Sol Invictus (Kirk/McCoy, R), Part 2
<< Part 1
Jim’s early for the meeting, but everyone is already going at it on the comm channel.
“--like Kleinfelder-T’van Radiation, non-ionizing radiation that has ionizing properties during phase transition--”
“No, because then we would have detected at least infrared emissions during phase, and we didn’t, so obviously--”
“Look, I”m more concerned about how all of this is affecting us. For consistency, these changes would have to affect every atom in this universe, including the ones in our bodies, right? So--”
“Hey,” Kirk interrupts. “Hi, everyone.”
“Hello, Captain,” they chorus back.
“So what have we found out in the last couple of hours?”
“Not a great deal, Captain,” Spock says, making Jim believe the opposite. “Simply that when we add light or any other radiation to matter, it becomes moderately ionized but displays no novel properties as a result. This raises several possibilities.”
“I’m listening.”
“One is that Q has created an illusory universe for the purpose of testing our deductive skills, one that may have its own laws, laws that are inconsistent with our own. Another is that the energy is manifesting somewhere else.” Spock, who normally would sound fascinated, sounds downright disturbed.
“Like where?”
“Another universe, or perhaps the same one, with our Enterprise existing in a decoupled quantum position from our original universe. If that were the case, the way ‘out,’ as it were, would be to re-merge one or more universes.”
“That sounds like more than we can accomplish in 18 hours.” It also sounds complicated; Jim’s money is on something gimmicky and obnoxious, maybe something designed to humiliate the humans Q obviously holds in contempt.
“Indeed,” Spock says. “A great deal of additional research is needed to fully explore either of these scenarios, let alone the countless other possibilities we might not have thought of.”
Jim grips the edge of the desk, wondering where Bones has gotten to. “All right, let’s back up. Q says she was creating a ‘puzzle,’ but she didn’t say what she expected out of a solution.”
“Exactly!” Chekov says. “We are assuming that she wishes us to put the lights back on--in other words, to return to our original state. But perhaps she just wants to see our reaction, to know what kind of people we are.”
“I agree with Chekov, Captain,” Uhura says. “And I’ll take it a step further.”
“Go on.”
“She appeared dressed as Amaterasu, the Shinto sun goddess. She obviously knows something about Earth history, and something about humans, or at least she thinks she does.”
“I didn’t think her opinion was all that flattering.” Jim also remembers the unique form of her contempt.
“It was our space exploration she objected to,” Uhura says. “She seemed to think it was--out of character, or something. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence she decided to throw us into darkness. Amaterasu was one of many, many sun gods worshiped on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. People used to make offerings to guarantee the sun’s return.”
“So, what do you think? Does she want us to worship her, or make her offerings?”
“Who knows? I do think we’d be wise to consider this puzzle on a different level, though. The level of a story, or maybe even a performance.”
“You’re suggesting that she wants us to entertain her?” Jim thinks about the being’s languorous posture, so different from the usual run of Bridge intruders. “I have to say, that makes sense; it must get pretty boring, being that powerful, and if there’s one thing that lady seemed to have, it's a big ego. But how do we know what kind of show she wants us to put on?”
“No idea, sir,” Sulu says, “but probably not the one they performed on the Connemara.”
“Of course! Sulu, that wreckage--did it come through to this universe with us?”
“No, sir, but we have all the scanning data. And a sample of the outer hull material.”
“Perfect. Sulu, see if you can squeeze any more information out of it. In the meantime--let’s plan a show, I guess.”
“Captain?” Scotty says. “I was thinking about the Connemara--they didn’t have a high-energy particle physics lab on board, but assuming this Q pulled the same trick on them--they probably would have figured it quickly enough. Engineering is full of containment vessels, and those vessels are--”
“Vacuums,” Jim says at the same time as Scotty. “Oh my God. I think we’ve got the makings of a nice bit of stage magic.”
It takes another half hour to work out the details; Scotty is bullish even by his own standards, and Jim can feel a palpable lifting of spirits, a feeling that they’re at least going to have the element of surprise on their side.
“It’s a plan. I want reports every two hours, and I’ll meet you on the Bridge at 0700 for the dress rehearsal. Kirk out.”
He signs off feeling not just relieved, but buoyant. It’s a good plan, and better than that, it’s a fun plan; he’s not big on Pyrrhic victories, but at least he won’t go out hating his job.
He makes his way around the desk with half trips over Bones’ legs. Bones is sitting in one of the two armchairs that are pointed toward the small window that currently has a view of nothing.
Jim circles around the back so that he drop his hands on Bones’ shoulders. “So, you feeling better about our chances of living to see another dawn?”
“I’ll be damned if I can understand any two words you people say,” he says with a shrug. “But the solution’s about as crazy as the problem, so it’s got that advantage.”
“Glad you approve.” Jim ducks his head to the vicinity of Bones’ ear and brushes his lips against what turns out to be the space behind it. Bones starts a little, and shivers.
“Jesus, will you knock it off? Things kissing me out of thin air give me the willies.”
“What, did you think it was a ghost? Or, wait--do ghosts do that to you? I don’t blame them, but still.” He’s feeling playful, and cover-of-night is turning out to suit his purposes better than he expected.
Bones shies away, pettish. “Easy for you to laugh.”
There’s something in his voice, more than the usual superstitious crankiness, and so Jim says, “What is it?”
“What is ‘it’? It’s not-- I don’t--” Jim feels Bones’ neck muscles tighten. “All right, fine. I don’t like the dark.”
“Why not? It’s beautiful,” Jim says, thinking of space.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not. It’s--well, it’s possibility. It’s protection.” It’s part of a lot of his fondest memories, in fact. As much as he’s able, Jim tries to follow his mother’s tradition of spending the first night back on Earth camping out on the solid ground, under the blanket of night. Jim always feels safe beneath the stars.
“Not to you, I guess. Come on,” Jim says, and swivels the chair around, grabbing Bones’ wrists and pulling him out of it, onto the bed where they flop down in a tangle of limbs. “Tell.”
Bones arranges himself with a sigh, half-overlapping Jim’s torso. “I used to have trouble falling asleep as a kid. My dad told me that if I was still awake after midnight, the Sandman would come into my room and sprinkle sand in my eyes to make me fall asleep. I know he meant it well, but it scared the crap out of me. I’d lie awake thinking every creak of the floorboards was the Sandman. Dad showed me a woodcut of him in this scary-ass old book; to this day I can’t think of those old-fashioned sleeping caps without getting the creeps.” He pauses. “How hard are you trying not to laugh?”
“I’m not laughing at all. What a fucking disaster.” Jim knows Bones honors David McCoy with the zeal reserved for people you think you’ve wronged, but to Jim’s mind Dr. McCoy the elder usually sounds intimidating at best, emotionally domineering at worst. He hates the thought of little Leonard--who he knows from holos was unbearably elfin and adorable--lying awake in his bed in adult-induced terror.
“Yeah, well, now you know. That’s why I like the lights at 5 percent.” He hooks a hand around Jim’s knee and strokes it, Jim’s reward for not acting like an ass about his phobias, which he’s been guilty of in the past.
“Bones, your father should have shown you how to meditate or change your diet or something. I mean, he was a doctor. What’s with parents outsourcing this stuff to mythological figures, anyway?”
“Let’s see if you feel the same way when you have kids,” Bones says. “But you--nothing scares you. You were made for this. You could probably live this way forever, if you had to.”
“It’s really not that bad,” Jim says, lowering his voice, because Bones is right--not about not being scared of anything, because he’s scared of plenty--but because their warm proximity is giving him ideas, and because Bones needs him to be fearless now. “I mean, there’s plenty to do, for one thing.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jim hears the ironic arch. “What the hell is there to do in the dark?” Jim’s learning to distinguish between types of silences; he lets this one develop for a moment. “Oh, right.”
“Eternal night,” Jim says, running his hands down Bones’ chest, feeling the swell of his pectorals and the indentation of his ribs. “Everybody’s diurnal rhythms would be fucked up, so we’d go with it, right? Four hours on, two hours off, or something like that. That means sex four times a day. And the rest of the time? There’d be no need for uniforms, except maybe for warmth, or sanitation. But optional, definitely. I’d be able to sit in staff meetings thinking about you naked across the table, and it would drive me crazy, but luckily I’d only be at most four hours away from doing you. You know what?” Jim cups his hand around one of his favorite places on Bones, where his hip turns into the flat side of his ass. “I don’t care if that Q ever comes back; eternal darkness sounds awesome.” And ridiculous as his fantasy is, it’s managed to get him hard, thinking about Bones naked that way, simultaneously exposed and reserved for him.
“That’s your secret, isn’t it? You’re never scared because every neuron is occupied with perverted fantasies.” Bones seizes his hand and guides it up under his own uniform shirt, to warm flesh that transfers its heat directly to Jim’s brain.
Jim misses looking at Bones, there’s no denying it, but where his memory fails his imagination takes over. They can be anywhere and everywhere, undistracted and suspended in the moment with nothing but each others’ flesh and hands. Jim’s careful to put their clothes where they can find them in the morning, but other than that it’s pure abandon, rolling around a bed that at times in the last three years has seemed too small for two large and restless men but that now seems vast.
Bones’ cock appears and disappears randomly until Jim clings to it like a lifeline, wrapping his lips around it only to find, miraculously, that Bones’ lips have wrapped around his own. It’s not something they’ve done often--Jim usually finds it too complicated, the sensory input too confusing--but now it’s perfect, an unbroken circle, feeding each other’s pleasure. As he comes, Jim’s brain launches a shower of sparks for his entertainment, and afterward it’s a series of stills of other places and times: in particular, a beach on Sulafal Gamma, where they made love twice and then fell asleep under the five-foot fronds of an enormous blue tree.
They don’t bother to shower or brush their teeth, and Jim finds himself liking this new universe better and better. He thinks about the solstice, the darkest night of the year, and wonders how long their longest night is going to last. They fall asleep wrapped around each other in a way they haven’t done in years, the darkness binding together what split shifts and bad sleeping habits have put asunder.
By the time Jim hears Bones’ even breathing, syncing with the gentle rise and fall of his chest under Jim’s hand, Jim considers the darkness a friend.
+++++
Jim is used to waking in the dark; sometimes he uses a sub-cu alarm to avoid waking Bones when they’re on different shifts, and sometimes he doesn’t and Bones growls and pulls the pillow over his head, or gets up to take a piss and falls back into bed, all seemingly without waking up.
This time, Jim has to shake him awake and get him back into his uniform without the aid of strong, hot coffee, and they share a packet of Idanian spice wafers that Jim’s been saving since their last starbase stop.
“Showtime,” he says, pushing Bones out the door, and Bones gives him that special grunt reserved for gung-ho cliches.
When they arrive on the Bridge Jim somehow knows everyone is there without asking, but he asks anyway.
“Everybody okay? Scotty, did you get any sleep?”
“Not a wink, sir,” Scotty says brightly. “But I think you’ll be quite pleased with the results.”
“Just no explosive decompression, all right? I don’t think I could face that without coffee.”
“You want some coffee?” Sulu asks from his familiar position at 11 o’clock. “I’ve got a vacuum flask right here.”
“Seriously? That’s almost frighteningly organized.” He accepts the flask from Sulu as carefully as if they’re doing a slow-motion relay exchange.
“Eagle Scout, sir. Always prepared.”
Jim takes a grateful swallow and they pass it around, making a game of it as they run diagnostics and simulations on Scotty’s overhaul of the Bridge ventilation system.
“I’d like to see her face when we uncork this,” Scotty says with satisfaction.
“Not much danger of that, is there?” says a sharp female voice coming from directly behind him. Jim wonders if she’s bothered to become corporeal.
“Back so soon, Q?” Strong fingers brush against the back of his neck, so he knows she at least bothered to materialize hands.
“Twenty hours, as promised. This is very unimpressive, Kirk, even by Starfleet standards. Still alone in the dark.”
Jim likes to look his enemies in the eyes, to gauge their intentions. Counter to Spock’s fastidious denials, Jim swears that it’s useful, even with slit-pupiled reptoids. Now he’s going to have to rely exclusively on the instinct that’s driven at least three admirals into retirement for their health.
“This game isn’t fair,” he says, swiveling his chair around to face her. “You never told us the rules; you just changed everything around us and left us to figure it out. This is all just for your entertainment, isn’t it?”
“Things usually are, yes,” she says, unperturbed. “But this is nothing but bluffing, Kirk. I promise you, there is an answer, and it’s not my fault you didn’t find it.”
“Your universe, your fault. And that’s why we refuse to play your game.” He can hear restless shifting around him, an uneasy sense of captain going off script.
“What do you mean?” Good, Jim thinks. Now I’ve got you asking the questions.
“I mean, we don’t need to find your solution, because we don’t need it and we don’t need you.” He really wishes it were safe to stalk around the Bridge; he’s in a mood for stalking. “You thought we’d be so desperate that we’d grasp at any straw, try anything, no matter how dangerous, and barring that, that we’d beg you for our own universe back. You know what? We have enough dilithium to keep the ship running for 20 years. We can synthesize our own water and food. And I’m sure, in time, we can figure out how to safely return to our own universe, or maybe even how to create universes of our own. And if we don’t, we’re just fine. We’ve don’t need the rest of the universe.”
It had taken Jim the better part of the night to make himself believe it, even with Bones warm in his arms, sleeping so soundly Jim felt like he had to check now and then to make sure he was still breathing. Because he suspects the being is omniscient as well as omnipotent, he puts that image in his mind. He doesn’t know how forceful or persuasive it is, but it’s the best argument he has.
“You’re telling me that you don’t need the universe because you’ve got each other?” she asks, incredulous past the point of sarcasm. “How poignant and cliched and very, very boring. You expect me to believe you can live this way?”
“We can,” Uhura says from the darkness. “We have before.”
“Go on,” Q says.
“Before humans understood the orbit of Earth, they observed that the days got shorter in the winter.” Uhura’s voice is light and patient, and Jim thinks he should have left this to her from the beginning. “They thought that gods controlled everything, including the sun, and so they prayed and sacrificed to those gods to make sure the sun returned. And they celebrated, because even in the darkest part of the winter, they believed in the possibility of rebirth, of better days to come.”
“Then maybe you should have tried harder to please this particular god,” Q says. “Because your sun isn’t going to shine again, is it?”
“Oh yes,” Kirk says, “it is.” He presses the control.
The vacuum system that Scotty spent the night installing does its work in seconds with an impressive roar. Kirk makes sure to don his oxygen mask before the helium replaces the bridge air because he may have to speak and figures a squeak won’t be impressive. As the transparent gas replaces the rebellious light-blocking atmosphere, Jim is delighted to see the Bridge again--such a welcome sight, though it’s been less than a day.
His crew isn’t exactly the way he left them. Sulu’s uniform is on backwards, Uhura’s wearing no makeup, and Bones’ hair is sticking up in a cowlick that Jim finds both comical and oddly attractive. Q, more surprisingly, is in the flat-nosed form of a Tellarite, wearing a long mail-like tunic.
“Don’t give me that look,” she says. “I was just visiting a Tellarite ship a few universes over, and I didn’t bother to change.”
But nobody is looking either at Q’s pivoting ears or Jim’s watering, blinking eyes. The sun is rising, moving into view as the Enterprise slowly rotates, a sun of Spock’s invention. The fist-sized ball of plasma contained in a magnetic field, through the trick of perspective, looks bright and beautiful as the one above the beach on Sulafal Gamma. Jim’s spirits lift along with his eyes to the golden light streaming through the view screen.
“Well!,” says Q, “that’s more like it. Pertinent to the conversation, and quite pretty besides.”
A moment later she’s changed into a human of the Classical period, with a long white gown and braided hair wound around her head. “You’re arrogant and self-absorbed, like all humans, but you show imagination. You’re interesting. No one’s ever tried that before,” she says pointing her thumb in the direction of the tiny sun.
“So now what?” Jim asks.
“I think that will be entirely up to you.” Q lifts her hand and appears to brush away the small artificial sun, to reveal the real one behind it, a star in its glory.
“We appear to be in orbit around Olvion Delta again, sir,” Sulu says quietly.
“You are,” Q says, already sounding bored again. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Am I really such an unreasonable being? All I ask is less of the probing, and more things like that. Be more creative, more interesting; be more--” she thinks for a moment “French.”
“More French?” Uhura asks in disbelief, but Q just gives her a little wave.
"They just have a certain--Well, it's hard to explain, but I find it very appealing. Au revoir, ma chère," she says, and disappears.
“Well,” Jim says, entering the code for an All clear. “Mystery solved. Where’s everybody going on shore leave?”
There’s a long moment where they look at each other, red-eyed, dishevelled, grinning and slighty giddy from the oxygen mix coming through their face masks.
Of all of them, Bones looks the least perturbed. “I don’t know about you, Jim, but I kind of liked that beach on Sulafal Gamma. It was--”
“Sunny?”
“Yeah,” Bones says, smoothing his hair and trying unsuccessfully to get it to lie down. “That, too.”
+++++
Nerdy Note #1: So I really tried to find a naturalistic explanation for light disappearing, and was hampered by the fact that I don’t get quantum physics even at the Wikipedia level. Molecules absorb photons of the right wavelength but always do something afterward: lose an electron, or emit the photon or something. If they didn’t do that I’m not sure what would happen, but for purposes of a sci-fi story the answer is huge a-splosion.
Nerdy Note #2: Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the late Roman Empire, a roll-up of various Roman and Eastern sun deities. December 25 was celebrated as Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the birthday of the Unconquerable Sun, the first day following the solstice on which the days visibly lengthen. Christian theologians continue to debate whether the selection of December 25 as Christmas was a conscious co-option of this holiday, an attempt to compete with it, or completely unrelated. The current pope, for instance, supports the idea that December 25 is simply nine months exactly from the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25, a date that also happened to be the Vernal Equinox in 1 C.E.
Jim’s early for the meeting, but everyone is already going at it on the comm channel.
“--like Kleinfelder-T’van Radiation, non-ionizing radiation that has ionizing properties during phase transition--”
“No, because then we would have detected at least infrared emissions during phase, and we didn’t, so obviously--”
“Look, I”m more concerned about how all of this is affecting us. For consistency, these changes would have to affect every atom in this universe, including the ones in our bodies, right? So--”
“Hey,” Kirk interrupts. “Hi, everyone.”
“Hello, Captain,” they chorus back.
“So what have we found out in the last couple of hours?”
“Not a great deal, Captain,” Spock says, making Jim believe the opposite. “Simply that when we add light or any other radiation to matter, it becomes moderately ionized but displays no novel properties as a result. This raises several possibilities.”
“I’m listening.”
“One is that Q has created an illusory universe for the purpose of testing our deductive skills, one that may have its own laws, laws that are inconsistent with our own. Another is that the energy is manifesting somewhere else.” Spock, who normally would sound fascinated, sounds downright disturbed.
“Like where?”
“Another universe, or perhaps the same one, with our Enterprise existing in a decoupled quantum position from our original universe. If that were the case, the way ‘out,’ as it were, would be to re-merge one or more universes.”
“That sounds like more than we can accomplish in 18 hours.” It also sounds complicated; Jim’s money is on something gimmicky and obnoxious, maybe something designed to humiliate the humans Q obviously holds in contempt.
“Indeed,” Spock says. “A great deal of additional research is needed to fully explore either of these scenarios, let alone the countless other possibilities we might not have thought of.”
Jim grips the edge of the desk, wondering where Bones has gotten to. “All right, let’s back up. Q says she was creating a ‘puzzle,’ but she didn’t say what she expected out of a solution.”
“Exactly!” Chekov says. “We are assuming that she wishes us to put the lights back on--in other words, to return to our original state. But perhaps she just wants to see our reaction, to know what kind of people we are.”
“I agree with Chekov, Captain,” Uhura says. “And I’ll take it a step further.”
“Go on.”
“She appeared dressed as Amaterasu, the Shinto sun goddess. She obviously knows something about Earth history, and something about humans, or at least she thinks she does.”
“I didn’t think her opinion was all that flattering.” Jim also remembers the unique form of her contempt.
“It was our space exploration she objected to,” Uhura says. “She seemed to think it was--out of character, or something. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence she decided to throw us into darkness. Amaterasu was one of many, many sun gods worshiped on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. People used to make offerings to guarantee the sun’s return.”
“So, what do you think? Does she want us to worship her, or make her offerings?”
“Who knows? I do think we’d be wise to consider this puzzle on a different level, though. The level of a story, or maybe even a performance.”
“You’re suggesting that she wants us to entertain her?” Jim thinks about the being’s languorous posture, so different from the usual run of Bridge intruders. “I have to say, that makes sense; it must get pretty boring, being that powerful, and if there’s one thing that lady seemed to have, it's a big ego. But how do we know what kind of show she wants us to put on?”
“No idea, sir,” Sulu says, “but probably not the one they performed on the Connemara.”
“Of course! Sulu, that wreckage--did it come through to this universe with us?”
“No, sir, but we have all the scanning data. And a sample of the outer hull material.”
“Perfect. Sulu, see if you can squeeze any more information out of it. In the meantime--let’s plan a show, I guess.”
“Captain?” Scotty says. “I was thinking about the Connemara--they didn’t have a high-energy particle physics lab on board, but assuming this Q pulled the same trick on them--they probably would have figured it quickly enough. Engineering is full of containment vessels, and those vessels are--”
“Vacuums,” Jim says at the same time as Scotty. “Oh my God. I think we’ve got the makings of a nice bit of stage magic.”
It takes another half hour to work out the details; Scotty is bullish even by his own standards, and Jim can feel a palpable lifting of spirits, a feeling that they’re at least going to have the element of surprise on their side.
“It’s a plan. I want reports every two hours, and I’ll meet you on the Bridge at 0700 for the dress rehearsal. Kirk out.”
He signs off feeling not just relieved, but buoyant. It’s a good plan, and better than that, it’s a fun plan; he’s not big on Pyrrhic victories, but at least he won’t go out hating his job.
He makes his way around the desk with half trips over Bones’ legs. Bones is sitting in one of the two armchairs that are pointed toward the small window that currently has a view of nothing.
Jim circles around the back so that he drop his hands on Bones’ shoulders. “So, you feeling better about our chances of living to see another dawn?”
“I’ll be damned if I can understand any two words you people say,” he says with a shrug. “But the solution’s about as crazy as the problem, so it’s got that advantage.”
“Glad you approve.” Jim ducks his head to the vicinity of Bones’ ear and brushes his lips against what turns out to be the space behind it. Bones starts a little, and shivers.
“Jesus, will you knock it off? Things kissing me out of thin air give me the willies.”
“What, did you think it was a ghost? Or, wait--do ghosts do that to you? I don’t blame them, but still.” He’s feeling playful, and cover-of-night is turning out to suit his purposes better than he expected.
Bones shies away, pettish. “Easy for you to laugh.”
There’s something in his voice, more than the usual superstitious crankiness, and so Jim says, “What is it?”
“What is ‘it’? It’s not-- I don’t--” Jim feels Bones’ neck muscles tighten. “All right, fine. I don’t like the dark.”
“Why not? It’s beautiful,” Jim says, thinking of space.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not. It’s--well, it’s possibility. It’s protection.” It’s part of a lot of his fondest memories, in fact. As much as he’s able, Jim tries to follow his mother’s tradition of spending the first night back on Earth camping out on the solid ground, under the blanket of night. Jim always feels safe beneath the stars.
“Not to you, I guess. Come on,” Jim says, and swivels the chair around, grabbing Bones’ wrists and pulling him out of it, onto the bed where they flop down in a tangle of limbs. “Tell.”
Bones arranges himself with a sigh, half-overlapping Jim’s torso. “I used to have trouble falling asleep as a kid. My dad told me that if I was still awake after midnight, the Sandman would come into my room and sprinkle sand in my eyes to make me fall asleep. I know he meant it well, but it scared the crap out of me. I’d lie awake thinking every creak of the floorboards was the Sandman. Dad showed me a woodcut of him in this scary-ass old book; to this day I can’t think of those old-fashioned sleeping caps without getting the creeps.” He pauses. “How hard are you trying not to laugh?”
“I’m not laughing at all. What a fucking disaster.” Jim knows Bones honors David McCoy with the zeal reserved for people you think you’ve wronged, but to Jim’s mind Dr. McCoy the elder usually sounds intimidating at best, emotionally domineering at worst. He hates the thought of little Leonard--who he knows from holos was unbearably elfin and adorable--lying awake in his bed in adult-induced terror.
“Yeah, well, now you know. That’s why I like the lights at 5 percent.” He hooks a hand around Jim’s knee and strokes it, Jim’s reward for not acting like an ass about his phobias, which he’s been guilty of in the past.
“Bones, your father should have shown you how to meditate or change your diet or something. I mean, he was a doctor. What’s with parents outsourcing this stuff to mythological figures, anyway?”
“Let’s see if you feel the same way when you have kids,” Bones says. “But you--nothing scares you. You were made for this. You could probably live this way forever, if you had to.”
“It’s really not that bad,” Jim says, lowering his voice, because Bones is right--not about not being scared of anything, because he’s scared of plenty--but because their warm proximity is giving him ideas, and because Bones needs him to be fearless now. “I mean, there’s plenty to do, for one thing.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jim hears the ironic arch. “What the hell is there to do in the dark?” Jim’s learning to distinguish between types of silences; he lets this one develop for a moment. “Oh, right.”
“Eternal night,” Jim says, running his hands down Bones’ chest, feeling the swell of his pectorals and the indentation of his ribs. “Everybody’s diurnal rhythms would be fucked up, so we’d go with it, right? Four hours on, two hours off, or something like that. That means sex four times a day. And the rest of the time? There’d be no need for uniforms, except maybe for warmth, or sanitation. But optional, definitely. I’d be able to sit in staff meetings thinking about you naked across the table, and it would drive me crazy, but luckily I’d only be at most four hours away from doing you. You know what?” Jim cups his hand around one of his favorite places on Bones, where his hip turns into the flat side of his ass. “I don’t care if that Q ever comes back; eternal darkness sounds awesome.” And ridiculous as his fantasy is, it’s managed to get him hard, thinking about Bones naked that way, simultaneously exposed and reserved for him.
“That’s your secret, isn’t it? You’re never scared because every neuron is occupied with perverted fantasies.” Bones seizes his hand and guides it up under his own uniform shirt, to warm flesh that transfers its heat directly to Jim’s brain.
Jim misses looking at Bones, there’s no denying it, but where his memory fails his imagination takes over. They can be anywhere and everywhere, undistracted and suspended in the moment with nothing but each others’ flesh and hands. Jim’s careful to put their clothes where they can find them in the morning, but other than that it’s pure abandon, rolling around a bed that at times in the last three years has seemed too small for two large and restless men but that now seems vast.
Bones’ cock appears and disappears randomly until Jim clings to it like a lifeline, wrapping his lips around it only to find, miraculously, that Bones’ lips have wrapped around his own. It’s not something they’ve done often--Jim usually finds it too complicated, the sensory input too confusing--but now it’s perfect, an unbroken circle, feeding each other’s pleasure. As he comes, Jim’s brain launches a shower of sparks for his entertainment, and afterward it’s a series of stills of other places and times: in particular, a beach on Sulafal Gamma, where they made love twice and then fell asleep under the five-foot fronds of an enormous blue tree.
They don’t bother to shower or brush their teeth, and Jim finds himself liking this new universe better and better. He thinks about the solstice, the darkest night of the year, and wonders how long their longest night is going to last. They fall asleep wrapped around each other in a way they haven’t done in years, the darkness binding together what split shifts and bad sleeping habits have put asunder.
By the time Jim hears Bones’ even breathing, syncing with the gentle rise and fall of his chest under Jim’s hand, Jim considers the darkness a friend.
+++++
Jim is used to waking in the dark; sometimes he uses a sub-cu alarm to avoid waking Bones when they’re on different shifts, and sometimes he doesn’t and Bones growls and pulls the pillow over his head, or gets up to take a piss and falls back into bed, all seemingly without waking up.
This time, Jim has to shake him awake and get him back into his uniform without the aid of strong, hot coffee, and they share a packet of Idanian spice wafers that Jim’s been saving since their last starbase stop.
“Showtime,” he says, pushing Bones out the door, and Bones gives him that special grunt reserved for gung-ho cliches.
When they arrive on the Bridge Jim somehow knows everyone is there without asking, but he asks anyway.
“Everybody okay? Scotty, did you get any sleep?”
“Not a wink, sir,” Scotty says brightly. “But I think you’ll be quite pleased with the results.”
“Just no explosive decompression, all right? I don’t think I could face that without coffee.”
“You want some coffee?” Sulu asks from his familiar position at 11 o’clock. “I’ve got a vacuum flask right here.”
“Seriously? That’s almost frighteningly organized.” He accepts the flask from Sulu as carefully as if they’re doing a slow-motion relay exchange.
“Eagle Scout, sir. Always prepared.”
Jim takes a grateful swallow and they pass it around, making a game of it as they run diagnostics and simulations on Scotty’s overhaul of the Bridge ventilation system.
“I’d like to see her face when we uncork this,” Scotty says with satisfaction.
“Not much danger of that, is there?” says a sharp female voice coming from directly behind him. Jim wonders if she’s bothered to become corporeal.
“Back so soon, Q?” Strong fingers brush against the back of his neck, so he knows she at least bothered to materialize hands.
“Twenty hours, as promised. This is very unimpressive, Kirk, even by Starfleet standards. Still alone in the dark.”
Jim likes to look his enemies in the eyes, to gauge their intentions. Counter to Spock’s fastidious denials, Jim swears that it’s useful, even with slit-pupiled reptoids. Now he’s going to have to rely exclusively on the instinct that’s driven at least three admirals into retirement for their health.
“This game isn’t fair,” he says, swiveling his chair around to face her. “You never told us the rules; you just changed everything around us and left us to figure it out. This is all just for your entertainment, isn’t it?”
“Things usually are, yes,” she says, unperturbed. “But this is nothing but bluffing, Kirk. I promise you, there is an answer, and it’s not my fault you didn’t find it.”
“Your universe, your fault. And that’s why we refuse to play your game.” He can hear restless shifting around him, an uneasy sense of captain going off script.
“What do you mean?” Good, Jim thinks. Now I’ve got you asking the questions.
“I mean, we don’t need to find your solution, because we don’t need it and we don’t need you.” He really wishes it were safe to stalk around the Bridge; he’s in a mood for stalking. “You thought we’d be so desperate that we’d grasp at any straw, try anything, no matter how dangerous, and barring that, that we’d beg you for our own universe back. You know what? We have enough dilithium to keep the ship running for 20 years. We can synthesize our own water and food. And I’m sure, in time, we can figure out how to safely return to our own universe, or maybe even how to create universes of our own. And if we don’t, we’re just fine. We’ve don’t need the rest of the universe.”
It had taken Jim the better part of the night to make himself believe it, even with Bones warm in his arms, sleeping so soundly Jim felt like he had to check now and then to make sure he was still breathing. Because he suspects the being is omniscient as well as omnipotent, he puts that image in his mind. He doesn’t know how forceful or persuasive it is, but it’s the best argument he has.
“You’re telling me that you don’t need the universe because you’ve got each other?” she asks, incredulous past the point of sarcasm. “How poignant and cliched and very, very boring. You expect me to believe you can live this way?”
“We can,” Uhura says from the darkness. “We have before.”
“Go on,” Q says.
“Before humans understood the orbit of Earth, they observed that the days got shorter in the winter.” Uhura’s voice is light and patient, and Jim thinks he should have left this to her from the beginning. “They thought that gods controlled everything, including the sun, and so they prayed and sacrificed to those gods to make sure the sun returned. And they celebrated, because even in the darkest part of the winter, they believed in the possibility of rebirth, of better days to come.”
“Then maybe you should have tried harder to please this particular god,” Q says. “Because your sun isn’t going to shine again, is it?”
“Oh yes,” Kirk says, “it is.” He presses the control.
The vacuum system that Scotty spent the night installing does its work in seconds with an impressive roar. Kirk makes sure to don his oxygen mask before the helium replaces the bridge air because he may have to speak and figures a squeak won’t be impressive. As the transparent gas replaces the rebellious light-blocking atmosphere, Jim is delighted to see the Bridge again--such a welcome sight, though it’s been less than a day.
His crew isn’t exactly the way he left them. Sulu’s uniform is on backwards, Uhura’s wearing no makeup, and Bones’ hair is sticking up in a cowlick that Jim finds both comical and oddly attractive. Q, more surprisingly, is in the flat-nosed form of a Tellarite, wearing a long mail-like tunic.
“Don’t give me that look,” she says. “I was just visiting a Tellarite ship a few universes over, and I didn’t bother to change.”
But nobody is looking either at Q’s pivoting ears or Jim’s watering, blinking eyes. The sun is rising, moving into view as the Enterprise slowly rotates, a sun of Spock’s invention. The fist-sized ball of plasma contained in a magnetic field, through the trick of perspective, looks bright and beautiful as the one above the beach on Sulafal Gamma. Jim’s spirits lift along with his eyes to the golden light streaming through the view screen.
“Well!,” says Q, “that’s more like it. Pertinent to the conversation, and quite pretty besides.”
A moment later she’s changed into a human of the Classical period, with a long white gown and braided hair wound around her head. “You’re arrogant and self-absorbed, like all humans, but you show imagination. You’re interesting. No one’s ever tried that before,” she says pointing her thumb in the direction of the tiny sun.
“So now what?” Jim asks.
“I think that will be entirely up to you.” Q lifts her hand and appears to brush away the small artificial sun, to reveal the real one behind it, a star in its glory.
“We appear to be in orbit around Olvion Delta again, sir,” Sulu says quietly.
“You are,” Q says, already sounding bored again. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Am I really such an unreasonable being? All I ask is less of the probing, and more things like that. Be more creative, more interesting; be more--” she thinks for a moment “French.”
“More French?” Uhura asks in disbelief, but Q just gives her a little wave.
"They just have a certain--Well, it's hard to explain, but I find it very appealing. Au revoir, ma chère," she says, and disappears.
“Well,” Jim says, entering the code for an All clear. “Mystery solved. Where’s everybody going on shore leave?”
There’s a long moment where they look at each other, red-eyed, dishevelled, grinning and slighty giddy from the oxygen mix coming through their face masks.
Of all of them, Bones looks the least perturbed. “I don’t know about you, Jim, but I kind of liked that beach on Sulafal Gamma. It was--”
“Sunny?”
“Yeah,” Bones says, smoothing his hair and trying unsuccessfully to get it to lie down. “That, too.”
+++++
Nerdy Note #1: So I really tried to find a naturalistic explanation for light disappearing, and was hampered by the fact that I don’t get quantum physics even at the Wikipedia level. Molecules absorb photons of the right wavelength but always do something afterward: lose an electron, or emit the photon or something. If they didn’t do that I’m not sure what would happen, but for purposes of a sci-fi story the answer is huge a-splosion.
Nerdy Note #2: Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the late Roman Empire, a roll-up of various Roman and Eastern sun deities. December 25 was celebrated as Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the birthday of the Unconquerable Sun, the first day following the solstice on which the days visibly lengthen. Christian theologians continue to debate whether the selection of December 25 as Christmas was a conscious co-option of this holiday, an attempt to compete with it, or completely unrelated. The current pope, for instance, supports the idea that December 25 is simply nine months exactly from the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25, a date that also happened to be the Vernal Equinox in 1 C.E.