Cause and Effect
	Playing poker with Data, Riker and Worf, Beverly's delight in fleecing Riker is enhanced when she is "reluctantly" forced to retire from the game.
	Examining commander La Forge in sick-bay, the doctor has feelings of deja vu.
Going off to sleep that night, Beverly hears voices in her room. When she switches the lights on, she finds herself alone. As she reports the aural intrusion the following morning, the command officers are urgently summoned to the bridge.
They gaze at the view screen as space itself seems to wobble around the stranded Enterprise. As they attempt to back away from the source of the anomaly, another Federation starship appears from within it - on a collision course.
Riker suggests opening the shuttle-bay doors so that the decompression blast shifts the trajectory of the Enterprise. Data suggests using the tractor beam to change the other ship's course. They use the tractor beam, but it fails to avert the collision. "This is the captain. All hands abandon ship". The crew and the Enterprise are annihilated by a warp core breech.
Members of the senior staff play their usual Tuesday night poker game.
	Beverly seems preoccupied as Riker says "You're going to call my bluff".
	"How did you know I was going to call your bluff ?"
Seconds later, nurse Ogawa calls the doctor to sick-bay to examine commander La Forge. When the doctor asks him if he's had the symptoms before, Geordi thinks so, but neither of them can remember when.
	Beverly seems to sense something mysterious. As she snuggles in for the night, voices appear from nowhere, then vanish as she reaches for the light switch.
	Disturbed, she has a late night chat with Jean-Luc over a cup of hot milk with nutmeg - a prescription for sleepless nights from his aunt Adelle. The captain suggests that La Forge and Data review the night's sensor logs before the following morning's meeting.
The logs show up nothing unusual. During their meeting, Worf calls them to the bridge, where they find themselves on an intercept course with another starship emerging out of a distortion field. With manoeuvring thrusters and shields both inoperative, innovative action is called for. Data's suggestion of moving the other ship by using the tractor beam fails. The Enterprise is utterly destroyed in a massive explosion.
Playing poker, Beverly agrees with Riker that they seem to be experiencing deja vu.
	"Keep dealing, Data."
Beverly, then Worf and Riker name the cards to be dealt, before Data deals them. Beverly calls sick-bay to see if commander La Forge is there. Seconds later he turns up to report symptoms of an ear infection. Instead of running the standard tests, Dr Crusher instinctively examines Geordi's visor and finds it has been conveying what La Forge describes as blurry after-images.

Late that night, in a state of anticipation, Beverly goes about her routine of tending her flowers before going to bed. When voices appear, she records them on her tricorder and rushes to engineering.

"I'm on my way."

Data finds over a thousand voices of the Enterprise crew overlapping in Beverly's recording.

"Then where did the sound come from ?"

In the morning, Dr Crusher calls the senior staff meeting extra early. Geordi explains that they think they are trapped in a temporal causality loop. From the tricorder voices, they surmise that some kind of violent explosion - bad enough for the captain to order "abandon ship" - causes a rupture in the space-time continuum.

Realising that their sense of repetition means that it just might be possible to send some kind of simple message into the next loop, they fix a transmitter of the residual energy type found in Geordi's visor into Data's head, hoping that some way to avoid the collision might be found. As La Forge prepares the device with Beverly and Data, they hear the call "senior officers to the bridge".

To avoid crashing the beached Enterprise into an oblivious starship in a spacial distortion, Riker suggests suddenly opening the shuttle-bay doors in the hope that the explosive thrust of air will push the Enterprise out of harm's way in the other direction. The captain goes for Data's option repelling their course using the tractor beam, but they still collide. Data sends himself a little message just before the warp core containment field and other systems go off-line. The Enterprise is blasted apart, with all life lost.

At the poker table, all the players get a feeling of repetition, but when Data deals, he deals four 3's instead of what Beverly predicts. The they are all dealt 3 of a kind. Throughout the day, Data repeatedly encounters conspicuous examples of the number 3.

The next morning, a highly localised distortion of the space-time continuum causes ensign Ro to summon the senior staff to the bridge. Another federation starship appears from the distortion, on a collision course with the Enterprise. With the helm not responding, the captain seeks options. Riker suggests opening the shuttle-bay doors. Data suggest using the tractor beam. As Data turns to follow up the captain's approval, he notices the 3 pips of Riker's rank insignia and gets the message. The tractor beam will not be successful. Data evacuates the shuttle-bay. The explosive decompression throws the Enterprise off course and they just avoid collision.

They find they have been in the loop for over two weeks. They are hailed by the other vessel, the type of which last saw service over eighty years ago. Picard invites the anachronistic captain of the Bozeman over. "There's something we need to discuss".

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