' E

I'm not only a life-long STAR TREK fan but also a professional filmmaker**. Over the past two years, since the release of "Star Trek Into Darkness," which has become a favorite film of mine and baffling me with its divisive effects on fans, I wrote a screenplay for spare time fun; it was my Abrams-verse STAR TREK Part 3: "Tomorrow Never Knows." (much of which I've posted on Tumblr)

In writing it, the characters of Chris Pine's Kirk and Alice Eve's Carol Marcus really came alive as I'd felt a strong chemistry between them already on-screen and thought their relationship should be part of what drives the future stories forward, possibly even, after struggle, conflict, action and drama (and sex), providing them the happiness denied them in the Prime Universe. I began using some elements of my half-finished screenplay to do something seriously I hadn't done in some time: writing prose fiction (screenplays truly are a different form of writing). As I began work on what is turning into the novel length STAR TREK BEYOND FOREVER (being posted serialized on this site), I was inspired to write a short story that I posted to Tumblr in 4 parts over the Christmas season in 2013-14.

That story, "A Christmas Trifle," is being presented here, polished and divided into simply 2 halves. It was not and still isn't, really, intended as a prequel to the novel as I was using it to find my way a bit around the characters and relationships. So, there may seem to a few instances of discontinuity between the short and the novel, but it largely does work in this regard and if, as I hope to do, write a follow-up full length novel taking place after BEYOND FOREVER, I may rewrite small pieces of this short and include it as a prelude to my Jim and Carol story (with at least 2 other short stories in the works that would fit in down the way).

If you are enjoying BEYOND FOREVER, I hope (and believe) you'll enjoy this. And as always, I'm very open to both public reviews/discussions and private messaging with questions, ideas, etc.; please also recommend it to friends and other readers for as a filmmaker, I know it's word of mouth that sells best. If you've just stumbled across this short and enjoy it, please jump into and join the ride, BEYOND FOREVER...

** to watch my award winning and crowd pleasing, at festivals and on movie channels, debut feature film as writer-director-exec. producer, "It All Happens Incredibly Fast", search for it by title on Youtube where it is available for a time in full for free; if you like it, leave a note and tell your friends to take a look (it's a good one!)

A Christmas Trifle

e

She enjoyed that he appreciated at least a few traditions beyond the nautical - - and the astro, sea and space, and fast vintage cars, but for the life of her Carol Marcus had no idea what old, melancholy jazz piano had to do with the season. And she wasn't about to ask who the hell Charlie Brown was but he'd insisted that she'd love it and so she'd dug it out deep from the cabin's computer. She flicked a look up at him, an inquisitive glance, as she stretched out on the old overstuffed sofa, relieved he didn't catch her as he usually did, and watched him at diligent work. Here was a young man, too young in some respects she sometimes thought, to do what was expected of him and that he demanded of himself, who had just days ago lead them through a swirling nebula with three Klingon warships on the prowl around them and who had eluded the enemy without firing a shot, an intense grin lighting his handsome features as they shot away from the swirl, homeward. And, dammit, he wore that same look now doing something as simple as stroking her bare feet.

She'd gone for a long cross country ski to work up an appetite for the dinner the Chalet staff would be be delivering and had expected him to remark that there were better ways to get hungry but when he'd just said, distractedly, "stay warm." little jingling alarm bells went off in her head. He was always tricks and plans and gambles.

She'd plowed hard across the densely packed icy snow of McMurdo, Starfleet cartographers' nickname for a vast open stretch across the equatorial plain of the frozen world Nefud. Carol felt her heart pound and a growing ache in her long legs and marbled arms and realized that she'd forgotten how cold McMurdo could get, the wind cutting in gusts through her despite her thermals and heated form fitting body suit and furry, old Russian soldier's cap. The last sliver of Nefud's orange sun disappeared over the horizon and the land had turned blue by the time she arrived back at the cabin, removed the skis and jogged and stretched. She was glad she'd gotten the work out and that she had gotten away from him for a while at least to clear her head. This was only the second time they'd been away together since their relationship had become public knowledge and that first time had proven a tumult; he'd put the same kind of energy and drive into a late night session of Scrabble as an afternoon of one-on-one beach volleyball. But there was no one Carol Marcus wanted to spend this Christmas with, and maybe more, than Jim Kirk.
Jim had met her at the door asking, "So how was it?", already helping her pull off her tight thermal jacket and untying the soft scarf from her long throat.

"Good," she'd answered. "Got the blood circulating." He ran a palm over her cheek—

"My god! You're freezing!"

"Yes, yes, I am," she'd laughed as he angled her to one of the heavy wooden chairs in the cabin's vestibule, sitting her down and together, with Jim down on one knee, they'd pulled off her boots. Carol stood and he'd watched as she'd stripped away a heavy black and red cable knit and the gray sweatshirt that once was his that she'd cut sleeveless for scrimmage football.

"Is there any there there?" he'd asked at the growing pile of her clothing and she'd pointed at him knowingly.

"Paraphrasing Gertrude Stein, eh? Well—" She was down to the black rubber formfitting one piece. "As for me, I'm all woman," Carol said, all silly-sexy.

"Yes, you most assuredly are," Jim had answered and was dead serious. He'd pulled her close and hoisted her up in his arms and twirled her around.

"Jim!", she'd exclaimed brightly, loving the sound of saying his name freely and lightly without Enterprise klaxons driving her cry or in the suddenly absurd context of arguing about torpedo dispersal patterns. As he'd carried her into the main low ceilinged chamber of the wooden cabin, she added with mock diffidence, "My dear man, you're much too good to me."

"You ain't seen nothing yet."

The water in the deep porcelain tub was on the hot side of warm but still a comfort. Carol could appreciate the heat spreading through her legs and her shoulders and the bubbles and lightly scented bath oils were heavy around her body like a liquid comforter. Jim had, after peeling her inch by inch from the athletic body suit, smiling, both of them, at every inch of exposed skin, slowly lowered her in. He'd gently poured a jug of steaming water over her, plastering her bobbed blonde curl then had wiped her hair with care from her wide eyes and back from her forehead. She felt it damp and drying against her strong shoulders. Taking a long, slow pull of the vodka martini with the delicate lemon twist he'd had waiting for her, feeling the cold frost of the icy glass against her fingertips and the strange chilled heat of the alcohol in her chest, Carol realized she'd barely thought of the Enterprise and her mates there since landing at the Chalet. And with reason. Jim Kirk rarely took advantage of "the privileges of command" and when he did he was generous about including his friends but his thoughts, since the moment the ship had leaped to warp and into its five year future over a year ago, were always with the crew and whereas some starship commanders may only acknowledge the season with a small tree on the rec deck and a turkey dinner in the mess, Jim knew how to appreciate family. And for a man with such a fouled up childhood, Carol thought, that spoke strongly and accurately of his character. He'd had Spock alter rotations from three shifts to four, and with skeleton crews drawn by lots, and had Uhura, who needed no encouragement, arrange shipwide parties and gift-giving amongst stations and sections. He'd likely had asked Nyota to pipe that sad jazz piano over the ship's comm…

The music was still playing when Jim had returned to towel her off but she'd sent him away playfully the moment his broad hands moved across her hard stomach and his full lips pressed down on her bare shoulders. She'd told him she'd wanted first to make herself presentable — "presentable," like she was about to teach a seminar or accept an award. He loved how "proper" she could sound and she'd tried to teach him what-for by talkin' dirty once but that amused them both more than it titillated and she knew she was as stuck with as equal and opposite a dysfunctional upbringing as he was, hard-working privilege to his sometimes self-imposed hardscrabble. Carol brushed back and scented her hair, touched perfume here and there and chose a pair of comfortable vintage black Capris and pulled on matching Japanese slippers and Jim's short silky robe of deep Royal blue with Klingon glyphs painted across the mid-riff sash she pulled tight.

Then, with a final look in the mirror of the bedroom's closet door, she tousled her hair with a quick hand and couldn't help but smile at herself. The Christmas vacation, as short as it had to be — three days and two nights — had come as his wonderful surprise for her. What she had as a surprise for him, her gift to the bravest man she'd ever known and an ace at, maybe, the toughest job in the galaxy would knock Jim Kirk into orbit.

Carol swayed into the cabin's main chamber where Jim had stoked a crackling, lightly smokey fireplace. There was a pleasant mischievousness to her usual casual confidence and she stirred to the realization that his martinis were like the man himself — so easy to enjoy and, boy-oh, did they pack a wallop. She kicked herself a little at her tinge of disappointment that he hadn't made a fuss over her entrance or particularly even noticed her; he'd played — if indeed he was "playing" … sometimes this romance drove her batty with second questions and self-recriminations — such the attentive boyfriend since arriving, something they'd agreed to avoid on board the ship and particularly when at station… only in the intimacy of one anothers' quarters… "Boyfriend"… Jesus, here's a man who had the power to turn half a planet to a puddle of molten lead— and "girlfriend"? Her? Doctor Carol Marcus, recently on the short list for a Zee-Magnees prize nomination and who was privately certain that her restricted research which even Jim barely knew anything about was a stone's throw — admittedly, a long stone's throw — from her opening up the powers of creation. But then he was also the "guy" who loved those hot cars and atmosphere-jets and fast, intense angling on alien seas, going after the big one that got away from more experienced hands. And she was the "girl" who loved, now, watching the old movies from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries denied her in that privileged childhood as "coarse" and who still loved riding the horse that had won her Olympic Silver at sixteen through the English old country.

But Jim had noticed her, she saw, despite his posture and put-on attitude of lazy masculinity — feet up on the coffee table carved from a single slab of local Warm Stone, a double scotch on the rocks in hand, head back against the couch as he listened to the game. He was watching her through half-closed eyes and smiled broadly when it was she who caught him this time.

"So, who's winning?," she asked, putting her book down on the table, and a small box wrapped in old fashioned snow-and-sleds soft paper.

"Patriots," he answered, with dull familiarity. "How does one team win this thing for forty-seven seasons in a row and people still make a party out of it?"

"Rah-Rah-Rah. Maybe you'll give cricket a try after all."

"I can make more sense out of the Andorian biathalon, figure skating with switchblades."

Jim was listening to, and watching what wavered through the holo-vision, the Superbowl which actually wouldn't be played on Earth — in Accra, Ghana — for another three months. Through some bizarre spasm in space-time, an event that hadn't actually occurred bounced around inside a quasar, ULAS Eight-Oh-Five-Five, the reliable "Double Nickel," in a galaxy that didn't even have a name for the books yet, bounced back at, literally, incalculable speed off of listening post Epsilon Six, routinely shorting the station out, and into the heart of the Federation. Sitar of Vulcan was still having nightmares over what he claimed was a simple explanation that even he couldn't wrap his logic around. In the short term, this mind-bending of reality had simply annoyed Jim Kirk. "What good's football for if you can't bet on it?"

He pulled his legs from the table and sitting up, took the wrapped gift she'd laid down in hand — gently. "For me?"

"Unless you've invited the other Captains of the Fighting First for a round and a sing-a-long by the Chalet bar piano and haven't told me." She smiled at him sweetly, forcing pretend-contriteness from him for his compulsive surprises aimed equally at annoying her for fun and pleasing her for something more.

"It's just you and me." He handed her back the present and she went and slipped it under what their hosts had provided as a "tree" — a kind of gnarled bough with luminescent gold needles found in the garden spots of the Nefud tundra. There was only one other lonely present beneath the bough — Jim's gift to her in a papered box about two feet square that left her perplexed — though they had exchanged starters shortly after arriving at the cabin over local spiced root tea with its ever so ethereal narcotic zing. Jim was wearing his gift now; a sleek, loose sleeved, Vee-necked longshirt, silver-spun by rare crow-sized bee moths from the spires of Antilles Paramus over his old farmboy denims. She'd be wearing hers from him later that night — though she'd helped him select the clingy, sheer and short black cotton Argelean slip.

Jim hoisted himself off the couch to the wet bar and mixed Carol another martini — again taking care with the lemon twist, shaving it close — as she joined him, leaning back on her elbows against the counter.

"Do you think Mister Spock celebrated Christmas? As a child, I mean."

"I don't think there was a baby Jesus on Vulcan. Wise Men, maybe."

"I'm not suggesting some old-time religion, only that his mother was human," Carol replied. "I just wonder, maybe, well, she must have made him at least aware of the traditions of the season. On Earth."

"You mean, did he stroke fingers under the mistletoe with pretty little pointy eared girls or leave out a fresh garden salad for friendly ole Saint Surak? His father doesn't strike me as an Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy kind of guy. You've never met that brand of austerity."

"Ambassador Sarek? You know, I think I did meet him once. At one of my mother's high society dos."

"Really? When was this?"

"Long time ago. More than twenty years, I imagine, a UFP Council charity thing in New York," she said, laughing a little at the small memory. "I couldn't have been more than, I don't know, seven or eight but I do remember a very serious man with pointed ears who scared me a little. I'd been told not to shake his hand, just bow my head quickly. But the woman he was with, I think she took my hand in hers and she was soft-spoken and had a friendly smile. She had to be human."

"They didn't have a sullen twelve year old know it all with them? With a really ridiculous hair cut?"

She hid the smile as she shook her head. Pushed, she'd have to admit she was always genuinely amused by the honest, sometimes awfully sharp, sniping between the two men who were clearly such friends. "No, no, I don't think so." She gave him a nudge. "You can be so mean."

"You'll have to ask him what he remembers, if anything, about that when we get back. Catch him in the right frame of mind and he'll actually talk a bit about her — his mom. The, uh… fondness, I guess you'd call it, between them."

Carol lightly stroked her blue-painted nails down his bare forearm as he'd compulsively pushed up the sleeves of the new shirt.

"Well," she mused softly and, she knew as she'd said it, a little too earnestly, responding to him, "That would make one of you. Who knew he'd find it easier to talk about his family? Especially his mum."

Jim's features tensed, cocking his head a little to the right— like a poker "tell" whenever she pressed too hard and, in this instance, she'd barely pressed at all. It was getting worse, this, and it worried her; like the paradox of foreboding, of a reality that hadn't yet happened, wrapped around and pulsing from that distant quasar, the closer they became — closer than any of the very few lovers she'd had — the more personally walled off he became over certain privacies. And she understood that when it came to, say, Tarsus Four or even his lost wild years between Hawkeye College and the Academy, when he'd nearly burnt out before he'd even begun — he'd talk it all out in time, she was certain. But when it came to Winona Kirk…? Heavens knew, Carol had her own problems with a judgmental mother, especially when she'd sided with her dad after the divorce, and had been rebuilding that burnt bridge since the nightmare of Khan but Mrs. Kirk was the quiet legend in a family of heroes, the galaxy traversing xenobiologist with more first contacts on her resume since Jonathan Archer's mission and Clegg Forbes' days on the USS Horizon.

Then Jim looked back at her and his body relaxed with his typical practiced swagger. He moved her around, drawing her back toward him and slipped his fingers beneath the silky robe and she felt his thumbs press and dance against her still flaming-sore trapezoids. Goddammit. Then he was nuzzling the curve along her neck and shoulder — his warm breath… God… damn… him. And he kissed her cheek, whispering in her ear, his lips barely touching her skin… "Carol…"

"You're… impossible."

"Yeah… yeah. You're right. I am. Completely… impossible."

"Jim…?"

He answered her by running an open palm down her right arm and pushing his hand into hers. She wrapped her fingers around his, held them tight, and instinctively lead him back to the beckoning comfort of the couch by the fire. The crisp music from the autoplayer popped and cracked with the restored hiss of an old era recording, the piano jazz lolling as children sang with disaffected longing… "Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer… Time for all what children call their favorite time of year…"

By the time Jim had eased her feet from the Japanese slippers and she was watching him gently rubbing her soles, then applying lovely pressure to where he knew she needed it, June Marcus' calculated kindness and Winona Kirk's unease around her son were consumed by the cabin and the here and now and James Kirk — in the strange promise in that box she had wrapped and placed under the golden bough.

"Jim, I need you to open your Christmas present, my gift to you. It's really, I think, for both of us."

He almost chuckled — almost, but he stopped himself. "You don't know what it is you got me?"

"Actually, no. Not exactly," she answered, a light, giddy laugh in her smile. She was about to discover, maybe the most profound thing about herself, about her and Mister Kirk, and it could very well fall flat, a terrible, disheartening ridiculous let down. Or maybe not.

"Jim, I'm a woman of science— and faith, in that, to me, the secrets of the universe and our desire to understand them are… borne of mystery. My gift to you's a mystery box and I think — I hope — it's filled with secrets."

"Really…," he said quietly and that's all he said, staring at her with the fire bouncing off his ocean blue eyes and he smiled at her as if, she thought, he saw her. Really saw her.

"If I know you, Captain, my Captain, you're always ready to jump into the great unknown—"

Then there was ringing and clanging at the front door.

to be continued. . . .