When Enterprise comes upon a shuttlecraft adrift in space, they bring it onboard. What they discover shocks them greatly. The shuttlecraft is from their Enterprise, and the pilot is none other than Jean-Luc Picard himself, or at least a duplicate of him. This Picard is semi conscious, and doesn't seem to know there are crew around him. Dr. Pulaski determines that this Picard is in a state of temporal flux from a point in time several hours in their future.

After checking the shuttle's logs, they see that this Picard left his Enterprise just before it was destroyed, near a massive space vortex. The crew and their Picard must determine how to avoid this future event before it happens again, to them, and their Enterprise is destroyed, too.