A moment later, the mist cleared, and the irregular ring of the Guardian of Forever stood there, looking precisely as it had on the other occasions Kirk had seen it. He walked up to it at once, feeling a sense of urgency that he immediately recognized as foolhardy. Whether he traveled to Veridian Three now or a year from now, he would arrive at the same time, at the same place.
“Guardian,” he said. “Do you know me?”
It did not respond, which did not surprise Kirk. Before his second visit here, he had read the reports of the researchers, who noted that the Guardian did not provide answers to every question put to it. Kirk decided to ask something he had asked before and which had netted a reply.
“Guardian,” he said, “are you machine or being?”
Still nothing.
Kirk opted for a different approach. “Guardian, my future self helped to rescue you from destruction.”
“I am my own beginning, my own ending,” it said, sections of its asymmetrical loop glowing in time with its words. Its voice sounded loud and deep, even within the wide space of the crater.
“Have you come here, to this time, from twenty-three Earth years ago?” Kirk asked, wanting to verify what he had been told.
“I am the Guardian of Forever,” the vortex declared. “I am the union and the intersection of all moments and all places. I am what was and what will be. Through me is eternity kept.”
“Did you travel to this time to avoid your own end when a Klingon vessel crashed onto this world?” Kirk wanted to know.
Again, the Guardian answered only with silence.
There’s no use waiting to see if this will work, Kirk thought. “I wish to see the past of Jean-Luc Picard, whose life once intersected with that of my future self,” he said. He could have asked to see the life of the future Kirk, but since he had himself never entered the nexus, his future self had never left it, had never joined Picard’s battle against Soran-at least, that’s what he thought. Temporal mechanics frequently failed to make sense. Still, regardless of his own involvement or lack of involvement in fighting Soran, Picard definitely had, and so a replay of his life would reveal the time to which Kirk needed to travel.
“Behold,” the Guardian said. “A gateway to the past, if you wish.”
The white mist reappeared, falling from the top of the Guardian’s ring and through the wide opening at its center. Then images began to form: a baby being born, being held by his mother, crying as he was fed. Sleeping, crawling, learning to walk. Going to school, walking between rows of plants, wrestling with a larger, older boy.
Kirk watched as the life of a man he had never met unfolded before him. The experience felt voyeuristic, like an invasion of this man’s privacy. But he continued to look on, the lives of two hundred thirty million Veridians the overriding issue.
As the minutes passed, so too did the weeks and months and years, and eventually the decades too. Kirk saw Picard grow from an infant into a boy, from a teenager into a man, from a son into a student, from a cadet into a starship captain. He looked on in wonder as a Starfleet vessel with four warp nacelles became visible within the Guardian. Later, a larger ship appeared, and Kirk recognized its designation at once: NCC-1701-D.
Finally, he saw Picard materialize in a rocky wilderness. He looked just as Kirk’s future self had described him, as did the man Picard subsequently fought: Soran. The Enterprise captain failed, though, and a missile launched from the planet’s surface and traveled into the star it orbited. Above, the unmistakable form of the energy ribbon twisted through the air, and when the Veridian star collapsed, the ribbon shifted downward, skimming along close to the ground. Electric bolts shot from it across its length, and roiling clouds followed behind it as it advanced. It passed over Picard and Soran, surrounding them with jags of energy and a billowing haze.
And then the images within the Guardian ceased. The mist continued flowing through its opening, but where Kirk had been watching scenes from Picard’s life, he now saw a shadowy emptiness. The nexus, he thought. Picard had been pulled into it and had continued to live, but he no longer did so within this universe. He asked the Guardian for confirmation of this, but it did not answer.
“Guardian, I wish you to stop,” he said. The shadows within the time vortex faded and the mists receded. He would ask the Guardian to show Picard’s past again. This time, Kirk would join him to fight Soran.
But not yet, Kirk thought. Before he stepped through the Guardian in an effort to save more than two hundred million Veridians, he decided to do something for himself. Alone on this world, and now alone in a life that all his friends believed had ended aboard the Enterprise-B, he would take one last look at the people he had loved.
“Guardian,” he said, “I want to see the past of my father.”
“Behold,” the Guardian said. “A gateway to the past, if you wish.” Again, mist drifted down through the time vortex. Within the white vapor, images appeared.
And then Jim Kirk watched his father being born.
The day had passed too quickly. In some sense, Kirk had spent it with the people who had meant the most to him in his life, seeing them from birth to death in a way that should have been impossible. He had watched scenes that had made him laugh aloud, a lonely sound quickly lost within the expanse of the crater. He had cried too, both from joy and from sadness at the images passing before him. Mostly, though, he had simply looked on quietly, stilly.
After seeing his father’s past, he had asked to see his mother’s. Then he’d watched the life of his older brother, Sam, and then that of Sam’s wife, Aurelan. He’d watched his grandfather’s life, his uncle’s, his nephews’, his son’s. He’d watched Spock and Bones and Gary Mitchell, Miramanee and Antonia. Throughout each of them, he’d often seen himself moving through these lives not his own, affecting them. For those who’d survived him, he viewed scenes unknown to him: Spock holding an infant, Bones getting married, Antonia finding love again. It had been both easy and difficult, but in the end, something he’d been pleased that he’d done.
“Guardian,” he said at last, almost ready to have the life of Jean-Luc Picard replayed so that he could step into it. But before he did that, he thought to ask to see the past of one other person. He didn’t know whether or not he’d be able to watch, but he wanted to try. “Guardian,” he said again. “I wish to see the life of Edith Keeler, whose life once intersected my own, through you.”
“Behold,” the Guardian said.
TERMINUS
Crucible
As Jim Kirk swept the floor of the 21st Street Mission, he stole glances across the room and into the kitchen. Along with one of the former vagrants who often worked at the mission, Edith washed the dishes from the night’s last meal. Even now, after another long and tiring day laboring to help the downtrodden, she looked beautiful. Kirk had never met anybody with her spirit. A woman of vision and compassion, she saw a future she could not possibly know and that should have been impossible for her even to imagine, a future in which all of humanity would work together for the common good. Far removed from those distant hopes, though, Edith did what she could in her own present to move society in that direction, helping the less fortunate because she felt a responsibility to the civilization of which she was a part. Kirk could not have loved her more.