Kirk didn’t hear the rest of the familiar, haunting words, because he suddenly, painfully, understood where he was.
Halkan.
All around him were the ruins of the starship that had claimed his Teilani’s life.
He sank to his knees in the red soil and wept as the full memory of this place and this time returned.
Standing over him, the old Ferengi who wasn’t a Ferengi, yet was older than any human mind could comprehend, cackled on. “To have the power to preserve life and improve the conditions in which it can flourish, and yet deliberately choose not to accept your responsibility to exercise that power… Captain Kirk, I submit that despite what you see around you, there is no greater tragedy than that.”
Kirk looked up through his tears to see the Ferengi’s dark and ageless eyes gazing down at him, looking through him.
What else had he said on the plain of death?
Something about Kirk having been chosen?
About Teilani having been chosen?
“Joseph…” Kirk gasped as a pattern formed just out of reach.
Then the Ferengi was gone, though no transporter had claimed him, just as had happened so many years ago, leaving Kirk alone with his grief, and with the young Vulcan.
She looked at him in bewilderment. “You can have anything, James. Be anywhere. Feel anything. And yet you choose this?”
Kirk blinked against the bright morning sun of this world, and in that moment the young Vulcan became Norinda.
Kirk stood, drawing strength from the loss he had experienced here, because in this illusion, Norinda had not become Teilani.
In the same moment that realization had formed within his mind, Norinda shattered into black and shadows streamed past Kirk until-
– he squinted in the bright lights of the museum, no longer startled by the abrupt change of scene.
He looked around to get his bearings, stopped in horror as he saw the small, stuffed, mummified body of Balok. The diminutive alien’s mouth was molded into a permanently twisted smile as he perpetually contemplated the glass of tranya that had been wired to his hand.
Kirk was in a chamber of horrors.
And he knew who had created it.
He had.
His other side.
The Emperor Tiberius who had brought Earth and Vulcan to abject ruin in the parallel universe that was a dark reflection of Kirk’s own.
And yet, Kirk knew, it was to this chamber, the lair of Tiberius, that he had come willingly to barter for Teilani’s life only six years ago.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind him. Metal upon stone, the sound of jackboots in any age.
Kirk knew he was in a dimension other than ordinary existence. He knew Norinda was searching through his memories, trying to find a time and a place he’d accept as his new home in her realm.
That knowledge strengthened him.
He turned to face Tiberius again, to stand up to that other side of himself and once again make peace with him, as he had in the past.
But there was no mirror for him to look into.
The person who approached was Norinda.
“This is wrong, James. I give you love and you surround yourself with…” She looked around the museum cases filled with atrocities. “… with such ugliness.”
Kirk felt even stronger. How had he ever found Norinda desirable?
“I know exactly why I’m here,” Kirk said. “And I know why you never will.”
Norinda’s face tightened in pain and confusion and flew apart as-
– the holographic sign floating overhead flashed
BIENVENU VOYAGEURS A TRAVERS LE TEMPS
WELCOME TIME TRAVELER
Kirk laughed in the shock of recognition. He saw the crowd surrounding him dressed in formalwear, heard the excited conversation, the music, the clinking of crystal, and knew exactly where he was: Ile Ste-Helene, Montreal.
It was almost seven years ago and he was on his first trip back to Earth since the ill-fated launch of the Enterprise-B. Meeting old friends. Even confronting Janeway’s duplicate from the parallel universe.
He knew that in this here-and-now Teilani waited for him in their home on Chal. She had urged him to take this journey and return to Earth, never dreaming of the consequences: Joseph’s conception; their wedding; her death.
But here he was again, near the beginning of his unexpected second chance, feeling the promise of life still to come. He realized he wouldn’t change these moments even if he could. With great sorrow had come great joy, and perhaps that was the way of things.
Janeway of the other universe approached him then, dressed as a server, carrying a tray of drinks through the crowd.
Kirk wasn’t fooled for an instant.
“It’s because you’re not in control,” he said, continuing their conversation.
The Janeway duplicate became Norinda.
“I’m trying to give you love!” she pleaded in frustration.
Kirk marveled at her ignorance.
“But I already have it,” he told her.
Norinda gave up the debate then. She fought his resistance in the only way she could, the only way left to her after so many years as a projection into Kirk’s realm, out of touch with her own.
Kirk’s life sped before him in ever faster strobes of recreated experience, as if flashing in time to the beating of enormous wings.
He was a child again, running in fear through the snow on Tarsus IV, chased by Kodos.
His mount thundered across the beach of Chal, and he exulted in the scent of the sea, the heat of the sun, the purity of the blue sky, white sand, and the love of Teilani riding at his side, long hair alive in the wind.
He was in his parents’ farmhouse. The Romulan assassins hunting him. Seeing Teilani for the first time in the kitchen, tasting their first kiss.
Telling Spock and McCoy he was retiring, going to Chal to find Teilani, to uncover the mystery of that world and its people, to find love.
On the rocks at Veridian with Picard, that first time they had met face-to-face, the long fall, the shadow of death approaching, but seeing at last it was Sarek.
The Borg. Destroying the machine world to save Picard. Losing himself in an energy beam that brought him-
– to Chal again, to Teilani, to battle the virogen plague that had scarred her beauty.
In the flashing of light and darkness, in the stream of all the experiences he had ever had, new knowledge was born: Kirk realized the secret that was being revealed, part of it, at least.
Teilani… All things led to Teilani.
Just as Teilani led to Joseph.
And Joseph led to-
Norinda cried out in heartrending anguish and the whole of the Totality’s realm joined in her denial.
Another flash and Kirk was on the bridge of his own Enterprise, Gary Mitchell at the helm as the ship approached the galactic barrier.
For a moment, Kirk was puzzled that Norinda had found this event, a memory that had no connection to
