Narrated (and enacted) by Vedek Lira
The future is. The future was. The future will be.
Time is not a river. It is a web — every strand humming with what was, what is, and what may yet be. And in that trembling lattice, one man sits alone beside a dying fire, cradling a bottle and a dream too large for his hands.
His name is Zefram Cochrane. Drunkard. Genius. Prophet in spite of himself. The man who would build The Phoenix — though, in this hour, he believes himself only a failure with a hangover and a handful of scrap metal.
I came to him in that moment between despair and dawn.
The Dream at the Fire
Montana, late 21st century. The air carries the scent of ash and engine grease. Cochrane hunches beside his fire, an old radio crackling static beside him. The bottle dangles loosely in his hand.
“Hell of a mess, Zefram,” he mutters. “Kings crowned in genes, cities burnt to cinders… and you sittin’ here tryin’ to build a rocket outta junk.”
He laughs — the kind of laugh that keeps a man from crying. Then the flames bend, and the stars above shift, reshaping themselves into patterns he doesn’t recognize.
The firelight deepens into crimson. And from its glow, I step forward.
“You drank too little,” I say.
He squints, blinking at me through the haze.
“Well, that’s a first. Usually they say I drank too much.”
“You see only ashes,” I tell him. “But ashes are the soil of tomorrow.”
He stares. “Who the hell are you?”
“I am. I was. I will be.”
“Right. A poet.” He gestures with his bottle. “You one of them government ghosts come to tell me I’m crazy?”
“Not crazy,” I reply. “Chosen.”
The Paradox
He scoffs, rubbing his eyes.
“Chosen to what? Freeze to death before I get this heap off the ground?”
The fire flickers higher, and in its glow, he sees it: the faint silhouette of a ship, rising from a dream — The Phoenix. Its hull gleams with possibility.
“You will build it,” I whisper. “It will fly. The Vulcans will come.”
Cochrane’s voice cracks.
“Aliens? Lady, I can’t even get a generator to run. I ain’t no savior.”
I smile — softly, sadly.
“Then be a man with an idea. That is enough.”
The night holds its breath. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howls — or perhaps it is the echo of time itself, hungry for what comes next.
The Awakening
Morning comes. The fire is out. The bottle lies on its side, spilling into the dirt. Cochrane wakes with a start, his head pounding — yet something is different.
He stares at the ashes, and for a heartbeat, he sees it again: the outline of the ship. The vision remains, faint but fierce.
He stands, brushes the dust from his coat, and walks toward his tools.
Vedek Lira’s Closing
I did not give him certainty — only a path. Prophets do not dictate; we illuminate.
Zefram Cochrane would curse my name for years, call his vision a hallucination, a dream born of liquor and loneliness. But when the Phoenix rose from the Earth and tore open the sky, he would remember.
And when the Vulcans descended — serene, curious, patient — humanity would meet them not as beggars, but as builders.
The future began not in triumph, but in paradox — in a broken man’s belief that the stars were worth reaching for.
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