“I am reading nine hundred thirty-seven discrete humanoid life signs, Commander,” Data said, consulting a compact device that must have been a tricorder. “Some are faint, but most are strong. There may even be more.”
“Nine hundred?” Kirk whispered to Guinan.
“The total number of people aboard ship was just above a thousand,” she explained. The figure initially surprised Kirk, but then, he had noted the size of this Enterprise.
Suddenly, he detected a considerable vibration in the decking. At first, he thought that the saucer must be shifting its position on the ground, but the trembling not only continued, it intensified. A low rumble grew in the enclosed space.
“Data, what is that?” the commander asked.
“Scanning,” Data said as he adjusted his tricorder. “I am detecting the energy ribbon.”
“Where?” the commander asked.
“Moving now along the surface of the planet,” Data said.
“It’s returned here?” The commander clearly hadn’t expected that information.
“Yes,” Data said, and then, “No, not precisely. I am reading a massive shock wave driving it along its path.”
“A shock wave from what?” the commander wanted to know, even as Kirk understood that it must be the same destructive phenomenon he had seen before being carried back into the nexus. “Did Soran’s weapon launch?” Kirk knew that it hadn’t.
Again, Data operated his tricorder. “Negative,” he reported. “Solar energy levels indicate that the Veridian star is intact, but…I am reading a complete breakdown of the space-time continuum along the course of the shock wave.”
“Caused by what?” the commander asked again.
“It is unclear, but it appears to be emerging from the past,” Data said, raising his voice as the rumbling increased in volume. Kirk recognized the character of the sound, having heard it before. It chilled him.
“From the past?” the commander said, also speaking louder, the skepticism in his voice plain.
“The shock wave matches a theoretical concept known as a converging temporal loop,” Data reported. “Two significant and identical sets of chronometric particles, connected by a conduit of some sort, essentially merge across time and space, annihilating everything between them. It seems to have been triggered within the last few minutes.” Data looked up from the tricorder and over at the tall man. “Commander, the shock wave is destroying the planet.”
“What can we do?” the commander asked, yelling now as the noise grew louder still.
In response, Data peered upward. Kirk lifted his gaze to the center of the overhead too, to where the dome had been smashed, and saw that it was already too late. In the scrap of sky visible there, the intense radiance of the energy ribbon appeared, and then about it, existence began to crumble. Kirk quickly looked around and saw confusion mingling with fear on the faces he could make out.
And then both darkness and light collapsed upon them. Those few touched by the bright energy of the ribbon seemed to fade away, but for one gruesome instant, Kirk saw the wave of blackness tear apart the rest of the crew. He turned away, slamming his eyes closed, unable to bear it. The great din pushed in on him like a physical force, threatening to crush him, untilIt all faded.
Kirk opened his eyes. Though Guinan still stood beside him, the nexus had taken them to yet another time and place. Once more, they stood atop a mountain, one of many in a chain of spectacular snow-capped peaks. Directly below Kirk and Guinan spread a crystalline city of surpassing beauty. Slender spires reached up elegantly toward a vibrant twilit sky, while artfully crafted structures reflected the light as though delicately dancing with it. On the horizon to the left, opposite the setting sun, a string of prismatic pearls arced across the heavens. The glittering dots swirled from one color to the next, like a spinning chain of self-contained rainbows. Kirk had never seen anything quite like it.
“What is that?” he asked, transfixed, the horror of what he’d just witnessed on Veridian Three slipping from his mind with the change of scene.
“Geysers on the moon,” Guinan said. “They discharge water beyond the pull of the low gravity, sending it into space. The ice freezes there and reflects the sun as it falls to the planet.”
“It’s beautiful,” Kirk said. “Where are we?”
“This was the world of my people,” Guinan said. “This was Lauresse, the city I called home.”
“‘Was?’” Kirk asked.
“This place…most of my people…were destroyed by invaders,” Guinan said. “I managed to escape, but…” She did not complete her thought, but offered a different one. “In the nexus, I spend much of my time here.”
“I can see why,” Kirk said as he gazed out over the city. It saddened him to hear of Guinan’s loss, of the extermination of her people. It also reminded him of the awful events he’d just seen replayed on Veridian Three, as well as of the potential threat to the population of the neighboring planet. “Guinan,” he said, “the converging temporal loop, caused by the two identical sets of chronometric particles- “
“That was you,” she said. “In twenty-two ninety-three and twenty-three seventy-one.”
“Me?” Kirk said, attempting to work out what Guinan claimed and taking into account what Data had said. “My body contained a unique set of chronometric particles both before I entered the nexus and after I left it.” Back during the five-year mission, McCoy had detected a discrepancy in Kirk’s M’Benga numbers, a measurement comparing the expected and actual energy of the humanoid nervous system. That had ultimately led to the identification of chronometric particles within his body. “So once I exited the nexus, two identical sets of particles existed at two different points in time and space.”
“And they were connected by the nexus,” Guinan said, distinguishing the “conduit” that Data had mentioned. “Your departure with Captain Picard to Veridian Three then initiated the convergence loop.”
“But it didn’t happen right away,” Kirk noted.
“I’m sure it did,” Guinan said. “But it must have taken time for the loop to close across a span of seventy-eight years and scores of light-years.”
Kirk nodded his head as he tried to fathom the extent of the devastation about which he and Guinan spoke. “So every point in time and space between my location in twenty-two ninety-three on the Enterprise-B and my location in twenty-three seventy-one on Veridian Three- “
“And obviously in neighboring time and space,” Guinan pointed out.
“Was completely obliterated,” Kirk finished.
“Yes,” Guinan said.
The idea staggered Kirk. Not only had Veridian IV and its population likely been wiped out, but the same must have been true of other worlds, not to mention starships, beginning with and including the Enterprise-B. Kirk stood in silence as he tried to come to terms with the enormity of the situation.
Then, from the city below, the graceful sound of bells began to play. The gentle ringing seemed to Kirk an appropriate accompaniment to the fragile-looking structures from which it rose. He listened for a few moments, allowing the lilting notes to calm his troubled mind. But then something else occurred to him.
“Why me?” he asked Guinan. “Why couldn’t it have been Picard? He entered and exited the nexus too.”
“It was you,” Guinan said. “Data stated that the converging temporal loop required a significant set of identical chronometric particles.”
“Right,” Kirk said, not knowing how Guinan knew this about him, but comprehending the wealth of information available to her within the nexus. He recalled again his exceedingly high M’Benga numbers, and that Spock and McCoy had ultimately used that quantity to distinguish chronometric activity within his body. As far as Kirk knew, his numbers, which had grown sizably during his time in Starfleet, had been by far the highest ever recorded. Some of that had been attributable to his various travels through time, but his readings had always remained greater even than those of individuals who had time-traveled as much as he had. Bones had theorized that other unusual experiences must have contributed to his high numbers, possibly including some unexplained forms of instantaneous transport, such as when Trelane had whisked him from the Enterprise bridge or when the Providers of Triskelion had pulled him through space across more than eleven light-years; or possibly his exposure to other universes, such as when he had slipped through a place of interphase in Tholian space or when the ship had reached the “magical” realm of Megas-Tu; or possibly the transference of his mind out of his body, such as when he had permitted Sargon to switch consciousnesses with him or when Janice Lester had forced him to do so. Whatever the cause or causes, the chronometric activity within his body had been extremely high by the time he’d entered the nexus.