New Nightmare

Lieutenant Taline was lying down on a biobed. His chest was in a cast from the recent door accident on the Bridge. He slowly drifted off to sleep......

The hazy picture that lay before him cleared into perfect focus. He was underground somewhere. In a tunnel, deep underground. He looked down to find himself in a dark brown robe that falls to his knees. As he exhales he notices a thin, long snake-like tongue protrude from his mouth. His eyes widen with surprise as he looks down and sees his hands. They are not of human flesh, but of a leathery scale-like structure that is dark greenish-black in colour. He finds a phaser-like weapon at his waist and a tri-corder-like piece of sensor equipment in his left hand. He starts to jog forward and finds that he is moving a lot faster than normal. This humanoid form he has taken is definitely different than that of his normal human form.

He turns a corner in the tunnel to find other creatures that look like him. They are running at full speed and blow past him. He looks at the tri-corder. It provides no unusual readings. He looks up to see a small group of flying/hovering creatures that resemble octopi without any tentacles. Large sacks are evident through the "surface" of their body. They fly by Taline and go after the other scaly humanoids. Taline turns around, drops his tricorder and runs after to see what is happening. He turns the corner back to the tunnel he first "arrived" in. The flying octopi shoot out small, yellow projectiles that appear to be pebbles. However, upon contact with one of the humanoids skin, it starts to burrow through the creature's skin. The creature grab the piercing site with pain. Then, they look up to Taline with a look of mindlessness. Like a robot programmed with an order, the creatures chase after Taline. Their red eyes glowed intently with a look of unstoppable fury. As it grew close to Taline, it exploded, taking out the entire tunnel.

Before any damage was dealt to him, Taline woke up, sweating profusely.

"Whoa. I gotta' find out what's giving me these dreams." He shakes off the nightmarish vision and manipulates the bed controls to sit up.

He turns and goes over to a replicator. He gets himself a coffee and sits backs down on the bed. As he lowered his hand, his chest ached again. He nearly dropped the coffee before getting back into a comfortable position.

"Better remember that I don't have complete mobility." He chuckled to himself and quickly grew bored. He finished his coffee and began looking at some information he requested.

The first Padd was about jobs that needed to get done in Engineering. Taline chuckled reading the part about Tyra having to clean the warp core. "I never was partial to dusting." He chuckles again as he puts the first Padd away and takes a second one.

The second Padd contained information about recent events that were happening on the ship. An away team was sent to the surface of one of the nearby planets and required an emergency beam-out. "Hmm...I'll have to look into that one..." Taline said to himself, but aloud at the same time. He put the second Padd away, and had his last Padd left. This Padd was the Padd he had dropped on the Bridge. He suddenly remembered his recent nightmare.

Lieutenant Taline put down his Padd slowly and thought carefully about the proper course of action. He spoke.

"Computer." The computer responded."Schedule an appointment with the ship's counsellor for me. Make it as soon as possible. It is important, but not urgent."

<Acknowledged.>

"Thank you."

Taline set the biobed settings to a comfortable laying down position. He relaxed and began to think deeply about all that has happened recently. A distant place, which nearly no one is familiar with ...the weird dreams...the away team...somehow he had to figure out how they were all connected. And judging from the vivid and disturbing images of the last dream, he had to do it quickly.