The room filled with white light, which slowly took shape, collimating into an inverted silhouette of a Pearl. The pearl shifted multiple times, and finally reformed into Pearl--our Pearl. She wore a black uniform with blue-green shoulders, and an arrowhead-shaped badge on her left breast.

"What... where am I? I... I was poofed... I was... no I was... but it can't be?"

Near Pearl was a woman in a similar black uniform, only with red shoulders, and another one still with yellow shoulders. The red-uniformed one was a pale-skinned woman with brown hair, and the yellow-uniformed one was darker and had some kind of skin condition on her forehead.

"Well I guess that answers one question. It's definitely a self-aware program, like the Doctor," said the yellow-shouldered one.

The red-shouldered one raised her hand and spoke. "I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway. You're on the Federation Starship Voyager. On the holodeck."

"A *Holodeck?* As in a holographic projector room?" Pearl said.

"Yes. Your mobile emitter was damaged. Luckily B'ellana was able to reverse engineer it to run your program on our holo-grid."

"My... mobile emitter?" Pearl said. "No, no no." She reached for her forehead, and found only bare skin. "No this can't be happening, you mean I'm, I'm dead?"

"Well, no, according to my diagnostics, you should have been losslessly converted. You're perfectly fine," said B'ellana.

"My GEM, what about my GEM?" Pearl said.

Janeway nodded, and B'ellana presented a case. She opened it, and Pearl peered in in horror. Five gems, all badly cracked. Pearl's was shattered, Amethyst's was chipped, Sapphire's had crumbled, Ruby's was split, and Rose's was crushed.

Pearl grabbed her head and squeezed it, her eyes looked like they were going to pop. "AMETHYST! GARNET! RO--WAIT A MINUTE! No, no, no this can't be happening. Where's Steven?"

Janeway raised an eyebrow. "Steven. That's a human name."

"Yes, yes, did you find a human, about 18 years old, short about yeh high, a little chubby--"

"He's in sickbay."

"I need to see him. Where is this sickbay!" Pearl said. She marched right up to the large hatch at the back of the room, tried to walk through, and as she passed the threshold she flickered and fizzled away.

---

The Doctor put an injection into Steven's neck with the not-a-needle injector. Steven started to stir again, and he groaned. He tried to sit up, but didn't have the strength. He grabbed himself and shivered. "Please, please, I need my gem," he pleaded. His eyes focused on the Captain.

"Is there anything you can tell us about how your... Gem works?" the Captain said.

"I need... I need it," Steven said, crying.

"Your holographic emitter was damaged in the attack," The Doctor said.

"I understand why the holoprogram needed a mobile emitter, but why would he?" Janeway said.

"I can't understand it. It's like there's gaps in his nervous system."

"Maybe the other programs can shed some light," Janeway said. "Computer, activate program unidentified alpha two."

The sickbay filled with light, and Pearl's silhouette shapeshifted a few times before settling on the black uniform and blue shoulders. It matched the uniform of the Doctor.

"Wah! What? Huh? Where are we now?" Pearl said.

"Now you're in sickbay," B'elanna said.

"STEVEN!" Pearl said. She knelt down next to him and grabbed his hand.

"Pearl... it hurts..." Steven groaned.

"I know, I know Steven, you're... you're gonna be okay."

Steven started sobbing.

"Hello," the Doctor said, "Do you have any idea what's wrong with him? As far as I can tell there's nothing physiologically wrong with him."

Pearl turned to face the Doctor, teary eyed. "He doesn't have his Gem!"

"Gem. Yes, he kept asking for a Gem."

"She means the mobile emitters," B'elanna said.

"Why would he need a mobile emitter. He's a human being, not a hologram!"

"He's... he's both! He's a human AND a crystal Gem!"

Janeway looked at the Doctor, questioningly.

"A cyborg of some sort then. That makes sense. If you took all of Seven's cranial implants out the result wouldn't be pretty either."

"Yeah, well that Gem is going to be hard to come by," B'elanna said. "It's ruined. It was the first emitter I tried recovering the data from. But the data was so corrupted I couldn't get an image to form."

"No... no..." Steven said. "It can't be. He...I... I'm... I'm dead."

"Hmm," The Doctor said. "It could be that the holoprogram is damaged just like the patient's body."

"Yes, yes, that's... that's right. They need each other!" Pearl said.

Janeway turned to B'elanna. "I want you to try and recover Steven's program again. Make that your priority."

"Captain, I may have more luck if I try recovering the other programs first. There's clearly a shared architecture between the programs, and I may have more luck troubleshooting what's going wrong if I had more experience."

"Do it," Janeway said.

"Please fix me... please fix them..." Steven cried.

"I'm going to give you something to help with the pain," the Doctor said. "But it will put you to sleep."

"Just... just fix it... fix me... please..."

------------

The holodeck doors opened again. B'elanna came through with another woman in a skin-tight outfit, with metal pieces sticking out of her face and hands.

"Alright. I'm ready to give this a try. I'll need to call it a night otherwise," B'elanna said.

"I can not postpone my regeneration much either," said the cyborg.

"Computer, activate alien program blue-alpha and alien program purple-revision 2."

Diffuse white light collapsed into two short silhouettes. One unceremoniously materialized into Sapphire, the other took a meandering path until it became Amethyst.

Amethyst fell to the ground, and grabbed at her whip, then tried to whip B'elanna and the cyborg, only to realize she had no whip. She felt at her chest, then her eyes went wide.

"What the heck?"

"W-w-w-w-w-we-we-we-we-we-a-a-a-re in the f-f-f-f-" Sapphire flickered.

"Yo, Sapphire? You good?" Amethyst said.

"I'm reading a memory overload. If we don't end this program the whole hologrid will go offline," the cyborg said.

"No, Seven, we have to get more data--"

"Computer, end program alien blue-alpha," Seven said.

"