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Kes finds herself in
Sickbay, on the verge of death. The Doctor activates something
he calls a bio-temporal chamber and Kes experiences a shift in
perception. She finds herself with a boy — apparently her
grandson Andrew — who gives her a belated birthday gift. The
Doctor tells her he's going to put her into the bio-temporal
chamber to prolong her life. She's in the Morilogium, the final
phase of the Ocampan lifespan. Suddenly Kes . . .
. . . awakens in her quarters,
where Andrew is still working on the present that he already
gave her. Kes meets Linnis, her daughter, who is married to
Harry Kim. Linnis' father is Tom Paris, who is also Kes'
husband. As Kes tries to take all this in . . .
. . . she finds herself celebrating her ninth birthday with her
family and friends. Andrew tells her he hasn't had a chance to
begin working on her present. Bewildered, Kes tells the Doctor
that she seems to be experiencing life in reverse. Consulting
her medical records, Kes learns she suffered from chronoton
radiation poisoning when Voyager was under attack by the Krenim.
As Kes reasons that the radiation exposure may explain her
condition . . .
. . . she experiences another jump. This time she goes
immediately to the Doctor, who confirms that the chronoton
particles, reactivated in the future by the bio-temporal
chamber, are moving her backwards in time. To stop the jumps,
they must purge her of the radiation — and the only way to do
that is to find out the temporal variance of the Krenim torpedo
that contaminated her.
Kes continues jumping back in time . . . to the birth of Linnis
. . . and to the Krenim attack, when she was exposed to the
radiation. Finding the torpedo, she notes the temporal variance,
then jumps again . . . to a year earlier, where she warns
Janeway to avoid Krenim space and gives the Doctor the
information to program a bio-temporal chamber that will purge
her system. As the chronoton count begins to drop, Kes
experiences several more jumps . . . eventually arriving at her
moment of conception. Just as she ceases to exist, her body is
purged and she awakens back in the period in which they were
using the chamber to eliminate the chronoton particles, where
she happily notes there's no time like the present. |
