Stardate 57663.9: The Cerritos has to deal with Drookmani scavengers, who want to take possession of 100-year-old Starfleet cargo. The Drookmani ship does not have weapons, and Captain Freeman is determined to resolve the situation peacefully, unlike tactical officer Shaxs. In the meantime on the lower decks, Tendi is afraid that she might be in for a spacewalk, an exam at the Academy that she skipped. Rutherford accompanies her to a training in his holodeck program that involves a holographic helper called Badgey. Ensign Fletcher offers Boimler and Mariner to take over their shifts of recalibrating the isolinear cores so they can go to the chu-chu dance. When the two return, Fletcher says that he has been attacked, and that an isolinear core of the shield system was stolen. Using their tractor beam, the Drookmani begin to bombard the Cerritos with debris. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but soon the shield generators deteriorate because of the missing computer core. When it turns out that neither the Delta Shift nor the Drookmani took the core, Fletcher confesses that he did it. He tried to hook himself up to it to improve his performance. And worse, the isolinear core has developed a conscience of its own, having inherited Fletcher's desire to become smarter. To that end, it begins to collect technology from all over the ship. Boimler and Mariner try to drag the rogue isolinear core to the transporter. As this turns out impossible because it is constantly growing in size, they lure the device to an airlock. The isolinear core drifts towards the Drookmani ship and disables it, thereby saving the Cerritos. On the holodeck, Badgey has a malfunction because of the attack and attempts to kill Rutherford and Tendi. The failure of the safety protocols, on the other hand, causes Badgey to be affected by the environmental conditions. Rutherford eventually manages to freeze Badgey when he switches to an arctic environment. When power is restored on the ship, Badgey seems to be back to normal again. In order to save face and to get rid of Fletcher, Mariner and Boimler come up with the story that Fletcher improvised a weapon to use against the Drookmani. He is promoted and transfers to the Titan, but loses his job just six days later.

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