The USS Cerritos is on a secret, totally redacted mission to a mysterious space station, and everyone’s hoping it doesn’t involve the Romulan Neutral Zone. Meanwhile, Ransom promises Boimler that he won’t be on holodeck sewage duty for long, as promotions are coming up and he’d have to screw up to a historically significant degree to not get promoted. In fact, the Cerritos crew are to transport the USS Voyager to Earth as a pristine museum piece, as well as carrying crates of related artifacts.
The curator of the Voyager museum is permanently on edge about being sure that the likes of mission-worn uniforms are undamaged and people aren’t opening panels in search of Neelix cheese or chewing gum on the ship… He’s more relaxed about the artifacts transported to the Cerritos, however, which include a leaf of the orchid that caused the merging of Tuvok and Neelix on the Voyager years earlier. The leaf similarly gets to the Cerritos’ transporter room and causes a merging of Billups and Doctor T’Ana into T’Illups.
Meanwhile, aboard Voyager, Mariner accidentally releases a dormant macrovirus. It attacks Boimler and starts self-replicating. The macroviruses escape the bridge and causes a bunch of holograms to come to life, including Doctor Chaotica, a Clown, and the Irish bloke from the holographic program “Fair Haven”. Before long, a Borg regeneration alcove falls on the curator.
Everybody on the Cerritos knows how Janeway sorted out Tuvix – “She just murdered him!” Those who investigate the incident include T’Illups, who decides to forestall the same eventuality.
On Voyager, a Borg nanite escapes, having merged with the macrovirus to create a macro-nanite. It causes the three aforementioned holograms to multiply all over the ship. T’Illups uses another leaf to merge Captain Freeman with Doctor Migleemo, the first of many deliberate mergings. As the holograms start to take over Voyager, Mariner is slimed to a wall. Boimler admits to her that he’s afraid promotion would separate them, but she reveals that she told Ransom to promote him.
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Tendi and new Vulcan Lower Decker T’Lyn try to separate out the merged people aboard the Cerritos. However, they only succeed in re-merging everyone into a single giant blob.
The holograms aboard Voyager send their ship towards a Borg cube. Boimler then enlists Rutherford’s help to break Voyager in order to shut down the holograms.
On the Cerritos, Tendi realizes the newest scanners can pick up personality traits. She is thereby able to identify the crew members in the blob and separate them.
Quarreling with Doctor Chaotica, Boimler claims to be Captain Proton’s son. Rutherford then manages to shut Voyager down before they can reach Borg space, revealing that he used Neelix’s cheese to affect the vessel’s bioneural gel packs.
With all sorted, everybody except Rutherford is promoted out of having to sleep in corridor bunks — including Mariner, who is desperate to not be promoted. Later, they celebrate with a chant of no more surprise dangers.
Elsewhere, the crew of a Klingon Bird-of-Prey encounter a small ship with a single lifeform aboard. The ship has a powerful beam that carves up the Klingon vessel, leaving only small pieces of debris floating through space...
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