Only on this planet do the myriad pulse-flows of time and space merge. Only here do the flux lines of Forever meet. Only here on this empty corpse of a world is there a gateway to the past, where the time vortex created by the Ancients can work. Only here. And we were set to watch the time vortex, so many hundreds of centuries ago that even we do not have clear memories of it.

The Guardians explain that they are almost immortal, that they have been guarding “the time vortex” for so many eons, that Kirk and his party are the first visitors they have had since two hundred thousand years before dinosaurs walked the Earth.

Spock inquires if they have seen another Earthman, and the Guardians say no. Yet as we INTERCUT to a rocky niche nearby, we see the hunted Beckwith, listening to every word being said. He looks around him, trying to find a way to escape, but it is a cul-de-sac. The only way out is past Kirk and the Enterprise patrol—and the Guardians. The look of desperation grows on his face, but it is mixed with a viciousness that tells us Beckwith is far from finished.

Kirk expresses astonishment at the concept of a “time vortex,” that he had always thought it was the fable of lab technicians when they had had too much pure grain to drink. The Guardians nod their heads in the direction of a shimmering pillar of light, set between the gray-silver rocks. The time vortex. Built on lines of creation that mortal Man will not discover for a hundred hundred times the span of years he has been in existence. Created out of pure matter, and harnessed to this world where the passage of time and space meet just so. The pillar of light rises up and disappears. Into that fire of forever lies the passage to the past.

Kirk asks the Guardians if they would consider it an imposition to tell him more about the time vortex. They smile a little wearily, and say they would be pleasured to do so. “We want to know,” Kirk says gently, and they answer: We have nothing to do but desire to show you. Uncounted millennia they have stood here, silent, and to exercise their craft is their delight.

They explain how the time vortex works, and then they offer to show Kirk the past. He asks if they can show him the past of any world, and they say yes.

Kirk asks to see the past of Old Earth.