Last Stop Windsor

Posted on Sat Feb 12th, 2022 @ 12:51am by Captain Natacha Patani

Mission: MISSION 0 - History Speaks
Location: Quarters, Natacha Patani
580 words - 1.2 OF Standard Post Measure

The legendary Montgomery Scott was once said to have thanked his commanding officer for using confinement to quarters as a method of punishment. When given the punishment, Lieutenant Commander Scott was said to have replied "Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! That'll give me a chance to catch up on my technical journals!"

Natacha was using her confinement to quarters to get caught up on her own personal projects. One of those projects was writing a holonovel adventure based on the life of an ancestor of hers, Khair un-Nissa Kirkpatrick.

Khair Kirkpatrick was born on the Indian subcontinent sometime in the early nineteenth century, and at some point in her early twenties (or possibly late teens, the details Natacha had recovered from her research were quite fuzzy), Khair had married a British officer named Alexander Kirkpatrick, and then converted to Christianity. Or Khair might have first converted to Christianity, then gotten married. Again, the historical data that Natacha was working with was fuzzy at best.

There was quite a lot of information that had to be gone through. For instance, Natacha wasn't quite sure if Alexander Kirkpatrick had been an officer for the army of the British nation state, or for the commercial venture the British had on the Indian subcontinent. She did know that when Alexander Kirkpatrick returned to England, he had to pay a servant's deposit on Khair in order to bring his wife with him.

At some point Alexander Kirkpatrick had then migrated to a small town in North America called Windsor (located on the south bank of the Detroit River) to assume a governmental position. By this time Khair had begun using the name Karen.

This was the point of time where Natacha wanted to write her holonovel adventure. Centuries earlier, Europeans had begun a slave trade of darker skinned individuals to North America, a practice that European colonists and their descendants had continued to the time period that Alexander and Karen Kirkpatrick had arrived in Windsor. Not too long after the Kirkpatricks arrived in Windsor, they became involved in something called the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a system by which, through covert means and methods, escaped slaves were moved from the areas of North America where slavery was legal, to those areas where it was illegal.

Again, the historical details of the Kirkpatricks' involvement in the Underground Railroad was fuzzy, but Natacha's imagination tried to fill in the gaps. There would be danger and intrigue, of course, but there would also be romance. Romance was something Natacha liked to especially speculate on. Growing up on Randeer Three wasn't conducive to the more sentimental emotions.

Whatever their involvement, Alexander and Karen Kirkpatrick would go on to have a long marriage and a large family. One of their great, great, great grandchildren would return to the Indian subcontinent for an economic opportunity, and one of their descendants would be an original colonists to Randeer Three.

For now, the ideas of the roles someone could assume in the holonovel adventure were nebulous. Natacha herself wanted to "play" Karen Kirkpatrick, but she could see someone wanting to play Alexander Kirkpatrick or an escaped slave. But there was so much historical data she had to learn.

Natacha pulled up on her PADD the long list of history books the computer had suggested. The first unread one on her list was "The Road to Freedom" by Catherine Clinton. Natacha downloaded the book , got settled on her bunk and began reading.