Chapter 5
Two Words
Franchise: The Original Series
Season 3, Episode 19: “Requiem For Methuselah”
There are two words that have the power to make you freer, more alive, more fully HUMAN than any two other words in the English language.
Do you know what those words are? Star Trek has the answer …
Captain's log, stardate 5843.7.
The Enterprise is in the grip of a raging epidemic. Three crewmen have died and twenty-three others have been struck down by Rigelian fever.
In order to combat the illness, Doctor McCoy needs large quantities of ryetalyn, which is the only known antidote for the fever.
Our sensors have picked up sufficient quantities of pure ryetalyn on a small planet in the Omega system. We are beaming down to secure this urgently needed material.
Immediately upon beaming down, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy meet a man named Flint, who welcomes them into his opulent home on the planet surface.
Noting the priceless – and previously unknown – works of art and music adorning Flint’s mansion, the three men are greatly impressed … but Spock is beginning to sense that may not be as it seems. How could an unknown painting by da Vinci – which Spock confirms is authentic – have been painted with CONTEMPORARY canvas and materials?
The secret will soon be revealed … but in the meantime, Flint introduces the men to his ward, Rayna Kapec, whom he says he took in following the death of her parents.
Rayna is young, brilliant, and beautiful, and of course, Kirk finds her irresistible. (What is it with Jim Kirk and alien women??)
In the course of securing the ryetalyn and synthesizing it for administration to the ailing Enterprise crew, Kirk, Spock, and Bones make two chilling discoveries: one, that Flint is of immense age – virtually immortal; and the other, that Rayna is not actually his ward … indeed, she is not even human. She is an android:
FLINT: Created here by my hand. Here, the centuries of loneliness were to end.
SPOCK: Your collection of Leonardo da Vinci masterpieces, Mister Flint, they appear to have been recently painted on contemporary canvas with contemporary materials. And on your piano, a waltz by Johannes Brahms, an unknown work in manuscript, written in modern ink. Yet absolutely authentic, as are your paintings.
FLINT: I am Brahms.
SPOCK: And da Vinci?
FLINT: Yes.
SPOCK: How many other names shall we call you?
FLINT: Solomon, Alexander, Lazarus, Methuselah, Merlin, Abramson. A hundred other names you do not know.
Flint explains that he was born on Earth over 6,000 years before, and soon discovered that through lifetime after lifetime, he simply could not die. So he has learned to conceal his secret, and he has used his vast wealth and centuries of acquired knowledge and skills to create, as Spock calls Rayna, “a perfect, ultimate woman, as brilliant, as immortal as yourself. Your mate for all time.”
Kirk, having by now fallen in love with Rayna, realizes that this is precisely what Flint had planned all along: to have Kirk use his charms to woo and romance Rayna, and somehow stir her android emotions to life, so that she would then turn to Flint in love.
But how will Flint rid himself of Kirk and the others? By imprisoning them, and the ship, in suspended animation, to be released
… in time. A thousand, two thousand years. You will know the future, Captain Kirk.
Unacceptable to Kirk, of course. As is Flint’s callous plan simply to use Kirk and then dispose of him. Kirk would have Rayna come with him, to join him on the Enterprise.
The men begin to fight. Rayna, who has come upon the scene and urged Flint not to imprison the crew, calls for them to cease fighting – and then, she utters the Two Words:
RAYNA: I cannot be the cause of this. I will not be the cause of this.
Please stop.
Stop!
I choose where I want to go, what I want to do.
I choose.
I choose.
FLINT: Rayna!
RAYNA: No. Do not order me. No one can order me!
KIRK: She's human. Down to the last blood cell, she's human. Down to the last thought, hope, aspiration, emotion, she's human. The human spirit is free. You have no power of ownership. She's free to do as she wishes.
Kirk begs Rayna to come with him; Flint begs her to stay. Her final words, uttered before she collapses, her circuitry overloaded by the conflicting data now coursing through it, are these:
I was not human.
Now I love. I love.
Lesson You Can Use:
… but did you catch the two words?
The two KEY words among Rayna’s final words?
I choose.
What separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom? What gives us the ability to rise above our circumstances, to overcome any obstacle, to control our own emotions and our own responses to any and all situations?
Your freedom, your right – indeed, your responsibility – to choose.
You can choose what career direction you take. You can choose how you respond to the angry email in your inbox or the road-raging driver in the next lane. You can choose – first thing in the morning – what kind of day you’re going to have.
And the moment you give up that choice, the moment you say “he made me upset” or “I couldn’t help it” or “what was I supposed to do?” – in that moment, you become disempowered. At the effect, rather than the cause, of your life.
You become less than fully human.
Never surrender your free will to the push and pull of circumstance. Never allow someone else to exercise control over your emotions. Never give in to the thought that “I can’t help it – that’s just the way I am.”
Stop. Take a breath. Realize that in every moment, the choice is yours, and yours alone.
Then … choose.