhaps not believing his luck at finding a true peer, never assuming for a moment that Flint understood too well the sentiment.

Sometimes Flint needed guide such friends to their greatest work, but he was gratified to learn that Galileo needed no such assistance, that not only was he in possession of great potential, but that he was also capable of exploiting that potential.  His only weakness was living in a time that did not appreciate him, but Flint had experienced enough of human affairs to know that renegades, no matter how they exhibit themselves, will always be rejected.  It was a pity, on so many levels.  Galileo deserved so much better.

They chatted, lightly, about some of Galileo’s latest observations, even what he himself considered wild theories, and Flint could see right then and there what might have been accomplished, had he been able to see that potential mature, what the world might be like, how many things would change, simply by accepting what Galileo had to offer.  Unfortunately, as much as everyone likes to benefit from innovation, very few people actually like to be the ones to let the ideas that give birth to it flourish in the first place.  Hence the slow march of progress.

How long would he humor humans?  He no longer thought of himself as human, by this point, couldn’t bring himself to do it anymore, not just because of his long life, but because he was disgusted, knowing what would happen to Galileo, and that there would be many more to suffer after him.  It didn’t take prolonged life to obtain wisdom, but that was the kind of observation Flint had formulated.

He only hoped he wouldn’t grow bitter.

Star Trek '12: 1512 AD - Bajorans

Kai Ra did not support the project at all.  She found it to be incredibly alarming, even though in her heart she knew long ago such excursions had once exposed the Bajorans to the Prophets.  What might be learned this time?

She oversaw, along with the first minister, the welfare of her people with infinite care.  Sometimes she wondered if she shouldn’t be more careful still, if the Bajorans wouldn’t be better off if she held the title of first minister as well.  She was ever fearful that the delicate balance and great cultural treasure of her people might not be better off remaining sheltered, and that building solar ships, or anything of the kind, might not invite danger and disaster and ruin, in short the end of everything that she knew.

Who else was out there?  The Prophets, yes, and she was grateful for that, more grateful than she could ever properly express, so that she was exceedingly humble, and yes, ambitious, but tempered and subdued, something she hoped all the Bajorans could remain.  There were dragons in the stars, who would only seek to exploit the resources, but not the riches, of the world.  They would be surprised to learn the strength of the Bajorans, she was sure, but she was not eager to test it.  For that reason she almost cancelled the project, even though it had been the last wishes of her only son, the last remnant that he had once existed.  But as Kai, she was encouraged to view all Bajorans as her children.  She had to keep reminding herself of that.

Solar ships, indeed.  Like most people, she didn’t believe they had any chance of success, that they couldn’t possibly make a journey of any significance, that if they didn’t fall apart before exiting orbit, then they would become a satellite and only circle Bajor, perhaps forever.  She shuddered to imagine these vessels in flame, like the Fire Caves, the destination of a pilgrimage she’d postponed for a year now, mindful of the necessity for the gesture, but fearful that she might be corrupted by the Pah’Wraiths, despite her faith, despite her devotion to the Prophets.  It had happened to others, and it would happen again, but she was supposed to be above such spiritual failings.  She was the Kai, after all.

Her son had worked so hard on the project, only to fall ill unexpectedly.  She had never heard an acceptable explanation for what had happened to him.  The project faltered for several years, rudderless, until she herself had prompted renewed efforts.  She now struggled to understand why she’d done that, perhaps out of continued grief, delirium.  But then what was she experiencing now, denial?  Was she still so affected by the death of her son?  What would her flock think of her, if they knew?  Was that the reason she now sought to shut the project down?

She kept delaying, just as with the trip to the Fire Caves, until the very day of the launch.  As Kai, she was given ceremonial final approval.  She looked over the vast assembly, saw the hope in a thousand faces, imagined that the pilot was her son.  She simply nodded, in the end, forgoing the virtual words that clutched into ruin in her hand on a scroll she tossed into the fire after the vessel shot into the sky, broke the atmosphere, and unfurled its wings, now out of view, and set out on a course with destiny.

Who knew what the future held?

Star Trek '12: 1412 AD - Hamalki

One of the great ambitions of any civilization is to create the technology to make fantasy a reality, or otherwise make the impossible a possibility.  That is the driving force of intelligent life, and can be seen again and again in an infinite number of ways.  What was once someone’s radical idea becomes an everyday thing for someone else.  Some ideas become stories, some become ideals, and as the bulk of what most people experience, some become new technology.  A fork is technology that someone who had never experienced anything like it would find incomprehensible, just as anyone who has would find it just as incomprehensible to not know what a fork is and what it does.

The spider-like Hamalki had the same ambition that most sufficiently advanced species do, and that was to traverse great stretches of space with as little effort as possible.  Many generations worked on this ambition, just as many generations on many world have and always will, until an engineer named D’d’lk, or so she was known at the time, decided the ideal shape of this ambition would be called the inversion drive, which when realized would actually collapse time and space, making travel instantaneous no matter the destination.  The only thing that made this difficult was that D’d’lk had no idea how to achieve it, and so she spent many years on the problem.  The only thing that makes any ambition difficult is the inability to solve it in the most efficient means possible.  Unfortunately, since efficiency is always the goal of ambition, it takes an uncommon mind to make it work as efficiently as possible.

Does it sound like I’m talking in circles?  That’s what thinking about such things is like, and for people like D’d’lk, this is an unavoidable hurdle, both a welcome challenge and constant frustration, to know what you want and that you have the capacity not only to conceive it, but to make it a reality.  But are you going about it the best way, or are there better ways?  Constant doubt is the companion of ambition, of dreams, and D’d’lk dreamed a great deal, even in her waking moments, so busy in her trains of thought that those around her never knew when she was present even when she was in the room.

She tried to avoid it, but that’s all that she talked about, too, because it was the only thing that interested her, the best way to solve her dilemma, to realize her ambition, to make the inversion drive a reality.  It was the same story at home as in public, and because she knew her family better than she knew strangers, her family heard so much more than anyone else.  Problems that were tangential to her goal never failed to escape her notice, and sometimes it seemed she lacked focus, but not in her own mind: D’d’lk always knew exactly what she was doing, even if it didn’t seem that way.

Her young daughter grew and matured listening to D’d’lk, her frustrations, setbacks, triumphs, and failures.  D’d’lk never lost faith in herself, and even if her daughter didn’t realize it at the time, she absorbed all of it, and it was her that finally made the inversion drive a reality.  But that’s what dreams are made of, the stuff of tomorrow.

(This particular story takes its inspiration from the Diane Duane novel The Wounded Sky.)

Star Trek '12: 1312 AD - Nacene

It was never supposed to happen.

They were explorers, just as many before and many after them, studying what the universe had to offer.  They were merely curious, and the Ocampa were such an innocent, unique case, incredibly powerful when they first came.  There were only two of them, and they tried to be as innocuous as possible, appearing disguised as just another pair of Ocampa.

He never wanted to blame Suspiria, could never bring himself to do that, but the truth was, it was her carelessness that led to the event.  He was madly in love with her, and could never imagine his life without her, but even he couldn’t overlook her failings.   The Ocampans, some of them, saw right through their disguises, which he was perfectly willing to ignore, but Suspiria took it as an opportunity to have a little more fun, to step beyond the restrictions both of them had agreed on many centuries earlier.  She accepted what she called disciples into their chambers, the humble dwelling he had arranged when they first arrived.  There were more visitors every day, and he was easy to overlook, playing his music in the corner as Suspiria entertained her rapt audience.

He grew jealous, yes, and was ashamed for it, but he could only hide those feelings from her for so long.  What was there to be jealous about?  They could leave these primitive souls behind anytime they wished.  The Ocampans showed a great deal of potential, but it was nothing to jeopardize anything over.  They had their own lives to protect.  There were only so many Nacene.

The more he seethed in private, the more resentful she became about his lack of hospitality.  She said he didn’t respect her, and maybe he never had, and it was only now becoming apparent.  He tried to prove her wrong, but she would have none of it, her excessive pride, he assumed, but hoped she’d get over it.  He was wrong.  Her liberties became greater as time went on.  Their few months among the Ocampa stretched on to a few years.  And then it happened.

He caught her in the act.  There was no denying it.  It was so unspeakable that his mind blanked it out so that he couldn’t remember what it was in later years, and actually began to internal the whole cause on himself, could no longer believe that Suspiria had anything to do with it.  He scorched the skies of the Ocampa’s world.  He never knew he had it in him.

Of course, immediately, he set himself into exile, and put up a dome and provided the Ocampans with sustenance and power that they no longer had on their own.  Cut off from the rest of the universe, their development quickly became arrested, and regressed at an alarming rate.  Suspiria left almost immediately, from the company of the Ocampa, at least.  It disgusted him, that much, that she abandoned them so easily.  He did it out of shame.

What else is there to know?

Star Trek '12: 1212 AD - Elysian Council

The collection of races was improbable at best.  Tobin himself wouldn’t discover until years later that he’d found himself among them through an act of treachery, but the fact that a human took any part in an interstellar alliance was enough of a sensation in his own mind that it never even occurred to him to question, at least at the time, how he got there.

He didn’t know what any of them were at the time, but assembled around him were representatives of the Vulcans, Klingons, Orions, Andorians, Tellarites, Gorn, Phylosians, Kzinti, and two others he never managed to identify.

As they would be for centuries afterward, the Andorians, Tellarites and Vulcans were in conflict, but that’s how they stumbled into the strange opportunity that would be codified in the secret Elysian Council.  It was the Orions who made it happen, and the Klingons who made sure that it did, and somewhere no doubt there were Romulans observing everything, waiting to see what would develop.

Tobin got to listen to many lectures from the Vulcans, but it wasn’t them who’d abducted him, but rather the Orions, looking for a new source for slaves.  They weren’t impressed with Tobin, and so they never went back to Earth for more, but it was his presence that forced everyone together.  If he’d known for a moment what the Orions had really had in store for him, he probably would have crawled into a ball, rather than accept the prodding of the Vulcans to listen, even though they scoffed at all of his suggestions as hopelessly barbaric prattle.  The Klingons forced the Vulcans to listen, though, and so Tobin did not realize how pathetic his situation really was, never realized that he was overmatched on every side.

The Gorn intimidated everyone.  Maybe that was it.  Even the Klingons didn’t press their luck.  The Kzinti and Phylosians were crafty, and Tobin had the sense that the whole point was to keep tabs on them, see if there was anything to be done with them, because as far as he could tell, everyone else pretty much knew each other, and that the Elysian Council was a giant bluff, and so there were no real government agents involved, only rogues.  Even he could tell that the Vulcans weren’t acting naturally, and he was overwhelmed by everything, barely eating because he didn’t recognize anything presented to him as food, and the one time the Klingons offered him what they called “blood wine,” he nearly died on the spot.

It helped that there were constant arguments, which the Tellarites really seemed to relish, even if it didn’t make them obviously happy, which further flummoxed Tobin.  Every now and again it did occur to him to question what was happening, but then one of the Orions would enter the room, and the chaos would coalesce into puppy love, even from the Vulcans, who kept muttering under their breathes, “Illogical!”

The Elysian Council was a success insofar as it didn’t result mutual destruction from among its members.  Tobin grew more confident insofar as he could eventually sleep again, and he breached the subject of admitting a few more humans, to the strenuous objections of every other member.  They eventually relented.  But it wasn’t easy getting more of his own people off Earth.  Quite foolishly, he was himself put in charge of the project, and being generally incompetent in every regard to any practical concern, there were many mistakes and misjudgments made, and this was a process that lasted well beyond his lifetime.

But in the end, Tobin did find peace with it all, and the Elysian Council persisted for a long time, and achieved all its mediocre goals.

(Inspired by the animated series episode "The Time Trap.")