Chapter 7
"I stand before you a white, middle-aged man. I am a divorcee and I'm also engaged to be married, to a woman, within the next year. We hope.
I have two children to my previous wife. And our marriage of more than twenty years broke down due to lack of communication. Unrealistic expectations. And the gradual dissipation of our romantic love.
No matter what happened between my ex-wife and myself, our children were always kept separate. Because children should never be used as weapons.
No matter if your heart, or your pride, is broken, our children are innocent and must remain innocent.
In my country, as in many others, child abduction is a criminal offence.
And I am appalled to learn that it is not treated as such here.
Or perhaps, this is a special case.
As so many right-wing commentators, lawmakers and law enforcers have suggested, "Homosexuality is a crime for which the 'innocent' must be saved"…
But Jack Ryan wasn't saving his son from an evil, criminal mother. He was saving his pride from the wound of adultery.
By kidnapping Alex, Jack Ryan tore open a mother's heart. And by this court ruling in favour of such a selfish father, by granting permission for Mr Ryan to live permanently with his and Jeri's son outside of the state of California, a very great injustice has stained the reputation of US family law.
Our patriarchal society has historically treated women as second-class citizens, and so a lesbian woman would have no chance at being treated with anything resembling fairness, acceptance, or even with dignity.
Jeri, if you are watching this broadcast, please, please come home..."
Patrick Stewart stood pale-faced and anxious in front of the television camera.
Like so many others, he was very fond of the young actress and had had many pleasant and insightful conversations with her.
Pausing for a long moment, he continued "... Your friends and your family miss you. Your son still needs to you.
You are not alone. We can fight this together…
Please come home, Jeri…"
//
On July 31st 1998 actress Jeri Ryan disappeared.
Due for an emergency therapy session that evening, her therapist reported to police that the vulnerable young actress did not attend.
Twelve hours later and nobody had seen or heard from Jeri and the Los Angeles police department declared her officially as a missing person.
Having expected a call from Jeri the late evening following her therapy session and not receiving it, Kate instead received a phone call from the therapist inquiring if she knew of Jeri's location and condition.
Blind panic and many frantic phone calls later, Kate was left reeling from the reality that nobody knew where Jeri was.
No one had seen or heard from her all day and attending her colleagues house, Roxann Dawson held the older actress firmly in her arms as Kate's imagination took her to places she could not escape, as without answers to Jeri's location or to Jeri's fate, Kate and many others had quickly began to think the worst.
Inevitably catching wind of the alarming new situation with 'troubled actress' Jeri Ryan, the insatiable media lead Los Angeles and later the whole United States into a state of high alert, never ceasing in commentary, backstory, analysis and updates surrounding the developing situation of the missing actress.
Disoriented and despairing, Kate Mukgrew was joined by Roxann and many other friends and colleagues as they searched the city and coast of Los Angeles and beyond for Jeri.
Out of respect and to highlight breaking news of the disappearance of actress Jeri Ryan, Star Trek TNG star and LGA ally Patrick Stewart, along with a selection of Voyager stars and other celebrities, recorded messages broadcast in a plea for the safe return of the young actress.
These recordings were played on a wide selection of networks and on different news channels.
Voyager episodes were temporarily cancelled by UPN to be replaced by messages of concern and appeal by Jeri's colleagues and friends.
Weeks earlier...
Two days after the disappearance of Jack Ryan and Alex Ryan, Mr Ryan had finally made the decision to inform his lawyer and the police of the location and condition of himself and his son.
Safe and out of the state of California, he explained to the authorities that it had been his intention to permanently save his son from exposure to the degeneracy of his perverted mother, and her equally perverted female lover.
A whirlwind lawsuit and sympathetic conservative judge and jury later decided that Mr Ryan was quite justified and correct in his actions.
The mother who had publicly wept and pleaded for the return of her young son was beyond despair.
The media swarm which pursued the frantic and tormented young actress from Kate's home, to the offices of her lawyers, to the court room, and back to Kate's home were ferocious and unrelenting.
Entirely unconcerned for the human story behind the news story they were reporting, men, and some women, with cameras and notebooks and microphones narrated the tale of 'homosexual adulterer' Jeri Ryan's life upheaval.
Increasing her distress to the point of her breakdown, media commentators had upon all networks and outlets judged, "Jeri Ryan would rather attend gay parties on the beach than fight for custody of her young son… Jeri Ryan is an adulterer who isn't fit to be a mother as well… Homosexuals should not raise children... Jeri Ryan is an actress in the public domain and we have the right to expose her actions and report on her life… "
//
She had lived and she had lost.
The battle was fought and lost.
Without her son she did not want to go on.
With only his father, her son would grow up to become his father. And that was her fault.
Her connection to her child was lost and she would never be able to retrieve it.
She still had Kate and she had romance. But these things meant nothing without the presence of her child as well.
Kate fulfilled her every intimate wish. And she was kind and caring and a good mother.
Jeri had thought she too was a good mother.
Now she was only a lover, and a failed mother.
And that was unacceptable.
She owed Alex more than life with an absentee, adulterous and selfish mother.
It would be better if he had no mother.
She stepped into the water.
Alex would have a home with his father and there would be no endless "media circus".
She stepped deeper.
There was no other way forward.
She had failed at this life and she had failed her son.
Water crept over her waist and dragged down her clothes.
She took two last steps and immediately began a heavy breaststroke.
She hated herself for the legacy she had left. For having misjudged the loyalty of a friend who had subsequently exposed her affair.
For having the affair in the first place and with Kate, another woman.
The world was still not ready for such events.
She hoped her son would not make the same mistake and gamble his own life and family in pursuit of doomed desire.
She swam, and she swam, and she struggled.
Tears mixed with sea and she spluttered.
She would return home. Back to the universe which had created her, and which could uncreate her.
She did not deserve to live.
The sun soon set and so did she.
The waves churned briefly and the dawning stars twinkled.
//
On the concluding night of the Ryan vs Ryan case, Kate and Jeri had stood at opposite ends of Kate's large kitchen.
The bright young woman who joined the cast of the popular television show was now haggard, harried, and so deprived of sleep that the shadows under her eyes had become permanent.
Kate watched in fright as Jeri's body trembled, her clothes crumpled and loosely fitting her now underweight frame.
Her blonde hair was tangled and tied back. Her skin was ghostly pale, and the turquoise of her eyes showed only a dying luminesce.
Jeri's thin fingers gripped the hem of her T-shirt and her weak legs displayed the bruises she had attained after fainting and falling down several stone steps following the court's ruling.
She had stared at Kate with the look of a woman whose life had long since finished.
Her eyes were raw from her tears. It had been distress such as Kate had never witnessed.
Labouring to try and remain strong for them both, Kate had insisted they would take Jeri's case to a Court of Appeal, but something had broken inside the younger woman.
She was no longer the confident, resilient younger actress who had confronted her in her trailer only several months ago and demanded respect.
Her heart had been wrenched from her body and her life, her strength, had left her.
Still she stared at Kate, as if the older woman would be able to provide an answer.
Neither woman held any hope for an overruling of the court's decision.
It was over.
Jeri would only be allowed infrequent, short and supervised visits with her son. And for these she would have to now fly to Missouri, or else relocate there, as her estranged husband had set up a new, permanent home in the town of Springfield for him, his son, and his new girlfriend, whom he claimed he had met during the court trial for custody of his son.
As a four-year-old boy, Alex Ryan was now at the full mercy and influence of his father's opinions and life lessons. And a woman who was a stranger to the child would be there in place of the child's own mother.
Jack had promised the judge he would be raising his son to 'fear God' as well as reject any and all 'evil influences' in the young child's life.
Jack Ryan, the judge and jury had all ruled that Jeri Ryan was such an influence.
And in deciding to kiss Kate that fateful day, in her heart Jeri had agreed that her pursuit of a same-sex extramarital affair meant she was certainly a bad influence upon her son.
She had been reckless and this was all her fault. The idea that she had been unfairly discriminated against was one she could not accept.
She had desired Kate and she had loved her. And now she had paid the price for that love.
But it was a price she couldn't bear. And as devastated as Kate was at the situation before her, the older woman wouldn't be able to help Jeri shoulder it.
The last words Jeri would find to speak to Kate had been…
"… Thank you for all you have done. And for everything."
That same evening she would leave for a therapy session she would never attend...
Three days later and Jeri's disappearance was not being treated as suspicious. The police were treating it as a suicide and had began to search the Los Angeles coast.
"Jeri Ryan is a victim of a sexist and homophobic regime to which this country's justice system has indulged in for far too many years…"
Majel Roddenberry's steady and commanding voice soared above the ten thousand strong crowd of Los Angeleans and visitors to Los Angeles as a humongous mass of LGBT and women's rights protesters filled the roads and streets surrounding the LA courthouse which had denied Jeri any rights over her child.
"We won't be waiting until the twenty-third or twenty-fourth century for gay rights and women's rights. Or for African-American or any oppressed peoples rights..." The crowd cheered and screamed with anger and approval. Hundreds of rainbow flags waved like flames among the waving fists and banners.
Mobilisation in such numbers had not been seen on the streets of Los Angeles in many years, and one face among the protestors shined unusually bright.
With the eyes and mouth of the famous female starship captain, but with a mass of thick brown hair and freckles as distinct as tiny pale orange petals, Kate lookalike daughter Danielle stood elbow to elbow with LGA members including Nicholls, Stewart and Roddenberry, as well as many other Star Trek actors and others including X-Files' Gillian Anderson, at the forefront of the gates of the courtroom demanding "Justice for Jeri" and pleading "Jeri come home".
Having immediately made the trip from Iowa with her boyfriend to meet her birth mother, Danielle and many of her friends had subsequently joined protesters and fans in the search for the young actress and in demand for change and justice for gay parents.
Upon meeting Kate she could only support and console the terrified actress who had given her away at birth.
With Jeri missing but her family finally reunited, her three children by her side, Kate's life was simultaneously collapsing and reforming at the same time.
With the exception of Robert Beltran, all Kate's fellow Voyager cast members and many members of the studio's crew were actively involved in protests and in the search for their colleague and friend.
Star Trek Voyager filming was suspended.
Paramount Pictures had made a statement expressing their concern for the young actress' whereabouts and offering their thoughts and prayers for her safe return.
On every corner of the media, on every newspaper and on every news channel, Jeri Ryan's face was front and centre and her name was the most well-known in all of the United States and more widely across the global entertainment world...
"Young, gay, actress and mother JERI RYAN suspected dead by suicide off the coast of Los Angeles"
//
The rawness of grief consumed Kate like vinegar being poured down her open mouth.
Eyes bleeding tears and a body shaking with despair and disbelief, anger and insomnia, the once leading lady of a science fiction smash hit had been reduced to a widow weeping into the dry sand of the Pacific wilderness.
Members of the LA coast guard and the police were placed evenly across the miles long coastline.
Boats carrying divers searched the crystal blue sea, but with several days past her disappearance, her body could may long since had been carried out to open sea.
Kate grieved the life she believed her own selfishness had taken.
She knew that a relationship with another woman was a forbidden fruit. The sweetest and the deadliest.
Twentieth century America simply was not ready to deal with female love or empowerment.
Jeri's love for her child and her grief at feeling she had lost him forever had driven her to the edge and over with desperation and distress.
Kate had consented for them both to gamble their lives for a relationship, and it had ended the way she denied it ever would, but suspected it still might.
They had taken a chance and now Jeri was dead.
She had loved the younger woman in a way she has not loved any other partner.
Jeri was intelligent, resilient, kind, and beyond beautiful.
But her nerve had snapped.
Her soul had broken.
And even at that moment there were press photographers lining the edges of the coastline.
They documented the conclusion of the lesbian love affair which had provided their salaries and more these past few months.
Photographs of Kate in her distress, by the side of the miles wet grave of her same-sex sweetheart would the next day be published by every major news outlet in America.
'A cruel end to a short affair', or 'The only end for sin and sodomy'...
... ... ...
---
"Four of Twelve Primary Adjunct of Trimatrix One Five has a regeneration fault.
Locate the error and increase the force field around her chamber.
The drone must not be permitted to leave the confines of her chamber.
The drone must not be deactivated.
If the drone does escape her confines, accompany her to my chamber.
If the drone begins to exhibit any behaviour of her former individual self, deactivate her immediately. Dismember her and bring her components to me."