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“We’ve arrived safely, as has Commander Donatra’s team. What’s the condition of our Sleeper?”

“Still yawning and stretching, but apparently only very slowly. Pazlar, Norellis, and Cethente have been continuously monitoring the correlated ongoing breakdown of local space. They’ve found no acceleration in the protouniverse’s spatial displacement rate—at least not yet. But that also means the effect’s not slowing down any, either. Another two weeks, three tops, and…pfffft. We’ll want to be very far away from here when that happens.”

Am I capable of doing that? Riker thought as he considered his exec’s report. Cutting and running just on the off chance I might manage to save my ship and crew, and get them home? Or do I do my damnedest to head this thing off, and maybe save billions of lives, regardless of what happens to Titan ? After all, in helping to defeat Shinzon, he had been at least partially responsible for opening up the spatial rift that may have ultimately drawn the protouniverse here.

But all he could do at the moment was to cling to the hope that he wouldn’t have to face the answers to his own questions head-on.

Aloud, he said, “We’re about to attempt to gain control of the Romulan fleet’s computer network. I’ll check in with you again once that’s done, Commander. Riker out.”

Crandall carefully set his toolbox on a chair before one of the computer consoles, then uncovered an access panel. He then opened the toolbox and began carefully arranging his instruments on the oilcloth-lined interior of its lid.

“It seems…I don’t know, wrong somehow, to just wipe this Sleeper off the computer network,” the junior engineer said as he worked. “I feel almost like I’m helping to kill somebody.”

“In a way, you are,” Donatra said in matter-of-fact tones. “But what of it? We routinely patrol our computers for signs of our rokhelh artificial intelligences developing self-awareness. Whenever we detect such signs, we purge the affected systems.”

“We don’t have a lot of alternatives,” Riker said by way of encouragement to Crandall as Daehla began pulling her own small instruments and several hair-thin, glowing cables from a compact kit she carried on her hip.

“But why can’t we at least…talk to it first?” Crandall wanted to know.

Riker thought that was an excellent question. He cast a quick interrogative glance at Deanna.

Though her smile was gentle, her reply carried a therapist’s firm it’s-time-to-face-reality tone. “Besides the fact that we have virtually no common frame of reference with it, Mr. Crandall? Don’t forget, we’re talking about an anentropic pattern of inferred sentience that arrived here from an entirely alien, non-Euclidean universe whose physical laws in no way resemble our own.”

Riker’s eyes widened involuntarily. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Crandall looked chastened. “Oh. I suppose when you put it that way…”

Deanna offered the engineer a smile that shone through her helmet’s faceplate. “Your instinct is a good one, Ensign. But it could take decades or even centuries just for us to get this creature’s attention. A little like Micromegas.”

“Who?” said Crandall, pausing in confusion.

“Maybe six centuries ago, Voltaire, a writer from your home planet, told the story of Micromegas, a gigantic being from another world. He was so huge that it was just about impossible for him to see Earth people as living things worth communicating with. And he encountered other beings that were at least that large compared to him.”

Noting Donatra’s impatient glare, Riker placed a reassuring hand on Crandall’s shoulder. “Try not to worry about it too much, Ensign. Talking to our sleepwalking intelligence—or least to the computers it’s hijacked—is the rokhelh software’s job, not ours.”

Riker watched in anxious silence as Crandall and Daehla each carefully hooked up their cables and handheld control units, working in tandem to create a pair of seamless interfaces with the warbird’s central computer, and thereby the entire fleet network. Though the entire operation