Chapter 6: Birthday Party of the King

An instant after Natasha assured Jason there was a Santa Claus, Picard and Data were flying above San Francisco again, courtesy of Benjamin.

"Haven't you shown me enough already?" Picard asked more out of the guilt over what Winona would think of her big brother if she were alive today rather than the frustration he had shown to those children carolers the day before last.

"There is another place to visit." Benjamin explained. "Even though you refused the offer yesterday."

"Oh no!" Picard said as that guilt swelled even more. "Not my nephew Jim's dinner party!"

But it was too late. The quartet was right in the middle of a modest but well-kept home. Jim was there with his wife, a woman with blond hair and blue eyes.

"To Uncle Jean-Luc!" Jim called out just as Riker had done at his own home to the same lukewarm reception.

"That stingy man who shuns you every time you see him?" Carol asked.

"Have pity on him, Carol." Jim asked.

"Pity?" Carol asked. "For a man so rich? His entire business is solely to be making a profit."

"Profit, yes." Jim said. "But how do the profits profit him? He takes it into his head to dislike us and be gloomy in Dukat's old place. I plan on giving him the same invitation I give him every year until he finally accepts for I pity him."

"How can you have so much patience, Jim?" Carol asked, obviously ashamed of herself.

"Because my mother always spoke highly of him and no one my mother loved so much can be all bad." Jim said simply as everyone went back to the party, somehow even merrier than before.

Picard however, was weeping silently, especially as his sister's favorite song was playing in the background.

"Why this remorse?" Benjamin asked.

"Every year he gives me a gift." Picard said with a heavy sigh and a trembling voice. "And I toss it away. I never understood such things."

"But gifts have been a part of Christmas from the very beginning." Benjamin pointed out. "See that tiny stable under the tree? Perhaps your young companion can tell you."

Data, more out of instinct than anything else, began singing a song his father had taught him as Picard looked at an ornament depicting the nativity.

Christmas Trees are brightly lighted.

Through the world the church bells ring.

Great and small are all invited

To the birthday party of the King.

Mighty prince and humble peasant.

Each will choose a gift to bring.

Do you have a birthday present

For the birthday party of the King?

Once wise men came in his honor

Bringing incense, myrrh, and gold.

But what is gold to a ruler

Who has all the stars to hold?!

Do you know what gift will please him?

Please him more than anything?!

Bring a heart that really loves him

To the birthday party… Of the King . . .!

Picard smiled at the song as he felt his heart swell up at the familiar, but somehow new, story, but then his smile fell as he thought of the Riker house.

"But what about that other child?" Picard asked Benjamin. "So tiny he seems little more than a baby himself. What of Little Jason?"

"I see a vacant seat in the chimney corner." Benjamin said solemnly. "And a little clutch without an owner carefully preserved."

As Benjamin said this, Picard found himself in the Riker house to find the scene Benjamin described and a family in mourning as they left for the cemetery.

"Oh dear god, let it not be." Picard gasped as he collapses down at the crutch and wept for the boy his callousness would kill.


Next chapter, my favorite song in the whole film.