Eternity . . . It's a Long Story

This was the first fanfic I ever wrote. At the time, I had never so much as heard the word "fanfiction." If I remember correctly, I was still in high school when I wrote this. No, wait . . . I say the year is 1996 in the story somewhere, so I was either just finishing 7th grade, or just starting 8th grade.



*Note: This story takes place shortly before the events in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and the author realizes that Star Trek is copyrighted.*


Eternity Myerson sat in her appartment littered with old issues of Scientific American, to which she had been a faithful subscriber, watching her favorite T.V. show. As the commercials came on, she decided to make herself her favorite drink (a mint julep), and do a little stargazing, in the off chance that she might see some "little green men," even though she knew that there were no such thing.


Eternity's boyfriend, Raistlin Dathomir, a test pilot for the United States Government, sat on the couch, flipping channels as the commercials played, sipping a mint julep that Eternity had made for him earlier.


As the show came back on, Eternity noticed a strange object in her telescope. An object that she had been lucky enough to see a small portion of in the earlier part of her life, but never hoped to see again.


Quickly, Eternity looked back to the television, just to be certain that what she was seeing was real, then looked at her mint julep, thinking what did I put in it THIS time?


"Raist, honey, I think you'd better come have a look at this . . ." Eternity sounded a bit distressed.


"Sure, Erni, what is it?" he replied, a little annoyed that she was interrupting their favorite show. At least he was annoyed until she pointed at the eyepiece.


Looking into the telescope, Raistlin did an almost-identical double-take to the one "Erni" had done just seconds before. "What did you put in the mint juleps, dear?" he said, not believing his eyes.


"Only the usual ingredients. That could only mean one thing . . ." Eternity replied, looking at her boyfriend in awe.


"It's real!" both chimed in unison . . .


*****


Captain's Log_Stardate 6327.1:


The Enterprise has been assigned to transport the vulcan, andorian, and tellarite delegates to Starbase one, where they will be further transported to Earth for conferences concerning the nomination of candidates for the presidency of the United Federation of Planets. There have been no problems in the journey so far, and even the tellarite ambassador, Ambassador Shirn, is on his best behavior. I find it odd. It is very rare that any mission goes right from the start on the Enterprise and stays that way for the duration. After our passengers are beamed to Earth, the officers and crew of the Enterprise will have three weeks of shore leave and R&R.


As Admiral James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise finished his log, he switched off the terminal at his desk in his spartan quarters, and headed toward the door to see what old-fashioned remedy Bones had for boredom that had sunk to the marrow.


*****


In his office in sickbay, Doctor Leonard McCoy was finishing another boring day of inventories, hand scrubbings, and broken limbs by performing the only appropriate action. . . dozing. But, when the cherry-red doors of his office slid open with an almost-metallic whisper, admitting James Kirk, he was as alert-and witty-as ever.


"Finally decided to take your physical, Jim?" the doctor continued the long drawn_out joke as he came around his desk and sat on it.


"Don't you just wish." the captain countered, it seemed, for the millionth time since their mission began. "Anything out of the ordinary, Bones?"


"Not one thing." McCoy grumbled. "I just don't get it, less than two hours are left until our mission is over, and nothing's happened." he stipulated. "I'm starting to think that Murphy's law doesn't apply to us anymore."


"I know what you mean. Maybe something will happen. It's bound to." Kirk argued.


"Come on Jim, nothing's going to happen, we're basically home free." the doctor was very enthusiastic, for this particular mission's prognosis was actually looking good.


At that very moment, the red alert sirens began their ever-annoying song.


*****


"Report!" Kirk barked as he marched onto the bridge with Doctor McCoy on his heels.


On the screen, the bridge staff beheld a monstrous hole in the fabric of space itself. The anomaly was a twisting, writhing conglomeration of gases, dust particles, and now, the hapless starship. Kirk couldn't help thinking to himself Well, the mission just got interesting...


"We seem to have traversed the path of a spatial anomaly which has pulled us into a collision course. Impact in ninety seconds." Spock dutifully reported while looking at the scans that the sensors gave of the anomaly.


"Well, that's obvious." drawled the doctor.


At that moment, the ship penetrated the anomaly, causing all hands to be temporarily paralyzed while their lives reversed before their eyes. After their lives, they beheld the lives of their ancestors and countless others flash in front of them, all reversed. When it was finally over, instead of seeing the anomaly, they saw Earth. Kirk was the first to gain enough control to ask when they were.


"Judging from the amount of pollution in the atmosphere, we are in the late twentieth century, Admiral." Spock droned, just coming out of his own stupor.


"What is the condition of the anomaly, Spock?" Kirk pleaded askance.


"The anomaly closed shortly after it deposited us in this time, Admiral. We are trapped in this century, Jim."


"I refuse to surrender to that statement. Uhura, tell the ambassadors what has happened, and tell them that we are doing everything that we can to get back home." Kirk ordered, turning toward the beautiful, ebony-skinned communications officer as he spoke.


"Aye sir." was her ever-dutiful, ever-melodious reply.


"Mister Spock, Doctor McCoy, Scotty, meet me in the briefing room." Kirk ordered to the scottsman standing at the engineering consol. "Mister Sulu, you have the bridge, and ask Ambassador Sarek to join us. I believe he might have some input as well." Kirk snapped as he headed for the turboshaft.


"Aye sir." chimed Sulu as Captain Kirk left the bridge with Spock, Doctor McCoy, and Scotty.


*****


Sarek was in his guest quarters meditating, when he felt the ship jolt as if being pulled by a tractor beam.


As he was requesting information of Uhura as to what had happened, he was interrupted by his own life flashing backwards before his eyes.


After this experience, which he shared with everyone else aboard the USS Enterprise, Uhura finished telling the ambassador about the spacial anomaly which they had encountered, and told him that Kirk had asked for his presence in the briefing room.


"Fascinating." was Sarek's reply as he headed for the briefing room.


*****


Nurse Christine Chapel was updating medical records, a task which seemed to have lasted the whole mission fifty times over, when she felt a jolt, as if the ship were being pulled off it's course.

Then, her life went in reverse before her very eyes, and the doctor's life, and the lives of people she had never met.


One experience which shocked her to remember was a time she had tried to bring Spock some soup, many years before. She did not know why, but he had hurled it back out at her through the door that day . . .


After the ordeal, she overheard one of the orderlies asking a comm unit what had happened and, shaking her head, with a smile at the memory, Nurse Chapel went back to the records updates.


*****


Once in the briefing room, Kirk solicited the advice of his staff, and ambassador Sarek.


"Any ideas on how to get home, gentlemen? Or at least what it was we went throught to get to where we are?"


"I believe, captain, that it is very similar to many other temporal anomalies that the Enterprise has encoutered before. They seem to be interconnected into some sort of a "nexus" of temporal phenomena." Sarek broke in with his own hypothesis.


"However, since the anomaly closed shortly after we were deposited into this time, neither I, nor my father can study it, nor can we formulate a feasible route home at the moment." Spock stated.


"Any ideas along that line gentlemen?" Kirk implored to the rest of his officers.


"Jim, I'm a doctor, not the gateway." McCoy complained under his breath so that only Kirk could hear.


Kirk chuckled, then said, "Alright, back to your stations, if anyone finds a way to get home, report to Mister Spock, whom I and Doctor McCoy will accompany down to Earth to get a few answers as to when we are and how to get back. Until a feasible solution is found, this meeting is adjourned." Kirk quickly ended the meeting.


*****


Eternity Meyerson blinked her intense hazel eyes, shook her long, light brown hair, and stooping over, took another look through her telescope. They like to land in Central Park, remember, Erni? . . . Miss Meyerson's thoughts wandered back to a time just a few years before which she had told no one about except her boyfriend, whom she trusted everything with.


As she focused the lense on Central Park, she caught a glimpse of the sparkling effect of a transporter . . .


*****


Spock, Kirk, and McCoy had beamed down to Earth in the middle of a hot mid_July day, in the unlikely event that they would find a clue on how to get back to their own time. So far, the search was unfruitful.


All of a sudden, as they were walking down a street in downtown San Francisco, they heard a young woman pleaded them from the window of her apartment to stop. After a minute, they saw her run out of a building, panting and looking as if she had something to tell them.


"Wait!" She breathed as she stood in front of them, almost doubled over from the effort of her sprint down three flights of stairs and through the park.


Upon getting a glimpse of the woman close up, Spock believed he recognized the face, but he couldn't have been certain, he was much younger when he had first seen it.


Kirk and McCoy also believed they recognized the woman, but they couldn't tell how.


"Yes? What is it you need, miss? . . ." Kirk asked, curious.


"Meyerson, Eternity Meyerson." the woman answered the unspoken question, shaking the Kirk's hand. Upon inching closer to the Admiral, she whispered "I saw you beam down, I know where you're from."


"There was a television show made in the late sixties that tells all about you people and your missions. Everyone thought the creator of this series had made it all up, but I know otherwise. I can tell you all about it, if you'll just come with me up to my appartment . . ."


Pulling out his tricorder, Spock used it to search the Enterprise's computer banks for just such a television show, but the search turned out to be fruitless.


"I am afraid there are no records of this series in the Enterprise's history files, Admiral." Spock reported, "but that error could be due to the destruction of the third world war and other such destructiveness in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Perhaps you could tell us, miss, what year it is?" he asked, turning to the woman.


"It's nineteen-ninety-six." she replied. "How about you three come in out of the heat up to my appartment? I'll make some lemonade and tell you what I know."


Kirk and McCoy debated the situation a moment.


"I don't believe there is any harm in speaking to this woman further." Spock said, as though he knew the woman personally. "Indeed, she may be able to help us find a way back to our own time."


"I agree." Kirk said. "Bones?"


"Alright." the doctor sighed. "But don't blame me if the situation gets worse."


*****


As Eternity prepared some lemonade and fruit in the kitchen for her guests, Kirk and McCoy debated on her identity, still unable to remember where they had seen her before.


"Could she be related to us by chance?" McCoy asked Kirk.


"I don't know, maybe. We'll just have to wait and find out." he answered, turning to his first officer. "Spock, you look like you also recognize her. How is that?"


"Oh, Spock and I go way back." Eternity interrupted, coming out of the kitchen, a smirk on her face. "It's kind of a long story. At least it will be if Spock tells it."


"Oh really?" McCoy drawled, copying Spock's usual raised eyebrow.


"Yes, that is quite true, Admiral. Although I was just a boy then, while Miss Meyerson only seems to have grown a few years." Spock confirmed the woman's allegations.


"When I was much younger, my parents and I made a trip to Earth. It was one of many we had made to the Vulcan Embassy in San Francisco. On this particular journey, however, my father encountered a slight "glitch" in the shuttles computer system, and we were forced to make an emergency landing in Central Park.


We searched for hours for the Embassy building, but it was not where it should have been.
Eventually, my mother noticed that the vehicles on the roadways had wheels and spouted noxious fumes. Automobiles, she called them . . . With internal combustion engines. It was really quite fascinating at the time.


Upon returning to the shuttle, we found that we had gone through a temporal anomaly not unlike the one we just encountered.


A day or two passed, and still we had no way to get home. Then, Miss Meyerson, a few years younger than she is now, found us. We never visited this place, her home, but from what she told us in the way of scientific knowledge, we knew she had been well read." ask he said this last statement, Spock gestured toward the magazines and books littering almost every flat, elevated surface in the dwelling.


"She and my father discussed many options and theories on a route home, and finally decided that the best course would be to slingshot on a hyperbolic course around the sun, thereby causing our shuttle to be thrown back to our own time period.


Miss Meyerson was sworn to secrecy until now."


Kirk and McCoy listened intently as Spock told his narrative, and as he finished, a knock sounded on the door.


The three began to get up in order to find a place to hide, but Eternity gestured for them to sit back down.


"It's probably just my boyfriend, Raistlin. He was there when Captain Spock and his family were here the first time. Don't worry. He might be able to help." she said, going to the door and opening it.


Sure enough, Raistlin Dathomir was there, staring at Admiral Kirk and his two friends as if he they were friends he hadn't seen in a very long time.


Eternity invited him in, then quickly shut the door.


"Raistlin Dathomir, I'd like you to meet Admiral James T. Kirk and Doctor Leonard McCoy. Admiral, Doctor, this is my boyfriend Raistlin." Eternity quickly made the introductions.
"Nice to meet you." Mr. Dathomir said, shaking McCoy's hand. "It's good to see you again, Captain Spock."


"Likewise, Mr. Dathomir." Spock replied.


"Now, as I was saying out on the street, there was a television show about all of you, and your voyages on the Enterprise. I myself have a copy of every episode on video." Eternity quickly re-capped while loading a tape into the VCR and pressing the play button.


As the video played itself out, Eternity explained that it was called "The Paradise Syndrome." Kirk just watched in awe, remembering, as the screen showed an actor who looked not unlike himself walking around calling himself Kiroc . . .


*****


"Where is Gene Roddenberry? How can we find him?" Kirk asked, as he took the lemonade offered him by Eternity.


"You came a little late for that." Raistlin explained. "He died a few years ago. His wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry,--who played nurse Christine Chapel--(at this revelation, Spock's eyebrow rose) asked for his ashes to be sent up into space."


"Captain, I do not think we need to ask Mr. Roddenberry. All the information we need, except for the answers to the question of how Mr. Roddenberry knew about us, is probably in the memories of this couple." Spock suggested as he picked up an orange and began to carefully take it apart, section by section.


"Actually," Raistlin declared. "I happen to know how he learned of the Enterprise."


"Oh you do, do you?" McCoy asked as Spock rose an eyebrow.


Kirk complied. "First, I have just one question, where are you originally from? We know you've lived in San Francisco for a while, but we don't know if you've been here your whole life.
"Well, not here. I was born in Iowa." Eternity explained.


*****


"Really?" Kirk asked. "Now I know where I've seen your face before." All throughout the conversation, Kirk had been staring at Miss Meyerson. There is something vaguely familiar about her. He thought, remembering the old family photo albums, saved from the nuclear holocaust of World War III. Until that moment, he couldn't see what made her seem so familiar.


He looked over at McCoy to see if he had come to the same conclusion. McCoy just stared back and nodded, wide-eyed.


"Where?" Eternity asked a little too eagerly.


"Yes, I think I see it too." Doctor McCoy, who had been silent until then (enjoying his mint julep), piped up. "One hell of a mint julep." He said, smacking his lips. "I bet that's where good old grammy learned it." he whispered to Kirk, who just smirked in reply.


"Where?" the young woman repeated.


"Come to think of it, we can't tell you. You probably know about the prime directive, don't you?" Kirk queried.


"Yes, but what does it have to do with me?" Eternity asked.


"What the admiral is trying to say Miss Meyerson, is that just as you cannot tell us about our futures, we cannot tell you about yours." Spock explained.


"I understand." Eternity said.


"By the way Mister Spock, how are your parents?" Miss Meyerson asked, even though she probably knew what he was going to say.


"They are both doing quite well." he replied.


"That's all well and good, but just how did Roddenberry know about us?" McCoy impatiently jolted everyone's memory to the topic at hand.


Mr. Dathomir began his own narrative.


"As I was looking through some old records from the air base I do test piloting at, I came across one of Mr. Roddenberry's journals. As I looked through this journal, I read about an encounter he had with the crew of the U. S. S. Enterprise after an accident had almost caused him to lose his mind. I don't know how he learned everything about the missions, but I do know that he met the three of you at that time."


Mr. Spock interjected his own hypothesis.


"Yes, I seem to remember a pilot, whom had accidentally found us in his deliriousness. As to his memories, I believe I am at fault. For, in order to cure him of his mental . . . instabilities at the time, I was forced to mind meld with the man. I believe a residual effect of that meld must have been some of my own memories being transferred into his own subconsious."


"Now, we've got a problem." McCoy said, just loud enough for Kirk to hear . . .


*****


"Indeed we do, Bones." Kirk replied aloud. "It's good to get some history that we lost back, but this is not a very good way to get it." One could almost hear the groan in the Admiral's voice as he said it.


*****


Amanda Grayson Sarek strolled in the arboretum, enjoying the fragrance of flowers she could not grow in her own garden back on Vulcan. Thinking of her own garden made her homesick, and gave her a bit of "triple-century jet lag."


Just as she began to get lost in the thought of her own garden, her husband, Ambassador Sarek walked through the cherry-red sliding doors, on his way back from the briefing room.


As they walked, Sarek and Amanda talked about the strange experience they had had just a couple days earlier.


"It was really quite fascinating, wasn't it, my husband?" Amanda opened.


"Yes, quite fascinating actually." Sarek said as they wondered to themselves Have they found the woman yet, I wonder?


*****


"I believe we may have an even bigger problem than we thought, Admiral." Spock said, holding up a diskette from beside Eternity's computer. "When the Enterprise was here last time, they did not have data discs like this. In fact, they did not have computers at all."


"Ah, you're very right, Captain Spock." Eternity affirmed. "Star Trek changed all that. Soon after the series first aired, a race to build computers began. Not long after that, the floppy was invented. We even have flip-out communications devices." she added the last while pulling her own cell phone out and flipping the top.


"Now this is one hell of a problem." McCoy put his two cents in.


*****


Kirk, Spock, and McCoy conferred amongst themselves while Eternity and Raistlin watched another episode of Star Trek. They were still doubtful of the prospects of an hyperbolic solar slingshot, even though it had worked before.


"I do not know that there is any other feasible solution, Admiral. We could not try to reach the Gateway, since it is weeks away, and the crew is already in need of rest." Spock put in his own argument.


"Not only that, but we can't fit the whole ship through that monstrous doughnut." McCoy replied.


"All right. Let's go back to the ship and start preparing for the maneuver." Kirk ended the conversation quickly, then turned to the couple watching the television.


"Thank you for your hospitality Miss Meyerson. We're very grateful that you could help. Now, we must be getting back to the ship." He thanked the woman.


"Wait!" the two said in unison.


"Yes?" Kirk asked.


"I mean, we've never seen the inside of the Enterprise before, other than on television, and that is not real, so we'd be very grateful to you if you'd give us a tour." Eternity diplomatically asked her favor.


The three discussed the possibilities of the two seeing anything that they did not already know about, finally deciding that a trip to the Enterprise for these two would not do anything against the Prime Directive.


*****


As the transporter finished re-materializing the Admiral, Spock, and McCoy, Scotty wondered who the other two people on the pad were, and how they could be coming aboard from the twentieth century, in clear view of the Prime Directive.


As soon as Eternity finished materializing, however, he knew the answer.


"Hello Mister Scott. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Eternity Meyerson, and this is my boyfriend Raistlin Dathomir." she quickly made the introductions before anyone else had a chance.


Scotty was shocked. "Admiral, how does this lassie knoow me name? I've never seen her before in me life."


"It's a long story Scotty." Meyerson, Kirk, Dathomir, and McCoy said in unison.


"Not that long, Admiral, but I see your point." Spock interjected, commencing the explanation while the door slid open and they walked through.


*****


After they had explained the situation to Scotty, Spock, Kirk and McCoy gave the couple a tour of the Enterprise, starting with the warp nacelles and ending with the bridge.


During the tour, both Eternity and Raistlin surprised their favorite "characters" by saying their names before the poor crew members could introduce themselves.


Ambassador Sarek even raised an eyebrow when he found Eternity and Raistlin on the ship, although he probably expected the occurrence.


*****


As Christine Chapel was recalibrating the displays on the diagnostic tables, she heard the almost-metallic swish of the doors opening. She looked up to see Admiral Kirk, Captain Spock, and Doctor McCoy giving a tour to two civilians.


She didn't realize until the woman introduced herself and her boyfriend that the ship was still caught in the twentieth century.


"Nice to meet you, Nurse Chapel." She said. "My name is Eternity Meyerson, and this is Raistlin Dathomir. I must say, it's amazing to see how much you look like Majel Barrett Roddenberry."


"How did you know my name?" Chapel said, a bit rudely. "Did McCoy tell? And who is Majel Whozewhatzits?"


"I didn't say a word, Chris! I swear!" sputtered the doctor.


"It's a long story." all, but Spock chimed in.


*****


While Ambassador Sarek was in their quarters meditating, his wife, Amanda Grayson decided to stretch the muscles she had tightened during her walk in the arboretum earlier that day.


As she was getting ready to bend down for a toe-touch, Eternity Meyerson, Raistlin Dathomir, Spock, Admiral Kirk, and Doctor McCoy walked through the doors with a semi-metallic swish.


"Spock, did you tell?" Amanda chided her son.


"Actually, it was Eternity who broached the subject of our first meeting. I merely added the commentary." her son dutifully replied.


"One hell of a long story, if you ask me." Doctor McCoy commented with a snicker.


*****


Captain's Log_Stardate 6330.5


We have successfully returned to our own time, thanks to help from Eternity Meyerson, a woman living in the twentieth century, who knew enough to get us home. We have successfully transported the ambassadors to Starbase one, where they were immediately beamed down to Earth. The officers and crew of the Enterprise are enjoying their shore leave at this time. I shall join them momentarily while Enterprise is looked over and repaired by the engineers at Starbase One.


Again, James Kirk finished his log. And, as he headed for the turboshaft, Spock inquired something of him.


"Where did you see her face before, Jim? And why does the doctor seem to have seen the same visage too?"


"Face? What face?" Kirk was puzzled.


"Eternity Meyerson's. You said you had seen her face before. . . after she mentioned that she was born in the state called Iowa." Spock explained.


"Iowa, if you looked in the computer memory banks, is one of the United States of America. I was also born there. Ten years after Eternity Meyerson helped us, she went back to her home in Iowa and married my great-great-great-grandfather, Raistlin Dathomir. They had decided to move back to Iowa because it was safer for children than San Francisco. Their daughter married my great-great-grandfather Kirk.


My mother used to show me old photographs of my ancestors. Most of them were too old to make out, but Eternity Meyerson's was the earliest recognizable photograph." Kirk beat around the bush.


"Still, I do not see how Doctor McCoy could have heard of her before we met her, Jim." Spock was ever-curious.


"As for McCoy's knowledge," Kirk disclosed. "he and I are distant cousins. I found that out a few years after I met Bones. Eternity and Raistlin are the place that our families branched off of eachother. Only he comes from their son's line. But that, my friend, is a long story, and I do not have Eternity to tell it."



Spock could only raise an eyebrow.