Log Entry 130713.70

I have suspected for some time now that I might be losing my marbles. Now I know it. This morning—well, not this morning because it was the middle of the night—but I woke up on the bridge!
I felt such a prat. I went to bed and all was fine with the world—well, as fine as it can be for a ship wandering through the stars searching for a phenomenon that snatches vessels, kidnaps the crew, murders them and then abandons their bodies to drift endlessly in space—but awoke with a start to find myself sitting on the bridge next to the Captain. She was watching me intently and not just T'Roc. Surrounding me were Al and, of all people, Karl!
Strangely though, my first thought wasn't, 'how did I get here?' or 'what's going on?' as you'd expect. No, my mind was absorbed by just one thought. 'Oh my god! Am I wearing clean pyjamas?"
To my complete amazement, when I looked down I found that I was fully dressed in uniform.
"She's awake," said a voice behind me.
I turned. It was Rosie!
"Do you remember anything?" asked the Captain.
I didn't answer. I was so baffled; I didn't know what to say. My gaze merely wandered from one face to another, studying the crowd of people in front of me. Only now was my brain asking the salient questions. How did I get here? Why is Karl on the bridge? Why is he in uniform? He's never in uniform! Why are Al and the doctor here too? And why am I here?
My face obviously spoke of my confusion. Al reached out to touch me and, to my horror, I actually recoiled.
"Give her time," said Karl. "She's in shock."
Shock only half described it. I began to burble some questions. The Captain interrupted.
"Let's take this into the Ready Room."
"NO!" I shouted, the aggression so high in my voice it frightened even me.
T'Roc looked at me with her deep, velvety soft, black, Klingon eyes.
"What's going on?" I asked. I had to know.
"Jenny, you've been doing this for the last eight nights," she explained.
"Doing what?"
"Sleep walking."
"I have?"
"It's how Beastie got out," said Al. "Each night, we take it in turns and camp outside your door."
That sounded a bit extreme.
"Who? Why?"
"Because when you walk, you talk and you say things."
"What sort of things?"
At that point, the turbolift doors opened and Rutter, Luke and Midas got out. It was beginning to look more like the Games Club than the bridge. Al explained.
"Okay, but you have to remember we are your friends and we had a huge debate about how to handle this, but the hints you've been giving us into the anomaly are so important, and it wasn't causing you any distress."
"Cut to the chase, Al!" I snapped.
Al shrugged.
"You've been giving us clues about this phenomenon, but we can't make much sense of them."
"Clues? Like what?"
Rutter held something out to me. It was a playing card—a dancer.
Something inside my head twanged, like someone pinging an elastic band in the middle of my brain. I physically flinched at it. Karl leaned down in front of me.
"Tell me what you feel," he commanded.
"Feel? I don't know what I feel!"
"Okay," he said, signalling the Captain to move. She did and he took her seat beside me. "Feel may be the wrong word. Let me try again."
He thought for a moment.
"When the Captain suggested we go into the Ready Room, you said no. Why?"
"I don't know why."
"Exactly, and the reason you don't know is because you are conscious and searching for a logical reason. This isn't logical. You said no for a reason that is deep inside of you—a reason that you know but that your conscious self doesn't want to recognise because it considers the reason flimsy and intangible."
I frowned. Karl sighed.
"I know I'm not making much sense. Here, try this. Lean back, close your eyes and take some deep breaths."
I obliged and seemed to sit for an age, breathing and relaxing while Karl's voice droned on mesmerically.
"Now, I'll ask you some questions and you answer, but don't think about the answer. Just let the words fall from your mouth unhindered. It doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense. Just release yourself of the burden of those words by releasing them. Let them go."
Karl continued to talk and I soon guessed that this was a subtle form of hypnosis, but I welcomed it. It was so calming and comforting.
"So tell me Jenny, why do you have to be on the bridge?"
I opened my mouth and just as Karl had bid, the words simply fell out, and like little lead weights, as each syllable passed my lips I felt an almost overwhelming sense of relief.
"Because of the kaleg."
"The kaleg?"
"The shadow."
"I thought the shadow was a Dancer."
"No. The Dancers can't enter our realm so they send the kaleg."
"So the kaleg is a sensor, a probe."
"Yes ... and more. It is the portal that drags our kind into their realm."
"The Dancers' realm?"
"Yes."
"And the Dancers are the aliens that live there."
"The Dancers and the Helvetians."
"But the kaleg belongs to the Dancers?"
"Yes."
"And you can see the kaleg?"
"Yes."
"Is the kaleg here now?"
"No, but it is near."
"But we can't see it."
"No."
"Why can't we see it?"
"Because it is not here."
"But you can see it?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Because it is here."
"I don't understand, Jenny. How can it be here and not here?"
A hypnagogic jerk pulled me rudely out of my reverie and I gasped a shattered breath.
"It's okay, Jenny," said Karl. "You've done really well."
"But why am I only remembering this now?"
"Perhaps because only now are we getting close to it."
Karl could be right. Over the past few weeks the shadow—the kaleg—had become slowly more and more opaque.
The room fell quiet and I began to look around at the faces of my friends. Everyone seemed to be looking at me ... except Luke. He was staring into space, his lips silently moving, as is his habit when working on a problem.
"Luke?" I asked, and suddenly his face lit up.
"I got it!" he shouted and ran over to Midas at the science station whereupon he barked some excited instructions to him. Midas immediately set to work on Luke's idea.
"Got what?" asked T'Roc.
"When is something there when it's not there? When it's an extra-dimensional entity."
"You what?" blurted Al who knows as much about science as I do about cookery (that is, nothing).
"Stardate 45959.1—the Enterprise encountered the Devidians, an alien lifeform that exists on an asynchronous temporal plane. In other words, the Devidians were slightly out of phase with our time so the crew of the Enterprise couldn't see them, but Commander Data could by using his phase discriminator.
"What if Jenny has a similar phase discriminator that means she can see the kaleg but we can't? What if it's something like that?"
"GOT IT!" shouted Midas with far more excitement than is seemly for a Vulcan.
"Front screen," commanded the captain and we all turned to look.
The screen flickered slightly as Midas made his final adjustments and the vision of open space ahead of us turned a peculiar shade of green. In the midst of it, a long blue rod of light twisted and turned, revolving on an invisible axis as it travelled through space.
"What's that?" asked T'Roc.
"The kaleg," I said coldly.
T'Roc took a deep breath.
"Luke, take the helm. Set a course for the kaleg."