Stardate 58759.1 - The Cerritos is visiting a Federation world called Corosonia, an artificial mega structure designed by a long-extinct alien species.

The Corosonians live in a utopia controlled by an environmental computer called Vexilon. Due to aging hardware, Vexilon is no longer operating optimally and its glitches are causing environmental issues.

Freeman and Ransom beam down to see what they can do to get Vexilon up and running properly again.

Freeman insists on using her minor in archaic technology to fix Vexilon herself.

Meanwhile, Boimler is leading his first away mission to retrofit the world’s power relays. T’Lyn’s on the team as well.

When T’Lyn mentions that ensigns serving under recently promoted commanders are statistically more likely to be injured or die, Boimler takes it to heart and decides to do the entire mission himself to protect his ensigns from harm.

On the Cerritos, Tendi, Mariner, and Rutherford explore the Anomaly Storage Room. They find a Betazed gift box and a Chula game in among the items.

They are all ordered to the isolinear chip junction immediately. There, they are ordered to scan thousands of chips by hand in a chamber that periodically fills with poisonous gas. There is one chip that is malfunctioning. Tendi wonders if they’re being hazed.

Freeman diagnoses Vexilon’s issues as an out-of-date operating system. When she implements an update, Vexilon shuts down and the clouds in the sky suddenly solidify and fall to the ground.

Over at the power station, Boimler shows the ensigns how to remove the power relays to ensure they do it safely. And then shows them again, noting there’s something wrong with the weather, so they should hurry but he can maybe do it faster.

In the isolinear chip junction, Rutherford finds Billups’s ferret, Lancelot, behind a panel of chips. He scans the last chip and it’s not malfunctioning. When the commander checks on them, he reveals there’s a second layer of chips they haven’t scanned yet.

Rather than deal with the twice-as-hot chips, Mariner, Rutherford, and Tendi try a workaround. Lancelot escapes in the other direction.

On the planet, Freeman triggers a reboot and the environmental controls revert to genesis stages. She contacts Boimler who is about to remove the last relay on his own and tells him to put it all back to how he found it so they can reroute power through his station.

Mariner and Tendi convince Rutherford to help them trap the commander in the Chula game with the Betazed gift box as payback for hazing them.

As they’re heading out, they run into the commander who shares how important it was to find the malfunctioning chip as it could be catastrophically fatal. He shares that as a child he was trapped in a Chula game for a month and the trauma was too much for him to help with scanning the chips because it reminds him of being in the game.

Realizing the error of their ways, Mariner distracts the commander with talk about his favorite music and tells Rutherford and Tendi to fix their mistake. Rutherford ends up triggering the trap and has to figure his way out of the Chula game with the gift box while Tendi single-handedly finds the malfunctioning chip.

At the power station, T’Lyn forces Boimler to stop try to complete the mission single-handedly. He admits he doesn’t feel like he deserves to be giving orders.

Rutherford gets out of the game and cleans up the prank set up before the commander returns to his quarters.

Boimler’s team manages to bring the power back up at the station. Freeman hacks the system and revives Vexilon. She orders it to stop the regenesis. The power station starts to overload. Boimler orders the ensigns and T’Lyn out and waits for the captain to permit a power shutdown.

Once the regenesis is averted, Boimler shuts the station down but it still explodes. His body lands at the feet of his team.

Boimler’s consciousness awakens in a room with a mystical koala. It starts to speak to him and he screams and wakes up in a sickbay biobed on the Corosonian surface.

Back on the ship, the JGs discuss how they feel bad thinking the commander was hazing them. A few tables away, Ransom and the commander make a toast to hazing new lieutenants. The story of childhood trauma was a lie.