Monologues

JAMES: After my bath, Buzz- and I never remotely thought in my wildest imaginings I would be making love to a man named Buzz or saying things like I love you, Buzz or how do you take your tea, Buzz- this same wonderful Buzz wrapped me in the biggest, toastiest bath sheet imaginable and tucked me safely into the lovely chair by the window in the corner of our room. I fell asleep listening to my brother play Rachmaninoff downstairs. I would wake up to the most unsettling yet strangely satisfying conversations in my long/short life. And I will scarcely say a word.

JOHN: There’s no point in pretending this isn’t happening. You’re dying, aren’t you? There are so many things we’ve never talked about, so many things I never got to say. I don’t want to wait until its too late to say them. I’ve spent my life waiting for the appropriate moment to tell you the truth. I resent you. I resent everything about you. You had mum and dad’s unconditional love and now you have the worlds. How can I not envy that? I wish I could say it was because you’re so much better looking than me. No, the real pain is that its something so much harder to bear. You got the good soul. I got the bad one. Think about leaving me yours.

They have names for us, behind our backs. I bet you didn’t know that, did you? James the good and John the bad, the princes of Charm and Ugly. Gregory has a journal. We’re all in it. I don’t come off too well in there either. So what’s your secret? The secret of unconditional love. I’m not going to let you die with it.

My brother smiled wanly and shook his head, suggesting he didn’t know, dear spectators. And just then a tear started to fall from the corner of one eye. This tear told me that my brother knew something of the pain I felt of never, ever not once being loved. Another tear. The other eye this time. And then I felt his hand on mine. Not only did I feel as if I were looking at myself, eye half-open, deep in a wing-backed chair, a blanket almost to my chin, in the twilight of a summer that had never come, and talking to myself, who else could this mirror image be but me? Both cheeks wet with tears now, but now I was touching myself.

That hand taking mine was my own. I could trace the same sinews, follow the same veins. But no! It brought it to other lips and began to kiss it, his kisses mingling with his tears. He was forgiving me. My brother was forgiving me. But wait! And I tried to pull my hand away. I hated you. He holds tighter. I. More kisses. I. New tears. I wished you were dead. He presses his head against my hand now and cries and cries and cries as I try to tell him every wrong I have done him, but he just shakes his head and bathes my hand with his tears and lips. There have never been so many kisses, not in all the world, as when I told my brother all the wrongs I had done him and he forgave me. Nor so many tears.

Finally we stopped. We looked at each other in the silence. We could look at each other at last. We weren’t the same person. I just wanted to be the one they loved, I told him.

JAMES: And now you will be.

Captain's Personal Log: Stardate: 51721.3

It's only been two weeks. I need to talk about this. I have to justify what happened. What I've done. At least to myself. I can't talk to anyone else. Maybe if I just lay it all out in my log it will finally make some sense. I can see where it all went wrong. Where I went wrong. I suppose it all started two weeks ago while I was posting the weekly casualty list in the war room. Every Friday morning for the past three months I had been posting the official list of all Starfleet personnel killed, wounded, or missing in the war. It's become something of a grim ritual around here. Not a week goes by that someone doesn't find the name of a loved one, a friend or an acquaintance of theirs on that damned list. I had grown to hate Fridays.

When seeing the looks on some of my officers faces after reading the list, I feel like something must be done. One such Friday came and that was the day I made the decision. It was like I had stepped through a door and locked it behind me. I was going to bring stronger forces into the war- any way that I had to.

My father used to say that the road to hell was paved with good intentions. I laid the first stone. I made a plan to persuade Romulan forces into joining our side of the fighting. I had committed myself- I'd pay any price... go to any lengths because my cause was righteous. My intentions were good. In the beginning that seemed like enough. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that bad news comes in the middle of the night. It seems the enemy conquered another sector. The Cardassians had succeeded in invading Betazed. Afer that news, I had to find some way to bring another force into the front. Someone to shift the balance of power. The only group as egotistical and politically power hungry who would enter the war on a losing side would have to be the Romulans. They needed something to benefit from that motion, of course. So to find a way to bring the Romulans into the war, I approached Garak, the station's tailor and Cardassian refugee. His contacts with the enemy side would be vital in locating some data we could use to drag the Romulans away from the enemy side and over to ours. Garak suggested forging evidence to fool the Romulans into joining the battle on our side.

Maybe I should have put a stop to it right there. Maybe I should have said, "Thank you for your input, Mr.Garak. I will take your suggestion under advisement."- and then gone back to my office and forgotten the whole thing- but I didn't. Because in my heart I knew what he was saying made sense.

Garak paid a computer analyst named Tolar to create a datachip with falsified information regarding a Cardassian plan to overthrow the Romulan Empire. When that chip was brought to the Romulans, they'd see the plans of the Cardassian Order and join our side. Of course the Romulans could detect if it was a fraud and then place me in an awkward and embarrassing position.

That was my first moment of real doubt. When I started to wonder if this whole thing was a mistake. So then I went back to my office and there was another casualty report waiting for me. People are dying out there every day. Entire worlds are struggling for their freedom and here I am still worrying about the finer points of morality. No- I had to keep my eye on the ball- win the war- stopping the bloodshed: those were the priorities.

So I pushed on and every time another doubt appeared before me, I just found another way to shove it aside. I had grown to be quite intolerant... raising my voice for no real reason. Becoming moody and harsh at the drop of a hat- any hat. Maybe I was under more pressure than I realized. Maybe it was really starting to get to me but I was off the hook. Starfleet Command had given my plan their blessing. I thought that would have made this easier but I was the one who had to make it happen. I was the one who had to look at the Romulan Senator in the eye and convince him that a lie was the truth.

Senator Vreenak of the Romulan government joined me on the space station. We watched the datachip... the fake datachip... and stared at each other for nearly a half-hou after it had ended. Naturally he wanted to check the validity of the chip. So he brought it back to his shuttle.

So all I could do was wait and see how masterful Tolar's forgery really was. So I waited. I tried to catch up on my paperwork but I found it very difficult to focus on criminal activity reports... cargo manifests... So I went back to pacing and staring out of the window. I'm not an impatient man. I'm not one to agonize over decisions once they're made. I got that from my father. He always says, "Worries and doubts are the great enemies of a great chef. The souffle will either rise or it won't, there's not a damned thing you can do about it so you might as well just sit back and wait and see what happens." But this time the cost of failure was so high I found it difficult to take his advice. If Senator Vreenak discovered it was a forgery... if he realized we were trying to trick them into the war, it would push them further into the enemy camp. They could start to openly help the Cardassians... if worse came to worse they could actually join the war against us. I had the distinct feeling that victory or defeat would be decided in the next few minutes. I was right. The Romulans determined the datachip was fake.

So it all blew up in my face and all the lies and compromises... inner doubts and rationalizations- all for nothing. Vreenak was furious. I can't say that I blame him. I would have reacted the same way. After telling me in no uncertain terms that he would expose this vile deception to the entire Alpha Quandrant, he got back on his shuttle and headed home. There didn't seem to be anything left to do. So I went back to work. Two days later I got the news. The shuttle ferrying Romulan Senator Vreenak was destroyed. Cardassian weapondry was discovered to be the cause. I could only guess what happened. Garak had sabotaged the Senator's vessel while it was aboard the station. He had the ability and the resources to plant a bomb in the styling of the enemy having been a Cardassian spy in the first place. The Romulan authorities would surely investigate and discover our forged datachip among the wreckage. Their analysis would be different from Vreenak's. Any evidence of falsified information would be discounted because it could be ruled out as damage from the shuttle's explosion.

So the Romulans would enter the war due to the destruction and death of Senator Vreenak. All that was lost in the process was one leading political Romulan dignitary and my self-respect. A small price to pay for such a lofty goal. At least that's what I convinced myself. At 0800 hours, station time, the Romulan Empire formally declared war against the Cardassians. They've already struck 15 bases along the border. So this is a huge victory for the good guys. This may even be the turning point of the entire war. There is even a "welcome to the fight" party in the war room tonight.

So I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder- but the most damning thing of all... I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again- I would. Garak was right about one thing: a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.

Computer... erase that entire personal log.