DAY ONE
NCC-1701-D CONFERENCE ROOM
1800 HOURS

"...so you see, Captains, the original Enterprise has not only inadvertently traveled through time, it has also shifted to the universe its officers refer to as 'Universe Prime.'"

"Like a derailed train," said Uhura. She had to hold her elbows in to fit in the extremely crowded conference room.

"Precisely, Lieutenant Uhura," Data replied, nodding at her.

"Wait a second," said Kirk, from one end of the table. "How do we know we're in a parallel universe?"

"Yes, couldn't this be an entirely new reality, Mr. Data?" said Picard from the other end.

Data quirked his head.

"A possibility we could recognize except for one fact, Captain," said Spock, switching to a new slide. "Vulcan is quite whole in this universe, while Romulus and my counterpart are both nowhere to be found."

"Like a disappearing magician," Troi mused.

"Exactly, Counselor."

"Wait, I thought that whole Romulus thing happens in the future," McCoy grumbled. "Your guys' future, I mean. After the Enterprise-E and everything."

Spock quirked his head.

"An excellent point, Doctor," Data said, switching to a new slide. "However, the effect of the Enterprise Prime's century-long sojourn in the fabric of spacetime has caused some events connected with its inhabitants to occur sooner than they should."

"Like a video on fast-forward," Sulu said thoughtfully.

"Just so, Lieutenant."

"So what exactly are we supposed to do about it?" Worf asked grumpily, sticking his head inside the room. He was sitting crosslegged outside the door at the older crew's request.

Data quirked his head.

"Mr. Data and I have been working with Engineers Scott and La Forge on this very question, Mr. Worf," said Spock, switching to a new slide.

"We think if we can reverse the polarity of the Enterprise-D's saucer shields," Geordi spoke up, gesticulating as he paced in an extremely small circle, "we can generate a static warp bubble that could travel through both time and space without hurting anyone inside it."

"Just add a wee bit o' dilithium juice, and whammo," Scotty added. "Booted back to home sweet home."

"Like a bottle rocket," said Riker.

"Nae you've got it, Commander."

"Of course, it'll take a little time," Geordi continued.

"And we'll need some kindae way to direct the ship to exactly where we want her to go."

Chekov and Wesley, who'd been forced to sit at the kids' table, snapped their fingers in unison.

"Vhat about a modified tractor beam that is adzhusted for the variables time-space tractor beam set to the wariables adjusted tractor beam?" they said together in an excited rush.

Geordi and Scotty shared a glance, eyebrows raised. "That might work."

"How long will this take?" asked Picard.

"Hmm, modifying the phase inducers..."

"And ectoplying the main debuction array..."

"A week?" they guessed.

Both ends of the table spoke up:

"You have three days."

"Make it so."

It took a long time to get everyone out of the conference room. Ro and McCoy hung back, glaring at the excitedly chattering Data, Spock, Geordi, Scotty, Chekov, and Wesley.

"Sometimes I just wanna..." said Ro, gesturing something vaguely violent with her hands.

"Tell me about it, kid."