I'm the type of husband that went out of style by the second fifth of the 21st century – in an age in which men were more worried about getting divorced than getting married, I would have been out of step and called all sorts of things.
But that's the thing about being a Kirk. We love being out of step. That's how you get ahead, after all.
My personal problem is that I can't see anything that anybody might give their wife that I don't think my wife should have that or better, and that I was that way long before my business took me to the point that I should have been thinking that way.
It took me 18 years to pay off the Gem of the Galaxies collection.
What you have to understand is that I married at 24, six years into starting Kirk and Dixon Shipping, still 12 years away from co-founding Kirk, Dixon, and Oahuapedal Solutions.
I married a woman who LOOKED 35, already an older woman, but half African American, one quarter hardy European American stock like myself, and one-quarter Vulcan.
In other words, Admiral Vlarian Triefield hardly ages, at least not externally. She was 55 the day I met her.
She showed me the door, kindly – she told me she was too old for me.
You think that I, Marcus Aurelius Kirk Jr., was smart enough to walk away, even with the name of a very smart man to balance out all that Kirk at the end?
Of course not. That just wouldn't be the Kirkish thing to do. I had made up my mind when I met her; she was going to be mine and that was that. The way she responded to our first kiss before she closed her door on me: I knew that door wasn't locked on her heart, and I was going to get in there or die trying.
Never mind all the commodores, captains, admirals, big-time businessmen, dignitaries, and rulers whose mouths were watering about the ageless wonder woman who was and is among the most powerful people in the galaxy. I played all my Kirk cards in the next week – forget a trump card, because we Kirks are some jokers about a woman.
I won. Mrs. V.T. Kirk became mine.
And then I realized: the rivals weren't going away, and they were still out there, mad as they could be, and scheming.
The following ten years of folly were really all in my head, since it hadn't settled in yet what my wife was always telling me: “If I wanted somebody else, there's no one I couldn't have married by now. I want you, Mark.”
Which brings us back to the Gem of the Galaxies collection.
The above is a jewelry box, the top being a 50-carat black diamond with inclusions of the native stone – very similar to Earth's spangled lapis lazuli – within it. The stone was left in its native rock with the top cut and polished, and the rest of the box was fashioned out of the native rock with some smaller black diamonds all the way around it.
Black diamonds are not that expensive, in general. They are literally just one crystalline step from being a lump of coal. But because of the way the inclusions in the Gem of the Galaxies look like a window into deep space, and because of the workmanship, the box alone commanded a high price.
And then, we've got to look into the box. Necklace 1, still black diamond, but, the workmanship!
And, if that were not enough, Necklace 2!
I learned this collection was coming out when I had been married all of three months.
In those days, the REVENUE – not the PROFIT but the REVENUE of my company, all that it brought in all year – was not even double my wife's yearly income from being a full fleet admiral, teaching at the Academy, and book sales. V.T. was already a wealthy woman when I met her. She could have put in an early bid on the Gem of the Galaxies collection, but the world of gem-jellies in space was occupying her attention that year, and, as much as she loves jewelry, she missed the early window.
She missed it. I didn't.
I played every Kirk card I had, showing up as Captain Kirk to put in that early bid.
Cousin J.T. called me, enraged: “Kid cousin, if you think, with my salary, that I'm going to help you pay that off –!”
“J.T., I would never. I got this, cousin.”
“M.A., you have lost your mind over this woman! Love them, but don't go broke!”
Of course, Cousin J.T. has never married, and is not broke. I'm still married, and am not broke. Different Kirks, different paths to not being broke!
Anyway, certain people were not happy that I managed to jump the line as the “wrong” Captain Kirk, but I made my initial payment to be there. Certain people looked for me to be outbid when things got real, and got even angrier when I outbid them AND worked out a payment plan I could handle.
To my mind there was no way that the author of The Galaxy as a Collection of Stellar Gems, a book that opened up space exploration as something generations of young girls could also relate to in their understanding of beauty, should not possess the Gem of the Galaxies collection for her 74th birthday, just ahead the 40th anniversary of her groundbreaking book's publication.
I raised my family and gave them every material need and happiness that I could for 18 years, and enjoyed life with them, and passed marriage anniversary 19 without letting on what was coming.
The men I grew up with grew into middle age, made their money, spent it largely on themselves, and made fun of me.
That stopped in year 19 of my marriage, when my wife appeared on the 40th anniversary back cover of her book holding the Gem of the Galaxies box and comparing it to the view of the galaxy through a starship viewscreen.
Cousin J.T. called me.
“Well, cousin, you told me you had it, and I don't see where I had to invest a penny to help you,” he said. “You're certainly not broke, either, and my fellow admiral is glowing so brightly on her book cover that your family is going to get your money back in about two weeks. That's some good investment, Mark. Well done.”
I was 43 years old, and to the galaxy, I had arrived.
Yet to me, the tears of my wife's emotion – for she knew I had to have been paying on the thing since we were married – were the most beautiful gems of all, sparkling on her gold-olive face.
“Mark, you didn't have to do this,” she said.
“That's the beauty of it!” I said. “You didn't have to pass over the type of man who could buy that outright, either! You did it! That's the beauty of it!”
My wife had collected a lot of jewelry before I met her, but she had slowed down since becoming a full fleet admiral and also since taking on the responsibilities of wife and mother. It meant a lot to her that I had certainly kept up, and she made the Gem of the Galaxies the centerpiece of her entire collection.
“Here's what I worry about,” she kidded me later. “What are you also buying behind the scenes on long-term layaway?”
“You'll know for our 20th anniversary, V.T.,” I said.
“You Kirk, you!” she cried, and broke out laughing.
“Well,” I said, “you can't just be an average guy and pick up and hold on to a whole full fleet admiral. You kinda have to be a Kirk to pull all that off.”
“Darn straight!” she cried, and kept laughing.
That was worth 18 years of payments right there.
I didn't even tell her what else I was paying off at the moment. The Gem of the Galaxies I timed for her 40th book anniversary. Other things were just random things … because like I said, if anybody could have anything, I thought my wife should.
Meanwhile, my darling wife made the equivalent of the money for the Gem of the Galaxies collection on the 40th anniversary of her book in one week, and handed all of that to me.
“That's for 18 years of things you didn't buy for yourself, Mark,” she said.
“Thank you, my dear,” I said. “That'll help me pay down some other things!”
“I figured you would do that, but, you know, maybe you might buy yourself something too.”
“V.T., I already have everything.”
“You're a silly man, Mark,” she said as she snuggled up to me, “but if you're happy, I'm happy.”
And in her happiness, I had everything – love, home, family, inspiration to be an even better businessman, year after year, to the point that I could now do whatever I wanted for her and our children, at just 43 years old. I had everything.
A couple of good layaway plans and some Kirk cards never hurt either!
These are further variations on the fractal in Apophysis 2.09 that gave us the deadly flowers of two days ago -- one of those ended up being gem-like, so I went down that path as well and got these beautiful alien gems!