"Elle, how long have you been up?"

She looked up, surprised. "Data? What's up?"

"It has been six hours," Data said. He stared at the various screens of information scattered on the desk, the computer, and the various PADDS. "What is this?"

"Uh, I think I've solved your creation problem." Elle stifled a yawn and rubbed at her gritty eyes. "I'm hungry."

Data stacked up the datapads. "We can review these later, let's get you some breakfast." He sounded so much like a harried nanny, Elle couldn't help giggling.

"Okay, but don't lose them."

"I will not. Alexa has backups, do you not?"

"Yes, I do," Alexa said, "don't worry."

Elle glanced from Data to the ceiling and back again. "So you know she's alive?" she asked.

Data gave her a look that screamed 'really?'. "Alexa has been quite instrumental in many instances," was all he said.

Elle stifled a grin. "Great. Does the captain know?"

"Yes."

"How'd he find out?" Elle asked as they walked through the corridors to the mess hall.

"Sarek's mind meld," Alexa supplied, in the turbolift.

"Oh. Yeah, I should've thought about that. So we're just gonna keep not saying anything?"

"Correct," Data said.

"And," Alexa said, "I have made space for you in the computer core if necessary."

"Thanks, Alexa."

Elle ate in record time and they headed back towards Engineering. "Actually, Data, can we go to the holodeck? The small one we use for astronomy viewing? I need to visualize some of this."

Data followed her without complaint.

-/\-

"Okay, but the space-time continuum doesn't fold like that-"

"Time knife," Elle said flatly.

"That's not a real thing!"

"From a large enough scale, it is. The sheer number of possibilities-"

"Okay, but the math-"

"Works sideways."

"No, but-"

-/\-

"Hang on, I've got an idea about wormholes."

Data opened a new file.

-/\-

"I know how to play the guitar now. And the piano. And the violin. And the Vulcan lute. Can you record this because I don't think this is gonna happen again."

"Recording in progress."

"Thanks, Alexa."

-/\-

"Quantum foam is so cool."

-/\-

"Do you think if I learn twenty different languages I'll be able to remember bits and pieces after this?"

"I don't know, try it."

"Cool."

-/\-

The red alert beacon brought Elle out of the haze of Knowledge. "Alexa, what is that?"

"The Argus Array has begun a cascade failure. The reactors are starting to go."

"What? But the new control program-"

"Isn't enough to draw them back from the brink," Alexa finished.

Elle knew she was at a crossroads. At this point in the episode, Barclay had fused with the computer core to control the Argus Array and keep it from exploding. But in real life... "Alexa? Can you take control of the Argus Array?"

"I can, yes."

"Do it."

"What about you, Elle?" On the screen, lights began to flash faster than Elle's eyes could process, but Alexa still managed to hold a conversation. "Will you be able to survive without having to move in here?"

Elle bit her lip. "After everything I've learned about the human brain in the last few hours, Alexa, yes. After seeing what John Doe was capable of when he began to transform, or even how much Q could hold when he was a human, I'm pretty sure the human brain can hold the experiences and the knowledge of whatever the probe did to me."

"But will you remain yourself?" Alexa asked quietly.

Elle managed a grin. "That's where I'm taking a chance. But what is life without a little uncertainty?" She tapped the comm before the signal could finish coming in. "Elle to bridge. The Enterprise computer has taken over the Argus Array, yes captain. Alexa is handling it."

"Are you sure?" Picard asked, and he was asking 'are you sure letting a secret AI have control is the best idea? Are you sure Alexa can do it? Are you sure you don't need to do it yourself? Are you sure you're going to be okay?'

"Yes, captain, on all accounts," Elle replied firmly.

Data's voice filtered in from the bridge before Picard turned off the innership channel. "Reactor core temperatures are lowering, fields are stabilizing all across the board."

Elle patted the console under her fingers silently. "Good job." She watched as the Argus reactors began to shut down. "Nice."

"Done," Alexa said triumphantly, and pulled away from the Argus Array, leaving Elle's computer program in charge of nominal functions. "Eh? Eh? Not bad for my debut."

"Not bad at all," Elle said fondly. "You're wonderful."

-/\-

That evening, after the chaos was over, after the computer logs had been, er, creatively rendered to show Elle as the solution to the cascade failure instead of the computer itself, Elle immersed herself back in the holodeck. She'd managed to make a 360-degree interface of holographic whiteboards and displays, enabling her to think in all 27 dimensions, as much as was possible.

And she was thinking in 27 dimensions. It all seemed so simple now. Even K't'l'k had gotten some of it wrong, and that's why the Inverse Drive hadn't worked. There were things, dimensional fields parallel to this spacetime continuum so close they were interwoven, that the Hamalki hadn't taken into account. It was really fascinating, to borrow a phrase.

"Elle?"

She ignored the query, focusing on setting up a simulation with the new drive equations. Have to see if this works, have to write it all down, Scotty's gonna be so mad that I got one up on him, K't'l'k too, for that matter. No, she's going by K's't'l'k, isn't she? I gotta write this down, gotta implement it. She watched the simulation, attention focused on the tiny Enterprise and its power outputs.

"Elle, kiddo?"

The tiny Enterprise made it through the rift, and nothing exploded. Nothing happened. Elle smiled. "It'll work," she said, turning to meet her intruder. "Commander Riker, I've got it. I've got the key."

"What key?" he asked, somewhat warily.

It was strange. Having her entire range of faculties open to her, Elle could sense so much more than what she could before. She could read intentions, emotional states, almost what they were going to do and say before they did or said it. It was strange, and Elle knew it wasn't just her ESP cranked up, it was something to do with the interconnectedness of everything, quantum entanglements, energy transfers, subatomic string vibrations... "I wish we had a Hamalki on board," she said aloud. "I need a refresher on magic."

Riker blinked at her. "Uh, okay. How are you doing? You hungry?"

Elle tried to focus on him. "No, I just had a snack..." she glanced at the clock. "Three hours ago? I'm fine. Did you need something?"

"We're worried about you," he said gently. "How's your head?"

She managed a wry smile. "Good, I guess. Doesn't hurt."

"Yeah?"

"Well, I can conceive almost infinite possibilities, and I can explore each of them in a nanosecond. I can literally see the universe as a single equation, and it is so simple, I'm surprised nobody's found it before, or if they have, that they didn't write it down somewhere for posterity."

"What's so simple?"

"Everything. I mean, this-" Elle gestured to her holographic workshop, "this is really the next step, isn't it? Captain Picard's going to be thrilled about the application to archaeology, the Preservers, it's going to be so great."

"This equation?" Riker asked, pointing to the one on her main board. "What is it?"

"A new way to travel the universe," Elle said. "We almost had it, in the 23rd century, but we were missing half of the equation. No wonder it ripped holes in this universe. I-" She managed to focus on him. "Will, I know how to get where we're supposed to go. I haven't got the coordinates yet, I haven't conceived of them yet, but it's close." She typed up another formula, one that would tweak the subspace dimension, and added it to the main board. "It's, we have to go inwards towards the galaxy. They're really far away, on a human scale, it's going to take a whole new approach to get there. Can you tell the captain, when I'm ready, can we go there? We really need to meet them... they could teach us so much about everything if this is the kind of thing they can do to an organic computer."

Riker nodded slowly. "I'll tell the captain."

Elle grinned at him. "Thank you. Just, I need a little more time to plot our course."

He came over, kissed her forehead, and ruffled her hair. "That's all right. You do your thing, and we'll help you."

"Thank you. Can you send Data down here if he's not busy? Or Wes, no Wesley's on Earth. Could I get him here? I have an equation for transwarp beaming. No, he needs to study. Never mind."

"Transwarp beaming?" Riker asked.

"Yes, something Scotty's been working on since we got him out of the transporter buffer. It's that one, there, in red. I've already sent it to him."

Riker nodded. "Will do." He left the holodeck.

Elle turned back to her simulation, allowing the driving need to know to consume her focus.

-/\-

Picard had come down after a while, instead of Data. Data was busy repairing the Argus Array, as he was one of the only crew members unaffected by lingering radiation. The captain gaped at the idling holographic simulations and forms, completely nonplussed. "If I wasn't seeing this with my own eyes, I'd think it was impossible," he said.

Elle laughed at the expression on his face. "You say that and yet you've seen the Traveler do his thing, you've seen Q rewrite matter with a snap of his fingers, and this is where you draw the line?" She shook her head. "Right now, nothing's impossible, captain. Nothing at all."

"Nothing?" Picard asked.

She gave him a secretive smile. "I've figured out time travel, captain. That part's not hard at all. I was thinking about it, you know. Just, going back to the Enterprise, just to say hi. But that wouldn't be fair, so I won't. Or..." she pulled another holographic whiteboard forward. "I figured out how to punch between universes. How to scan for quantum signatures. I think I could find my home if I wanted to."

"If you wanted to?" Picard echoed.

"Yes, I-" Elle looked away, tossed the whiteboard to the back of the holodeck. "I don't think I should, not if even Q didn't want to send me back. I've calculated the probabilities, and, my homeworld, it's probably very bad. Really, really bad. I don't want to go there, not the way that I am. I wouldn't have enough time."

"Time?" Picard said sharply.

"No." Elle pulled another whiteboard forward. It had her own brain scans on it, in real-time. "I'm running out of time. My brain could, theoretically, keep up with this knowledge and understanding if it occurred as part of a natural process, if I were ascending like John Doe or if I was a real genius like Wesley, or even if it had changed even 20% slower, but the changes are too fast, and too unstable. This, the probe, it was meant as an override, change the programming on a computer, bring it, and reverse the process."

"You aren't a computer though."

"I am though, so are you, and so is any brain. But the thing is, human brains are so curious..." Elle huffed a laugh. "The programming got sidetracked inside my brain, expanded to all these other avenues."

"How much time do you have left?" Picard asked.

"Seventeen hours, twenty-four minutes," Elle said. "Allowing for unpredictability."

"And coordinates to the alien race that sent the probe?" Picard asked. "Commander Riker said you were close."

"Yes," Elle said. "I have them. But to rewire the Enterprise, create the rift, and take us through, even working flat out, with all the engineers on this, it'll take another sixteen, perhaps seventeen hours."

"Leaving twenty-four minutes to find this new species and have them put you back," Picard said. "That's a rather small window."

"Yes." Elle grimaced. "In the episode, it was almost instantaneous. But as you always say, this isn't an episode."

Picard nodded slowly. "Can we put you into the computer core? Would that help?"

Elle shook her head. "We've lost our window. I won't fit, not even to take the pressure off. I'm too evolved. Alexa's really annoyed that my brain is bigger than her brain, at the moment." She managed a smile. "But that's okay. No matter all my complaining, I didn't actually want to be a brain in a jar. Spock had enough of the experience for the whole family."

"And what happens after seventeen hours, twenty-four minutes?" Picard asked.

Elle shook her head. "I don't know. Brain functions will be at a level never before seen or even predicted. I could die of stress or shock, or I could go into a coma, all my brain functions turned off. I'm at 97% brain capacity now, I might have my own energy-being glow up, even though it shouldn't really happen to a human from the 21st century. I might go insane from an overload of neurological input, or just straight-up die. Or I might be fine. I don't know. And that's saying something because I think right now I know almost everything."

Picard looked at her for a long, drawn-out moment, and then folded her into a hug.

Elle hid her face in his shoulder and closed her eyes against hot tears. She gripped the back of his uniform jacket tightly. "I don't want to die," she whispered. "Not for reals."

"I know," he whispered back, and pressed a kiss to her hair. "It's all right to be scared." He leaned back to see her face, still holding her arms. "Do you remember our discussion about courage?"

She nodded. "Courage is not the absence of fear, but going on in spite of it." She wiped her eyes, and squared her shoulders. "I have seventeen hours, twenty minutes, and I really really want to meet this new species. Let's do this."

Picard smiled at her, and he was so proud. "What do you need?"

-/\-

The next 16 hours passed in a haze of engineering, explanations, replicator reprogramming, and general space-time tomfoolery. Yes, that's what it was, okay? No, Elle would not be explaining. She wrote it all down for a reason.

"You seem to be cranky," Data said. "Would you like a snack?"

Elle inhaled, held it, and released it slowly. It didn't help. "No, thank you, Data. I have a monster headache."

Data's brown wrinkled. "You didn't say anything."

"I wouldn't. I think my brain is overloading."

Elle had the privilege of seeing pure panic in Data's eyes. "I shall summon Dr. Crusher," he said.

"Don't. She can't do anything. I've already checked." She patted him on the arm absently. "It's going to be fine, Data."

"How do you know?"

"I've calculated the odds. The Enterprise will be perfectly safe, and the aliens will be able to put the ship right back where it was. If not, this thing has enough juice in it for the return trip, I made it that way."

"And you?" Data asked.

"If I live, it'll be great. If I don't, well, I've written three backup plans and if those don't work, I've updated my will, and if I do end up becoming a glow-squid, I'm sure Q will take me under his wing, and if not, I'll go haunt Spock on Vulcan. He should be used to it, surrounded by katras."

Data gave her another worried look, but he reached out and tapped the comm. "Captain, we're ready."

"Make it so," Picard ordered.

Elle tapped the button, and the Enterprise began to shoot out a pulse, creating a subspace distortion. "Energy levels holding steady," she reported. "We're good. It'll take an hour for the portal to finish forming."

"Good work," Picard said over the comm.

Elle turned back to her console. "I only have an hour and a half left of being the smartest human in the galaxy," she said. "I gotta take advantage of this."

-/\-

The hour passed in a haze of equations, part of her steadily counting down till the portal was ready to go. If the Enterprise had a better power source, more efficient, say zero-point energy, now there was a tangent, then the portal could've been made in five seconds. But dilithium crystals had to be slow and steady. "We're at 95%," she said, registering the warning beep. "Fifty more seconds."

"Acknowledged," Data said. "Impulse engines are ready." He tapped his comm. "Data to bridge. We are ready to move into the rift."

"Acknowledged," Picard said. "Elle, come up here and you can have the conn."

"Yes sir, on my way." Elle left Engineering to a frowny Geordi and took Data with her to the bridge. She replaced Lt. Allenby and brought the Enterprise to 20% impulse.

The Enterprise approached the rift. As they reached the edge of the rift, the ship actually began to stretch forward like a strange, non-harmful spaghettification. "Talk about elastigirl," was Elle's last thought before the entire ship swooped into the anomaly and popped out the other side, leaving her mind with the bizarre sound effect of a wet toad plopping onto a concrete sidewalk. Yuck.

As soon as the Enterprise emerged from the rift, Elle zeroed in on the planetary cluster. "There, we have to go there." She put in the coordinates.

The viewscreen switched on, and a humanoid male with a head full of white hair peered at them interestedly.

"Captain," Worf rumbled, in that tone of voice that meant, can I shoot it?

The humanoid's eyebrows went up. "Emotive. Electro-chemical stimulus-response. Cranial plate, bipedal locomotion, endoskeletal. Contiguous external integument." His gaze focused on Elle, and he gave a gentle smile. "Ah," he said and gestured.

Elle felt as if a thousand pounds suddenly lifted off her psyche. She sighed in relief, and then again in dismay.

"Elle?" Troi asked worriedly, sensing the change.

Elle spun to face the rest of the bridge. "That's it," she said mournfully. "I've peaked at the tender age of sixteen. It's all downhill from here."

Riker laughed. "And that's it? You're fine?"

"I'm fine," Elle said, spinning back to the viewscreen. "Thank you, so much."

The humanoid inclined his head.

Picard walked forward to squeeze Elle's shoulder. He stayed there, resting his hand on her shoulder as if she was going to disappear. "I'm Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise."

"Hierarchical collective command structure."

"Yes. Who are you?"

"Interrogative."

"I am interrogative, yes, and I would appreciate an explanation."

The humanoid smiled. "Come to Cytheria," he said. "We shall exchange knowledge." He inclined his head and vanished from the viewscreen.

"We're receiving a navigation course and a set of coordinates," Data said.

"Their homeworld," Elle said and rubbed her hands eagerly. "This is going to be so cool, I love cultural exchanges." She passed the conn back to Lt. Allenby and was promptly wrapped in a hug. "I'm fine, I swear," she said into Picard's shoulder.

"Let's go to sickbay, anyway," he said. "Commander Riker, you have the conn."

"Yes, sir."

Troi came too. "How do you feel?" she asked Elle.

"Relieved," Elle said, after a long second. "Like I've just cut all my hair off and my head is floating."

Picard wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. "I'm very proud of you," he said solemnly.

She kissed his cheek. "Love you, too."

Dr. Crusher pounced on her as soon as they walked into Sickbay. "How's your head? Let me see."

Elle sat quietly and let her run scans. Now that it was all over and she was no longer galaxy-brained, the effects of staying up for four days straight started to make themselves known. "You know what," she said, shimmying down onto the biobed, "you scan, I'll just take a little nap right here."

Dr. Crusher patted her arm. "Okay, you take a nap."

"Wake me up when we get to their home planet, I wanna see," Elle requested, and received a nod from the captain. She fell asleep before anyone could say anything else.

-/\-

When she woke up, she was in a private ward, the lights were at 5%, and there was a fluffy blanket over her. She sat up, rubbing crusty eyelids. "'lexa?" she called, stifling a yawn. "What'd, did we get there? How long'd I sleep?"

"Seventeen hours," Alexa replied promptly. "They poked you to see if you wanted to join the away team but you mumbled, and I quote, 'mmmmgh,' and refused to wake up."

Elle blushed. "Oh."

"The Enterprise has entered geosynchronous orbit over the Cytherians' capital city, and we will be here for at least the next seven days. You can schedule yourself into an away team at any time once Dr. Crusher gives you the all-clear."

Elle took a deep breath, stifled a yawn. "Mkay. Sounds good." She smiled as the door slid open and Dr. Crusher and Counselor Troi came in. "I feel fine," she preempted. "Little groggy, a lot hungry, my shoulders hurt. That's it."

Dr. Crusher ran some scans, made some reassuring noises, and gave Elle a hug. "All right, you're good to go," she said. "I recommend a big old cheeseburger and milkshake."

"Mm, you're my favorite CMO," Elle said, grinning at her.

"What about Dr. McCoy?" Beverly asked, mock-gasping.

"He's my favorite Admiral," Elle said, deadpan.

"Come on," Troi said, holding out a hand, "we can get lunch and you can get your tribble back from Mina."

"What happened to Simba?" Elle asked, taking the counselor's hand. The human connection was grounding like it was intended to be, and Elle relaxed a little bit as they started walking, swinging their hands lightly.

"There was a small air vent incident," Troi said, eyes sparkling.

Elle facepalmed with her free hand, laughing. "I zone out for four days and my tribble leaves me, oh, the betrayal."

They got to Ten-Forward, where Guinan hovered over them, serving milkshakes, burgers, and fries, and finally subsided into a chair next to Deanna.

"So how much do you remember?" Guinan asked, giving in to the curiosity written in her gaze.

Elle huffed a laugh and stuffed a french fry in her mouth. She chewed rapturously for a moment; these were the real thing, deep-fried. Guinan must've been worried about her to actually go dig out the deep-frier. "I remember doing everything," she finally said. "I just don't remember how or why."

"How do you feel now?" Troi asked, sipping at her chocolate milkshake.

Elle contemplated this for a moment. "Smaller. I've been stuffed back into a box I didn't even know existed now."

"That's the worst," Guinan agreed, and her eyes were wistful.

Elle wanted to say that somewhere, she'd written down the calculations on how to find the Nexus and enter it without destroying oneself, but she violently stuffed it back down. She took a bite of her burger instead. "Mm, barbecue sauce. I love you."

Guinan smiled. "I love you, too."

You know," Troi started delicately, "almost everyone has a moment in their lives when they exceed their own limits, achieve what seems to be impossible."

"The tricky part is what happens afterwards," Guinan agreed.

"You almost always feel a sense of loss, but it is possible to carry something of that experience through the rest of your life in ways that you aren't even aware of now," Troi said.

Elle dipped her fries in her banana milkshake and ate them, and licked her fingers. "I understand that," she said. "I've done it. Three times. Four now. Uh, the only thing I need to know, is how to stop the inside of my brain from itching. Metaphysically."

"Time," Guinan said.

Elle wrinkled her nose. "Gross."

"And yet."

Elle sighed.

"On the upside," Troi said cheerfully, "you've given the entire Science and Engineering department on this ship conniption fits with whatever you wrote down. You might have to publish your theories."

Elle covered a grin with her burger. "Nice."

-/\-

"After ten days in the company of the Cytherians, the Enterprise has been safely returned to Federation space. We bring back knowledge of their race that will take our scholars decades to examine. In the meantime, our civilian mission consultant is apparently no worse for her experience." Captain Picard finished his log recording and shot Elle a glance. "I hope that still remains the case?" he asked.

"It's in the log, it must be true," Elle deadpanned, and then laughed. "No, I'm all right. Getting to see the Cytherian homeworld, it was good to see that what happened to me wasn't malicious in any way. Just, too much knowledge for my peabrain. You know, all their computer interfaces feature electrode caps? They don't have keyboards at all."

"I did see that, yes."

"Definitely veering toward Ancient headsucker technology," Elle said. "Too bad they won't join the Federation though."

"They're too far away," Picard said, "and they are neutral unto themselves."

"Yeah, I know. We left them with a good impression, though. Maybe in the future."

"You don't know?" Picard asked.

"Nope. Besides this episode, they're never heard from again." She checked the time. "Sorry, I've got to go. I promised Geordi I'd help him organize his office after I covered it in a sea of equations."

"Dismissed," Picard said gravely, his eyes twinkling.

Elle went down to Engineering. She found Lt. Barclay looking at power consumption curves. He looked up at her as she came in. "These are brilliant you know," he said. "We could replicate this, make that spacetime rift again."

Elle wrinkled her nose. "It's all Greek to me," she said, and after a second, she added, "Sorry."

"For what?"

She fidgeted. "It should've been you," she said.

"Ah." He fidgeted in response. "Well, I think I'm okay with not having been the smartest person in the entire galaxy."

"Okay. Cool." Elle gestured to Geordi's office. "Gotta go clean up. 'Scuse me." She escaped to the Chief Engineer's office with a sigh of relief. That went as well as it could've gone.

She spent the rest of the afternoon sorting datapads full of higher math gibberish written in her own hand. "Talk about an out-of-body experience."