- A powerful artificially intelligent Earth probe, with a murderously twisted imperative, comes aboard the Enterprise and mistakes Capt. Kirk for its creator.
- The Enterprise encounters a powerful energy force that has apparently killed all human life in a solar system with over one billion inhabitants. They identify the culprit as a small space probe that had its origins on Earth. Called Nomad, it merged with another and, as a result, took on a new mission to destroy all biological beings as being imperfect. It believes Captain Kirk to be its creator and, as such, has spared the Enterprise and its crew, at least temporarily.—garykmcd
- Years ago, a brilliant scientist named Jackson Roykirk created a space probe named Nomad, whose mission was to seek out new life forms in the Universe. Once Nomad was out in space, it collided with a powerful Probe named Tan Ru (an alien probe of great power) whose mission was to find and sterilize large soil samples which were tainted on planets, and the programs of the two probes became mixed.
Now Nomad is a million times more powerful, and instead of seeking out new life, it thinks its mission is to sterilize imperfect life.
The Enterprise is flying through space when they are hit by a powerful jolt with as much power as 90 of their photon torpedoes. Each jolt reduces the Enterprise's shield protective power by 20%. The speed of the jolts is warp 15, which means that the ship cannot outrun the threat. Photon torpedoes from the Enterprise have no effect on their target, from where the jolts seem to be originating. The target simply absorbed the energy of the torpedoes.
It is Nomad, and it keeps firing. Kirk panics and gets on the loudspeaker. "This is Captain James T Kirk. Please stop." Suddenly Nomad stops. Nomad asks Kirk to beam aboard its ship, but Kirk says they cannot as the Nomad vessel is too small. Basically the whole ship is 1 meter, 500 kgs and cylindrical across. They ask Nomad to beam their officers aboard instead but this is a machine, not a ship. It beams over and Kirk and Spock try to figure it out. There are no sensor readings as the machine has a protective shield around it. Nomad says that its source of power has changed since its point of origin and much was taken from the "other".
Nomad calls Kirk "The Creator" (As Kirk reveals he is from Earth) and Kirk figures out that Nomad is mistaking him for Jackson Roykirk, the man who created Nomad, since their names are similar sounding. It is possible that the Nomad's memory banks were badly damaged in the accident and it only had parts of its creators name left. "Good" thinks Kirk "Now we have an edge." But Nomad is floating around the ship causing havoc. It hears Uhura singing and says "What is that?" She says "It's singing." Nomad says "Think about singing." And then he sucks her intelligence out of her head. She has to be retrained from kindergarten. Then Scotty tries to interfere with Nomad, and Nomad flips him over a railing. McCoy says "He's dead" to Kirk. Kirk is now shocked. But Nomad asks if he should repair the "unit" meaning Scotty, and he resurrects him (after taking the human biological schematics from McCoy). But Uhura can't be repaired by Nomad because her brain was wiped out not her body. Kirk has to get rid of this damn machine.
Kirk asks Nomad to lower its defenses, so Spock can scan it. Spock gets some references for a collision with the "other", but it is insufficient. To gain knowledge he performs a mind meld with the Nomad. Spock discovers the complete truth about the Nomad. But in the mind meld, Nomad also learned about Earth and its location from Spock and knows that it is full of imperfect biological beings. Nomad will attack Earth and sterilize it.
Kirk uses logic to convince Nomad that he is wrong because he mistook Kirk for Jackson Roykirk, then he says to Nomad "Since you are imperfect, you must sterilize yourself." And they beam Nomad off the ship just before he explodes into a million pieces. On the bridge, Kirk says to McCoy. "You know that Nomad thought I was its Daddy. Think of how proud I am. You saw how he resurrected Scotty. My Son the Doctor."
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