STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JEAN-LUC PICARD

by David A. Goodman

  With only a little bit of trouble, I was able to get ahold of the survey Starfleet Academy personnel had done of Danula II in preparation for the athletic events. Their description of the course was a lot more detailed than the one given to the runners, and I saw actual data on the road surface and the incline of the hills. It appeared that the steepest hill was the last one leading to the finish line, and had an incline of 18.1 degrees. I knew I had to design my training runs in San Francisco to imitate it as closely as I could. There was a hill not too far from the academy on Filbert Street, which had an incline of 17.5 degrees, so from then on I always ended my runs there, and practiced holding a little energy in reserve for that final leg.

  The day we left for the Olympics was actually a momentous one for me: it was my first trip into space. I was excited to board the shuttle that would take us to a starship in orbit. I crowded in with the other two hundred or so cadets participating in the Olympics; the remaining 12,000 stayed behind and watched the event via subspace. As I strapped myself in, I scanned the small craft looking for a familiar face, but recognized no one, or at least no one I’d had more than a passing contact with. It re-emphasized for me the isolation I’d constructed for myself. I’d been lonely when I arrived at the academy, and all my efforts in my first year only exacerbated that feeling.

  “Stand by to launch,” the pilot said over a speaker. Shortly we were moving, but I could barely tell. The inertial dampeners on the shuttle kept me from feeling any G-force, and I was seated in the center of the shuttle, meaning my view to the portholes was blocked as other cadets leaned in, as eager as I was to get a look outside. So my first trip into space felt like the equivalent of sitting in a waiting room at a doctor’s office, except with a seatbelt.

  The shuttle landed in the shuttlebay of the starship that was going to transport us to Danula II. We filed off the craft and were immediately greeted by a yeoman, a man not much older than any of us.

  “Tennn hut…” the yeoman said. “Captain on deck.”

  We stood at attention, as a burly man of about forty, receding hairline, looked us over with a scowl.

  “Welcome to the Enterprise,” he said. “I’m Captain Hanson.” We hadn’t been told that we were being transported aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC-1701-C, one of the new Ambassador-class vessels. Hanson himself was well known to the cadet corps. He’d had a distinguished career already, making captain before he was thirty. I thought for a moment that this said a lot about our status.

  “You should all know, I didn’t want this assignment,” Hanson said, immediately deflating my sense of self-importance. “The U.S.S. Hood was supposed to take you children to your reindeer games, but they had to put in for unexpected repairs, so I got stuck with it. This ship is brand new. If any of you do anything to mess it up, I find a scratch on a wall or a crumb on the carpet, I will make sure none of you ever see the inside of a starship again. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir!” we all said in unison.

  “Dismissed.” He walked off, giving the impression that we mattered to him not one whit. Later, in my quarters, I tried to discover the meaning of the phrase “reindeer games” but all I could find was an unremarkable movie from the early 21st century.1

  The three-day trip to Danula II was almost as unexciting as the shuttle ride. The two hundred of us were confined to our rooms on one deck. We had access to an exercise facility, and a recreation room where we also took our meals. Security men and women kept a strict guard on us; Hanson was serious that we weren’t going to interfere with the running of his ship. One of the cadets, a member of the Parrises squares team, tried to sneak past security and get to the bridge. He was quickly caught and confined to the brig for the remainder of the voyage.

  When we finally arrived at our destination, I made a concerted effort to get a seat in the shuttle by the window. When we left the shuttle bay, I was overcome with a strange sense of vertigo: I was sitting upright, but had the overall sensation that I was looking down. Out the porthole was a blue-green Class-M planet, easily mistaken for Earth in my mind. I knew Danula II was a good deal smaller than Earth, and expected that I would be able to tell, but all I saw was a giant world. Then suddenly we were in the cloud layer and heading toward a landing. We flew over a large ocean, heading to the small northern continent.

  The planet’s sports complex sprawled across my view; the Danulans built it as a gift to the Federation upon its admittance, and Starfleet Command was under some political pressure from the Federation Council to use it for its Olympics, even though it was far from convenient. We were taken to a modern dormitory, spartan but clean.

  The marathon was the last event of the Olympics, so I spent most of my time continuing my training. One day, however, I decided to watch the events. The Academy Olympics drew a large in-person audience. As I watched them cheering the cadets, I realized many were family members—excited, proud parents and siblings showing their pride and affection. I hadn’t even considered telling my family that I was participating. I found myself jealous of all the goodwill of those friends and families, and I quietly returned to my solitary training.

  The day of the marathon was warm, even as early as I got up—I was one of the first to arrive at the starting line. The road we would run on was a wide dirt path, lined with trees that seemed similar to Earth’s oak trees but with a purple tint to their trunks and leaves. Eventually my competitors joined me; over a hundred cadets were participating in the marathon, while the others watched. The crowd of onlookers was larger than the events I’d gone to. The marathon was the big event.

  The chief judge of the event was the commandant of the academy, Devinoni Grax. He held up a phaser and fired a burst. We were off.

  * * *

  I gave myself an early lead from most of the pack, but the four lead runners quickly passed me, and I let them. Sussman, Matalas, Black, and Strong all ran together, with Sussman out in the lead. They had all run the course before, and the only competitors they were worried about were each other. Over the course of the first thirty kilometers, I slowly closed the distance to them; in the last ten kilometers I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to make up a large distance, but also wanted them unaware of me for as long as possible.

  Now I saw the final hill coming up. I knew that I was within two kilometers of the finish line. The hill itself was half a kilometer in length, and it looked a lot steeper to me than Filbert Street. I could see Matalas start to kick and pass Sussman as they hit the bottom of the hill. Once he was comfortably out ahead, I saw his pace steady. Now was my time.

  I increased my pace, and as I passed Black and Strong first I heard a gasp of frustration. They were not expecting this since they probably didn’t even recognize me. My training was paying off; the pain I’d suffered running up Filbert Street was familiar, and I pushed through it. I passed Sussman and closed on Matalas. He was several inches taller than me so his stride was longer. I was less than a meter behind him as I saw the finish line at the top of the hill. (It was often said that whoever designed a marathon course with the finish line at the top of a hill was a unique kind of sadist.) Several dozen officers and academy personnel waited beyond, cheering us on. I pushed up next to Matalas. He turned and looked at me, surprised, annoyed. I’d broken his concentration and that gave me the advantage I needed to get out a centimeter ahead as we crossed the finish line.

  I ran only a few feet and collapsed on the other side. There was applause and cheers, and one of the athletic directors came over to help me up. As I stood I saw the ovations came from faculty and staff. Most of the cadets and their families were ignoring me, and congratulating the upperclassmen who’d just crossed the finish line. A few gave me cold stares. I’d just broken a record: I was the first freshman to win the academy marathon. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I seemed to have further alienated myself from my colleagues. Or so I thought.

  “Johnny!” Startled, I looked up to see Corey and Marta jostle their way through the crowd. �
�That was amazing!”

  “What… how did…” I said. I could barely breathe and I couldn’t process the fact that they were there. Neither of them were participating in the Olympics. They grabbed me and took me through the crowd to a table with refreshments.

  “Congratulations, Johnny, you’re the pride of the class,” Corey said.

  “It was really amazing,” Marta said. She handed me a cup of water, which I gulped down, most of it spilling over me.

  “How did the two of you…” I said.

  “Commandant Grax, before he left, asked for volunteers to serve as stewards,” Marta said. “We’ve been serving drinks and hors d’oeuvres for the last three days.”

  “I spilled champagne all over some Vulcan captain,” Corey said. “A little on purpose, to see if I could get him mad. But he didn’t.”

  “Why…” I said. I still wouldn’t let myself believe they were there to see me.

  “Because,” Corey said, “what would be the point of winning the marathon if you didn’t have any friends to see it?” I’d underestimated him. I wasn’t used to this type of person, someone outgoing and personable, someone willing to bend over backwards to be my friend. I had greeted it with suspicion; he hadn’t been insulting me by saying I was going to win, he had taken my measure and realized my goal. And I was thrilled. He’d given the race I’d just won a little more meaning.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Cadet…” I looked up to see Captain Hanson. We stood at attention. I was shocked; the last time I’d seen him was on his ship.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “At ease,” he said, but we didn’t. He looked me up and down, and gave a hint of a smile. “Well done.” And with that, he turned and left.

  “Jean-Luc,” Marta said, “looks like you’re on the scoreboard.”

  “Call me… Johnny,” I said, and meant it.

  * * *

  “What is ex parte communication?” Rodney Leyton said. He was a recent graduate who’d stayed on as an instructor, and taught my Introduction to Federation Law class. He was a little full of himself but was widely acknowledged to be going places in his career. I wasn’t really paying any attention to him anyway, but to the person who answered his question.

  “It’s an archaic term referring to communication between a judge or juror and a party to a legal proceeding outside of the presence of the opposing party,” she said. She was slim, confident, and assertive, and I’d been trying to make eye contact with her for the entire class. Her name was Phillipa Louvois. She was around my age but had already graduated from law school.

  “And can you tell me why it’s archaic?” said Leyton.

  “Though many of the laws guiding the Federation and Starfleet find their origin in ancient British and American jurisprudence,” Phillipa said, “some have fallen away.”

  “For instance?” This was an example where the instructor probably knew less than the cadet; Leyton was using the cadet’s knowledge to not only teach the class but himself.

  “Well,” Phillipa said, “there have been many instances where Federation law has been decided by a Starship captain, without a judge, jury, prosecutor, or defense lawyer.”

  “And why are those no longer necessary?”

  “Trust,” I said. They both looked at me, along with the rest of the class, which hadn’t really been part of the discussion. At the time it felt like a bold move. It wasn’t, but it got her attention.

  “What does trust have to do with it?” Phillipa said.

  “Something like ex parte communication,” I said, “implies that the judge, prosecutor, and defense lawyer cannot be trusted to have communication without all parties present. That implies that either might not follow the law. It appears that our system now trusts that all involved will obey it. It speaks to our evolution as a species.”

  “Perhaps it does,” Phillipa said, “or perhaps it leaves us open to someone waiting to take advantage of it.”

  “Vigilance, Mr. Picard,” Leyton said. “Freedom requires vigilance.” He checked the wall chronometer. “That’s it for today…”

  As the class broke up, I made sure to intercept Phillipa on her way out.

  “Do you really think that?” I said.

  “What?” She looked at me curiously.

  “That someone is waiting to take advantage of us?”

  “Why else have lawyers?” She gave me a smile that was at once suggestive and condescending.

  “I’d like to talk to you more about the necessity of lawyers,” I said, rather awkwardly. But it had its intended effect.

  “I take my lunch outside the library every day,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll see you there sometime…”

  This was my second year at the academy, and it was going much more smoothly.

  Winning the academy marathon the year before had done a lot for my confidence, and, though the upperclassmen weren’t thrilled, my class celebrated me as a hero. I roomed with Corey again, and he and Marta became my closest friends, though the beginning of the year I was still primarily focused on my studies, and begged off on some of their more daring adventures.

  But despite my social and athletic successes, the study of archaeology with Professor Galen had taken a dominant role, becoming an unexpected tributary of my ambitions. Growing up, my desire to be a starship captain was unique; it set me apart from my surroundings. Now, at the academy, a large portion of the cadets I met had the same ambition, and I saw that I had come to miss my uniqueness. Galen’s mentorship led me to see the potential rewards of being an academic. It appealed to the intellectual side of my personality, and yet was also a form of exploration and achievement. The many discoveries made in the excavations of ancient civilizations on other worlds had led to modern advancements in medicine, agriculture, and terraforming that had changed the face of the Galaxy. Professor Galen had also become something of a surrogate father—a man who understood my inner self in a way my real father never did.

  On the last day of the first academic quarter Galen asked me to stay after class. He pulled up an image on the viewscreen at the head of the room.

  “You’re looking at two paintings; one is Vedalan, the other from Trexia,” Professor Galen said. “What do you notice about them?”

  There were two ancient paintings side by side. They’d withered with extreme age, but the images were still not difficult to make out. They each represented completely different media and style: the Trexian painting on the right used something similar to oils and was in an almost impressionistic style, with short brush strokes and no sharp edges. The Vedalan painting, on the left, was hyper realistic, almost looked like a photograph. The paintings were from two civilizations that were long dead, and what was interesting was the shared subject.

  “They’re showing the same scene,” I said. The scene showed a scared group of natives, cowering as creatures stepped out of a doorway in the sky. The natives were different; in the Trexian painting they were Trexians, and in the Vedalan painting Vedalans. But the creatures, even though drawn in different styles, on different planets light-years away, were basically the same: lean figures, large-eyed with antenna, and no apparent clothing. And they were both painted gray.

  “Yes,” Galen said, “should this be of interest to us? We’ve seen similar myths on different worlds; in fact, Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development guarantees that there would be. Are we just looking at two primitive minds expressing their superstitions and fears?” I knew he was testing me, and I enjoyed the challenge. There was another clue in the painting.

  “The clothes,” I said. “They’re different.” The natives in the Vedalan painting were cave people; the Trexians depicted were much more advanced, perhaps from a 12th-century Earth equivalent.

  “So?” Galen smiled when he said it. I knew I was on to something, but he wasn’t going to hand it to me.

  “If the paintings were from the same period of time,” I said, “they may represent actual events, rather than a dep
iction of a common myth.”

  “An archaeologist did quantum date the paintings,” Galen said, “and they

  do come from the same period, both created 200,753 years ago.”

  “That can’t be coincidental,” I said.

  “No,” Galen said, “so the archaeologist looked for more clues. For pieces of art to survive the death of these two civilizations meant they themselves must have been considered important. But there were no other clues on either of these planets as to what this scene depicted. So he looked elsewhere.” As Galen went to his satchel, I knew that “the archaeologist” he referred to was Galen himself. It was no surprise; I’d come to learn that he was the foremost in his field, having spent the last sixty years of his life uncovering the most famous historical finds of the Galaxy. He had acquired more knowledge in the field than any other living person, and his experience unlocking the mysteries of ancient artifacts was of enormous value to the Federation.

  From his satchel, Galen produced a pottery shard.

  “This is from a piece of Dinasian pottery from the same time period,” Galen said. “And as you can see, a similar depiction of the invader, with the inscription ‘the Creature of Air and Darkness.’ ”

  “That’s from the legend of Iconia,” I said. Up to that point in time, the Iconian civilization was thought to be a myth, conquerors that ruled the Galaxy over a quarter of a million years ago. “You’ve proved they existed…”

  “I haven’t proven anything yet,” Galen said. “But I have made a proposal to the Federation Archaeology Council to begin a dig on Dinasia; if all goes as planned we will begin next year.”