Carmen remembered – it was a dream! If she concentrated closely enough, she would be able to do nearly anything. She kicked up at the phaser and knocked it out of Yi'imspi's hands.

"Whatever you think you're trying," Yi'imspi threatened, "it won't work."

"Oh, but it will." Carmen waved a bit at the Calafan. "Ta," she cheerily interjected as she jerked her head to one side, hard.

The force woke her up, but also wrenched her neck and brought on a nearly instantaneous and wicked migraine. "God, that was close," she muttered, holding her head in her hands. She tapped out a quick message on her PADD to the company she made deliveries for, telling them that she would not be able to work that day.

=/\=

For Rick's own dream, he bypassed several people and found a lone Terran female. "You lost?" he asked her.

Jenn Porter looked down her nose at him. "I've got other business," she said, a little testy.

"Oh? No time for little old me?"

"I don't know you," she complained.

"So? This is a dream. It can be a one-nighter." She made a face at him, so he hastily added, "Or we could just talk. See, I've met your counterpart on the other side of the pond. At least, I think she's your counterpart. I'll admit I'm not sure."

"Why should I care what you say?" She conjured up a mirror and began primping in front of it.

"Who's the special guy you're getting ready for?"

"He's a lot more important than you are."

"You don't say. Look, I've also got someone to meet, but she's not too experienced with these sorts of dreams, so I think she's gone asynchronous. Maybe that's what happened to your guy. Or maybe they're asynchronous together."

"I hardly think he'd be interested in any low lifes like you," she sniffed, conveniently forgetting that Charlie Eleven was living in a shack. "I bet your friend is just as low class."

"I can help you synchronize again," he offered.

"What'll you want for that?"

Rick was about to suggest something a bit more earthy, but he held his tongue. "I'll need for you to meet my friend, Carmen Calavicci."

"So you can just do us both? No, thanks."

"Intriguing as that sounds, no. I want you to meet her while you're both awake."

"Why?"

"We just wanna know if you're a true counterpart to Tamsin Porter on our side. That's it."

"Right, yeah. What's the catch?"

"No catch. It's a simple DNA and radiation band test."

"What if I turn out to be this Tamsin's counterpart? You'll want something from me, I bet."

"We'll cross that bridge if and when we get to it, okay? So, whaddaya say?"

Before she could answer, he heard the sounds of a scuffle. In the dream, he could move as fast or as slow as he wanted. "'Scuse me." He got to the scene of the scuffle nearly instantaneously, only to find Carmen in the process of disappearing. Yi'imspi turned to him, but he could see the phaser on the floor. "What's been going on here?"

"So you are at least part-Calafan, Crewman Daniels."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"No, but it does answer one of mine."

=/\=

Carmen sat up in bed, in alarm, holding her head. "Blast! I have got to be considerably more careful. I'll need to wait for Richard to go to sleep before I can safely lay my head – and the Enterprise-E is a good four hours earlier than it is here." She checked a wall chronometer, which showed that it was nearly 0200 hours. "Still, you should be in bed by now, Daniels. And sleeping, you womanizer." She sighed. "I suppose I shall have to take my chances now, and beware of a certain Calafan named Yi'imspi."

=/\=

"Questions?" asked Rick, affecting an air of nonchalance. He was considerably better skilled than Carmen was, when it came to the shared dream state. With some concentration, he made the phaser disappear.

"Yes, see, you've got an odd heritage. It doesn't make any sense," Yi'imspi stated.

"What do you think you know?"

"Oh, I know it for certain all right. See, this dream raises some other fascinating questions, just as readily as it answers others. You've got Calafan blood, to be sure. And you've got Mirror Universe blood as well. I understand you claim to be a time traveler. So tell me, Daniels, exactly how do you do it?"

He stood there, stock still, not twitching or moving any other muscles. "Where are you hearing such lies from? Somebody out there's got an awfully vivid imagination."

"Hardly," she countered. "This is what you are – a misfit. You don't belong in either radiation band, much like the others. And you don't belong in our time period, either. You're a mass of, well, it's not contradictions. Rather, you're a mass of unfinished subplots in a novel. Where does your chapter go? And how does it end, eh?"

If she knew about the descendants of Douglas Jay Hayes Beckett, then there was no telling what else she could possibly know. "Others? Who are you talking about?" Maybe he'd be able to trace the leak this way, he figured.

"Apart from you, there are thirteen messed-up people out there. Their family tree is a bunch of twisted-together and tangled vines."

"Oh, really? Anybody I know?"

"Of course you know; don't play coy with me," Yi'imspi snapped peevishly. "They're why you're here in the first place."

"Actually, no."

That seemed to bring the Calafan up short. "What, so why are you here?"

"I'll never tell," he replied, willing himself to wake up.

Much like Carmen had, he sat up. "This is going to cramp our style, big time, if Carmen and I can't meet. It doesn't look like my waking hours will be much better. Wherever that leak is, it's got to be plugged. And whoever is leaking that information – either they, or Yi'imspi, or possibly even both, has got to be behind the band cycling. Or at least related to it somehow."

=/\=

Back in her office, Admiral Harriet Caul sat and mulled over her situation. She engaged her communicator. "Get me ultimate confidentiality. I will make the final connection manually."

There was a relayer on the other end of the line, who flipped a switch and then reported, "Ready; I am dropping off now."

Caul clicked on her PADD several times. Her desktop computer also sprang to life, and showed a split screen – Admiral Alynna Nechayev on one side, and Yi'imspi on the other. "Report," Caul commanded.

"Efforts to locate any other transuniversal hybrids have reached numerous dead ends," Nechayev said. "I suspect anyone else with an anomalous band is dead. Hence we are still at fourteen – the thirteen we found, plus Richard Daniels. Picard and the others still seem to believe that these cross-breeds will be useful for universe to universe communications. I do not believe that he suspects our primary motive, to potentially send them to the Mirror and restore Charles VI to power if all else fails."

"All right," Caul conceded. "Let me know if anyone suspects anything. We'll need a modified shuttle, I believe. That brings me to you, Yi'imspi."

"Right," replied the Calafan. "The shuttle is just about ready, but I'll need a way to modify weapons and mimic an old pulse cannon. The Monongahela has proven to be a bit recalcitrant. But that's not the big thing I can report tonight."

"Oh?" asked Caul.

"I met Daniels in my dream. I can only conclude that he is at least partly Calafan," Yi'imspi said.

"That's another in the plus column, on the side of confirming that he's a time traveler," Nechayev remarked. "I wonder when, in the future, interbreeding between our two species will be perfected."

"Did he say anything to you?" asked Caul.

"He said that he wasn't here on the Enterprise-E for the thirteen hybrids. But he wouldn't tell me exactly why he's here. He also arrived when a human woman left my dream. She called herself Carmen."

"You've got a busy subconscious," Nechayev observed.

"We all do. But a human really only has three choices when it comes to becoming a part of a standard Calafan dream state. One is to just be in the Lafa System. Another is to be in physical contact with a Calafan while sleeping."

"And the third?" pressed Caul.

"The third is to be at least part-Calafan. I can tell – the dream state allows for this – that this woman is wholly human and wholly at the 21 centimeter radiation band. And she probably really is in the Lafa System. But the dream state also allows for me to understand the universe of origin of a dreamer – and she was dreaming within the Mirror. She also can't effectively transmit her dream state across the light years. So she's getting some help from either a full-blooded or partial Calafan."

"So there's a connection between Carmen and Daniels," Caul concluded.

"Plus this Carmen being somehow in the Mirror Universe," Nechayev added. "That's awfully fishy right there. So your design seems to have worked, or at least it inspired others to invent a similar methodology."

"That doesn't make me feel any better," Yi'imspi complained. "For humans to be able to quickly and reliably cross over is all well and good. But – Charlie Eleven notwithstanding – the last thing we need is Terrans coming over and invading."

"And that is why you're on this project in the first place," Caul snapped. "As you are well aware, our Calafan intelligence has told us that they've been hunting for a means of crossing over."

"They've been trying to cross over ever since the time of Empress Hoshi," Yi'imspi pointed out.

"Right, but they're a lot closer to succeeding now," Nechayev said. "Your job is to leverage Charles VI's desperation to be reinstated, and make it appear as if he's succeeded. This aligns with our interests rather neatly, to overthrow the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance."

"I know my job," the Calafan groused, "and I can make it look good. But if Charlie Eleven meets Carmen – and he figures out that she's a 21 centimeter type of gal, then he'll know that the technology works. He won't be satisfied with half a demo. He will want the real thing and he will invade."

"Then we'd better get this Carmen out of the way," Caul commented darkly.