The Autobiography of James T. Kirk

by David A. Goodman

  “George!” A big bearlike man with unkempt hair barreled toward us and warmly shook Dad’s hand.

  “Rod, this is my son Jim,” Dad said. “Jim, this is Rod Leighton.” The big man looked down at me and gave me a pat on the shoulder.

  “Jim! Nice to meet you! Come meet the family!”

  Rod led us over to the shuttle boarding entrance, where a diminutive woman and a boy about my age were waiting.

  “Hello, Barbara,” Dad said to the woman. She gave him a hug, then turned and looked at me.

  “Jim, it’s going to be a pleasure having you with us,” she said. She gave me a warm smile.

  “Are you kidding, we’re lucky he’s letting us come with him,” Rod said. He then turned to the boy. “Tom, introduce yourself. You guys are going to be spending a lot of time together.”

  “I’m Tom,” he said. There was a little bit of sarcasm in his voice, but he put his hand out and I shook it. This less-than-auspicious beginning to my relationship with Tom Leighton was interrupted by an announcement over the public address system.

  “Attention, this is the final boarding call for Orbital Flight 37 …”

  “That’s us,” Rod said.

  I turned to look at my dad. This was the first moment in all the months leading up to this trip that I realized I’d be leaving him.

  “Don’t give the Leightons any trouble,” he said.

  “I won’t.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” he said. “Take care of your mom. Be safe out there.”

  I thought he would give me a hug, but instead he held out his hand for me to shake. I shook it. We then all turned to board the shuttle. I turned back and saw him standing there. He smiled at me and waved me on. I was leaving him, without Mom or Sam in the house, all alone on the farm. And I was guilty, not because I wanted to stay, but because I really wanted to go. I felt I was finally getting to say goodbye to my childhood, and in truth I was, but not in the way that I thought.

  We climbed aboard the shuttle, and Rod got us seats near one of the portholes. My face stayed plastered to the window as we took off. The gravity plating and inertial dampeners on the shuttle made it almost impossible to sense you were moving at all; it made the world outside look like a movie. As the shuttle banked before heading out into space, I caught sight of my dad, standing in the port alone, watching us go. I waved, but he couldn’t see me.

  We cleared the atmosphere in less than five minutes and were suddenly in orbit. It was my first time in space, and it was stunning to see the big blue marble of Earth below, the sky filled with spaceships and satellites, and finally Earth One, the large orbital station that serviced and supplied the ships that came into orbit. We were flying to Tarsus on the S.S. New Rochelle, which was in a parking orbit away from the station. It was a supply ship, an old Class-J cargo tug with an updated engine. As we approached, the ship looked huge; it had a forward command section, and a long thin hull in the back that housed modular cargo holds. It looked like an ancient railroad train in space.

  The shuttle docked at an airlock near the forward command section. I grabbed my duffel bag and followed the Leightons as we entered through a docking tunnel. A crewwoman holding a tablet checked us in, then directed us aft. We passed a few open hatchways to modular cargo pods, where we could see crewmen who worked busily in the cavernous holds, stacking crates and storage containers.

  We reached a hatch to the rearmost cargo hold, and Rod led us inside. As we entered, we saw that it wasn’t cavernous like the others. The interior had been redesigned; walls and corridors had been inserted to create several floors of passenger quarters. We found our stateroom.

  “Here it is,” Rod said. “Home sweet home.” It was small, with two bunk beds, two closets, and four drawers for storage. But it was clean and spare, and I found its small size and efficiency somehow exciting. Rod went over to one of the bunk beds.

  “I’m on top,” he said, with a wink to his wife. She looked genuinely annoyed and slapped his shoulder. Rod then turned to me and Tom.

  “What say you, boys? You want to go find a porthole and watch us leave orbit?” Rod didn’t even wait for a response; he was out the door and Tom and I were on his heels. We headed forward and crossed through two cargo holds and reached the entrance to the command and drive section. There was a guard posted who stopped us.

  “Sorry, authorized personnel only,” he said.

  “Oh, apologies, the captain’s son wanted to see us leave orbit,” Rod said, indicating me. “I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. Come on, boys, let’s—”

  “Wait … whose son?” The guard looked worried. “He’s Captain Mayweather’s son?”

  “Don’t worry about it, I understand you’ve got orders. Come on, boys …”

  Rod led us back the way we came, but the guard stopped us.

  “I can let you into the command section, but you have to stay where I put you …”

  “You sure? I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “It’s okay, but as soon as we go to warp, you have to come back.”

  “Sure, fine.”

  The guard led us into the command section; he indicated an access ladder, and we left him behind as we climbed it. The ladder led to a forward observation deck. It was cramped, barely enough room for the three of us, but the view port filled up the whole wall. It was like we were standing in outer space, looking out on Earth and all the spaceships in orbit.

  “Mr. Leighton, how did you know the captain had a son?” I said.

  “I didn’t,” Rod said, smiling. “And you can call me Rod.”

  I laughed. A bluff! And it was quite a big one we found out when we later met Captain Mayweather, whose dark skin indicated a pure African ancestry. He was also well over 100.

  We were only on the observation deck for a few moments before we noticed Earth and the ships in orbit slipping away. As Earth moved behind us, I noticed off to the right in the distance a metal web surrounding a large space vehicle. It was a ship in dry dock. As we got closer, I could make out small repair craft buzzing about it. The superstructure of the dry dock kept me from getting a complete look at the ship, but it had the familiar saucer and two-engine nacelle design of many Starfleet vessels. Yet somehow it seemed larger and different than any ship I’d seen before.

  “Dad, what ship is that?” Tom said. I was so intent on getting a better look at the ship I hadn’t noticed Tom looking as well.

  “One of the new Constitution-class ships,” Rod said.

  “What’s the Constitution class?” Tom said.

  “They say it’s going to be faster than any ship ever built,” he said. “It’s going to be able to survive in space without maintenance and resupply the way most ships have to. They have high hopes for it.”

  We passed the dry dock and then it and the ship were gone. It would be a number of years before I got a better look at it.

  * * *

  * EDITOR’S NOTE: Though Isaac Cody was a well-known and successful developer in the region during the 19th century, there is no record of him selling a farm to Franklin Kirk.

  * EDITOR’S NOTE: The translation of the Sioux name “Ogaleesha” is “Wears a Red Shirt.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE TWO-MONTH TRIP TO TARSUS IV was uneventful and eventually quite dull. Tom Leighton and I were the only two kids on the voyage, and by the time it was over we knew every detail of the ship and about each other. Tom reminded me a lot of Sam; he was smart and quiet, loved to read, and wanted to be a scientist. Once he got comfortable with me, I found him to be an engaging friend. He often pulled weird facts out of his head that were always interesting and entertaining.

  One night, while everyone was asleep, he woke me up, excited.

  “Come on, Jim, I found out where the artificial gravity generator is.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but I got dressed and joined him as we headed out to the catwalk that led to the rest of the ship. Like most ships in Starfleet, the New Rochelle tried to imitate Earth�
��s conditions of day and night, so this was the late shift and most of the crew were off duty and asleep.

  Tom led me to a ladder that went down to the bottom of the main hull. When we reached the deck, he indicated a hatch.

  “Right behind that is the artificial generator for the entire ship,” he said. “It took me a while to figure out where it was.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. I was really tired and not a little confused.

  “Come on,” he said, and immediately headed off.

  “Where the hell are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  We headed back up the ladder, and then forward again. We then snuck into a cargo hold and stopped on the catwalk. We were about 100 feet off the floor of the hold, which was partially filled with storage containers.

  “According to my measurements, we’re about halfway between the artificial gravity generator and the bow plate.” Tom put his hands on the railing of the catwalk.

  “So?”

  “Watch.” Tom pushed hard on the railing and suddenly was rising off the deck. He flipped over and landed, feetfirst on the ceiling. It looked like he was standing upside down.

  “Holy crap,” I said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I read about it,” Tom said. “These cargo ships used to be run by families who learned all sorts of facts about these ships. Some of them called this ‘the sweet spot.’ Try it!”

  I grasped the railing and pushed. At first I was just pushing up my own weight, and then suddenly I was weightless and moving through the air. I tumbled end over end. I actually hit Tom and we fell to the “floor,” which was actually the ceiling. It was amazing.

  “Let’s do it again!”

  Both of us lost in laughter, we then pushed off together and landed on the catwalk. We kept going back and forth, laughing, yelling, almost missing the catwalk a couple of times, until finally a security guard found us and dragged us back to our quarters. We spent a lot of the next two months sneaking off to this area. Eventually, I became interested in why it was happening, and I sought out a crew member who explained it to me. It was my first experience trying to understand life in outer space, and the relationship between humans and their spacecraft. It also taught me a valuable lesson on the inherent risks involved in space travel, as on one of these excursions I got careless; I missed the catwalk and landed on the cargo bay floor, breaking my wrist.

  While my wrist healed, I ended up spending a lot of time with Tom’s parents. They were very loving and attentive to him, and treated me like I was a member of their family. They made sure I was taken care of, and that I kept up with my studies. Barbara, a physician, always asked me lots of questions about my interests and was on me constantly about whether I was getting enough to eat. She was small, probably just over five feet tall, but she had a quiet intensity that somehow gave her authority over the three larger males in her care. She stood in great contrast to her husband, a boisterous raconteur who thrived on attention. (Rod, much to his wife’s chagrin, taught Tom and me poker on that trip, where I learned more about his ability to bluff. No real money exchanged hands, but it was still instructive.) Rod was skilled in modern construction and was very excited about joining the colony, and though my mother had been on Tarsus IV for years, it wasn’t until this trip that I learned about its history.

  Humans settled Tarsus IV in the 22nd century after the Romulan War. Most of the settlers were veterans of the conflict who, with their families, purposely picked a planet on the other side of the Galaxy from the Romulans and the Klingons. Their goal was a society devoted to peace. So, although many of them had served on ships as soldiers, they devoted themselves to a scientifically constructed technocracy. The government was built on completely practical notions of what the individuals in the society needed and what they in turn could provide. For a century the colony had flourished as one of the most successful examples of human achievement in the Galaxy. At 13 I don’t know if I fully understood the accomplishment of the people who built this world, but looking back it makes what would happen there that much more tragic.

  We arrived at Tarsus IV on schedule, and the Leightons and I were among the first people to be taken down to the planet. As the pilot took the shuttle below the cloud cover, I could see huge tracts of barren, rocky land. Then in the distance there was a strip of green, and we came in on a landing field outside a small city. When we stepped off the shuttle onto my first foreign planet, I was surprised at what I saw: blue skies, rolling hills, grass, and trees. My first exposure to a Class-M planet; it wasn’t foreign at all. It could easily have been mistaken for Southern California.

  The spaceport was only a few kilometers outside the main town. I could see the dense sprawl of buildings, none higher than four stories. It had the feel of a late-19th-century European city, dense but not quite modern. I was trying to take it all in, when I was startled by someone calling my name.

  “Jim!” I turned. It was my mother. Because of the limits of communication while in transit, I hadn’t heard from her in the months since I left Earth. I had gotten so caught up with space travel and landing on a new world I’d actually forgotten about her.

  She ran toward me, a giant smile on her face. She’d gotten older since I’d seen her last; in my mind she was still the young, vibrant woman who lifted me up in her arms when I was little. Now, because I’d grown, she seemed small to me. It was a difficult adjustment; she strode like a beautiful colossus in my imagination and now she was only slightly taller than me. She squeezed me in a warm hug. I could feel her tremble as she fought back tears. I felt the eyes of everyone around us as she embraced me, and though as a child I’d missed this affection, in this moment I could not return it. She felt my awkwardness and stepped back. We were almost on the same eye level.

  “You’ve gotten so big,” she said. Whether intentionally or not, that was one of the last things she said to me before she left Earth. Now, unlike then, I heard the regret in her voice. We stood in uneasy silence for a long moment; then the Leightons stepped in and introduced themselves to her. Barbara said some things about what a nice young man I was. Mom wasn’t particularly warm to them; she seemed uncomfortable, anxious to get me away.

  “Come on, Jim, let’s go home.”

  I could see Rod was a little put off by her attitude, but Barbara placed a gentle hand on his forearm. Barbara said they’d see me later, she was sure, and I said goodbye and thanked them. Mom helped me with my luggage, and we headed off to a waiting hover car, a simple vehicle with four seats and an open trunk. She drove it herself into the main city.

  As we glided through the streets, Mom gave me a tour. She seemed very self-conscious talking to me, and I frankly wasn’t doing anything to help put her at ease. She filled the time by explaining the colony to me.

  “There are 12 boulevards that radiate out from the city center,” she said, as we entered the outer perimeter. The boulevard we were on was surrounded on both sides by buildings no more than three stories in height, and they looked to be made of brick and stone. It all seemed very old to me.

  “All the buildings except the ones of the original settlement are made of indigenous materials,” she said. I sat there quietly. “You know what indigenous means?”

  “Yes,” I said. I was being purposely curt. Since seeing her, I had felt an unexpected surge of anger, and it was overwhelming me.

  The boulevard, simply labeled 12th Street, converged with all the boulevards in the center square. This was the site of the original settlement, and the buildings here, while in fact the oldest, looked the newest. Arranged to establish a town square, they were made from prefabricated materials designed to weather harsh environments. The square was quite large, and we drove through it and continued on to the other side of town. My mother tried to fill in as much information as she could, then asked me for details of my trip. I gave her mostly one-word answers. She was struggling to connect, and I was making sure she failed.

  She pulled the hover ca
r over near a redbrick two-story building. We got out and she led me inside to a first-floor apartment. It was simple, clean, and quaint. She had indulged in the ancient tradition of putting photographs on the wall; Sam and I were everywhere I looked, at every age. I didn’t even remember some of the pictures being taken. She showed me to my room, which had a small bed, dresser, and its own window that looked out onto the street.

  “I know it’s not much,” she said.

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  “Let me help you unpack.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Okay,” she said. There was a chime that I assumed was a doorbell. Mom left my room to head to the front door. I didn’t follow, but stood and watched as she opened it. On the other side was a short, bald man in some kind of uniform coveralls. He had a badge and held a tablet with a stylus. He had a friendly, open demeanor.

  “Hey Winona,” he said. “Just checking to make sure you got your son okay.”

  “Thanks, Peter,” she said. “Yes, it went fine.”

  “So I’ll change the occupancy on your unit,” he said, marking the tablet. “Can I meet him?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Jim?”

  I pretended I hadn’t been listening and came out after she called a second time.

  “Jim, this is Peter Osterlund. He’s an officer in the colony’s security section.”

  “Nice to meet you, son,” he said. “Now, Winona, you’ll have him examined by medical—”

  “In less than 24 hours, yes,” she said.

  “Okay, great,” he said, finishing on the tablet. “See you soon!” And with that he was gone.

  “What was that all about?”

  “The colony keeps highly detailed records of its inhabitants. It allows for very specific planning regarding the use of resources. There are computer models that use our genetic makeup to determine accurate predictions of our consumption of food, water, medicine, everything. Even down to the wear and tear on the pavement of the sidewalks.”