The BLTS Archive- A Shopworn Tale or
The Re-Told Romance: A Work of Fanfiction
by Ragpants (mhkurtz@earthlink.net)

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Author's Note: Comments are always welcome.

May 2000

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All stories have a beginning, a middle and ending--or so I've been
told--and are arranged in that order. But readers are impatient things
who seldom wait for resolution. They sneak ahead and read the ending
first. I ought to resent this subversion of all my efforts.

But I don't. Well, not too often. Because I'm a reader too and
connoisseur of romantic tales and because I already know how the story
ends. Just as you do.


So here's the ending: And they lived happily ever after.

What? you cry, outraged and disappointed. What kind if an ending is
that? It's sham. A travesty. A--oh horrors--cliche! We want details.
Details. The life and breath of a story is in the details. You clamor
greedily for more.

Another ending: Kathryn couldn't sleep. The sheets felt slightly damp
from the sweat of their lovemaking, and her lover sprawled and snored
down the middle of the bed, leaving her no room to unfurl her cramped
limbs. She got up, stumbling slightly in the unfamiliar room's
darkness, and found her way to the window. She didn't remember asking
for a exterior room. Perhaps she had. Or perhaps the night clerk,
seeing her uniform, knew she could afford the extra expense of the
window and had gouged her credit chit for it. Regardless, there was a
window in her room with an unsullied view of space beyond it.

On the other side of the transparent aluminum, a wide, smoky expanse
of stars lazed dimly in the black velvet emptiness. The stars had been
her first real love and faithful to her beyond the frailty of any
mortal lover. She knew she could never forsake them for the heat and
dust and gravity of any planet. And now she wouldn't have to.

Satisfied now? Happily ever after, just like I told you it would to
be. A cliche, but all stories are cliches of one type of another.
Especially the romances. Definitely the romances. You know how the
stories ends even before you glimpse the first word on the page. And
still you read them. I marvel at your willingness.

What? You want more? A beginning? Even knowing, as you do, how the
story ends? Can't you shape your own beginning, knowing that the
lovers must meet anew? Will none but my beginning do? How about if I
start you and you then design the rest?

The beginning: Captain Kathryn Janeway was lost.

We *know* that, you sneer. That's the whole premise of the show. Old
hat. Booooooring. Surely you can do better than that. Find some better
start. Something fresher. Something original. Why rehash old stuff?
Give us something new to read.

Something new? When the whole story is already known from beginning to
end anyway? You ask alot, but I'll try.

Another beginning: Captain Kathryn Janeway was lost. Although she'd
been on Collin's Station two or three time before, the station's
managing engineer kept realigning the station's layout. She had to
learn a new system of location coding every time she docked here. And
somehow, on this visit, between corridor Blue-7-A and corridor
Blue-7-B, she managed to make a wrong turn and get hopelessly lost.
There was still an ankle-high, sky blue stripe of paint above the
neutral gray carpeting along the corridor's length--which meant she
was still in Blue sector, which was a good thing, but her plate bolted
to nearest wall bore the label: 12-R. So she was in corridor Blue-12-R
with no idea of how she had gotten there. She'd retraced her route--or
what she thought was her route--and found the intersection of Corridor
Blue-12-Q and Red-12-N. Neither of which was of any use. She was on
her way to the Station's Overseer's Office, on Corridor Blue-7-C.

For a moment, she felt helpless.

The corridor was totally deserted. Or if not deserted, then no one was
within sight. She would have gladly asked for directions had there
been. A seven year sojourn in the Delta Quadrant and another ten more
rattling about the interstial emptiness between the unraveling arms of
the Milky Way had knocked all that injured pride nonsense right out of
her head. There was no shame in admitting one was lost; the only
disgrace came from not being in the proper place at the proper time,
if it was humanly possible to do so, and often if it wasn't.

And she was sure she was about to be late for her meeting with
Overseer Minzer.

Her hand hovered above her Starfleet insignia, which housed her
communicator, while she considered calling her ship for assistance. No
use, she decided. Lt. N'klot was manning the comm board--and resentful
of it, Janeway thought privately, with the surety of long
acquaintance. It had been boasting about its big plans for shore
leave. (Not a sexual liaison, of course. N'klot was genderless and the
likelihood of running across another of its species in this sector for
an impersonal exchange of gametes was vanishingly small. Most likely
an all-night scram session with the station's percussionists, she
suspected, since no one aboard the Arthur C. Clark was even remotely
interested in Delosian jazz and there had been more than one complaint
about the lieutenant's incessant drumming until she had forbidden it
altogether in the interest of the crew's sanity.) N'klot wouldn't have
downloaded an updated station layout. It wouldn't need a station map
and could not have imagined that anyone else would either. So she was
lost.

The attempt to retrace her original path had proven fruitless, so
Captain Janeway forged fearlessly ahead. The next corridor conjunction
linked with Black-3-T and Red-8-U; the one beyond that with Black-3-w
and Black-5-Y. Now she was not only lost, but in the wrong sector too.
She turned around. And hesitated.

With her hand poised on her hips and her chin lifted in a simulation
of her youthful defiance, "Q!" she demanded, her voice reverberating
in the silent air.

She waited a beat, then two, then three. But there was no
response--not that she really had expected one. More than 20 years had
passed since the near omnipotent being had last materialized to annoy
her. She lifted her shoulders in a small, wry shrug and returned the
way she'd come. Ahead she heard the thudding of footsteps. Someone was
jogging, though none too fast. She broke into a jog herself in hopes
of catching up with the runner.

"Hey," she yelled. "Wait!"

The footsteps didn't slow. She arrived at a tangled intersection of
passageways too late. The runner had moved on. She slumped for moment
against the subtle concave of the station's wall, surrendering to both
breathlessness and frustration. She slapped her palms against the
smooth, lightly padded wall, wishing that she was a little younger, a
little faster, a little less addle-witted--that she had never gotten
lost in the first place.

She blew out her irritation in a breath and reached for her comm, but
as she did, she heard the thudding footfalls return--this time in
approach. She recognized him, despite all that the years had wrought:
the silver woven through the braids that bounced upon his shoulders,
the bulky thickness encumbering his waist, the unfamiliar hollows and
wrinkles that time had worn upon his face. Chakotay. She braced
herself, fearing both that he would know her--and that he would not.

Ok, That's enough of beginning. You can take it from here. I've given
both ends of the story--one that you know by heart. You can fill in
the blanks, connect the dots, spackle all the cracks. Use any cliche
you choose because you already know how the story goes.

Boy and girl meet. Boy and girl strike sparks. Boy and girl are parted
by time and circumstance. Boy and girl are reunited and they live
happily ever after. That's exactly how this story goes. You don't need
the middle. It's only details. And you can supply all those yourself.

Do you really need to know of her triumphant return to Earth? Her
brief moment in the limelight? The months of negotiations and
debriefings? Her hasty marriage to a Starfleet admiral and their
gradual estrangement? Her slow-growing, sullen disillusionment with
StarFleet? And it with her?

Her retreat to far flung exploration with a tiny crew and smaller
ship? And now the re-call home to retirement that is waiting for her
in the Overseer's office?

Or his exoneration? His bitterness over StarFleet's failure to
reinstate him to duty? His return to his Dorvan? His two failed
relationships? (One with a plump, ambitious matriarch of his People
who lived in the Snake Clan's ancestral pueblo with two daughters and
three strong sons-in-law to represent her interests in the Kiva. The
other with a much younger, blonde graduate student on a dig, who
threatened repercussions when he didn't offer marriage.) How he
wrangled meager funding to equip a creaky derelict and head off in
search of rumors about a remnant machine civilization existing in the
Sagittarian Arm?

They found each other. Isn't that enough?

I'm done now. You do the rest. This story is completed and I've other
things to do.

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The End