Before Sol Burned Hot in Space
Beneath the leaden sky, the land looked different than it would five billion years from now, but only marginally so. Several new—Or old, Kirk corrected himself—rock formations climbed from the rugged soil, while others he had once seen here had yet to take shape. This long ago, a number of fissures had not opened in the ground, though some looked to him as though they would remain essentially unaltered in the millennia to come. In the distance, where he and Spock and the rest of the Enterprise landing party had observed archeological ruins during their initial visit here, Kirk now saw nothing.
The Guardian of Forever appeared completely unchanged. The sepia-toned ring stood on edge a dozen or so meters ahead of Kirk, the irregularly flowing shape perhaps two and a half times his height and looking just as it had on the day he’d first set eyes on it. The scientists and historians who had studied the enigmatic artifact had reported its seemingly fixed nature even across eons, but Kirk had no idea how that could be possible. Doesn’t everything change with time? he asked himself, and then he supposed that his question had its own answer embedded within it: time. The Guardian clearly had a significant measure of control over time in a fundamental way, a control that could be readily witnessed, but that had yet to be explained.
Kirk remembered discovering the Guardian. From the moment that the mysterious entity had confirmed its nature as a gateway through time and space, Kirk’s imagination had been sparked. He’d found the idea of stepping into the past and losing himself in another world tantalizing and compelling.
And then he had done just that, chasing McCoy into Earth’s twentieth century. Kirk and Spock had restored the timeline that Bones had accidentally altered. After they had reset events to avoid a Nazi victory in World War II, the Guardian had returned the three of them to their own time. It will be as though none of you had gone, the Guardian had said of a successful attempt to repair the damage done to history, but that hadn’t been the case. Time had indeed resumed its shape, but the experience had changed the rest of Kirk’s life.
He hated this place. Coming here had led him to his one chance for true happiness, but then that chance had been stolen back from him in the cruelest way. Even when he’d next visited this nearly empty world, the wonder and potential of the Guardian had been eclipsed by the effortlessness with which its use could bring about unexpected and lethal changes to the universe. On the third and final occasion when Kirk had approached this planet, he hadn’t made it to the surface, but had led the Enterprise crew into a deadly battle with the Klingons that had caused hundreds of deaths and very nearly his own.
Despite all of that, though, he had come here now seeking the Guardian’s aid. Kirk wanted to use the time vortex for a positive, useful end while avoiding any repercussions, any modifications to the timeline. The best chance he had of accomplishing all of that would depend not only on his own abilities and actions, but on the will of the Guardian itself. The situation put Kirk in mind of tales belonging to the literary subgenre of protagonists attempting to forge a deal with the devil.
“Guardian,” he said, pacing forward to stand directly in front of it. “Do you remember me?”
It offered no response. Kirk recalled that, during his preparations for his second visit to this place, he had read through the documentation of the researchers who’d worked here. The reports had stated that the Guardian did not reply to every question asked of it, and also that it sometimes spoke without being addressed in any way. More than that, the researchers had noted, just as Spock had, that much of what it said came “couched in riddles.”
“Guardian,” Kirk said again. “Are you machine or being?” This had been one of the first questions he’d asked when he and the Enterprise landing party had initially encountered the Guardian. It had responded by claiming to be both machine and being, and neither machine nor being.
Now, though, it remained silent. Kirk decided to attempt to engage it by way of a different tack, at the same time addressing an important issue. “Guardian, do you know when your existence will end?”
“I am my own beginning, my own ending,” it said, its deep voice booming and full even in the open space. Synchronized with its words, different portions of the ring glowed from within.
“No, you are not,” Kirk asserted, though he made an effort to keep any hint of defiance or hostility from his tone. “You are not your own ending. I know this because, in the future, I witnessed your destruction.” He waited for a reply. When none came, he opted to continue. “I saw a starship plunge from space and through the atmosphere of this—”
“I am the Guardian of Forever,” the vortex proclaimed. “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.”
“How can you possess eternity when you are not yourself eternal?” Kirk asked. “Five billion years from now, a starship commander will intentionally crash his vessel on this world, on this very spot. A powerful detonation will result, creating a massive crater and vaporizing both the ship and you.”
Again, Kirk waited. He heard the howl of the wind, though about him, the air remained still. Through the center of the Guardian, in the distance, he saw dirt kicking up and blowing across the land. Finally, he went on. “I tell you this for your own sake,” he said. “I tell you this so that you will be able to avoid the end that I have seen. If you do not listen to me, if you do nothing, you will cease to exist.”
“Time bends,” the Guardian said cryptically. “The end is but the beginning.”
“What does that mean?” Kirk asked, but he knew better than to expect a straightforward answer—or any answer at all. When indeed the Guardian said nothing, Kirk turned and paced away from it. His boots scraped noisily along the hard terrain, and now he felt the chill movement of the air. It struck him that he had no protective garments, no clothing whatsoever beyond that which he wore right now. He had no shelter in this desolate place, no food, no water. In order to achieve his goals, he would therefore have only so much time—
But of course he had access to time. He glanced back over his shoulder at the Guardian. If Kirk needed anything at all, it waited for him just on the other side of the vortex. He had only to call up a time and place, and then leap to it.
Virtually any time and place, Kirk thought. The researchers had found few limitations on what they could observe of the past beyond the time surrounding the actual origin of the Guardian. That means that it must be possible to access the moments when the Gr’oth had plummeted to the surface of this world. Persuading the Guardian of the reality of that event might or might not be critical in securing its compliance, but back in the nexus, the other Kirk had believed attempting to do so to be the right choice. Kirk himself had agreed. And maybe the Guardian can convince itself of its own demise, he thought.
Kirk turned and headed back to the Guardian. When he reached it, he said, “I wish to see tomorrow.” He knew that in the accounts that he had read of the research done at the Guardian, no mention had ever been made of the vortex displaying future events or allowing anybody to travel forward through time. He and the other Kirk had been aware that it might not be possible to find a direct route through the Guardian to 2293 or 2371—or in this case, to 2270, the year when the Gr’oth had slammed into the planet. He chose to see if being more specific in his request would make a difference.
“Guardian,” he said, “I wish to see the thirteenth day of June in the Earth year twenty-two seventy.” Once again, Kirk received no response, and so he decided to try an indirect path to the event. “I wish to see yesterday.”
Still nothing.
For an instant, panic gripped Kirk. He had expected that the Guardian might be either unwilling or unable to present the future to him, but he had no reason to think that it would not replay the past. It had done so before. In his previous trips here, it had shown him the history of humanity on Earth, the dawn of Orion civilization, and a recent day on the planet Vulcan.
Now, though, the vortex stood empty.
“‘Since before your sun burned hot in space,’” Kirk said to himself, quoting the Guardian. “‘Since before your race was born.’” When Kirk had exited the nexus, he had come five billion years into the past—or at least he had wanted to do so. He assumed for the moment that he had, despite having no real means of confirming that fact. But if he had arrived here that long ago, then Earth’s sun had yet to form in the cold reaches of space, and the evolution of humanity lay even further ahead in the future than that. Kirk had asked to see yesterday, but for human beings, right now, at this moment, today did not exist. With no today, how can there be a yesterday? Kirk thought. Have I come too far into the past to make use of the Guardian? He wondered too if he had inadvertently condemned himself to living his final days on this barren world, while at the same time being unable to do anything to prevent the destruction caused by the converging temporal loop.
But today exists for me, Kirk told himself. And so does yesterday. Once more, he would shift from the general to the specific. “Guardian, I wish to see my yesterday.”
“Behold,” it said. “A gateway to your own past, if you wish.”
A white mist spilled down from the top of the wide, roughly circular opening through the center of the Guardian’s ring. Then images began to form: Kirk’s mother giving birth, his brother Sam holding him as an infant, Kirk sleeping in a crib. This had been one of the ways in which the historians had learned to refine their requests of the Guardian. If it showed a thousand images of a ten-thousand-year epoch, it would present just ten scenes per century, making it difficult to view or navigate to particular points in time with much precision. Observing the course of a single life, though, because of its relative brevity, allowed for greater granularity: a thousand images displayed of Kirk’s sixty-year life would produce one scene for every three weeks he’d lived. The numbers worked out differently than that, and the Guardian didn’t always show moments spaced evenly apart, but the principle remained that you could see far more detail of a single life through the vortex than you could of a longer period.
Kirk continued to watch as his existence unfolded before him. He smiled when he saw himself tottering across the family living room and into Sam’s waiting arms, perhaps taking his first steps, but he also felt a deep melancholy as well; Sam had been gone now for almost half of Kirk’s life. Similar emotions played through his mind as his mother and father appeared, as his grandfather did, his uncle, all of them lost for so long at this point.
He closed his eyes when the colony on Tarsus IV materialized. At the age of thirteen, Kirk had been living there when the food supply had been all but wiped out by an exotic fungus. Governor Kodos had seized full power and declared martial law, then executed four thousand colonists in a horribly misguided and ultimately unnecessary attempt to save the other four thousand.
Kirk watched with interest, though, as he sped through Starfleet Academy. He saw himself as a young officer aboard the Republic, and then later, aboard the Farragut. Aboard the Enterprise, he saw Spock and Bones and Scotty.
And then the Guardian of Forever appeared. And then New York City in 1930. And then Edith.
Kirk turned away. He could not bear to see her. It occurred to him briefly that he could simply step through the time vortex and rejoin his beloved, save her from the traffic accident that had taken her from him—
But he had already made the decision once to sacrifice his own desires to preserve history. How could he in good conscience abandon that now? He had come here with a greater purpose than his own happiness, and he would see that effort through.
When Kirk peered back at the Guardian, he saw himself in gangster clothing on Sigma Iotia II. He fought the Kelvans as they commandeered the Enterprise, ferried the Dohlman of Elas to her arranged marriage on Troyius. He spoke with High Priestess Natira on Yonada, argued with the insane Captain Garth on Elba II, observed a glommer devouring a tribble.
As the period of the Klingon attack on the Einstein station approached, Kirk said, “Guardian, do you perceive yourself with the times that these images present?”
“I see all,” it said, a pronouncement startling for its lack of ambiguity.
Kirk thought for a moment how best to phrase what he would say next. “Then you will see the time when you will cease to exist,” he said. “I propose that you can avoid such an end by moving yourself through time.”
“All that will be, has already been,” the Guardian said inscrutably. “All that has been, will be.”
“Does that mean that you have already escaped the destruction caused by the starship?” Kirk asked. He did not anticipate a direct answer, but he wanted as much as possible to try to divine the Guardian’s intent, as well as any movement it might have made through time. When it did not reply to his question, he said, “In my lifetime, a temporal phenomenon has devastated a section of the galaxy between the years twenty-two ninety-three and twenty-three seventy-one, with a corresponding loss of life. I wish to prevent that from occurring.”
Within the ring of the Guardian, Kirk saw himself lying in a coma in the Enterprise’s sickbay, and then unconscious atop a diagnostic pallet in Starbase 10’s infirmary. It struck him that those times in his life had come after the Gr’oth had rammed into the Guardian of Forever. Or had it? Kirk thought. The recordings of the incident had shown the Klingon vessel as it had streaked through the atmosphere, and they had shown its intended target. But when the Gr’oth had gotten close to the planet’s surface, its mass had obscured the view of the Guardian. Could it be that the time vortex had during those last moments taken itself away, traveling through time to a place and time of safety? If the Guardian had been destroyed, Kirk asked himself, could it possibly be showing me events in my life that had taken place after that? Though he could not be sure, he didn’t think so.
As his life continued to unfurl within the Guardian, he said, “I will unintentionally cause the shock wave that will destroy a portion of the galaxy, and I need your help to keep that from happening.” When the Guardian did not respond, Kirk explained precisely how and why the converging temporal loop had developed, then detailed his plan to stop it from occurring.
“Do you understand?” he asked when he had finished.
No reply.
“Will you help me?” he tried.
Nothing.
“Will you save yourself from the starship in the way that I have requested?”
“I am my own beginning, my own ending,” repeated the Guardian. “Through me is eternity kept.”
Kirk could not determine whether that answered his question, but he also realized that he would likely receive no reply more explicit than that, no matter what he asked. Strictly speaking, other than the Guardian allowing him to travel back into his own life right now, its participation would not be crucial to Kirk’s efforts to avert the temporal loop. Being able to move through time via the vortex a second time would make it far easier to carry out his plan, but if necessary, he could succeed without that capability.
In the mists of the Guardian, moments from the Enterprise’s seven-and-a-half-year expedition to and from the Aquarius Formation flickered past. After that, he saw himself riding a horse on his uncle’s farm in Idaho, and he saw Antonia. He saw Khan Noonien Singh and Carol Marcus. He saw his son, David.
While the images continued to fade into and out of view, Kirk made additional attempts to converse with the Guardian. He tried to learn if it would indeed protect itself from Korax’s suicidal plunge to the planet, and if it would be available to Kirk in his attempt to thwart the emergence of the shock wave. The Guardian spoke little and revealed less.
In the end, recognizing that he would learn no more than he already had, Kirk decided to proceed. Either the Guardian would survive beyond 2270 or it would not, either it would assist him when the time came or it would not. No matter, Kirk would do whatever he could to prevent the converging temporal loop.
He waited quietly as the pictures within the vortex moved on, showing the days aboard his last command, the Enterprise-A. Eventually, he saw himself in retirement once more, this time not sequestering himself away in the hills of Idaho, but traveling the globe and the galaxy: rappelling the Crystalline Trench, climbing Mount Revek, diving the Alandros Caves, rafting the lava flows of the Valtarik volcano, and more. As he reflected on the feats of derring-do that he’d undertaken during his second retirement, he realized how much he had been motivated to engage in such dangerous activities by the general sadness that had settled over his life.
At last, the images within the vortex reached the days just before he had boarded the Enterprise-B for its maiden voyage. He quickly reiterated his requests of the Guardian, then took a step back with one foot, preparing himself to move quickly. When he saw himself walking along the streets of San Francisco, he knew that the moment had come.
Kirk sprang forward and leaped through the Guardian of Forever, back into his own past.