Copyright ©1999, Tracey
Harnack. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be re-posted
in part or in full without written permission from me. It's characters are used
without permission, no infringement is intended.
Disclaimer: Gene Roddenberry's Earth:
Final Conflict is copyright 1998, Tribune Entertainment Co.
Rating: PG.
Title: Happily Ever After
Author: Tracy Harnack
“Grandfather, tell me about when you were young.” The voice of a child startled the old man out of his thoughtful reverie. Perhaps old was not the word for the man, actually. More like…in his golden years. He looked well over seventy, true, and his hair was silver gray. He sat in a rocking chair by the fireplace. But his attitude was that of one who was still full of energy and life, and his gray-green eyes were as keen as ever. His face was etched with pain and battle scars, but was still quite handsome.
He turned and smiled at the young boy who had spoken. “When I was young?” he asked, teasingly.
The brown haired boy nodded eagerly. “Yes, Grandfather. The good old days.”
A fair-hair girl of several years older kicked him. “Sean, you know those weren’t good times. More like the bad old days, right Grandfather?”
The old man grinned at the children. “Yes, those were bad times, Aileen. But without them, we’d never be where we are now.”
Aileen and Sean glanced at each other excitedly and settled themselves quickly at the old man’s feet. “Tell, us please,” Aileen implored. “Tell us about when the Taelons came.”
The man got a faraway look in his eyes and fell silent for a moment. Finally he spoke. “Well, I suppose I should start with ‘Once Upon a Time’, huh?”
The children’s bluer-than-blue eyes met his and they nodded vigorously.
“All right. Once upon a time, the Earth was all alone in the universe. We didn’t know about the Taelons or about the Jaridians or the Kimera, or anyone else.”
The children’s unnatural eyes grew wide, as they tried to comprehend that fact, even though they had heard this story many times before.
“But that was before I was born,” he continued. “By the time I was born, the Taelons had been here for quite some time.”
“Your parents were heroes, right?” Sean asked.
The man smiled sadly. “Yes…yes, I suppose they were. In a way, they both died fighting to save humanity, although it didn’t always seem that way. Anyway, I grew up very fast.”
“Faster than Mother?” Aileen asked.
“Yes, much faster than your mother. Just she grew up much faster than you. I grew up in hours. Soon, the fight against the Taelons was full-blown.”
“Fight?”
“You fought each other?”
“Oh yes…and killed. But that was before we understood the whole situation.”
“It was very bad then, wasn’t it?”
The man nodded. “Yes, as I said before, it was bad. But it was good, too.”
“Good?”
“Yes. You see, while things were hard and people were dying, we learned so many lessons from those times, lesson we might never have learned without the struggle. We made incredible friendships that will never die, and we’ve passed those friendships on to our children, and their children. But the fighting was still bad, until we found out the truth.”
“That Humans and Taelons needed each other, right?” Aileen piped up.
“Right,” the man said, tweaking her nose gently. “We fought for a very long time before we understood that.”
“But you knew as soon as you were born, didn’t you grandfather?” Sean asked.
“I did,” he confirmed. “But even I didn’t quite understand all of what that meant for a long time.”
“You were the first, though, right?” Sean insisted. “And you made everyone else understand?”
“I was the first, the first of many things. And I did make everyone else understand. Eventually.”
“Yup,” Aileen said happily. “That’s why we’re here. If Grandfather hadn’t convinced everyone that we needed each other, everyone would be dead now, wouldn’t they?”
“Yes, they probably would,” he said after a moment. “Funny, I never thought of it that way.” He shook his head to clear it. “Anyway, it took along time but eventually Human and Taelons laid down their weapons and joined together.”
“To create us.”
“Yes, to create you. And all the other children like you.” The old man fell silent again. His thoughts drifted to the old, confusing days of fighting and subterfuge. When he didn’t even know what was going on in his own life, but was some how expected to save the world. When it seemed like there was no one to trust, and that those he loved most were out to kill him. When his friends were dying off by the handful, and he was the only one like himself in the universe.
He was jarred from his thoughts by Sean’s voice.
“How did it end?”
He raised his brows at the boy. “I told you. We joined together to make a new race. A better race. You.”
“But how did it end?”
Liam Kincaid grinned rakishly at his grandson. “Why, don’t you know boy? True stories never end. They go on and on, endlessly. It is up to you,” he looked intensely at Aileen and Sean, “to live Happily Ever After.”
Fin