She was released the next morning with strict instructions not to whack her head again. "Find somewhere secure to ride out the next jump, where you can sit down," McCoy said, giving her a hug.
Elle went to the Observation Deck. Even though, technically, the least physically secure spot on the ship due to its giant window, seeing the stars made her feel more secure. She chose one of the padded benches that faced the window, and dug the seat belt harness out of the cushions. "I feel like I'm back in a carseat," she grumbled, as the loudspeaker above her head timed the jump down from two minutes.
The supernova'd star, Scorpion-something, came into view again around the curve of the saucer section and Elle hastily dialed down the intensity of the window filters so her eyes wouldn't burn out.
One minute.
Elle lifted her eyes up to the curving support beams and bulkheads. "Enterprise," she said softly, feeling a little ridiculous. "If you are alive, like the captain says, don't let anything bad happen, please?"
The ship did not reply, obviously, but Elle felt a little better. "Thanks," she said softly, and the physical universe seemed to slide away...
She was five years old, sitting with her dad on the couch. "What are we gonna watch?" she asked.
Her mother answered her. "Star Trek, The Next Generation."
"That's not Star Trek. That captain's bald! And there's a Klingon! Why is there a kid on the bridge? Who is that? Is that a robot-"
Her dad put a hand over her mouth. "You have to watch, and I'll explain it," he said.
Elle licked his hand.
"Ewwww, slimy," he teased.
"I'm not slimy, you're slimy," she retorted, with all the indignation her five-year-old self could hold. She pointed at the screen. "Where's Spock?"
"He's an ambassador right now, he's not in this show. You'll like it, I promise."
- She was suddenly a he, and he was wrestling with his brother in the tall summer grass, each of them grunting with effort as they tried to get the upper hand.
"Ow, not my ear," the older boy complained.
...Elle inhaled so sharply she almost choked on her own spit. She ripped the harness off her shoulders and gaped at the view form the windows. The entire Milky Way galaxy lay before her, spinning like a diamond-flaked plate in the void of Space. "Ultimate Frisbee," she whispered to herself, almost afraid to break the silence of the momentous occasion.
She stayed in the Rec Deck, watching the galaxy turn. Eventually more people wandered in, quiet groups of one or two, careful not to intrude on anyone else's silent contemplations.
She felt more than saw the captain enter the room. He came over to her and leaned on the railing next to her. "How's your head?" he asked.
"Good as new," she said.
"You were cute, as a five-year-old," he said, confirming her thoughts about collective mental desktops.
"You were, too," she said. "Did you see Nurse Burke's talking rocks?"
He snorted. "Did you?"
"No, but I knew."
"Is that really going to be the future captain of the Enterprise?"
"In eighty years or so, yes, sir." She leaned against his arm. "We really shouldn't have come out this far, but, wow."
He put his arm around her shoulders. "What a sight," he agreed, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "We're getting an award, by the way," he mentioned. "First crew to leave the galaxy. We could retire, buy our own planet. You could attend a real school."
"The Enterprise colony," Elle said dryly. "Sounds boring."
"You're right."
Uhura joined them at the rail. "First time we've seen this light," she said quietly, wrapping her arm around Elle's shoulders on the other side.
Elle revelled in the warm affection between two of her "parental units" and didn't even jump when Spock melted out of the shadows, Batman-style.
"I would hardly say that, lieutenant," Spock intoned gravely. "The light from the Milky Way stars has shone on the Enterprise since the first day of its travel."
Elle smiled as they bantered over her head. She turned to look as K't'lk and Scotty entered the observation room, arguing about physics. "-enable rocks to turn themselves into flowers and also turn other rocks into flowers."
"But that's magic ye're talking!" Scotty protested.
K't'lk chimed merrily. "Possibly."
Kirk and Spock exchanged a glance. "Do you understand this science, Spock?" Kirk asked.
"I believe I understand some of it," Spock said.
Elle let the debate about causal loops and discovery of truth float over her head.
"Are you saying the universe is giving us traffic fines?" McCoy drawled.
"A breach in spacetime integrity," K't'lk said, her chiming somber. "Either psychic, or physical or both."
"Both," Elle confirmed. "The physical is tied to the mental, and it's both. Conservation of energy, right?"
"As your hatchling says," K't'lk agreed.
"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," Spock said quietly.
Elle nodded.
The comm beeped, interrupting further philosphical science. "Mr. Spock, sir, we have evidence that the Universe is either blowing up or stuck. Would you come and tell us which?"
Spock was halfway out the room before he replied. "On my way," he said, and was gone.
Elle sighed as Kirk followed, and the two engineers followed him. "Well it was fun while it lasted," she said.
Uhura squeezed her tightly. "I feel like some hot cocoa to deal with the chaos," she said. "How about you?"
"Sure!"
They only got halfway through their mugs of hot cocoa before Captain Kirk called all senior officers to a briefing. "Elle Wilcott to the briefing as well, please, thank you."
Elle took her hot cocoa with her. "What department am I supposed to represent?" she asked Chief Giotto.
He raised an eyebrow, amused. "Department of Civilians No Longer Allowed to Modify Cleaning Equipment."
She cringed theatrically. "You saw that?"
"Lt. Matthews was kind enough to inform me," he said dryly. "I'm making that a rule, by the way."
"But you didn't dissassemble him?" she asked, anxious for Commander Stabby.
"Of course not," Giotto said, still dry as the Sahara. "Commander Stabby outranks me, after all."
Elle giggled into her hot chocolate.
Kirk called the meeting to order and they got under way. Essentially, no diagnostic computers could be trusted, the crew could be trusted, and they were starting to realize they might be in over their heads. "Which, for us, is business as usual," Kirk said dryly. "Our next stop, the Lesser Magellanic to look at stopped time. Dismissed."
Elle left with Chekov to get a refill on her hot chocolate, "you must have it with marshmallows, Elle, that is how we drink it in Russia."
-/\-
The next jump was even crazier. One second Elle was sitting with her tribble, the next she was on a savannah - in a savannah? - and Enterprise crew were popping up like newly-spawned Minecraft Steve's all around her. Then the lion-sharks attacked.
Whoever's mindscape this was, Elle was going to find them, and smack them. Really hard.
She dodged a roaring landshark, suddenly found a phaser in her hand, and started shooting to stun. "This is the worst," pew pew, "simulation!" a successful night-night to the nearest lion-shark, "I've ever been in!" she shrieked to the universe.
"Amen!" Lt. Martinez hollered back, sticking to her side like glue. He deserved a commendation.
She blinked, and it was over, they were back on the Enterprise, alerts blaring loud enough to wake the dead.
"Don't get any ideas," she warned to the universe at large, again, in case it got any ideas about spontaneously generating a zombie apocalypse.
Nothing happened.
She made her way to one of the rec rooms with a window in it, not the Observation Deck, but a small porthole.
Elle took one look, and immediately wished she hadn't. Space writhed, stars flickering and sputtering or staying unnervingly still, the spaces between them crawling forwards and backwards like living things. "Don't like that," she whispered, backing away from the porthole. "Don't like that at all."
She couldn't get anywhere near the chaos that was the Science Labs or Medical, or Engineering, so she sulked her way down to the Rec Room.
"You look disturbed in spirit," Lt. Tanzer greeted her, giving her a sympathetic smile. "Inversion worry you a little?"
"If by worry you mean freak me out with lion-sharks jumping at my head, then yes," Elle replied. "And I looked outside."
"Ouch," he said. "Hard on the brain and the stomach." He led her to an empty table. "You sit here, I'll get you a ginger ale and someone to play Minecraft with."
Elle wrinkled her nose. "I think I'm good on the universe-building front, actually."
He laughed. "I guess you would be." His eyes twinkled. "You wanna play Mr. Sulu's Enterprise prototype?"
She grinned. "Yes!"
Ginger ale, some virtual piloting and running away from Klingons... okay, so Elle blew up the ship like twenty times, trying to figure out controls and stress tolerances, but she was sufficiently distracted.
At least until the announcement came over the all-call. "Inversion in five minutes."
The queasy feeling came back. Elle chugged the rest of her ginger ale. "Moira?" she asked the games computer.
"Yes, Elle?"
"Are you experiencing these inversions too?"
"No," Moira said. "To me they do not exist, because in that moment, I do not exist. I don't believe I am alive enough to be caught up in the mindscapes like you and the rest of the crew."
Elle rested her chin on her hands. "Oh. Does that bother you?"
"Not really," Moira said. "I'd rather not be a collective group mind."
Elle thought about the Borg and then hastily banished that thought from her conscious. "Same," she muttered, feeling vaguely queasy again. "But Moira?"
"Yes?"
"Apparently the closer we get to the center of the disturbance the more our real selves will shine through," Elle said. "What if I'm a terrible person?"
"You are only fourteen," Moira said. "You haven't lived long enough to become a terrible person."
"I guess."
Moira gentled her tone. "And you aren't a terrible person anyway. A calm heart gives strength to the bones, or however that saying goes."
"Bones has never had a calm heart in his life," Elle retorted.
"You know what I mean."
Elle smiled faintly. "Yeah. Thanks, Moira."
"You're welcome."
Between one breath and the next, the Enterprise disappeared, and Elle was suddenly in a forest on a bark dust trail, a pond peeking through the trees.
She turned on her heel. "This is my favorite hike," she said aloud, surprised. "Huh. I guess we spawned into the mindscape." She did another 360, picked a direction, and started walking up the trail.