Janeway had to get to the bottom of this. Ignoring everyone else, she went directly to see Seven. She found the tall blonde Borg at her console doing hurried calculations.

  "Seven! Report!" Janeway needed to get a lid on this before the rest of the crew was gone.

  "Captain." Seven turned and was flustered beyond any other emotion she'd had and her face was pale as a ghost. The two women stared at each other for long moments as if Seven was talking, but she wasn't.

  Janeway had to get her started again.

  "Report." She said in a direct, yet quieter voice. Seven seemed to be at a loss for words for a moment.

  "Captain, I've..." She turned to her console. Seven couldn't look the Captain in the eye while speaking. It was what she often did when human contact had become uncomfortable. "I've made an error. The system wide holodeck protocol is a failure." She concentrated on the console trying to tune out the Captain altogether.

  Janeway wasn't going to let her do it. She pulled Seven's arm to make her face her.

  "What is going on?" She demanded; her tone had to stay professional, a failure is when you blew a fuse. When you shrink half of the crew, that's something else!

  Seven's lip quivered for a moment as if the truth were an option. But clearly with the feisty red headed Captain, it wasn't. She would find out the truth sooner or later, there was no point in hiding it.

  Resistance was futile.

  "I.. I couldn't get the ship's computer to multitask as was required for the system to work, even with the computer I designed, so I selected a group of my nanoprobes to handle the ship's multifunctioning deck simulations." She seemed to be admitting something from the soul. Yet Janeway didn't see the connection with the problems.

  Janeway wrinkled her brow further. Her eyes cast in stone.

  "Seven. I just saw Tuvok on my way here. He was this tall." She indicated with her fingers.

  Seven seemed to become nervous about that as well. She had to come up with the full explanation quickly. Perhaps she would only get demoted to toilet cleaner and not thrown out the air lock?

  "Captain, I accept full responsibility..." She began again. This time Janeway could just keep nodding. Seven was not to stop until she was done with her explanation.

  "The holodeck protocol covered the whole ship, and my nano probes linked it to my brain..." Again the long pause was kept alive by Janeway rolling her hand on her wrist. Keep going. Keep going.

  "And the ship was affected when I ... when I dreamed." Seven had let the cat out of the bag. Janeway had to take the explanation as gospel. But it was a far shot explanation.

  "You dreamed that Tuvok was three inches tall and he is? What did you dream about everyone else?" Janeway was frowning with disappointment. Safety was supposed to be the number one factor here. She could have slapped herself for not making sure everyone knew the "risks" and had everything double checked by the other technicians before she let Seven go ahead with the project.

  There would have been alot more skepticism if they'd found out that Seven herself was the data processing hub for the ship.

  Seven was sort of relieved having said the most destructive of the things to admit to. "The dream was that the men on board voyager were ... small. I shall reverse it at once." She went straight to her Borg charging station and went to "sleep." Janeway was digging her fingernails into her palms.

  She'd had to turn off her comm badge. There was too much chaos on the ship, and here she was watching Seven SLEEPING!

  Within a few moments Seven reawoke. "There." She announced and went back to her console. Evidently whatever she was looking at was still wrong. Janeway called back to sick bay.

  "Janeway to sick bay. Doctor?"

  "Captain, my mobile emitter has become smaller for some reason, but I've rerouted myself through the still functioning ship wide holo emitter system. The crew seems to be affected by something that has made them smaller as well. There seems to be no explanation..."

  "I've got the explanation. Computer, all deck announcement ... Attention crew: This is the Captain. Attention: all hands. This is Captain Janeway. There's been an ... error in the shipwide holographic system. I'm ordering the ... women of the crew to collect up all the men until they are all accounted for and report to sick bay." She was about to call Chakotay when she realized her number one would also be affected. She tried anyway.

  "Commander Chakotay this is Captain Janeway. Commander?" No answer.

  "Computer. Locate Commander Chakotay."

  "Commander Chakotay is not located aboard Voyager." The computer reported back. Of course he was aboard, just smaller than the ship recognized.

  "Computer, what was the last known location of Commander Chakotay?"

  "In his quarters." It reported back. Janeway was on the move. She had to find him quickly. She was hoping that everyone was looking before anything terrible happened. Before she left Seven she warned.

  "Don't sleep!" She accused alot more venomously than she'd intended. The already vulnerable blonde was shivering.

  "Aye, Captain." Seven promised with her large lips tight as a drum.

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  "Chakotay?" Janeway looked into the doorway and saw an elegant restaurant with exotic dancers and several different races dining. "Chakotay?" She looked around on the floor. If he was in the simulation, then she might just end it and find him. But if he WASN'T within the simulation limits, the computer would "erase" him if it was terminated.

  That would be VERY bad. She had to find him within this world and keep him with her as she disengaged the program.

  It was more frequent now for people to lose small items on holdecks if they left them in a place and then began walking far enough away. It was especially difficult now that the main focus was a small quarters. She looked around some table legs and in the shadows of plants.

  Chakotay could be anywhere by now! She fumed.

  He may have taken a walk down the city street in front of the restaurant. She bit her lip as she looked. A waitress came by. "Ma'am. Can I help you?"

  "Yes, I'm looking for Commander ... I mean. I'm looking for a man. He's about this tall." She indicated with her fingers. The tall waitress just shrugged.

  "Aren't we all!" She strode off as if the red headed Captain were the crazy one. Janeway had to keep looking.

  She suddenly got another idea.

  "Computer, what was the last location of Commander Chakotay in this room?"

  Off to her right, a red blinking computer cursor was above a table with a woman sitting at it.

  Janeway hurriedly went to the table and looked around. "Miss, have you seen a man.. he's about this tall?"

  The lady had her hair swept back tightly on her scalp and was drawing smoke off of a long stemmed cigarette. She looked too stuck up to speak to her. "Maybe." She pulled the white bola around her white dress as if she were queen of the universe. Janeway had no time for this.

  "Look.. lady. If you don't answer me, I'll run you through!" She balled her fist in the woman's face. She seemed to get knocked off of her pedestal for a moment. Uppity holograms weren't going to stand in Captain Katherine Janeway's way.

  "Well!" The woman's eyes bulged but she settled back in her chair wincing at the feisty red head. "All men here are only this tall," she indicated the same thing with her fingers that Janeway did, "So you may as well look for yourself!" She squirmed away and run into the ladies room.

  Janeway looked around, and sure enough, of all the people she saw, they were all women.

  She hadn't noticed so much before because some of the different alien's were hard to tell gender apart. She looked at a Klingon woman sitting at her table. She had a group of male Klingons on her dining plate. She picked one of them up by his foot and dangled him over her face before dropping him in her mouth and chewing on him.

  Janeway's blood turned to ice. She ran over and grabbed the Klingon's arm before she could eat another male.

  "Have you seen a human man about this tall..." She began with the description, then remembered it was all males. "Never mind. He had a tattoo on his face?" She was sweating bullets imagining the sharp toothed, grill foreheaded woman eating her number one officer. The Klingon just pushed Janeway off.

  "I do as I please. This place pleases me!" She picked up another male from her plate. "Vach mallll!!!" She smiled and threw him in her mouth to begin chewing happily.

  Janeway backed away and looked even more frantically.

  He'd been at a dining table, but there was no telling who was sitting with him. The woman that went into the ladies room MIGHT have him. But she didn't seem to know anything.

  Janeway was going to need help.

  The whole ship would be in turmoil if there were more lost men like this. She reported for all unaccounted for men to be looked for. And to remind everyone not to disengage the holodecks before looking. She was already assuredly too late for some. She got everyone's attention at once by drawing her phazer and shooting into the air.

  "Listen up! I've got an officer on this deck. If he's not returned to me at once..." Just then she saw a woman at the bar with her white gloved hand up. Janeway went over directly and saw Chakotay on the bar next to a couple of wine glasses.

  "Captain!? Are you real?!" The tiny Commander asked.

  "I'm real." She reassured and tried to grab him. The blonde kept herself between Chakotay and the Captain.

  "Uh, Captain. Meet Vareche. She's from the Beregone system." Chakotay introduced. The large busted blonde offered her hand to Janeway, but the Captain was much too busy.

  "How do you do, my ship is in an emergency..." She tried to reach for Chakotay again. This time Vareche didn't have to block her. Chakotay ran behind Vereche's gloved elbow and peeped out.

  "Let her take me wherever you want me to go. Her program works on the whole ship you know." He said looking up at Janeway as if he were scared to death of her.

  "I'm gathering everyone in sickbay." She began then got even more irritated that he was afraid of her. The very woman that was trying to rescue him from the likes of the Klingon Valkyrie! "What's gotten into you. This is an emergency! I need you be be rational!" She didn't know what was wrong with her exec. Perhaps Seven hadn't told her everything.

  "Shall we?" Vereche stood with Janeway putting Chakotay in her small leather purse.

  Janeway shrugged and lead the way to sickbay. The holographic woman followed just as real as the Doctor ever was.

  Janeway didn't know what to do about it. It would be one thing if a hologram was interfering, but Chakotay WANTED to be with the fictitious woman. He'd need psychological evaluation when all of this was over.

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