On Tuesday this week Titan releases Star Trek Explorer: A Year to the Day That I Saw Myself Die and Other Stories, their latest anthology collection of original short stories from Star Trek Explorer magazine. The 14 short stories contained in the book feature characters and situations from across the Trek universe, including Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Picard.
TrekMovie has an exclusive excerpt from David Mack’s Star Trek: Deep Space Nine story titled “Lost and Founder,” where Odo finds himself in a reflective mood in the far future…
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“LOST AND FOUNDER”
Story: David Mack
Illustration by Pete Wallbank (Titan)
4491 A.D.
The dispersed essence of what once had been the Changeling known as Odo rode the leading edge of a derecho as it swept across a dry and lifeless plain. Eons had elapsed since Odo mastered this, the most difficult of his people’s abilities. Altering his mass to take any individual form he desired had marked only the beginning of wisdom.
In the second millennium of his life, he had learned to scatter himself without losing control of his constituent atoms. The development of that skill had been a boon greater than anything he could previously have imagined. Instead of casting himself as a single stone, he could become a million motes of dust borne aloft on the arms of the wind, or diffuse his gelatinous form to reach every nook and depth of an ocean without a name.
Why become a fish when one can be the sea?
The key had resided in learning to sense and control the delicate bioelectrical field that united every particle of his being, and which also made possible the unions of two or more of his kind within or without the Great Link. His companions in the Great Link had called that tenuous field “the subtle body.”
What I wouldn’t give to hear the voice of my people once more.
It had been roughly two thousand years since the sundering of the Great Link, followed by the galactic diaspora of the Changelings. Once known as the Founders, they had ruled several dozen sectors of the Gamma Quadrant as gods. Then they had abandoned their empire, along with its billions of beings whose lives they had engineered to require their absolute control, broke all bonds of union with one another, and scattered themselves to the stars.
Odo had not seen another since that day, so very long ago.
Thus had begun his wanderings.
At first, he had searched for those who had left him, but they had left no traces, no clues, no sign they ever wanted to be found. He had roamed from one wandering star to the next, never finding what he sought. Instead, he had propelled himself only that much farther from his home.
Home. What did that word even mean anymore? Was home the Alpha Quadrant? The Gamma Quadrant? The Great Link? Bajor? No answer satisfied Odo’s yearning.
Deep in the shadows of his mind lurked memories of the space station Deep Space 9, previously known by its Cardassian name, Terok Nor. Odo harbored a nostalgic attachment to that place, but his recollections now were all bittersweet. The last remnants of that station had been scrapped, melted down, and sold off centuries earlier. Nothing was left of it now but tall tales told by those who had never seen it or the Bajoran wormhole with their own eyes.
Shaping himself into a trickle of water, he merged with a small stream and let it carry him, pulled by gravity along the path of least resistance to the nadir of a valley, where it emptied into a brackish pond. Sensing the change in the water, Odo separated himself from it and went ashore in his golden gelatinous form. He coalesced at the pond’s edge. Looking down, his gaze was met by that of his soft-featured reflection on the water’s black surface.
Around him and the dark pool stretched desolate hills and barren plains touched by nothing but this world’s churn of ceaseless wind. Sand funnels spun up without warning, whirled like dervishes, then tore themselves into quickly dissipated clouds of dust.
That was life reduced to its essence, in Odo’s experience. Forms emerged out of chaos, sparking great flurries of action and struggle… only to exhaust themselves and collapse back into the dust and darkness from which they sprang. The same story, over and over again. Such was the arc of history, which bent not toward justice but toward entropy. Throughout the universe, changes were never permanent – but change itself, as an inescapable force, was.
The pale, feeble disc of this world’s white dwarf sun slipped beneath the horizon. Overhead, the blanched sky dimmed until the starry sprawl of the cosmos revealed its cold majesty. Odo turned his longing gaze upward, toward pinpricks of light that had travelled hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years to reach him here, now, in this lonely place.
If only I had someone… anyone… to share this with me.
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Is Odo destined to traverse the stars alone, or is there anyone else out there? You can read the complete story in Star Trek Explorer Presents: “A Year to the Day That I saw Myself Die” and Other Stories, on sale December 10.
These self-contained stories also includes an adventure following the aftermath of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, co-written by Mr. Chekov himself, Walter Koenig, a trip into Vulcan history, and, for the first time, stories featuring Jack Crusher, Annika Hansen/Seven of Nine, and Captain Liam Shaw from Picard.
You can pre-order the Star Trek short story collection from Amazon for $24.99.
Cover for Star Trek Explorer short story collection (Titan)
And if you want more, check out the collection released earlier this year: Star Trek Explorer Presents: “The Mission” And Other Stories. It includes stories from Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager from authors James Swallow, John Peel, Gary Russell, Greg Cox, Una McCormack, Michael Carroll and more. The stories include the return of noir detective Dixon Hill, a dramatic prelude to the classic episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” and even a story showcasing Captain Jonathan Archer’s loyal hound, Porthos. You can order it from Amazon for $17.99.
Cover for The Mission and Other Stories (Titan)
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Quick correction: this isn’t the second Titan short story collection. It’s the fourth. They’ve published three prior volumes:
* Star Trek Explorer Presents: The Short Story Collection
* Star Trek Explorer Presents: “The Mission” and Other Stories
* Star Trek Explorer Presents: “Q and False” and Other Stories
This sort of publication does make me wish the producers would start accepting fan scripts again, as they did during the TNG era. I’ve no doubt that a lot of them were rubbish, but they also yielded some of TNG’s best episodes. I didn’t know this until recently, but “Yesterday’s Enterprise” began as a spec script (albeit one excluding Tasha Yar).
It would do a lot to alleviate this insularity and group think and lack of creativity we’re repeatedly seeing on NuTrek.
I also once read that there is a WGA rule that *required* episodic shows to have an open script submission policy, although I’m assuming that means via an agent, rather than TNG, which I understand allowed unrepresented writers to submit. Perhaps one of the industry insiders here can confirm?
Not sure what reality is, but I’d imagine there’s less incentive to accept fan scripts given how few episodes are made per season nowadays.