The Movie in My Mind

“At night, when I try to sleep, I’ve seen her die a hundred times,” he told me this morning at breakfast. “Killed in a traffic accident, the way you read in the news article.” Leaning his face into his hands, he covered his eyes, as if to block out the sight, or perhaps to hide human tears. “It’s like a movie in my mind, playing over and over again, each time slightly different, but always with the same ending. Edith, dead.”

He has gone with her tonight to one of the “movies” he spoke of. Motion pictures, they are more properly called. Utilized by humans for educational purposes as well as for the less logical function of entertainment, they are precursors to the holorecordings developed in the twenty-first century. In this era of Earth history, the nascent technology is so primitive that the images typically are in tones of gray, lacking natural color.

I am haunted by “movies” in my own mind. Not, like Jim’s, of an as-yet-to-be-determined future waiting to be enacted here in Earth’s past, but rather scenes from our recent past, lying in a future now lost to us, perhaps forever. Even with my mental disciplines, I cannot evade the memories.

Thrown from the scanners at the science station by a temporal wave emanating from a previously unexplored planet, I look across the bridge as I hear the hiss of a hypospray. I see you bent over the rail, holding the medical implement to your stomach. You reel for several steps, then fall to the floor. The Captain and I rush to your side. Silent, your head lowered, you have risen to your knees. From your clenched hands I take the empty hypo. With a sudden cry, you throw up your head. Your face is covered in perspiration, your eyes and
mouth wide in some inner frenzy of pain or fear. You begin to scream in manic paranoia: you believe we all intend to kill you. Wild-eyed and still shouting, you rise to your feet. The Captain and I attempt to restrain you, but you throw off first us, then the medic as he enters the bridge. And then you disappear behind the closed door of the turbolift.

The second scene transpires on the surface of the planet of the time portal that calls itself the Guardian of Forever. Having subdued you with a neck pinch and assuming you at least temporarily safe, I turn back to the Guardian. The Captain and I discuss the possibility of traveling to the past with the intent of circumventing your accident. I soon realize that, distracted by your situation, I have neglected recording masses of valuable historical data. I initiate making the recordings. But only seventy-eight seconds after I render you unconscious, I hear Mr. Scott call your name; one point three seconds later, the Captain calls to you as well. Still lost in your nightmare of drug-induced paranoia, you do not heed the cries of your friends. Eluding our grasps, you jump through the strange toroidal structure, again disappearing, this time into an unknown past.

I have failed the Captain, and the ship. And most of all, you. On the bridge, I was absorbed in study of the temporal anomaly. I should have warned you that the Enterprise was at risk of further turbulence from the time waves emanating from the planet. And in my shock after you accidentally injected yourself, I was unprepared for your uncharacteristically violent behavior, or for the unexpected strength lent by your mania. On the planet, too, again distracted by scientific curiosity, I failed to prevent your escape.

Others are paying—may continue paying—for my carelessness, and myfailure to control my own emotional reactions. Jim is suffering in anticipation of Edith Keeler’s death, and should she die, he will suffer even more keenly. But if we are unsuccessful in reversing the changed timeline, far more people will suffer, because the Third Reich will go on to conquer Earth. The history of many worlds, my own included, will inevitably be altered as well. Jim and I left among the ancient ruins of the Guardian’s planet four colleagues who may have to live out their lives in Earth’s past because of those alterations.

And whether or not we are successful in our mission to restore the original timeline, you have paid for my ineptitude. And like Jim, are likely to continue to do so. My lack of control cost you a chance for a possible cure for your condition. While we were on the Guardian’s planet, before contact with the Enterprise was broken off, Dr. M’Benga relayed to us additional data on cordrazine overdose: an experimental treatment for the condition exists.

Neither of the two patients to whom it has been promptly administered has suffered lasting effects from their exposure to cordrazine. Of the fourteen untreated cases on record of comparably massive overdose, eleven patients, or seventy-eight point six percent, were left with permanent cognitive, affective or behavioral abnormalities; of those, five were left functionally psychotic. Only three patients, or twenty-one point four percent, made a full and spontaneous recovery.

If Jim and I fail in our mission to restore the original timeline, he at least will have the comfort of Edith Keeler’s continued companionship. I am not assured the equivalent.

The Captain fears for his beloved.