Published Nov 25, 2004
I am on the starship Enterprise, from the Next Generation TV show (a fine show, even if certain people think it’s boring). We find a spaceship (is it an alternative Enterprise? I’m not sure) stuck in between two dimensions, partially in ours and partially in another. This ship moves close to us to transfer its crew over; “it must be so horrible to be trapped between dimensions, they’ll try anything,” says Captain Picard.
Their ship touches ours, at the bottom of our saucer section, then winks out of existence. Picard and I ride the turbolift down to see who we’ve taken on board. At the bottom of the turbolift shaft, the door doesn’t open; I am about to force it when Picard pushes on the door; it flexes in and out like the safety button in the middle of a juice bottle’s cap. The area outside is depressurized; the bottom two levels of the saucer section were opened to space when the other ship disappeared. If I had opened the turbolift door, Picard and I would have been killed.
After a few anxious moments, the turbolift takes us back up to the bottom “living” level. I comment how awful it would have been to get stuck down at the bottom floor; Picard agrees.
Now the day is over, so I leave the turbolift and go to sleep on my bunk, a hospital gurney in the middle of the deck, which is open from one end of the ship to the other. Nobody is there. I turn out the lights. In the middle of the night I wake up with the feeling somebody is watching me. Nobody is there, but there’s a tricorder on the floor, its screen glowing in the darkness.
Are the people from the other ship really gone? Am I really alone?