brennen
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lurkers-guide



								<h3>Synopsis by Matthew Murray (i9717029@unicorn.it.wsu.edu)</h3>


								<p>

								Sheridan arrives at C&C after Ivanova's call.  Babylon 5 has picked up a

								weak signal which Ivanova doesn't recognize coming out of deep space,

								from something that didn't use a jump gate.  Sheridan asks if it is an alien

								craft, but it isn't.  Ivanova plays the message for Sheridan: "This is

								the Copernicus.  We come in peace."


								<p>

								In Downbelow, a man named Amis jumps out of a dumpster screaming,

								"Through the walls!  It's coming through the wa..."  He says he needs

								some ozones, but he doesn't have any with him.  He is suddenly seized

								by pain.  "No!" he screams.  "I'm stuck!  Get out of my head!  Where

								are you?"  He looks at the floor.  "There you are!"  He pushes some garbage

								aside

								and looks out a porthole, seeing the approaching craft.  "There you

								are!  I see you..."  He begins to recite the Lord's Prayer, but

								can barely remember the words.  He runs away screaming as

								the vessel approaches the station.


								<p>

								Amis goes to the plaza,

								where he stands atop a table, delivering a doomsday speech to all the

								people there, warning them that Judgement Day is coming.  He says that

								they are all in great danger.  He sees G'kar and tries to warn him, but

								G'kar does his best to ignore him, and walks away.  Garibaldi arrives

								and grabs Amis, taking him off to the brig.


								<p>

								<img align=middle width=128 height=96

								src="/lurk/gif/027/preach.gif"> "Judgement Day is coming!"


								<p>

								Sheridan, Ivanova, and Garibaldi attempt to identify the ship and

								determine why it didn't use the jumpgate.  A maintenance craft, sent to

								examine the ship, approaches it and shines its light on the ship's

								name.  There are some letters, difficult to make out, before the ship's

								name, but Sheridan says he thinks they say U.S.S.  Ivanova doesn't

								recognize the ship's design.  Sheridan explains to her that ships

								like these were "used in early deep-range exploration, back before we

								got jumpgate technology from the Centauri."  None of them, however,

								know what happened to the ship in the more than 100 years since it was

								launched.  Ivanova detects a life form aboard the vessel, and Sheridan

								orders the ship to be brought aboard the station.  Sheridan calls down

								to Dr. Franklin to inform him that they may be bringing a patient

								aboard.


								<p>

								<img align=middle width=175 height=131

								src="/lurk/gif/027/copernicus.gif"> The Copernicus.


								<p>

								Sheridan, Ivanova, Garibaldi, Franklin, and several other officers

								enter the ship and examine the contents.  Inside, they find two

								cryogenic freezers.  The occupant of one of the freezers is dead, but

								the other contains

								a young woman, whose life signs are deteriorating quickly.

								Franklin says that they must get her to MedLab quickly.  They open up

								the freezer and take her to MedLab.  As they begin to treat her

								vanishing pulse enroute, the transport tube's lights go wild for a moment.

								She suffers a heart attack, but Franklin and his assistants are able to

								treat her for it.


								<p>

								Garibaldi enters the brig, where Amis is resting.  He is asleep, but

								thrashing about and shouting loudly about incoming weapons.  "Damn lurkers,"

								the guard says.  "We oughtta space the whole bunch of 'em."


								<p>

								"Were you in the war?" asks Garibaldi.


								<p>

								"No, I missed it."


								<p>

								"Yeah, well he didn't."


								<p>

								"How can you tell?"


								<p>

								"I've had that same dream."  Garibaldi leaves.


								<p>

								Ivanova is aboard the Copernicus, attempting to restore full power.  As

								soon as she does so, strange noises seem to come from all around her.

								She looks around, but sees nothing, and goes back to work.


								<p>

								<img align=middle width=128 height=96

								src="/lurk/gif/027/bridge.gif"> On the Copernicus' bridge.


								<p>

								Amis wakes up, with Garibaldi at his side.  Amis says that he is in

								perfect health, but doesn't know what he said or what he did.

								Garibaldi tells him what happened, and that they had to sedate him to

								get him to sleep.  Garibaldi asks Amis if he had done this before, and

								Amis says that he has done <em>everything</em> before.  Garibaldi asks where

								Amis was stationed during the war, and Amis admits that he was a, "gropo,"

								a ground pounder.  Garibaldi says that he was one, too.  Garibaldi asks

								him about his dreams, but Amis says that he doesn't dream.  Garibaldi tells

								him about the things he said in his sleep, and decides to let him leave

								the brig, though he recommends the man see a counselor.


								<p>

								Meanwhile, in MedLab, the woman from the cryogenic capsule, Mariah

								Cirrus, has passed from her unconciousness into a dreaming state.  After a

								few moments, she awakens with a start, and looks at her surroundings,

								frightened.  Dr. Franklin assures her that she will be all right.


								<p>

								<img align=middle width=128 height=96

								src="/lurk/gif/027/medlab.gif"> Mariah wakes up.


								<p>

								In Sheridan's office, Ivanova tells Sheridan that the man from the

								other cryogenic freezer should be alive, because the freezer didn't

								malfunction.  "Something," she says, "or someone murdered him."


								<p>

								Dr. Franklin examines the corpse from the other cryogenic capsule in

								MedLab.  "At the time of death," he tells Sheridan and Garibaldi, "the

								victim's weight appears to have been about 90 pounds.  Given his height

								and bone structure, his normal weight should have been about 180.  But

								malnutrition wasn't what killed him.  He died as a result of organ

								failure."


								<p>

								Garibaldi asks why, and Franklin says that the man's organs

								are missing, as if something had pulled them out from the inside.

								But a thorough scan of the ship revealed that the organs were not on

								board.  Garibaldi wants to interrogate the woman that was with him,

								though Franklin insists she couldn't be responsible, because she was in

								stasis the whole time.  Sheridan and Garibaldi can't accept this as an

								explanation.  Franklin then goes to check on her, though Sheridan tells

								him that he wants to talk to her when it is possible.


								<p>

								Mariah thanks Dr. Franklin for helping her.

								Franklin introduces himself.  He asks her how she got on the

								ship.  She explains that she and her husband were part of a commerical

								research group, which needed volunteers for a long-term deep space

								mission.  They volunteered and were put on the Copernicus, which would

								awaken them from their cryogenic sleep when they came in contact with

								an intelligent signal.  She asks how long they were asleep.  Franklin tells

								her that she was in the ship for over a hundred years.  She asks

								to see her husband, and Dr. Franklin tells her that he died during the

								voyage, and that they didn't know the cause.  She says that it seems as

								though they just said good-night to each other, and when she tries to

								cry, she can't, which Dr. Franklin explains is due to long-term stasis

								drying her tear ducts.  "God, what have I done?" she asks herself.


								<p>

								Amis runs through the station, as if searching for the presence he

								believes is putting the station in danger.  He goes to the cargo bay,

								where he finds the Copernicus.  "Holy mother!" he shouts, before he is

								chased away by a guard.


								<p>

								Dr. Franklin and Mariah are visiting various parts of the station.

								They go to the plaza, where Dr. Franklin explains the things she missed

								while cryogenically frozen.  "A few years after your ship left Earth,"

								he tells her, "we finally made contact with another species -- the

								Centauri.  We opened up trade relations and they gave us jumpgate

								technology.  Before that, we'd been pretty much limited to our own

								solar system.  After that, we were out among the stars, first leasing

								time on alien jumpgates, and then building our own."


								<p>

								Mariah laments at

								how she and her husband didn't wait, and how things might be different

								had they not gone on the Copernicus.  Dr. Franklin tries to tell her

								that what she did took courage, but she brushes it off, wondering about

								what else she missed.  He tells her about some of the general things

								that have happened, and about the Dilgar and Minbari wars.  She feels

								bad that the humans hadn't outgrown violence while she was in

								suspension.  "It's gonna take a lot more than a hundred years to evole

								a better human," Franklin tells her.


								<p>

								Ambassador G'Kar appears by their

								table, and Dr. Franklin introduces him to Mariah.

								"Take my advice and go back to the time you came from," G'Kar tells

								her.  "The future isn't what it used to be."


								<p>

								As she ponders his

								words, she remembers, subconciously, something that happened to her

								during the voyage.  She is in her cryogenic capsule aboard the

								Copernicus, asleep, when something appears in the capsule with her.

								She wakes up in the capsule and screams.


								<p>

								She wakes up for real, with Dr. Franklin, who

								tells her that she passed out and was taken to his quarters.  She

								thanks him again.  He asks her what her dream was about, but she

								doesn't remember anything about it.  She asks Dr. Franklin why he is

								interested in her dreams, and Franklin explains to her that her husband

								didn't die of a hardware malfunction, but was instead murdered.  She

								assumes that he means that she killed him, and he tries to tell her

								that he knows she didn't but wants to find out who -- or what -- did.  She

								begins crying that she is alone, feeling lost and distraught.  He tries

								to convince her otherwise, but stops and almost kisses her.  After they

								pull apart, he says that it is inappropriate, something to which she

								agrees.  Dr. Franklin suggests that she try to rest, even though she is

								very scared, which she does.


								<p>

								Garibaldi is eating in the Zocalo when Amis enters, again telling the

								patrons that they are all going to die.  Garibaldi escorts Amis out,

								telling him that he doesn't want Amis causing trouble on the station.

								Amis insists that he isn't crazy, and that something is on the

								station.  Garibaldi asks him what is on the station.  "Death," Amis

								replies.  "It came off that ship from the past.  I found it."

								Garibaldi asks Amis if he is sure.  "Yes.  I saw it do the same thing

								during the war."  As the two leave the Zocalo, in another part of the

								station, an alien, in an otherwise empty room, becomes the creature's

								next victim, his final word a scream as it attacks.


								<p>

								<img align=middle width=128 height=96

								src="/lurk/gif/027/arrest.gif"> Garibaldi escorts Amis away.


								<p>

								Garibaldi and Sheridan are in MedLab, listening to Dr. Franklin's

								findings about the latest victim.  Dr. Franklin explains that the

								alien's internal organs disappeared, with no visible entry or exit

								points, just like Mariah's husband.  Garibaldi expresses doubt that

								Mariah may be who she claims.  "I arrested a lurker named Amis," he

								says, "who was stationed on a deep-space listening post during the

								war.  Forty-seven men landed on that moon -- all of them were

								slaughtered, except for one."


								<p>

								Franklin tells Sheridan that whatever

								killed them couldn't have come aboard the Copernicus because the scan

								revealed nothing, but Garibaldi says that it could be something they

								had never before encountered.  "I traced the ship's path.  It passed

								within the gravitational pull of the same moon that Amis was stationed

								on.  This Mariah Cirrus may not be what she appears."


								<p>

								Franklin tells

								them that, since Mariah was with him the previous evening, she couldn't

								be responsible for the alien's death.  Sheridan orders that a

								watch, someone other than Franklin, be put upon Mariah around the clock.  Dr.

								Franklin is upset, taking this to mean that he isn't doing his job.

								Sheridan says he wants to protect the station; Dr. Franklin says

								he can't believe that this is happening on the word of a lurker.

								But Garibaldi tells Franklin that Amis won many medals during the war,

								making him fairly trustworthy.  Sheridan says that the League of

								Non-Aligned Worlds has asked for a council meeting to discuss the problem,

								and orders Franklin to go over her medical scans again.  "For what

								it's worth," Garibaldi tells Franklin after Sheridan leaves, "I hope

								you're right.  But if you're not, be careful."


								<p>

								At the council meeting, a delegate says that the League insists

								that Mariah be removed from the station.  "She has brought something

								evil from the past...a soldier of darkness," he says to the council.

								Though Londo finds the situation laughable, G'kar takes it quite

								seriously, telling the delegate to continue, which he does.  "The forces

								of darkness do not move openly.  They work through others.  Use

								others.  When the darkness was defeated long ago, they scattered, hid

								themselves away in secret places, and waited.  Now, the dark hand is

								reaching out and recalling them from their sleep."  Sheridan can't

								believe that Mariah is responsible, but the alien says, "Evil

								sometimes wears a pleasant face."


								<p>

								G'kar thinks they should consider

								the delegate's word, but Londo doesn't.  Sheridan says that they shouldn't

								ignore what is going on.  Londo laughs and this, and leaves, saying

								they should kill the presence, if they find it.  The alien delegate says that

								the League will take action if Sheridan doesn't.  This angers Sheridan,

								who warns the League that Mariah will be protected at all costs.  He

								adjourns the meeting.  He talks to Ivanova, also present at the

								meeting, about the situation, and she asks him what he would do if a

								"soldier of darkness" did board the station via the Copernicus.

								Sheridan scoffs at this, saying he will believe it when he sees it,

								though Ivanova hopes it will not come to that.


								<p>

								Garibaldi springs up in bed, apparently due to a bad dream, and goes to

								talk to Amis.  Garibaldi confronts Amis about the creature, telling him

								to take him where he found it.  Amis has a difficult time believing

								Garibaldi really believes him.  They go to the

								place where Amis had seen the creature earlier, though there is nothing

								there now.  Garibaldi draws his weapon, and searches for the creature,

								but only finds a lurker in hiding.  He grabs Amis, but Amis breaks

								away, and then shouts into midair for the creature to finish what it

								started.  He collapses near the wall, sobbing.  Finally understanding,

								Garibaldi tells Amis why he believes him.  "During the war there was a

								guy in my unit.  Kept telling everybody our perimeter was weak.  We

								laughed 'cause we checked it over and over.  It was secure.  We all

								figured he was nuts.  Until then, we'd never seen any action.  And

								then, one night, we stopped laughing.  They came through that perimeter

								like it was paper.  He was the first to die.  Saved our butts.  He was

								a nut, but he was right.  I believe you."


								<p>

								Garibaldi asks Amis to tell him about the listening post, and Amis

								explains what happened to him.  "We were an intelligence-gathering

								unit, not set up for heavy combat.  We'd heard the Minbari were setting

								up a command and control post, so we slipped onto a small moon before

								they finished the perimeter scans.  We set up camp in old ruins of some

								kind.  As far as we knew, it was a dead world.  It came in the night,

								during a storm.  We heard nothing, saw nothing...It came right through

								the walls, like a hot wind.  The first man died, just meters from

								me -- never even screamed.  We ran... we ran.  For a second, I thought I

								lost it, and then I saw it.  Standing in the middle of a ball of

								lightning.  It looked like it had come straight from hell."


								<p>

								"How did you survive?"  Garibaldi asks.


								<p>

								"I didn't!  It kept me alive.  As a snack.  It becomes part of you,

								feeding on you.  The lucky ones were the men who died on the moon.

								What it took from me I can never get back.  When the rescue party

								showed up, I weighed 85 pounds.  That's how I knew it was on this

								station.  A part of me's still inside that thing.  I can feel it.  But

								nobody ever believed me...until now."


								<p>

								"This feeling...can it lead you to it?"


								<p>

								"I think... I think maybe that's what it's been doing.  All this

								time... Calling me.  I think maybe we have some unfinished business

								between us."  Without warning, Amis runs off.


								<p>

								Dr. Franklin enters the Copernicus and finds Mariah there.  He asks why

								she is there, and she says that it is all she has...other than him, if

								that's even true.  He tells her he doesn't want to move too fast, and

								she understands.  She misses her husband, and wants to find the

								creature responsible, but she also says that she had marital problems,

								and that all she and her husband had left when they began their journey were

								the stars

								and their dreams.  Franklin understands, saying that he has devoted

								most of his life to his work, and that he has had little time for

								anything else, and that Babylon 5 isn't an appropriate place to raise a

								family.  Mariah says that she believes her husband wouldn't have liked

								the world in which she woke up.  Franklin tells her that what killed

								her husband is on the station, and he wants to know anything she knows

								that might help.  She tells him that, in her dreams, she is not alone

								in the cryogenic tube, and that she believes it used her to stay alive

								until it could find more food, which Franklin believes it has found on

								Babylon 5.  "I've put everybody here in great danger," she says.


								<p>

								Meanwhile, Garibaldi walks through the corridors of Babylon 5, looking

								for Amis or other clues when he hears a scream coming from nearby,

								which he quickly runs to investigate.


								<p>

								Later, Sheridan tells Garibaldi and Ivanova that official accounts blame the

								attack on the listening post on the Minbari.  Garibaldi says that Amis

								is certain the Minbari didn't attack the post, and that the alien took

								a part of him when it left his body, and that he could feel it on the

								station.  "If the same thing happened to Mariah," he suggests, "she

								might be able to help us find it."  Ivanova says it is too risky, and

								since they don't know the nature of the creature, they don't know what

								to do about it, since it may have control over her, causing her to

								scout for it without her knowledge.  Sheridan tells Ivanova and

								Garibaldi that whatever happened to the listening post is happening

								again, and that they need to be ready for whatever it is.


								<p>

								Mariah is in asleep in MedLab when Garibaldi wakes her.  He tells her

								that he needs her help to find Amis.  He asks her if she can feel where

								the alien is, and she says that she believes she can.  Dr. Franklin

								says he will allow it, but only if he can come along to make sure she

								is in no danger.


								<p>

								Ivanova reports to Sheridan on C&C that they received reports of weapon

								fire and part of a signal from Garibaldi.  Sheridan orders that section

								of the station to be sealed off.  He tries to contact Dr. Franklin, but

								can't, which Ivanova assumes is because Dr. Franklin went to search for

								the creature.  Sheridan agrees, and then tells Ivanova to bring out the

								heavy artillery, with which to fight the creature.  Ivanova and

								Sheridan, and several other officers, all heavily armed, go down to

								the section and find Franklin and Mariah outside tending to two injured

								officers.  Franklin tells Sheridan that Garibaldi is still in there,

								trying to find Amis and the creature.  Sheridan and Ivanova enter.


								<p>

								<img align=middle width=128 height=96

								src="/lurk/gif/027/hallway.gif"> Off to fight the creature.


								<p>

								Weapons at the ready, they search the area, but can see nothing.  Soon,

								they come to an open area, where Garibaldi is searching for Amis, whom

								he soon finds, being held in midair by some invisible force.

								Amis shouts at Garibaldi to shoot the creature, which

								is apparently attacking him.  Garibaldi fires at the air behind Amis,

								who drops

								to the ground.


								<p>

								<img align=middle width=128 height=96

								src="/lurk/gif/027/drop-amis.gif"> The creature drops Amis.


								<p>

								Garibaldi tries to get him up as Sheridan and Ivanova

								move closer.  They all fire blindly into the area where the creature was

								last seen, though they don't do much damage to it.  Amis says that he

								believes the creature is waiting for him.  Sheridan then orders Ivanova

								to triangulate their fire, so that they set up a "kill zone, point

								blank."  Amis claims it won't work, that the creature is too smart.

								"You've got to give it what it wants!"  He runs out into the open area,

								shouting at the creature to come and get him.  The creature complies, and

								begins attacking Amis.  But, it walks directly into the kill zone.

								Garibaldi, Ivanova, Sheridan, and all the others fire madly at the

								creature, which looks very tall, humanoid, with horn-shaped protrusions coming

								from its head.  The creature falls to the ground and evaporates,

								apparently dead.


								<p>

								Dr. Franklin and Mariah are in MedLab, checking on Amis, who will be

								okay.  Franklin asks how Mariah will fare, and offers to let Mariah

								stay on the station.  She declines, saying that she wants to mourn for

								the loss of her husband, bury him, and visit Earth.  She says that she

								wants to come back, if he is still interested, which he claims he will

								be.  "Don't make promises life won't let you keep," she tells him.

								They kiss, and then she leaves MedLab.


								<p>

								Ivanova reports to Sheridan, saying that they finished analyzing the

								database from the Copernicus.  She found that Mariah was telling the

								truth.  But, Ivanova has something else to report.  She says that the

								ship lost about one tenth of its oxygen when it passed by a moon in

								sector 18x70x59, which would have happened when the creature came aboard, but

								when the ship left that sector, it was set on a new course.  They were

								lucky that the creature didn't know the ship would make contact with

								any signal it came across, or it would have passed right by without

								anyone noticing.


								<p>

								Sheridan asks what course the ship had been programmed

								on, and Ivanova tells him that the ship was heading to the rim, "toward

								the exact place where Ambassador G'kar told us an ancient enemy was

								gathering its forces."  She asks if it was a coincidence that it was

								going to Z'ha'dum, and Sheridan says he didn't believe it was.


								<p>

								"Something's going on, Commander," Sheridan tells Ivanova.  Ivanova

								agrees, saying that the sitatuation worries her a great deal as well.

								As they ponder the meaning of recent events, G'kar is in his quarters,

								reading the book of G'Quan, in which he sees a drawing of a tall

								creature, which bears a distinct resemblence to the one killed by

								Garibaldi, Sheridan, and Ivanova.


								<p>

								<img align=middle width=128 height=96

								src="/lurk/gif/027/book.gif"> The Book of G'Quan.