But it’s not, Kirk told himself, discerning something not quite right about the situation. “At least it used to be,” he said, remembering as he brought the cleaned pan back to the cooking surface. “I sold it years ago.”
The uniformed man had entered the house and now stood just a couple of meters in front of Kirk, on the other side of the island. “I’m Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship…” He hesitated, and Kirk knew the name that he would say next. “…Enterprise.”
From out past the captain, Kirk heard the gentle tolling of chimes. “The clock,” he said, moving from the kitchen and into the living room, recollecting more. He reached the wooden shelf that extended from the fireplace mantel, atop which sat an elegant, handcrafted timepiece he remembered well. “I gave this clock to Bones.”
“I’m from what you would consider the future,” Picard said. “The twenty-fourth century.”
A dog barked, a deep, throaty exclamation. Kirk turned to the still-open front door, to where a Great Dane now sat, peering inside. “Butler!” Kirk said, thrilled to see his old companion. He walked toward the dog, who got up and came into the house. Kirk dropped to his knees as he reached the canine, but while that action felt right, the sense of there being something wrong increased. “Butler,” he said. “How can you be here?” He looked to Picard in the hope that the captain might be able to provide some answers. Of Butler, Kirk said, “He’s been dead seven years.”
And then, from above, came a woman’s voice, instantly recognizable. “Come on, Jim, I’m starving,” she said. “How long are you going to be rattling around in that kitchen?”
Kirk turned away from the dog, who then ambled off. “Antonia,” Kirk said, understanding that this had all happened before. “What are you talking about?” he asked Picard. “The future? This is the past.” He rose back to his feet. “This is nine years ago.” He remembered it so well.
Just in front of him in the living room, on a small table, sat a wooden box, the antique piece decorated and held together with ornate metal fleurs-de-lis. Kirk stepped forward and opened it, knowing what he would find within. He pulled out a small, black velvet bag and extracted from it a golden horseshoe, a miniature red rose attached to the arch. My going-away present to Antonia, Kirk thought, recalling once more the events to come, recalling this very time. “The day I told her I was going back to Starfleet,” he said, and he felt now what he had felt then: relief, shame, sadness. He had hurt Antonia, he knew, and maybe he had hurt himself too.
Slowly, he padded past Picard, around the island, and back into the kitchen. From atop the rear counter he picked up a pair of objects, speckled orange. “These are Ktarian eggs, her favorite,” he said, holding them up for Picard to see. “I was preparing them to soften the blow.”
“I know how real this must seem to you,” Picard said. “But it’s not.”
Kirk didn’t care. He didn’t want to care. He set the horseshoe and one of the eggs down, then turned up the heat on the cooking surface.
“We are both of us caught up in some kind of temporal nexus,” Picard continued.
Kirk tried hard to ignore the words and whatever they implied. After cracking the egg into the frying pan, he asked Picard to retrieve an herb for him from a kitchen cabinet. As the twenty-fourth-century captain did so, Kirk scrambled the egg with a whisk, holding the pan over the heating surface.
“How long have you been here?” Picard asked.
“I don’t know,” Kirk answered honestly, taking the herb and adding a dash to the pan. He remembered starting to chop the wood, but before that…he didn’t know. Evanescent images flitted through his mind, elusive as a long-ago dream. “I was aboard the Enterprise-B in the deflector control room and- ” He suddenly thought about seeing Antonia again, and he recalled the tray he had prepared…this morning, whenever that had actually been. He asked Picard to continue whisking the eggs, and then, as he went to retrieve the tray from the far counter, he resumed his story. “The bulkhead in front of me disappeared and then I found myself out there just now chopping wood, right before you walked up.” Not entirely true, but close enough. Whatever had come between the Enterprise-B and now had emerged from within his mind and then faded away.
He thanked Picard and took the pan from him, dishing the egg out onto the plate on the tray. “Look,” Picard said with some hesitation, “history records that you died saving the Enterprise-B from an energy ribbon eighty years ago.”
“You say this is the twenty-fourth century?” Kirk asked.
“Uh huh.”
“And I’m dead?” Kirk said.
“Not exactly,” Picard told him. “As I said, this is some kind of- “
“Temporal nexus,” Kirk said along with Picard. “Yes, I heard you.” He’d heard, but he’d disregarded the information. He wanted to focus on this re-created day, on this last time-and maybe not the last time-with Antonia. He mentioned completing the preparation of her meal just before a toaster finished heating three pieces of bread. Kirk squeezed past Picard to get them, then set the toast on the plate.
“Captain, look, I need your help,” Picard said, his voice suddenly forceful. “I want you to leave the nexus with me.” Kirk tried to ignore him, picking up the tray and heading out of the kitchen and toward the stairs that led up to the second floor. Picard followed. “We have to go to a planet, Veridian Three,” he insisted. “We have to stop a man called Soran from destroying a star. Millions of lives are at stake.”
Millions of lives, Kirk thought as he mounted the first steps, and then he pressed himself to let it go. Still, he stopped partway up the stairs. “You say history considers me dead,” he said. “Who am I to argue with history?”
“You’re a Starfleet officer,” Picard said sternly. “You have a duty.”
“I don’t need to be lectured by you,” he snapped back, Picard’s words uncomfortably close to the ones Kirk had repeated to himself all the long years of his life. “I was out saving the galaxy when your grandfather was in diapers.” He paused for an instant, deciding to change the tenor of his response. “Besides which,” he said lightly, “I think the galaxy owes me one.”
Picard regarded him for a moment, then turned away. Before he did, though, Kirk took note of the expression on his face, one he had seen many times before-most often in a mirror. “Oh, yeah,” he said beneath his breath. He walked back down the steps and over to stand beside Picard. “I was like you once,” he said. “So worried about duty and obligation I couldn’t see past my own uniform.” Once, he had saved three and a third centuries of human history, possibly Earth itself, maybe even the Federation, and all it had cost him had been the love of his life. “And what did it get me?” he said. “An empty house.” He had lived too long with the pain.
Picard looked at him, and Kirk could see that the future captain of the Enterprise actually understood. “Not this time,” Kirk told him, and he started back over to the steps and then to ascend them. “This time, I’m going to walk up these stairs and march into that bedroom and tell Antonia I want to marry her.” When he reached the second floor, he balanced the tray against the jamb, took hold of the knob, and threw the bedroom door open wide. “This time,” he said, determined, “it’s going to be different.”
Inside, Antonia looked up at him from where she still lay in bed, her long hair spread out on the pillow behind her head, the dark strands contrasting the white fabric. She gave him a wide smile, and he returned it. He glanced back at the door for a moment as he pushed it closed with his foot, then turned back to see-Not the master bedroom of his vacation home, but a barn. For a moment, he felt disoriented. Horses whickered and the dry, earthy scent of hay filled the air. The tray now gone from his hands, Kirk peered behind him, but the doorway through which he’d just come-through which he thought he’d just come-had gone too. He didn’t know what had happened, but as he looked around, he recognized his location. Not only that, he also thought he knew when he was. This time it’s going to be different, he’d said, and maybe now, he could ensure that from the beginning. With his own thoughts and hopes, he realized, he had chosen to come to this place, to this time.