Stardate 50063.2: A Voyager away team visits a monastery of the Nechisti Order on the Nechani homeworld. Kes is fascinated by a shrine, but when she steps in she is hit by a surge of biogenic energy and falls into a coma. The monks do not allow a further investigation of the energy field that could help the Doctor devise a treatment for Kes. Neelix finds an ancient Nechani legend about a king whose son was struck by energy much like Kes and who successfully requested from the Ancestral Spirits inside the shrine to return him to life. Janeway learns that the monks who enter the shrine undergo some sort of ritual to prepare themselves, and she suspects that their biochemistry may be altered in a way to withstand the biogenic energy. She asks to undergo this ritual, in order to find a cure for Kes. Janeway is assigned a guide, who tells her to wait in a room with three old people. But Janeway is eager to move on. Although the guide warns her that all she is going to do will be meaningless, Janeway undergoes a series of straining rituals. The Doctor, who monitors Janeway's lifesigns, finds a clue that may help Kes. But when he tries to revive her, Kes's condition deteriorates. Janeway asks the guide to undergo the ritual the way it was meant to be. This time she takes the time and talks with the old people, who in her opinion might be the Ancestral Spirits. They tell her to take Kes to the shrine again. Although it is against all reason, Janeway carries Kes through the gate, and Kes wakes up. It turns out that the ritual actually prepared Janeway, and that the Doctor's treatment protected Kes the second time she passed the energy field. Janeway, however, has doubts that everything that happened can be explained with science.

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