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Weird Science

Posted on Fri Jul 13th, 2018 @ 2:25pm by Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Vaemyn & Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy
Edited on on Wed Aug 29th, 2018 @ 12:17am

Mission: Holographic Horrors
Location: USS Hera, Deck 9, Stellar Cartography
Timeline: 2395

As the idea hit her, Lieutenant Rita Paris sat bolt upright in her spacious bed from the quick catnap she was trying to sneak in.

“The graviton polarity generators! That’s the key!”

Practically leaping out of bed, Paris paused long enough to run through a sonic shower, then yanked up her black leggings before wrestling into her anachronistic gold minidress uniform, the gold scants holding it all up and together. Making certain that she had her uniform’s insignia in place, as it doubled as her comm badge, Rita scooped up her old flip open communicator and clipped it to the back of her uniform, slipped on her black knee boots and hustled out the door, PaDD in hand as per usual.

As she locomoted, she glanced up more often than usual. Under ordinary circumstances so long as she stayed to starboard, she was in the correct lane of traffic and she could afford to have her nose buried in a report or tech spec or whatever catching up on the modern world in which she was engaged. But with the holo emitters shipwide going haywire, it did not pay to not watch where you were going these days, because you literally never knew what you might encounter.

Hopping on the nearest turbolift without incident, Paris tapped her comm badge. “Computer, please locate Chief Science Officer Vaemyn.”

=^=Lieutenant Vaemyn is not currently on board=^=

“Deck 9,” Paris ordered the lift, then rode it down, trying to organize her thoughts so that she could at least come off looking like a halfwit to the scientist, as opposed to a complete idiot. Making her way through the corridors, she was only chased by a Mugatu once, and she managed to lose it by ducking into the maintenance bay and hiding from it. While that left it wandering the halls, she wasn’t really quite up for fighting a 365 kilo giant poisonous primate with her bare hands today. Besides, she was on a mission, and if her idea wasn’t completely crazy, maybe the Science department could use it to get them the hell out of this dark matter cloud.
Well, assuming someone from the science department was in Stellar cartography. The mystery of where the chief science officer had gotten off to Rita figured was Security’s problem.

Of course, as Vaemyn was concerned, he was currently in a quite lovely position indeed. He was (technically) in Stellar Cartography, but a poorly phrased voice command to begin a computer simulation instead confused the poor computer into a tizzy. Vaemyn wanted to simulate the gravitational tides of the dark storm.

So, naturally, the computer sent Vaemyn and his companion/victim of the day, Ila Dedjoy, into the storm of darkness. Except without a ship. Or shuttle. Or spacesuit.

Thankfully, the malaised computer had not beamed the two scientists out into a horrifying death and instead meerly created a holographic simulation. Oh, the computer truly believed that Vaemyn and Ila were outside, but due to some strange whim of a starship designer, Stellar Cartography’s holographic systems were deliberately meant to be visual only, unlike the rest of the Hera. There were no safety protocols to short circuit because the holoprojectors simply couldn’t actually do anything harmful, such as suck the air out to simulate true vacuum or send the temperature plummeting down to absolute zero. Quite by accident, Vaemyn and Ila had discovered one of the few areas of the ship that could be considered ‘safe’ from wild holographic intrusions.

Still, they focused on the matter at hand. An elementary magnification command worked, reducing the skyscraper-sized Hera to a mere meter in length, while another tentative command successfully coaxes the computer into colouring the areas of strong gravitational attraction red. It was nowhere near a truly accurate map of the dark matter, and indeed it left the virtual Hera surrounded by disturbingly blood-coloured shaped blobs amidst the stars, but it was a start. and the scientists worked with eager diligence. In Vaemyn’s case, this was accompanied by enthusiastic hand-flapping, a happy grin and endless non-sequitors.


Tabbing the hatch controls of Stellar Cartography produced a negative sound, so Rita flipped open her communicator to call the ship. An oddity of the future's starships were that you needed less communication with your shipmates, because you were often working with the ship itself. In her day, the crew tended to think of the ship as one of their shipmates in an abstract, sentimental sort of way. In 2395, the ship was sentient, and it obeyed your lawful orders.

Provided you gave it the right requests and orders, just like any chain of command. Best of all, the computer operated on pure logic. Under normal circumstances at least, though it seemed to Rita those were the exception rather than the rule on the USS Hera.

"Computer, does Stellar Cartography fall under my department?"

=^=Stellar Cartography is a shared laboratory between science and flight control, although access is unrestricted to any crew in case of emergency=^=

"Thank you, Computer," Paris offered, frowning a bit. If everyone had access then why was it locked? "Computer, please override lock on the Stellar Cartography door. Authorization Lieutenant Paris, Rita, 867-5309."

=^=Acknowledged=^=, the ship's computer replied, and the door slid open with a positive chime.

"Thank you, Computer..." the extradimensional explorer expressed as she strode into the holographic map of the storm that the science officer had assembled, which stopped her cold. Stepping slowly and cautiously, she took in the spectacle of the holographic projection of the storm in awe. Paris' face was rapturous. "Rebooting the nav sensors worked... this is beyond amazing."

Noticing the Vorta scientist, Paris continued moving cautiously, as she could not see the details of the room nor floor and had nearly stumbled off a step she could not see once already. Closing the distance, she directed her question at the equally rapturous scientist. "Lieutenant, is this real-time or just a still image? Are we getting live telemetry here?"

Ila had big round doll eyes and could see a bit more than the other two so she had a slightly easier time of it with the holographics going haywire. She was still in awe at the amazing scenery going on around them and though her race experienced joy and excitement in a different manner, she shared in her cohort's enthusiasm for the success they've had in mapping what they had of the storm. Tapping at the barely visible console, even to her, she was able to rotate the map a bit so they could see it from a slightly better vantage point. "If I may, this is live. It seems the storm cropped up on top of us and is still building in intensity. However, it seems to be dissipating rapidly on the far edge."

"Incredible," Paris muttered, taking it all in.

“Is it?” Vaemyn said with bemusement, then looked up. Considerable hard work had started to reveal the vast tempest raging around the Hera, with every colour imaginable boiling and roiling in the endless array of clouds. The lightning was just as impressive, with moon-sized lightning bolts zapping between the clouds with startling regularity. It was all computer tricky, of course, everything colour-coded for easy comprehension; the true storm was utterly invisible, but still just as lethal.

“Oh, I suppose it is,” Vaemyn said nonchalantly, then glanced at Rita. Her unusual yellow uniform stood out more than usual amidst the technicolour splendour surrounding them, but the look of wonder in her eyes was even more impressive. “How can we help, lieutenant?”

“I… uh…” Clearly Paris was having a bit of trouble taking it all in- after all, this was unheard of in her day and age. Standing in the middle of the storm, as it were, was a breathtaking sight if you weren’t jaded to the technological marvels of the modern day. Which clearly she was not, as she composed herself and focused on the task at hand.

“I had an idea about the storm… that we might be able to use the graviton generators to push back the storm using electromagnetism to produce anti-gravity that could affect even the dark matter, pushing it back far enough so that we can produce a stable warp effect. Then assuming we can keep it up, we just have to figure out how to not outpace the graviton bubble. I think? Maybe?” The buxom blonde of a bygone age shrugged a bit, a seismic activity given her physicality.

“I’m, um, clearly no scientist, I’m just a pilot. But I thought if we could effectively map the phenomenon then I might be able to plot a shorter course out of it, assuming we can form a stable warp bubble. So at least I’ve had one idea pay off today.”

The large eyed alien raised a hand to volunteer some information. "If I may... My specialty is originally geology so I know a bit about gravity. With the pod graviton generators and the warp coils inverting the output of them... If we bounce that off of the main deflector... In theory, we might be able to create a quantum-gravitic-warp repulsion field. My people have been working on it for some time. Of course every time they've tried it the test platforms have been consumed by a singularity..." Ila looked thoughtful for a moment. "But then again, they didn't have the extra advancements that we do. We can probably avoid creating a nanosecond long black hole and being crushed into the size of a gilberry."

The anachronistic astronaut actually understood all of that, so she was taking that as another victory. Again, she followed her own established rules of starship life. Define everything you just heard in a summary statement, so you can confirm that you understood correctly, thus the course can now be defined. "Right, so... it could work, then, is what you're saying?"

“...Perhaps,” Vaemyn said slowly, his eyes out of focus as he stared at the storm. “The theory is comparable to the creation of a warp shell and carries similar risks, but it would repel the dark matter clouds, thereby negating dark lightning strikes. The calculations are extremely complex, but the idea is sound.”

Snapping out of his brief focused trance, Vaemyn grinned warmly at Rita. With her impractical miniskirt and buxom gold uniform, he had never thought of Rita as being capable of such intellectual maneuvering, a mistake that was, in retrospect, unforgivable. Sure, there had been bombshell Vorta scientists that he had known in his youth, but they had been designed that way, after all.

“You may have just saved the ship, Miss Paris,” Vaemyn said in appreciation.

The smile with which his words were received was genuine and pure, and thus easy for anyone to interpret. It was an expression of unadulterated joy reserved for those whom had fulfilled their purpose in the cosmos. Since losing everything she had known, and being thrust into a world that had quite moved beyond her, the anachronistic astronaut had spent all of her time running to catch up. Often not understanding half of what was said, the unconventionally uniformed underdog had generally not found a way to be useful nor serve a purpose.

In Vaemyn's words was that validation that she had missed so desperately, and been chasing so hard on the Hera. She had done something right. She had contributed. The supercentenarian space explorer's presence on the mighty starship... mattered.

As a professional Starfleet career officer, Lieutenant Rita Paris knew better than to violate another officer's personal space uninvited. But in this case, she threw military decorum to the wind and swept the Vorta into a quick embrace.

"Thank you... I really needed to hear that," she whispered in his long and efficient ear before releasing the brilliant scientist and taking a step back.

Startled, Vaemyn nevertheless laughed in the unexpected embrace, patting Rita good-naturedly on the back. “You’re quite welcome, Miss Paris,” he said as she withdrew.

Clasping her hands together, Paris pressed on with the less practical aspect of her plan. "So I was thinking we could try a spindizzy- we spin the ship to produce the effect. But since we have multiple redundant graviton generators that's probably not really necessary, is it?" Paris grimaced a bit comically.

“I don’t know,” Vaemyn said curiously, tapping some controls rapid-fire to the side, causing a stream of holographic mathematics to stream down in front of him almost faster than the eye could see, all while he kept typing. The seeming gibberish did seem to make sense to Vaemyn though, as he clucked, hummed and sighed at various points.

“Miss Paris,” he finally said slowly, “bearing in mind that the ship is designed to travel forwards only, could you somehow fly the ship accurately if we were spinning? And by spinning, I mean spinning very, very fast. Like trying to pilot a spinning top.”

Lips pursed and brows furrowed, then the gold-clad lieutenant held out her hand, fingers splayed in an approximation of the saucer section. "If this is the saucer, I'm thinking that we spin her on a horizontal, stem to stern." Rita wagged her hand to illustrate. "She'd still be pointing forward, we'd just be giving the inertial dampeners a run for their money. But I'm going to work that out with Thex next, because," Paris shrugged broadly. "I don't know the tolerances of the inertial dampeners off the top of my head."

"Besides, this really seems like the sort of plan the chief engineer should sign off on. Assuming the chief science officer thinks I should bring it to them?" Paris opened her eyes wide, her expression a silent question to the scientist.

Ila raised a hand at the mention of the inertial dampeners. "If I may... I assisted with the installation of the new Intel pod and with it we had to do some modification to the structural integrity field generator. If we spun the ship faster than 36 RPM for more than a few seconds, that system will fail and the deck echo bars will fly out of the space-frame. We calculated this based on the relative momentum of prior encounters that other ships have had with an entity known as Q where he spun the ship from one location to another. We can survive that... But not much more. Perhaps if we rotated just the gravimetric field instead and simulated a spinning stellar body? I've done that in small scale with rock samples..."

"While I'll admit there was a certain romance with the idea of spinning the starship, I believe you and we certainly don't want to rip off the intel pod, Paris added with a grin. "Simulating a spinning stellar body, you say... using the graviton generators? That sounds like some good science to me. Lieutenant?"

Vaemyn sighed theatrically, plainly disappointed. “Yes, Rita, it is fine science indeed. Maybe we shall be able to spin the Hera’s saucer some other day. I’ve always wanted to see these big Starfleet saucers spin. They’re just so perfectly designed for it.” His melancholy fading, Vaemyn looked back at Rita, smiling. “Certainly, Rita, take it to Thex and see what she thinks. The strain on our main deflector, inertial dampeners and graviton generators will be severe, but I’m sure that she can solve the problem.”

“I’m on it!” the old-school officer offered a snappy salute, spun on her heel and began cautiously feeling her way out of Stellar Cartography. A plan was in motion and she had the blessing of the science department, even if she wasn’t going to get to do something completely insane with the starship.

Win some, lose some. But at least they now had a plan for escaping this storm.


 

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