The Night Visitor
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
The glow slips effortlessly through TROI'S QUARTERS' closed door, steadies over the sleeping COUNSELOR DEANNA TROI, then travels down her body—pausing at her head and lingering with an almost deliberate tenderness.
Troi jerks awake from a restless dream, searches the empty room for the lover she senses was there, and registers the irrevocable truth: someone or something visited her, and she will never be the same.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
A split-second collision of violated dread and maternal fascination, the shock of realizing one's body is now a contested frontier.
Troi lies curled beneath a microfiber blanket, rhythms of REM sleep twitching her eyelids until the light enters. She jolts awake, chest heaving; one hand claws sheets the other splays across her womb like a woman sealing a breach in reality.
- • Secure the sense of self against invasion
- • Understand/accept whatever new life now begins within her
- • Bodies can keep secrets they even themselves have not agreed to
- • Whatever has entered her was invited by something deeper than will
Exacting patience—the calm of an architect certain the foundation will finally bear the house it intends to build tomorrow.
The incandescent presence drifts above footlockers and bulkheads, stealth-crawling meters of hallway like a predator reading pheromone trails until it pours—without effort—into Troi’s cabin. It folds itself over her abdomen, white-blue light kissing her cells open to receive encoded purpose.
- • Locate the one compatible biological vessel
- • Implant engineered genome without detection
- • DNA is a language that believes it is music
- • Sleep is permission enough for organic change
Drowsy banality that marks midnight in deep space—too tired to notice destiny sliding by inches away.
Two crew—noses still creased by uniform collars—amble out of the starboard turbolift, murmuring drink orders or shift memos. The glow oozes through a bulkhead panel as they pass, unseen, their soft footfalls the clock the entity ignores.
- • Reach quarters before reprimand bell rings
- • Respect CO's curfew orders
- • Enterprise corridors are safe because they're familiar
- • Ghosts don't file duty reports
Deep REM unselfconsciousness; the sleep of those whom history’s cursors skip over.
A male ensign lies shirtless in his berth, one arm flung over his eyes. Above him the radiant intruder suspends, samples, declines like a sommelier rejecting a cork-shredded bottle before drifting on without leaving wake or ripple.
- • Dream quietly until alarm sounds
- • Tomorrow will resemble today
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Molecularly-tight duranium hull becomes a fluid membrane between the impregnating intelligence and the main corridor; the slab simply yields, rippling once like pondwater before resuming its matte solidity to continuing shadows.
Troi's overhead ceiling panel unlocks its magnetic seals without noise or mechanical haste, cupping the silver tendril as it descends. Once delivery is complete, plates re-latch leaving ceiling plating indistinguishable from its own reflection.
The turbolift doors breathe open on silent pneumatics, exhaling two passing crewpersonal memos and a rush of institutional coffee smell that the orb threads through without altering trajectory. Moments later the doors swallow themselves closed, leaving the corridor dark and birthing the next stage of night.”
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Enterprise’s night corridor plays midwife stage to silent conspiracies—amber runner lights rival the corridor’s heartbeat, engines throb through hull bones to disguise echoing paces of destiny. Every shadow here is a doorway for what physics insists cannot walk.
Ranker bunks pressed like honeycomb cells line this drab branch of the child-selecting algorithm. Here the orb demos disdain—hovering over a dismissed male body before pivoting toward more fertile purpose elsewhere.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"The glowing ball's penetration of the hull is the immediate physical cause for the glow slipping into corridors and entering Troi's quarters."
"The glowing ball's penetration of the hull is the immediate physical cause for the glow slipping into corridors and entering Troi's quarters."
"The glowing ball's penetration of the hull is the immediate physical cause for the glow slipping into corridors and entering Troi's quarters."
"The glowing ball's penetration of the hull is the immediate physical cause for the glow slipping into corridors and entering Troi's quarters."
"The light's deliberate presence over Troi's sleeping form directly precipitates her violent awakening and the recognition that she has been visited and changed."
"The light's deliberate presence over Troi's sleeping form directly precipitates her violent awakening and the recognition that she has been visited and changed."
Part of Larger Arcs
Key Dialogue
"Troi: (no one present; the dialogue is her startled breath, the question-mark of her eyes, the silent certainty that she has been chosen)"