"Captain, I have discovered something very important."

"What?"

"I am a stereotypical horse girl."

The captain started laughing, bending almost in half over the neck of his horse. "Good to know." He pointed out the next curve of the trail. "We're almost to the lookout point."

Elle patted her own horse's neck and followed him around the curve. "Whoa."

The Kabul River lay before them in all its restored glory, lighting up the valley with its reflection.

Picard dismounted and helped Elle to the ground. Both horses began their programmed idle routine and began to mouth at the tall grass nearby. "What a view," he said, sighing in satisfaction.

"Where'd you put the snacks?" Elle asked.

He rolled his eyes. "Really?"

"What? We can snack and look at the view at the same time," Elle said. "Double the experience."

He conceded the point, and they sat on the picnic blanket with their snacks. "So, you mentioned that this was the Indus Valley?" Elle asked.

Picard entered professorial-lecture mode, and Elle decided that if he ever retired, he could be very comfortable teaching at Star Fleet Academy, or, gasp, a civilian university.

Data suddenly appeared, incongruous in his uniform.

"Ah, Data," Picard said, pleased. "Come to join us?"

"No sir," Data said apologetically. "We have encountered an aggregate field of plane-polarized objects that require further investigation."

Elle blinked. "Sensor ghosts?"

"Yes."

Picard sighed. "Oh well, c'est la vie. Computer, end program."

-/\-

"How we doin', Commander?" Elle asked.

La Forge eyed her suspiciously. "Where's Commander Riker?"

"He's taking the day off. I'm his replacement."

La Forge muttered something about the betting pool under his breath. "Well," he said, "we're not close enough to the cosmic string fragment to scan it with enough detail to replicate it using our reflector array."

Elle paused. "Now that's something I didn't see coming."

"We'll have to wait until we can get a good reading of the frequencies," La Forge said. "Probably in another hour."

"Nice."

"While you're here you can help me with the parabolic dish. We know what the general readings will be, so we can get it in the ballpark."

-/\-

The bridge had a smattering of alarms going off when Elle, Picard, and Data re-enetered the bridge. Allenby swiveled to look at them. "I've completed another full scan of the area, sir. There is no further indication of the anomaly."

Picard frowned. "Well then. Ensign, prepare to resume course to T'lli Beta. Stand ready at warp six, Ensign."

"Aye, sir."

"Engage."

Allenby hit the controls. The ship jolted, and nothing happened. Elle rubbed at her forehead as a headache blossomed. "Ow," she said.

Picard glanced at her. "Elle?"

"Gave me a headache," Elle said. She sat down in the end chair on the central dais and pressed her fingers to her temples.

"Riker to Engineering. Geordi, what happened?"

La Forge sounded distracted. "Checking. Looks like the field collapsed before we could enter warp. Recommend full stop while I check it out."

"Full stop," Picard ordered.

"All decks reporting minor injuries only and no damage," Data said. "Weapons and shields are also normal."

Allenby frowned. "Uh, Captain, we've started moving again. Something is pulling us. New heading confirmed. Zero two five mark two seven three. Speed is holding at one-tenth impulse."

Riker raised an eyebrow. "Whatever's pulling us sure isn't in a hurry."

Elle rubbed at her forehead again. She excused herself from the bridge and went down to sickbay. It was packed. "What happened?" she asked another lieutenant.

"Headache," the lieutenant said. "You?"

"Same." Elle frowned. "I don't know, I feel like..."

The ship shuddered again, and Elle wobbled on her feet. She steadied herself, tried to read the vibrations running through the floor. "Whatever it is, we haven't broken away from it."

"Is this an episode?" Nurse Ogawa asked, coming by with a medical tricorder.

"Maybe?"

The tricorder whirred, Nurse Ogawa frowned. "There's literally nothing wrong with you."

Elle gave her a Look. "Then why do I have a headache?"

"No clue. Stay put." She bustled off to look at the other headache sufferers.

Elle sat criss-cross on the biobed and closed her eyes to go through her list of episodes. After Spock had helped her organize her mental desktop, Star Trek TNG Season 4 was listed on... this shelf, after Alexander's first appearance... ship being pulled, headaches...

She heard Counselor Troi's voice, talking to Dr. Crusher about neurological scans, and the episode clicked.

"Oh, the 2D space whales," Elle said aloud, coming out of her mental library. She looked over at Counselor Troi. "Did you lose your empathic abilities?"

Troi's jaw dropped. "I- how did you-"

"It's an episode," Elle said triumphantly. "Don't worry, it's not permanent."

Deanna deflated in relief.

Dr. Crusher's eyebrows went up. "What are you talking about, Elle?"

"The sensor ghosts aren't ghosts, and they're so different and powerful they shorted out everybody's empathic abilities." Elle grimaced. "The only one who can actually tell is Deanna, but that's why the rest of us are headache-y."

"But it'll come back?" Troi asked.

"Yes."

Troi hugged her. "Thank you."

"Just the messenger," Elle said, hugging her back.

"Senior officers to the conference room," the all-call said, interrupting the bustle of sickbay.

"Let's go."

"Wait, can I get something for the headache?" Elle asked.

Headache hypo duly administered, the three of them headed to the conference room. Riker had already started asking questions. "Could it be some sort of tractor beam?"

"No other ship is indicated," Data said.

"We're caught in the wake of flat space whales," Elle announced, dropping into a seat next to Data. "They're heading towards a cosmic string."

"We're what?" Riker asked. "Flat space whales?"

"Cosmic string?" Data asked at the same time, alarm in his features.

"Do you ever explain something in a linear fashion?" La Forge asked, amused.

Elle thought about it. "No. I always start in media res."

Picard snorted. "Begin at the beginning, if you please, and go on till you come to the end, then stop."

"Alice in Wonderland," Elle said. "Or Murder Must Advertise?"

"Both," said the captain, pleased.

"Sir," Riker said.

"Anyways," Elle said. "They're ghosting us on sensors because they're two-dimensional and we're at the wrong angle, but if you shoot off a probe we'll be able to see them."

"Fascinating," Data said.

Elle grinned. "Yeah. They're going home to the cosmic string, and we just happened to get stuck in their wave field." Her grin widened. "You know how we're gonna get out of here?"

"Don't say it," La Forge threatened, pointing a finger. "Don't you-"

"We have to reverse the polarity-"

"-dare say it-"

"-of the cosmic string," Elle finished triumphantly, cackling with pure glee.

La Forge groaned and threw himself back in his chair, covering his face with one hand. "Blasphemy."

Elle continued, still snickering, "They're reading the cosmic string emanations, so if we imitate it, they'll shift their migration pattern, disrupting the graviton field. Says TV you, anyway."

Picard carefully did not laugh at his suffering chief engineer. "Would that actually work, Commander?"

La Forge sighed the sigh of the beleaguered. "We'll have to take some more scans, figure out what they're doing to the graviton field and what the creatures are looking for. How much time do we have, heathen?"

Elle shrugged. "Long enough for the empaths among us to have at least two existential crises."

Picard pressed his lips together tightly to prevent smiling. "Meeting dismissed then."

Elle followed Troi out of the room.

"I'm not going to have an existential crisis," Troi told her.

"Okay," Elle said agreeably. "I might, though, so I should probably stick around. Just in case."

Troi gave her a Look.

Elle remained unphased. Once you've survived the Eyebrow of Utter Reproach by Spock, there was no facial expression you are not immune to. That was probably why Captain Kirk was so great at diplomacy. Elle had never personally been glared at by Spock (she was his favorite, hands down, second only to the captain), but Spock had glared at Bones, who'd glared right back, and between those two, nobody else was even slightly intimidating.

"Fine," Troi said, "but you can't be in the room while I have my counseling sessions with others."

"Okay," Elle said, because protesting was illegal.

They went to Troi's office. The counselor sat down to do paperwork. Elle pulled up a version of 24th-century Minesweeper that somebody had made based on that ancient minefield they'd encountered a few months ago.

It took half a level for Troi to speak. "What if my empathy doesn't come back?" Troi asked.

"It will," Elle told her.

"This is real life, Elle, things don't magically resolve in forty-five minutes."

Elle looked at her. "I am aware," she drawled.

Troi looked scared. "So what if it doesn't come back?"

"Adapt, improvise, overcome," Elle said, playing the next move in her game. "You're gonna have to work on your human half. The gut instinct, not the empathic circuits. You can work around the blank spots."

Troi scowled.

Elle raised an eyebrow. "Do you want me to pity you?"

"No." Troi sighed and rubbed at her forehead. "I can't, my whole mind, it's blank. It's so quiet. How do you live like this?"

"Your brain will come up with its own background noise, trust me," Elle said.

"You're not taking this seriously."

Elle looked up at her again. "Deanna, I rate kind of high on the esper scale, too, you know. You're not the only one who's missing a sense. There's at least fifty of us on this ship who got whammied."

"But their job doesn't depend on their empathy," Troi said. "Mine does."

"You don't need it to do your job," Elle said. "It'll be harder, but you can do your job just fine. If your empathy doesn't come back, you'll just have a bit of an adjustment period but you'll eventually be fine."

"How do you know?"

"Well, once you realize I'm picking a fight with you on purpose then you'll be able to work with other people," Elle pointed out.

Troi stared at her.

Elle stared back at her calmly.

Troi burst into tears.

Oops, there it was. Elle grimaced. She sent a text message to Riker. Deanna's crying, help!

Like a knight in shining armor, Riker was there within moments. He tugged Deanna into his arms, rubbing her back, murmuring all the right words, tissues in hand. He pointed to the door with his free hand.

Elle fled, and almost bumped into Picard, who was coming down the corridor. "Er, Counselor Troi's busy," she said, grimacing.

Picard frowned in sympathy. "Is she all right?"

"Repression is bad for you," Elle said. "And I hit all the right buttons, which I'm good at, but I'm bad at the comforting bit."

Picard put a hand over his mouth. "I see," he said, after a moment. "Cup of tea?"

"That would be great," Elle agreed.

They walked in silence to the captain's ready room and Elle sat on the couch. He replicated two cups of Earl Grey and sat across from her. He took a sip, waited till Elle took a sip. "How are you feeling about losing your sense of empathy?" he asked.

Elle took another sip of tea. "It kind of feels like when you're on painkillers, and you forget that you have legs, and you can't feel them? Like that."

"I'm sorry," he said.

Elle shrugged. "It's just a headache, to me. I can still read body language, facial expressions, tones of voice. And learned empathy hits different areas of the brain than extra-sensory empathy. I've still got that. I don't really need extra-sensory perception, no more than any human does."

Picard said nothing.

They sat in silence for a little while. "I do have a speech planned for when Deanna has processed her initial emotions and is ready to move forward," Elle said.

His mouth quirked in a smile. "Oh really? Do tell."

"It's the 'why Superman would get his butt kicked if he ever lost his powers' speech," Elle said. "Definitely saw this on the internet, but I'm stealing it. Superman doesn't actually know how to fight. He just uses his powers. So if he became Clark Kent, any moderately martial arts person could deck him. Batman, on the other hand..."

"I get where you're going," Picard said, eyes twinkling.

"This is why Captain America insists that all members of his team know how to fight, even if they have superpowers," Elle said.

"You're mixing comic books," he said.

"No, they have Justice League comics in the Marvel universe, and vice versa," Elle said. One of the lieutenants in Waste Reclamation was a comic book specialist, and they had the entire Marvel series basically memorized. "I think it's an argument that Steve Rogers uses to make his Tony Stark learn to fight even though he's Iron Man. One of those comic series anyways."

"Training and experience do even the odds when faced with superhuman events," Picard agreed. "Everything that happens to us is a chance to hone our skills or learn new ones."

"Yes, sir."

They finished their tea in companionable silence, and Elle went to check on Deanna. Riker was waiting for her in the outer office. "That wasn't very nice," he said, folding his arms.

Elle winced. "Sorry not sorry?"

He pulled her into a side hug. "Thank you though," he whispered into her hair, and let her go. "Counselor Troi is off duty the rest of today. She's going to take this rare opportunity and watch well-constructed romantic dramas without interruptions."

Elle raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to stay and provide moral support?"

"That is absolutely none of your business," he said sternly. "Unrelated to anything else, I'm off the rest of today so you get to go check on Geordi and Data. Goodbye." And she was unceremoniously propelled into the corridor.

Elle grinned all the way down to Engineering.

-/\-

It took another two hours for the Enterprise to be dragged in range of the cosmic string fragment, but once Data squeezed every last drop of information out of the long-range sensors, they were ready to go.

Elle stayed on the bridge to look over Lt. Casey's shoulder as she monitored the engineering console. "Green across the board."

"At your discretion, Commander La Forge," Picard said.

"Data, can you focus the reflector field for me?" La Forge asked.

"Stand by. I'm differentiating particle-emission signatures now."

"Good. Good, that's doing it. Patterns are converging." La Forge made a pleased sound over comms. "Casey, how we lookin'?"

"All readings within range," Casey reported.

"We're at seventy-five percent output."

"Same course, same speed. No change, sir."

Elle hopped on her toes anxiously.

Casey gave her a look.

Elle took two steps back. "Sorry."

"Punching it up to eighty percent," La Forge said. "Eighty-five."

"The creatures are moving," Data said. "Graviton field is collapsing."

"Get us out of here," Picard ordered.

With a mighty jolt, the Enterprise broke free of the graviton field. Elle managed to keep her balance this time, and she sighed in relief as they managed to move away.

"The beings have resumed their course into the string," Allenby reported from the conn. "They'll be there in another two hours, twenty minutes."

"Resume course to T'lli Beta, best speed," Picard ordered.

"Aye, sir."

Picard turned to look at Elle. "And how is your headache?"

"I think we have to wait until we're out of range," Elle said.

He frowned. "I see."

With all the excitement basically over, Elle left the bridge. Two hours and twenty minutes till the space whales left this dimensional plane, and what a sentence that was. "Computer, set an alarm for two hours and twenty minutes," she said, entering her quarters. She took off her shoes and grabbed Simba the Third.

The tribble cooed agreeably as Elle curled up on the couch. "I'm done with this headache," Elle announced. "I'm taking a nap."

Simba purred until Elle fell asleep.

The soft beeping of her alarm woke her up what seemed like seconds later. Her headache was gone. There was a message waiting on her computer. "From CMO Office: When you have time come down to sickbay for a neurological scan."

Elle grabbed a snack and went down to sickbay. "Are we cured?" she asked Dr. Crusher.

"You tell me," Dr. Crusher said.

"Well, the headache's gone," Elle said.

"Hm." Dr. Crusher waved the tricorder around.

"How's Deanna?" Elle asked.

"She's fine," Dr. Crusher said. "As soon as those creatures disappeared on sensors, her empathic abilities came back. So did everyone else's."

"I was asleep, I missed the 'aha' moment," Elle said.

"I can tell." Dr. Crusher traced a pillow crease on Elle's cheek with a grin. "Good nap?"

"Very good."

"Well, your neurological functions are normal as far as I can tell. Go hug somebody, see how you feel, and if you start feeling odd, or if your headache comes back, comm me, okay?"

Elle nodded and slid off the bed. "Will do." She went to find Counselor Troi.

Troi was in her office, doing paperwork. She looked up when Elle came in, and smiled. "I'm not going to snap at you, I promise," she said. "Come sit down."

"Back to normal?" Elle asked, sliding into the comfy chair opposite.

"Yes. You?"

Elle nodded. "Enjoy your day off?" she asked casually.

Troi smiled. "I did, yes."

"In a week, I'll have bridesmaid experience," Elle said conversationally. "Just to let you know."

Troi laughed. "We'll keep that in mind."

"We?"

Elle's comm chirped. "Elle Wilcott, report to the Cetacean Astronavigation Lab."

"Oh, come on!" Elle complained, starting to laugh.

"Duty calls," Troi said, smothering a grin.

"We're coming back to this conversation," Elle said, standing up. "I'm not allowed in any of the betting pools, you can tell me!"

"They're waiting for you."

"Ugh." Elle hurried for the lab, still laughing. She entered the CAL section and went over to Carol. "Hey, what's up?" she asked.

Carol flicked a fin. "The alien pod sends their apologies for getting us caught in their wake, but it was really quite time-sensitive."

Elle flopped down on the bench. "What. Wait. What?" She stared at the whales in disbelief. "You spoke to them?"

"Their two-dimensional vibrations intersected with the Enterprise," Carol said. "After some back and forth, we were able to communicate."

"...oh. What else did they say?"

"They were surprised that extra-dimensional beings existed." Carol grinned. "For once, we get to be the cool aliens."

Elle supposed that beings of two dimensions would consider beings of three dimensions 'extra.' "Have you, uh, reported this to anybody else?" she asked.

"Of course," Carol said. "The captain should be reading it this evening." She rotated idly in the water. "I think I'll be able to publish a paper on this subject. Two-dimensional beings and their effects on gravitons and subspace. What do you think?"

"Sounds prize-winning," Elle agreed. "On the scale of Douglas Adams sentient beings, between slime mold and god-mice, where do you think they fell?"

"Humans," Carol said, which, fair enough.

"Did they say if they would be back?" Elle asked.

"Nope."

Elle contemplated this. "Fair enough," she said again, because what else could you say? "Any other revelations?"

"Nope."

"Okay." Elle flapped her arms in the whale-sign meaning approximately 'see you later' and left the labs. "I think I'm going to go back to bed."