Author's note: Beta'd by Kylie Lee, who did her usual wonderful job. I messed with it after her beta, so any mistakes are mine.
Enterprise had responded to the distress call from the colony, where an explosion had rocked the main power plant. Reports trickling in as the ship had rushed to the planet had hinted at deaths, and scans from orbit had indicated no life signs, but there was no way anyone could have been prepared for just how bad it would be. At least, that had been Trip's assumption before he'd transported down.
He gazed at the bodies scattered about like so many rag dolls as his repair team members began to gingerly pick their way around the area. He was still standing where he'd materialized when the hum of the transporter broke the silence a minute later. Doctor Phlox and a med tech solidified into existence several meters away. Trip's uneasiness lessened with the physician's arrival, although his feeling of guilt remained unabated. He knew they wouldn't find any survivors. Phlox would be limited to preparing the bodies so that they could be taken away for burial.
He'd seen dead bodies before. One of Enterprise's first encounters with another species, on an Axanar ship, sprang to mind. The entire alien crew had been killed and hung up to drain for some substance in their bodies. But even going into situations where he knew there were liable to be bodies, he'd never known ahead of time exactly what he would see.
Until now.
The power plant's main generator was running wild; it wouldn't shut down. A flurry of desperate activity. Panicked voices. A horrible roaring noise that made it impossible to think. A blinding white light tinged with angry orange. Finally, silence, and smoke. He peered through the haze, surprised that he was uninjured. There was a massive hole in the wall of the adjacent room which housed the generator. He couldn't see inside, but he knew there was nothing left to see. Whatever equipment that had been in there had to have been vaporized. But in the control room, in every direction he turned, were bodies. Horribly mangled bodies. He wanted to close his eyes, block out what he was seeing, but he couldn't.
"Commander?"
Trip jerked his head and focused on Rostov, a member of the repair team, who was looking at him in concern. "Sorry," Trip said. "It's something of a shock to see all this."
"It's awful, isn't it?" Rostov said.
Rostov's question didn't require an answer, which was just as well. Trip wasn't sure there was anything he could say. He cleared his throat but was unable to clear his mind, and, stepping over the nearest body, he tried not to put his foot in a dried pool of blood. He glanced down at the body. It was that of a young man with short brown hair, with a gold ring on the fourth finger of his left hand.
Trip recognized it, and everything else around him, from a nightmare that had woken him, sweating and gasping, two nights before.
They eventually discovered that certain components in the generator controls had failed, leading to the explosion. They also determined that the power plant would never operate again; there wasn't enough of it left to make it do anything. The colonists were going to have to set up a new power plant from scratch.
Trip spent more than twelve hours on site with no breaks for rest or food. Upon his return to the ship, he gave his findings to Captain Archer, then headed for the mess hall even though he had little appetite. He reasoned that some food in his system might make him feel better. After a few bites of a club sandwich, however, his stomach tied up in knots. He dropped it back on his plate and pushed it away. He was looking regretfully at the piece of pecan pie he'd picked out, knowing he wouldn't be able to eat it, when Hoshi walked into the deserted mess hall.
The communications officer obtained a drink from the beverage dispenser before making her way to his table. As she took the seat across from him, she noticed his haggard appearance. "Are you all right?"
"Nice to see you too," Trip responded wearily.
Hoshi looked at him in concern. "I hear it was pretty bad down there."
"It was awful, Hoshi," he said. He stopped to inhale deeply and immediately wished he hadn't; he could still smell the cloying odor of death. "I'm glad you didn't have to see it."
"You ought to get some sleep," she suggested gently.
Trip looked away from her steady, solicitous gaze. They'd both been in space long enough to know that weird things happened. The disaster at the power plant had been bad, but no worse than some of the things they'd encountered. He recalled that on some of Enterprise's first missions, it had been Hoshi who had come unglued, while he usually had been able to take the bad stuff in stride. But in this case, it was what had preceded his visit to the power plant that was freaking him out. At last he looked back at her. "I'm afraid to go to sleep," he said baldly.
A spark of sympathy flared in her eyes. "Afraid of having bad dreams again?"
"Sort of. Not exactly." Trip closed his eyes. "I'm afraid of what I might dream next." That possibility made his eyes fly back open. "I knew about the explosion at the power plant," he said bluntly, "before we received the distress call from the colony. Several nights ago, I had a nightmare about what happened - before it happened."
"How do you know it was that power plant?" Hoshi asked. "They all look pretty much the same, don't they?"
"Because the bodies were the same!" Trip retorted with sudden vehemence. "They were in the same places, with the same injuries, wearing the same clothing-" He broke off to catch his breath. "In my dream, I was there when the generator blew. I couldn't stop it, but I wasn't killed. I saw all those people-"
He stopped to look beseechingly at her. Of everyone on board, she'd be the most likely to understand why he was so upset. She had been contacted telepathically by an alien in the Delphic Expanse. "You know I'm practically psi null," he told her, "but could I have picked up on the thoughts of someone who was there?"
Hoshi shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Trip recalled that she'd been freaked out herself by hearing the alien's voice and seeing his face on view screens, when in actuality, it had all been in her head.
"I don't know," she said with a frown. After a few moments, she suggested, "Maybe you should have Phlox take a look at you to make sure nothing's wrong. At the very least, he could give you something so you can sleep."
He must look really bad if Hoshi didn't tease him about Vulcan neuropressure. It was common knowledge that T'Pol had used the technique on him so that he wouldn't be plagued by nightmares in the Expanse. In the long run, though, it had caused more problems than it had been worth.
"You're right," Trip conceded. "Maybe a visit to Phlox is in order."
"Your brain scans show nothing out of the ordinary," Phlox said, turning away from the monitor's screen to face his patient.
Trip was sitting rigidly upright on one of the sickbay biobeds. Phlox had already told him that there were no indications of any unusual substances in his body or any signs of physical trauma. Being told there was nothing wrong with him should have been comforting. Instead, he was more anxious than before. If there wasn't anything physically wrong with him, maybe there was something wrong mentally.
"We both know you have been troubled by nightmares in the past," Phlox continued gently. "Those were a normal reaction to the loss of your sister, and to what happened to Earth. This dream you told me about, however..." The Denobulan shook his head. "Dreams cannot be explained rationally. They are merely the way the brain refreshes and repairs itself."
Discouraged, Trip looked at him. "No explanation for it?"
"I believe you are worrying about nothing," Phlox said. "Yes, it was a disturbing dream, especially since you had it before you visited the power plant. But Earth history is littered with reports of people who have had dreams in advance of an event. So far, no one has been able to explain them - or substantiate them."
At Trip's dejected expression, Phlox said soothingly, "I can give you something to help you sleep, but just this once. I counseled you before about the dangers of becoming dependent on them, hmmmm?"
"Yeah, I know," Trip muttered.
Phlox went to the medicine cabinet, where he put a pill in a small envelope. "Drink a full glass of water with this before you retire for the night," he instructed as he handed over the envelope. "You should be able to get at least eight hours of restorative sleep."
Trip slid off the biobed. "Thanks, Doc." He shuffled toward the exit.
As the frosted glass doors opened before him, Trip tightly clutched the envelope with its promise of one dreamless night of sleep. He might rest well after taking the pill, but he fully expected it to be the last time in a long while that he wouldn't dread going to sleep.
Trip stepped off the turbolift, only to collide with the ship's tactical officer. He was so tired he hadn't seen Malcolm until he'd bumped into him. "Sorry," he mumbled.
"What are you doing up so late?" Malcolm asked. "I thought you would be sound asleep after spending most of the day on that planet."
"I wish." Trip scrubbed at his face with one hand, while showing Malcolm what he held in the other. The Starfleet logo, along with the medical caduceus, could be seen on the envelope.
"Sleeping pills?" Malcolm guessed.
Trip nodded.
"You're not worried about nightmares, are you, like you had after...?"
As Malcolm trailed off, Trip asked plaintively, "Why is everyone so concerned about those nightmares? It's the new ones I'm worried about." He swayed wearily on his feet.
Malcolm grabbed Trip's arm. "Come on," he said as he led Trip down the corridor. "Let's get you to bed. You're so tired you don't know what you're talking about."
"I do know what I'm talking about, Malcolm, but you probably wouldn't believe me."
"Believe you about what?" Malcolm asked as they arrived at Trip's cabin.
Trip leaned against the bulkhead while Malcolm opened the door for him. As it slid open, he said, "I knew about the power plant explosion before it happened." He stepped past Malcolm and entered his cabin.
Malcolm stared after him, then followed him in. "That's crazy."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Trip said. He stumbled over to his bed, where he sat down heavily. The edge of the envelope rasped across his beard stubble when he dropped his face into his hands, reminding him that he hadn't cleaned up since returning from the planet. Maybe a shower before taking the sleeping medication would help.
But there was Malcolm, waiting for him to explain - or at the very least, wanting some reassurance that he hadn't totally gone off the deep end. His friend wouldn't have followed him into his quarters if he wasn't concerned about him. Well acquainted with Malcolm's tenacity, Trip also knew he wouldn't leave until he'd told him what was wrong.
"I dreamed about the explosion," Trip said from behind his hands. He looked up. "Three nights ago. Before we knew about it."
He recited the details of the nightmare. Half-way throughout the narrative, Malcolm sat down at the desk. Trip could detect emotions flitting across the other man's face. Concern, followed by disbelief, and finally suspicion. Malcolm being the ship's security officer, he understood that last reaction. But as he was relating the results of Phlox's testing, Malcolm's expression changed to something more speculative.
"What?" Trip asked.
"As a person who deals with security issues," Malcolm began, "my first inclination would be that you were involved or had contact with someone who knew it was going to happen, which would indicate the explosion may have been the result of sabotage." He held up his hand to keep Trip from protesting. "We both know there's no way you could have been involved. You've been on the ship with the rest of us, and we haven't received any personal communications since the relay buoy malfunctioned a couple of weeks ago, so no one off the ship could have told you about it. Lastly, if you did know that it was going to happen, you would try to stop it, because you're an honorable and decent man."
Trip's tense muscles relaxed marginally, as did the nagging sense of guilt. Leave it to Malcolm to hit the nail on the head. As if having a dream about the catastrophe hadn't been bad enough, the feeling that maybe he might have been able to do something to prevent the explosion, if only he'd realized the significance of the dream, had been worse. "Thanks," he said.
"My second inclination is that it's a coincidence-"
"How could that be?" Trip interrupted. "Everything was just the way it was in my dream, down to the smallest detail." Unbidden, the image of the dead man's hand with its wedding ring flashed before his eyes. The man had left a wife behind to mourn his passing, just like Trip had mourned Lizzie's tragic death. He stood to pace the cabin. "If there's no reasonable explanation-" He ran his hands through his hair. "-I must be losing my mind."
"There is another possibility."
Trip stopped pacing to stare at him. Malcolm had covered what he'd already considered and discarded. What else could there possibly be? Besides insanity, that is.
"Precognitive dreaming," Malcolm said matter-of-factly, "or, as my great-great-great-grandmother might have put it, you're fey."
"Fey?" Trip spluttered. "What are you talking about, Malcolm?" He sat down on the bed and laughed dismissively. "Seeing the future in dreams? There's no such thing."
Malcolm's eyebrows rose to suggest he might believe otherwise.
"You're the last person I'd expect to put credence in something like that," Trip went on.
"I've had it happen a few times myself," Malcolm said quietly. "Nothing as dire as what you experienced, I'll admit, but strange enough to make me wonder."
Malcolm's sincerity calmed Trip, but it also made him curious. "So you've dreamed about things before they happened?"
Malcolm nodded. "Several times. The first one I remember was when I was about ten years old." His eyes took on a faraway look. "I dreamed I was in an examination room about to have my teeth looked at by a dentist. He was tall, had black hair in a combed-back style, and had long, slender fingers." He refocused on Trip. "A short time later, our family dentist retired. Our new dentist looked exactly like the man in my dream."
Trip wasn't convinced. "That could just have been coincidence."
"Maybe." Malcolm exhaled heavily. "But after that, I had other dreams that would have a correlation to something that took place later. Not very often, mind you. Sometimes years would go by before I'd have another precognitive dream." He paused. "That's probably a good thing, because if it happened on a regular basis... Well, I'm not sure I'd like that, wondering if every time I had a dream, it was going to happen in real life."
Trip asked, "You dreamed about something really bad, didn't you? And it happened?"
"The dream itself wasn't bad. But what I found out later..." Malcolm settled back in the chair. "Have you ever heard of the Magellan Resort?"
Trip's eyebrows drew together as he searched his memory. "Wasn't that the big resort that had a fire about five years ago? I was too busy getting Enterprise ready to launch to pay much attention to the news at the time. Close to a hundred people died, didn't they?"
"That's the one," Malcolm said. "I had a dream that I was in a grand lobby. There were huge chandeliers hanging down from the ceiling. I could see gaming tables off in the distance. The overall impression I had of the place was of bright colors - white, gold, red. Then, all of a sudden I was in a different place." He smiled crookedly. "You know how it is in dreams. One minute you're in one place, the next you're somewhere else."
"Yeah," Trip said, leaning forward. "In real life, you'd question it, but you accept it in dreams."
"Well, all of a sudden I was in a basement with a group of people. We were walking single file behind a firefighter. I know it was a firefighter because he was wearing one of those coats with the reflective stripes across the back and around the cuffs, and he had a helmet on. And he was carrying an ax."
Despite his gloomy mood, Trip smiled. "A fire ax?" He snickered. "Maybe your dream was trying to tell you something."
"If I want my dreams interpreted for sexual symbols, I'll tell them to Phlox," Malcolm said with a smirk. The glint of amusement in his eyes faded as he continued. "We were looking for a way out of the basement. We had to walk down four or five concrete stairs to a lower level and wade through water that came almost up to my knees. Then we climbed another short concrete staircase to a door. It wouldn't open, so the firefighter used the ax to break it open. That was where the dream ended."
Trip considered Malcolm for a few moments. "So how do you know that was the Magellan Resort? Have you ever been there?"
"No, I haven't. And in the dream, I didn't know where I was," Malcolm said. "I might never have realized it was that place but for one thing."
"What's that?" Trip asked.
"The water. A news story I read some time later said that so much water was used to put out the fire that there was half a meter of it in the basement. And here's the clincher: During the fire, some of the guests in the casino were led out through the basement."
"Whoa," Trip said quietly. "You had this dream before the fire?"
"Several weeks before," Malcolm affirmed.
"Did you tell anyone about it?"
"Why should I? By the time I realized the connection to my dream, the fire was over and done with." Malcolm shrugged. "Besides, people might have thought I was bonkers if I'd claimed to have known about it ahead of time through a dream."
Trip mulled this over. "It could be coincidence," he said.
Malcolm shook his head. "There are too many details, like the water, that match up. Like in your dream."
Details, Trip thought, like the wedding ring on the hand of one of the victims that he'd seen in his dream. It was an image that resonated with him, he realized, because of his own close, personal loss. "That still doesn't explain why I had a dream about the explosion at the power plant."
"There is no explanation," Malcolm said. "We may never know why we have dreams that literally come true. You'll only drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out." He got to his feet and headed for the door.
"So you're saying I just have to accept that I had a dream that foretold the future?" Trip asked.
Malcolm turned back to him. "Yes, for your own peace of mind. And don't worry that other dreams you have will happen, because it's been my experience that they don't happen very often. This may even be the only time you have a dream like that."
Trip still wasn't convinced that seeing the future in a dream was possible; going crazy made more sense. But here was Malcolm, one of the sanest people he knew, telling him that he'd had the same experience, not once, but several times. Trip didn't know if he could accept something that couldn't be explained. Indeed, it would be contrary to his very nature, considering he spent his life working with facts and figures and the exacting perfection demanded of warp engineering.
"Not all such dreams are bad, you know," Malcolm said.
"Like the one you had about your dentist," Trip said. "That wasn't a bad one."
"Bloody well not!" Malcolm contradicted him, putting his hand to his jaw. "The tooth extraction he did hurt like the devil."
"So what was a good one you had?" Trip persisted.
A sheepish expression crossed Malcolm's face. Trip expected him to clam up, like he often did when discussing something personal.
But the tactical officer held his ground. "I dreamed, several days before I received my assignment, about the first time I set foot on Enterprise. That really was a dream come true, in more ways than one." Malcolm cleared his throat, a sign he wanted to change the subject. "Are you going to be all right?"
"Yeah, I think so," Trip said. "Thanks, Malcolm. I appreciate what you told me. I know you don't like to talk about private things."
Malcolm nodded his acceptance of Trip's gratitude, opened the door, and was gone.
Trip stared at the envelope in his hand, trying to come to a decision. To dream or not to dream? As Phlox had told him, dreams usually didn't make any sense. From what Malcolm had told him, trying to fathom why he'd had a particular dream had no explanation either.
Should he be fearful of another horrible nightmare that might come true? Excited at the prospect of a dream that might portend something good? Or would he just drive himself crazy wondering about it? Maybe it would never happen again, and he was worrying about nothing. The only thing he knew for certain was that taking the pill would only delay how he would cope with the situation.
Trip placed the envelope on the bedside table and lay back on his bed. Within moments, he was asleep.
A/N: Reviews appreciated!