by Merri Todd Webster

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. . .)

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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.

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End