Chapter Text
In 1969, man touched down on the moon for the first time.
Of course, this wasn't the end of the space race. Far from it. Because just three weeks later, Earth received a mysterious signal. It varied in strength--doubling and halving perfectly at times. In other words, essentially a series of ones and zeroes. They didn't seem to mean anything--there were long streams of ones, longer of zeroes. Sometimes they alternated in hatching patterns and--wait, this was a picture! Excited scientists printed out long strips of ones and zeroes, blacking out the ones with whatever they had--pencil, charcoal, and eventually even crayons someone dug out of a closet. A printer and computer beside them began the slow work of converting the ones and zeroes to black and white squares and then printing them, but they were far too eager to wait for that.
The signals continued day after day, painting image after image--a face, humanlike, only thinner, higher. With fine cheekbones, a prominent nose, sharp ears, and straight, downturned eyebrows, they looked alien, but not distant at all. The world held its breath. Alien life was not strange or incomprehensible–in fact, it looked like a brother.
Then schematics, carefully explained–diagrams mapping out measurements, materials, constructions, all in the perfect lingua franca of atomic measurements. As the diagrams came together, Earth’s finest began to recognize them as specifications for the construction of a ship. Not any ship–an interplanetary ship, bigger, safer, and orders of magnitude faster than any that had been considered before.
And in the pages was marked a meeting point–just out past the border of the heliosphere. Further than man had ever gone. Further than man could’ve made it in the next 60 years, even, without this aid and motivation in the form of alien contact.
After three weeks of seeming resolution, the Space Race resumed. Soviet and American scientists scrambled to adapt these schematics into something plausible, to develop the technology required to be the first to greet our kindred, and, of course, to defeat the other. Budgets rivaling even those of the militaries were poured into the space programs; people prepared for the crunch of their lives. There was an air of excitement about, a delight--man was no longer alone!
—
In June of 1984, James Tiberius Kirk was sitting in the early morning sun on his front porch with a book in his lap. His Walkman played The Psychedelic Furs’ recent album Mirror Moves. It was sunny out, but the scent of rain hung in the air, and in the distance, the blue sky gave way to thick gray clouds that promised thunder. He smiled faintly. It was good to be home.
He’d just graduated from the US Air Force Academy, top of his class. He was a gifted pilot, a brilliant student of aerodynamics and astrophysics, a natural leader, and a prime physical specimen. He was the best the US military had, but more than that, he was the best the world had. In a few hours, a letter would be delivered to his door–ordering that, after this month of paid leave, rather than rejoining the Air Force as a Lieutenant and going on with his career, flying like a madman for a decade or so and then slowly climbing the ranks of command, or perhaps returning to civilian life, James Tiberius Kirk had been chosen for higher things.
He’d been recruited for the space program.
Jim had spent childhood years staring up at the stars, laying flat on the grass, stretching his arms up palms first as if he could take the galaxy into his hands. The bright lights of the city hadn’t reached Iowa yet, and he could see the Milky Way spill across the dark sky like a bright gauze. He’d spent teenage years never really alone, popular and charming as he was, but always a little out of place, wishing for something he didn’t know how to name. He’d thrown himself into his studies with an unrivaled discipline, always with an eye to the sky. In fighter jets, he thought he’d found the cure to his wanderlust–he’d seen his chance to scrape the vault of the heavens for a few glorious years, to tear through baby blue sky and look up at the deep blue infinity, even in midday.
He’d soon be preparing to pierce right through.
—
S’chn T’gai Spock stood, gazing at the starship display screen at the distant light of this system’s sun. It was awfully far away, he thought. A shame they couldn’t meet them closer, but the humans had to prove themselves. While they’d managed to escape orbit, they hadn’t managed much more than that. They weren’t even interplanetary yet, still using primitive engines, still prewarp, still horribly primitive. Still, the Vulcans had been eager to meet their human brothers–especially because of him, a half-human.
When an ordinary scouting mission to Earth had led to Sarek accidentally revealing himself to a human woman–and worse, entering into a relationship with her and bringing her back to Vulcan–they had realized the necessity of expediting the timeline of first contact.
So they’d given humans a head start with decent impulse engines; good enough to meet them out there, but not quite as risky as giving them full warp engines without ever having met them. It’d take them a little while to get there even once the ship was built. Maybe a little under an Earth month, assuming their impulse engines were capable of 0.1 of light.
Spock found himself oddly anticipatory. As a half-human, he’d been chosen as one of Vulcan’s ambassadors. He considered himself entirely Vulcan, and yet there was something lonely in him, something he had not sensed in any of his peers. When they were kind to him, and when they were cruel, there was always a distance between them. He had wondered if taking to the stars would cure that peculiar loneliness, when the careful practice of meditation had failed to.
Or perhaps nothing would change, and after this he would return to the Vulcan Science Academy and go on with his life, quietly and logically ignoring the melancholy in his chest. Going on stiff-lipped, pretending not to notice the way people looked at him, going on in a solitary pursuit of something greater, but not warmer, than connection.
Whatever became of him, he was glad of the honor of initiating first contact. Even if it was only because no one really regarded him as belonging.
He was glad.