Present Pasts:

A Star Trek: Voyager Fan Fiction Short Story

by

Jonathan Key

Student Number: s1715224

Course Title: “The Past Was Not Dead”: Cultural Memory and the Politics of Remembering

Course Code: LAX012M10

Credits: 2

Instructor: Dr. Amanda Gilroy

Date of Submission: Thursday, March 15, 2012

Number of Words: 2,170

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Captain’s log, stardate 53418.9: We lost Ensign Newberg today. Neelix has volunteered to
organize a funeral service in the mess hall, or what’s left of it. I don’t know what I will say
this time, the third time in just as many weeks that we’ve had to say goodbye to one of our
own, and I’m afraid my attempts at consolation are beginning to fall on deaf ears with the
crew. I can’t blame them. Our unknown alien assailants show no signs of giving up, and we
haven’t come any closer to developing a defense mechanism against their refractive phaser
pulse. The ship is in shambles. Decks one through four are uninhabitable, and with the ventral
shields at 34%, it’s only a matter of time before we lose the remaining lower decks. All
attempts at communicating with the aliens have failed, and their devastating neurolytic drain
has the Doctor scrambling for answers. Sickbay has been expanded into adjoining crew
quarters, but with each attack, the number of patients swells. The diagnosis is always the
same: acute depletion of neurolytic and engrammatic enzymes. The Doctor hypothesizes that
the aliens probe the brain, and in the process, absorb the enzymes. We don’t know why. Have
we violated their space? Altering our route has not deterred them, and there is no way around
this part of space. Commander Chakotay wants me to consider turning back, settling on that
M-class planet we surveyed four months ago, at least until we make the necessary reparations.
But that’s light-years in the wrong direction. I’m overlooking something, and I’m not about to
give up. Not just yet.

Captain’s log, stardate 53421.3: Today, the Borg-enhanced sensors detected a type-J
wormhole. Ever since we entered this sector, space has been devoid of them, and without
wormholes, our uplink to Earth is useless. The wormhole’s aperture is too narrow for Voyager
to pass through, but Seven informs me that it leads directly to the Alpha Quadrant, and that its
unique composition should support not only our regular carrier frequency, but transport
beams as well. We are on course to reach the wormhole by 0600 hours. It’s been almost four
months since we made contact with Starfleet Headquarters. I am beginning to forget what
Admiral Hayes looks like. I’m cautiously optimistic about Seven’s plan to beam equipment
through the wormhole; our left warp nacelle was badly damaged in the aliens’ last assault, and
we can’t replicate any more duranium alloy. I overheard Ensign Kim wondering out loud
whether we might be able to boost the deflector’s output and beam people through the
wormhole as well. His enthusiasm is infectious, and these last few weeks, I’ve secretly been
wishing Starfleet had assigned us a counselor before we left dry dock.

Our left warp nacelle isn’t the only part of Voyager that’s buckling under the pressure. The
alien attacks have been eating away at the ship’s morale, and a growing contingent of the
crew has latched onto a cold hatred as the only remaining reason to keep going. We are losing
more than bulkheads and shield output at the hands of these aliens. Ensign Newberg once
confided in me that she enlisted in Starfleet after her parents were killed in a Klingon raid on
one of the lunar colonies. Not in the hopes of one day exacting revenge, but because she
believed that Starfleet’s dedication to peace and cooperation would keep her from
succumbing to her baser instincts. In her darkest moment, Starfleet was there to help her
honor her parents’ memory, instead of drowning it in Klingon blood. It’s up to me now to
keep her memory, that memory, alive.

Captain’s log, supplemental: A boy, a human boy. The Doctor’s scans reveal that he is
somewhere between seventeen and nineteen years old, and a preliminary analysis of his
clothing indicates that he’s from the early twenty-first century. We don’t know what
happened exactly. Moments after the transport link to Earth was established, an alien vessel
appeared out of nowhere, and targeted a refractive phaser pulse straight at the wormhole’s
aperture. A cascade reaction resulted in the production of chronoton particles, which most
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likely deflected the transport beam from its original destination into Earth’s past. The ensuing
shockwave not only knocked out our deflector dish, but caused the wormhole to collapse
altogether. What was supposed to be our trump card has brought an innocent boy into an
increasingly volatile situation. Time travel gives me a headache in regular circumstances, and
although this situation certainly isn’t unprecedented, there is no Starfleet manual I can turn to
for answers. The Doctor tells me that, even though the boy lost consciousness during
transport, he has suffered no bodily injuries, and the Doctor can keep him sedated for the time
being. It’s a tempting offer. I have lost three crewmembers, while seventeen others languish
in a vegetative state, shells of their former selves. Keeping this boy sedated may be the best
way to keep him out of harm’s way. Yet, sitting in my ready-room, I’m not so sure I have the
right to suspend his life. At the end of the day, I brought him here. I won’t decide his fate
twice.

Computer? It’s me, John. I hope I’m doing this right. Tos told me I might want to try
keeping a diary. They call it a log. I don’t know where to begin. There was no light. I was
expecting a light, at least. Alien encounters always involve lights, right? I remember watching
E.T. as a little kid, and then again years later as a not so little kid, and being really moved by
the main character carrying E.T. back into the light. I had an E.T. teddy bear, but I left it at
home when I started college. I hadn’t thought about that movie in forever. When I first woke
up, I was sure I was dreaming. Two people were standing over me, and they slowly explained
what had happened. When I tried to touch the Doctor and reached through his body, I freaked
out for a second. I’m not sure how I felt about aliens before. I definitely wasn’t a sci-fi geek
or anything, but I always believed the universe was too big for just us humans. The woman,
the Captain, told me about the twenty-fourth century, the Federation, Starfleet, and the
mission she and her crew were on. Things were pretty dire, and I noticed she had tears in her
eyes. I didn’t realize it at that moment, but she wasn’t just crying about the ship; she was
crying because she missed what she’d left behind. That’s when I started crying, too.

I sucked it up, though, and I told them that, back in the twenty-first century, films and
television, which apparently haven’t stood the test of time, had prepared me for this moment.
I mean, I’d never touched, uhm, not touched, a hologram before, but I’d seen plenty of them
on television. At that point, the Captain was called away, but not before introducing me to
Tos. Tos is a Bolian, but at that time, Tos was just a completely blue guy to me. He reminded
me of the aliens in Avatar, only without the long hair and with more clothes on. The Captain
had asked him to show me around because he was the only other young person on board, and
we kind of hit it off. It’s weird, because there are plenty of humans on board Voyager, but
talking to Tos, who also left his parents and friends behind and also isn’t sure he’ll ever see
them again, took some of my anxiety away. I think he feels the same way. We hung out
almost all the time, and we were in our room when it happened. Red lights started flickering
everywhere, and I’d been on board long enough to know that meant trouble. Before we could
figure out what to do, the room started collapsing and Tos took me by the hand and led me
through the corridors. Things were exploding left and right, and then, suddenly, it just
appeared. One of the aliens. I’d seen pictures on the viewing screen, but I wasn’t prepared to
run into one. It looked like a cross between a human being and a praying mantis, and it
knocked Tos against the wall with one of its arms before he could run away. I knew what it
was about to do, and when I saw it move closer to Tos, I pictured him lying in sickbay just
like the others. I don’t know what I did exactly, but I launched myself at Tos, blocking the
alien’s path. All I remember after that is an icy cold finger touching my left temple, and
seeing bits and pieces of everything that had happened to me since I arrived on Voyager
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flashing before my eyes, including my own memories, and the scenes of E.T. and Avatar that
I hadn’t even realized were there.

Captain’s log, stardate 53424.7: John was the first to wake up. The Doctor wasn’t positive,
but he had a working theory of what had transpired during that final alien attack. When he
examined John after Tos had carried him into sickbay, he discovered that his neurolytic and
engrammatic enzymes had only partly been depleted. The alien had ceased the analytic drain
midway, and had in the process left behind a trace of his own neurolytic enzyme compound,
which was not present in any of the other crewmembers that had previously been attacked.
The Doctor extracted some of the alien enzyme, and injected it into one of the victims’ neuro-
cortex; after only a few minutes, the patient’s own neurolytic enzymes began regenerating,
and he woke up only half an hour later. By the end of the day, all seventeen stricken
crewmembers had made a complete recovery. The Doctor believes that the aliens must have
engaged in a symbiotic type of mind-meld with Voyager’s crew, but that the process had for
some reason only been successful in John’s case. He reluctantly admitted that he did not know
why, which, for the Doctor, was a difficult admission to make. Where medicine left off, I
decided to follow up, and I asked John whether he remembered anything that might point us
in the right direction. All he remembered were flashes of motion pictures, and although I was
skeptical at first, I perused the computer for any mention of memory, aliens and so-called
“movies.”

When I was just about to give up, I discovered that a cultural historian by the name of Alison
Landsberg had posited the notion of “prosthetic memory” in the early twenty-first century.
She suggests that memories that “[do] not strictly deriv[e] from a person’s lived experience”
may nevertheless anchor themselves into that person’s “archive of experience,” where they
may “[inform] one’s subjectivity as well as one’s relationship to the present and future tenses”
(25-26). From what I had gathered, John had drawn on his memories of fictional alien
encounters to strike up a friendship with Tos, so this part of Landsberg’s argument seemed to
be borne out by the situation at hand. Crucially, Landsberg goes on to argue that prosthetic
memories form a particularly viable foundation for unexpected affiliations, and “may become
the grounds for political alliances” between parties of different races, classes, and genders
(34). Species could now be added to that list. A few lines down, Landsberg notes that those
cultural memories that have “an affective, individual component” are especially “likely to
motivate action” (ibid.), and John’s selfless defense of his new friend certainly fits that
pattern.

Intrigued, I read on, and happened on a line that provided me with an insight into the aliens’
actions that I had never before considered. Landsberg points to one of the films she analyzes
as an example of how memories, lived or prosthetic, “become the building blocks from which
to construct narratives of the present and visions for the future” (41). What if the aliens’ mind
probes, which we took to be attacks, were actually attempts at communication? What if this
species’ guiding philosophy is based on the exchange of memories? Could they be “seeking
out new life and new civilizations,” to paraphrase a captain I have always looked up to, by an
exchange of memories? When they first melded with our crew, they must have been flooded
with memories of fear, which later devolved into a hatred that may have motivated their
continued assaults. John was different. He had used his prosthetic memories to fashion a new,
provisionary identity aboard Voyager; his memories did not just allow him to identify with
Tos, but they taught him “to experience empathy” (47). In that moment, when the aliens
vicariously shared in that empathy, more than one identity was reshaped. All this time, the
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answer to our present problem could be found right here, in our guest from the past. The next
day, when repairs began, I assigned Ensign Newberg’s quarters to John. It felt right somehow.

Works Cited

Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of Remembrance in the Age of

Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.