Isolinear core

An isolinear core was a removable computer core on California-class starships. The ship had many such cores arranged in banks of two; each one was responsible for a particular system function, such as regulating auto-repair for the shield array. The banks themselves into which the cores were inserted were also removable.

In 2380, Ensigns Beckett Mariner, Brad Boimler, and Fletcher were assigned to replace the chips in the USS Cerritos' isolinear cores. Fletcher volunteered to complete the task alone so that Mariner and Boimler could attend the Chu Chu dance, but he soon found the work too difficult and so sought to increase his intelligence by connecting his brain directly to one of the cores. However, his brain waves instead corrupted the core, causing it to become animate and attempt to make itself "smarter", as Fletcher had, by incorporating nearby technology into itself. Fletcher attempted to exacerbate this in order to blame the resulting chaos on a Q and avoid taking responsibility for his mistake, but Mariner and Boimler responded by tying him up. Abandoning their initial plan to beam the increasingly massive and unpredictable core off the Cerritos, Mariner and Boimler managed to drag the core to an airlock and eject it into space, whereupon it drifted into and disabled a hostile Drookmani ship. Afterwards, they claimed that Fletcher had deliberately weaponized the core, so as to earn him a transfer off the Cerritos and spare them from having to further deal with his behavior. (LD: "Terminal Provocations")