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

by David A. Goodman

  Except for songs. It was the one thing I’d hung on to, the final link to the life that I had before. I had learned the songs of Kataan but also played songs from distant Earth.

  “Mother, we’re ready!” Meribor shouted. Eline came from the other room.

  “Ready for what?”

  “For the concert,” Meribor said.

  “Not the ‘Skye Boat Song’ again,” Eline said. Eline knew they were left over from something she didn’t understand, but she didn’t seem to mind. It was only a token, it didn’t take me away from her.

  “No, we’ve learned the lyrics to a new one,” Meribor said.

  “It’s my favorite,” Batai said. As I played the song and the children sang along, Eline and I caught each other’s eyes. The joy of children was something I’d never experienced in my other life—I’d kept my distance from the ones on the Enterprise. But now it was my life, and their unrestrained enthusiasm and unconditional love delighted me. Watching them grow from tiny helpless creatures, almost immediately developing their own personalities… seeing how they were similar to each of their parents, yet their own people almost from birth.

  There were struggles in this life, to be sure. The world I was on was dying, and I couldn’t convince anyone to do anything about it. It was frustrating to stand by while I watched this lovely place begin to decline. But it was ultimately a gift, this life that someone had decided to give me, a life in another society, as another man. The simple life that had eluded me as Picard was mine as Kamin. True happiness: children, grandchildren.

  And then I woke up from it.

  The Enterprise had encountered a probe that had linked to my mind; the probe was from Kataan, a world that knew it was dying. They had given me this gift so I would teach the rest of the Galaxy about them.

  It was a difficult adjustment to make. On the Enterprise I’d been linked to the probe for only twenty-five minutes. But I’d lived a whole life, a whole life where I was happy.

  And it was now gone.

  I went back to my quarters, lonely, depressed. Riker came to see me. He’d examined the probe, and handed me a small box.

  “We found this inside,” he said. Riker left me. I opened the box; it was my flute. Or the flute of the real Kamin. I didn’t know. I held it to my chest, then realized I knew how to play it. I had never been able to play the flute before. I began to play the “Skye Boat Song.” I then played “Big Yellow Taxi” and heard Meribor and Batai singing the lyrics.

  “Don’t it always seem to go,

  That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone…”

  * * *

  When we arrived in 19th-century San Francisco, we were all almost overcome by the smell.

  “Oh my god, it’s awful,” Deanna said.

  “Is that sewage?” Beverly said.

  “Yes, and horse manure,” I said.

  “Maybe a little burning coal,” Riker said.

  “I think I might throw up,” Geordi said.

  I, however, had other concerns. We were standing in the middle of a cobbled street, in our Starfleet uniforms. Passersby were looking at us, aghast at our strangeness. Riker noticed it too.

  “We need to get some clothes in the local style,” he said.

  “We’ll need money,” I said. Geordi took his comm badge off his tunic.

  “There’s some gold in this,” he said. “Should be worth something.”

  We were able to trade a few of our comm badges (with the circuitry removed) for about ten dollars, which, in this time period, was almost a king’s ransom. We used it to purchase some clothing. I didn’t know how long we would have to stay, so we would also need food and shelter.

  “Look, sir,” Geordi said, indicating a sign that read “Rooms for Rent.” I knocked on the door. An elderly woman answered.

  “Yes?”

  “We were hoping to rent a room,” I said.

  “All of you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We don’t have a lot of money, so we’re going to share.”

  “You’re a strange lot,” the woman said. “Who are you?” She seemed put off by us.

  “Well, I’m Jean-Luc Picard, and this is… my acting troupe.” It was the only lie I could think of that could explain what a group of men and women who bore no resemblance to each other would be doing together.

  The woman, Mrs. Carmichael, reluctantly let us a room. And from there we began our search for Data, who’d already preceded us to this time period. He’d followed the Devidians, a strange species from the 24th century, who were using a time portal of their own design to go back to old Earth. They were stealing the life forces from cholera victims, which their people fed on.

  I was initially not going to come on this mission, until I received some “encouragement” from a special member of my crew: Guinan pressed me to go. We spent several days tracking the Devidians as well as looking for Data. When we found him, it seemed he’d already done a fair job of tracking the Devidians himself, with some help from people who lived in the period, including the famous author Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain. There was, however, one other person there who was also helping him, one I expected to meet. She came to his rented room soon after we were reunited.

  “Do I know you?” Guinan said. She was wearing period clothing that somehow still evoked the outfits she wore in our century.

  “Not yet,” I said. “But you will.”

  Now everything about my relationship with Guinan was explained; why she seemed to know me when we first met. Her interest in me. I realized that I was also now a part of that unique aspect of time travel that no one has ever been able to properly explain: the temporal causality loop. I was meeting Guinan five hundred years in the past. For her, it was our first meeting, for me, I’d known her for decades. Because of this first meeting, she would recognize me five hundred years in the future. We would form a bond that would lead her to send me into the past to meet her for the first time. Our relationship had no true beginning.

  After we defeated the Devidians and returned to the 24th century, I went to see Guinan in Ten-Forward.

  “So, what did you think of old San Francisco?” she said.

  “The smell was awful,” I said. “You’re very patient to have kept that from me all these years.”

  “I didn’t want to screw it up,” she said.

  “It does raise a question in my mind,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “When I was taken by the Borg,” I said, “Will said you were instrumental in getting him to save me…”

  “I never told him to save you,” she said. “I said he had to let you go.”

  “But did you know he was going to rescue me?”

  “I hoped he would,” she said, “or we never would have been friends. Face it, Jean-Luc, we’re eternal.” I laughed. I felt we were.

  * * *

  “I’m here to relieve you of command of the Enterprise,” Alynna Nechayev said. She was my new commanding admiral. We’d never met before she came into my ready room to take away my ship.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “I need you for a mission,” she said. “We believe the Cardassians are developing a metagenic weapon.” This was a frightening prospect: a metagenic weapon could destroy an entire ecosystem, releasing a toxin into a planet’s atmosphere where it mutates, seeking out and destroying all forms of DNA it encounters. Within a few days, everything is dead.

  “Have they solved the delivery problem?”

  “We believe they are experimenting with using a theta-band subspace carrier wave,” she said. I had experimented with such a device while captain of the Stargazer. “There’s evidence they’re conducting these experiments on Celtris III. I want you to lead a strike team to take out their laboratory.”

  “Why relieve me of my command? Certainly I could supervise the mission.”

  “I need the Enterprise somewhere else. It looks like the Cardassians are planning an incursion into Fede
ration space. I’m sending the Enterprise to engage them in talks.”

  “I still don’t understand,” I said. “Shouldn’t I be the one…”

  “You are an expert on theta-band carrier waves. I want you on the mission.”

  “I see,” I said. It was becoming clear that it wasn’t just that she wanted me on the mission. “Who will command the Enterprise?”

  “Edward Jellico,” she said. “He brought the Cardassians to the table before, I need him to do it again.” I understood it now; there were other officers who could’ve commanded the mission, and I certainly didn’t need to give up command of the Enterprise. But Nechayev wanted me to go because she wanted Jellico in my chair on the Federation flagship. He’d gotten a lot of credit for bringing the Cardassian war to a close, perhaps justified, perhaps not. But Nechayev wanted his CV. So I would lead a strike team and lose my ship. She was willing to put my life in danger because she actually had someone else she preferred to be in command of the Enterprise.

  * * *

  “What are the Federation’s defense plans for Minos Korva?” Gul Madred said.

  I was hanging by my wrists, naked in a cold room.

  It turned out the mission Nechayev had assigned me was all part of the Cardassians’ plans. They weren’t preparing to launch a metagenic weapon, they were trying to lure me to Celtris III.

  I had been captured, held as a prisoner, and tortured by the Cardassians. Nechayev was correct, they were planning to invade Federation space and capture Minos Korva, a system with over two million Federation colonists. The Cardassians were under the misapprehension that I, as previous captain of the Enterprise, had been briefed on potential defense plans. They were wrong.

  My torturer, Gul Madred, didn’t really care. He toyed with me: he was unpredictable and harsh one moment, then kind the next. Making empty promises, then depriving me of food and water. They took me down from my shackles and implanted a device inside me.

  “What are the Federation’s defense plans for Minos Korva?” he repeated. We’d been through this before, several times over several days. He held up the keypad he’d used to activate the device inside me. I remembered the excruciating pain of it. It felt as if there was no source, no way to stop it, as if all my skin was being pulled off with a white-hot blade. I couldn’t bear it. So I begged.

  “Not again,” I said. “Please…”

  “Tell me,” he said. I had to say something, but I didn’t have an answer to his question. I didn’t know. So I lied.

  “The Federation will… deploy four starships… led by the Enterprise…” I was trying to think of something to make it sound plausible.

  “Really? We heard it was seven.”

  Had they heard? Was he lying? Seven was also plausible.

  I didn’t know.

  “It’s seven,” I said.

  “You’re right…”

  “You’re lying. We’d heard three.”

  “I’m not lying. It’s the truth… it’s seven…”

  “Is it?” He held up the control pad, and turned it on. I screamed.

  It went on like this for days.

  I woke up one morning to the smell of food. My head lay on his desk. I looked up to see Gul Madred cracking open a large boiled egg. There were two plates of food. Was one for me? I didn’t dare ask; I’d learned the decision was not mine. Every decision was his.

  “Oh, you’re awake. Have something to eat. I insist.” He handed me the food, but first only a raw egg with what looked like some kind of pulsating reptilian mass inside that smelled like sulfur. There was also a plate of cooked food, but he wasn’t handing me that. I wanted the cooked food, but I couldn’t ask for it. The only food he’d given me was the raw egg, so I ate it. This was the learned helplessness of torture. This was different than my experience with the Borg. Madred made the pain he inflicted personal; the lack of predictability forced me to give up. It was a battle of wills in which I could not compete; he controlled my environment, and wanted to control my perceptions as well.

  “How many lights do you see there?”

  There were four lights over his head, but he told me there were five. He came back to this “game” day after day, dispensing excruciating pain if I did not accept the untruth. I resisted, but Madred had an accomplice: my unconscious mind. It wanted to protect me from the pain. Eventually, I actually thought I saw a fifth light. Madred had altered my reality.

  The uselessness of torture as a means of gaining information; I not only would have said anything to end the torment, my mind would convince me it was true.

  I was kept in captivity, but it turned out to be pointless. Jellico stopped the Cardassians’ invasion plans and successfully demanded my release. It wouldn’t end so easily for me.

  * * *

  “We’re ready to leave orbit, sir,” Riker said over the intercom. We were at Starbase 310, picking up crew and cargo. I was in my ready room. Since returning from my captivity, I had chosen to spend less time on the bridge.

  “Very well,” I said. I sat in silence.

  “We’re due at Deep Space 9 tomorrow,” Riker said. Deep Space 9 used to be the space station Terok Nor, run by the Cardassians, which I’d visited on the Stargazer. The Cardassians had withdrawn, and the Bajoran government had invited the Federation to administer the station. The Enterprise would be delivering crewmen picked up from Starbase 310, as well as three runabouts to supply the station.

  But I didn’t want to go. I did not want to run into Cardassians.

  “Sir?”

  He needed me to make the decision, the very simple and obvious decision to leave orbit. It was a small decision, inconsequential really. But my captivity had taken away my ability to make decisions. I’d been taught they belonged to Gul Madred. I had to force the words out.

  “Make it so,” I said.

  When we arrived at Deep Space 9, I was on the bridge.

  The incomplete gyroscope with dangerous-looking claws reached out for us. When I was last here, the scans showed it was heavily armed. Now, the Cardassians in their exit had stripped it of everything. Still, it took all my self-control to order the conn officer to dock with one of those unpleasant-looking metal arms.

  “See,” Deanna said, “nothing to worry about.” She’d been sitting next to me, monitoring my progress since I’d returned. I smiled. As scared as I was, I did feel I was regaining control.

  “Should I begin offloading our cargo?” Riker said. I nodded.

  “Has the station commander arrived yet?” I was due to brief him, and then I was to leave.

  “No, sir,” Data said. “Commander Sisko is scheduled to arrive in two days.”

  Two days. It sounded like forever.

  “I’ll be in my ready room,” I said, and left.

  The two days passed, and eventually, Commander Sisko arrived. He was an imposing man, and I immediately sensed a ferocity about him as he walked into the observation lounge.

  “It’s been a long time, Captain,” he said as we shook hands. There was no warmth in the remark, and I didn’t recognize him.

  “Have we met before?”

  “Yes, sir. We met in battle. I was on the Saratoga at Wolf 359.”

  I felt suddenly nauseous. This was a completely inappropriate thing for him to say, but I should have been ready for it—I’d been so preoccupied with my own recovery, I had somehow missed this on his record. I tried to continue the briefing, tried to find a connection, but this man wouldn’t allow it. He had obviously lost people who meant something to him when the Borg… when I… destroyed his ship. We finished, and soon after I left him and his station behind.

  As I thought about Sisko, who was still so clearly locked in the tragedy of that attack, it suddenly gave me perspective. I connected my recent imprisonment with the Cardassians to my abduction by the Borg. In both instances I’d been stripped of the most basic human right of self-determination. Linking them in my mind, I was able to step outside of the fear. I was able to let it go. The f
ear of the Cardassians did not rule me.

  I wondered at my fortune over being able to mend my psyche. I certainly had to credit my ship’s counselor, Deanna Troi, whose patience, kindness, and professionalism helped me to face the truth of the situations.

  But I’m certain I also owed the two mind melds I’d had with Vulcans. I’d transferred to my own mind certain mental disciplines that allowed me to conquer the emotional responses. I suppose the other advantage I’d had was that, over time in my life, I’d become emotionally detached. I hadn’t let myself be close to anyone for a very long time. This made the disciplines I’d learned from my contact with the Vulcans that much more natural. It helped me recover, but didn’t help in my own pursuit of personal happiness.

  * * *

  “Jean-Luc,” Professor Galen said. “I was too harsh.” He was lying on a bed in sickbay, his chest burned by a disrupter wound. It was remarkable that he was still alive; he was well over 100 years old, and such a wound would have killed a much younger man. These were his last words.

  Three weeks before, he’d come to the ship. It had been over thirty years since I’d seen him, and recently I’d begun to worry about him; for the last several years he’d stopped publishing works in his field. But when I saw him again, he’d lost none of his astuteness or self-assurance. He also still had not acquired any respect for the career I’d chosen. His first evening aboard ship, I took him to Ten-Forward, and asked him why he’d gone so silent.

  “I made a discovery so profound in its implications,” Galen said, “that silence seemed the wisest course.” I asked him to tell me what it was all about, but he shook his head.

  “That information comes with a price. Your agreement to join me on the final leg of this expedition.”