In her dream, Carmen heard a knock. "Yes?" She half-expected Jenn Porter, as in her waking state. But she still asked, "Richard?"

"That is not my name," scolded the man who opened the dream door. He was somewhat paunchy, with an impressive beard and wild eyes. He had human Asian and Caucasian blood, and a smidgen of Vulcan. He looked as if he had fallen on hard times, even though the dream state would have permitted him to cover up his deficiencies. But he did not have any Calafan blood in him, and no real experience with the shared dream state, and so he was incapable of such subconscious tricks.

It was the man whose photograph she had seen, while awake, not one hour earlier. "Charlie Eleven, I presume."

"Ah, you have me at a bit of a disadvantage," he said, probably drawing on some long-forgotten memory of courtly manners. "And you are, Miss?"

"Carmen."

"A delightful opera from the other side of the pond."

"I wouldn't know," she claimed, not wanting to let on that she didn't belong in his universe.

"A pity. Tell me, Carmen, have you seen a Calafan, by chance?"

"There are a ton of Calafans in the dream state at any one time. I'm sure you're well aware of that."

"She's a beautiful woman. Her name is Yi'imspi."

Carmen swallowed, recalling her most recent meeting with Yi'imspi, which had involved a drawn phaser. "Silver or copper?"

"How do you know that?"

"The same way you do, I imagine," Carmen explained. "I've seen both versions here on Lafa II."

"So you are on the same miserable rock where I currently find myself. The amenities are not up to my," he sniffed haughtily, "standards. But I digress. Where are you living? Perhaps I could enjoy your company in person."

"I don't recall inviting you."

"Would you not wish to feast your eyes on an Emperor? Is that not a dream of yours, Carmen?"

"Not bloody likely. All I want to do is make you your forged ration card and be done with it." The minute she said that, Carmen regretted it. Charlie Eleven was, she was sure, far from stupid. He would figure out the connection, particularly if he talked to Yi'imspi. She banged her own forehead, silently cursing herself for the slip-up.

"So you're the one who Porter found, eh? Well, then I imagine she's obtained your address somehow. Resourceful girl, but she's far too scrawny."

"Give her your extras with your new falsified ration card, and she'll stop being too scrawny for you."

"Tell me, Carmen, for I enjoy women with a little spice to them, are you not intrigued? Not even a little bit?"

"I've got what to do, without you."

He grabbed her arm roughly, and she hauled off and cracked him hard, across the face. "You don't seem to understand. I give the orders, and you comply with them."

"You're just barely on this side of vagrancy. You're hardly in a position to command anyone, or anything."

"The Empire will rise again. The Klingon-Cardassian Alliance won't last forever. And once I've punched through, they'll have to give it all back to me, on a veritable silver platter."

"Punched through where? What?"

"Why, it's the barrier between universes. See, there were some records. My ancestor, Hoshi the Great, she had some of them expunged, but there was some unrelated information that she never got to. Her daughter – and my direct ancestor – Takara Sato Masterson Tucker – she wrote her memoirs. She claimed to have had rather earthy dreams of a fellow named Thomas Digiorno-Madden. There was even a possible indication that he could have been the father of her son, Charles Tucker V, who was the father of the Emperor Charles I."

"What are you talking about? How is that even possible?"

"This dream state," he explained, "it permits certain kinds of bridgings. Digiorno-Madden's descendants would have a radiation band – it's the hydrogen line, and its length differs, depending on the universe – it would be a figure out over twenty centimeters. The matter was being investigated when the interregnum began."

"So being deposed has cramped your style a little," she commented. "This is fascinating and all, but it's to which point?"

"I want to know my heritage. Maybe there's family. And whether there is, or there isn't, that universe should be ripe for conquest. I will deliver it, and the Terran Empire will rise again."

=/\=

"Audrey," Rick commanded, "give me everything we've got on Yi'imspi, in both the prime timeline and this iteration. Actually, give me what you've got for all of the temporal iterations."

Prime universe or mirror?

"That's a good question. Uh, both."

In the prime timeline and 21 centimeter radiation band universe, known as the prime universe, Yi'imspi is an athlete on Misty Dana MacKenzie's barnstorming team, the Black Sheep.

"And before that?"

She attended the Rhea Polytechnic Institute, and attained a Bachelor's degree in Warp Engineering.

"Why would she be playing sports with that kind of an education?"

The answer to your inquiry is not known to this unit.

"Er, that was a rhetorical question, anyway." He thought for a moment. "What did she do between graduating tech school and trying out for Dana's team?"

Available information indicates that the subject was heavily recruited by numerous engineering firms and even by Starfleet.

"Then it's even weirder that she chucked it all to play sports. Who did she end up working for?"

None of them – the subject instead attended numerous foreign language classes and training programs offered via the guard training program at Canamar Prison.

"That's, wait, what?" He was getting a nagging feeling, and it wasn't going away. "Nobody needs to learn foreign languages anymore, not with universal translators. Even I don't have to; my implanted communicator does that. So why are you bothering, Yi'imspi? And Canamar? That's weird on its face. Huh," he snapped his fingers in realization. "I bet that was all spy training! Computer, crack into the present-day records of Section 31. Do so on my authorization. Search for female Calafan agents."

Gaining entry and decrypting the files, and performing the requested search, will take hours.

"Okay, I'll head back to the Enterprise-E. I don't know how much you know about the band cycling, but I bet you're assigned to investigate it."

=/\=

"If this Madden fellow is your ancestor," Carmen pointed out, "then your band – you called it a band, yes?" Charles nodded, so she continued, "Your band would be off, am I right?"

"Yes," he confirmed.

"Are there other transuniversal lovers? Perhaps your Mister Madden isn't the only one crossing a veritable pond."

"No," Charles said. "I am certain that Digiorno-Madden is the only one. But the percentage will prove it."

"And how do you propose to measure it?"

"My friend Yi'imspi is an engineer. She can build me a detector, I am certain."

"Is she building anything else for you?" Carmen inquired.

Charles must have realized he had said too much, for he snapped, "Interview's over!" He angrily stormed out of the dream room, slamming the imaginary door behind him.

"I'll lay better than even money that you – or she, or both, perhaps – are our band cycler. Oh, Charlie Eleven, whatever shall we do with you?"

=/\=

"We're being hailed, Captain," M'Belle reported. "It's coming from a planet."

"On screen," Picard commanded.

The people on screen were, it seemed, human. They were dressed in little more than rags. One, a woman of perhaps forty or so, snapped, "Who the hell are you?"

Picard seemed taken aback for a moment. "I am Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise-E."

"Darragh Masterson of Archer's Planet," she replied. "You Starfleet?"

"Yes," the captain replied cautiously.

Darragh turned to a younger fellow standing near her. "Whaddaya think, EK?"

Now Dana looked up as the man started speaking, her jaw agape with every syllable. "I don't know, Dee. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me. But all the way out here? Maybe it's a trick of the Empire."

"Kent?" Dana asked, forgetting protocols for a moment.

Now Marty was intrigued. He motioned to M'Belle to briefly cut the sound. He stood, turning toward Picard but with his back to the main viewer. "Sir," he said, "we all know that the existence of the Terran Empire isn't as closely guarded a secret as it used to be. But people out in the middle of nowhere? I mean, the likelihood is small."

"No," Dana corrected him. "If that's my ex, Kent Hoberman's, counterpart, then the likelihood should be impossible."

As Rick rematerialized into an unused lab on the Enterprise-E, he engaged his implanted communicator. "Audrey," he commanded, "patch me through to all command and control communications, at all levels of access, confidentiality, and encryptions. Listening mode only."

Working. New command will take computing and processing power from the previous command to break into and decrypt Section 31 files. This will add time to that earlier task.

"That's acceptable."

The volume was low, so that he could hear what was going on without anyone in the vicinity – unless they were very close to him – being the wiser. He could hear Picard say, "Are you saying that there is a second breach to the Mirror Universe, MacKenzie?"

Dana replied, "I don't know, sir. But that guy is Kent and not Kent, if you know what I mean."

"Perhaps this Kent has a secret side you do not know," Rick could hear M'Belle say. She added, "I should tell you, they are hailing us again."

"You've got insider information, MacKenzie," Picard said. "Determine whether this is our universe's Kent. Open the channel, please, M'Belle."

Apparently the Caitian did just that. "Kent," Rick could hear Dana repeat.

"What?" there was a pause and Rick surmised that Kent was checking Dana out, for the man added, in smoother tones. "Hey, 'sup?"

Dana laughed a little. "Don't tell me that actually works where you come from."

"It works just fine, girl. And you are?"

"Focus, you worthless targ!" a woman's voice snapped – Rick didn't know that the voice belonged to Darragh Masterson.

"Right," Kent muttered, and Rick concluded that Kent and that woman were romantically linked.

"What happened to Sandy?" Dana asked pointedly.

"Sandy?" asked the woman, in a tone that was becoming increasingly agitated.

"Kent's ex-wife," Dana explained. "Or did you forget to tell her about that?"

"I don't know any Sandy, Darragh. Look, girlie, whatever stalling tactics you're trying, they just won't work."

"Let's get down to brass tacks," the woman said. "What the hell are you doing in our Delphic Expanse?"

"I have no record of any such claim of ownership," the captain declared.

"We live here," the woman said, "on Archer's Planet and Ceti Alpha V."

"We found debris," Picard said, "and we wanted to investigate. Ms. Masterson, do you happen to know anything about it?"

"That's been there forever," the woman – Rick realized she was Darragh Masterson – said. "We think it's even from before our ancestors were banished here."

"So some of you are Augments?" the captain asked.

"Fat lotta good it's done us," admitted Kent, "So you can maybe understand a little why we're not so welcoming to you Starfleet types, now, y'hear?"

=/\=

Rick stopped walking – he had been pretending to go somewhere but was more or less just aimlessly wandering one of the corridors of the Enterprise-E. "This is bad. The Augment colony isn't supposed to be discovered – well, technically, encountered – at this time. And a mirror Hoberman? Possibly the MU Darragh Masterson, too. You are supposed to be on the other side of the pond, maybe, great, great, however many greats, grandmother. And not born yet, in either universe."

"Who are you talking to?" It was Tamsin, taking yet another break.

"Just the Ghosts of the Future Yet to Come."

She shrugged and left him standing there.