Chapter Text
-1-
Spock stood outside the gardens of the family house in ShiKahr well after his parents had retired. Despite several hours of meditation, sleep had been elusive tonight, the eve of his entrance exam. It would determine the next five years of his studies and was the strongest predictor of an acceptance into the Vulcan Science Academy, his ultimate professional goal. He traveled the paths of the courtyard, a flashlight in his hand in deference to the moonless Vulcan sky, taking comfort in his familiar surroundings until the moment an aberration occurred.
Out of the thin Vulcan air, a man appeared in the garden.
It was the clearest way Spock could describe it. He was alone, he was certain of it, and suddenly he was not. Perhaps a soldier would seek a weapon, a wiser being would flee, but Spock was a scientist and his instinct was to investigate.
He leaned over the prone figure, holding his light above to observe. Just as Spock was starting to suspect that a corpse had been transported to the courtyard, it groaned.
“Oh, thank god. Spock.” The being—a Human, Spock was certain, judging by the smooth curve of his ears and the length of his forearms compared to the relative length of his torso—opened his mouth once in shock, then grimaced. “I’m sorry, but—”
“You are in need of medical attention,” Spock observed. The man’s forearm was cut deeply, his red blood mingling with the red sand, making it shimmer. The odd angle in which he held his arm protectively to his side indicated a complicated fracture.
“No—wait—” the stranger protested before Spock could turn around. “There isn’t time. I just need a dermal regenerator.”
Spock considered for a moment why there wasn’t time but calculated that the most efficient and ethical solution was to retrieve the necessary item, which was just inside the corridor, so he complied. In moments he proffered a medkit, which the Human opened and immediately administered bone knitting compound spray to his neck and retrieved the dermal regenerator, and started to repair the skin of his arm.
“It will not heal properly,” Spock commented. “The ulna will have to be re-broken.”
“You’re just as know-it-all at any age, aren’t you,” the stranger ground out between clenched teeth, concentrating on his work.
Spock considered the unusual turn of phrase for a moment, but before debating the syntax of “know-it-all,” he had a more pressing question.
“How do you know me?” Spock had an eidetic memory. He had met exactly eight Humans in his life; none of them resembled the being laying on the ground of the courtyard.
The stranger looked up from knitting together the wound on his arm. “Educated guess.”
“You have entered my family house uninvited,” he pointed out. “How have you come to be here?”
He finished closing the wound and flexed his fingers, wincing. “Really? This is your home? On Vulcan?”
“Yes, I have already stated this. Answer my question.”
“How did I get here?” the man repeated. “It’s complicated, not sure if I can explain in time.”
“In time for what?”
The man got a faraway look, and snapped his attention back to Spock, giving him a lopsided grin. “This.”
And in the closest fraction of a millisecond Spock could reasonably calculate, the man was gone.
-2-
Spock was nineteen the next time he saw the stranger. He was waiting in an antechamber inside the Vulcan Science Academy to take his oral examination when he felt, rather than saw, someone behind him. Spock spun around, immediately recognizing the intruder from his childhood, the tall blonde Human, this time uninjured and appeared just as surprised by his surroundings as Spock was by his sudden appearance. He rejected the instant denial that came to mind, the subtle and dangerous inner voice that suggested that Spock had imagined the bizarre encounter all those years ago and he was imagining it now. Spock was Vulcan. Vulcans did not create such fantasies.
“It’s just me,” the man said, hands raised in surrender. “Always a pleasure to see you.”
Spock blinked unnecessarily as if his eyelids could possibly erase the vision of the Human from the garden, now dressed in black pants and a garishly bright yellow shirt.
“Precisely how many times have we encountered each other?” Spock asked evenly, determined to obtain some factual information about this occurrence.
In the daylight, the unusual brilliant pigment of the Human’s irises were just as startling, and they fixed him with an enigmatic look that made Spock feel like this Human held a library of secrets behind his eyes.
“I stopped counting,” he replied. “So, where are we today?”
“You do not know where you are?”
The Human looked around the small unadorned room for a clue and shook his head. “No. Care to tell me?”
“The Vulcan Science Academy, which is protected by a standard antitransport deflector.”
The man grinned at Spock’s unasked question, answers sparkling behind his eyes. “You think I transported here?”
No, he did not. Each time the Human’s entrance and exit had lacked the telltale sound and palpable energy signature of a transporter beam, but he was without another hypothesis. The stranger started to walk to a wall, brushing his fingers against the walls delicately, as if to ascertain their permanence. “So this is Vulcan,” he mused, peering curiously out the sole narrow window, down onto a busy ShiKahr street. “It’s not as hot as I thought it was.”
“It is the wet season,” Spock replied automatically, despite his intense desire to interrogate and uncover the mystery of the other’s appearance, but he was unsettled and strangely certain that if he pressed further, the man would disappear. “Do you visit Vulcan often?”
“No, it’s my first time,” he said, looking back over his shoulder from the window, catching Spock’s disbelieving stare. “Oh, I see. Not my first time.”
Spock felt a bubble of frustration—such a shameful Human emotion— finally burst. “Why are you here?”
The Human turned around, tilted his head back in challenge. “You’re the most brilliant person I’ve ever met. You’ll figure it out,” he paused, looking around the room. “But I doubt you’ll find the answers on Vulcan.”
”Explain,” he demanded, which elicited a curious smile.
“I don’t know. Maybe you should… cultivate some other options.”
He was about to demand where he would find such answers, but a door swung open and the junior minister of the science council stepped into the antechamber.
“The Ministers are ready for your exam.”
Before following the junior minister into the hall, he glanced back, disappointed yet unsurprised to find the room empty once more.
-3-
Spock was seated at his office desk, entering line after line of code, perfecting the design of his pet project.
“Wow,” a voice whispered over his shoulder. Spock looked up, and this time swiftly recovered from his surprise and was intent on studying the man, now dressed in civilian clothes, a soft-looking t-shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. He was studying the room with rapt interest. “So today’s the day.”
Spock stood, briefly considering turning on a recording device, then rejected it. Surely he should call security first, as he was an intruder. Years of Starfleet training had instilled some value for procedural safety adherence above his curiosity.
“Why don’t you record me?” the stranger suggested. At Spock’s look, the man shot him a blinding grin. “Trust me, you’ll want to. It’s okay, I’ve seen the video.”
“Video?”
“Your hologram recorder is malfunctioning today, so you’ll have to settle for 2D imaging,” he said, and without asking sat on the edge of Spock’s desk. “What are you working on?”
Although all thoughts of alerting security had vanished, he was not entirely trustful of this Human. Spock took out his hologram recorder, used for simulations and labs in his classes only yesterday. A quick look at one of the emitters corroborated the stranger’s assertion. Part of the recording lens was cracked, rendering it useless. The stranger just smirked in response.
Spock gestured to his vacated chair for him to sit, and set up his computer to record the proceedings. It would not be as useful as a holovid, which could be later analyzed for far more forensic information, but it would have to do.
“What is your full name?”
“Just Jim, for now.” At Spock’s pointed look, he shook his head. “I want to tell you that full truth, but I can’t. Trust me, it’s for the best.” Spock considered and relented.
“What is your purpose on Earth today?”
“To tell you about who I am, I guess. I don’t really know, but I do know that almost a decade in the future, I will watch this recording. I remember this office, and those,” he gestured to the four small oil paintings behind him, mementos from his mother. “They were in the background of the video you made me watch, so I figure that I show up today, today must be the day I tell you everything.”
Except for his name. Spock ignored the errant thought and continued. “You are alluding to time travel.”
“Yes, I am. But before you start screaming about temporal incursions and looking for my thirty-first century time agent badge, I’m not one of them. I’m from the twenty-third century, same as you.”
“How is this possible?”
“I can’t explain why it happens. You think that I might be traveling into a sentient space-dwelling phenomenon.”
“I do not.”
“Well, you can take it up with yourself later,” the man muttered. “I think that it’s me. I’m the one that’s causing it.”
“Explain.”
He smiled a little, his eyes twinkling. “Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes when I need something, I wish really hard, and then I find myself here.”
“Where?”
Jim’s lips quirked again in a secret smile. “Near you.”
“How many times has this temporal anomaly occurred?”
Jim considered this question. “You know, I’ve lost count.”
“So you have said.” Spock wondered if this Jim would remember their brief encounter at the Vulcan Science Academy.
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” His face turned from thoughtful to self-satisfied. “Glad to see you took my advice and applied to Starfleet. You should listen to me more often in the future.”
Spock had tried and failed to assure himself that his decision to apply was not nearly as influenced by the startling anomaly of a Human that winked in and out of existence, but rather Jim’s seemingly offhand comment had reminded him of an interest he had long held, thus merely a catalyst and not the reason. He was less sure now than he was then. “You are certain we will see each other in the future.”
“Definitely. Our timelines are about to sync up, in a sense, and I won’t start time traveling until after we meet in our shared timeline.” Jim leaned forward, his face becoming animated. “I’ve spent years studying quantum and temporal mechanics. There are some widely held conjectures that this situation is violating. The Wells-Tuxx’ol Principle? I think I destroyed it. I’ve logged every visit, every detail I could remember, and we’re still not any closer to figuring out the rules to my temporal jumps. As best as I can tell, the Novikov self-consistency principle still applies, but we can assume there is a multiverse while we are simultaneously maintaining this single fixed timeline.”
“Fascinating.”
“I know. It freaked me out for years that I was making time jumps. I had no idea you remembered my visits, and I was convinced I was hallucinating them for a while, just like you aren’t certain you haven’t been hallucinating me.” Spock did not deny it, and Jim continued. “You told me that’s why you are recording this, as proof that I did come back. You won’t show it to me for another seven years.”
“When will we meet?”
“Our first meeting?” Jim’s eyes widened, memories playing across them. “Less than a year, I think. Not a very good story. Suffice it to say, it was not our finest moment. If you could try to keep an open mind about me, it will be worth your while.”
Spock could make no promises. “Why am I the constant?”
The man leaned forward slightly, and Spock was momentarily surprised that he had been leaning so far forward in his chair, fascinated by the possibilities of Jim’s supposed time travel, to not notice they were now nose to nose. “That is one you’ll have to figure out on your own time,” he murmured. The hot air of his breath made the hair on Spock’s neck stand up. Before he pulled back, Jim placed a chaste kiss on the corner of his lips.
Spock’s mouth opened in surprise, and Jim gave him another unrepentant grin.
“Sorry. You’ll thank me for it later.”
Before Spock could ask why he would be grateful for such an assault, Jim blinked out of existence.