A/N: Y'all, why did I say yes to working more hours? My brain is dying.

"Hm."

"What hm?" Elle asked. "That sounded like a bad hm."

"The Argus Array is still down." Lt. Eisen tapped at the screen.

"Hm."

Lt. Eisen shrugged. "Perils of intergalactic connections. We'll work with the data we have then. Can you pull up the chart?"

"Yeah." Elle pulled it up. "So many brown dwarfs, so little time."

"Actually, they're rather rare."

"I know. I was making a joke."

"Oh. Then yes, the galaxy is too large to reach them all."

"We need to harness transwarp," Elle said.

"Maybe you can work on that," Lt. Eisen said. "I'll stick to tracking brown dwarfs."

"Cool." Elle started to correlate data.

-/\-

"We've been ordered to investigate the Argus Array," Picard said and stuffed a piece of waffle in his mouth.

"Oh yay," Elle said. "Stellar Cartography has been wilting into their data streams."

"Morale has gone down by five percent," Dr. Crusher agreed.

"We should have a party, kick up morale," Elle said.

"No," said Picard.

"Party pooper."

They had a party anyway. Riker was an enabler.

-/\-

"Ooh, that doesn't look good," Elle said, as they came up on the Argus Array.

"Astute observation," Picard said dryly.

Data frowned. "The fusion reactors that power the array are extremely unstable. There is a high risk of overload."

"What about the computer systems?" Riker asked.

"They do not seem to be functioning at all, sir."

Worf frowned. "Captain, I am picking up an unidentified device one point eight kilometers from the array."

Elle squinted. "Is that, a water heater?"

"No, that's some kind of probe," Riker said.

"Probe that doubles as a water heater," Elle said. "I think we had that in our garage. I'll bet that's what damaged the array."

"Is it emitting any signals, Lieutenant?"

"Negative, sir. I show no activity." Worf put it up on the screen. Complete dud.

"Hm." Picard tapped his chin. "Mister La Forge, why not go out and take a closer look, do some fishing."

"Aye, sir. Lieutenant Barclay, report to the main shuttle bay." La Forge looked over at her and grinned. "Elle, you too, let's go."

Elle fist-pumped. "Yes! Thank you!"

"Backpack," Worf, Riker, and Picard reminded her, in perfect surround sound.

"Yes, dad," Elle said demurely and saw Troi cover a smile with a sleeve. She followed Geordi into the turbolift. "What do you think it is?" she asked.

"Aliens," Geordi deadpanned.

"Oh hey, that's my guess too!" Elle held up a hand for a high-five.

Geordi obliged with a tolerant grin.

Elle grabbed her in-case-of-death backpack and reported to the shuttle bay. Geordi and Barclay were doing prelim checks on the shuttlecraft Einstein. "Alright, check is green, let's go. Lt. Barclay, let's let Elle pilot today. She needs the practice."

"Sure." Barclay took the passenger seat in the back and pulled up the aux sensor controls.

Geordi strapped in and gestured towards the main consoles. "All right Elle, it's your show. Take us out."

Elle grinned. "Yes, sir." She strapped in and changed the console configuration to her preferred format. "Enterprise, this is shuttle Einstein, ready to depart."

"Copy, Einstein, you are cleared for departure."

Elle brought the shuttle up and moved forward, passing through the forcefield smoothly. She turned the shuttle towards the water-heater probe off the bow of the Argus Array. "Can I do a couple of rolls?" she asked.

"No," Geordi said, amused.

"Awww."

"You can bribe someone else to take you out later," Geordi said. "Focus."

"I'm goin, I'm goin." Elle stopped a respectable one hundred meters from the probe. "Enterprise, this is shuttle five in position. Ready to begin short-range scan."

"Proceed, shuttle five," Riker said.

"Let's start with passive high-res," Geordi said.

"Begining with electromagnetic band," Barclay announced.

They hit it with all the passive scans, nothing. "Let's go to active scans," Geordi said. "Elle, put us back another hundred meters in case it decides to hit back."

"Copy."

"All right, active scan..."

"Nothing," Barclay reported.

"Huh. Increase to point zero."

"Still nothing."

Elle frowned. "Man, that thing is stubborn."

"Yes, it is. All right Elle, hit it with a positron emission."

"Positron burst, aye." Elle locked the engines and brought up the targeting system. A short burst of positrons ought to do it. She fired.

-/\-

Ceiling. Sickbay ceiling. Elle blinked again. Still the sickbay ceiling. "Whuh?"

"Elle!" Dr. Crusher peered down at her.

"Did I pass out?" Elle asked, sitting up. Barclay and Geordi were sitting across from her on the other bio-beds. "What happened?"

"The positron burst triggered the probe. It sent out a flash of light so bright it knocked you and the shuttle computer right out," Geordi said. "You feel okay?"

"Yeah, I think so." Elle rubbed at her eyes. "What about you?"

"My visor must have filtered it out," Geordi said.

"And I was in the back, I only saw you drop," Barclay said. "Scared the wits out of me."

"Sorry."

Dr. Crusher ran a final scan over Elle's eyes and head. "Hm. There was no apparent retinal damage and the cornea looks fine. But I'm still waiting for a full sero-amino readout. I'll call you when it comes in." She snagged a med tech. "I'd like this done as quickly as possible, Ensign."

"Yes, doctor."

Elle's gaze unfocused as the solution to a faster brain chemistry scan appeared in her mind's eye. "If you use the global mode to read the electromagnetic signatures in the cells, you wouldn't have to wait for the individual readouts," she said.

All four of them swiveled to face her. "What?" Dr. Crusher asked.

"Yeah," Elle said, excited. "If you just fiddle with the adjustments, here, can I try it?" She took the tricorder and fiddled with it, boosting the sensitivity to a thousand. "Eh? Eh? What about that?"

"I didn't know you were taking bioengineering," Dr. Crusher said, half-amused, half-bewildered.

"I'm not. It just kinda came to me."

"Huh." Geordi ruffled her hair. "Come on, we need to get to engineering and run scans. The probe's energy flash completely knocked out the shuttle's computer, we need to retrieve any scans we got in that second."

"Cool." Elle followed them out.

They got to Engineering and were greeted with a yellow alert. "What's that about?" Geordi asked, disgruntled.

Elle surveyed the bridge readouts. "Huh. Guess the probe came to life." Its little fireworks display was increasing as it got closer to the Enterprise. "How is it even moving? It doesn't even have engines."

"It might not have engines, but it could knock out the Enterprise computer just like it did the shuttle."

"Rude."

Geordi snorted. "Tell me about it."

The comm sounded. "Riker to La Forge, can you increase phaser power?"

"Attempting to now, Commander. Isolate phasers eighty to one twenty. Barclay, shunt all the plasma emitters..."

Elle frowned. This was starting to feel familiar. The Argus Array, the probe... The Enterprise went to warp two and the probe was still following them, increasing its energy output to fatal levels. "Captain, the probe's energy output is overloading our shields. Failure anticipated in forty-seven seconds." Even Data sounded stressed over the open link.

"I'm willing to entertain suggestions," Picard said, also starting to sound stressed.

Elle frowned. "If we could increase power to shields, we could use a torpedo." She reached out. "Geordi, move, thanks." She brought the Enterprise out of warp and down to impulse, and started to transfer warp power to the shield grid.

"Elle, what are you doing?" Geordi asked, hands fluttering as he hovered behind her.

"Okay, go, we can fire photon torpedoes," Elle said, adjusting a final few outputs. "The shields will hold, I swear."

"Mister La Forge?" Picard asked.

"I don't know how she did it, but shield strength has been increased by three hundred percent. It should be enough."

"Good enough. Mister Worf. Photon torpedoes. Maximum yield, full spread."

"Aye."

There was a brief moment of silence, and Elle watched in satisfaction as the probe went ka-boom. "Noice."

"Huh. Good job, Elle," Picard said, sounding proud.

"Thank you, sir." Elle stepped back, blushing as Geordi and Barclay gaped at her.

"How did you do that?" Barclay asked.

"Uh, well, it just occurred to me that I could set up a frequency harmonic between the deflector and the shield grid using the warp field generator as a power flow anti-attenuator, and that created an amplification of the inherent energy output." Elle blinked. Paused. Reviewed her own words. "Dang, I must have been subconsciously actually listening to all of Wesley's rambles."

Geordi laughed. "Good job. Now undo it."

"Yes, sir." Elle reset all the power flows and went to have a snack. She watched out of the windows as the Enterprise warped back to the Argus Array. A short skip and a hop, and the Argus Array came right back into view. It looked worse than before. The probe must've overloaded it, too. She paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. Was this an episode?

"Elle Wilcott to the Observation Lounge."

Elle startled out of her contemplation. "On my way." She put her plate away and went to the Observation Lounge, where La Forge, Data, Riker, and the captain were gathering.

"Since you seem to be on a roll with engineering today, you get to be on the Argus repair team," La Forge said.

"Yay." Elle sat down. "No Barclay?"

"He's working on probe scans."

"Ah." Elle frowned. "He should be here, though, right? I could've sworn- oh, no..." She facepalmed as the light dawned. "I knew this was an episode."

Picard frowned. "An episode? About the Array?"

"Yes, no, sort of. But I got whammied instead of Barclay." Elle groaned as all the pieces fell into place. "Oh, this is gonna be the worst."

"Why? What happens?" Riker asked.

"Okay. The probe is an alien species' way of making first contact. It's supposed to look for compatible systems and reprogram them to be capable of journeying to the aliens' home planet for cultural exchange, and then the aliens send the ship back. It wasn't compatible with the Argus Array or the shuttle, or the Enterprise, but it is compatible with human brains. In the episode, it was Barclay that got zapped, but now it's me, I guess." Elle wrinkled her nose. "I'm still dumb underneath it all, but this is like that episode in Stargate where Jack got head-suckered by the Ancient knowledge device, turned into a genius, got to the Asgard, and got un-geniused before his brain melted."

"Is your brain going to melt?" Picard asked calmly.

"No," Elle said. "I don't think so. But at some point, I'm going to have to share space on the Enterprise once my mind gets literally too big for its britches."

"Okay," Riker said. "That's terrifying. How do we stop that from happening?"

Elle grimaced. "Uh, you can't. Couldn't in the episode, and now with the figures literally spinning through my brain, uh, no yeah, it's gonna have to run its course. I think it takes a few days, from what I remember in the episode. In the meantime, we can work on the Argus Array and a whole bunch of other stuff. I'm going to have to write everything down because once this is over I'm not gonna understand anything that's gonna come out of my mouth."

"Again, terrifying," La Forge said.

Picard held up a hand. "If we do have time, then let's go over the report for the Argus Array. Mr. La Forge?"

"Right." Geordi pulled up the diagram on the screen. "Each of the telescope's subspace antenna clusters is powered by its own fusion reactor, but a single computer controls them all. When the computer went down, all the reactors went haywire. They're starting to overload, and could eventually go critical. The explosion would destroy the Array, and I wouldn't want to be next door when that happens."

"A standard isolation procedure would be advisable," Data said. "Cut off each reactor from the damaged control system and repair them one by one."

Elle scrolled through the damage report. "They're not really broken, though. And the core memory's intact. We could program a new control system and have it all done at once."

"That would take at least seven weeks," Data said.

"No," Elle said, the idea bursting to life. "I think I could do it in like two days... is this what it's like, being a genius? This is fascinating." She grabbed the nearest datapad and dropped it. "No, I need a keyboard."

"Okay," Riker said, "so you're going to sickbay."

Elle sighed. "Fine."

Picard went with her to sickbay. So did Geordi, morbidly fascinated by the possibilities being spawned by Elle's new brainwork.

"Well," Dr. Crusher said, giving Elle a bracing smile, "your brain is certainly firing on all thrusters. The production of neurotransmitters in your brain has jumped by over two hundred percent, and it's actively rising. Pre and postsynaptic membranes have increased permeability to match it. The corpus callosum, the connecting bridge between both sides of the brain, is so active now that the hemispheres are essentially behaving as one."

"So, it's not simply raw intelligence," Picard said, frowning.

"No. Creativity, resourcefulness, inspiration, imagination, they've all been enhanced. Elle, while this lasts, you might be the most advanced human being who's ever lived. Make sure you write everything down, okay?"

"Beverly," Picard scolded.

"What? It's not science unless you write it down."

Elle grinned. "Pros and cons of living on a ship full of mad scientists."

"How do you feel?" Dr. Crusher asked.

"Uh, terrified, also excited, uh, a little hungry."

"Okay." Dr. Crusher gave her a hug. "I want you to wear this cortical monitor, we can keep an eye on your neurotransmitter levels, and listen to your body cues, okay? You need to keep your energy levels up, so eat whenever you feel hungry and drink lots of liquids through the day, okay?"

Elle nodded. "I understand."

"All right."

"Is there no way to reverse this process?" Picard asked.

"No," Dr. Crusher said. "Not with our current medical knowledge."

Elle leaned against Picard's side. "It's okay, captain. It's happened to Spock, it's happened to Bones, it's happened to Dr. M'Benga, and they were fine. I can handle it, and the aliens we're gonna meet can fix me right up again."

"And if they can't?"

Elle shrugged. "I've always wanted to live like a brain in a jar."

Picard wrapped an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. "You are a terrifying optimist. Go, be smart, do what you need to do."

"Yes, sir." She kissed his cheek and slid off the bio-bed. "Come on Geordi, I want to use the big screen in your office."

"Sure."

As Elle and Geordi walked away, Picard murmured to Beverly, "the next child we try and raise, can we get an artist? If we get another little Einstein I'm going to need a new heart."

"We'll hold auditions," she promised him and squeezed his hand.

Elle managed to hold in her squee of joy until they got to the corridor, scaring Geordi half to death.

As soon as they reached Geordi's office, Elle got to typing. If she wasn't aware that her neural patterns had been hijacked by an alien, she would've been impressed with herself. As it was, this was still pretty impressive.

"Okay, I'm gonna go do my job, you just, uh, keep doing that," Geordi said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Holler if you need anything." He left, shaking his head.

Data came in a few minutes later. "Captain send you to keep an eye on me?" Elle asked.

"Yes," Data said.

"Cool."

-/\-

Around midnight, Data put his foot down. "You must get your rest," he said. "Your brain is undergoing massive changes, you need to eat and sleep."

"Aww, c'mon."

"No," Data said, saving and closing the programming window. "You've made incredible progress on creating a control progam from scratch, but even you need sleep. At least six hours."

"Five," Elle said. "We've gotta take advantage of this."

"Not at the cost of your health," Data said firmly.

"Ugh. At least you've got the dad tone down once you have a child," Elle said. She detoured towards the mess hall, it was mac'n'cheese night. "How is that going by the way? You haven't really said anything about it."

He sighed. "Creating a being in one's own image is not as simple as various holy writings make it seem."

Elle covered her mouth, trying not to smile. "Did you read a bunch of sacred texts for references?"

"I did, yes. There were no clear descriptions of the actual process of creation."

"Data, I love you," Elle said solemnly and gave him a hug.

He patted her back. "I also have much affection for you," he said, "but I am unsure as to why you are stating this now."

"Just because," Elle said, stepping back. "Can I see what you've been working on?"

"After you sleep," Data said firmly.

"Ugh."

Elle ate, and Data escorted her to her quarters. "Shall I come pick you up in six hours?" Data asked.

"Yeah, sure." Elle showered, put her dinosaur pajamas on, and tried to go to sleep. Staring at the ceiling gave her ideas about brain patterns, though, and sitting up to write them down made her think about neural nets. She moved to the desk and turned on the computer. "Just a couple minutes, I need to write this down before I forget it," she muttered. "I wonder if Data put his stuff on the main drive..." Ha, he did.