Twisted: A Parody

"TWISTED: A Parody" by Scott Martin (smartin@sonalysts.com)

On her second birthday, Kes enters the Holodeck, which is unusually dark. "Hello?" she calls out. "Is anybody here?"

"SURPRISE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" a dozen voices shout as one. The lights brighten, revealing the senior Voyager crew, a birthday cake, and a ton of presents.

"Oh, you didn't have to do this," Kes says, embarrassed. "It's a good thing we Ocampans use the same standard years as Humans, though."

"Not to mention Talaxians, Klingons, Vulcans, and every other intelligent race in the Universe," Neelix adds, bringing over a cake. "Happy birthday, Kes." He hands her a tiny box.

"What is it?" Kes asks.

"It's a thimble. I sculpted it out of a year's worth of my own earwax, as Talaxian custom dictates. It's not much, I know, but it's the thought that cou--"

Suddenly, Tom Paris runs up, shoving Neelix aside. "I brought you a present," he says, handing Kes an enormous gift-wrapped package.

"Why, thank you, Tom," Kes says, opening the package. "Oh, look! Black lingerie, a year's supply of birth control pills, and two pairs of handcuffs! How cute!"

Neelix looks thoughtfully at Paris, who has begun to remove Kes' clothes. 'I wonder if I should be jealous,' he thinks.

Meanwhile, on the bridge, a spatial anomaly appears on the main viewscreen.

"It seems to be kind of distorting the surrounding space," says Ensign Kim. "I'd guess it's a spatial distortion of some kind."

"Thank you for your insightful analysis, Mr. Kim," responds Tuvok, who's taken the conn while Captain Janeway parties in the Holodeck. Remembering that Voyager has had some bad luck with spatial anomalies in the recent past, he wisely decides to pull away. "Take us out, Ensign," he orders.

"Sorry, sir," retorts Kim. "During the four seconds since we discovered the anomaly, we've been completely surrounded by it. Weapons systems are off-line... the warp core just shut down... whoops, we've lost comms, too!"

Tuvok rolls his eyes upward. "I hate when this happens," he mutters.

"The anomaly has formed a ring around the ship. We can't escape," Kim explains.

Behind Tuvok, one of the crewmembers looks up from his console. "A RING around the ship, you said? Then all we have to do is--"

"Excellent idea, Ensign Miscellanie," Tuvok breaks in. "Mr. Kim, launch a Class Four probe into the distortion. By sending out gravimetric pulses, perhaps we can disrupt the anomaly long enough to pull away."

"Yes, sir," Kim says, pressing the Launch-A-Class-Four-Probe-Into- The-Distortion button on his console. The console beeps uselessly. "No effect," he says a second later.

Ensign Miscellanie hesitantly clears his throat. "Uh, excuse me, Mr. Tuvok, what I was going to say was--" he interrupts.

"Not now, Ensign Miscellanie," Tuvok says, cutting him off. He turns back to Kim. "Try emitting a tetrion beam from the main deflector dish at a frequency of 15.3 megahertz. Perhaps that will generate a temporal rift in the distortion ring."

"The main deflector dish isn't responding," Kim replies.

"Sir, I'd like to point out..." Miscellanie begins.

"Please stop interrupting me, Ensign. Mr. Kim, generate a sustained muon burst for ten seconds and direct it at the closest portion of the anomaly. Cycle it through the visible spectrum so it looks pretty."

"Nothing's happening, sir," says Kim.

"Mr. Tuvok, why don't we just go up? Or down?" Miscellanie blurts out.

Tuvok rounds on the hapless ensign. "Ensign Miscellanie," he says dangerously, "if you persist in interrupting me I shall have you relieved of duty and thrown in the brig." He turns to Kim once more. "Mr. Kim, wave this rubber chicken over your head and hop on one leg. Perhaps Hhorgg, the Deity of Space/Time, will take pity on us."

Kim doesn't even hesitate. The floor creaks as he jumps up and down.

"Now sing 'When Irish Eyes are Smiling,'" Tuvok intones.

On the Holodeck, the party has broken up. Captain Janeway has sensed that something has gone awry on the bridge -- she can faintly hear Kim's voice, singing in horribly off-key tones.

"Tuvok only does the rubber chicken thing when he's desperate," Janeway tells the crew. "All right, everybody get up to the bridge. Be sure to leave in small groups so we can all get separated."

Shortly, Neelix and Kes find themselves wandering the corridors. They discover that all the crew's quarters have been switched around.

"Look," says Kes, pointing at various doors. "Schwartzman was on Deck 6, Paris was on Deck 4, and Richards was on Deck 7. Something very strange is going on!"

"Maybe somebody switched all the nameplates?" Neelix replies.

"No, it couldn't be that," retorts Kes. "Obviously, another pesky spatial anomaly has rearranged the crew's rooms without distorting the surrounding corridors, disrupting the power systems, or opening the ship to space!"

"You don't have to be sarcastic," mutters Neelix.

Meanwhile, Paris and B'Elanna Torres, equally lost, attempt to find Engineering. After visiting nearly every room of the ship, they eventually manage to arrive at their destination.

"It looks like something terrible has happened to Voyager," Paris says unnecessarily, for the benefit of viewers who are stupid. "Every room has been moved around."

"Not again," B'Elanna sighs. "What switched the rooms around THIS time? A transporter malfunction? An unexpected jaunt to an alternate reality? A playful, omnipotent Space Imp? What?"

"Probably just another spatial anomaly," Paris grumbles. "Those things are really starting to tick me off."

After briefly consulting with the engineers, B'Elanna decides to try to beam Paris and herself directly to the bridge. "We'll need to cross-wire the Wertz manifolds and cycle the pattern buffers, but we can do it. Luckily, we've got transporter pads right here in Engineering." She gestures toward a nearby door.

B'Elanna walks to the door, which obediently opens for her. But then she halts, startled. Behind the opened entrance, a crewman sits on a toilet seat, his pants down around his ankles. He looks up from the newspaper he's reading.

"That is NOT the transporter pad," Paris says.

"I... don't believe it," B'Elanna breathes in a hushed, shocked voice. "It's here. I've finally found it."

"What are you talking about?" Paris asks.

"The bathroom! There's really a bathroom on this ship! My God, I've been looking for one of these things for the last two years!" She turns to Paris. "Do you have any idea how long I've had to hold it in?!"

Paris whistles, much impressed.

B'Elanna turns back towards the crewman, now modestly covering himself. "OUTTA MY WAY!!" she shouts, rushing towards the toilet and shoving the hapless crewman onto the floor. The door closes. For the next several minutes, the sounds of B'Elanna relieving herself can be heard through the closed portal...

Dispatched by Tuvok to find the Captain, Ensign Kim stumbles across her in a corridor. He gives her a brief update on the situation.

"I've had no luck trying to get to the bridge by conventional means," Janeway says, exasperated. "Let's try using the Jeffries tubes. Maybe the anomaly only distorted the bigger corridors and left the smaller passageways alone."

"Yeah, right," Kim mumbles to himself. Nonetheless, he follows the Captain as she clambers through an access panel.

After crawling around the narrow passages for endless minutes, Janeway and Kim stop in front of a bulkhead. Kim flips open his tricorder. "My tricorder's indicating some strange matter fluctuations behind this door -- right in front of you, Captain," he announces. "Looks pretty dicey to me. Still, we have to keep going."

Janeway pauses a moment, then turns and smiles at the Ensign. "You know, Ensign -- Harry -- I just wanted to tell you something. I think you're doing a magnificent job. You've been handling this whole situation with grace and dignity. Your technical skills are second to none. You're the most valuable officer on the bridge -- more valuable than Chakotay or Paris or even Tuvok. Without you, this entire ship would have been destroyed several times over. In fact, you're doing such a fantastic job that I intend to put you up for a promotion when we get back to Earth. How does Commander sound?"

Kim grins back at Janeway. "Sounds very flattering, Captain. Thank you." He smiles even more broadly. "You're still going first, though."

Janeway strikes her fist against the wall. "Dammit," she says, swearing quietly to herself. "That line ALWAYS works on Chakotay!"

"I always wondered how Chakotay got his pips," muses Kim.

"All right," Janeway says, ignoring him. "Let's get this over with." She opens the door.

Behind the panel, the corridor twists and turns and rocks like a psychotic roller coaster ride, as the spatial anomaly wreaks its havoc on the Jeffries tube.

"Neato," says Janeway. "I wonder what happens if I stick my arm in there?" She reaches out. Her arm is suddenly stretched to five times its original length.

"Yeeaaghh," she cries articulately, as Kim pulls her back in...

Eventually, the senior crewbeings manage to regroup in the Holodeck, which (as usual) can't be shut off. They examine a computer schematic which shows what Voyager now looks like. On the display screen, they see a badly deformed ship, twisted and rent like cheap toilet paper.

"Look at this," says Chakotay. "Does this raise any obvious questions to your minds?"

"Yeah," replies Paris. "Howcum the computer is still working?"

The Doctor steps in. "I believe what the Commander was wondering, Mr. Paris, was how this could possibly be fixed by the end of the episode."

"Dog! Nurf wuffle sub! S'drawk cab gnik latmik ool!" shouts Janeway, who is suffering from aphasia as a result of being caught in the spatial distortion.

Suddenly, B'Elanna has an idea. "I've got it! If we can just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, decouple the Wiggs array from the baffle partates, reduce the number of futon particles moving through the warp core, and press that Big Red Button in Engineering, everything will be fixed!"

"Isn't that potentially dangerous?" asks Chakotay.

"Yes, absolutely," says B'Elanna. "Very, very dangerous. The whole ship could blow apart, scattering our atoms across the Delta Quadrant at nearly the speed of light, which means that parts of us could strike our home planets as cosmic rays in about 80,000 years -- although, at relativistic speeds, it would only seem like a few hours to us, assuming we were still able to measure time, which would be an unlikely assumption inasmuch as we'd all consist of an ever-expanding cloud of dissociated atomic particles with no cognitive abilities --"

Chakotay breaks in. "What's your point, B'Elanna?"

B'Elanna shoots a look of annoyance at Chakotay. "The point, Commander," she says, "is that the whole procedure is fraught with peril. Only a madman would attempt it. At best, we have a .001% chance of survival."

"Oh, the tension! Oh, the pathos!" cries Neelix.

"Okay, let's do it," says Chakotay. "It beats turning into Spaghetti People."

After a harrowing and of course dangerous trip to Engineering, B'Elanna and Kim manage to reach the critical panel and press the Big Red Button. The intrepid crewmembers start to get blurry as the camera vibrates. Everything tumbles and falls over. Sparks fly out of nearby consoles. A huge, rumbling sound drowns out all other noises.

"THE WHOLE SHIP'S SHAKING!" cries B'Elanna. "THE CORE'S ABOUT TO BREACH! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE SO WE CAN DIE ON ANOTHER PART OF THE SHIP!"

"WHAT?" shouts back Kim.

"I SAID--"

And then the shaking stops. "Wow, how dramatic," says Kim. "I thought for SURE we were goners that time."

"We did it!" B'Elanna exclaims.

"Don't bet on it," Kim says. "We're only forty minutes into the episode. Come on, let's find the rest of the crew."

Kim and B'Elanna manage to find their way back to the Holodeck, which for some reason still contains only the senior members of the crew. The remaining 389 people on the ship are nowhere to be found.

"Well? Did it work?" asks the Doctor, as B'Elanna and Kim stride in.

Without warning, the spatial anomaly waltzes through the Holodeck door behind them.

"Whoops," says B'Elanna.

"So this is it," says Paris, "we're going to die."

The crew watches in horror as the anomaly ripples closer, blocking their only exit. "Entertaining suggestions, people," Chakotay says.

Tuvok looks thoughtful for a moment, then speaks up. "Nothing we have done thus far has availed us. Perhaps the only solution... is to do nothing."

"No, that couldn't possibly be the answer," the Doctor replies sarcastically. "If it was, the episode would be pointless. It would imply that this entire course of events has been outside of our control from the beginning, that the writers have just been throwing roadblocks into our path until the very end of the show, when they pull out the usual deus ex machina and restore everything to its original state. The episode would boil down to a series of contrived crises, designed to fool the audience into thinking that something of dramatic worth was happening."

"You must be right," says Chakotay, "but I don't see how we have any choice. This entire course of events has been outside our control from the beginning." Suddenly, he snaps his fingers. "I know! I'll contact my spirit guide!"

Chakotay sits at a table and closes his eyes. "O mighty Spirit Guide," he chants, "we are smack dab in the midst of a great and powerful Spatial Anomaly. Tell us how we may avoid a horrid fate, we beseech thee!"

A spectral figure appears above the table, shimmering gently in the air. After a moment, the Spirit Guide's deep, sepulchral voice resonates in the hushed silence of the room.

"Try generating a sustained muon burst and directing it at the closest part of the distortion," it intones.

Chakotay looks crestfallen. "Umm... mighty Spirit Guide, we already tried that."

The Spirit Guide ponders this for a moment, then shrugs. "Hunh. Then I guess you're toast," it says, disappearing with an audible "poof."

Chakotay sighs, then looks at the assembled crew. "Yep," he says. "No question about it. We are definitely going to die this time."

As the spatial anomaly moves closer, each of the crew has Meaningful Moments, where, in the belief that they will shortly be dead, they acknowledge their affection for each other.

"I'm worried about Neelix. He hasn't come back," says Kes. "Oh, Doctor Whoeveryouare, hold me!"

Tuvok moves close to Janeway. "Captain, even though at present you sound like a record being played backwards, I wished to acknowledge my respect for your abilities. It is a pity we will not survive, since I would thoroughly enjoy seeing you bark out orders in your present state." He snickers.

"Kim, I love you," says Paris, embracing the young Ensign.

The spatial anomaly moves closer...

Closer...

Paris looks at his watch.

Closer...

Chakotay starts tapping his feet.

Closer...

"Is everybody done with their Meaningful Moments?" asks B'Elanna.

"Yes," they all reply, except for Janeway, who replies "Lub."

Closer...

Suddenly, the anomaly is upon them, having crossed the intervening ten feet in only six hours. Everybody distorts...

And just as suddenly, everything snaps back to normal.

Janeway sits up. "I'm home! I just had the strangest adventure! You were there, Chakotay, and you, Paris, and... and... maybe it was all a dream." She frowns in confusion at the assembled crewmembers, who have become unusually monochromatic. In the distance, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" starts playing.

"Captain! Your aphasia is gone!" exclaims Chakotay.

"Yes," says Janeway, "and somehow I know that everything in the ship is back to the way it was, too."

"How do you know?" asks Paris.

"The anomaly told me. It was sentient!"

"Oh, now THERE's a twist!" the Doctor mutters sardonically. "We get to combine the It-Was-All-A-Dream, Alien-Lifeform-Of-The-Week, AND Dangerous-Spatial-Anomaly plotlines all in one episode!"

"An intelligent ripple in the fabric of space-time, with a passion for interior decorating," Tuvok muses. "Fascinating. Stupid, but fascinating."

Janeway says something meaningful about the preciousness of life in its various forms, while the rest of the crew nods and mutters approval. Suddenly, Tuvok notices something strange.

"Captain," says Tuvok, "you have a spatial anomaly in your hair."

THE END