Re: Star Trek: 500 Rising Tides
Ashley Turner, personal log, supplemental
The offices of Starfleet Medical gave way to the mountains of Georgia and I smiled when I saw the expanse of land. England in the nineteenth century was nothing like this and the smile faded only slightly when I saw an elderly woman approaching us. She looked to be in her late eighties but I knew that she was actually a little over a hundred and ten years old. Professor Tonia Barrows wore a tan-coloured suit which looked out of place in this rural setting and she noticed the looks on our faces.
‘I have just finished recording a lecture,’ she said. ‘Come on in, I’m sure you’re hungry. Leonard will be so glad you’re hear.’
We followed her into a modest-sized cottage and into the main room where an elderly man was sitting in a chair, seemingly asleep. ‘Well, well, I see people are still using that infernal contraption,’ he spoke with a deep voice that was at odds with his age.
‘The transporter,’ Allen said. ‘He never did like it.’
‘Want to keep my atoms together, especially at my age.’
‘You’ve used the transporter before, Leonard,’ Barrows said as she brought in a tray of drinks.
‘That’s not the good stuff is it?’ he asked, sniffing toward the tray.
‘Leonard, you asked me to invite them.’
McCoy smiled and looked a decade younger. ‘You think you might be related to Cochrane, eh?’
I nodded, ‘Yes, Admiral.’
McCoy scowled. ‘I’m a doctor, not an admiral. Now, I presume the test came back negative?’
‘I’ll go and deal with dinner,’ Barrows said and extricated herself from the conversation.
‘It did,’ Allen nodded. ‘I was surprised when you called.’
‘Jim might have promised not to reveal the encounter but I never did, and spontaneous remission of Sakuro’s Disease was unheard of, it still is.’
‘That was the disease Commissioner Hedford contracted,’ I said. ‘And the records show that she was cured by the Companion.’
McCoy nodded. ‘Yes, she was, even though the Companion had stated that it could not cure her before. I still don’t know how it did cure her, but that is part of the reason I called. I took a DNA sample from Commissioner Hedford after the Companion merged with her and found that it was substantially different to the DNA sample on record.’
‘The Companion altered her DNA?’ Allen asked, clearly intrigued.
‘Yes, and it did the same to Cochrane, though to a lesser degree.’ He fumbled for a padd on the coffee table and passed it to Allen. ‘Run the test again against this baseline. If it matches I want to know. Always wondered what happened to them.’
‘Did the Enterprise never return to Gamma Canaris N?’ I asked.
‘No, we didn’t, in deference to Doctor Cochrane’s wishes. The only mention made of the encounter was in my medical logs that I classified.’
‘They were declassified five years ago,’ I said.
‘Goddamn bureaucrats. I specifically stated that they not be declassified until Kirk, Spock and I were dead so no one could come looking for information.’
Doctor Allen and I shared a look. ‘I’ll run the test in the morning.’
‘I want to know what you find out.’
‘Of course, I wouldn’t dream of keeping you out of the loop, Doctor.’
‘If you would all like to come through, dinner is ready.’
The rest of the evening passed pleasantly and I told stories of my life in the nineteenth century and what I had been doing since arriving in the twenty-fourth.
The following morning, I went to see Doctor Allen with Counsellor Mathias and he performed the test.
‘Well?’ I asked when Allen had been silent for several seconds.
‘Take a look.’
I did so. It was positive.
‘According to these results,’ he said, ‘you have enough alleles in common with Zephram Cochrane to mark you out as his great-grandson.’
‘I would suggest you destroy any evidence of this test, Doctor,’ Mathias said. ‘This may have been Temporal Investigations sealed the file.’
He nodded and purged it from the system. ‘I have no doubt that someone from that department is watching us. I want you both to be very careful.’
‘Always,’ Mathias said.
‘I need to think,’ I replied.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Not yet, thank you. I have a lot to go over in my head.’
‘The way I see it is pretty simple,’ Allen replied. ‘At some point after the Enterprise left the Gamma Canaris region, Cochrane and Hedford had at least one child who left that world and settled elsewhere.’
‘They obviously created a new family and passed parts of Cochrane’s history down the line.’
‘If I’m going to find out what happened, I need to get to Gamma Canaris and I doubt that any civilian ship would go out that far without a good reason.’
‘What do you suggest then?’ Mathias asked me.
‘I will continue my studies and hope to get into Starfleet.’
They both looked at each other but it was Mathias who broke the silence first. ‘While I have no doubt that you would pass the entrance exams easily for the Academy, I would suggest enlisting instead. There would be far less scrutiny and Temporal Investigations are unlikely to push the issue of you joining up.’
Allen agreed. ‘We’ll do what we can to help you. Where are you with your studies?’
‘Ninth grade,’ I replied. ‘I should reach the tenth grade early next week.’
‘Keep going. I think you’ll find your aptitude soon enough.’
I returned to my studies with greater alacrity. Knowing that my family was out there somewhere spurred me on. Perhaps when I found them I would learn how I ended up in the nineteenth century with memories of childhood that might or might not have been my own.
)
