|
While exploring an uncharted
asteroid, Chakotay, Kim and Torres stumble upon what appears to
be an alien burial ground. Not wanting to desecrate the site,
Chakotay and his team decide to make some quick anthropological
observations and then return to Voyager. But before they finish
their study, a subspace vacuole — a dimensional distortion —
forms and begins to fill the cavern they're investigating.
Alarmed, Chakotay orders Voyager to beam them up. But when the
Away Team appears on the ship, there is only Chakotay, Torres
and the body of a recently deceased woman.
In the meantime, Kim finds
himself trapped inside a ceremonial burial pod on an alien
planet in another dimension; he has somehow switched places with
the corpse. Freed from the pod, Kim is told that he's on the
homeworld of the Vhnori people. The Vhnori think that Kim has
come from the "Next Emanation," or afterlife, and they are
disturbed when he reveals that he has just come from a place
that contained the dead bodies of many Vhnori.
On Voyager, the Doctor is able to revive the corpse — a woman
named Ptera. When Ptera realizes that she is not in the Next
Emanation with her deceased family members, she becomes
hysterical. Later, she reveals that her people believe that when
they die, the vacuoles take their bodies to another plane of
reality. To learn that the distortions merely take their bodies
to a barren asteroid is difficult to accept. Not long after,
another vacuole forms, and deposits a second corpse onto the
ship, and still later, a third.
After hearing Kim's story about the bodies on the asteroid, a
Vhnori man named Hatil — who was about to submit to euthanasia
to ease his family's burden in caring for him — changes his mind
about dying. On Voyager, Ptera wants to be sent home, even if
that means dying a second time. The crew attempts to beam her
into a forming vacuole, but the procedure doesn't work and when
they retrieve her, Ptera is dead.
Time is running out. The vacuoles are damaging the ship's warp
core. If the crew doesn't find Kim soon, they'll have to leave
him behind. On the Vhnori world, Kim figures out a way to
escape. He'll take Hatil's place in a burial pod, allowing Hatil
to fulfill his own escape option and Kim to transfer to his
universe when the next vacuole delivers the occupant of the pod
into the other dimension. The plan works, and Kim's body appears
on Voyager, where the Doctor is able to revive him.
 |
