Chapter Text
Two very important things happened in Jim’s final year at the Academy. Actually, something like 12 important things happened that year, and we’ll get to most of them. But in the life of Jim Kirk, two items in particular stand out.
First, there was the thing with Ben.
Command School was a year-long program split in two parts: For the first half of the year, ensigns took advanced courses in strategy and operations, engineering and medicine, psychology and management; then, for the second half of the year, they boarded a starship and performed regular duties there while shadowing command.
It would be misleading to say that Jim sailed through his coursework only because Jim was never content just to sail; he had to fly. Even in this final, most advanced phase of his formal education, he was always twelve books ahead.
When the second half of the year came around, Jim was rewarded for his extreme dedication with an assignment to the Constitution-class USS Republic. It was a prestigious posting, but Jim had another reason to be happy about the assignment: The Republic was where Ben served.
Jim arrived on board bearing gifts for Ben, in the form of a handwritten letter from Belle and a baby shoe that Jame had just outgrown. It didn’t take them any time at all to resume their friendship, because it had never stopped. They’d called each other frequently during Jim’s third and fourth years — Ben had been the person who finally talked Jim into breaking up with Janice Lester — and of course, they’d seen each other a lot during Ben’s paternity leave. Jim had been there at Jame’s birth, for God’s sake. He’d held her at her christening.
But on the Republic, where Ben and Jim were more-or-less equals, their friendship reached perhaps its fullest form. You might even go so far as to say that they were the social center of the ship. In fact, let’s go ahead and say it: They were the social center of the ship. Ben had been popular at the Academy and he was popular here, and Jim, who was still on somewhat cool terms with his classmates, once again found that he became well-liked the moment he stepped onto a starship.
Together, the two of them were everyone’s friend. They were, simply, incredibly fun to be around. They held court in the rec rooms and the mess hall. They couldn’t walk a meter down the corridors without being cheerfully greeted by someone. They were everyone’s first choice for advice in any conceivable social situation: if you wanted to throw a party, you talked to Ben; if you wanted help with a problem, you talked to Jim.
Then, with only three weeks left on Jim’s tour, it happened.
Ben had the swing shift watch in engineering that day. Jim had the night watch. Often when that happened, whichever one of them had the second watch would come by early, bringing the other dinner and playing as many hands of poker as Jim could take. (He still never beat Ben.) But that particular evening, Jim had a date, and Ben didn’t begrudge him at all for showing up at 22:00 on the nose.
“You could at least do the woman the courtesy of running a little late,” he said, as Jim logged in.
“Ha,” Jim said. He was, of course, physically incapable of being late to duty. Ruth had taught him that.
Ben gave Jim a friendly punch on the shoulder and left. Jim began the usual start-of-watch checklist, taking note of each item as the computer read it off: Engine thrusters functioning normally. Coolant flow unimpeded. Atomic pile circuits…
One of the atomic pile circuits was open.
Jim threw himself across the room to close it. How long had the circuit been open? If the atomic pile was exposed to air for more than ten minutes, the it became highly volatile. The whole ship could’ve blown up. How could Ben possibly not have noticed it was open?
(The answer was that Ben was not particularly great at his job. He wasn’t bad, but he thought he had all the answers, and didn’t see any need to, for instance, have the computer read out the checklist at the end of his watch, as Jim did. He was sure he could remember everything on his own. He couldn’t.)
When Jim’s watch ended, he spent a very long time composing his log. He didn’t want to implicate Ben. For all he knew, there were extenuating circumstances. But facts were facts, and the safety of the ship and crew came first. Jim reported the open circuit and closed out his log.
Ten minutes later, he was called to the captain’s ready room.
He entered uncertainly. Jim had spoken to Captain Okoro, taken orders from her on the bridge, even shadowed her on the job a few times, but he’d never been called to her ready room. He’d never done anything that would have merited it.
Okoro didn’t look angry. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t look angry.
“At ease, Ensign.”
Jim relaxed, but only because he’d been ordered to.
“Have a seat.”
Jim sat.
Okoro leaned forward, hands clasped. “I just received your log.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“I know you’re good friends with Lieutenant Finney.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Okoro fixed him with a steady stare that Jim had come to associate with all and only starship captains. She leaned even a little further forward. “Are you sure you want to turn in this log, Ensign?”
Jim did not yet have the stare of a starship captain. But he was working on a pretty good one.
“Extremely sure, Captain,” he said. Sylvia Tilly had taught him that.
For three more seconds, Okoro studied him. Then she nodded sharply. “Very well, Ensign. Dismissed.”
Jim slept badly that morning, imagining what would happen when Ben found out about the log. He didn’t have to wonder long. Ben confronted him in the mess hall at lunch.
He didn't do it quietly.
“Jim!”
Ben stormed toward Jim, who quickly stood to meet him.
“Ben…”
But Ben wasn't in the mood for calm reconciliation.
“It was you, wasn't it?” he demanded. “You reported me!”
“I was just—”
“I was up for promotion soon! They moved me to the bottom of the list!”
A drop of doubt bubbled up in Jim's gut. He hadn't thought the consequences would be so severe. “I'm sure you'll make it up soon.”
Ben scoffed. “You'll be a lieutenant commander before I am!” He paused, his eyes turning nasty. “Maybe that's what you wanted, huh?”
Jim had never seen Ben like this. Belle had mentioned a temper, once or twice, and of course he’d believed her, but he’d never really been able to picture it.
He could picture it now.
Maybe you can’t. If you weren’t already aware, from the moment that Ben Finney walked into this story, what he was going to become, maybe you feel like this is a very sudden, angry turn. After all, this is the first you’ve heard about Belle mentioning a temper. You’ve never even seen Ben raise his voice.
All I can say is that the signs were there. They were small, they were easy to miss, maybe — Jim certainly missed them — but they were there. Go back and check, if you don’t believe me. Ben was good at hiding the sloppy, suspicious, vindictive side of him, but he wasn’t perfect.
The signs were there, and now Jim could see what they’d been pointing to.
“Of course not!” Jim said. “Ben, I—”
“How could you do this to me? After everything I've done for you! How could you do this to me?”
If a good answer to that question existed, Jim didn’t know it. So he went with a true answer.
“Ben,” he said, “you left the circuit open.”
Ben almost punched him. Jim could see his fist clenching, and more important, he could see it in Ben’s eyes. But although Ben Finney was an angry man, and a sloppy man, he was not a stupid man. Punching Jim would feel good now, but it would certainly worsen his promotion prospects, and might even result in demotion or discharge, if Jim made a fuss. He could wait.
Jim didn’t have the time or the clarity to think of it now, but later, he would remember Ben’s advice to him, on that first day in his office: “Make peace, or make war.”
Ben made war.
But he’d been Jim’s teacher for too long. He couldn’t quit the habit all at once. So before he turned away from him for good, Ben gave Jim one last lesson, disguised — even to himself — as a parting shot.
“You know what your problem is, Jim? You don’t know how to bend.”
#
Jim had quite a bit on his plate, but he made time to visit Belle his first week back on Earth. He called first, which he hadn’t done in years, but he thought it was only fair to give her some warning. Plus, he didn’t think he could handle it if she slammed the door in his face.
She didn’t. Her voice wasn’t happy, but she told him to come over.
Belle opened the door with Jame in her arms. Jame was nearly two years old, a beautiful, talkative child. She reached for Jim as soon as she saw him.
“Want Jim!” she said, in the garbled toddler voice that only parents understand.
Jim looked to Belle, who nodded and handed Jame over to him. He bounced her in his arms while she giggled.
“Hi, Jame,” he said. “I brought you a present.”
Jame couldn’t quite say the word “present” yet, but she knew what it meant. Her eyes got huge. “Give, give!”
“It’s not a toy starship, is it?” Belle asked.
“No, I think she’s got enough of those.”
He pulled the gift out of his pocket. It was a long, bright, almost photo-realistic rosebud made of plastic, deceptively sturdy for how delicate it looked. Holding it in front of Jame so she could see what he was doing, Jim pressed the base of the bud, and the rose bloomed.
Jame gasped and grabbed the rose from his hands. She pressed the base over and over, watching the rose transition from bud to flower and back again.
“What do we say?” Belle said.
“Thank you!” Jame said, her eyes still on the toy.
“She’s learned so many words,” Jim said.
“They do, at this age.”
Belle and Jim looked at each other for a moment, sharing a pause that could only, alas, be described as “pregnant.” Then Belle stepped silently aside to let him in.
They sat at the kitchen table, where Jim had told Belle about Tarsus IV and Belle had cried about Ben, and they didn’t talk. Jim bounced Jame on his knee, and Jame babbled and laughed. After a while, she got bored of the game and wandered to the living room to play, gnawing on her toy rose as she went.
Jim watched her go, then got down to the ugly business.
“I assume Ben told you.”
“He did.” Belle didn’t sound angry, just solemn.
“Belle, I am so sorry.”
“I don’t blame you,” Belle said. “I’m sure you were right.”
It wasn’t a remark meant to placate. Belle really was perfectly sure that Jim was right. She’d heard the version of the story Ben told, and had seen right through the justifications and conspiracy theories to the truth of the matter. Belle and Ben had married young, and at the time she hadn’t known him very well. But she was learning more about her husband every day.
“Still, I know what a promotion would’ve meant to you and Jame.”
“We can live without the promotion.” Belle picked some dirt out from under her thumbnail, regretting her decision not to make some coffee before this conversation. It was so much easier to have something to fiddle with. “Jim… I don’t think you should come around anymore.”
“What?”
“Ben’s… He’s not in a good place. He thinks you sabotaged him to try to make yourself look better to me. He accused us of having an affair.”
Jim didn’t have a cup to bang on the table, so he stood up, letting the chair scrape against the floor.
“That’s absurd!”
Belle looked at him coolly. She didn’t say, “Is it?” She didn’t have to.
Jim sat down.
“You know how important you are to me,” Belle said. “I want you in my life. But if Ben found out we were seeing each other…”
She didn’t have to say that, either. Jim had seen it in Ben’s eyes.
Ben never hit Belle. He might have hit Jim, if he had the chance, but he never hit Belle or Jame, so don’t worry about that. He just became so controlling and invasive and unpleasant that eventually, Belle breathed a sigh of relief every time he left Earth. Maybe you think that’s better.
Jim gazed past Belle, to where Jame was pretending to plant the toy rose in the living room carpet. “What about Jame?”
Belle turned to look at her daughter for a long moment. When she turned back, she was crying.
“I’ll send you pictures,” she said.
#
The second important thing that happened in Jim’s final year happened before he was assigned to the Republic, while he was still on Earth, finishing his classes. It didn’t happen on Earth, though, and it had very little to do with Jim. What happened was this:
The Klingon Empire declared war on the Federation.
#
Most of the exams that Jim had to take before he graduated were written. A few were traditional psychological assessments, conducted by a counselor. He wasn’t worried about either of those, having had a great deal of experience in preparing for both exams and counselors, and indeed, he passed easily.
There was one test, though, that Jim couldn’t prepare for. He knew that he would have to complete a command simulation, but ensigns were never told what the simulation was, or what outcome would signify success. There were rumors, of course, but no one really knew what to expect on the Kobayashi Maru.
Oh, you’ve been waiting for that, haven’t you?
Forget “on time” — Jim showed up for his appointment with the Kobayashi Maru 37 minutes early. The secretary who took his name smirked at him when he arrived.
“I was worried I’d get lost,” he said.
He waited his 37 minutes, then 12 more, before the secretary called his name and ushered him into the room where his test was to take place.
It was a small annex, with the far wall constructed almost entirely out of a two-way mirror. Through the mirror, Jim saw what appeared to be a scale replica of the bridge of a Constitution-class starship. The posts were all manned. All but the captain’s chair.
Commander Wei stood in front of the mirror.
“Ensign Kirk,” she said. “Apologies for the delay. I was on a conference call about… well, it was of vital importance.”
“The Klingons, Commander?”
“Yes. But you don’t have to worry about that.”
Jim didn’t have to worry about that yet. The war with the Klingons was heating up every day. Three of Jim’s classmates had already completed their Kobayashi Maru and graduated; they had all been assigned to starships on the frontlines. Over 8,000 people had died on the Federation side; no one knew the number of Klingon casualties. No one but the Klingons, that is.
“If you say so, Commander,” Jim said.
Commander Wei nodded. “This is the Kobayashi Maru. I’m sure you’ve heard rumors about it. Forget them. The test consists of a simulation of a life-or-death situation of the kind that you might face, if you ever captain a starship. There is no time limit on the test, and you may take it as many times as you like. You tell us when you’ve completed the one you would like us to grade you on.”
That got Jim’s interest. “You tell us” was not a common phrase in Starfleet. “Will I be docked points for taking it multiple times?”
“Maybe.” Commander Wei smiled. Jim got the sense she answered that question a lot, and enjoyed it every time. His sense was not wrong.
“Is there anything else I should know?”
“Not that I can tell you.”
“Then let’s do this.” He took half a step, then froze, remembering himself. “Commander.”
“Let’s, Ensign.”
Jim walked through the door next to the two-way mirror, nodded to the officers manning the posts, and took his seat in the captain’s chair. It felt a little bit like wearing his father’s suit to a fancy party, but it also felt right.
Commander Wei spoke through the intercom. “Captain Kirk, your simulation begins… now.”
I’m not going to write out the Kobayashi Maru for you. You know how it goes: The ship receives a distress call from a civilian vessel, the Kobayashi Maru, which has been stranded in enemy territory, and is in imminent danger of destruction. The ensign taking the test must decide whether to attempt a rescue, risking confrontation with the enemy, or abandon the civilian ship to its fate. No matter what they do, there is significant loss of life.
When Kirk took the test, the territory was the Romulan Neutral Zone, and the imminent danger was a black hole pulling the Kobayashi Maru into its orbit and interfering with its life support, but that hardly matters. What matters is that he tried to save the ship. But you knew that too.
Jim’s first attempt at the test ended with the Enterprise destroyed by cloaked Romulan ships he never even saw coming, and the Kobayashi Maru sucked into the black hole. He stumbled out of the false bridge in a haze, certain that he had failed.
But all Commander Wei said was, “Well, Ensign?”
Jim wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead. “When can I take it again?”
#
I assume I also don’t have to tell you that Jim tried to save the ship the second time, too.
#
It was a nasty August. It wasn’t hot — it never really got hot in San Francisco — but an intractable fog lay over the city, chilling it thoroughly, like a blanket in reverse. Every building looked grimy, and Jim never remembered to bring a sweater.
He spent a lot of time wandering the city that August. There wasn’t much else for him to do. His third appointment with the Kobayashi Maru was weeks away, and he’d already finished every other graduation requirement. All of his classmates were already gone, making their way to the battle lines. Some of them were even in orbit around Earth, preparing to defend it should the worst happen.
In civilian academics, they sometimes call graduate students who have done everything but the grand finale “ABD” — “all but dissertation.” Ruth would spend four years of her life ABD while she finished her archaeology PhD.
Jim was ABK. All but Kobayashi Maru.
Of course, he could have stopped it at any time. All he had to do was tell Commander Wei that she could use his second test, and he would be graduated. She’d broken down, the last time, and hinted to him that he would pass, if he chose to. The Federation badly needed soldiers.
But that would have been admitting defeat. Before he took the first step on his journey to the captain’s chair, Jim needed to know that he could save the Kobayashi Maru. He suspected that the tactic he was supposed to take was to abandon the ship, but that was out of the question. Jim could not doom those people to death to save himself, not even in theory. It was never just theory. Adrian Kodos had taught him that.
Perhaps — he’d never have known it, let alone admitted it — he was also glad of the delay in his deployment to the frontlines. Jim was no coward, and no deserter, and he knew full well why they were fighting, but he wasn’t built for war. It certainly wasn’t why he’d signed up for Starfleet. He could have fought, would have if ordered to, but it would have utterly destroyed him.
On a particularly cold evening in mid-August, Jim stepped into a bar on Divisadero. The place was a favorite of Starfleet officers on shore leave, being close enough to the Academy to walk, far enough that most cadets wouldn’t get in your way, and loud enough that your commanding officer might not notice if you weren’t on your best behavior. Jim didn’t particularly want to talk to Starfleet officers, nor did he want a drink, but he’d been walking all afternoon, and he needed somewhere to rest his feet and warm up.
He ordered a beer to be polite and took it to the darkest, most remote corner of the bar, where there was a cramped little table that everyone seemed to have simply forgotten the existence of. He watched the Starfleet officers and a few confused civilians enjoying their night out, remembering with something like fondness the last party he’d watched from a corner, when Tilly and Ruth had had to sober him up. Jim had been to better parties since then, parties he’d actually participated in and enjoyed, but there was a simplicity to the memory that he liked. He’d gone to a party. He’d gotten drunk. That was a thing stupid college kids did. It had felt complicated at the time, but it hadn’t been, really.
“You aren’t drinking.”
Jim looked up, shaken out of his thoughts. The man who had spoken to him was dressed in a Starfleet uniform, a lieutenant’s by the look of it.
“Neither are you,” Jim said, gesturing to the man’s empty hands.
“Vulcans are denied that pleasure,” the man said. “May I sit down?”
When the man was seated, Jim could see that his ears and browline were, in fact, Vulcan. Remembering something Ruth had once told him about Vulcans and handshakes, Jim opted instead to hold up his hand in the Vulcan salute. The man returned it.
“Well then,” Jim said, “who am I not drinking with?”
“My name is Spock.”
“Ensign James Kirk. Jim.”
“You haven’t answered my question, Ensign Kirk.”
Jim grinned. “You never asked one.”
Spock’s face took on a look of pained annoyance that Jim thought might be the Vulcan equivalent of a laugh. “Why aren’t you drinking your beer?”
“I never drink when I’m unhappy,” Jim said. “It’s too close to drinking because I’m unhappy.”
“May I ask why you’re unhappy?”
Jim raised an eyebrow. “Is listening to strangers’ problems in bars fun for you?”
Spock raised an eyebrow back. He was much better at it. “Ensign, I am surrounded by inebriated humans. Listening to the problems of the one sober man seems by far the more interesting option.”
Jim laughed, and then, because he liked this Vulcan and because he had driven everyone else he could talk to out of his life, he told Spock about the Kobayashi Maru.
“Your conclusion is incorrect,” Spock said when he was finished. “You are not supposed to abandon the ship.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“You are not ‘supposed’ to do anything. There is no possible good outcome. The Kobayashi Maru is a test of your ability to deal with failure — the so-called ‘no-win scenario.’”
Jim’s fist tightened around his full beer bottle. “It’s rigged?”
“Not rigged, Ensign. Simply not designed to test what you thought it tested.”
Not command style. Not ability to think under pressure, or even to plan strategically. Failure. Or, to put it another way, acceptance. Starfleet wanted him to accept the senseless deaths of the civilians aboard the Kobayashi Maru. Starfleet wanted that.
Did he really care, Jim wondered, what Starfleet wanted?
“The mutineer,” Jim said. “Burnham. Do you think she was right?”
Spock thought for a moment, then said, “Her actions didn’t produce her desired effect, so I cannot conclude that she was right.”
In case you’re wondering why Jim would think of Michael Burnham, of all people, at that moment, you should know that everyone in Starfleet was talking about Michael Burnham constantly at that time. Mutineers were big news, and mutineers who got out of jail and served on a starship again? Unheard of. As an example of possibly unethical defiance of Starfleet’s wishes, she was an incredibly obvious choice.
If you’re wondering why Spock didn’t mention that Burnham was his sister, I can’t help you. He was a private guy, I guess. For all Jim ever knew — for all I know — he could’ve had dozens of siblings running around.
“Forget what happened,” Jim said. “She wanted to prevent a war. So she mutineed. Is that ethical? Logically?”
“Logic cannot decide ethics.” A human might have leaned forward into their speech, but Spock sat back, his eyes drifting toward the ceiling. “Once you have determined what is right and wrong, logic can determine how to achieve the former and avoid the latter. But logic cannot tell you right from wrong. There is no empirical truth to the matter. If there were, we Vulcans would never disagree on a course of action. Each person must decide for themselves what is right, Ensign Kirk.”
Jim sat with that for a long time. Spock didn’t seem to mind.
“I have to go now,” Jim said, at last. “Thank you, Lieutenant Spock.”
“Peace and long life, Ensign Kirk.”
Jim didn’t need his ex-girlfriend to tell him how to respond to that one. “Live long and prosper.”
It was very late when Jim left the bar. He walked back along Divisadero, seeing San Francisco through Belle’s eyes: Lovely, and full of infinite potential. He passed through the Academy gates, and saw the campus through Ruth’s eyes: Oppressive, and horribly limiting.
Jim sat down on the bench under the elm tree by the parade grounds and closed his own eyes.
Starfleet was an imperfect organization. Jim loved it, he did, and he loved its ideals, but it could not, or would not, always live up those ideals. Starfleet would not save him. Marcus Finnegan had taught him that.
You know what your problem is, Jim? You don’t know how to bend. Jim had given up a lot for Starfleet, or more precisely, for its principles. He’d endured months of Finnegan’s torment; he’d lost Tilly’s respect; he’d said goodbye to Ruth; he’d destroyed his friendship with Ben; he’d given up Belle and Jame. In return, Starfleet had asked him, over and over again, to bend. Deal with Finnegan yourself, Jim. Overlook Hank’s plagiarism, or we’ll destroy his career. Are you sure you want to turn in this log?
And now, a final request: Condemn the Kobayashi Maru to its fate. Accept it.
No.
The rage that Jim had been suppressing, with greater or lesser success, for nearly a decade was suddenly, shockingly accessible, and it had a single target: Starfleet.
How dare they? How dare they ask him to do that? It was possible, Jim thought, that there was such a thing as a no-win scenario. But he would not be forced into one by an organization that so often didn’t even look for another option. He would not go off and fight a war for them. He would not be that person.
You don’t know how to bend, James Kirk.
Jim bent.
#
The secretary was used to Jim showing up early, although he was a little surprised when Jim showed up three hours early for his third and final appointment with the Kobayashi Maru. That was okay, though. Jim was fine with waiting. In fact, he waited right through the secretary’s lunch hour.
When the secretary left, Jim casually walked through the door into the testing annex. There was no one inside. The Kobayashi Maru was not a state secret. There were no guards or complicated locks protecting it.
The computer that controlled the simulation was in plain view along the left side wall. Jim stuck a drive into it, uploaded a program he’d created in advance, and wrote a few lines of code to integrate it into the existing simulation. That was it. He was back in the waiting room before the secretary had decided what to order at the cafe.
When two o’clock rolled around, the secretary sent him into the annex. Commander Wei was waiting for him. She looked him up and down for nerves, but Jim was not in the least bit nervous. Some things are just too outrageous to be anxious about.
“You know the deal, Ensign,” she said.
“I do, Commander.”
Wei sighed. “Then let’s get started.”
Jim walked into the mock bridge and took the captain’s seat. It felt more right than ever.
“Captain, we’re getting a distress call from the Kobayashi Maru,” the communications officer said.
Jim ordered the ship into the Neutral Zone. The navigator waited until she was turned away to roll her eyes.
“Captain, two Romulan ships approaching.”
Jim told the communications officer to hail them.
“They’re not—” The communications officer did a double-take. The Romulans were accepting the hail. He’d never seen that happen. It wasn’t supposed to be able to happen.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
The communications officer glanced helplessly at the other bridge crew. They shrugged.
“Uh, Romulan ships responding. Captain.”
“Play message.”
“Federation Starship,” the message said, “you are encroaching in the Neutral Zone. Leave, or you will be destroyed.”
“This is a rescue mission,” Jim said. “I repeat, this is a rescue mission, not an offensive one. A civilian ship has gone off course, accidentally, into the Neutral Zone, and is now being destroyed by a black hole. Our only aim is to rescue the ship. Then we’ll be out of your hair.”
“How are we to believe you?” came the response. “If we let you live, you could go anywhere. You could cross into Romulan territory.”
“Come with us. Accompany us to the civilian ship, and then escort us out of the Neutral Zone. If we put a toe out of line, you can blow us out of the sky.”
There was a pause. Jim didn’t need to put a pause there — it wasn’t like any of this mattered — but the man had a dramatic streak. You love that about him, don’t you?
Anyway, if this was the last time Jim was ever going to sit in a captain’s chair, he was going to do it right.
“Your offer is acceptable,” the Romulan said. “We will destroy you, if you misstep.”
Of course, Jim didn’t misstep. He directed the Enterprise to the location of the Kobayashi Maru, aided by an extremely confused bridge crew and tailed by two imaginary Romulan ships, rescued the civilian vessel, and guided everyone safely out of the Neutral Zone.
When the simulation powered down at last, Jim walked out of the mock bridge and was confronted by a very displeased Commander Wei.
“There, Commander,” he said. “You can use that one.”
Like I said. Dramatic streak.
#
For two weeks, Jim was in limbo. He was not promoted. Nor was he discharged, though he was constantly sure that he was about to be. Nobody quite knew what to do with him.
You see, technically, reprogramming the simulation had not been cheating, in a “there’s no rule that says dogs can’t play basketball” kind of way. (If you think Air Bud didn’t survive into the 23rd century, I don’t want to know you.) The official rules for the Kobayashi Maru were that the ensign took the test as many times as they wanted, and when they stopped, they were evaluated based on how they had handled the no-win scenario. There was nothing that said they couldn’t handle it by, well, winning.
Among the people who were deciding Jim’s fate were a certain number who liked his ingenuity. At another time, those people would probably have carried the day, because no one wanted to discharge an ensign who had completed five years of demanding schooling and was ready to begin contributing to Starfleet. But this was wartime. And in war, there was no room for insubordination. Definitely no room for mercy.
So for two weeks, they put off the decision. It wasn’t hard. There were 20 more important things to worry about every hour. And then the war ended, so abruptly it left their legs spinning in the empty air of all the free time they suddenly had to make decisions.
In the new peace, Jim’s insubordination seemed more charming than dangerous. They were rewarding mutineers now, for God’s sake. They could promote someone who didn’t technically break any rules. Jim passed, with a commendation for original thinking to smooth things over, and Starfleet added a line about not reprogramming the simulation to the official instructions for the Kobayashi Maru.
Jim received his commission a week later in Paris, at the office of the President. It was all very official and exciting, but what matters most about that trip is that he ran into Tilly in the hall, just after her promotion and just before his.
They both stopped short when they saw each other.
“Ensign,” Tilly said.
“Ensign,” Jim said.
Tilly laughed, and like that, the tension was gone. Their issues were too small, and too long past, to matter. They had both lived through far more important decisions than the one that had divided them.
“I hear you’re a cheater,” Tilly said cheerfully.
“I hear you ended a war,” Jim said. “Using the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, I’m sure.”
“You know what? Kind of. Although it’s sort of a misstatement to say that I ended the war. I mean, I helped, I was there, but I didn’t just go in alone and say, ‘Hey, tit-for-tat with forgiveness, guys,’ you know, I mostly carried a suitcase.”
Jim laughed. “You haven’t changed at all.”
“I think I’ve changed. You haven’t changed.”
“I’ve definitely changed. I cheated!”
“I guess we’ve both changed,” Tilly said, thoughtfully.
Yes. They both had.
“I should say thank you,” Jim said. “Thank you.”
Tilly blushed. “I told you, it wasn’t just—”
“Tilly. If the war hadn’t ended, I wouldn’t be here. I would be packing my bags for San Diego, trying to figure out what to do with 95 percent of a Command School degree. Or I’d be off killing Klingons somewhere. Either way, I wouldn’t be… I wouldn’t be me, in any way I recognize. So can you please let me say thank you?”
The pleased, reluctant smile that forced its way onto Tilly’s face was pretty endearing.
“You’re welcome.”
“Now, if you don’t mind,” Jim said, pointing to a heavy wooden door a few meters ahead, “I have to go through there and get promoted, now.”
He was almost to the door when Tilly spoke again. “It’s not fair. The next time I see you, I’ll have to call you Lieutenant, and you’ll still get to call me Ensign.”
Jim smiled. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll take care of that in no time.”
She did, too. Tilly and Jim spent their entire careers greeting each other by the same rank, all the way up to “Captain,” “Captain.” And laughing every time.
But that was years away. Right now, in this moment, Jim — still an ensign, for another ten minutes — waved, turned around, and walked through the door to graduate.
#
You know by now that I’ve seen these people’s futures, and after all the time we’ve spent with them, it only seems fair that I tell you what I know.
Marcus Finnegan graduated without honors, and was assigned to the Glenn, where he worked in engineering. Luckily for him, he had personality clashes with several of his crewmates, and was soon transferred to the Antares, and from there to the Defiant, and finally to the Polaris. Every ship he served on was destroyed shortly after he left. His attitude ensured that he never advanced far through the ranks, but it did save his life several times over.
Ruth Falkner became a highly respected archaeologist, and was responsible for several breakthroughs in the understanding of women’s role in early Andorian politics. Jim did not turn her off men, but it might be argued that he turned her off humans. She was married twice: Once to a Vulcan man she met in graduate school, and then to an Andorian woman, Elis, whom she met on an expedition. She and Elis had two children, and co-wrote 17 academic papers.
Adrian Kodos left his ID on the burned body of one of his followers and sneaked off of Tarsus IV in the cargo hold of a relief ship. He changed his name to Anton Karidian, founded a theater company, and had a child with one of the actresses. The actress left him shortly after Lenore was born. When Lenore was nine, she found a box backstage containing a dried flower — the first to bloom on Tarsus IV, though she never knew that — inside a leather-bound diary. She thought they were props at first. Then she read the diary, and the knowledge changed her.
Sylvia Tilly, well, your guess is as good as mine what her future holds. I’ve already told you the only thing I know for certain: She sure as hell becomes a starship captain.
Ben and Belle Finney divorced, right around the time that Jim was first assigned to the Enterprise. Belle remained in San Francisco, and eventually became a professor at UCSF, where she once collaborated with Dr. Thomas Leighton in his attempts to create synthetic food. (She never told him she knew who he was.) As promised, she sent pictures of Jame to Jim every year. Jim would not see Jame again in person until a decade later, when she came to the Enterprise to visit her father, and Jim bumped into the two of them in the corridor. As far as Jame knew, she was meeting Captain Kirk for the first time.
As for the captain himself? The war came for James T. Kirk in the end. But between then and the doorway in Paris, there were decades of peace, more or less. Decades of exploration, of friendships, of difficult decisions made the best way he knew how.
It was worth it. It had to be.