Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×16

Writ­ten by: Michael Dismuke

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 30^th August 2026

Guest Stars:

• Lieu­ten­ant (juni­or grade) Qin Ruogang: Valik’s assist­ant in engineering.
• Chief Glo­freth jav Nuss: the ship’s quartermaster.
• The Entity: Mys­ter­i­ous non-cor­por­eal entity.

Com­mand­er Hop­era was of the opin­ion that, des­pite care­ful arrange­ments to ensure there would be no prob­lem, a pro­por­tion of the crew would fail to report for duty the day after the stard­ate rollover party. What none of us expec­ted was that many of those would dis­ap­pear from the ship entirely.

It appears that someone… or some­thing… is sys­tem­at­ic­ally remov­ing mem­bers of my crew, for reas­ons unknown. It began with the tele­paths, but we’re now los­ing oth­ers, and our food stocks appear to be depleted as well. Jin and the oth­ers are at a loss to work out why this is happening.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 10000.3

Plot: Lyo­n­esse’s seni­or officers try to find out what happened to the miss­ing personnel.

The ‘A’ Plot: In the wake of the second wave of dis­ap­pear­ances, Cap­tain Mas­uda calls an emer­gency meet­ing of her depart­ment heads in the con­fer­ence room. With Lieu­ten­ants Astan and Valik both miss­ing, their depu­ties, Ed Par­rish and Qin Roguang, take their places. They are also joined by Chief Nuss, the quartermaster.

Com­mand­er Hop­era reports that about 20% of the crew are miss­ing, includ­ing all known tele­paths and empaths. The dis­ap­pear­ances also extend to the vari­ous groups of pas­sen­gers aboard Lyo­n­esse includ­ing the Romu­lan, Vul­can and human refugees. Nuss adds that about 40% of the ship’s food stock is miss­ing, mean­ing that they will need to restock with­in 3 months, assum­ing no more losses.

Vale explains that the med­ic­al team is hav­ing some suc­cess in pro­du­cing an anti­emet­ic, but that pro­gress is slow as the cause of the con­di­tion lies in a sub­atom­ic res­on­ance with­in the suf­fer­ers’ brains. She is hope­ful that she will be able to pro­duce enough for all aboard, but is not sure it will pre­vent disappearances.

Jin reports on his invest­ig­a­tions into the bio­lo­gic­al parts pro­duced by the fab­ric­at­ors. The oth­ers are con­cerned when he reveals the pres­ence, in the pieces, of DNA resem­bling that of the miss­ing people. Does this mean that those indi­vidu­als have been dis­as­sembled and recycled for these struc­tures? Jin is par­tic­u­larly wor­ried: his pet Risi­an pan­ther has van­ished as well.

It is at this point that the deck chief con­tacts Nuss, who tells the rest of the meet­ing that some­thing odd is going on in cargo hold 2, cur­rently unused. Mas­uda ends the meet­ing and heads down to the hold, fol­lowed by sev­er­al of the oth­ers. They arrive to find the walls, ceil­ing and floor of the hold covered in organ­ic-seem­ing growths. A sci­ence team are already on the scene, and tri­cord­er read­ings show that the growths are com­posed of mater­i­al very sim­il­ar to the fab­ric­ated pieces. They are spread­ing rap­idly, and grow­ing togeth­er to form a kind of skin across the sur­faces of the room. The growths are obvi­ously alive, and appear to be pulsing in syn­chron­isa­tion with the pulsars outside.

The meet­ing resumes, tak­ing this new data into account. Jin is now con­vinced there is a dir­ect con­nec­tion between the fab­ric­ated pieces and the growths in cargo hold 2. It seems that the mater­i­als com­pris­ing the van­ished per­son­nel have been used to cre­ate both phe­nom­ena, and he believes that they are inten­ded as a kind of puzzle, pos­sibly as a test of intelligence.

Dr Vale is con­cerned that this is extremely dan­ger­ous, and pro­poses that they should just leave, accept­ing their losses in the face of a super­i­or intel­li­gence. Lt James expresses some sup­port for this pos­i­tion although he would be dis­ap­poin­ted if they were unable to resolve the mystery.

Jin coun­ters that this is obvi­ously an intel­li­gent being with great power: surely it is their duty to try to estab­lish con­tact? He believes a being with these cap­ab­il­it­ies will be able to restore the miss­ing crew members.

While they argue, Par­rish com­ments that it’s odd that the dis­ap­pear­ances seem to be tak­ing place on a peri­od­ic basis – and that the fab­ric­ated com­pon­ents rep­res­ent a tiny frac­tion of the miss­ing mass. The cap­tain sug­gests the entity is simply try­ing to com­mu­nic­ate, and that the vari­ous data are clues to help them design a way to talk to it.

Jin sug­gests that the fab­ric­ated com­pon­ents and growths in the hold are actu­ally inten­ded to form a body for the entity, and that it requires them to assemble it. Play­ing dev­il’s advoc­ate, he points out that doing so risks unleash­ing some­thing dangerous.

Par­rish is con­fused: if that’s the case, why would­n’t it provide clear­er instruc­tions? But Jin replies that maybe it can­not com­mu­nic­ate dir­ectly at all without a body.

Mas­uda comes to a decision: they should assemble the pieces, as that should enable them to communicate.

Assum­ing the pieces are a puzzle, Jin now attempts to work out how they fit togeth­er, using a digit­al mod­el in the com­puter lab. This is not as easy as it might appear: des­pite detailed scans, the pieces are not easy to sim­u­late, as some of them seem to twist through high­er dimen­sions. He real­ises that the only way he will solve this is to piece them togeth­er physically.

The ensu­ing solu­tion and assembly takes place in cargo hold 2, so that they can see how it impacts the growths on the walls. A num­ber of pieces seem to be miss­ing, but pre­sum­ably addi­tion­al bio­lo­gic­al mat­ter will be required for more, which is not a risk they want to take. How­ever, Jin can now see that the com­pleted struc­ture will con­sti­tute a mod­el of the neut­ron star sys­tem. He is able to fab­ric­ate sub­sti­tute pieces, then notices that the wall growths are start­ing to grow out to and con­nect with the structure.

The assembly pro­cess takes two full shifts, but Dr Vale’s anti­emet­ic seems to have been effect­ive in pre­vent­ing fur­ther crew losses dur­ing this time. As soon as the last piece is put in place, the orbs rep­res­ent­ing the stars them­selves begin to glow and rotate rap­idly, much like the real thing. A loud buzz sim­il­ar to that pro­duced by an elec­tric­al trans­former starts, then every­one present begins to hear voices in their minds. It appears to be tele­path­ic com­mu­nic­a­tion, but in mul­tiple over­lap­ping voices, inter­fer­ing with each oth­er. After a minute or so, the voices resolve into a single clear voice that addresses each per­son indi­vidu­ally and simultaneously.

The con­ver­sa­tion is not what they expec­ted: while the being has a clear com­mand of their nat­ive lan­guages, it is curi­ous about fun­da­ment­al con­cepts, such as love, pain, hun­ger and regret. It seems to have full access to their memor­ies, and uses examples from their past as the basis for dif­fi­cult questions.

The com­mu­nic­a­tion is, how­ever, two-way, and they are able to piece togeth­er an under­stand­ing of the being’s nature. While the life-form is a product of the neut­ron stars’ mag­net­ic field, it is effect­ively new­born, becom­ing sen­tient only when the ship’s sensors dis­turbed the field.

Hav­ing no exper­i­ence with oth­er life, it is devel­op­ing rap­idly and very curi­ous. It wanted to talk to the people on the ship, but was only able to com­mu­nic­ate with the ship’s com­puter, which it did not find help­ful. It decided to dema­ter­i­al­ise a num­ber of indi­vidu­als so that it could talk dir­ectly to their minds. Then it used their con­stitu­ent mater­i­als to con­struct puzzle pieces as a test of their intel­li­gence. The com­pleted puzzle now provides it with a cor­por­eal link to communicate.

Mas­uda asks if it knows the way out, but, hav­ing exis­ted only in this loc­a­tion, it does not. She asks if her crew mem­bers are still alive and can be restored, to which it replies pos­it­ively. But it would want some­thing in return: it wants to explore the uni­verse. It needs their help as it can­not leave this sys­tem by itself.

After some dis­cus­sion, Mas­uda offers the entity the chance to become human as a guest on the ship, in return for restor­ing their miss­ing per­son­nel. It agrees imme­di­ately, and the miss­ing beings begin reappear­ing over the next few minutes. Nuss con­firms that the food stocks have also reappeared.

Jin and Vale find them­selves design­ing a new body to host the entity.

The Arc: We appear to have anoth­er refugee…

Obser­va­tions: The ship’s fab­ric­at­ors are a pre­curs­or to the 24^th cen­tury rep­lic­at­or, using trans­port­er tech­no­logy to per­form the same func­tion as a 3D print­er. They are cap­able of pro­du­cing inan­im­ate objects, includ­ing food, but are rel­at­ively slow, and unlike rep­lic­at­ors, they require a feed­stock made up of appro­pri­ate molecules to work. They are used to cre­ate more elab­or­ate items from basic food stores, and to assemble spare parts for the engin­eer­ing department.

The entity was cre­ated by inter­fer­ence pat­terns in the mag­net­ic fields of the two neut­ron stars. It only became sen­tient when Lyo­n­esse scanned the sys­tem, but imme­di­ately began build­ing an under­stand­ing of its envir­on­ment. It did not take it long to identi­fy the sep­ar­ate humans and devel­op a desire to talk to them. Unfor­tu­nately, it has no concept of mor­al­ity and it took a very dir­ect approach to do so.

Ques­tions: The entity shares many fea­tures with the elec­tro­mag­net­ic life­form encountered at BC-01C. Are they related?