2299: Cinnamon Cove, Maine

As usual, I woke before Janice. Propping myself up on one elbow, I smiled down at my beautiful wife, thankful as always that she was mine. Kissing her softly on the forehead, I got out of bed and padded through to the kitchen. I brewed a pot of coffee then stood in front of our picture window sipping a cup while gazing out over the Atlantic breakers, lost in thought.

Today is our twentieth wedding anniversary, and because he gave me away at both of my weddings I found my thoughts turning to Captain James T. Kirk, a man now six years dead. In the days following his death, the full story had emerged. Despite being retired he, Montgomery Scott, and Pavel Chekov had somehow wangled a ride-along on the maiden voyage of the Enterprise-B. This was a trial run to put the ship though its paces rather than an actual mission and no one was expecting any excitement. However, during the voyage, Enterprise was ordered to rescue a pair El-Aurian refugee ships from a strange energy ribbon of unknown origin. She was able to save some of the refugees before their ships were destroyed, but in doing so became trapped in the ribbon itself. Jim went to deflector control to realign the deflector dish, allowing Enterprise to escape, but the trailing end of the ribbon made contact with the ship's hull, opening the section he was in to the vacuum of space. Jim Kirk was presumed dead.

His body was never found.

That night I had a dream about Jim Kirk, and I've had many dreams about him in the years since, yet prior to death I had never dreamed about him at all, not even once.

It was strange to think back to our encounter on Camus II, and remember how desperately I'd wanted to captain a starship. At the time this wasn't a possibility for women, but things had changed since, oh how they had changed! My daughter Grace was now one of our most daring and most gifted starship captains, a swashbuckler with a different girl in every port. She reminded me strongly of Jim Kirk. Had she been his daughter she would most definitely have been a chip off the old block. Maybe something from my long ago body swap with him had somehow rubbed off on her. An absurd idea I know, but I kinda hoped so.

"Any of that coffee left?" said Janice, coming up behind me and slipping her arms around my waist.

"Most of a pot," I said, turning in her arms and kissing her. "Happy anniversary, my love."

"Wow, twenty years already. Where does the time go?" "Yeah, we both turn sixty next year. I'm having a hard time getting my head around that one."

"True, but thanks to modern medicine everyone looks and feel twenty years younger than they would've at this age back in the twentieth century. Sixty is the mid-point of our lives rather than the start of our final decade or two. And thanks to good genetics, you barely look any different now to how you did on the day we first met."

"Well, I have a few more 'laughter lines'..."

"Right, but not many women our age can still carry off that heels and short skirt combination as well as you do. My waist has thickened out over time but yours is as trim as ever, despite you having had two children. I bet you could still get into your wedding dress. In fact, I really want you to wear it again when we renew our vows on our twenty-fifth anniversary."

"OK, it's a deal," I said.

We kissed some more, then Janice led me back to the bedroom, both of us still as hot for the other as we'd always been. It was one of those moments when I realise what a lucky woman I am. I love my life.

""""""

2301: Cinnamon Cove, Maine

Janice and I had killed off several bottles of wine last night, seeing in the new year together. I'd been restless, unable to sleep, so I'd left her slumbering and got up. I'd poured myself a glass of Merlot from the bottle we hadn't quite managed to finish and now I stood before the picture window sipping it, and gazing out into the darkness. There was an impressive star field visible overhead and it would be easy to imagine I was back on board a starship rather than in a cottage on the coast of Maine.

January 1st, the inaugural day of the new century - I'm one of those curmudgeons who insists years ending in 00 are the last one of the old century, not the first of the new - and life is good, yet I find myself in a very different place mentally than I was a year ago. That's because I now know who I am.

I'm James T. Kirk.

The dreams about Jim Kirk I'd been having over the previous seven years were actually memory fragments. As more and more of them bubbled up so they formed a sort of jigsaw puzzle, one my subconscious slowly started to assemble until finally, nine months ago, I had a revelation:

I'm James T. Kirk.

Or rather, I used to be him. I've been Janice Lester for the past thirty one years; I've been her almost as long as I was him, and I like my life. I'm a mother of two children and I have a wife, all of whom love and adore me, and I them. Something that precious is not to be cast lightly aside. Even had I the means to become again who I once was I wouldn't do so. Too much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Those who love me love the woman they've known all those years, in the case of my children the only person they've ever known me as. I'm their mother and I will stay their mother. I may not have known the truth of who I had been, but every decision I made after Arthur Coleman's death was my own, and I stand by them.

Integrating those returning memories with mine from the past three decades, reconciling the person I used to be with the person I am now, was not easy and, inevitably, it caused personality changes. I became less submissive in bed - a surprise to Janice, but not an unwelcome one - and more assertive and confident generally.

Our understanding was that Khan Noonien Singh's brainwashing device overwrote the existing personality of anyone subjected to it and that that personality was then gone forever. There is no record of it ever operating any other way. So how then have my own memories returned? The answer must lie with the strange mind-swapping machine on Camus II. Janice Lester told me we were still connected, and proved as much when she switched me back into her body. I suspect our minds remained 'quantum entangled' and that rather than being overwritten my original memories were stored in the link between us in some fashion. Exposure to that strange energy ribbon then triggered a cascade of memories back down the link and into my mind. Spock would have a more elegant explanation, if I told him who I was. The day the Enterprise dropped him off on Vulcan on our 'milk run' to Elba II with Khan's device was the last time I'd seen Spock in over thirty years.

Until two days ago.

They were all there at the service on spacedock, Spock, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, Bones, all of them come to pay their respects to the second of their old crewmates to die. It was an open-casket funeral, so we got to see Uhura lying there, the mortician having made that body look much better in death than it had recently done in life. Janice and I were the only ones present who knew that while her original body might be here Uhura herself was currently hundreds of light years away, serving alongside our daughter as Lt. Zoe Nyonga. I couldn't fault her for not telling her old friends she was still alive, because she was under orders not to do so. Criticising her would make me a hypocrite, because I was not bound by any orders yet I couldn't bring myself to reveal who I was, not even to the woman who shared my bed and my life. I told myself it was better to let sleeping dogs lie, that they had all mourned Jim Kirk and believed him dead, so let him stay that way. Then there was the fact that Jim Kirk still had enemies, enemies who wouldn't hesitate to strike back at him through his family. David had already been killed, and I refuse to paint targets on Grace, Grant, and Janice by telling the world who I am.

When they committed Uhura's body to the vastness of space, sending it on the long parabolic arc that would eventually carry it into the sun, I studied the craggy, aged face of my former first officer, trying to find the Spock I used to know, but it had been too long. Time had done its work and we were both different people now, particularly me.

I've read every account I could find of Janice Lester's missions after she took over as James T. Kirk, and I can't find anything in them I would've done differently. So it seems she was right all along; she did have what it took to be a starship captain after all. But to get her there she had violated me in the worst way possible. Violation of the body is one thing, but violation of a person's mind, of their very identity, is far worse. I cannot forget what she did to me, but I can forgive it. To do otherwise, to let resentment grow and fester would harm not only me but ultimately those I love, as well. Her actions as me saved the world, and I'm content to let that balance the books.

Then there's David.

By all accounts she loved my son as much as I did, but given how short a time she knew him that raises a whole lot of questions about the nature of the 'quantum entanglement' that existed between us. Was there perhaps a sense in which while masquerading as me she actually became me, became the James T. Kirk the universe needed her to be? I can't answer that question; I doubt anyone could.

So what happens next?

Because they relied on codewords rather than names or personal contact, I've been able to call in a few markers from thirty years ago to check out what Starfleet Intelligence is up to on Camus II. Something about that whole set-up makes me uneasy. Yesterday I received a piece of data that solidified that uneasiness. It appears that six months ago a certain piece of outlawed technology was removed from a secure weapons storage facility in Nevada and shipped to Camus II. Now what do you suppose Starfleet Intelligence needs with Khan's brainwashing device? Whatever it is I intend to find out, and if necessary do something to stop them.

I'm a middle-aged mom, a teacher, and not even a member of Starfleet, so it isn't going to be easy. Long odds then, but I've beaten worse and I'll beat these. Why? Because my name is Janice Lester...

...and I'm Captain James T. Kirk.

""""""

The End

""""""

Notes:

1. This draws from the original TV and film continuity only since I've never read any Star Trek novels, or other ancilliary material. The conceit of this version of events is that everything you see in the films and on the TV shows still happened exactly as shown, except that every appearance of Captain Kirk after my sequel to TURNABOUT INTRUDER was in fact Janice Lester in Kirk's body.

2. Character ages: For the purposes of my story, I've assumed Lester and Coleman are the same age as the actors playing them at the time of TURNABOUT INTRUDER. Given her lowly rank, I've assumed Janice Rand was younger than actress Grace Lee Whitney and so made her the same age as Janice Lester.

3. In the film SEARCH FOR SPOCK it's claimed the Enterprise is twenty years old. This is clearly wrong since in the episode THE MENAGERIE we flash back to a mission 13 years earlier. Assuming she was newly commissioned then, she would be 32 years old at the time of the movie. This is the figure I've assumed in my tale.

4. Timeline of this story is based on the Star Trek timeline at Wikipedia.