Alternate history

15
Nov
2016

Recurrent Themes – Childcare Workers

Recurrent Themes – Childcare Workers

Childcare workers matter in a lot of my fan fiction.

Background

While regular ships generally don’t have children on them, generational ships most certainly do.

Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | DNA | Childcare Workers

This is for all of those times when someone had to look after a kid. Hence there are some similar threads that run through my fan fiction.

I am not including the Daranaeans here, mainly because their acts of childcare are generally a part of parenthood and not as unrelated professionals.

Appearances

Maria Elena Torres Archer

In Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, Maria Elena, daughter of Lili and José, steps in when Victoria is killed.

Beth Cutler (Mirror Universe only)

When Reversal begins, Beth has the unenviable position of babysitter to the Empress Hoshi Sato‘s lone royal brat, Jun.  Without being able to escape, Rick Daniels eventually reveals Beth would have been Jun’s first kill.

Victoria Dietrich

Part teacher and part babysitter, Vicki cares for the children during Entanglements and The Three of Us. However, she eventually gives some of the babysitter duties over to others.

Aidan MacKenzie (Mirror Universe only)

After the conclusion of Reversal, Aidan is tasked with siring the Empress’s second son, Kira. The Empress also forces him to become the royal babysitter. Embarrassed, catcalled, and humiliated, Aidan lays low for the most part. With Chip, he gets a small degree of revenge in Brown. But in Gilded Cage, the Empress essentially gets him back by placing him under house arrest. In the alternate timelines in Temper, and in the correct timeline in He Stays a Stranger, it’s revealed Aidan stayed on as the sitter although, as the children grew up, he became one of their only de facto parents, along with Susan. Susan is never really a sitter and instead is a skilled teacher. This is even in the Mirror Universe and also during alternate timelines.

Ethan Shapiro (alternate timeline only)

During Entanglements, after Ethan‘s suicide attempt, he can no longer adequately perform tactical duties. As he recovers, he becomes capable of working with the Quartermaster, Sekar Khan, and also performing some minor babysitter duties. This only happens during The Three of Us and not during Everybody Knows this is Nowhere.

José Torres (alternate timeline only)

As Ethan recovers, José becomes his roommate. José takes on babysitting duties as a means of trying to attract female attention. As with Ethan Shapiro’s connection to childcare, this only happens during The Three of Us. It does not happen during Everybody Knows this is Nowhere.

Upshot

Childcare is of course still a necessity in the future. I’m proud that it’s a profession for any gender.

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Posted by jespah in Emergence series, Fan fiction, Hall of Mirrors, In Between Days series, Interphases series, Themes, Times of the HG Wells series, 0 comments
15
Jan
2016

Recurrent Themes – Soldiers

Recurrent Themes –Soldiers

Background

For Reversal in particular to work, there had a to be a number of people ready and able to go to war.

Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | DNA | SoldiersIn particular, as the Mirror Universe is so different from the prime universe, a lot of people would be soldiers there who wouldn’t be so here. Or they would be more violent and less disciplined than in our universe. As it is explained to Lili, the percentage of military personnel is deliberately kept very high over there.

There are more MACOs in particular than the group listed here, but these people are seen the most.

Appearances of Soldiers

Aliwev

This Calafan recruit drills directly under Doug and, in the Mirror, in one of the alternate timelines, assassinates the Empress Hoshi Sato during Temper.

Douglas Jay Hayes Beckett

Doug, a trained killer, spends much of Reversal trying to leave the practice of making war. When he can’t find anything else to do with himself in Together, he eventually becomes the captain of a defense unit on Lafa II, and instructs recruits.

Daniel Chang

Chang, a canon character, defends the Enterprise but, in the E2 timeline, commits crimes.

Tristan Curtis

Curtis is another E2 timeline criminal. In the Temper alternate timelines, he’s named Craig.

Brian Delacroix

In the prime universe, Delacroix is a security guard who becomes a chef. In the Mirror, he nearly kills Doug.

Tommy Digiorno-Madden

Unlike the other five kids, Tommy joins Starfleet and goes into Tactical.

Thomas Grant

In the deep future, Tom is assigned to the Breen homeworld before he joins the Temporal Integrity Commission.

Deborah Hadden

Deb works in Security in both universes. In the Mirror, she kills Brian before he has a chance to off Doug. But her victory is short-lived, and she perishes when he leaves that universe.

Jay Hayes

The consummate soldier, Major J. Hayes is so committed to defending the ship that he has nearly no time for people.

Gary Hodgkins

Yet another E2 criminal, Hodgkins often pairs with Curtis, particularly in the Mirror.

Chandler Masterson

Chip is wasted in Security and moves over to Communications. This isn’t possible in the Mirror, so he stays in  Tactical. In the prime timeline, he escapes the Empress, but in one of the alternates, he rises to become captain of the Defiant.

Travis Mayweather

Travis is a soldier in the Mirror Universe only. He’s a poor soldier, though, and an even worse leader. In the alternate timelines, and in the prime timeline, he is fragged by his own troops.

Andrew Miller

Like Travis, Andy is only a soldier in the Mirror. When the Empress taps him for somewhat earthy duties, he manages to get himself reassigned to Science.

Malcolm Reed

The other consummate canon career soldier, Malcolm is more ambitious and tries for a command as soon as he can get one.

José Torres

José is another person who is only a soldier in the Mirror. He is not cut out for command at all and, in an alternate timeline, destroys his ship, the Luna, and everyone on board is killed.

Upshot

Star Trek fanfiction will always have a place for men and women (and other genders) in uniform.

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Posted by jespah in Emergence series, Eriecho series, Fan fiction, Hall of Mirrors, In Between Days series, Interphases series, Mixing It Up Collection, Themes, Times of the HG Wells series, 0 comments
19
May
2015

Review – The Black Widow

Review – The Black Widow

A black widow spider represents Pon Farr gone wrong, wrong, wrong.

Background

For a Star Trek fan fiction challenge about “what if”, I decided to take a canon episode into a far different extreme direction.

Plot

In the canon episode, Bounty, T’Pol prematurely goes into Pon Farr because of a medical issue (she and Phlox are affected by a microbe).

Barking Up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | The Black Widow

The Black Widow, a horror story from an alternate timeline.

As a part of the episode, she comes onto Phlox, who rebuffs her, and then tries for Malcolm, who is in a pressure suit, and he rejects her as well, eventually shooting her in the back with a phase pistol and stunning her. Archer comes back (he escapes Tellarite captivity) and all is more or less well.

I decided there would be two major differences. Phlox would succumb to her charms, and Malcolm would miss.

As a result, this changes the dynamic dramatically.

The New Plot

In the new plot, once both of these events occur, T’Pol goes after the first man who can (she hopes) satisfy her urges. And that turns out to be Travis.

When the story opens, Jonathan has just returned. Malcolm greets him at the transporter and tells him that there will be a staff meeting immediately. He informs him of Travis‘s death, and also Brian Delacroix‘s, and that Deb Haddon has been gravely injured.  Archer, a bit disoriented and very confused, goes along with this. He sees Malcolm, Hoshi, and Tripp at the meeting. Phlox speaks from Sick Bay.

Archer learns that, after seducing Phlox, T’Pol escaped from decon (the escape is canon, but the seduction failed in canon). Malcolm was there with his team – Brian and Deb. T’Pol came onto Malcolm who rejects her and then, in a rage, she snapped Brian’s neck and shattered Deb’s helmet. A fragment lodges in Deb’s eye, and she is permanently blinded.

And then there’s the matter of Travis. After escaping from that scene, and Malcolm shooting after her but missing, T’Pol confronts Travis in his quarters. She essentially sexually assaults him, and her appetite kills him.

The story continues with Archer confronting her in the Brig, but she is barely competent, and relations with Travis have not satisfied Pon Farr. Hence she will die in a few days if they don’t get her to Vulcan on time.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated T.

Upshot

I really liked the way this one worked out, as I moved from a bewildered Archer to Hoshi with a measure of PTSD, to Malcolm’s disgust and emotional detachment, to T’Pol’s frenzied mania, to Phlox’s shamed confession, to Deb’s acceptance of her fate, to finally communicating with Admiral Forrest and informing him of this big, bad Vulcan secret. I don’t write horror too often, but I think this story turned out well.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Review, 0 comments
14
Oct
2014

Portrait of a Character – Polloria

Portrait of a Character – Polloria

Polloria is a classic villainess.

Origins

For a villainess character in Reversal, I wanted someone who would be utterly ruthless, but who would also bide her time and be careful about how she’d do the deed. Enter Polloria.

Portrayal

TV Guide #1430 (flap open)

TV Guide #1430 (flap open) (Photo credit: trainman74)

Polloria is played by veteran soap actress Genie Francis. I like how this attractive actress has some versatility.

She’s also got a great Star Trek pedigree – she’s married to TNG actor Jonathan Frakes. I would have loved to have seen her somewhere on Star Trek, and she was evidently under consideration for a guest spot during the second season of TNG. But for whatever reason, that didn’t happen.

Personality

Ambitious and mean, Polloria is cutthroat. She will do anything to get what she wants, and that means authorizing Dr. Baden to begin injecting Yipran with potassium, which will cut off Yipran’s dreams. Once she is found out, she still doesn’t give up, and tries to become the Mirror Yimar’s regent, and even attempts to turn Doug through a shared dream.

Relationships

Chawev

In both universes, they carry on an affair, but it’s really just to get Polloria into position so that she can become the next Calafan High Priestess. She doesn’t care for Chawev at all, only for her naked ambitions.

I haven’t decided, yet, whether she got Baden to help her with any sort of sex or relationship, or whether it was just bribery. Baden’s dream woman is Miva, but there’s nothing yet on what his relationship with Polloria was, if anything, prior to Reversal.

Mirror Universe

Portrait of a Character – Polloria

Mirror Polloria

Unlike a lot of other characters, Polloria in the Mirror Universe isn’t much different from her Prime Universe counterpart. They’re both determined, driven, and utterly evil.

In both universes, Polloria receives a sentence of potassium injections, which leave her dreamless and comatose. But in the alternate timeline brought about in Temper, the Mirror Polloria is temporarily freed, as Empress Hoshi has essentially opened up the prisons.

Quote

“Everyone, remember, any words you say to her, she’ll pick up on. So choose carefully and don’t say much. In fact, just let your father and I do all the talking, all right?”

“This situation cannot be sustained. But dispatching this one in public is not gonna happen; there’s no time. It’ll have to be done today. Then you’ll bring Yimar in front of the people and we’ll, we’ll take her under our wing. Nurture and guide her and tell her what to do.”

Upshot

I liked creating this villain character, and even redeeming her a bit in Temper. Will she return? Possibly for a prequel story. I’m not sure.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Hall of Mirrors, In Between Days series, Portrait, 0 comments
21
Jun
2013

Recurrent Themes – Religious/Spiritual Leaders

Recurrent Themes – Religious/Spiritual Leaders

Spiritual leaders exist in my fiction.

Background

Religion is Star Trek canon, Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | DNA | Spiritual Leaders and of course it is also a very real and very personal human experience.

While much of Star Trek is rather atheist-friendly, I don’t believe that faith will ever, truly, completely leave us. In particular, the Enterprise era should have characters who still practice religion. Hence spiritual leaders would be a nature offshoot of that.

In Between Days Spiritual Leaders

Leah Benson

First showing up in The Light, Rabbi Benson is the official Starfleet Rabbi. She assists Ethan Shapiro in putting together a short service to commemorate the life of his great-aunt, Rachel Orenstein.

In Bread, she is a part of an official Starfleet set of meetings and banquets where all of the Starfleet chaplains have been brought together as a part of welcoming three new worlds to the nascent Federation – the Caitian home world, Denobula and the Xyrillian home world. Leah is cordial with the Imam, a Buddhist monk and others. Religion is very much alive, and she is a big part of it. While reminiscing with Jonathan Archer, she reports that Ethan would often ask her advice about Karin Bernstein, and she is delighted that they wed.

Yimar

In the alternate timeline in Temper, she is the spiritual leader of her people on both sides of the pond. When the timeline is restored, she is only the High Priestess on the Mirror side.

The role of High Priestess is not too well-defined, but Yimar has the power to summon her fellow Calafans, no matter where they are, and can even telepathically communicate with those in the Mirror Universe, a useful talent for a spiritual leader who, in an alternate timeline, leads her government in exile, too.

Yipran

In Reversal, she seems to be dying. But Yipran, the High Priestess of the Calafan people, is not going down without a fight. In Fortune, she reveals that she understands far more of the universe and its origins (and its eventual fate) than pretty much anyone.

Times of the HG Wells

Kaiwev

In Where the Wind Comes Sweepin’ Down the Plain, a Calafan temporal agent, Chellewev, dies in the line of duty. It’s up to Kaiwev, the leader of the Calafan unit, to lead prayers at the dedication of Chellewev’s spot on the Temporal Integrity Commission‘s monument to the fallen. Kaiwev is really just pressed into service. I never meant for him to be a priest.

Milton Walker and Members of the Eligian Order

About half of this order consists of upstanding men who commit charitable deeds and are true believers. The other half is a front for the Perfectionists, including Walker himself. The legitimate monks are unaware of what is going on under their noses.

Interphases

Jonathan Archer

Because there are no religious or spiritual leaders on board, Captain Archer must perform those tasks. This includes everything from officiating at weddings

Recurrent Themes – Religious/Spiritual Leaders

Not just any old wedding

to eventually giving funerary orations.

It’s not much of a stretch to assume that he would also preside over christenings and Bar and Bat Mitzvot.

He presides over Malcolm‘s and Jay‘s funerals in The Three of Us and both of theirs, Tripp‘s and Lili‘s in Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. About the only religious occasion he does not conduct is Nanette Myers’s conversion to Islam. Ramih Azar performs this, in the presence of Azar Hamidi and Maryam Haroun Hamidi as witnesses.

It is unclear who fills in when Jonathan finally dies, but it is not a stretch to assume that the successor captain would do so. In The Three of Us, that’s Charles Tucker IV; in Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, that’s canon character Lorian Cyrus Tucker.

Upshot

Faith abides and, in Bread, for the Mirror Universe and the prime, it’s one of the few things that survives. I believe there is a place for religion in Star Trek, even in the later series, and I am not afraid to show it. Faith of the heart, to me, means all hearts and, by definition, all faiths as well.

Posted by jespah in Hall of Mirrors, In Between Days series, Interphases series, Themes, Times of the HG Wells series, 1 comment
12
Feb
2013

Spotlight on an Original Technology – Pulse Shot

Spotlight on an Original Technology – Pulse Shot

Pulse shot?

Theory

In order to make some of my Star Trek fanfiction work, I needed a means of stepping from our universe to the Mirror, and vice versa. So in Reversal, this is accomplished via shared dreaming, and a crossover is performed by the Calafans by using power from the NX-01, the ISS Defiant, the amplifier dishes on Point Abic, Calafan group meditation and the sodium vapor flares emanating between the two smallest stars in the Lafa System, Fep and Ub. All of this, acting together, brings Doug from there to here, over the course of several hours. The Mirror High Priestess, Yimar (a teenaged girl) decides to leave the doors open in perpetuity. This has the effect of allowing Calafans to pass back and forth between both universes although other species still cannot.

However, the sodium vapor flares in particular are somewhat uncommon occurrences. Plus I wanted a technological solution.

Having read about dark matter, the truth is that it’s exotic and there’s an awful lot of it. It is ripe for fan fiction treatment, as it’s abundant and mysterious. Hence I decided that I would use it for the purposes of heading from here to the other side of the pond, or back again.

Practice

In Temper, the Empress Hoshi Sato has her Science Ensign Lucy Stone, with the help of Vulcan slaves T’Pau and Kefris, devise a means of moving from one universe to the other. In canon, she (Hoshi) is well aware that the Defiant is from another universe. It is an advanced design, with superior firepower, defenses and accommodations. It makes sense that she would be looking for a spare or two or two hundred. Hoshi is a person who wants to be known as a conqueror. So she may have realized it could very well be easier to subjugate our universe, instead of going out to hidden corners of the Mirror.

Three Shots

Therefore, in Temper, in 2161 the Defiant‘s main phaser is calibrated to twenty-one centimeters. And it initially fires a pulse shot into seemingly empty space. Because this works, Richard Daniels is summoned to the Temporal Integrity Commission, as he and Eleanor notice the time change immediately (an ornate sword she was lecturing about, Ironblaze, vanishes). This causes the first alternate timeline, and time becomes incoherent.

Spotlight on an Original Technology – Pulse Shot

The Defiant

Due to temporal incoherence, a few years later, in 2166, another pulse shot opens a second passageway. But this time they fire it near the amplifier dishes. This shot opens things up more widely and it’s not just Calafans who can pass back and forth. Now humans and all other species can as well. At this stage, four people pass from our universe to the Mirror. This act changes history enough, and that triggers Daniels sensing the change but not the specifics.

Then there’s a third instance in 2178. But this is not new. Rather, it’s vestiges of incoherent time. The first repairs to the timeline need to happen in this time period. Richard knows this instance well as it coincides with a major, independently verified historical event in that alternate timeline. After fixing 2178, there is a fix for 2166. And once that is all done, Richard himself repairs 2161.

Aftereffects

Beyond the temporal incoherence, the other effect happens later. Some of the pulse shot is, simply, “lost”. But energy can be neither created nor can it be destroyed. This is according to the Law of Conservation of Energy (Thermodynamics). So where does it go?

The correct question isn’t where it goes. It’s when it goes. And when does it land? 2366, and it hits Wesley and Geordi’s shuttle, thereby causing the toss back in time in Crackerjack.

I have yet to write further aftereffects. I might use this plot device again.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Spotlight, 2 comments