"I was simply a fool named Akharin, whom fortune favored with the ability to recover from my most fatal errors. Through some fluke of mutation, I was granted lifetimes to master the lessons that wiser men could master in only one."
- Flint, under the alias of Willem Abramson
Flint was the name of an immortal male Human who had lived across various periods in history.
Biography
Early life
The being known as Flint was an immortal who was born as Akharin in Mesopotamia on Earth in 3834 BC. As Akharin, Flint became a foot soldier and discovered that he could not die when he was wounded on the battlefield. After his discovery, Flint continued his life on Earth, taking numerous aliases over the years, often playing a vital role in Human history.
Among his many identities were King Solomon, Methuselah, Lazarus, Alexander the Great, Merlin, Leonardo da Vinci and Johannes Brahms. Flint also witnessed numerous historical events, such as the Black Death in the 14th century, and often met other individuals who had a huge impact on the world, such as Moses, Socrates, and Galileo Galilei. Flint also had many wives and children, all of whom he outlived.
During his long life, he acquired many items such as a Gutenberg Bible, a first folio of William Shakespeare's plays and a painting by Reginald Pollock. It is possible that he lived as one or more of these men. (TOS episode: "Requiem for Methuselah")
Meeting with Q
Early on in his life, in the Paleolithic Era, tens of thousands of years ago, Akharin had been known as Vandar Adg. His body gained immortality when charged with strange energy from a meteorite. It was at this time he met Q and tricked him, causing Q to be compelled to follow Vandar's commands on the basis of a wager that Q had made and was obliged to keep. This reality saw Vandar become quite powerful, using his ability to give Q orders to expand an empire, the Imperial Planets. Vandar's mad reign was not ended until the 23rd century, when a group of displaced time travellers from a future alternate reality, the Legion of Super-Heroes, were stranded in Vandar's reality. Also trapped was a landing party from the USS Enterprise, in the primary universe.
When Spock and Brainiac 5 journeyed to that Earth's past, they found the newly-imprisoned Q, who had been ordered not to take orders "from anyone living on Earth". Spock and Brainiac correctly surmised that they could try giving him an order, to free himself. The plan worked, as Q was not prevented from taking the order—Spock and Brainiac, being from the future, were not technically living on Earth, nor had they been born yet. Q's escape ensured that the alternate reality was never created. In the primary version of history, Vandar became Akharin and found himself to be immortal. In the Legion's reality, however, Vandar remained a villain, taking on the name "Vandal Savage".
Q would return to visit Flint in the 23rd century, on Holberg 917G, to ask the immortal about the experience of once having captured an omnipotent being and how the once bloodthirsty conqueror was a now a man of peace while educating him on the multiverse. (TOS - Legion of Super-Heroes comics: "Issue 1", "Issue 4", "Issue 5", "Issue 6")
- Q's visit to Earth's ancient history took place numerous thousands of years before Akharin's birth in Mesopotamia. It is possible that Flint was mistaken or no longer remembered that era, or it could be that the interaction with Q displaced the young Flint in time for some other purpose or that Flint's changed history was a result of the distortion in reality between the primary universe and the Legion's reality. Flint's final discussion with Q also leaves open the possibility that he was speaking metaphorically to Kirk when he said he was born in 3834 BC, his "birth" referring to when he turned away from conquest.
Flint the Immortal
In the 1980s, Flint went by the name Wilson Evergreen and was working as a scientist at the top secret Da Vinci Research Base in Antarctica on a project that would close a hole in Earth's ozone layer. Gary Seven discovered this research and managed to convince Flint not to continue the research as it could be used as a horrible military weapon. During this encounter Seven discovered Flint's immortality when a young Khan Noonien Singh stabbed him through the heart and Flint returned to life after a few moments. (TOS novel: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume 1)
Later, during the 21st century, Flint took parts from Gary Seven's Beta 5 computer after Seven had left, which Flint used to build Flint's personal computer, Rayna. Rayna assisted Flint in his operations and his personal life, keeping a constant stream of new identities ready for Flint to use as needed.
During the mid-21st century, Flint was using the alias Lewis Bixby and living in New York City when it was attacked by nuclear weapons at the beginning of World War III. As Bixby would have died in the blast, Flint changed his name to Jerome Drexler and then deployed weather satellites to help cleanse Earth's atmosphere. Several years later, Flint had weapons grade ebola virus dropped onto Phillip Green's headquarters, killing Green. This was done to ensure that Zefram Cochrane and his team could escape from forced slavery at Green's hands. Later, Flint and Christopher Brynner were witnesses to the Vulcan landing at Bozeman, Montana. (ST short story: "The Immortality Blues")
William Abramson
In the 23rd century, Flint became William E. Abramson, a famous physicist who developed the transtator. (TOS episode & Star Trek 5 novelization: Requiem for Methuselah, FASA RPG modules: The Federation, The Four Years War)
- ST reference: Spaceflight Chronology called him Edward Abramson, while FASA RPG module: Where Has All the Glory Gone? called him Willem Abramson.
In the 2230s, Abramson was so well known that Federation Ambassador Emanuel Tagore made a joke about subtleties of klingonaase being lost "across an Abramson junction". (TOS - Worlds Apart novel: The Final Reflection)
Abramson's legacy included sharing the 2243 Nobel Prize with Richard Daystrom for the computer theory behind duotronics. (FASA RPG module: The Federation, ST reference: Star Trek Chronology, TOS episode & Star Trek 9 novelization: The Ultimate Computer)
Additionally, the Roykirk/Abramson Perimeter Effect was co-named for him. (FASA RPG module: Where Has All the Glory Gone?)
Micah Brack
He continued to live by the year 2239 when he used his identity as the interstellar financier Micah Brack to buy the planet Holberg 917G in the Omega system. As the world was uninhabited, Flint took careful steps to ensure it remained that way while he created a home there in order to live a reclusive existence. During that time, he managed to engineer a number of female androids in his quest for an undying love partner; each of which held the name Rayna, which culminated in Rayna 17 who was not allowed to know of her failed predecessors.
Flint's existence remained secret until 2269 when he was discovered by the United Federation of Planets vessel USS Enterprise which orbited his world in order to take the planet's ryetalyn ore for use as an antitoxin for Rigelian fever which had infected the entire crew. While they were on Holberg 917G, they encountered Flint who had introduced himself after he stopped his M-4 robot from killing the landing party. Taking them to his home, Flint sought to jump start Rayna 17's emotions by allowing her to interact with these visitors. She fell in love with Captain James T. Kirk but was unable to transfer this emotion back to her disappointed maker. Being forced to choose between these suitors, Rayna 17 ceased to function to the horror of Flint.
During this time, science officer Spock deducted that Flint had lived for a long time at which point he revealed his immortality. However, Doctor Leonard McCoy discovered that Flint was actually dying as he had previously been sustained by the complex fields on Earth and thus by relocating to his new home he had sacrificed his immortality. Flint stated that he would devote the rest of his new natural life to the improvement of the Human condition. (TOS episode: "Requiem for Methuselah")
Emil Vaslovik
Though McCoy believed that Flint was dying, he had actually misled the doctor. The discovery of his identity by Kirk and his comrades had not been the first time his existence was learnt of, but was the first time in several centuries. Normally, he prepared a new identity to adopt in such conditions but this time the groundwork of this new persona was not fully developed. He quickly decided to adopt the name Emil Vaslovik in an effort to atone for past mistakes, namely the mistakes he had made with Rayna. This was because he believed he had wronged her and instead of giving her life, he simply wanted to shape her for his own purposes. Thus, he had lost a truly wondrous thing which was a soul in his creation and it was this thought that shaped the heart of Flint's new existence as Emil Vaslovik who sought to impart this sense of responsibility on others.
- "Emil Vaslovik" was also the name of the scientist who created the android Questor, from Gene Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes.
This persona was active by the early part of the 24th century when he had met similar cyberneticists who sought to study the field of artificial intelligence. These included Noonien Soong and Ira Graves with whom he worked closely. Such individuals shared Emil's concerns on the ethical treatment of AI and it was this fact that led him to acquire their aid in the recovery of various artifacts which were the "bodies" of numerous machine intelligences. In 2307, he accompanied the two on an expedition to the planet Exo III in order to learn more of the rumored technology that produced artificial life in order to save the artifacts present on the world. However, their trip to Exo III instead woke a large number of androids that had been in stasis and sought to kill the trio of trespassers. Vaslovik, Graves and Soong, however, managed to escape though were unaware of the intentions of the androids having believed them to have returned to their slumber.
Later, by 2374, during the Dominion War, Vaslovik joined a Starfleet research program into Holotronic brains for a new type of android where he worked with Bruce Maddox and Reginald Barclay. However, Vaslovik's aim was simply to infiltrate the program, steal the prototype android and purge all records of the project. He was successful in this and managed to hide the prototype android as a Starfleet Lieutenant that went under the name of Rhea McAdams. Emil was not aware of the fact that the androids of Exo III were secretly working to acquire the android and use its technology to fix a flaw in their design. This chain of events led Rhea McAdams to take Data to a cloaked space station which was the home of Flint, where the android instantly deduced his identity. He worked with the crew of the USS Enterprise-E in combating the android threat and helped plan the use of a nanite colony which assimilated the rogue Exo III androids. During the crisis, Emil escaped to parts unknown though he later reactivated Juliana Tainer and introduced himself as Akharin. (TNG novel: Immortal Coil)
Appendices
Appearances
- Star Trek: The Original Series
- Federation (as Micah Brack, 2060s)
- "Requiem for Methuselah"
- The Cry of the Onlies
- The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume 1 (as Wilson Evergreen)
- Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Immortal Coil (as Emil Vaslovik)
- The Persistence of Memory (As Emil Vaslovik)
- The Body Electric (as Akharin)
- Star Trek: Enterprise
- Uncertain Logic (as Willem Paul Abramson)
- Live by the Code (as Willem Abramson)
- Strange New Worlds 9
- The Immortality Blues (as Lewis Bixby and Jerome Drexel)
External link
- Flint article at Memory Alpha, the wiki for canon Star Trek.