Another DTI Debriefing

Posted on Wed Nov 6th, 2019 @ 11:45am by Alden Engstrom XIII & Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox
Edited on on Sun Nov 17th, 2019 @ 3:30pm

Mission: Family Detention
Location: Starfleet Command Basement
Timeline: 2396

Inwardly, Alden Engstrom XIII was groaning and wondering if his predecessors ever foresaw a day when a woman the likes of which he was meeting with once more would even exist, let alone be willingly walking around causing temporal and quantum mayhem in her wake. It was unlikely, but after reading some of the other reports that had crossed his desk, it was not entirely unthinkable. The odds of one Rita Paris even surviving all that the universes threw at her were astronomical, but she was indeed still alive and kicking, and it was his sworn duty to document it fully and determine if there was any sort of temporal shenanigans that the DTI would have to account for or set right when they were able.

As for their scheduled meeting, it apparently had to be planned around some lengthy business concerning the Romulan Empire and the DTI conference room was already occupied by a conference call between agents interviewing a potential new agent, so his only choice was to have the meeting in his office.

The same office that every one of his predecessors had used since the founding of the DTI.

To say that the large office was 'cluttered' would be an understatement. It was itself an archaeological dig site. There were models of ships from before the founding of Starfleet, stacks of paper from back when it was made from wood pulp, stacks of antique PaDDs with dead power cells, stacks of boxes full of books on topics that hadn't been touched in decades. Knick-knacks from bygone eras littered shelves, covered in dust. There were even hanging lights that desperately needed to be upgraded to even 22nd century standards. Such was the life of the DTI though, having Starfleet Command built on your roof.

Strolling in like it was her office instead of his, Commander Rita Paris was exactly as he remembered her. All 183 centimeters of her, with a comically curvaceous figure wrapped in that old uniform of hers that just screamed 'anachronism'. The woman was vivacious and sensual, while somehow never being overtly sexual. She was like bomber pin-up art from the 1940's come to life, and when she smiled, it seemed to lend vibrancy to the room.

Which only served to depress him more.

Looking around, she nodded her head, taking it all in. "Nice digs, Director. Could use a good dusting and some organizing, but I'm hardly one to talk. So, I assume I know why I'm here, but I'll be happy to let you tell me. Oh, and I brought you a present!" With that dazzling smile on full display, she set a rectangular box on the desk before him, festooned in pale blue wrapping paper embossed with old gold Starfleet command delta patterns across it, and tied up in a bright red ribbon. Without asking permission, she dusted off the chair opposite his and sat down, smoothing out her skirt reflexively as she did so, a habit clearly born of years of practice.

He did his best to not show his annoyance and lowered mood at the sight of the bombshell vixen strolling into his office, but Alden still wasn't pleased with the arrangement, nor with her upbeat attitude. He took everything extra seriously and this was no exception. Still... There was no harm in accepting a small gift - it might even pertain to his line of work, if he knew the woman in front of him.

Thus, after a brief silence, he glanced down at the small package and gingerly tugged at the ribbon and wrapping paper, carefully unwrapping it and setting each piece of wrapping aside in immaculate condition until the box was open and the contents revealed. As he did so, he began his briefing. "Very well. We received a report that you interacted with a ribbonized universe that intersected with ours... While beaming at war-p... nine... point... two.... You then spent an ex-ten-ded period of tiiime in that universe. While I have read that report, I was ho-ping... To get your... Personal... thoughts... on the sub-ject.... Since you did... After all... quite possibly... vio-late... The prime di-rec-tive... In a com-plete-ly un-ex-plored space-time con-tin-uum..." As he finished speaking, he finally looked in the box to see what was in it.

It was a rock.

Smooth and polished, it bore reflective qualities that caused the earth tones within it to scintillate not unlike a tiger's eye stone. But as her dropped the stone the size of his palm out of the box to rested in his hand, a glow slowly began to emanate from within the stone, causing the surface to shimmer.

"It's called a Heartstone. It will only react like that in contact with a living organism, be it organic, carbon-based or otherwise. It's a mineral sample I brought back for you, since I knew we'd be having this conversation, and I knew you'd appreciate a souvenir that might help you determine the vibrational harmonic of the reality that I visited. Plus I still don't know how it determines what is alive and what is not, so there's a puzzle involved as well. I know, you're unimpressed and annoyed, so you're welcome." Paris smiled, crossed her legs in a practiced scissoring motion, folded her hands in her lap and waited patiently for the Director to ask his questions.

Silently, Engstrom studied the rock for several moments before setting it back in the box and moving it off to the side before fixing the woman in his office with his full attention. "Thank you, Rita Paris. It is suitably... faaaaascinating..." The way he drew out the word 'fascinating' was a mix of anticipation and disapproving energy-less angst.

"As for my QUES-tions..." he began, folding his hands in front of him. "Let us start with how you found yourself in the... Continuum... in ques-tionnnn... as well as... what you did first... upon your arrrrrr-iv-al..."

“As you mentioned, I was being beamed from the Vulcan vessel Shavok to the USS Hera. As the Hera was in a race against time, they were swinging through the system without slowing down. The Vulcan crew of the vessel saw no logic in my requests to transfer by shuttle, having beamed me up from the planet, ignoring my initial request. So I didn’t bother trying to reason with them since ‘I’m a walking chaotic element to transporters, I don’t care what the facts say’ doesn’t sway Vulcans, not even my husband,” Paris sighed.

“I’ve been split into anima and animus, shifted dimensions more than once, been rendered sentient energy more than once, had my physical age halved, suffered an episode of transporter psychosis, had the transporter create a duplicate of me, traveled in time… I mean, if it can happen to someone in a transporter it’s probably happened to me, as well as a few that seem to be me boldly going where no one has gone before. So my hesitation to use transporters is less a ‘matter of preference’ than a ‘for my own safety and the safety of others involved’ issue.” Paris smoothed out her skirt as an excuse to wipe the sweat from her palms, as even discussing her past misadventures, her outward composure and casual nature belied the undercurrent of anxiety that the phenomenon created within her.

“But Sonak assured them that with the destruction of our universe of origin there was no scientific reason for my ‘transporter allergy’. Yet while we covered those 2 million kilometers at that speed, despite two other beams moving with mine, somehow I managed to intercept a ‘ribbon’, a rolling gateway to another dimension, as studied by Dr. Soren. Given the time-flow variables involved in such anomalies, I assume you are quite familiar and need to no briefing on such phenomenon.” While it might have been offered flippantly, Rita actually respected the dour man with the drawn-out speech pattern, and assumed competency on his part, rather than the opposite. After all, he was the head of the division, and one did not rise to such a position by being dim.

"Indeeeeed..." was the man's only response as he waved one hand for Rita to continue.

“With that said, I was in the process of beaming when I sensed an elongation or stretching of the signal. I tend to slow down transporters, even now, so I’ve become somewhat attuned to it. While most people seem to experience transport as instantaneous, I don’t- I haven’t since my first reintegration.” Pausing, Paris took a breath to steel herself, then pressed on. “In this case, I felt it elongate, then I felt… for lack of a better word- a snag. I can perceive some things in the beam, but I can’t affect them. All I knew for certain was that the beam was still stretching to where it was programmed to go, but something else bunched it up and pulled me in.”

“As I reformed into matter unexpectedly, I fell out of the sky in a gladiatorial arena on a desert planet known as Kathoom. Given terminal velocity, I activated my EVA armor and brought up the energy shield native to the Gift of Hera bracers of the Sun and Moon, and tried to no avail not to land on anyone. Turns out as I landed, I kind of defeated the local champion, who was about to kill his opponent, one Glan. I rolled off and dismissed the armor and shield as quickly as I could, as this definitely had all the earmarks of a pre-warp civilization, but in defeating the champion, I became the new champion… you know how this thing goes.”

In this, Paris was a bit more flippant, as she launched into her unlikely story of leading a slave’s rebellion, of escaping the arena, questing to the Source of All Tears, facing dangers and hardships, of doing her best to not rely on her technology as she had limited power resources and was trying her best not to reveal high technology to a low-tech society. She detailed her adventures and companions, admitting her violations of the Prime Directive freely, as she used her advantages sparingly, but used them nonetheless to keep herself and her companions alive, up to and including the final climactic battle, wherein she was drawn back out of the dimension by the transporter beam manipulations of Lieutenant Commander Sonak.

The whole while through the story, Engstrom listened intently, committing every detail to memory as he did so. He'd read the report, but hearing it first hand and matching up the subtle emotions that the woman before him displayed with the details were enlightening to him. As she finished, he took a deep breath and slowly let it out before proceeding with his next question.

"If... you would be so... kinnnnd..." he began, pausing somewhat dramatically, as was his idiom to do. "Please give me your... asSESSment.... on whether this... was... ax-cci-dent-al or in-ten-tion-al... After all... higher order beings seem to be... Draaaawwwwwwn... To your shiP."

Rather than reply immediately, the woman paused to consider the question, as it was one she herself had not considered. Exercising logic and reasoning against her experiences, she rose from her chair to pace a few steps in internal debate, then a few more. "Excellent question, Director, I must admit. Given the evidence at hand, singling me out for testing could very well explain why I alone experienced the phenomenon."

"However, if we were to be tested, it would stand to reason that multiple test subjects would have provided more data, thus the conclusion to be drawn leans more towards a negative answer to that theory. Given that while I did face moral quandaries, as well as a test of the Prime Directive, I did not detect any sort of guiding influence on the pattern of events, in neither my arrival, my presence nor departure. While I would be happy to offer a re-examination of my report from that perspective, my immediate reply would be negative." Taking her seat once more, the cooperative commander continued.

"I will add that upon return to the Hera, the being designate Goddess: Hera was aware of my actions and my presence in that dimension, likely through the connection to her that I literally carried with me," she offered, raising her hand before her and sliding her uniform sleeve down to reveal the relatively crude bronze bracer she wore upon her forearm. "Hera did later admit to me that in that dilated time passage she could observe and was aware, although she was unable to intervene on my behalf. I have confidence this was the case and that she spoke accurately, as I believe she would have intervened on my behalf were she capable of doing so, despite the entire affair having played out over the course of thirty-three point seven two nine seconds of time in our universe."

"I suspect that while this may seem... like a co-in-ci-dence... It very well is... not..." Engstrom rummaged through a pile of papers for a moment before pulling out a report that looked as old as the Federation and handed it to Rita. "I have here a report very similar to your case... If you turn to page three ninety four... You will see that the individual in quessss-tion... One Tom Meferton... Was whisked awayyy... To a similar world for seven months, but returned... to find that on-ly thir-ty-threeeee seconds had passed in his twentieth-century Ireland home. Quite the... How to say? Wardrobe Ad-ven-ture...?"

Taking the offered ancient print document and scanning over the report silently, the pretty pilot's lips pursed. "The landmarks that he mentions are consistent with many of the locales I visited, and there was a legend of a great hero of their ancient world known as Ta'meferton, which would lend credence to this being the very same dimension. But I fail to see the hand of the divine in this- assuming the ribbon which serves as a dimensional rift was mobile, traveling at sublight speeds it could very well have been the same rift, given the movement of the galaxy on it's axis and the locations., It says here a nearby bomb blast was thought to be the catalyst, so perhaps the released energies could have been responsible for his translation."

As she hypothesized, trying to link the events and puzzle out the factors involved, Paris never looked up, nor did she scoff at the concept. An open mind was one of her strengths, and Engstrom would not have presented it had he not wanted her full attention bent to the task. While she was happy to tease the man for his insufferability, this was a puzzle of the universe they were considering, and this was another aspect of her explorer's nature- a mystery of old now connected to her modern experiences, which began to form a pattern.

"Are there any other recorded incidents, so that a timeline and a causality might begin to form, Director Engstrom? I still fail to see the hand of the divine, as it were, in any of this," she admitted, continuing to flip pages as she scanned the ancient report. "But if there is more data perhaps...?"

If the grim man could look more grim, he did so as he pushed an ancient book towards the buxom bombshell. "After your... Incident... we began looking for similar cases in... literature... And found a reference... In the sixteenth century a French writer published a... Fantastical... jour-nal... detailing a similar world... We suspect it is... Re-la-ted..."

“Hmmm… four hundred years or so suggests an elliptical orbit, like a comet. But these are on Earth, and I was in the Eridani system. So it should have, by that reasoning, been swinging back through the Sol system at this point in the orbit, if that’s the case. Or am I missing a piece of the puzzle, Director?” As she was speaking, Paris was tapping at the PaDD, calculating a simulation of an orbit that would bring the phenomenon about every 432 years, as they were currently discussing. As a navigator and pilot, she was definitely well within her skill set here, and she was giving the puzzle her full attention now, as it was becoming more fascinating by the moment. “Or do you think it might be on a much faster orbit than 400 years… which would imply considerable speed attributed to the phenom…”

"We believe that... your unique and... innnnnteresting... quantum sig-na-ture... may have caused a... fluc-tu-a-tion in the phenomenon's course and speed... and would like you to... In-vest-i-gate..."

"Color me curious, Director. What did you have in mind...?" Paris asked with narrowed eyes. here came the pitch, and the part she likely wasn't going to like very much, she suspected.

And he suspected she would not like him suggesting it. Still, he couldn't help but let his face do some sort of weird contortion that it wasn't used to that sort of resembled a smile, but definitely made him look like a villain in some old holonovel. "You are the first to... retrieve... objects... from this phenom-ena... Once we are able to track it, we would like to use you as... Bait... And beam you across... Nay... Into it... As an explorer that has been proven... Com-pat-ible... with the... penom-enon... However... it may take a few... months... to track it..."

That earned him a burst of musical laughter, for a good five seconds, followed by a shaking of the head of the short-haircut commander. "Ahhh, Director Engstrom, let it never be said that you have no sense of humor. Using me as bait and beaming me in to explore it. Ohhhh, that is funny." Like a stage magician, Paris produced a datachip between her fingers and tossed it onto his desk.

"I was there nearly three months. I took a great number of scans from my EVA armor, which I've shared with Starfleet, and I will give you direct copies. I HAVE explored the anomaly. Been there, done that," Paris smiled as she leaned back in her chair, folding her hands demurely in her lap. "If I did in point of fact drag it off course, so be it. But you are going to have to work a LOT harder than that if you think you're going to convince me to play along with what sounds like an ill-conceived, poorly planned and entirely unnecessary adventure for data I've already collected."

As Engstrom picked up the datachip, for once, he was actually startled to full silence as he turned it over in his hands. After several moments, he nodded and tucked the chip into a reader, offloading the data into secure storage for processing and further study. "We were... Unaware... You have my... gratitude."

"Alden... I know, you wouldn't give me permission if I asked, so we'll skip that part... I think you misunderstand a basic precept about me. I'm not an adventurer, in it for the thrills. I'm not a hero, in it for the glory. I'm an explorer. I want to seek out new life, and new civilizations. To boldly go... and record what I find, to add it to the accumulated knowledge of the universe. Because that's what explorers do. They go into the unknown, catalog what they find, and return to share that knowledge for the betterment of all. I think you might misunderstand my motives, and that may be somewhat at the core of why you don't care for me overmuch."

Ignoring the dour expression his face took at that statement, Paris shook her head. "Your job is to keep things on an even keel, and I do respect that. While I take risks and chances and I will admit I am a bit of the eye of the storm, given the things that tend to happen to me, I want the universe to be stable. I want these billions of souls to be able to sleep at night not worrying that reality might implode because of an extradimensional incursion. That's your job, and you do it well, as evidenced by the fact that we're all still here."

"Mine is to find these weird and mysterious and wonderful phenomenon, catalog them as best I can, or leave survey markers for others to follow, and return home to tell the tale." Rolling her eyes sheepishly, she admitted, "With a lot of help from a certain Vulcan hero, more often that not, but he made peace with that a long time ago. Because he knows that despite safeguards, despite precautions, despite all statistical probability and often logic, somehow Rita will find trouble and get lost. Captain Stuart used to call me the Lost Navigator for good reason, after all." Paris paused at that, remembering her friend and captain of days gone by.

In the span of a few moments, the dour man looked like he had aged a dozen years as he nodded in acquiescence, finally dropping the facade that he had been keeping up this whole time. "Indeed... I have never taken you for anything but... an explorer, Mrs. Paris. But... on everything else... I concede. I thank you for your... time... assistance... and patience. You have been... most helpful and... Quite possibly... answered... some of our... oldest questions... Do you have... anything else? Questions...? Comments...?"

"You investigate and deal with some of the most interesting phenomenon around, Director. While I am quite happy in my current assignment, I'll be back on Earth in a few years, full time. I will always be happy to assist you in your investigations, because sometimes you might need an explorer. And like any good Starfleet officer, I'm here to help." Paris offered the dour man a warm smile, with a bit of upraised eyebrows. "Simply put, call me if you need me, Director."

"In the meanwhile, I'll try not to generate too much paperwork for you..."