|
When Voyager happens upon a
junkyard of old ships, the crew stops to purchase some parts
from Abaddon, the salesman. Tom Paris falls in love with a small
shuttle he finds among the junked vessels, and convinces
Chakotay to let him restore it. He discovers the shuttle has a
neurogenic interface, allowing it to interact directly with the
pilot's thoughts. Tom gets to work immediately, naming his new
toy "Alice." After a brief trial of the interfacing technology,
Tom calls it a night. When he leaves, Alice powers on by
herself, scanning Tom's brain imprint. In his quarters, Tom
hears a female voice calling for him.
Driven by Alice's seductive
power, Tom works nonstop on the shuttle. He and B'Elanna Torres
try to celebrate its christening together, but Tom is obsessed
to the point of excluding everyone. Tapping into Alice's
database, he has found the flight suit design of her last pilot
and is now wearing it instead of his Starfleet uniform. When
Chakotay orders him to put his test flight on hold and attend to
his official duties, Tom complains to Alice, whom he is now
imagining as a flesh-and-blood woman. She eggs him on,
convincing him to use the neurogenic interface again.
Alice goads Tom into stealing power cells from Voyager. When
Alice traps B'Elanna, sealing a hatch and shutting off life
support systems, Tom realizes the neurogenic interface is out of
control. He rescues B'Elanna and tries to alert sickbay, but
Alice won't let him. She forces him to launch the shuttle and
complete the interface, making him one with the machine. As
Captain Janeway and the crew realize what is happening, Tom
fires on Voyager and escapes into warp.
The Voyager crew turns to Abaddon for answers. He explains that
the shuttle Tom acquired is "haunted." Before he can say more,
he begins hallucinating himself and suffers a cerebral
hemorrhage. After receiving a cortical suppressant, Abaddon
reveals that he too was once linked with Alice. She was looking
for a top biological entity with which to work together in
tandem, to guide her to an unknown point in space. After
reconstructing data Tom left behind, Seven of Nine discovers
where he and Alice are heading. They are going to an anomaly
called a particle fountain.
Because Tom's synaptic functions are linked to the shuttle,
Janeway cannot fire on him. Instead, Tuvok works to access the
main computer and transmit a shutdown sequence. B'Elanna taps
into his interface using a communication signal. With both
B'Elanna's and Alice's voices in his head, Tom cannot think
straight. Just as he is about to suffer a cerebral hemorrhage,
Tuvok succeeds in shutting down Alice. Tom is beamed safely to
sickbay, and Alice is destroyed in the particle fountain. |
