EPISODES FEATURING CHEZ SANDRINE - illustrated episode excerpt

NON SEQUITUR

Kim wakes up in an apartment in early 2372 in San Francisco on Earth. No one seems surprised to see him there, not his fiancée Libby, nor a local coffee shop owner named Cosimo who says he has served him coffee for the past eight months, nor his friend Lieutenant Lasca who is a fellow starship design specialist at Starfleet Headquarters. Lasca takes Kim to an important meeting at Starfleet Headquarters to present the design of a prototype runabout which Kim and Lasca have designed as part of their work in the Starfleet Engineering Corps. Since Kim does not remember his apartment, his engagement, his job, Lasca or designing a runabout, he feigns illness in order to end the meeting. In his Starfleet office, Kim accesses classified Starfleet records using his Voyager security code and discovers that he never served on USS Voyager which has been reported lost in the Badlands while searching for a missing Maquis ship. Instead of Kim, his best friend Ensign Danny Byrd was assigned as ops officer aboard Voyager.

Kim discovers that Tom Paris is not on Voyager's crew manifest but was sentenced for treason (Maquis activities) and has been paroled from the New Zealand Penal Settlement. He now lives in Marseilles, France. Kim wants to rejoin the life he remembers, even if it means being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, and he travels late one night to Marseilles.

On the waterfront at Marseilles, Kim locates Tom Paris at the real Chez Sandrine. To Kim's chagrin, Paris does not know him, although he listens to Kim's story. Kim tells him his last recollection is of being in a shuttlecraft heading back to USS Voyager. Kim asks Paris to accompany him to Starfleet Headquarters where they can run a computer simulation to learn what happened. Paris refuses, thinking it is a Starfleet trick. Kim's visit is observed throughout by Cosimo.

Marseilles waterfront, France. An alien leaves a bar as Kim enters. It is the real Chez Sandrine, the bar which Paris, in Kim's original reality on Voyager, has re-created as a holodeck program.

As Kim looks round, a familiar voice tells him sharply: "Hey, watch it, will you? I'm trying to set up a shot here."

Kim looks round. "Tom." Tom Paris is playing pool. Paris: "Who the hell are you?"

Kim: "You don't know me, do you?" Paris: "Sure. We were at the Academy together, right?" Kim: "No." Paris: "Oh, well, it must've been the Exeter. We served on the Exeter together?" Kim: "Try Voyager." Paris: "Ah, Voyager. Well, sorry to disappoint you but I never set foot on that ship. Can't say that I'm sorry considering what happened to it." Kim: "You know about the mission to the Badlands?" Paris: "Oh yeah. Captain Janeway asked if I'd help her track down that Maquis ship in exchange for an early release from the penal colony." Kim: "But you said no?" Paris laughs. "Are you kidding? I said yes! Sounded better than Starfleet rehab. Anyway I got as far as Deep Space 9 when I get into a bar fight with a Ferengi, and I was thrown into the Brig by a very unpleasant shape-shifter. Janeway tried to get me released but my parole was revoked by Starfleet Command. Voyager left without me." Kim: "That Ferengi, was he trying to sell you Lobi crystals?" Paris: "Yeah. How do you know about that?" Kim: "Because I was there! In my reality, anyway. Tom, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I was on Voyager and so were you. You never got into a bar fight with that Ferengi. You stopped him from selling me Lobi crystals. And you did lead us into the Badlands." Paris snorts. "You're right. It does sound crazy." Kim: "Something's happened. Somehow reality has been changed - a temporal anomaly, an alien influence. I can't explain how. All I know is that it's true. I was in a shuttlecraft, heading back to Voyager and then I woke up here, on Earth." Paris: "What is it you want?" Kim: "Come with me to Starfleet Headquarters. Help me run a computer simulation of what happened on that shuttle. You're the best pilot I've ever seen, and if anyone can figure it out it's you."

Paris laughs heartily. "You had me there for a minute, you really did. But then you blew it." Kim: "What are you talking about?"

Paris slams down his glass. "You're not getting me to step foot inside Starfleet Headquarters. So you tell whatever admiral or captain who sent you that I'm not interested in being another pawn in one of their games." Kim: "It's not a game!" Paris: "Oh, it isn't? Well, that's a shame. I like games." Kim: "You once told me that you used to treat life like one big game - rules, players, winners, losers. You never took any of it seriously...until you lost." Paris: "You know, you're starting to annoy me." Kim: "You also told me you were afraid of what would happen to you if you didn't take Captain Janeway up on her offer. Now I see why." Paris: "What do you see, Ensign?" Kim: "A loser and a drunk."

Paris goes to hit him but Kim is quicker. Kim deflects his blow, pulls Paris' arm behind his back and pushes him face down onto the pool table. Kim comments: "I guess in this reality, that's all you'll ever be." He leaves, hugely disappointed.

	Paris gets up. For a moment he is thoughtful.
	Then he walks casually over to the bar for another drink. Sitting at the bar.....is Cosimo!

When Kim arrives home, he is taken in for questioning at Starfleet but no one believes his story. Worse, Kim's behaviour is suspicious, for he has accessed classified computer records and visited a known Maquis sympathiser (Tom Paris). Kim realises Starfleet suspects he might be a Maquis spy. Until the matter can be settled, an electronic security anklet is placed on Kim to monitor his whereabouts.

Kim visits Cosimo who tells him that his (Cosimo's) species inhabits a temporal inversion fold in the space-time matrix and that Cosimo was sent to keep watch over him after Kim's shuttlecraft intersected one of their time streams. The accident scrambled Kim's timeline and sent him back to the life he would have known if he had not joined Voyager's crew. In an effort to help Kim, Cosimo gives him a small disk containing the co-ordinates of the time stream that could take him back, saying that he might be able to return to his original reality if he recreates the conditions of the accident. Cosimo warns that there is no guarantee; instead Kim might enter another reality vastly different from the current incorrect one, but Kim believes he has to try to regain his original reality.

Kim tampers with the security anklet he is wearing, planning to escape. He says farewell to Libby, promising to do his best to return home, then tries to evade a Starfleet security team which arrives, alerted by the anklet tampering. A Starfleet security guard pursues him and eventually apprehends him. Unexpectedly Tom Paris arrives on the scene and lays out the security guard. Paris and Kim flee. Paris reveals that he came to help Kim because, if Kim is correct, a life on Voyager would be better than his present one. Needing a ship to recreate his shuttlecraft accident and ride the time stream back to his original reality and Voyager, Kim and Paris commandeer the prototype runabout. They break out of spacedock and head for the time stream's co-ordinates, pursued by a Federation starship which damages the runabout. Just in time they manage to recreate the conditions of Kim's shuttlecraft accident, and Kim regains his reality just as the runabout explodes. Glad to be back on Voyager and in his normal life, Kim baffles Tom Paris by telling him: "I owe you one."