The BLTS Archive - Crossing the Boundaries
by Merri Todd Webster (lonchura@yahoo.com)

---

THE OVERTURE: Paramount owns the characters and the setting, but it
doesn't own me - -or Garrett Wang, either, even if he does work for
TPTB.

There's no sex in this one, nothing hotter than a handshake and a
quick hug. However, a number of things are implied, not all of them
complimentary. Consider it a tribute to my favorite Voyager character,
and one of my favorite Voyager actors (Robert Picardo is just so
funny. . .)

---

It was the end of another gruelling day on the set of Star Trek:
Voyager, and Garrett Wang was exhausted even though he'd spent most
of it sitting around. That was part of the exhaustion, he reflected
as he scrubbed  the heavy makeup from his face: having to arrive
before dawn, submit to  makeup, squeeze into the hot, tight,
uncomfortable uniform, and then sit  around for hours so Ensign Harry
Kim could deliver his few lines. Lines which anybody could say, any
ensign, any warm body in a Starfleet jumpsuit, it wasn't like they
were specific to his character.

Garrett ran the dripping washcloth over and over his face, rinsed it
out thoroughly, and was starting to apply another layer of cleanser
when he heard a noise that was not a polite knock or even the door of
his trailer being opened. He whipped around and saw -- Harry Kim.

For a moment Garrett just stood there, blinking, water and cleanser
running down his face. About six feet away from him was a handsome,
shyly smiling young Asian man in a current Starfleet uniform who
looked just like Garrett Wang. No, not exactly. The face was thinner,
the hair shorter and not slicked back, the set of the shoulders a
little different, but it was the face on the autographed publicity
shot he'd done for Voyager's first season, the one he privately
thought of as the Starfleet Poster Boy shot. There was something
missing from the other man's face which Garrett saw every day in his
own, and conversely, there was something in the other man's face that
Garrett would never have. He saw it even though he didn't know what it
was.

"I'm sorry," said the other man. "I've come at a bad time."

The voice was deep, like Garrett's, with a very faint accent, as
though English were not his first language. Absently Garrett reached
out and grabbed his towel to wipe off his face. He tossed it aside,
smeary with the remnants of cleanser and makeup. "Who are you?" he
managed at last.

"Lieutenant Harry Kim, of Starfleet. But you knew that already."

Garrett took a step forward. Yes, those were lieutenant's pips on the
collar. And something about this guy's bearing was military. He wasn't
a lounger, at least not while he was wearing that uniform.

"Harry Kim is a fictional character," Garrett observed. "And an
ensign."

The other man nodded. "In this universe. But in my own universe, I'm
very real, and I'm a lieutenant." He smiled, and it was very much like
Garrett's own. "We've all gotten field promotions. May I sit down?"

Garrett nodded, in his turn, and--'Harry? Well, how else am I gonna
think of him?'-- Harry sat down on the edge of the couch, his back
straight. Garrett pulled up a chair and dropped into it.

"So you're Harry Kim. From the future. From the Delta Quadrant."

"And from another universe." Harry looked at Garrett, searchingly.
"You're really taking this well. I admire that."

"I have an imagination," Garrett replied.

"That's why I came to you," Harry said.

"So what brings you here?" Garrett inquired. "Must be some kind of
important mission."

"Actually, it is." Harry drew a long breath, and his manner took on
something of a junior officer reporting to a senior.

"Eighteen months ago, under circumstances I don't have time to
rehearse, the crew of Voyager learned definitively that we have
doubles in what you might call alternate universes, or parallel
timelines, or both. Other Starfleet ships have had similar
experiences, but we discovered something that, as far as we know,
nobody else has discovered. If it is  known, in Starfleet, it's so
highly classified none of us on Voyager knew  about it." He focused on
Garrett for the first time. "We discovered that there are timelines in
which we are fictional characters."

Garrett raised his eyebrows. "Go on."

"Ever since then," Harry continued, "we've been researching our
'doubles', both real and fictional, and we've learned a number of
important things. The chief thing is that the existence of timelines
in which we are part of the fictional 'Star Trek' universe is in some
way crucial to the existence of timelines in which we are historical.
The other thing is that history and fiction show the greatest
divergence in the case of Voyager."

"What kind of divergence?" Garrett asked. This was getting
interesting.

"Are you familiar with Captain Kirk?" Harry asked.

"Sure."

"What was his ship?"

"The Enterprise."

"Who were his two closest friends?"

"Spock and McCoy."

"Which Starfleet captain was temporarily assimilated by the Borg?"

"Picard."

Harry nodded. "There are hundreds, maybe thousands of facts about the
Federation and Starfleet personnel that you, a twentieth-century
Asian-American actor, already know because they've been accurately
portrayed in a fictional medium. The Kirk, Spock, Picard, Borg that
you know about correspond to our history and reality. But the starship
Voyager and its crew, as portrayed on television, do not correspond to
our reality, or to any of the alternate realities we've contacted."

Garrett frowned. "Like how?"

"Is your character in a sexual relationship with anyone?" Harry asked.

Garrett scowled. "No. If I had my character's luck in love, I'd shoot
myself."

Harry grinned. "Don't worry, man. As far as we know, there's not a
single universe in which I sleep alone."

Garrett returned the grin, unknowingly enhancing their resemblance.
"So gimme details."

Harry blushed, something Garrett had not done since he got his first
spontaneous erection as a teenager. "Um -- do you have any prejudices
against, uh, same-sex relationships?"

Garrett blinked. "No, uh, no."

"How about, say, interracial relationships?"

"No, of course not."

"Good," Harry said, "because Tom and B'Elanna are both my lovers."

"Tom and B'Elanna?" Garrett cleared his throat and hoped he didn't
squeak again. "Tom Paris? And B'Elanna Torres? All three of you?"

Harry nodded. "We've been together for almost three years. There are
other universes in which Tom and I are a couple, or Tom and Chakotay,
or me and B'Elanna. In my universe, Chakotay and the Captain are a
couple, have been since New Earth."

Garrett thought about this. He looked at Harry. "Two men and a woman,
and you're one of them?"

Harry nodded, again. "Triads aren't common among Earthborn people, but
there's no prejudice against them. The three of us could be legally
married under Federation or Klingon law. And I'd say one out of every
three marriages, on Earth, is between persons of the same sex."

Garrett whistled. "That's a lot."

Harry shrugged. "Helps keep the birthrate down. Besides the
relationship thing," he went on, "almost everyone on Voyager has
received a field promotion. I'm a lieutenant j.g., Tom's a lieutenant
commander, so is B'Elanna, and we're not all. The only person on the
fictional Voyager who's been promoted is Tuvok. On our ship, he was
one of the first field promotions, but certainly not the last.

"We've been able to monitor the broadcasts of the Voyager series, and
frankly, we're all pretty upset. We're not the cardboard characters
we're made out to be! We figured that if we were angry at being
portrayed so inaccurately, you actors were probably angry at being
asked to portray characters who are sometimes inconsistent, sometimes
uninteresting, sometimes just furniture."

Garrett snorted. "Yeah, I've been feeling like furniture a lot
lately. At least Robbie gets some on-screen kissing."

Harry leaned forward, elbows on knees. "You don't have to feel that
way. Believe me, Garrett, I am not a boring person. I'm in love with
two wonderful, crazy, volatile people--I spend half my off-duty time
keeping Tom and 'Lanna from each other's throats, and the other half
making love to them." He grinned and blushed at the same time.
"Besides clarinet, I play flute and piano, I sing pretty well, and I
play jazz as well as classical repertoire, even some folky stuff. I do
have an interesting job as Ops Manager, but no one would ever guess
that from what you get to do onscreen."

Garrett shook his head. "So why are you telling me this, man? Just so
I can get more onscreen action? If I press for more scenes, they'll
probably just kill me and bring me back to life again."

Harry grimaced, making Garrett wonder how many of those deaths and
resurrections he'd experienced. "As I said before, the existence of
timelines in which 'Star Trek' exists as fiction is crucial  to the
existence of timelines in which the Federation and its neighbors exist
as reality. We don't yet know how or why that's true, only that it is.
And the more closely fiction represents reality, the better chance
that reality  has of coming to pass."

Garrett looked long and hard at the other man. He supposed he could
just be having some kind of exhaustion-induced hallucination, but it
was hard to disbelieve the guy. He was Harry Kim. He looked like
Garrett, enough that they could have been related, but they weren't
identical. He had the right posture, the right attitude, the right
uniform. He said the right things. And the intensity with which he
returned Garrett's gaze wasn't the intensity of a madman, but of a
sane man with a mission.

"So what do you want me to do?" Garrett said finally.

Harry Kim reached into an invisible pants pocket. "I have two things
for you." He held out one of them. "This is a diskette compatible with
your current generation of computers. It contains information about
the historical Voyager, from several different
universes--'suggestions' for the show and for you, in particular."
Garrett took the diskette and Harry offered him the other item: a
small, thin, flat piece of pale wood.

"What's that?"

"One of my clarinet reeds." Harry smiled. "A memento, and also a
proof. If you have it analyzed, you'll find it isn't actually made of
wood." Harry got up. "I have to go. I can feel the timer pulling me
back; the window will open in another minute."

Garrett got up, too. He looked at the diskette and the clarinet reed
in his hand, then held out his other hand. Harry clasped it firmly and
drew Garrett into a quick hug. "Why me?" Garrett asked, hoping Harry
would understand the implications.

Harry's smile broadened. "I really shouldn't tell you this, but--it
was easy for me to get to you because you're one of my maternal
ancestors." To Garrett's astonishment, Lieutenant Harry Kim said
good-bye in a dialect of Chinese Garrett understood. Then he stepped
away and turned his back.

Garrett watched as something happened to the air in front of Harry. A
shimmer turned into an oval that was an opening. Very dimly, Garret
could see through it two people who looked like Roxann, in makeup, and
Robbie, in the same way that Harry looked like himself. The shimmer
wavered, thickened, cleared, and with a last grin over his shoulder,
Harry stepped through the opening and disappeared with a small, odd
noise.

Garrett looked down at the diskette and the clarinet reed. They were
still there. "Now who on the set has a laptop?" he murmured.

---

The End