"Auch wer das nicht begreift, was ihn, beruft, der sei bereit." – Rilke (even he who does not understand what summons him should be ready.)

o0o0o

Captain James Tiberius Kirk sat in full uniform in front of a videorecorder. He was alone in his office and he felt damned stupid, talking to the machine and only the machine. He was uncomfortable and disquieted. And so Kirk began to speak:

"Hello." He licked his lips and took a deep breath. "My name is James Tiberius Kirk. I was born in 2233, in space, to George and Winona Kirk of Earth. My father died moments after I was born in an attempt to defeat a no-win scenario. Over my lifetime, my assessment of his attempt has changed. When I was small, I only knew my dad was dead and I had never known him, and my mom thought I looked just like him. When I was a teenager, for reasons that will become abundantly clear, I believed George Kirk was an idiot for dying the way he did and that he had lost. But as I have gotten older – and at the time of this recording I am twenty-eight years old – I have come to the realization that he beat the no-win scenario. He got what he wanted from his twelve minutes as the captain of the Kelvin: the continued survival of the people he cared about."

Kirk paused to take a drink of water.

"Now, I do not know what my reputation will be, whenever someone decides to open this file and watch it. At the time of this recording, I am the captain of the Enterprise on the first Five Year Mission undertaken by Starfleet. Actually, I am in my office doing this rather than assisting, badly, with star mapping. I have the reputation of being a skirt-chasing hotheaded bastard, and anyone who said that of me would be more or less correct. I also was instrumental in the planet Earth's continued existence after the events of 2258 and in the avoidance of war with the Klingons in the aftermath of the events of 2259. All this might be ancient history for you, of course."

Kirk was feeling very stupid. What was the point of this, besides to get Bones off his back?

"I state my highly successful but less than impeccable record thus far, because anything you know of me is about to be cast in new light." Kirk took a deep breath. "I survived Tarsus IV in 2246, and aside from being one of the nine survivors who could identify Kodos the Executioner, I was also the one who killed him."

He had to pause, in order to breathe and not hyperventilate.

"I was sent to Tarsus IV to live with relatives for the year. I went from hell, living with my stepfather, to hell: starvation, privation, and murder. I survived, and I am ashamed that I survived when worthier people than I did not. I stole food to live. I ate rats, ferns, and possibly human flesh also. I did what was necessary to stay alive, and to keep the children with me alive. Of the seven of us, the last to hide successfully in the woods, only I and one other survived to liberation.

"I ran into the other survivor on my ship, earlier this week. Kevin Riley, Ensign. I've assigned him to Engineering, not that he likes it. Sorry for stating your name, Kevin, if you don't like it I can bleep it out later. But I was…" Kirk paused. "I thought I might have been infuriated with him. His escape attempt led directly to the last of our fellows being murdered and cannibalized right in front of me. I thought also I might be overjoyed to see him again, to see him well and healthy after how starved we both were on Tarsus, but I wasn't. I only felt sad. Sad because of what was taken from us so young. I was thirteen and Kevin was only eight in 2246."

"So here I am. Narrating my story, my personal shame, for a camera. For an audience I will never know, for people who will never know me. Forget the legend of Captain Kirk, ladies and gentlemen, and meet the little boy Jim, who cracked a murderer's skull on flagstone."

And Kirk did tell the story, in full, fell detail. Winona Kirk's abandonment. Frank's beatings. Sam running away. That stupid car. Getting to Tarsus IV. Liking his aunt and her husband. They were nice to him. The hungry time. Being counted. Being tattooed against his will – and here he showed the blue marks to the camera – and running away. Finding every last one of those little kids he tried to save. Watching all of them die but Kevin. Killing Kodos. Recovering with Starfleet Medical. Kirk left nothing out. No stone unturned, no detail unsaid. He cried a lot – must've gone through a whole box of tissues. Blubbering on camera, what was the world coming to?

And, when all was said and done, he found he had one last thing to say to that same camera.

"What kind of happy ending can this Jim Kirk have?" he asked. "Can a man like me go off into the night like some old soldier, not to die but just to fade away? Maybe. You in the audience would know better my end than I, in this chair, on this wonderful ship. Can I have a nice quiet retirement someday? God that would be so boring! That's not for me and I know it full well." Kirk paused. "Maybe someone will take this skirt-chasing idiot and reform him into being something socially acceptable. But that person would have to recognize that the things that drive them crazy about me – my energy, my intellect, my drive to succeed at that no-win scenario, my arrogance and my charisma – are the things that make me a good captain, if not a good person.

"And that person would have to recognize that I have spent my whole life finding a better answer to the no-win scenario than my father did. By my living, I hope to whatever Powers that Be that I've proven my survival worth it." Kirk felt the hollowness in his face. "I hope only that I have proven the universe right: that letting this wacko Jim Kirk live over and over and over again is for the net benefit of the universe.

"But, I have no proof of that. For now I'm the universe's punching bag, and I am actually mostly okay with that. I just want to be the best captain I can be for as long as I can manage it, and then teach at the Academy until I drop dead. I think they'll have me, after some convincing."

With sudden awkwardness, he ended the self-interview with the only words that came to mind: "Kirk out."

o0o0o

The Future: 2296, Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, Earth

The recording clicked, shuddered, and ended.

Watching it: a class of shiny new cadets in a military ethics class. The instructor was a lot more interesting than the man who had taught Jim Kirk all those years ago. Well, the instructor thought so, at least.

Said instructor rose to the podium, clicked the lights back on, and addressed his class. "Now, you have a unique opportunity here, class, to ask any questions you with of a survivor," he chuckled, "who happens to be your professor."

The class laughed. Kirk had managed to keep his "our-pal-the-captain" attitude long after he was promoted to Admiral in the 2260s. At age 63 he might not have been as thin as he once was and his hair was grayer, but he was as incorrigible as ever.

A person in the front row raised her hand. "Professor, it has been fifty years since the events on Tarsus IV. Not to say things like this get more acceptable with time, but why focus on this example of mass murder, rather than a more recent example?"

Kirk thought about it for a long moment. "Well, partly it is because I know this example well enough to use it in front of a bunch of smart cadets. But I do have another, less self-serving a reason: because this was one of the first off-world mass deaths in an Earth colony, and because issues of blame and guilt are more clear-cut than in most other cases. I use it as an example because, unfortunately, it's a pretty good model for everything more recent than 2246."

Another person raised his hand. "Professor, what long-term studies have been done on the effect of surviving mass violence?"

"On survivors of Tarsus IV, very few. There were simply too few survivors to work with. But many were done in the 20th and 21st centuries on Earth, and many have been done on the effects of the destruction of Vulcan in 2258, for example."

With that, most of the cadets seemed to have had their questions answered and several had already left to go throw up. Kirk had not left out any details of his time in Kodos' house. Cannibalism really got to some people's nausea, it seems.

Kirk dismissed them and reminded them of the paper due next class on their emotional responses to survivor testimony (which was not entirely self-serving; he had tracked down and interviewed every survivor of Tarsus IV he could find over the course of ten years, starting in 2260). A person he recognized all too well – two people, actually – rose to greet him from the back of the room.

"Spock, Bones," Kirk nodded a greeting.

"Admiral Kirk, you have become a remarkable teacher," Spock said.

"You flatter me. And we're all Admirals here – I'll call you by your name if you call me by mine."

"All right. Jim."

"And if I ask you to call me Leonard, I bet you'll just ignore me," Bones hugged Kirk. "You've done wonders, Jim."

"Thank you."

"I must admit it does not get less nauseating for the retelling."

"No, it really doesn't." Kirk felt green himself. He hated that video. He hated that it was a perfect piece of evidence and thus he couldn't just ignore it, but he hated hearing himself narrate events that still hurt fifty years later. It was physically painful and it was exhausting.

"It was a particularly effective narrative tool, Jim," Spock cut in. "Though I have to ask: how do you frame the no-win scenario, and what is your answer?"

Kirk chuckled. "Astute as ever, Spock. It's been years, and this is what I have come up with: Life is not a winnable game. No one gets out of life alive. So I have only one answer: to cram as much living into my life as possible. As much crying, laughing, sorrowing, hurting, joying – as much of everything possible. We never know when we will be called to the stage to wave our audience goodbye."

Bones put a hand to his chin. "And has it been fun, Jim?"

"I would rather ask," Spock said, "did it make a difference?"

Kirk laughed again. "Yes, and yes."

o0o0o

A/N: I hope you've enjoyed my little story. I only had a few notes here.

Firstly: as a Holocaust historian I can tell you my ideas of human evil and Holocaust studies in general were influenced largely by the following books: Tim Snyder's Bloodlands, Deborah Lipstadt's The Eichmann Trial, Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men, and Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I have met or corresponded with all of the above but Frankl, who died before I was born, and I have the highest regard for them personally as well as scholarly.

Secondly: I have based my James Kirk on the Kirk we saw in Star Trek 2009 and Star Trek Into Darkness, but there are large elements of the Kirk from The Original Series as well. If he seems out of character, it may be that my writing was just that off, or it was the weird mixture of these canons and two different ways Kirk speaks (Shatner was a Shakespearean actor before he went to Star Trek and I have not seen any information that said Pine has that kind of training. That leads to very different ways of saying lines; not better or worse, just different).

Lastly: The conversations I have Bones/Spock have with Kirk are highly contrived. Actually getting a person to open up about a horrible experience takes more training or life experience than I have any understanding of, let alone any ability to write about. I know my limits. I have stuck to my limited knowledge and deep interest in Star Trek and genocide studies and I'm so grateful you went along for the ride.