TICKET

It's a long road to becoming James Tiberius Kirk. This is the beginning of that road.

Jimmy finishes high school over the summer. He's done trying to fit in with the other, bigger kids. He never does anything right. He's always a little too smart, and a little too quiet, and a little too vicious. And he's way too young.

So he takes the classes he needs for a diploma online. He hacks into the servers that process his exam grades just because he's not patient enough to wait for the results to come.

But soon enough, the piece of paper with his name on it—James Tiberius Kirk—comes in the mail. He seals the diploma in an airtight plastic tube and secrets it away in the woods with the other few items he prizes—a photo of his father, one of the medals his mother had tried to throw away, a toy starship Sam had given him when he was little. The diploma is the first tangible sign that he has accomplished something, that he is worth something, that he has received in his life.

He is eight years old.

He decides to sign himself up for online college courses a week after the diploma arrives. He has to make a believable computer replica of his mother and Frank to consent to the courses, though, and that takes him a month, but at the end, he has facsimiles of his guardians that will pass muster. He plays master puppeteer and arranges a conference between the dean and his virtual parents. The dean is delighted with the child genius and his very supportive guardians, and lets them sign him up for anything they think he can handle. He arranges things so the boy doesn't have to pay a cent of tuition-the prodigy gets a full scholarship. They swear the dean to secrecy—the last thing Jimmy wants is attention.

He signs up for twenty five credits in his first semester. The classes range wildly across disciplines, spanning from history to theoretical physics to mechanics to classical literature to languages. He does magnificently in all of them.

Frank still thinks he is in high school. He leaves every morning at the same time he always used to and comes home at the same time every night. He spends his days mostly outside with a datapadd or in a public building somewhere. Sometimes he hacks his way into the shipyard. The people in charge there are old friends of his father's, so he doesn't really get into trouble when they catch him. It becomes something of a game between the eight year old and the security teams—how far into the complex can he get before they catch him?

He learns to play, there among the Starfleet personnel. It's a savant's game of tag, and he delights in it. It awakens a previously buried mischievous streak in him. The officers there slowly learn to love the quiet, bright child too, and they begin to let him stay a bit after they've caught him. Frank's well known as the town drunk, but there's nothing they can do to help Jimmy, so they let him hang around the shipyard.

They show him how the theoretical knowledge he'd learning in his classes actually applies in reality, and find themselves continually shocked at how quickly he picks things up. Within a year, they're letting the nine year old work alongside them. He's supervised, of course, but he loves watching the starship come together under his hands.

He gets his bachelor's degree in computer science (with high honors) three days after his tenth birthday. He celebrates with Teylah, the chief engineer at the shipyards, who brings him a cupcake with a lit candle planted in the frosting. It's the first time he's had someone give him cake since he lived with Grammy Cleo, and everyone who can spare a moment from the work on the ships sings a crazy mixmash of the birthday song and congratulations.

Teylah says, "Happy Congratulamabirthday!" and he blows out the candle.

It's the happiest he can remember being.

He beats Frank in a fight. He is almost eleven, and it was mostly luck.

Frank had shouted him for a few minutes, like he always did, and then tried to hit him. Jimmy had blocked. Jimmy had learned enough over the years of living with Frank that he could usually hold his stepfather off for a minute or two, but Frank always got him in the end. But this time, just as Frank was winding up for the knockout blow, he stepped on one of his own discarded beer bottles, and his foot slipped out from under him. Jimmy snaps out a kick without thinking, and for once, it actually connects. In fact, it connects so hard it breaks Frank's jaw and knocks him out cold.

Jimmy stares down at Frank for one long minute. He looks so weak, lying there on the floor, but Jimmy knows that as soon as Frank wakes up, he'll kill him.

So he runs upstairs and gathers everything he can think of, anything he might need. He steals all the credits out of Frank's wallet, but leaves anything that can be traced. And then he goes and gathers everything from his secret place in the woods, where he boots up his datapadd and starts the program he's been working on for years. He's finally brave enough to actually do it, because there's no turning back now.

He hacks into the government network, and files documents that legally emancipate him.

For the first time, his life is really his own.

He hikes to the terminal at the airfield near the shipyards, because that's one of his favorite places to go and people-watch when he needs to think.

He sits down on the bench and looks up, and there it is, in bold font on a poster:

Colonists wanted for

FARMING COLONY

Are You Brave, Hardworking, Young, and Looking for Adventure?

We have a place for you!

Buy a ticket today!

It seems to Jimmy that another planet would be a great place to be. It's time to leave the past behind.

He marches to the ticket counter and pulls out his stolen pile of credits, hefting the backpack with everything he owns a little more securely.

"One ticket to Tarsus IV," Jimmy says. And the future has never looked so bright.