"Who are you?"
"I'm Michael Burnham, the mutineer!"
"You can't just fabricate a prison costume and expect people to recognize you as Burnham."
"Well, who are you supposed to be?"
"Isn't it obvious? ... I'm a Suliban."
"A what?"
"Kids, kids, enough of this." The old man gently pushed the kids out of the way. "You two are getting on my nerves."
He looked out the bay window. It was a dreary day, as the weather control agency had mandated rain for the area to help the natural grass grow. They wouldn't let lose for even the traditional holiday. He heard in the old days that London was always raining, and the weather mods seemed to take that as gospel.
The kids didn't mind. They grew up with the rain, and most of the homes they'd visit would be in high rises or below ground. He figured about twenty or thirty homes in a city block should tire them out, then return back home. In his youth, he had lived in Australia, where it never rained. In his adulthood, he had travelled amongst the stars in various starships: the Enterprise, the Reliant, the Hood. Catastrophe overran them all, and when the Earth itself suffered major power failure, and millions died, including his own daughter and daughter-in-law, he left starship service and returned to his home planet to live for the first time in twenty-five years.
Hours passed, and, dressed as a Dimoran, he raced under the streets of old Burke Square, leading around Queen Mary's statue, trying to keep up with Jamie and Johnny. At eight years old, the twins could outrun him, a grown man of fifty-one. Some Bolian tourists, or perhaps locals with a good set of makeup, looked on in curiosity as the man stumbled through the underground courtyard.
He finally caught up to the twins and admonished them for their behavior. He had raised them for six years, more than their mother, who had been raised by his former girlfriend after he left for the stars. As he reprimanded them quietly next to the plaque dedicated to Robert April, a crowd formed. But it wasn't for him. It was for a monitor showing an FNS broadcast of some import. Was it another mysterious probe? Could it be the Klingons? Or the Breen? Earth was a bad location to raise a family, but then he could not think of any place better. He held his grandkids tight as they listened in.
"Power disruption in <zzzt> The Weather Modification Network is experiencing outages <zzzt> Authorities are tight-lipped <zzzt>"
Panic erupted in the crowd. Klingons and Romulans, Gorn and Augments, all stood in shock and horror at another potential power outage. He saw Zefram Cochrane and Kahless the Unforgettable get into a brawl over the volume control. He witnessed Phillip Green and T'Lana engage in some unexpected end of the world activity. But now was not the time for voyeurism. He took Johnny and Jamie to the only place he knew might be safe: Starfleet.
Racing pass Trafalgar Square, he and the kids reached a clearing by a non-descript door on the side of the local transport station. With three knocks and one tap, a peephole appeared. Looking up and down at his costume, the peephole voice scoffed and asked who he was supposed to be.
"I'm supposed to be SE 29754 T JTK," he said, citing his Starfleet serial number. The man typed it in and apologized to the Commander for any misunderstanding. He shrugged it off, and also shrugged off the guard's apprehension at allowing two young boys into the top secret facility.
"I'm Captain Richter. What's going on here?" said the imposing installation commander.
"It's okay, Captain," said the guard, "we have an old transporter chief here."
The man found himself whisked away deeper and deeper into the maze, the lights flickering on and off, off and on. The kids weren't nearly as alarmed as everyone else, amazed to see what it must look like in a real live starship. He found himself in an abandoned room that must be thirty or forty years old.
"Commander, these systems are all pre-duotronic. No one here is as capable as you in operating this sort of system. Something is attacking our modern systems. The weather is going crazy. Hospitals around the world are failing. Decades of spent up hurricanes and tornadoes are forming. And tsunami. We need you to transport as many as you can to safer places. We need you to save lives. Can you do it?"
He looked at the controls, and at the lateral vector transporter pods in front of him, and knew that site-to-site with such a primitive system would be very dangerous. He had seen bodies ripped apart, torn inside out by a bad compensator or mislaid scanner. He knew what horrors lay ahead of him, and it was part of the reason why he retired in the first place.
But he knew the world was ripping itself apart, and he couldn't just let people die to save his sanity. After taking a moment to familiarize himself again with the controls, he started getting in the reports. The weather mod was fixed after six hours, after the result of an emergent computer virus in the duotronic systems. The transporter chief saved 3,408 souls within those six hours, most of them confused and bewildered at their sudden transport. None of them dead or known to be in more than one piece. And that's the day John Kyle saved the world.
"I'm Michael Burnham, the mutineer!"
"You can't just fabricate a prison costume and expect people to recognize you as Burnham."
"Well, who are you supposed to be?"
"Isn't it obvious? ... I'm a Suliban."
"A what?"
"Kids, kids, enough of this." The old man gently pushed the kids out of the way. "You two are getting on my nerves."
He looked out the bay window. It was a dreary day, as the weather control agency had mandated rain for the area to help the natural grass grow. They wouldn't let lose for even the traditional holiday. He heard in the old days that London was always raining, and the weather mods seemed to take that as gospel.
The kids didn't mind. They grew up with the rain, and most of the homes they'd visit would be in high rises or below ground. He figured about twenty or thirty homes in a city block should tire them out, then return back home. In his youth, he had lived in Australia, where it never rained. In his adulthood, he had travelled amongst the stars in various starships: the Enterprise, the Reliant, the Hood. Catastrophe overran them all, and when the Earth itself suffered major power failure, and millions died, including his own daughter and daughter-in-law, he left starship service and returned to his home planet to live for the first time in twenty-five years.
Hours passed, and, dressed as a Dimoran, he raced under the streets of old Burke Square, leading around Queen Mary's statue, trying to keep up with Jamie and Johnny. At eight years old, the twins could outrun him, a grown man of fifty-one. Some Bolian tourists, or perhaps locals with a good set of makeup, looked on in curiosity as the man stumbled through the underground courtyard.
He finally caught up to the twins and admonished them for their behavior. He had raised them for six years, more than their mother, who had been raised by his former girlfriend after he left for the stars. As he reprimanded them quietly next to the plaque dedicated to Robert April, a crowd formed. But it wasn't for him. It was for a monitor showing an FNS broadcast of some import. Was it another mysterious probe? Could it be the Klingons? Or the Breen? Earth was a bad location to raise a family, but then he could not think of any place better. He held his grandkids tight as they listened in.
"Power disruption in <zzzt> The Weather Modification Network is experiencing outages <zzzt> Authorities are tight-lipped <zzzt>"
Panic erupted in the crowd. Klingons and Romulans, Gorn and Augments, all stood in shock and horror at another potential power outage. He saw Zefram Cochrane and Kahless the Unforgettable get into a brawl over the volume control. He witnessed Phillip Green and T'Lana engage in some unexpected end of the world activity. But now was not the time for voyeurism. He took Johnny and Jamie to the only place he knew might be safe: Starfleet.
Racing pass Trafalgar Square, he and the kids reached a clearing by a non-descript door on the side of the local transport station. With three knocks and one tap, a peephole appeared. Looking up and down at his costume, the peephole voice scoffed and asked who he was supposed to be.
"I'm supposed to be SE 29754 T JTK," he said, citing his Starfleet serial number. The man typed it in and apologized to the Commander for any misunderstanding. He shrugged it off, and also shrugged off the guard's apprehension at allowing two young boys into the top secret facility.
"I'm Captain Richter. What's going on here?" said the imposing installation commander.
"It's okay, Captain," said the guard, "we have an old transporter chief here."
The man found himself whisked away deeper and deeper into the maze, the lights flickering on and off, off and on. The kids weren't nearly as alarmed as everyone else, amazed to see what it must look like in a real live starship. He found himself in an abandoned room that must be thirty or forty years old.
"Commander, these systems are all pre-duotronic. No one here is as capable as you in operating this sort of system. Something is attacking our modern systems. The weather is going crazy. Hospitals around the world are failing. Decades of spent up hurricanes and tornadoes are forming. And tsunami. We need you to transport as many as you can to safer places. We need you to save lives. Can you do it?"
He looked at the controls, and at the lateral vector transporter pods in front of him, and knew that site-to-site with such a primitive system would be very dangerous. He had seen bodies ripped apart, torn inside out by a bad compensator or mislaid scanner. He knew what horrors lay ahead of him, and it was part of the reason why he retired in the first place.
But he knew the world was ripping itself apart, and he couldn't just let people die to save his sanity. After taking a moment to familiarize himself again with the controls, he started getting in the reports. The weather mod was fixed after six hours, after the result of an emergent computer virus in the duotronic systems. The transporter chief saved 3,408 souls within those six hours, most of them confused and bewildered at their sudden transport. None of them dead or known to be in more than one piece. And that's the day John Kyle saved the world.
