Game was 10/15/20; sadly, we didn't have a Heidi, but we gained a Wendy.

Two days have passed as the Varich continues traveling the Rupture Zone and in the process, they have collected six different versions of the Cliff probe. Mel and Christopher keep an eye on things while Christopher quietly diverts some of the paperwork, so Mel doesn't have to worry about it; it takes Mel almost a full day before she realizes. Jessa keeps her door open and actually sees all of the patients on her roster. Even the captain drops by for a counseling session; Mel has free time, after all. She is also at a bit of loose ends, as the Varich continues to hold up in the Rupture Zone. Ssleestak and K'tral are at loose ends as well so far; nothing on the Varich has broken. K'tral continues her conversations with Fal when he has time, while Fal continues scanning the Rupture Zone.

Fal also meets with Lieutenant (junior grade) Trina and works with her for a long-term plan for information storage and optimal use. He eventually includes the rest of the science department with this although he keeps Alexandria Tovan at bay on the strategic side. He decides he has no problem granting her access to the data itself but realizes her intense focus renders her fairly useless when it comes to the planning stages. He decrees that the kinetic absorbing carpet is an optional project, and his team is only to spend up to fifteen percent of their time working on it. Senior Chief Petty Officer Xervis Yadri counters, "With your permission, sir, I'd like to devote my entire time to that. After all, we get shot at a lot, and this helps us not die." Fal concedes the point.

The biggest challenges fall to flight control. Phillip has rearranged the standard three-shift day to be four shifts with several breaks in between, to allow his pilots time to rest. He subs in the shuttle crews as well, making sure everyone has time and experience flying in the Rupture Zone. In this case, Lieutenant Merek'miir has proven to be absolutely invaluable. She pilots primarily by 'feel' and at one point violently jerks the Varich to port, out of the path of a suddenly emerging subspace tear. Phillip and the rest of the senior officers choose not to make an issue of that! As a gift to his friend Phillip, Shan'taar announces jokingly, "I promise I shall not touch flight control!"

Phillip continues his therapy sessions with Armina, but she shortens them to thirty minutes out of respect of the pressure he is under. When Phillip is not on duty, he makes it a point to stay off the bridge. He sleeps more than normal, and does what he can to decompress, including eating comfort foods. Peel understands completely and spends time with him when he wants but otherwise lets him rest. Paj is also understanding and willingly cooks up whatever Phillip requests.

Phillip also tells Peel specifically of her temporal alternate and her violent threats towards the chief engineer of the Varich-A. He also adds, "Apparently, I'm the smarter one!" He explains a bit more, especially how apparently in that timeline their relationship did not continue. Peel announces, "That satisfies me on multiple levels." It takes Phillip a minute to get her joke, and then she continues, "I'm not sure what is happening in that transmission, however. The only time I've ever been that angry with someone was when my father tried to kill me." Phillip quickly changes the subject.

The rest of the crew also learns about the Varich-A, leading to a lot of whispered conversations. Unfortunately, the further the Varich travels into the Rupture Zone, the less reliable communications with Starbase 212 get. This means that any news from Earth fails to get through while Ssleestak's daily updates from both Sola and the repair crew often do not make it through. To make things even more confusing, sometimes the messages they do receive are utterly garbled and seemingly from the future.

At 1400 hours, the short-range sensors suddenly go off as they detect an object approaching fast. Fal scans what he can and reports that something has altered course and is traveling at warp 7 to intercept them. Mel orders, "Yellow alert!" Fal continues scanning and declares, "Captain, it appears to be a giant dirty snowball. I'm reading at least one hundred life-signs on board, but I can detect no engines, no weapons, or any sort of centralized structure." The object decelerates to match their speed right on top of them and the crew sees Fal's description is apt; the vessel appears to be a giant dirty snowball about one and a half times their size. The snowball then opens fire as it strafes the port nacelle and then somehow vanishes!

The Varich's shields absorb the weapon's fire and between Fal and Ssleestak, they determine but the weapon used was some form of concentrated subspace packet and it was operating at approximately ten percent power. Mel orders, "Proceed with caution, but continue on course." Phillip scans ahead to see where the ship would have been if they had not been attacked but doesn't find anything out of the ordinary - at least whatever qualifies as ordinary in the Rupture Zone.

At 1445 hours, the giant dirty snowball suddenly appears directly below them and opens fire again! Phillip jerks the Varich to starboard in an attempt to evade, but unfortunately the maneuver is so sudden and so violent that several inertial dampeners fail! The violent flight pattern leads several members of the crew, including Phillip and Jessa, to be violently sick. The good news is that this time, Fal is able to determine that the snowball flies right into a subspace tear and vanishes. Shan'taar reports that this time the other starship used their weapons at eleven percent power. Fal muses, "This means they understand a base-10 system at least."

Mel declares, "Maybe, but I don't want to do this eighty-eight more times." Next to her, Armina announces, "I second that!" Fall and Ssleestak review the scans taken during both attacks and determine that the object is in fact a decentralized starship and is designed to take advantage of the subspace tears in the Rupture Zone. Ssleestak immediately covets that ability! He then turns to repairs, and he and K'tral quickly reroute power and manage to save all but two of the damaged inertial dampeners.

Forty-five minutes later, at 1530 hours, the giant snowball suddenly erupts from a tear directly in front of them! Phillip immediately dives down as the vessel opens fire, this time at twelve percent power! Shan'taar pops off a quick shot with the phaser cannon, also at twelve percent power, and the blast strikes true and a part of the snowball partially separates and slams into the Varich! There is no violent collision, as the Varich passes through the misty tendril, leaving everything on the Varich sopping wet and smelling incredibly musty. Several members of the crew are able to catch glimpses of some sort of white humanoid aliens as the two ships pass through each other; Mel sees them a little more clearly as one briefly collides and passes through her! Ssleestak realizes the smell of wet Gorn is deeply unpleasant to most mammals so he goes to get his cinnamon spray.

Fal correlates the data that the Varich has collected with all that the probe uploaded two days ago and finds dozens of sightings of this type of vessel. Some appear to be roughly the size of a Nova-class starship, while the largest are twice the size of a Galaxy-class starship! Merek'miir says carefully, "I believe these are the Androkai, captain. There have been myths and legends about them in the Rupture Zone for longer than I've been alive, and up until now I believe they were nothing more than a myth. Then again, I thought that first probe was indeed 'The Lovers' and look how that turned out!" She admits she didn't want to say anything earlier until she had time to access the portable database she brought with her. Mel makes a note of that reluctance and idly wonders if this is a personal trait or a Wabai cultural trait.

Ssleestak suggests, "Captain, what if we fly into them and then travel into one of the subspace tears?" Mel really doesn't like that idea at all, and calls out, "Conference!" Merek'miir petitions to remain at flight control, and Mel realizes that is the best option. The senior officers gather in the conference room and Jessa declares, "Let's do the stupid thing!" Swims demands, "Why? How have you lived three lifetimes with no concept of consequences?" Jessa retorts, "The second one didn't count!"

Ssleestak amends his idea and offers, "What if we just shoot a probe instead? Or perhaps one of the smaller vessels, like the Thunderbird or the captain's yacht?" Mel immediately vetoes the idea of using the Thunderbird, but generally doesn't care what happens to the Waverider. Swims continues to insist on the dangers of this plan and the potential damage it could wreak, but Jessa retorts, "If they realistically wanted us to bring this ship back in one piece, they wouldn't have sent us!" Swims replies, "I want to disagree with you… but I really can't argue with that."

Christopher posits, "Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. What if they're trying to figure out if we're sentient?" Fal raises his eyebrows at that idea but is practically bouncing in his seat as he wants to perform science! He supports using a probe the next time their new friends return, and even Phillip agrees. Mel decides to let them try and the meeting ends. The senior officers returned to their stations except for Fal who heads down to the torpedo big to speak with Crewman (1st-class) Chilp.

He meets Chilp and explains the basic situation; Chilp leans over an open photon torpedo and says, "Tell me more!" Fal grins and outlines their idea to fire a probe at the other vessel in the hopes that the probe will be able to track them into the subspace tear. Ideally, the probe will be set up so Phillip could fly it remotely. Chilp considers the suggestion very seriously and then muses, "Well, we might as well use Cliff again." Fal jokingly asks, "Which one?" Chilp misses the sarcasm as he turns to the rack of identical probes and seemingly points to one at random as he replies, "That one, I think. I'll need a little bit of time to rig up an interface so that Ensign Dade can pilot it. It won't be pretty, but it'll work."

Fal returns to the bridge and shares Chilp's assessments. Assuming the Androkai continue with their attack every forty-five minutes, the next attack will come at 1615 hours, several minutes into Beta shift. Mel decides to extend Alpha shift to compensate, although Phillip amends that and allows Beta shift take over flight control while he relocates to another station to pilot the probe; Mel agrees. Chilp finishes the probe with a few minutes to spare and loads it into the torpedo launcher.

At 1615 hours, the Androkai vessel appears directly above them and fires down, this time targeting the phaser cannon! Shan'taar fires the probe at the general dead-center of the mass of the Androkai ship; his aim is perfect but the Androkai ship overcompensates with the evasive maneuver and then slams into the Varich! With no time to react, the Varich enters the subspace terror encased within the Androkai ship!

Mel growls, "Goddamnit!" while Fal burbles happily as he starts scanning the inside of subspace tear! Then the weirdness starts, as suddenly there are six different versions of Jessa on the bridge! Four of them are all wearing Starfleet uniforms, just with slightly different variations on the uniform cut, while the fifth one is wearing something much racier, showing that Trill spots do in fact go all the way down! Jessa chirps, "Hello!" and her doppelgangers echo the greeting in a chorus! Jessa notices that her doppelganger in the racy outfit is not Joined,¹⁾ but then everything shifts!

For the next few seconds, the Varich exists in the universe where they are all Gorn! Jessa crows with delight as she is suddenly tall, powerful, and scaly! Unfortunately, in this reality Ssleestak is human and an engineering exchange officer! He screams in terror, "Nipples, ew!" The Varich slips out of that universe but for a split second all of the crew, even the vegetarians, are craving raw bloody meat! Then they enter the universe where they're all Tholians! They share a group consciousness, thus confirming Starfleet's theories that the Tholians have some sort of shared meta-consciousness and racial memory. Then they shift into the universe where all life has evolved into Phillip Dade! All of them are Phillip, much to the real Phillip's discomfort, but then Ssleestak-Phillip gets his head shoved into a conduit!

Then they briefly descend into the universe where they are all Soong-type androids, and then they find themselves on the most comfortable couch they have ever enjoyed! As they fall through subspace on this comfortable couch, which provides bowls of snacks, Mel realizes that the entire crew somehow fits on said comfortable couch. Then, the Androkai ship managers to eject the Varich, and they pop back into their reality, but still on the comfortable couch! Despite being in the void of open space, the couch provides atmosphere for a split second before it suddenly pops back into the Varich.

There's a moment of silence as every member of the crew attempts to assimilate what they just experienced, and Fal notes that for a split-second the Varich achieved sentience but then lost it. Phillip turns to astrogation and declares, "We're actually now only an hour from our intended destination!" Mel wonders how much time they were in that tear, but Fal replies, "According to the chronometer, captain, we were only in there for a few seconds. We've just travelled two days' time in a handful of seconds!" Jessa crows, "The stupid thing worked!" Mel responds through clenched teeth, "Yes, ensign."

The Varich continues on her journey, but everyone tenses at the forty-five-minute mark. However, when a subspace tear opens directly beneath them, it is not an Androkai ship that emerges, but instead six different versions of the Cliff probe! One probe is Tholian, one is Gorn, one is a mass of purple the same shade as Jessa's hair, one of them appears to be Phillip just floating in space, one appears to be similar to a Soong-type android, and one is a couch. Mel groans but decides to collect the probes. She decides, "Cargo bay three is now Cliff-town," as Chief Edgly expertly beams all six probes to cargo bay three.

Mel then orders a medical team to cargo bay three to examine the probes, specifically the one that resembles Phillip. Shan'taar reports, "Captain, the shields are holding at eighty-two percent. We still have two blown inertial dampeners, but we won't be able to repair those while we're in the Rupture Zone because we have to drop out of warp and go EVA." Ssleestak declares that the Androkai are a silly race and should not be contacted, even if that is against Starfleet's values. Mel elects to say nothing for or against, but Ssleestak mentally adds a new list alongside his Five Biggest Douchebag Empires; this list is of species that should not be contacted.

Doctor Vrax hails the bridge and reports, "Captain, the Phillip-probe does not appear to be sentient or alive. However, it just sat on the couch and a bowl of snacks appeared." A moment passes as he examines the other probes and declares, "Captain, the android is non-functional and the purple one is just a giant mass of hair!" Jessa mumbles a quick apology and then Doctor Vrax yelps in surprise! Mel immediately goes on red alert but Vrax reports, "Sorry about that, captain. The Phillip-probe just opened its face for data-export! It just startled me, that's all. And now it's eating the snacks!"

Fal groans as he realizes all of the data he collected within the subspace tear, combined with all of the data from the first probe and all that the Varich has already collected, means that their computer core is rapidly filling up! Everyone is surprised, considering the storage amount containing a Starfleet vessel, but Ssleestak decides but he will build a spare computer core strictly for data storage. Down in cargo bay three, Vrax reports, "Captain, all six probes have just powered down."