(graphic designed by Tigger)
Star Date: May 13, 1977
So, this is how it ends?
He had always assumed they would go on forever -- that their legacy… his legacy -- would extend into the next millennium, and beyond. He had always assumed that immortality was his for the asking.
Funny, he'd never been wrong before.
Too soon, time had run out. Without warning, the plug had been pulled, the lights had been dimmed. The stage was bare. The curtain had fallen. There would be no time for tearful farewells. A wrap party was out of the question.
The fire that raged around him would see to that.
Perhaps it had been his own arrogance that brought him here, to this moment, to this fate. Space may have been the final frontier, but now it looked like he would meet his Waterloo here on the very planet he had once called home.
Earth. The final conflict.
The sounds… the frantic shouts of the firefighters, the death-groan of the collapsing roof, the angry roar of the flames that now licked at his feet… faded away until they were mere whispers in the maelstrom that surrounded him.
He looked at his friends, lying unconscious on the floor next to him.
For all he knew, they were already dead.
“Bones, Spock,” he cried plaintively.
His voice bled with emotion, his heart ripped from his chest. He shuddered at the thought of what was to become of them.
Crispy critters
He was to blame. If only he hadn’t listened to that tape this morning. “Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it....”
Oh, hell. That wasn’t right.
He hated time warps. They confused everything.
Suddenly, he stood up straight. No! He was Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. His five- year mission to seek out new worlds and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man had gone before, had only just begun. Damn it! His Federation career was not going to come to such an ignominious end.
He was going to live to be called Admiral if it killed him.
Filled with renewed determination, he flipped open his communicator.
“Mr. Scott. You’re cutting this one a little too close.”
“Aye, Captain. We’ve almost got it fixed. I’ve got all my people working on the problem. There are just so many wires.... Give us another minute.”
Wires?
The fire was about to devour them. In spite of the sweat that seeped from every pore, his response dripped with cool sarcasm. “Fine, Scotty. I’ll just… tell the beast to wait.”
“That’s the spirit, Jim. That’s why Star Fleet made you the captain.”
Scotty was right. But, he wasn’t just an ordinary captain of an ordinary vessel. He was James T. Kirk, Captain of the mighty Starship Enterprise -- the pride of the fleet, defender of the weak and helpless against the likes of the evil Klingons and the devious Romulans. He was Captain James T. Kirk, and, by god, he’d act like it to the bitter end!
His back against the wall, Kirk defiantly faced the fire. Summoning his last ounce of strength, he ordered it to go away.
He blinked his eyes in disbelief.
The fire was gone.
Damn, he was good!
A figure materialized through the thick, black smoke.
“Scotty?” Kirk asked weakly.
“Are you all right?” an urgent voice asked.
He felt the stranger grab his arms, holding him up. Darkness lurked in the corners of his mind, and he struggled to answer.
“My-my friends. Take care of my friends,” were the last words Jim Kirk uttered before he collapsed in the man’s arms. His communicator slipped from his hand, and tumbled to the floor.
“Roy! Over here! I need your help!” Johnny’s muffled shout was answered instantly. Roy appeared next to him.
“This guy was conscious a second ago, Roy. You think you can get him out on your own? I'll take care of these other two.”
“Yeah, I got him. I’ll ask Cap to send Chet in to help you.” Roy glanced at the unmoving figures on the floor, as he loaded the man over his shoulder. “You think…?”
“I don’t know, Roy. Tell Chet to hurry. I don’t think the roof's gonna hold much longer.”
“All right,” Roy answered, and turned to go. From the moment they’d arrived on the scene, he’d had a funny feeling that something wasn’t right, but there wasn’t time to worry about it now. “Be careful, Johnny,” he added under his breath.
Pulling off a glove, Johnny crouched down and reached his hand to feel for a carotid. His foot kicked something. It was a small object, and he realized it had fallen from the victim’s hand. Not knowing if it was important, he picked it up, and slipped it in his pocket next to the handi-talkie.
The first one had a weak pulse. Johnny shifted on his feet and reached for the other. His fingers paused for just a second, as he peered through the hazy smoke at the man’s face and head. Those were the strangest looking ears and eyebrows he’d ever seen. Shaking off a feeling of lightheadedness, Johnny felt for a pulse, and wasn’t at all sure what to make of it.
Then it happened.
Right before his eyes, the two men literally began to disintegrate. Not to ashes, but into tiny, shimmering particles that floated and swirled in the air. For a moment, he thought he heard a faint humming sound that went along with it.
Whatever “it” was.
Suddenly, a strange feeling came over him. It was unlike any dizziness he’d ever felt. Johnny unstrapped his helmet, and put his hand to his forehead, only to discover it seemed to be disappearing. Feeling stranger still, he ran his hand over the top of his head. The helmet fell to the floor behind him, and he tried to stand up, but he had no feet.
He looked again for the other two, but just like that… they were gone.
*POOF*
John Gage vanished into thin air.
* * * * * * * *
Chet picked up the helmet. Gage, one of these days, Cap is finally gonna break down and let me glue it to your head.
He looked around, and saw no one. Nothing. The roof creaked, and he backed up, puzzled. Roy had said there were two unconscious victims here, and that Johnny needed help. This had to have been the right spot. There wasn’t anywhere else they could have been. Johnny’s helmet was here. The trouble was, there wasn’t anywhere they could have gone, and there wasn’t any way out other than the way he had come in, and they hadn’t passed him. The smoke wasn’t that thick, now that the building was being ventilated.
Debris fell as rest of the roof of the old warehouse began to give way. Chet scrambled to safety, wondering if he had understood Roy correctly, hoping that they hadn’t gotten their wires crossed, praying that Johnny was safe.
Wherever he was.
* * * * * * * *
Roy carefully laid the man on the ground, then got the oxygen off the squad. He couldn’t quite take his eyes off the person’s unusual attire. It was May, not October, so Halloween was out. It was a little early in the day for a costume party, too, and they were no where near the studio lot. Roy put the O2 mask over the victim’s face, and checked vitals, feeling oddly relieved. Everything seemed to be normal. Except for those clothes and the funny sideburns. The man began to cough, and quickly regained consciousness.
Hank Stanley came over, and knelt down on one knee next to Roy, taking in the peculiar getup this guy was wearing.
“Fire’s out. How’s he doin’, Roy?”
“I think he’s okay, Cap. Probably a little heat exhaustion, some smoke inhalation. He’s comin’ around now.”
“That’s good. What about the others?”
Roy looked over his shoulder at the burned-out building. “You know, Johnny and Chet should have come out by now.”
Without another word, Stanley raised the antenna on the HT he held in his hand. “Squad 51, this is Engine 51.”
They waited a moment, but there was no reply.
“Squad 51, this is Engine 51,” he repeated. “Do you copy?”
There was still no reply over the radio, but they looked around when they heard a shout. Kelly was headed their way, in a hurry. He had a helmet in his hands, and it wasn’t his.
Roy turned his attention back to his patient, who was pulling the oxygen mask away, and trying to sit up. Stanley stood up, and waited for Chet.
“Where’s Gage and the other two men?”
“I… I don’t know, Cap. They weren’t there. Johnny’s not out here?”
Roy looked up. “What do you mean, they weren’t there? Johnny couldn’t have gotten both of those men out by himself. Are you sure you were in the right place?”
Chet held out the helmet as proof. “Roy, the warehouse wasn’t that big. It was the only place they could have been. I… I didn’t see anyone.”
Kelly had a stricken look on his face. He couldn’t have missed them, but what if he had? The roof had totally collapsed, and anyone still in there would have been crushed to death.
“Scotty got them out in time.”
Three heads swiveled at the statement, and stared at the man sitting on the ground.
“Who’s Scotty?” Stanley asked.
“He’s my engineer,” Kirk replied, giving these men in strange outfits a once-over. He remembered seeing photos in a book of early earth history. These men were…? Of course! Firefighters! They were the ones who had extinguished the flames. His ego was slightly bruised, now that he knew it wasn’t on his command that the fire had disappeared.
Stanley and Chet and Roy all looked at each other, confusion evident on their faces.
“Who are you?” Stanley asked suspiciously.
“Captain James T. Kirk of the… of the....” Kirk hesitated, reminding himself where he was, hoping they hadn’t accidentally violated The Prime Directive somehow, and altered things forever.
“Captain of the…?” Stanley prompted, impatiently waiting for the conclusion of the sentence.
Kirk looked around at all the red trucks. “The… other fire engine?”
Okay, so that one didn’t fly.
He was helped to his feet by Roy, who then stood back and looked at him accusingly.
“Where’s my partner?”
“Your partner?”
“You said someone named Scotty got them out in time. Where’d they go?”
Kirk looked from man to man. “Your partner’s missing?”
Roy grabbed the helmet from Chet’s hands, almost shoving it in Kirk’s face “My partner and your two friends. Where’d they go?”
“I....Uh....” Kirk was still a little too dazed from the smoke to think up something on the spur of the moment. Not expecting to be seen, they had failed to work out a good backup story, just in case. “I don’t know.”
“Listen, mister. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but I want some answers, and I want them NOW,” demanded Stanley.
“Who are you?”
Stanley glared at the man. “Hank Stanley, Captain of Los Angeles County Fire Station 51. These are my men-” He motioned to Mike Stoker. “-and that’s my engineer. Where the hell is Gage?”
“Gage? Oh. Your man. The one that’s missing.” Kirk was smartly playing dumb, trying to buy some time, trying to size up the situation, trying to figure out how to explain to these people what had happened. “Well. Uh…, Captain… Stanley, is it? Is there some place we could talk in private?”
While waiting for the reply, Jim Kirk sighed heavily. Whenever they had one of those “time” issues, and they got anywhere near Earth, something invariably went wrong. He was going to have to have a long talk with Sulu about avoiding those pockets in space that turned the powerful starship into a backwards-in-time traveling machine.
Stanley did some sizing-up of his own. This man was obviously a nut-case, but it appeared he might be the only one to know where John Gage was.
“All right, Captain… Kirk, is it? We’re not playing games. I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know now.”
Kirk looked into Stanley’s steely eyes, and felt like maybe he’d met his match. The man with the funny skunk stripe on his helmet was going to be a force to be reckoned with after all.
“I imagine your man is on board the Enterprise right now.”
“What would Johnny be doing on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean?” Chet asked.
Kirk looked at him blankly. “What?”
“Mister, you’d better start making sense, or we’ll have that deputy come over here and take you in for questioning,” Stanley warned.
There would be no getting around the truth. “The Enterprise is my ship,” he said simply, as though that would explain it clearly enough.
“What’s the captain of an aircraft carrier doing in a burning warehouse in Wilmington?” Chet asked again.
“Nooooooo,” Kirk exhaled in exasperation. “The Enterprise is a starship.” He looked at their uncomprehending faces. “A SPACE ship. Up in the sky. From the future.”
“Okay, Kelly, get that deputy over here.”
“Sure thing, Cap.”
“No. No, wait. You’ve got to hear me out,” Kirk pleaded. “We can’t tell any one else, or you may never get your man back.”
That momentarily stopped them in their tracks.
Stanley glowered at Kirk. “Are you threatening to hurt him?”
Kirk held his hands up defensively. "No, nothing like that. We just can’t risk having too many people involved. I’m afraid we’ve already violated The Prime Directive.”
“The Prime Directive?” Roy asked.
“We… we aren’t allowed to interfere with the course of events of another world. And, we can’t go back in time and change anything that has already occurred on earth, or we’ll change the course of history. Who knows what would happen then. Maybe we’d all disappear. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
Roy didn’t know what to think. All he knew was that Johnny was missing, and, according to this man, on board a space ship from the future.
He was really worried now.
Not about Johnny.
He was worried about the fate of the world.
What if Johnny came up with one of his… ideas?
* * * * * * * *
His eyes slowly blinked open. He was surely looking at the lovely face of an angel. Maybe he’d died and gone to heaven.
Nope. If only he’d repented for that lifetime of sin when he was sliding down the hill that time....
“That’s all nurse,” a male voice said, dismissing her.
A nurse? Shit. He hadn’t gotten a chance to ask her out yet!
Her uniform gave all new meaning to the word mini-skirt, and Johnny wondered why the nurses at Rampart didn't dress like that. He made a mental note to talk to Dixie to see what she could do.
Johnny flinched when two other faces appeared. He wanted the angel-nurse back. One of the men looked an awful lot like the man “down-below.” He swallowed hard.
“Wh-where am I?” he asked meekly, trying to get a look at his surroundings. He drew back when he felt something press into his upper arm.
“Where do you think you are?”
“I… I don’t know… and, who are you, and… and what is that thing?”
“I’m Doctor McCoy. I just gave you an injection to help you overcome that lightheaded feeling you’re probably experiencing.”
Johnny sat up, rubbing his arm. “I didn’t see a needle.”
“We don’t use needles. Those went out along with things like scalpels and x-rays long before I was born. Medicine isn’t that barbaric any more.”
“No needles, huh?” Johnny grinned, forgetting for a moment he had no clue where he was. “I gotta tell Brackett about this....”
Johnny jumped a little when the other one spoke.
“What happened to Captain Kirk?”
“I… I…uh, Captain Kirk? Was he the other guy in the warehouse with you? My partner… Roy… got him out of the building before… before....” Johnny had no idea before what. “Wh-who are you, and where am I?”
One of those eyebrows raised, sending a little chill down Johnny’s spine.
“I’m Spock. First Officer. You’re aboard the Federation starship USS Enterprise.”
“Oh. I guess that explains it. Sort of.” Johnny thought it over, then frowned. “What exactly do you mean, starship?”
Spock and McCoy turned aside, conferring quietly so they couldn’t be heard.
Johnny fidgeted nervously, looking around the room. He could tell he was in a hospital, of sorts. It wasn’t like any he’d ever seen, but at least one thing hadn’t changed. Hospital beds were as uncomfortable as ever. He wasn’t restrained, but he didn’t see any hope of escape from these madmen, so he waited and tried to recall how he’d been kidnapped. He figured he wasn’t worth ransom, and was hoping they didn’t want to use him for any secret, underground medical experiment. Johnny rubbed his arm again, wondering what was really in that so-called injection.
They turned back to him. The doctor gave him a kindly smile. It put him on edge. He wasn’t going to be some human guinea pig without a fight.
Spock spoke.
“Until the transporter is functioning properly again, and we determine how to return you to earth and get our captain back, it looks like you’ll be staying here for a while. If we have your word that you will act in a civilized manner, you will be treated like a guest.”
Johnny was trying to absorb what he said. Return me to earth? He decided to play along. For now.
“I… uh… You’ve got my word. But, one thing. Just… just how do you treat a guest?”
Spock looked at McCoy, expecting him to provide the answer.
“Well, where I come from, son," the good doctor drawled, "we invite a man to dinner. Are you hungry?”
Ah, the magic words.
* * * * * * * *
“… so, you see, your man must have picked up my communicator and had it on him when Scotty finally got the transporter to work.”
“Uh-huh.” Stanley nodded, but looked doubtful.
Kirk didn’t know why they wouldn’t believe him. It wasn’t that difficult of a concept, and they didn’t strike him as dumb. Well, maybe the short guy with the overgrown mustache was a little on the slow side, but the others seemed intelligent enough. Even back in the 1970s, they had known space travel was possible. They’d already been to the moon by that time. Talk of discovering life on other planets had been common. Surely, rearranging human molecules wasn’t all that inconceivable.
It really bugged him. Why the hell didn’t they believe him? After all, he was James T. Kirk, Captain of the Starship Enterprise. For some reason, that didn’t seem to make the kind of impression on them it did around the rest of the Milky Way.
Firemen were a tough bunch.
He tried one more time to gain their confidence. “All right. The transporter must have malfunctioned again, or they’d have sent Gage back, and come for me by now. My engineer is the best there is. We just need to wait until he fixes it, then everything will be back to normal. You can go back to fighting your fires, and we can go back to fighting Klingons.”
“Cap, I think he’s telling the truth. I think we should believe him.”
Both captains looked at Kelly at the same time.
Kirk breathed a sigh of relief that someone, even if it was this Kelly-guy, finally believed him. “Is your station far from here? Maybe we could go there, and I could stay out of sight until they come for me.”
“Why do you need to hide? Are the Klingons still after you?”
“Kelly,” Stanley grumbled.
“I know, Cap. Shut-up.”
“What about Johnny?" Roy asked. "How do we know he’s all right?”
Chet shook his head. “Roy, Johnny is in outer space. It’s where he’s from, remember? He’s fine. It’s everyone else on the ship you should be worried about.” He turned to Kirk. “You have nurses in your sick bay?”
“Yes, but....”
“Well, there you have it, Roy. Gage is probably so busy chasing nurses, I bet he doesn’t even know he’s missing.”
Chet had a point.
Roy wondered how many Johnny had struck out with so far.
* * * * * * * *
“Mr. Spock. Why don’t you join us?” McCoy invited the First Officer to sit down at the table. “Mr. Gage and I were just discussing advances in medical techniques over the last few centuries. Back home, he’s a… a paramedic. It was an interesting concept, developed in the late 1960’s, early 70s to provide emergency pre hospital care....”
“Dr. McCoy, I'm sure it's fascinating,” Spock interrupted. “We have a problem to discuss...." He stopped and looked at the tray in front of Johnny. “What is that?”
“A hamburger and french fries. Don't... don't tell me they don’t have hamburgers where you come from? Hot dogs? Man, I can’t wait till we have computers that make anything we want.” Johnny shoved a french fry in his mouth, wanting to laugh at the droll expression on Spock’s face, but decided against pushing his luck.
McCoy had given him the grand tour, and it hadn’t taken long to figure out this was no hallucination. He really was on a space ship, and was grateful to find it was populated by friendly earthlings… with the exception of the First Officer. He found Spock interesting, if not a little scary.
“What’s the problem, Mr. Spock?”
Resuming his conversation with the doctor, Spock proceeded to explain that their appearance on earth had changed something that had been invented in the past. Whatever they had done seemed to have affected the ship mechanically, and altered some of their instruments. The ship’s engineers were having difficulty because they didn’t understand what they were looking at.
Johnny listened intently. He knew that fixing that transporter was his only ticket home. It was kind of nice up here, exciting and all, but he had a date tomorrow night with a new nurse from Rampart. He’d worked on her for weeks before she’d finally said yes, and he didn’t want to blow his chance with her.
She was really incredible.
“I can fix it,” he offered casually, between bites of his hamburger.
There was that raised eyebrow again. It wasn’t quite as intimidating the second time around. “Are you an electronics engineer, too? You understand computers and circuit boards?”
“Well, no. No, but it... it doesn’t take a… a rocket scientist to know all you need is a simple adjustment.”
“You know about wiring things?”
Johnny grinned. “I’ve had some experience. I know how to start a car without....” It occurred to him they probably didn’t know what cars were. “Never mind. I had this great idea once. You see, I wired a tape recorder into the squad so we could keep track of our runs, and not get our paperwork all messed up.”
Spock heard the word recorder, and considered it carefully. “You were successful?”
“Well. No. I... But, I knew what I was doing. It’s just that the instructions were upside down or backwards, and I started to... to fix it, when it sort of... blew up. Man, my hair almost caught on fire, too.” Johnny stopped, knowing he wasn’t inspiring confidence in his abilities.
Mr. Spock rose to go. “I believe I’ll let Mr. Scott continue to work on the problem. We're running short of time. The ship is already experiencing some time-space continuum problems, and I’m afraid we will be forced to leave within the next five hours.”
“Leave? What do you mean... leave?" Johnny was beginning to get a little nervous. "Not until I’m back down there... you know, on earth, and your... your captain is here, right?”
McCoy frowned. “Spock, maybe you should let the kid take a look. What harm could he do?”
"Doctor, if I recall correctly, you said the same thing about Tribbles. Need I remind you...?"
Johnny stood up, as something came to mind, briefly wondering if the Tribbles had been any trouble.
“You know, Doc, where's my handi-talkie? I have an idea....”
* * * * * * * *
The overhead lights came on in the rec room. Roy shuffled in, followed by Chet.
“Johnny, wake up.” Roy shook his shoulder.
“Huh?”
“You fell asleep with your head on the typewriter again, Gage. You left the TV on, too. When are you gonna give up on that dumb idea of yours?” Chet asked.
Johnny yawned, and slumped back in the chair. He looked around the room, then at Roy. “Were we at a warehouse fire earlier today?”
“You still don’t remember?” Roy looked at him with mild concern. “You passed out for a minute from the smoke when your air regulator went haywire.”
“Oh, yeah. I…. I did? Is that what happened?”
“Cap thinks there might have been some chemicals in there that weren’t listed on the company’s manifest log. We all felt kind of funny afterwards. None of us can remember much about the run, either. You must have inhaled more fumes than the rest of us, though.”
"Fumes, huh?" Johnny unconsciously rubbed a spot on his arm.
Roy opened the refrigerator door, and reached for an apple. “Either of you want anything to eat?”
“No,” answered Chet as he headed for the TV. “I’m just gonna see if there’s any good movies on.”
Johnny sat with his eyes closed, rubbing his temples.
“You still have a headache, Johnny?”
“Yeah. Kind of. I don’t know. It’s not exactly a headache. My head… just feels… sorta funny.”
“Hey, look!” Chet exclaimed. “I didn’t know Twilight Zone was on this time of night. Wow, it’s that one with William Shatner, when he’s on the airplane and he sees a monster outside....”
Johnny raised an eyebrow.
“Fascinating.”
* * * * * * * *
“I kind of liked the young man,” McCoy said. “He reminded me a little of myself when I was that age. Full of energy and curiosity. Too bad he couldn’t have stayed longer. I think he would have livened things up around here.”
“I’ve had all the excitement I need for a while,” Kirk retorted. “I’m ready for some old-fashioned peace and quiet. How about you, Mr. Spock?”
Spock was feeling unusually distracted, and ran his hand through what little hair he had. “Man, I have this strange craving for a… a hamburger.”
Kirk smiled, though shooting McCoy a slightly puzzled look. “Set a course for Star Base 10, Mr. Sulu. Take us out of orbit. Warp speed.”
“So, Mr. Spock. Tell me something.”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Do you like your french fries with or without ketchup?”
Spock looked dispassionately at both Kirk and McCoy, failing to see the humor they were obviously sharing.
The captain and the ship's doctor weren't sure, but they could have sworn they heard the first officer mutter something that sounded an awful lot like, "Oh, SHUT-up, Bones," then turn and whistle a happy tune as he left the bridge.
McCoy laid a hand on Kirk’s shoulder, and leaned down to whisper in his ear. “That was one mind-meld you shouldn’t have missed, Jim. I don’t think old Spock here is ever gonna be the same.”
* * * * * * * *
