A/N: Greetings from the West Coast where everything's on fire! There's one about an hour from my house, so that's fun. Good thing we have lots of masks laying around in case of smoke inhalation... anyway. Next chapter! I feel like we need a healthy dose of escapism... no matter where you are, stay safe!

The sound of a spectacular explosion greeted Elle as she entered the Rec Room. She moved directly towards the 3D game tanks and found Sulu and Lt. Tanzer grinning at each other across from a holographic starfield. "New game?" Elle asked.

Sulu grinned. "Harb is a genius," he said.

Elle looked down at Sulu's gaming console. "It looks like the helm layout," she said.

"It is," Sulu confirmed, beaming. He pressed a button and the game reset itself.

A tiny Enterprise and three Klingon ships reformed in the center of the holo starfield.

Elle's eyebrows went up. "That's cool."

"Better than cool," Sulu said. "This game performs exactly like the Enterprise would in real life."

"Awesome," Elle said, holding up her hand.

Lt. Tanzer gave her a high five. "Let's just see how it plays," he said, because he was modest like that.

Sulu restarted the game console.

Elle replicated a bowl of chips and sat next to Harb. She watched Sulu play space-dogfight with the Enterprise and lose the port nacelle taking a turn too fast. The game winked out with another explosion. "Nice," she said, and perked up. "Hey, does that mean you can teach me to pilot the Enterprise from here?"

"Sure," Sulu said. "If you're bored with art, we can switch your elective to piloting."

Elle beamed at him. "I love this ship," she said.

Sulu grinned back at her. "Me too."

Elle watched him play, and watched Tanzer and Sulu make minute adjustments to the game so it responded more smoothly. She watched the tiny Enterprise glide around, bank, wheel, and roll. "Are you sure it can do that?" she asked doubtfully, as Sulu fended off an attacking Klingon D7.

"It can definitely do that," Sulu said, without taking his eyes off the console. "You don't notice because of the inertial dampeners, but evasive maneuvers are a huge part of encounters."

"Why are you doing it all in realspace though?" Elle asked. "Why aren't you using warp to make your escape?"

"Sometimes you can't warp out," Sulu said. "If you're too close to a star you have to play for time, or if you know you're too far away from backup and you need to even the field."

"Oh."

Sulu brought the game to an end and handed the console to Elle. "Here you go. Lesson one."

"Does this count as extra credit since school's over?" Elle asked.

Sulu laughed. "Sure."

That night, every time Elle closed her eyes, all she saw were buttons and levers. That one's for up, that one's for down, that one's forward-left, that one's forward-right. There are multiple thruster groupings, and that's your inertia calculator. That one's for changing the shield dynamics to take advantage of solar waves. That one...

Elle groaned and pulled a pilllow over her head. She dreamed of tiny Enterprises chasing each other in the dark.

-/\-

"Why is everyone so tense?" Elle asked. "What's goin' on?"

"The Elective Mass Inversion Apparatus," Uhura replied. "Fleet's close to announcing who gets to test it."

"We're not getting it?" Elle asked.

"We probably are, but you never know with office politics." Uhura smiled slightly. "If you've wondered why the captain's tense that's why."

"I'd noticed that," Elle agreed.

The name stuck stuck in her head as she went about about her bedtime routine. "There's no way I can go to bed without figuring out why that sounds familiar." Had Scotty been talking it? Probably. She got on the computer and searched up the drive.

"Elective Mass Inversion Appartus, first proposed by Hamalki research and engineer K't'lk on stardate..." Elle read aloud, and yelped. "K't'lk! Spider lady! Glass spider lady!" She searched up the Hamalki species. "Yeah! The creative physicists! Oh, this is gonna be so good, I love this book!" She picked up Simba and gave it a squeeze.

It trilled, echoing her excitement.

She tapped at the comm. "Elle to Kirk."

"Kirk here. What's up, Elle?"

"The new drive, we're gonna get it. But it's gonna cause spacetime continuum tearing."

"This is an episode?"

"Nope. A novel." She bounced on her toes. "It's a good one, too."

An audible sigh. "All right, is this a big one?"

"Uh-huh."

"Okay. Get your thoughts together, as much as you can remember, and then you can brief me and Spock. You said space-time ripping?"

"Yeah."

"Good grief."

Elle laughed. "Elle out." She plopped on her bed and crossed her legs. She took a few deep breaths in and out, settled her thoughts, and imagined walking up to the shelf with her Star Trek books on it. Wounded Sky, tucked in between the other hardcovers. It irked her that it wasn't short like the other ones, but when you're buying novels from garage sales and libraries, that's the life. It still surprised her that her dad hadn't had his own collection of Star Trek novels, but he was more of a tv-movie guy anyway. Mom was a reader, but she liked Star Wars. That's what you get when two nerds have a child, Elle thought wryly.

Wait, no, focus. Wounded Sky, purple cover, hilarious acknowledgements that pretended the book was a report, citing alien scientists and Dr. McCoy's work, but- wait, no. Focus.

I need an actual Vulcan mind, Elle mourned. No, shut up. Focus. She tried it again. Just think of the plot. The plot.

An hour later, she opened her eyes and bounced off the bed. "All right, let's go," she said, shoving her shoes on.

She found the captain and Spock playing chess in one of the rec rooms.

"Good, you're here," Kirk said, smiling at her. "Come rescue me from this chess game."

"You were the one that moved your rook," Spock retorted, raising an eyebrow at him.

Elle laughed and dragged a chair over to the third side of the table. "Okay, so I managed to focus long enough to get the basic plot of the book, and the results of the drive."

"Which are?" Spock prompted.

"Which are, each time you use the drive, it causes a corresponding tear. It made two stars go supernova, and then caused a bleed from an anentropic universe into ours, messing up an arm of the Lesser Magellanic. The longer you used it the more space-time-thought barriers broke down and there was this whole shared reality thing," Elle propped her hand on her chin. "And then we go in and make a whole other universe with K't'lk's singing."

Kirk turned to Spock. "I hope you understood some of that."

Spock nodded. "That is indeed disturbing news." He looked at the captain. "I must speak to the scientists in charge of this drive."

"Go on."

Spock left hastily.

Kirk gestured to the board. "Play a game?"

Elle shifted to sit across from him. "Sure."

Kirk let her make the first move, and shifted back in his seat. "All right, now explain the drive to me again."

Elle chewed on her lip. "I don't actually know the science behind it, captain, I just know some of what the novel said."

"Give it your best shot," he encouraged.

"Okay," Elle said. "Best as I can figure it, the drive accesses this alternate dimension that's full of raw energy, where there's no time, no mass, etc, and from there you can access the rest of the universe. So you give it coordinates, it pulls the entire ship into that space, and pops it out again where you wanted to end up. So you don't go through normal space at all. And there's no time in that other place, so you don't have any travel time."

Kirk blinked. "That sounds crazy."

"I know," Elle said. "But it works, ish." She moved a rook and instantly regretted it.

Kirk gave her a rueful grin. "How about we drop chess and go get some ice cream instead?"

Elle smiled. "You have the best plans, captain."