"Elle, how do you feel about a special project?" Without waiting for an answer, Riker dropped a datapad in her lap, almost dislodging her game controller. On the hologram, the mini-Enterprise crashed into an asteroid and blew up. "Oops."

" Commmandeeerrrr," she complained. "I was in the middle of stealth attacks!"

"You can't be using the academy simulator without going to the academy," Riker said, amused. "Even if the captain wants you to beat Wesley's record."

"Pitting his children against each other," Guinan murmured as she passed with a pitcher of lemonade for some delta-shift crewmembers who were having lunch. "How terrible."

Elle sniggered. "Wesley is so mad someone keeps one-upping his scores."

"You have eighty years on him," Riker said, amused. "Go easy on him."

"Absolutely not," Elle said. "No mercy for the baby."

A passing crewman shot her an alarmed look.

Elle laughed again and put away her keyboard. She turned off the game tank. "What special project?" she asked. "Engineering? Time travel? Psychology?" She started reading and wrinkled her nose. "Colony prep?"

"That, right there," Riker said, pointing at her face. "You don't like doing it."

"So you're making me do it?"

"Yes," he said. "You have to learn to like something about every job that you do, or you won't like anything about any job that you do."

Elle squinted at him. "And?"

"And, we're helping an old friend of mine, and I want all hands on deck," Riker said.

Elle sighed. "An old friend like, you served with them, or like, an 'old friend'?"

"That's none of your business," Riker replied primly.

Elle looked up the head of the colony effort. "Ah. She's pretty." She kept reading. "Standard colony set up. This planet seems nice. Melona... good agriculture. Bedrock. Passed both surveys."

"We're heading to pick up the first wave of colonists and supplies," Riker said. "We'll be helping them set up while the Enterprise goes back for the second wave."

"There's that many people being mobilized?" Elle asked, surprised. "Usually, we can fit the whole colony."

"Not this time. Once it's set up, it'll be a good trading post between these two sectors." Riker tapped the padd. "I want you on logistics, and once we get to the colony, I'd like you to help with the prefabs, replicators, and robots."

"Nice!" The excavator robots were like something out of Star Wars, spider droid-looking things, but they were as efficient as Star Trek things usually were, and they had self-contained replicating units to literally make sand into bedrock as they chewed through building sites. They were the backbone of Federation colonies and terraforming operations. "I love those guys."

"See?" Riker said. "You're having fun already." He took the padd back. "You can get your copy in the morning."

"Aww." Elle picked up her keyboard again. "Sounds good. Night, commander!"

"Night, gremlin."

-/\-

The colonists heading for Melona Four were a hardy lot and ready to start building. The leader of the fledgling colony, Sarah Carmen, was great, too.

"You just like her because she let you name all the terrabots," Geordi said, watching Riker and Carmen flirt over drinks in Ten-Forward.

"And she's a competent leader and organizer," Elle said. "I barely had to do any logistics to fit all their stuff into the cargo bays."

Geordi left to go chat up a lieutenant from biosciences, and Elle wandered over to the bar again. "Can I get a refill on this hot chocolate?" she asked.

Guinan took her glass. "Of course you can," she said. "You all right?"

Elle sighed. "I don't know. I feel like, I'm missing something."

"It has been a few weeks since you've been able to talk to Ambassador Spock," Guinan said. "How are you doing with that?"

Elle waved a hand. "In that way, I'm fine. Bones and Scotty are mother-henning me enough for four people, let alone Spock. I know he's having the time of his life right now arguing with the only people who can match Vulcans for hard-headedness."

"Not the Klingons?" Guinan asked.

"No, they're too easy to manipulate." Elle rested her chin on her fist. "It's Doctor Carmen. She seems familiar."

"From one of Commander Riker's stories?" Guinan suggested.

"No... Doctor Crusher said he's not allowed to tell Wesley or me stories until Wesley gets married."

"I didn't think either of you were looking for a spouse," Guinan said, covering a smile with her hand.

"I'm not, and Wesley certainly isn't," Elle replied, sniggering. "So you see how long it's going to take."

"So it's not from his past escapades," Guinan agreed. "Could this be an episode?"

Elle sighed. "I was hoping you weren't going to say that. We've gone out of order from what I remember them being in, and to think of any episodes this season is going to take an awful lot of mental work..." She glanced up at Guinan pathetically.

Guinan pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow. "And what does Surak say about laziness and mental discipline?"

Elle sighed. "Your kids never got away with anything, did they? I'm going, I'm going." She took her hot chocolate and went down to the arboretum. She found a quiet corner under a dwarf willow tree and took a seat. Focus, said her inner-Spock. You have the knowledge within you. The calm mind is the one that truly knows. It is enough to reach out and look for it.

She took a deep breath and focused. Season five of TNG. The Klingons... she shivered at the phantom sensation of holding the time crystal and moved forward hastily. Spock had already left, so the Enterprise didn't have to go to Romulus to look for Spock. They were somewhere in the first half of the season, though. Darmok had already happened. Ensign Ro. The disaster. But then, Rasmussen? And, Wesley wasn't coming back for break yet for a good few months. So, where were they?

Focus on what is, she chastised herself. Colony planet. Doctor Carmen. Colony... something bad happened on a colony...the Borg? No. Something else that caused total devastation. Something...

Elle sat upright, startled out of her own mental desktop. "The Crystalline Entity!" she shouted.

Alexa beeped cautiously. "The Crystalline Entity was last seen when Lore tried to feed it the Enterprise almost five years ago."

Elle stood up and shook the cherry blossoms off her shoulders. "I gotta go tell the captain." She hurried up to the bridge.

"Ah, Elle, how is..." Picard trailed off. "What's wrong?"

"I remembered something," Elle said grimly. "This is an episode. The Crystalline Entity comes and devastates Melona."

Picard muttered a quiet phrase in French. "Not this again," he said.

"Please tell me there's something different about this time," Riker said, frowning.

"Yes. The caves are a mixture of something that the entity can't get through. But you guys started communicating with it... through graviton beams. Except, the expert on the entity destroys it with those graviton beams before you can actually reach a dialogue." Elle frowned. "I believe we can communicate with it and convince it to feed only on uninhabited planets."

"The Crystalline Entity moves so quickly and erratically we cannot track it," Data pointed out.

Elle squinted into the distance, trying to remember. "I think, you figure out a way? I think. Something about gamma radiation? This episode was more about what's-her-face's revenge spiel than the entity itself... which is probably why they made you deal with another one later on in a novel to establish communications and sentience. They're cosmozoans, like the space whales. And the gormoganders."

Everyone blinked at her. "I have no idea what you're talking about," Riker said.

"You know," Elle said, after a second of back and forth confused faces, "I don't think the Federation xenobiology lessons are up to date. Or my memories are different than history. The space jellyfish from Farpoint? Cosmozoans. The..." she paused. "Discovery had already come out when I left. But no one seems to know about stuff from it, besides the NDA on Spock's-" She stopped herself from saying 'secret sister.' "And La'an from the past, she kind of implied that Khan was born in my time, not in the 80's or 90's. Which..." She blinked rapidly. "Time is always in flux, so things that already technically happened are still happening, which means... it's like in Doctor Who, four different versions can all be true at the same time... Riker, when you're a captain in the future, and you have to deal with this, you have to call me to confirm this, okay?"

"Again, I have no idea what you're talking about," Riker said. "Time what?"

"Never mind that," Elle said, waving a hand. She put her hands on her hips. "It's, too, you know if they made more shows after I died, and there's fresh Star Trek content that I don't know about, I'm gonna be so mad. How do I even know?" She pointed at the ceiling accusingly. "Q! Pike's crew is too cool! Are they a TV show?!"

Everyone on the bridge actively cringed, but thankfully for Picard's blood pressure, there was no answer.

"Elle, focus," Picard said, placing his hands on her shoulders. "The Crystalline Entity. The colony."

Elle shook her head. "Right. Yes. Never mind spacetime. I'm sure the 29th century is keeping an eye on stuff." She refocused. "The Crystalline entity. Needs to eat, so it eats biospheres. I'm positive we can direct it to noninhabited planets. Or, uh, planets that are gross and that we want to terraform once the Entity is done with them." She wrinkled her nose. "We really need to give it a name. I can't keep saying 'Crystalline Entity' like it's some sort of Sith Lord."

"Fred," Riker suggested.

Picard gave his first officer such a deeply disappointed Look that Elle choked on a laugh.

"When does Fred show up?" Geordi asked.

Elle forced herself not to even smile. "In the episode, colony phase 1 is already set up, and the Enterprise is already on its way back with the second phase."

"We have some time, then, to build defenses for the colony," Data said. "Captain, may I suggest a two-pronged defense. We can recreate the cave composition into testing structures, and the Enterprise can reach out to try and communicate with," his eyes twinkled, "Fred."

Picard gave a deep sigh. "Agreed. Let us hope that this, Fred, can be reasoned with."

Elle determined to send Wesley the clip of this briefing session. He was gonna flip.

-/\-

"Hey, Data?"

"Yes?"

"How are you, with all this?" Elle gestured vaguely at the chemical composition of the caves on Melona, indicating, of course, the mission in general.

Data wrinkled his nose. "Undecided," he decided, which, fair. "I only hope that previous experience with androids does not prejudice Fred against us."

"I'm sure even Fred will be able to tell that you're awesome," Elle said, patting him on the back. "I doubt Fred and Lore even reached a meaningful dialogue in the first place."

"I also doubt it." He squinted at his results. "Elle, besides the forcefield shields we are making, are you planning on having the terrabots synthesize the structures out of kelbonite and fistrium?"

"Uh, yes," Elle said. "If the bones of the structure are made like that, it'll act like a Faraday cage and hopefully disperse the energy. It'll also be more tectonically stable for this planet than the standard building mix. I haven't tested it yet."

Data glanced at the clock. "You can stop for lunch, and I will program the tests."

"Sounds good." Elle went to get lunch, got distracted by one of the colonists teaching the kids to juggle in the mess hall, and finally made her way back to the lab.

"Perfect timing," Data said. "I have the simulation ready."

"Cool." Elle leaned forward eagerly to analyze the computer-generated graphics, watching the readings on the side as the pre-fab house got zapped by lightning. The screen flared with light, and Elle gaped. There were holes in the roof, and all the windows had blown out, but the structure was intact. "What about inside?" she asked.

Data pulled up the results inside. "The majority is intact, and the simulated people inside it survived."

Elle punched the air with glee. "Yes! Oh yeah, take that!" She held out her hand for a high-five, which Data gave her. "Nice!"

"We will run further simulations," Data said. "But you may begin to reprogram the terrabots to synthesize the materials needed. Ask Lt. Barclay to help you."

"Yes, sir. This is gonna be awesome."

-/\-

Elle was wrong. This was not awesome. Kelbonite and fistrium were both rare minerals, and playing alchemy with synthesizers was more risk-laden than-

"Ew," Elle said as the replicated matter began to smoke slightly.

Barclay pulled her away from it as the contamination forcefields came on. "Computer, isolate and vent lab space 27-A. What did you do?"

"I don't know! I was turning carbon into fistrium. It did not like that."

"Try starting with nitrogen instead," Barclay said. "Less hassle."

"For you, maybe," Elle muttered. "Like turning straw into gold."

"Okay, Rumpelstiltskin."

-/\-

"We got it," Elle said, presenting Geordi with their new terrabot programming. "And we only singed seven eyebrows."

Geordi looked at her perfectly full eyebrows. "Whom did we singe?" he asked.

"Uh, Barclay. Thrice. And a half."

Geordi covered his mouth with his hand. "Right," he choked out, voice strangled with mirth. "Good job."

-/\-

Melona IV was a beautiful planet. "Who would eat this planet?" Elle asked, standing on the hill overlooking the valley where the terrabots were going to work. "It's so pretty here."

"An ant colony is beautiful when you stoop down and look at it," Riker said. "Doesn't mean you don't step on them without looking."

Elle shoved at his arm with a sigh. "Don't make philosophical sense at me when I'm trying to be upset."

"Then don't be upset about things that aren't worth being upset about," Riker suggested.

Elle squinted at him. "There's a reason Deanna hasn't married you yet, and I think I found it."

He burst into laughter and ruffled her hair. "Stabbed in the heart, gremlin. Maybe I will send you back up to the ship."

" Commander," Elle complained.

"Just kidding," he said, grinning at her. "You're the one who took the lead with the formation of the shield, you should get to see your idea coming to life."

The captain and Dr. Crusher walked up to them. "Ready for three weeks of camping?" Dr. Crusher asked.

"So ready," Elle said.

"Got all your stuff?" Dr. Crusher asked.

Elle indicated to her backpack and then pointed at the tent with all her things in it, which she would be sharing with Lt. Andreas. "I have all my stuff."

"Have fun," Picard said, giving her a grin. "But not too much fun."

"Yes, sir," Elle said, accepting a hug from Dr. Crusher.

"Number One," Picard said, giving him a 'take-care-be-safe-don't-die' nod of affection.

"Captain." Riker gave him the return nod.

Elle leaned on Riker's arm as the captain gathered up everyone going back to the Enterprise. "Bye," she called, waving. "See you in a bit! I'll have a good tan!"

Picard laughed as they beamed away.

The Enterprise left orbit a short time later. Elle didn't even notice, too busy putting the last tents together and working on the layout with Dr. Carmen.

Sitting around a fire that night, Elle thought about the last time she'd been camping with Captain Kirk. No swimming this time, unfortunately. Or horseback riding. There were native equines on this planet, but so far, no one had tried to domesticate them. Well, there was time. If Fred didn't eat the biosphere of this planet, that is.

Elle started running the calculations in her head again. If there were fifty forcefield emitters around the colony's edge, and they could put up two a day, how long would it take the Entity to get here, considering no one knew where it was to begin with?

A piece of bark hit her shin.

Elle looked across the fire. "Stop thinking so hard," Riker said. "I can see your brain smoking from here."

"That's the fire, Commander," Elle said dryly. "You need your eyes checked."

"Relax," Riker said, tossing her a bag of marshmallows. "We have time, and the Enterprise is backing us up."

Elle grinned and took the marshmallow. "Hey, have you guys ever played chubby bunny?"

-/\-

Going to bed with a stomachache from laughing too hard was actually so, so worth it.

She woke up to the twittering of birds and the murmured voices of people trying to set up the analog coffee pot. She put on her boots and wandered outside to stand next to the table. "You're doing it wrong," she informed Riker. "It's the other way round. Coffee in that part, water in that part."

"Oh." He emptied out the coffee grounds and tried again.

"Why aren't we using the replicators?" Elle asked.

"No one wants to get in the supplymaster's way," Riker said. "He's running the electrical list."

"Ah." Elle watched him click the coffee on, and it started to burble. "Nice."

By the time she changed, used the facilities (bathrooms were the first building up at a colony, closely followed by the satellite and comms post), and braided her hair, the coffee and breakfast were ready to go.

"There's something different about having burnt eggs fresh off a fire," Elle said. "It's giving, cowboy looking for a wife. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."

Dr. Carmen looked at Commander Riker.

"Ignore her," Riker advised.

"Rude," Elle said, shoving more eggs in her mouth. "See if I help you when get eat by a cayote."

"There are no coyotes on Melona IV," Data said.

Elle sighed.

-/\-

Dr. Carmen pointed out over the ridge. "The hospital facility will be located there, facing north in that grove of trees. And the school and the arts centre will be standing there, centrally located among the residential homes."

"We'll be able to start putting in the pre-fab hospital equipment as soon as the Enterprise comes back tomorrow." Elle agreed, checking off another box on her clipboard. She looked over the changes they'd made to the colony layout. "It's crazy, the difference between survey scans and actually being here."

Riker grinned at her. "See? It's not so bad."

"You have good ideas once in a while," Elle allowed, laughing.

Riker rolled his eyes.

"No, really," Elle said, grinning up at him. "It's nice to get some fresh air once in a while."

Riker's comm went off. "Riker here."

"Commander, the satellite has just registered a massive object passing it, heading for the planet," Data said urgently.

Elle's eyes widened.

"Is it the Entity?" Riker asked.

"Unknown, sir."

"Hail the Enterprise," Riker ordered. "Get everyone to the caves." He tapped his comm. "Riker to all hands. Evacuate to the caves. This is not a drill."

"It's too early," Elle protested as the three of them broke into a run, heading towards the eastern part of the colony, where the caves were. "We should have had another three weeks!"

"It might be that the presence of life forms attracted the creature," Riker called back. "Less talk, more run."

Elle hitched her backpack higher and ran faster, slipping on the damp grass.

There was a deep, ear-shattering rumble as something entered the atmosphere, and a shadow passed over the land. Elle looked up, shocked to see Fred in all its cosmozoan oversized snowflake glory. "Not good," she whispered. They barely had half a building made out of the Faraday cage materials. The only thing that would ward it off were the caves themselves. "We're not gonna make it," she realized as they ran. "Where's the Enterprise?"

"Still coming," Riker said, reaching back to haul Dr. Carmen along.

Elle slowed down as she watched the Crystalline Entity start to send lightning strikes into the ground, vaporizing the organic matter with violent flashes of energy. "Oh, Great Bird," she breathed. "Go! Go, go, go!"

They caught up with the rest of the colonists and officers, everyone running for the caves. "Don't stop!" Riker bellowed. "Don't wait for us, Data, go!"

Data, at the front, was literally hauling people into the caves by their shirts, using his android strength to pull them to safety.

Elle passed a couple of people, two of the colonists, and grabbed the woman's hand, tugging her along. "Go faster," she panted. "Almost there."

An older man in front of them stumbled and fell. "Go," Elle ordered the woman and stopped to help him up. The Entity was so close that the smell of ozone was overpowering. Oh no, oh no, this is in the episode, he falls every single time, where's Dr. Carmen-

The startling realization that Dr. Carmen was twenty feet ahead of her, almost safe in the cave, hit her at the same time as the more important realization. Electricity prickled at her skin, and Elle pushed the older man forward. "Go!" she screamed, lurching forward. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, goodbye-

She caught sight of Riker and Data, the expressions of horror on their faces - and everything disappeared in a flash of white and pain.

To be continued in Decoherence Vol 3: Utopia

A/N: Y'all. It's been a wild ride. I can't believe how many obstacles this story has overcome, not the least of which was a global pandemic and losing a loved one, but Vol 2 is done! Thank you guys so much for all your kind comments and support over the last few years. See you in the next one!

Check out Decoherence: Another Point of View, chapter 5, for some closure and some sneak peeks of future events.