Rory 2

Rory had gone hiking.  With a heavy knapsack on his back, he needed a rest after a few hours.  He found an old abandoned tent in the woods, and decided to stop there.  He sat listening to music for a few minutes.  He saw some mushrooms and they reminded him that he was hungry, so he started a fire and prepared a bowl of oatmeal.  He noticed when he was putting the bowl back that there was a crumpled sheet in his knapsack he couldn't remember putting there.  It was a treasure map.  Stunned, he took a picture of it in case he lost it, and set out to follow the trail, as he knew the woods well enough to recognize the map's topography within it.  The trail led to a cave, and there Rory found the treasure. 

Rory 1

Rory, who after having taken his medication given him by a comic book convention goer dressed as a Viking, became convinced he was king of a tent community, took one look at his kingdom, and saw a cactus, which he decided to chop down with an ax, but he saw it was a fake cactus, filled with gears, which he decided to sell, was paid handsomely for, and so he was able to afford a shield, to protect him from usurpers.  All in all, a good deal.

Star Trek: The Botanist

The year is 1996.  In Los Angeles a tech mogul named Henry Starling is unveiling his latest miracle.  Halfway around the world, a man named Khan observes the ceremony.  He's disgusted, of course.  Khan is the epitome of genetic perfection, the culmination of eugenics theories that began at the turn of the century.  To him, Starling represents the decadence of a country steeped in materialism, an artificial world in which the human will someday be eclipsed.  Khan is a superman.  Both are products of the Age of Science, but at diametrically opposed ends. 

Khan is watching because he has eyes and ears everywhere.  He rules a radical network with agents throughout the Middle East.  He was created by Russians too caught up in the Cold War to comprehend the secrets they'd stolen from Nazis, whom they had fought so bitterly against.  Sent into India at the dawn of the schism, where no one thought to look for him, Khan found himself alone, but not for long.  He used his remarkable intellect to create others like him.  That much was easy.  But his life of exile prevented Khan from accessing the fruits of the developed world.  Which made him angry.  Which made him jealous.

And so he watches men like Starling.  Of course he knows of the government contracts that fund the weapons used against him in the incessant wars, wars few observers comprehend for what they are.  That would hardly be a reason to hate Henry Starling.  On the contrary, it's a reason to celebrate him.  It gives Khan the chance to show his strength.  He is not so proud as to deny such arrogance.  He is a superman, after all.  A superman needs a worthy opponent, even if they're merely human.

And have no idea he exists.  That's what Khan likes most about this situation, not just that Starling has no idea he's being watched by his enemy, but that he doesn't know there's anyone who should be watching.  That is arrogance, too, and another reason Khan values his rival even as he hates him. 

He's considering inviting Starling to visit him.  He need never know who Khan is, not really, only that he's meeting someone of importance.  For men like Starling, that's often more than enough.  Khan can pass himself off as common wealth, from some rich family.  No further explanation needed.  He can offer to fund Starling in-person, and savor the moment the fool accepts the offer, ignorant of the ties that already bind them. 

Just maybe, he can indulge himself further.  He can share his secret fascination with Starling.  His obsession with Botany Bay.  The idea of exile has always interested him.  After all, he has lived in exile all his life, and his agents have made exile the standard of their lands, again, the way it once was with nomads.  He is a nomad, too, but exile makes it sound cruel, and he wants to be reminded that the world has wounded him, that it owes him a great debt.  The exiles of Botany Bay were criminals.  Eventually they founded a country.  They were recognized, finally, as something other than exiles.  As masters of their own fate.  Childish, in some ways.  He doesn't care.

He watches Starling indulge himself at the silly ceremony, and he wonders. 

What would he say, I wonder, if he knew where Starling got his tech from?  What would he say, I wonder, if he knew Starling's fate, just a little later?  What would he say, I wonder, if he knew his own fate, his last ignoble exile?  Would he be humbled?  Is that even possible for such a man? 

In this moment, he is lord and master of the whole world, at least in his own mind.  In his own mind, this will always be true.  This is how he was conditioned, you understand.  Does this make him the villain?  In his own mind, he is the hero.  In his own mind, Khan is the botanist.  He is destiny.  He is a vision of the future.  Never mind that his existence was refuted before he was even born. 

Some people will persist in error regardless of how obvious it is.  Such is the genius of Khan.  Such is his perfection.  Such is the fate of arrogance, which if prized above all usually masks a perfect imperfection.  And so he was right all along, after a fashion.  Such is Khan.

Death at Christmas

When he was far too young to process it, Kevin's father died.  He passed away at Christmas, and it was exactly the kind of insurmountable thing he would carry with him the rest of his life.

He did his best to put aside the particulars.  He never talked about them with his friends, anyway.  It seemed enough that they knew, the sort of thing people are just supposed to understand, and for the most part, that's exactly how it was received.  Except once.  It became a morbid fascination of his, trying to decide whether or not it was the best or worst thing that ever happened to him.  Finally, finally, his reality had been pierced.

And for the rest of his life, Kevin would struggle about what to do next.

Star Trek: The Next Generation "The Warrior's Drink"

"I must bear my dishonor alone," the boy said.

"That is not true," the old man replied.

***

The old man, actually, was not an old man at the time.  He was in his prime, a virile bear of a man serving aboard the starship Intrepid under the command of Captain Deighan.  Sergey Rozhenko and Deighan did not see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, and most of the time it didn't matter, but when their ship answered a distress call from the Klingon outpost at Khitomer, Sergey finally found the courage to put his foot down.  "Deighan, my friend," he'd said, "if you do not do this, I will be forced to renounce you.  You understand, this will be difficult for me, as you will still be my captain.  But I will make it work."

But he was an old man at heart, following traditional ways even if the world around him, the whole galaxy, was crying out for something new.  He had never wanted to serve in Starfleet.  He had wanted his bearlike frame to stay on Gault, where his family had been farmers for three generations, once they'd finally joined, seemingly, the rest of humanity in space.  None of them had spent any real time with aliens, either, in all that time.  Farmers lead solitary lives, after all. 

He joined Starfleet all the same.  Something new announced itself into his life almost immediately, when he was asked to participate in an officer exchange program.  A Klingon named Moztar was his counterpart.  Moztar was old, a warrior well past his prime, said to be curious of things that had eluded him, experiences he had once found distasteful.  Such as spending any time among humans and not actively wanting to kill them.  Sergey had realized, "I have met Bolians.  I have even had Vulcan instructors.  But Klingons?  Never in my wildest dreams...!"  Sometimes, when he'd read the stories about them, as a boy on Gault, he'd wondered if Klingons weren't somehow like his Russian ancestors, ruthless and cunning, always engaged in some intrigue, always on the brink of war, too proud to ever admit weakness, too eager to drag everyone down with them...And suddenly he was being asked to brief this Moztar fellow, who stunk of some...powerful alcohol he couldn't even begin to identity.  And his ancestors had known strong drink, too!  "Try to remember," he'd said, uselessly, "humans won't be familiar with...anything you know."  Moztar had nodded, and Sergey had spent a great deal of time trying to decide what exactly he'd meant to convey with the gesture.

The time spent aboard a Klingon ship?  The T'kuvma had smelled almost as bad as Moztar, which would be Sergey's lasting impression of it.  He was too overwhelmed by the whole experience to remember anything else.  If anyone so much as stepped toward him, he shrank back.  He had been totally useless, and doubtless set back the program decades.  He never found out what Moztar had accomplished.  He never told his son about it.  He never talked about it at all, but it was the foundation of all that Sergey was to become.

Years later, Deighan feigned outrage, but then replied, "I don't have much choice in the matter, now do I?  Keep those engines running smoothly, Rozhenko.  We may need to beat a hasty retreat yet."

They found virtually nothing left alive at the outpost, except a frightened Klingon youth, who looked as if the world had ended, which of course for all intents and purposes it had.  He'd lost his parents that day, after all, and his honor.  His first words, and indeed his only words for weeks afterward, were about how his people would never accept him again, and that had broken Sergey's heart.  He resolved on the spot to remedy the situation, as much as possible.  He resigned his commission and he and his wife began to raise the boy as their own.

On Gault, the old ways died hard.  The boy was rejected, and so was Sergey, something he'd never anticipated.  These were people he'd grown up with, who knew him as well as he knew them, as well as their families three generations back had known each other.  And they turned their back on him.  The boy was the enemy to them.  They had all heard the stories of Klingons who raided worlds like theirs.  Gault had never been threatened, but colonists live with the fear whether they experience it or not.  This is why stories are told, to keep alive old wounds.  Or so these people seemed to think.  Sergey grew disgusted. 

His only solace was the vigor with which his son maintained his Klingon ways.  All Sergey could do was stay out of his way, sometimes, and that was exactly what he did.  He loved that boy, and was determined that he would have someone who accepted him, unconditionally.  Well, Sergey and his wife, and their human son, Nikolai.  When they finally left Gault for Earth, to resettle in Minsk, the place his son would come to call home, a city looming with history, an outlet, an escape for a boy needing an escape, Sergey again thought of his experiences aboard the T'kuvma, and wondered what he'd missed.  Life with the boy was a constant challenge, of course, but nothing had ever been more rewarding, nothing that spoke so intimately of purpose. 

Years later still, he confessed himself amused, listening to his son speak in his trademark brief utterances, of prune juice as "the warrior's drink."  Sergey had tried for a long time to get his son to drink the stuff, when he was a boy, and of course the youth had wanted nothing to do with it.  It's always the discoveries we make ourselves that...Well, Sergey was an old man now, and felt like it, but hearing that joy in his son's voice, it made him feel young again. 

And proud.

I've Got a Bad Feeling About This

Dooku knelt before Yoda, for the final time, and he wondered where things had gone wrong.  It had long been difficult for him to view his old mentor with anything but reverence, and perhaps that was it.  Something in the back of his head had always wondered how a Jedi could attain such status.  Didn't that approach...pride?

When Dooku was a boy, Yoda had already been ancient, by most standards.  According to his studies, Dooku learned that Wookiees had long lives, too.  There were other examples, doubtless.  Still, it had instilled that sense of reverence from the very beginning.  Yoda's small stature made it easy for new padawans to assume him to be one of them, and Dooku had made that same mistake.  He still smiled, privately, at the thought.

He had inherited the title of count from his birth parents, a role made meaningless the day he was accepted into the halls of the Jedi temple on Coruscant.  There were such temples elsewhere, but the younglings with the most potential were brought to Coruscant, and Yoda, and young Dooku had felt what he hoped was his last surge of pride the day he learned of his destiny.

Kneeling before Yoda now, knowing what he knew, he wondered if he had escaped pride after all.

For Dooku had a new master, now.  A man named Palpatine.  To the rest of the galaxy, a politician.  To Dooku?  Everything.  He had surmised quickly that Palpatine knew more about the Force than even Yoda, and that had been...too much.  Had there really been a choice?  The reverence Yoda instilled in him awakened something in Dooku, something that had gotten out of control.  Palpatine offered relief.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," he said to Yoda, now.  "I fear we may never meet again."

He had just accepted the assignment to shadow Palpatine, an assignment he'd campaigned for, an assignment he'd suggested.  No one, not even Yoda, knew why he'd requested it.  For all the Jedi Council knew, it was merely for Palpatine's role as Chancellor of the Republic.  Master Windu hadn't trusted him for even a minute.  But then, they'd never seen eye-to-eye.  If Dooku hadn't been Yoda's apprentice...

Of course, he would meet Yoda again, and they would fight, a reprise of all the sparing sessions they'd shared a long time ago, but with far greater stakes, the battered bodies of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in silent witness beside them.  "Much to learn have you," Yoda would tell him, and in that moment reveal that he had not taught Dooku everything he knew...

And that was it, too.  Dooku had known, had known, all along, that he never fully gained Yoda's trust.  And that was pride, again.  He tried to depict himself as so perfect a Jedi that he had to leave the Jedi Order to be one, a contradiction, the myth of the Sith, and yet...

He stood up again, and Yoda bowed, ever so slightly, toward him, the last sign of mutual respect they would ever share.  Was it, in fact, respect?  Or the farewell Yoda foresaw, the terrible future ahead of them?

Dooku foresaw a great many things, or at least he told himself he did.  Pride again, perhaps.  He foresaw Palpatine's victory, a resounding one, a definitive one.  He foresaw the galaxy brought to order, the kind of order the Jedi had never been able to accomplish.  He foresaw small minds trying to reject this order.  He foresaw the illusion of hope.  He foresaw its futility.  Men like Palpatine could not be denied, men with vision. 

He saw himself, in that moment, in front of Yoda, as the last of the Jedi.  And he bowed to Yoda in return, and he said nothing more, and that was that.  He walked away with a bad feeling about it, all the same...

In Which Lemony Snicket's Story Is Completed

It was February, and five children, all of whom were more or less healthy, were sitting on the ground in a lazy circle.  It was quite dark, and the children had to squint to see one another's frowning faces.

"I wish we were ice skating," said Robin.

"I wish we were eating Mexican food," said Apu.

"I wish we were wearing boots," said Alastair.

"I wish we were playing percussion instruments," said Lillian.

Miranda sighed.  She was the youngest of the five children, but nevertheless she was often the leader of the group.  She tried not to be bossy about it, but it is difficult not to be bossy from time to time.  "We can't do any of those things," she said.  "We're not at a skating rink, and we don't have any skates.  We're not in Mexico, and there's not an enchilada in sight.  We're not wearing boots, and there's not a department store for miles around.  And we're not playing percussion instruments, because it wouldn't be wise to make so much noise.  After all, we're in a puzzling and possibly dangerous situation.  I know it's difficult to believe, but we may have to face the fact that we're on our own."

"But how can that be?" Robin asked.  "Just a few hours ago we were on a picnic with Madame Blatavsky, when all of a sudden we discovered she was really..."

"Hold it right there," Miranda said.  "You were about to say, 'when all of a sudden we discovered she was really an cantankerous and scheming guardian who was not at all what she appeared to be, no matter how poorly she had trimmed her eyebrows.'  This is to say, no matter if that's the truth or not, it has already been done.  Madame Blatavsky is not the problem, anymore than ice skates are the problem, or enchiladas, or boots, or percussion instruments.  No, our troubles began well after the picnic with Madame Bltavsky took an alarming turn.  We all agreed that sending her to fetch better food, regardless of whether or not it included enchiladas, was better for all of us, well before we determined her to be a cantankerous and scheming guardian who was not at all what she appeared to be, no matter how poorly she had trimmed her eyebrows."

Miranda knitted her own eyebrows in a concerned manner.  She alone, because she was the leader of the children, would have to determine where things had truly gone wrong.  It wasn't Madame Blatavsky's disappearance, which itself truly was alarming, as it has never taken more than seven-and-three-quarter hours in the history of misbegotten picnics to locate an alternate source of dining options, accounting both for the locating and for the returning to the original scene to collect anyone who might have been left behind, even if they were five children led by an exceptionally capable, if inconveniently youngest, girl such as Miranda.

It wasn't when they had decided to go in search of Madame Blatavsky, which Miranda had agreed to do once the first day had ended and she had convinced the others to sensibly wait until morning to begin, surviving on a poor diet in the meantime of the unsatisfying foodstuffs they had originally set out with for the picnic, quiche sandwiches whose only discernable ingredient was a suspicious paste inadequately made from shoots of parsley that looked like tiny patches of grass that had grown wildly in a park, which only served to remind everyone of the sad fate of the original picnic.

No, Miranda was convinced it was the bicycles they had all ridden at the start the series of...inconvenient events, the ones that had banana seats that were in fact in the shape of apricots, so uncomfortable to sit on while peddling that everyone had complained, even Madame Blatavsky, the whole way.  They had agreed to leave these bicycles behind, even though Miranda insisted they reconsider, that even bicycles with uncomfortable seats in the shape of apricots would be preferable to having no transportation at all.

"Our problems began when we decided to abandon our bicycles, the ones with seats the shape of apricots," she declared.

"I still wish we were ice skating," said Robin.

"I still wish we were eating Mexican food," said Apu.

"I still wish we had boots," said Alastair.

"I still wish we were playing percussion instruments," said Lillian.

Miranda sighed.

[Completing a story originally begun by Lemony Snicket for the purposes of a contest in the 2005 McSweeney's book Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and some other things that aren't as scary, maybe, depending on how you feel about Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, A Man Named Lars Farf, and one other story we couldn't finish, so maybe you could help us out]