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When he was a kid, Jim had never thought about what a person does after retirement. He hadn’t really thought about it until a week before he was officially retired from Starfleet. It was a strange thought, he’d spent almost his entire life in the stars, and now he was just a civilian on the ground.
He was supposed to spend the rest of his life behind a desk, signing paperwork and sending others off to do his job. But somewhere along the line, Jim Kirk had begun to lose his mind. Not in any alien or mystical way. Although it was rather mystical that in the current year they were still yet to beat Alzheimer’s. It slowly dug away at his mind, melting and removing those wonderful memories of soaring through space.
So he retired back to his family’s farm in Riverside. The Kirk family had had this farm for generations. Until recently, it hadn’t grown anything for at least a century. They’d all been too busy to care for the land, too busy trying to save the universe.
But now he was retired, now he was able to stop and stare at the corn. And wow was there a lot of corn. He hadn’t entirely planned on going into only corn farming, but he bought too much of the stuff and now he was living with the consequences of his actions. There was a routine to it, he made sure to write everything down in case he had forgotten it in the morning.
One of the benefits of embracing the farming life was that he always had a golden tan, his hair was a few shades lighter than when he was flying through space. Though he was trying to ignore the grey that had joined the blonde. It wasn’t just his mind that was being changed, he didn’t look nearly the same as Jim Kirk from the Academy.
Yes, now everything was corn. No more visiting new worlds. No more constant hum of the engines buzzing through his bones. No more space. Just corn, and even that wouldn’t be here for long as it was rapidly approaching harvest time.
Jim Kirk spent a fair amount of time standing and staring at the corn. At night he would stand in the corn and stare at the stars. Wonder where his friends were now. He was certainly going mad, could corn drive one to insanity? If it didn’t before then he was a new case to study.
He was conducting his normal mid afternoon stare at the corn when he heard the unmistakable sound of a transporter. Jim whipped his head around as two figures appeared in front of him, one looked serious while the other looked deeply sad. The taller one had black hair, although his was also speckled with grey. The shorter one seemed almost close to tears, his watery blue eyes were waiting to spill. Jim knew that the taller was certainly an alien, although he couldn’t place the species.
All he could do was smile, perhaps they’d take him back to the stars.