Professor Reynolds checked his comm station as he did every morning before class. There were several new messages, but one from Cadet J. Kirk caught his eye. It was a vid file. The professor opened it.
Jim Kirk sat in what looked like a small bedroom. His skin was pale, almost sallow, so unlike his normal radiant self. "I almost didn't come to class today," Jim chuckled, trying to hide his wavering voice "I hate backing down from a challenge, but if there's one thing in the galaxy I can't do, it's talk about Tarsus IV, talk about Kodos, academically." Another deep breath. "I asked my son what he thought I should do, and he simply said 'Daddy, it's unclassified now, maybe you should just tell the truth.'
"The truth is, for a long damn time I thought Tarsus IV was the best damn thing to ever happen to me. I was sent to the Colony just after I turned 11. Turns out I had a godmother there I had never even heard of, so when shit went down on Earth for me, I was given a choice foster care, or Tarsus IV and Hoshi Sato.
"It was amazing staying with Hoshi. It was everything I never let myself dream about. Hoshi and Takashi didn't flinch away from the sight of me, the vision of the ghost of a hero I never got a chance to meet. They didn't blame me for coming back when my father didn't. They weren't senile and confusing a four-year-old Jimmy with a ten-year-old George. They didn't ignore me, or dismiss me as nothing more than the trouble-making hero's disappointment." Kirk took a deep shaky breath. And when he spoke again his voice was higher, childlike: "They didn't leave me for months or years to go off into the black, they never yelled at me or beat me or locked me in the closet without food or water for days. They didn't come into my room at night to touch me, and breathe on my neck and tell me that I was no one, that I was nothing, that the only thing I was good for was a hole."
Kirk paused to wipe tears from his cheeks with shaking hands. "Hoshi was a teacher at the school on Tarsus. I spent a lot of time there. Between Hoshi and another teacher it was the first time I actually liked school. They were the first ones to see that a lot of my bad grades and troublemaking and fighting I got into was just me being tremendously bored. I went from repeating third grade, again, to starting high school in less than 6 months.
"This other teacher, this man, he perhaps did even more for me than Hoshi did. He put so much into my learning. He gave me books to read, real paper books. He taught me history, philosophy, science. He was the first man to hug me since my grandfather that thought I was his son. He taught me to see the beauty in things. He was the first person, in my 11th, 12th, 13th years to care for me while I was sick or hurt. He and Hoshi were the first ones to not let me get away with whatever shit I wanted in a way that meant anything to me, that I cared about. Who wouldn't let me goad people into fighting. He was the first person who taught me that it's okay to be angry. He was the first person to teach me that you don't have to be angry all the time.
"This man," Kirk sighed, "he was the closest thing I've ever had to a father. I wished he could be my father. He was the first person I came to, giddy, to say at the age of 11 I had made my first ever friend. He was the first person to throw me a birthday party, my first ever birthday party, to give me my first ever birthday present, at the age of 12. he was the first person I came to, whose shoulder I cried on, when my first crush rejected me with a punch to the face. He was the first person I went to when I found a mold I couldn't identify on the grain crop behind Hoshi's house. Back when I was keying out and identifying every living being I could find. He was the first person to whom I disclosed the totality of Frank's, my stepfather's, abuse. This man, he was the first person to tell me that I had worth. Me. Not the legacy of my father, not as George Kirk's son, but that I, James Tiberius Kirk would do great things.
"I will never forget that day - and believe me I tried - I will never forget what it was like that morning standing in the rain with hundreds - nearly 1,800 I later found out - of people, summoned by the new government. It was early, the sun hadn't risen, had barely begun to light in the sky, and it was raining, drizzling really. It should have been cold but with so many bodies packed into the square it felt warm, humid, almost sticky. I went over to help calm several young children. They were crying and sleepy and all of us were tired, confused, hungry, hopeful. And the man that stepped up on the platform in front of the crowd was that teacher, that man who I wished could be my father, he smiled before us all.
"'The revolution was successful.'" Kirk's voice was flat now. "That man said. 'But survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean the slow death to the more valued members of society. Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV.'"
Kirk was silent for several deep, shaky breaths. "Along with everything else the man you all know as Kodos, was the first person to disappoint me. Maybe because he was the first person I expected anything from, but I can't help thinking I should have seen the signs. They were there. The snide comments about non-human species. Consoling my first broken heart with 'he isn't pure enough for you James.' When he threw both my birthday parties, the only kids that were invited were human, and white, even though most of my friends were not, were left out. I saw how he treated human and non-human kids differently at school, how even treated the kids of Asian or African or Middle Eastern descent differently than us with light skin and Eurasian names.
"I heard and saw his frustrations with the government, how they weren't doing enough. It was over a year between when I first saw the mold that matched no records the spring that I was twelve, and when it wiped out nearly all the crops and half the storage food and another three months by the time we should have been harvesting instead of standing in a raining courtyard on late-summer morning. I heard the way he blamed the old and the sick for the problems they couldn't have caused. He blamed the gay couple down the street, the black family that lived next to the school, the little Jewish boy who always wore long pants even when it was sweltering. He blamed the Muslim girl who covered her hair and had the most beautiful singing voice I've ever heard. He blamed the transgender woman who lived next door to Hoshi and taught me how to cook and impress boys. And girls. And everybody. Kodos blamed everyone who didn't fit his image of perfection. His white, cishetero, human perfection.
"I heard Kodos talk about needing to fix things. How those he blamed for everything that was wrong - the spreading fungus, the failing crops, the slow reactions of the governing council, the first tastes of famine - how they would be reckoned with. I heard him talk about, begin to plan a revolution. I heard whispers of a 'Final Solution.'
"But until that day, until the words, 'Your continued existence is a threat,' until then I trusted Kodos. He was the first person who taught me to trust, how to accept people, how to let them in. Kodos was everything to me, the best thing to happen to me. He taught me how to want to live, that I was worth something, that I wasn't worthless, that I wasn't a waste, that everyone wouldn't have been better off if I was dead, if I had never been born.
"Empty words, apparently.
"And still sometimes I wonder, why me? Why was I on the die list? Was it because not all of the people I found myself attracted to were girls? Because most of my friends weren't human? Was it because of my allergies? Because of my ADHD? Was it because I was too young? Was it simply because I knew his face? I didn't know, I'll never know."
Kirk sighed again and then grinned that mischievous smile, the first expression Reynolds had seen from Kirk that he had recognized. "But I knew how to be a threat to society well before I met the man that calls himself Kodos, before I even heard about a place called Tarsus. That was a part I knew how to play. It was a role I didn't mind slipping back into.
"In the courtyard that morning people started screaming in the aftermath those words. A few minutes before a person with violet flushed skin and neon green hair had pressed a child into my hands with the whispered words 'Xir name is Xelem, take care of xem.' Kodos was still speaking when xe rushed to the nearest guard and I seized the chance. I urged the kids I had collected and we ran as the panic and phaser fire broke out. I remember diving on a kid right before phaser fire would have gone right through his head. I can still feel the heat from a blast as its tore the back of my shirt but missed me.
"We ran out of the square and we ran and ran and ran and ran. We ran through the town and through the farmlands, and through the woods on the edge of the colony, and up into the foothills beyond. I only looked back once, just in time to see all those that hadn't it made out of the courtyard ushered, shoved into an antimatter chamber, just in time to see the door shut. Just in time to see Kodos flip a switch and hundreds of people disintegrate into nothing. I was running again. At some point that little boy that I saved from phaser fire clambered up onto my shoulders, when he just couldn't run anymore, when I couldn't just let him fall behind, when I couldn't leave him to die.
"I brought the kids back to some of the caves I had found exploring. Even Kodos didn't know about them; no one did. It was one of my food caches. I had been storing food and water there, and around all the wild, unvisited places on the colony, since about a month after I got to Tarsus. Back before I realized that Hoshi and Takashi would actually feed me regularly, would not take away the food they gave me. Well until they couldn't." Kirk laughed. "Funny how Tarsus was the first time I any had food security, when it ended in so many months of famine. Tarsus IV wasn't the first time I have been deprived of food. I knew how it went, living with hunger until it went away, and beyond that when it became all you were. I could handle it, I would be okay.
"But I never thought to plan for it not just being me. I never imagined, I wasn't prepared to take care of kids. Of 11 kids. 12 of us made it to the caves that day. 11 kids that weren't used to being hungry, that weren't used to being scared. I've never had to endure except by myself or alongside my older brother before then. We didn't have enough food, we didn't have enough food, we didn't have enough water; and I, at age 13, suddenly I have 11 kids age 20 months to 10 years to take care of, to keep fed, to keep alive."
For a moment Kirk closed his eyes, and his entire body shook, like a wet dog trying to dry off. "Now," he continued, "my grandfather taught me how to hunt and how to fish but it just wasn't enough. It wasn't enough because the flora and fauna were suffering from the mold and lack of food just like the crops and the colonists were. I went on raids, at first just the vacated houses of those on the kill list. Mostly we stole food and water, but also medicine, blankets, clothes, shoes, knives, whatever else we found useful at the time.
"We found more kids, and they added to our numbers. Most of them were still younger, kids families left behind when they were summoned, but some escaped from the massacre and a couple were teenagers that were spared the list their families were on and now found themselves alone. One, Xreya, I became quite close to. Xir parents and Xelem's parents were quite close, were the same species and Xreya helped me with Xelem, with all the little ones. I hadn't known Xreya well before, while xe were fifteen, I was a few years ahead of xem in school - a junior in high school, while xe was a freshman - before the massacre, before the revolution, before everything went to shit. Xreya was the oldest of the kids I took in.
"When Kev, that 4 year old boy I had shielded, and Xelem started calling me Daddy," Kirk shook his head, smiling, "it was almost a joke, at least amongst the older ones. For Kevin and Xelem and the other little ones though, I was the closest thing to a dad they had left. For some of them I was the only dad they remembered, their young minds either not holding memories that long, or tossing them out with so much trauma that's best not to remember." Kirk chuckled again. "It's fitting, I who never knew a father, would become a father for so many. And, damn it, they were my kids," he nearly yelled those last two words. Then, whispered, "they will always be my kids." A deep breath and Kirk's voice returned to normal. "So at the age of 13 I found myself, somehow, the father of as many as 32 children.
"Terran and Tarsus seasons didn't always match up, there were only 10 months on Tarsus, about 28 days each, but they almost matched up that year. On Terra it was August, and on Tarsus it was late summer when the massacre occurred. Winter was coming, and then winter was there. Cold, disease, infection killed a lot of my kids before starvation got the chance. So many died of that too. So many died. They just wasn't enough food. I tried, I tried, I tried."
Kirk once more wiped tears from his eyes, and when he spoke again his voice was once more flat. "I was 13 when I killed for the first time. Winter hadn't really set in yet; the ground still thawed each day. It was a raid. They got more more dangerous by the day, but we needed food, my kids needed food. Sometimes we needed to protect ourselves. Mostly from adults. Mostly from adults that weren't slated to die. I lost 5 kids in raids.
"I was 13 still, I think, the first time I was caught by a member of Kodos' security forces. One of his Dogs. We called them Dogs. I thought for sure I was going to die, but I couldn't; my kids needed me. I couldn't, I, I couldn't leave them alone to die. So I begged. I begged him not to kill me. Told him I would do anything. When he told me he would even give me food, not just let me go, but give me food if I paid, I didn't even think. I almost didn't even mind. Frank never gave me food when he used me to get off. This man didn't tell me I was a whore, that I was good for nothing, that I should never have been born. He didn't even hit me. Just used me, tossed me some food, and told need to be back in three days if I was interested in another transaction.
"And of course I went back. And I found other Dogs, both men and women who could pay. It was dangerous, I knew. One of them could change their minds, or kill me rather than feed me. Kodos could find out. Or I could run into a Dog who wasn't interested in the one commodity I had to offer. But it was the easiest way I could feed my kids, and I didn't have to risk any more of them. More than half of us had died by then, and all the older ones, save Xreya and I, were gone. The next oldest was 12, little Aliyah, and she was barely even there. She didn't, couldn't do anything by herself. She couldn't eat, move, sleep, even, unless we made her. She hadn't spoken in weeks, months maybe. Her body was still with us, but Aliyah wasn't. And after that Tom, 10, maybe 11 by then, he lost one of his eyes just after the first frost. The others weren't even 9. They were so young. I couldn't risk them, it was easier to take all the risk myself.
"I don't know when Xreya found out what I was doing. But I remember, so, so clearly, the night xir let me xe knew. We had gotten all the kids asleep, but me neither of us could. And xe took me by my hand and dragged me outside the cave where we were hiding in at the time. It was different caves than the ones we had first fled to. We didn't go far away, not so far away we wouldn't be able to hear if one of my kids cried out, not so far away we couldn't still see the mouth of the cave. Just far enough away that if one of the little ones woke up they couldn't hear us.
"'I know I can't convince you to find another way," xe said "and that I cannot take on any of that burden myself. But if you are interested, if you want, there's someone who would have you for nothing save yourself.'"
"I was 14 the first time I was kissed. I was the 14 the first time a crush turned into something more. I was 14 the first time I had sex with someone I chose. I was 14 the first time that, maybe, I fell in love."
"Spring came again. The earth thawed again, but almost nothing grew. And then spring was growing near a close. It was down to 10 of us then. We couldn't last much longer, I told Xreya we had to do something. So we made a plan. We got as much food as we could. And we told Tom, he was the next oldest of us now, we told Tom we'd be back as soon as we could, but it might be a couple of days.
"I never thought I would see my kids again. It was a suicide mission. Neither of us had any illusions that we could break into Kodos' mansion, hack a communication to Starfleet, call for help, and get out alive. So we didn't plan to. When I got there Xreya got to spreading thermite I had made around while I went to hack Kodos' comm station.
"I got in, I got the message out and I even managed to hide what I did from the server, but I was still in his office when I heard that voice I knew oh so well. 'James, son, I expected so much more of you.'
"I have no words to describe how I felt hearing that monster I had once wished was my father call me son. I have only one word to describe what came after. Torture. I still bear the scars, both physical and mental from that night. Or nights. I have no idea how long it lasted. I never thought I would think Frank, who had broken so many bones of mine, given me so many bruises and cuts, over and over, who had beaten me half to death more than once, I never thought I would think he had a gentle hand.
"Everything was just pain and Kodos' voice for a while. I figured Xreya must have gotten caught. Must have died before xe got a chance to finish xir half of the plan. Xe got far along enough, or had just been delayed, or something because after that it was nothing but heat. Pure, hellish heat. The kind that scorches the air inside your lungs. I was relieved then, the heat made me white out. I was so glad it was finally over. I was so relieved, I would finally be dead.
"I never expected to be pulled out of the rubble and woken up by a Starfleet medical officer.
"Most of the survivors had already been evacuated. The ones Kodos thought good enough to survive. The ones that lasted six Terran months of Kodos' dictatorship. The ones that survived the riots. But not my kids. I was the first, the only kid they had found. The first one found alive from Kodos' kill list.
"I led the officers to my kids: scared, and hungry, and out of food but alive. My kids were alive. And I was alive. And I had my kids back. I carried Xelem in one arm and Kev in the other back to the ship. And everything was fine. Everything was good. For the first time everything was okay. Everything was going to be okay.
"And then someone, a security officer, tried to separate me from my kids. He tried to take Kev out of my arms. I didn't think, I just acted on instinct and muscle memory drilled into me by protecting those kids for so long. Before I, before anyone realized what was happening, he had a knife embedded below his heart, and Xelem and Kevin and I were covered in his blood and nine eerily quiet kids had become growling, feral creatures. I don't know who's luckier, the officer or I that he didn't die. I didn't mean to hurt him. Some part of me, I think, knew he was trying to help. But he tried to take my kid, he didn't even say anything; he just tried to take my kid. Right from my arms. And for so long adults had meant danger, adults meant death. I couldn't let him take my son, I couldn't let my son die.
"It was Terran March when we left Tarsus IV. The massacre had been in Terran August. It was nearly six Terran months to the day. During that time just over 4,000 people died. Half of the colony. I never found Xreya. Most of my surviving kids went to their extended families, but Kevin and Xelem, the two youngest, they had nowhere else to go. They came with me, I raised them, though I couldn't legally adopt them until I was 18, but they were always my kids, they still call me Daddy."
Kirk was crying again. Not the quiet tears it before, but shuddering sobs. "I can't talk about Kodos academically, because I still hear his voice when I am alone, in the dark of night, when the world is too still or quiet. I still hear his voice when I close my eyes. I can't talk about Tarsus academically, because I can still smell the rot, still hear the screams. Still see my kids dying. Still fear my kids dying. I can't, I can't talk about this academically, I just can't. I can't talk about this in public because this is still too real. I hope you understand Professor. This was meant to be a practice but I just can't."
Behind Kirk two kids came into the room, a pale, black haired boy in early his teens, and a younger child with lime green hair. "Daddy, it's alright. We're safe now. It's alright."
The vid file ended