But today exists for me, Kirk told himself. And so does yesterday. Once more, he would shift from the general to the specific. “Guardian, I wish to see my yesterday.”

“Behold,” it said. “A gateway to your own past, if you wish.”

A white mist spilled down from the top of the wide, roughly circular opening through the center of the Guardian’s ring. Then images began to form: Kirk’s mother giving birth, his brother Sam holding him as an infant, Kirk sleeping in a crib. This had been one of the ways in which the historians had learned to refine their requests of the Guardian. If it showed a thousand images of a ten-thousand-year epoch, it would present just ten scenes per century, making it difficult to view or navigate to particular points in time with much precision. Observing the course of a single life, though, because of its relative brevity, allowed for greater granularity: a thousand images displayed of Kirk’s sixty-year life would produce one scene for every three weeks he’d lived. The numbers worked out differently than that, and the Guardian didn’t always show moments spaced evenly apart, but the principle remained that you could see far more detail of a single life through the vortex than you could of a longer period.

Kirk continued to watch as his existence unfolded before him. He smiled when he saw himself tottering across the family living room and into Sam’s waiting arms, perhaps taking his first steps, but he also felt a deep melancholy as well; Sam had been gone now for almost half of Kirk’s life. Similar emotions played through his mind as his mother and father appeared, as his grandfather did, his uncle, all of them lost for so long at this point.

He closed his eyes when the colony on Tarsus IV materialized. At the age of thirteen, Kirk had been living there when the food supply had been all but wiped out by an exotic fungus. Governor Kodos had seized full power and declared martial law, then executed four thousand colonists in a horribly misguided and ultimately unnecessary attempt to save the other four thousand.

Kirk watched with interest, though, as he sped through Starfleet Academy. He saw himself as a young officer aboard the Republic, and then later, aboard the Farragut. Aboard the Enterprise, he saw Spock and Bones and Scotty.

And then the Guardian of Forever appeared. And then New York City in 1930. And then Edith.

Kirk turned away. He could not bear to see her. It occurred to him briefly that he could simply step through the time vortex and rejoin his beloved, save her from the traffic accident that had taken her from him—

But he had already made the decision once to sacrifice his own desires to preserve history. How could he in good conscience abandon that now? He had come here with a greater purpose than his own happiness, and he would see that effort through.

When Kirk peered back at the Guardian, he saw himself in gangster clothing on Sigma Iotia II. He fought the Kelvans as they commandeered the Enterprise, ferried the Dohlman of Elas to her arranged marriage on Troyius. He spoke with High Priestess Natira on Yonada, argued with the insane Captain Garth on Elba II, observed a glommer devouring a tribble.

As the period of the Klingon attack on the Einstein station approached, Kirk said, “Guardian, do you perceive yourself with the times that these images present?”

“I see all,” it said, a pronouncement startling for its lack of ambiguity.

Kirk thought for a moment how best to phrase what he would say next. “Then you will see the time when you will cease to exist,” he said. “I propose that you can avoid such an end by moving yourself through time.”

“All that will be, has already been,” the Guardian said inscrutably. “All that has been, will be.”

“Does that mean that you have already escaped the destruction caused by the starship?” Kirk asked. He did not anticipate a direct answer, but he wanted as much as possible to try to divine the Guardian’s intent, as well as any movement it might have made through time. When it did not reply to his question, he said, “In my lifetime, a temporal phenomenon has devastated a section of the galaxy between the years twenty-two ninety-three and twenty-three seventy-one, with a corresponding loss of life. I wish to prevent that from occurring.”

Within the ring of the Guardian, Kirk saw himself lying in a coma in the Enterprise’s sickbay, and then unconscious atop a diagnostic pallet in Starbase 10’s infirmary. It struck him that those times in his life had come after the Gr’oth had rammed into the Guardian of Forever. Or had it? Kirk thought. The recordings of the incident had shown the Klingon vessel as it had streaked through the atmosphere, and they had shown its intended target. But when the Gr’oth had gotten close to the planet’s surface, its mass had obscured the view of the Guardian. Could it be that the time vortex had during those last moments taken itself away, traveling through time to a place and time of safety? If the Guardian had been destroyed, Kirk asked himself, could it possibly be showing me events in my life that had taken place after that? Though he could not be sure, he didn’t think so.

As his life continued to unfurl within the Guardian, he said, “I will unintentionally cause the shock wave that will destroy a portion of the galaxy, and I need your help to keep that from happening.” When the Guardian did not respond, Kirk explained precisely how and why the converging temporal loop had developed, then detailed his plan to stop it from occurring.

“Do you understand?” he asked when he had finished.

No reply.

“Will you help me?” he tried.

Nothing.

“Will you save yourself from the starship in the way that I have requested?”

“I am my own beginning, my own ending,” repeated the Guardian. “Through me is eternity kept.”

Kirk could not determine whether that answered his question, but he also realized that he would likely receive no reply more explicit than that, no matter what he asked. Strictly speaking, other than the Guardian allowing him to travel back into his own life right now, its participation would not be crucial to Kirk’s efforts to avert the temporal loop. Being able to move through time via the vortex a second time would make it far easier to carry out his plan, but if necessary, he could succeed without that capability.

In the mists of the Guardian, moments from the Enterprise’s seven-and-a-half-year expedition to and from the Aquarius Formation flickered past. After that, he saw himself riding a horse on his uncle’s farm in Idaho, and he saw Antonia. He saw Khan Noonien Singh and Carol Marcus. He saw his son, David.

While the images continued to fade into and out of view, Kirk made additional attempts to converse with the Guardian. He tried to learn if it would indeed protect itself from Korax’s suicidal plunge to the planet, and if it would be available to Kirk in his attempt to thwart the emergence of the shock wave. The Guardian spoke little and revealed less.

In the end, recognizing that he would learn no more than he already had, Kirk decided to proceed. Either the Guardian would survive beyond 2270 or it would not, either it would assist him when the time came or it would not. No matter, Kirk would do whatever he could to prevent the converging temporal loop.

He waited quietly as the pictures within the vortex moved on, showing the days aboard his last command, the Enterprise-A. Eventually, he saw himself in retirement once more, this time not sequestering himself away in the hills of Idaho, but traveling the globe and the galaxy: rappelling the Crystalline Trench, climbing Mount Revek, diving the Alandros Caves, rafting the lava flows of the Valtarik volcano, and more. As he reflected on the feats of derring-do that he’d undertaken during his second retirement, he realized how much he had been motivated to engage in such dangerous activities by the general sadness that had settled over his life.