In the Hands of the Prophets

“THERE WAS another time,” the Sisko says.

“It is not linear,” Jake answers. The twelve-year-old boy dangles his fishing line in the quiet water of the pond, rippling the reflections of towering trees, green fields, and the pure blue sky of Earth. The sun is strong, and the rich scent of the bridge's sun-warmed wood makes uncounted summers happen all at once for the Sisko.

“But it is, was, will be. . . .” The Sisko falters with the syntax of eternity. His father plays the upright piano in the restaurant in New Orleans as the Sisko plunges into the depths of the Fire Caves with Gul Dukat and first takes his captain's chair on the bridge of the Starship Defiant, all within a single heartbeat—the same heartbeat.

—The heartbeat of his unborn child, now grown, now fulfilling a destiny unimaginable to the Sisko, a destiny now known to him, now unknown.

The Sisko laughs at the wonder of it all.

“You're laughing again,” Jean-Luc Picard tells him in the ready room of the Enterprise, in orbit of Bajor.

The Sisko looks down at the old uniform he wears at this moment. The texture feels so real to him, even as it dissolves beneath his fingers and he is in his bathing suit on the beach carrying lemonade to the woman who will be/is/was his wife—still at this same moment.

“That is correct,” Solok confirms. The young Vulcan walks beside the Sisko on the path leading from Starfleet Academy's zero-G gymnasium to the cadets' residences. “All moments are the same.”

“In this time,” the Sisko says. He watches Boothby plant fall flowers by the statue of Admiral Chekov. “But there are other times. That's my point.” The gardener now prunes bushes for the spring.

“This is not logical,” Solok says. His cadet's uniform becomes that of a baseball player, and he tosses a small white ball into the air, then catches it with the same hand an infinite number of times.

“Logic has no place here,” the Sisko says. He reaches out and intercepts the ball even as Solok attempts to catch it. “Because logic is linear.”

“Some logic is absolute,” Sarah Sisko says. She stands by the viewport in the Sisko's quarters on Deep Space 9, the radiance of the opening doorway to the Celestial Temple filtering through her hair. Wormholes within wormholes. Temples within temples. An infinite regression. Or an eternal one.

“I think I finally know why I'm here,” the Sisko says. “Why you . . . had to be certain my mother would marry my father, give birth to me.”

“You are the Sisko,” Major Kira agrees. She stands at her station in Ops.

“You need me here,” the Sisko says.

“You are the Sisko,” Curzon Dax agrees, the vast spacedocks of Utopia Planitia orbiting with flawless precision beyond the viewport of his shuttle.

“You need me here to teach you,” the Sisko says.

Interruption.

The Sisko finds himself in the light space. Around him Sarah, Jake, Kira, Solok, Curzon, Worf, and Admiral Ross.

“You have much to learn,” the admiral says.

“Then shouldn't I already know it?”

“Your language is imperfect for these matters,” Solok says.

“You have much to realize that you already know,” Worf says.

“That you have always known,” Jake says.

The Sisko holds up a finger, and each of his observers watches it, as he knows they will.

The Sisko regards their expectant faces and laughs again. “Look at you all,” he exclaims. “You want to know what I'm going to say next. Because you don't know!”

The Prophets are silent.

The Sisko thinks of a thing, of a time, of a moment, makes it real.

And they are on the Promenade of Deep Space 9, as it is the day the Sisko first sets foot upon it.

The Sisko can smell stale smoke, hear the clamor of work crews. Feels what the Prophets cannot feel, the . . . anticipation.

He leads them to the entrance of the Bajoran Temple.

“Since you do not know time, how can you know of other times?” the Sisko asks, so much that is hidden now known to him.

As he knows they will, the Prophets continue their silence.

The Sisko holds out his hand to them. “Welcome, Prophets,” the Sisko says with a smile. “Your Emissary awaits you.”

All enter the Temple then. Intendant Kira and Jadzia and Ezri, Jake and Kasidy, Weyoun and Damar, Quark and Rom and Nog, Bashir and Garak, Vic and Worf, O'Brien and Keiko and Eddington and Vash. All at the invitation of the Sisko.

It takes hours for them all to pass through, all in a single moment.

The last is the Sisko, poised on the threshold of the Temple.

He remembers his own words the first time he stands here.

“Another time.”

An infinity of eternities in just two words. An infinity beyond the understanding of the Prophets.

Until now.

The Sisko enters the Temple.

Not to show them the beginning of things. Because that would be linear.

He enters the Temple to show them the end.

As it was.

As it is.

As it will be. . . .