Over on Facebook, Dayton Ward posted that twenty years ago today, Pocket Books’ Star Trek: Constellations was released.
Constellations was an anthology celebrating 40 years of Star Trek, and I was privileged to have my short story, “Make-Believe,” close out the book.
Twenty years. I was so much younger then.
I snuck in the door.
I index carded and wrote the outline at the EB Games vendor show in Las Vegas in September 2005.
Then I almost missed out because I didn’t see the email about outline revisions during a week where I doing inventories for EB.
Then somehow it all came together.
I wrote it over two nights after work, listening to WSHA, Raleigh’s jazz radio station, into the early hours of the morning.
On the occasion of the anniversary, I want to share the pitch that got me in the door. It is not “Make-Believe.” It is something entirely different.
I called it “Tomorrow Never Knows,” which was just a filler title. I’ve not looked at the document in years — I wasn’t even sure I had it, because my sister killed my computer by getting a virus on it — but it turns out I did.
What if, in the confines of the Captain’s Table outside of time and causality, a person could meet the last person they ever expected to see, a person he knew to be dead? For Captain Spock of the USS Intrepid-II, on the final leg of his journey back to Earth and soon to retire from Starfleet to pursue a diplomatic career, a chance visit to the Captain’s Table gives him the opportunity to speak with his now-deceased friend Captain James T. Kirk one final time. For Kirk, his Enterprise is two weeks from reaching Earth, his five-year mission nearly over and a possible promotion to the Admiralty waiting in the wings. The two men have reached crossroads in their lives, where the careers they made may give way to uncertain futures. Kirk finds confirmation in Spock that whatever happens happens for the best, while Spock comes to realize that challenges in a new career can be more rewarding than complacency in the status quo. The two men converse amiably for a time, Kirk makes his leave to return to the Enterprise, and as Spock goes to leave he crosses paths with Cap, the Table’s proprietor.
Cap and Spock speak briefly, with Spock asking why he was allowed to speak with Kirk since people who know one another but come from slightly different timeframes are allowed no interaction to protect causality. Cap explains that sometimes the rules are broken, that sometimes it is better for the universe for causality to be violated and paradoxes introduced, that sometimes patrons need to find a sense of closure with their pasts. Spock concedes the logic of Cap’s illogic, steps outside the bar, and readies himself to face the future.
Twenty years on, there’s potential in this idea. It was wrong for the book, because it’s fannish and ties into a series of novels (The Captain’s Table sexology and Vulcan’s Forge) from several years previous.
In other words, it’s not a story for general audiences.
But, it got me an invitation to pitch, and I pitched a concept I’d toyed with for a few years for the Strange New Worlds short story anthology that I didn’t know quite what to do with it.
I found the story.
And twenty years on, I hope people are still finding it.