The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [31]
He turned toward Nog. “Okay, this is weird. Not alternate universe weird, but it’s not adding up right.”
Nog nodded, his mouth full after taking a hefty gulp of his wine. Swallowing, he said, “I knew you’d be intrigued.”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t know if I’m intrigued, or just plain troubled.”
“Well, it’s not the first time hew-mon history has gotten distorted,” Nog said. “Look at Zefram Cochrane. He’s still hailed as a great hero at the Academy, even though Troi’s memoir describes him as more of a scared, drunken genius than the larger-than-life figure everybody thinks they know.”
“Yeah, but this is more than that,” Jake said, reaching for his glass. “Cochrane’s personality was one thing; we’re seeing whole sequences of history that are different from the version that just about everybody accepts.”
Jake’s stomach gurgled suddenly, and he realized that he hadn’t eaten yet. Rena often joked that if she wasn’t around, he’d starve to death and be eaten by the cat before anyone found him. “Excuse my rumbling,” he said. “I’m going to fix myself a sandwich. Do you want anything to eat?”
“What local delicacy would be good with a pinot noir?” Nog thought for a moment, then grinned. “Do you have any fresh nutria?”
Jake blanched. “Ugh! Not unless you want to go out in the bayou and try to catch them. I can replicate you some, if you really have your heart set on it.”
“Won’t taste quite the same as the wild version, but I suppose it’ll have to do,” Nog said, his shoulders drooping in mock resignation.
Jake stood up and began walking toward the kitchen, rolling his shoulder to try to work a kink out of it. “You know, Nietzsche said, ‘History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if a significant amount of what we think we know to be true in our own histories could be represented completely differently two hundred years from now.”
He unwrapped a loaf of bread and sliced two pieces from it with a serrated knife from a wooden rack on the kitchen’s tidy counter. “I remember Dad once telling me about the American presidents, pre-World War III. He said that history always told people that George Washington was the father of the United States, and that he had been the first president of this country. But there were actually over a dozen men that preceded him, although their powers were different and they were called ‘President of the United States in Congress Assembled.”’
Nog had followed Jake to the kitchen. “You hewmons and your territorialism. You think the history of the Grand Naguses is any different?” He smiled widely. “You should hear some of the ‘facts’ about even recent history I’ve been told during my visits to Ferenginar. Some of what’s being taught to my younger brother and sisters about Rom sounds almost like a fairy tale.”
“Well, you have your world, I have mine,” Jake said, slicing some salami he’d pulled from the refrigeration unit. “I knew that World War III had pretty much caused havoc with files and data back in the twenty-first century, but I don’t think- I didn’t think that Earth’s history could have gotten so messed up since then.”
Nog picked up the salami log and sniffed at it, then wrinkled his nose as if in disgust. “This smells awful.” He took another sniff. “Why don’t you go ahead and make me a sandwich from it as well?”
Jake snorted a laugh and reached for the loaf of bread. “So, history is being rewritten all over the place, and this is no different, is that what we’re saying?”
Nog put his hands up, protesting. “Not me. I think there’s something more to this.”
“Okay, so returning to the mystery at hand, the accepted holoprogram of 2161 says that Shran was a military hero who disgraced himself in private business and had to fake his own death,” Jake said as he continued cutting the sandwich fixings. “And that he had a five-year-old daughter with Jhamel, whom he had met in 2154,