STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION — “SECOND CONTACT”
(A Lost Log Between Stardates 47990.1 and 48003.6)
ACT I — PATTERN BUFFER BLUES
The hum of the Enterprise-D’s transporter bay was the sound of quantum confidence — that precise, unwavering thrum that whispered: “You’ll be reassembled just fine.”
Except this time, it lied.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard materialized on Pad Three, posture perfect, uniform crisp, one eyebrow twitching at the brief flicker of blue in the stream. To the transporter chief, it looked like nothing — a stray phase variance, 0.004% deviation. To Beverly Crusher, waiting by the console with a tricorder, it looked like trouble.
CRUSHER: “Pattern degradation on the secondary Heisenberg compensator?”
TRANSPORTER CHIEF DANIELS: “Barely a blip, Doctor. The buffer cleared both quantum signatures cleanly.”
CRUSHER: “Both?”
Daniels hesitated.
That was the moment fate stifled a laugh.
Another shimmer erupted on Pad Three — and there he was again. Jean-Luc Picard, down to the microfreckle beneath his left ear, blinking in perfect sync with himself.
Two Picards.
One mission.
Zero protocols for this.
PICARD #1: “…Merde.”
PICARD #2: “Indeed.”
Cue theme music.
ACT II — SCHRÖDINGER’S CAPTAIN
The transporter room became a quiet war zone of logic. Data was already at the console, fingers dancing like a pianist in a Bach fugue written by quantum mechanics itself.
DATA: “Both patterns exhibit identical DNA, molecular cohesion, and neural engrams. To within 0.0000001%. Which is… uncomfortable.”
RIKER: “So you’re telling me we’ve got two perfectly real captains?”
DATA: “Correct. Although statistically, the universe only intended one.”
WORF: “Recommend immediate termination of the duplicate.”
BOTH PICARDS: “Mr. Worf.”
Crusher’s tricorder sang with unease.
CRUSHER: “They’re both alive, Will. Same synaptic pathways, same memories… up until the dematerialization event. After that, they’re diverging.”
Two Picards turned to her — one frowning with command precision, the other… smiling, just barely.
She hadn’t seen that smile since before the Stargazer.
PICARD #2: “Perhaps divergence is not a flaw. Perhaps… an opportunity.”
PICARD #1: “This is not an experiment, Number One. It’s a crisis of identity.”
PICARD #2: “Oh, lighten up, mon capitaine. If one of us must brood, I nominate you.”
Q appeared in a flash of light brighter than a warp plasma discharge.
Q: “Oh this is delicious. Two bald existential crises for the price of one! I’d ask which of you is the real captain, but frankly, neither of you has had a date since the Cardassian armistice.”
Riker groaned.
RIKER: “Q…”
Q: “Relax, Number One. I’m merely observing. I wouldn’t dare interrupt your command’s thrilling exploration of the human self.”
(leans closer to Crusher) “Although, between us, I give it five hours before one of them makes a move.”
ACT III — THE DUPLICATE’S DILEMMA
Picard-Prime (the original, or so the transporter logs claimed) remained steadfast. Duty first. Orderly containment. Science.
Picard-Deux, meanwhile, was rediscovering the art of not being a starship captain.
He sat in Ten-Forward, sipping actual synthehol like it was wine from Château Picard 2342 Reserve, engaging in the most dangerous experiment in Federation history: smiling at Beverly Crusher.
PICARD #2: “You’ve been scanning me every four hours, Doctor. Are you worried I’ll fade out of phase or that I’ll embarrass myself?”
CRUSHER: “Both are statistically likely.”
PICARD #2: “You’ve grown crueler with age.”
CRUSHER: “And you’ve grown… duplicated.”
They laughed — a real laugh, not the diplomatic chuckle that haunted diplomatic banquets.
From a nearby table, Guinan polished a glass and raised an eyebrow that contained roughly three thousand years of cosmic judgment.
GUINAN: “Be careful, Beverly. Quantum entanglements can get… personal.”
Meanwhile, Picard-Prime reviewed sensor logs in the ready room, trying not to notice that his reflection didn’t quite match his movements anymore. A tiny lag — a hesitation in the mirror.
As if reality were buffering him.
DATA (over comm): “Captain, I have discovered a minor issue. The transporter pattern buffer still holds residual fragments of your original quantum signature.”
PICARD: “Meaning?”
DATA: “The universe may not yet have decided which one of you it intends to keep.”
PICARD: “Splendid.”
ACT IV — Q’S QUANTUM FARCE
Engineering was chaos. Geordi had opened the Heisenberg compensator arrays, muttering about “entropic echo harmonics.” Q leaned on a warp manifold as if it were a bar counter.
Q: “You humans never cease to amuse. You split your captain like a cellular mitosis and still manage to assign a shift rotation.”
GEORDI: “Q, if you’re not gonna help—”
Q: “Oh, but I am helping. I’m restraining myself from rewriting him into a chorus line.”
Data and Geordi discovered that the transporter’s phase variance had created a quantum interference resonance — two identical waveforms locked in stable coexistence, each one stealing probability mass from the other.
It was the Schrödinger’s Cat of starship command.
DATA: “If left unchecked, the interference will spread through subspace, potentially destabilizing all transporter systems within the Federation.”
GEORDI: “So not just two Picards — two everyone.”
Q: “Imagine the sitcom potential.”
Back in the observation lounge, both Picards argued over who should risk reintegration.
Worf stood ready with a phaser, in case ethics went sideways.
PICARD #1: “I cannot allow a duplicate of myself to compromise the chain of command.”
PICARD #2: “I cannot allow the chain of command to compromise myself.”
Q: “Ah, the eternal battle between duty and desire. Tell me, Jean-Luc, which of you gets the woman and which gets the uniform?”
Silence.
Crusher’s glance at Picard-Deux answered before he did.
ACT V — THE CHOICE PARADOX
The reintegration chamber glowed with transporter light. Data calibrated the buffer harmonics while Geordi muttered technobabble prayers about phase inversion thresholds and duotronic realignment.
DATA: “Reintegration probability at 87%. Identity coherence remains uncertain.”
PICARD #1: “That will have to suffice.”
PICARD #2: “You always did settle for adequacy.”
Crusher stepped forward.
CRUSHER: “Stop. This isn’t about which one’s real. It’s about which one wants to be.”
That silenced even Q.
Beverly looked between them — one Picard made of protocol, the other of potential.
One a captain, one a man.
PICARD #2: “I’ve commanded fleets, negotiated armistices… but I’ve never allowed myself to exist beyond them.”
PICARD #1: “You’re not me.”
PICARD #2: “Exactly.”
He stepped into the chamber.
Q (softly): “Oh, mon capitaine… the bravest thing you’ve ever done is resign from being yourself.”
A shimmer. A hum. The transporter fired.
The light flared, and when it faded — only one Picard stood there, steady, whole… and quietly different.
DATA: “Integration successful. Quantum coherence restored.”
Q: “Boring. Predictable. Tragic.”
Picard looked at Crusher. Something in his eyes — a human micro-shift, a half-smile, a pulse of gratitude.
PICARD: “Doctor… dinner?”
CRUSHER: “You’ll have to make a reservation.”
Q: “And thus, the universe returns to normal. One Picard. One moral lesson. One repressed romance. How quaint.”
EPILOGUE — STARFLEET LOG 48003.6
(Personal log, Captain Jean-Luc Picard)
“Transporters. We entrust them with our very atoms, with our identity. Yet today, I learned that even perfection in technology cannot resolve the imperfection in ourselves. I faced… myself. The man who might have been. Perhaps still is.
Beverly says I seem more at ease. I told her it must be residual quantum alignment. She smiled. She didn’t believe me.
Q, of course, has not reappeared. For once, I suspect even omnipotence knows when to give privacy.
Still, I cannot help but wonder… when I look in the mirror, which one of us is doing the looking?”
The log ends with the faintest laugh — the sound of a man who has finally made peace with being two things at once.
Captain and human.