Work Text:
Last Chapter
2005
Jacob Russell cannot stop thinking about his grandfather’s characters.
Benny had spent decades and decades with Benjamin Sisko. After that one night of inspiration in 1953, Benny had never said goodbye to Sisko, but had held him in his mind as a silent companion for the rest of his life. As years stretched into decades, he continued to refine and focus and expand out who Sisko was. And over time, he did the same with all the other characters he had created in those first stories.
After his grandfather passed away, Jacob had found some of his journals. In them, he had found notes and ideas and revisions and deletions. Jacob had occasionally heard stories about that period in 1953, had heard that his grandfather felt that Ben Sisko came to him, as a fully-formed person in that given moment, but with a blank past and an unwritten future.
To a young Jacob, it had sounded like divine inspiration, which ironically was discouraging to him as a young aspiring writer, sadly bereft of such inspiration.
But his grandfather’s journals had shown that, even if Sisko arrived effortlessly, Benny put a lifetime of effort into building him into something more than just a moment’s inspiration. Benny Russell had worked . And in so doing, he had made Sisko real not only for him, but for the world.
So it was that Jacob wasn’t sure what to do with his current situation. He simply could not stop thinking about his grandfather’s characters.
What’s more, he kept having ideas about new characters and new stories, carried on from his grandfather’s original vision. And the ideas were coming fast and furious, and he felt compelled to scribble them down so as not to lose them.
This continued for weeks (years), as these characters’ lives unfolded in all directions in his imagination. He kept running out of notecards, buying more, and running out. Soon his apartment was filled with stacks and stacks of notes, jotted down furiously.
Twelve years unfolded within Jacob’s mind, with dozens of characters and countless themes. The stories were wide and varied, sometimes contradictory and sometimes incomplete.
But right around the twelve-year mark – twelve years after the conclusion of his grandfather’s television series – the stories began to slow down, which Jacob welcomed as a breath of fresh air.
Jacob looks around at the stacks and stacks of notes. What to do with all of this now?
He sits down at the keyboard and starts to write.
My dear Doctor:
Forgive my delay in responding to your kind communications. I wanted to give this modest chronicle I’ve enclosed a modicum of organization and update it before I sent it on to you. Thank you for your concern. I have thought of you often since our last meeting, and I am pleased to hear that your life on Deep Space 9 remains challenging and productive. Considering all the changes that have taken place I would have expected nothing less. And I’m certainly not surprised your research proposals have been accepted. You’re a brilliant young scientist – even if you are genetically enhanced. As for my life here…
First Chapter
2006
“ How many of these have you written?” Ize asked him.
“Uhh,” Jacob said sheepishly, “maybe a couple dozen?”
Isaac “Ize” Aronberg flipped through the manuscript of A Stitch in Time . “Jacob, this is over 400 pages long! Are they all like this?”
“Ahh, no” Jacob replied, “Garak’s a bit long-winded,” he grinned. “Most of them are about half that length.”
“Still…”, Ize said as he slowly turned his gaze across Jacob’s apartment. “It’s a lot of books.”
“Yeah…”, Jacob said. “I don’t know man. Last year, all these ideas came to me, and just kept coming and coming. Since then I’ve been figuring out how to turn them into stories that I can share with people.”
“I guess this is why you’ve been skipping out on me at the pool table, eh?” Ize said, gently teasing.
“Yeah Ize, I’m sorry about that,” Jacob said sincerely. “It’s just… it’s been nice, in a way, getting to spend this much time with my grandfather’s characters. It kinda makes me feel close to him.”
“I can understand that, for sure,” Ize said as he picked up another manuscript.
“But Jacob… and I don’t know how to say this… do you really think anyone will read them? I mean, your grandfather’s show was popular, but do you really think people will be willing to read thousands of pages’ worth of additional stories?” Ize asked, with what can only be described as loving concern.
Jacob stood up from his desk and went over to join Ize looking at the manuscript he picked up. Ize handed it to him, and Jacob just looked at it for several moments (several years).
“These people seem real to me, Ize. And I think they deserve to have their stories heard.”
And he opened the book, and the universe began again.