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Missing Madness

Posted on Sun Oct 21st, 2018 @ 12:56am by Lieutenant Asa Dael & Captain Enalia Telvan & Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy & Emergency Medical Hologram (Adam Power) Mk X

Mission: Hera v Hera
Location: Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: After Dose of Unreality

Asa pressed the chime to the Captain's ready room. After receiving confirmation the Captain could see them this morning, Asa compiled the information they had reviewed with the EMH last night and requested a meeting time to speak with the Captain. They had also let the EMH know what time the meeting was in the event there was more to report on.

The Captain was in her ready room sipping a cup of tea, still trying to wake up. In front of her was a small boxed breakfast that her wife had made her and she was slowly enjoying it as she had the computer read the night's logs to her. She had a meeting with the Doctor this morning about a genetics project of some sort. She was sure she'd hear all about it as soon as they got here so she wasn't too worried about that. What she was more worried about was that her wife's cooking seemed to have reached a new level and she'd put on almost a kilo in the past few weeks.

After receiving word to enter, Asa skittered in through the door with all the grace of Jack Russell puppy. They were slightly wired from the lack of sleep, with a bit of red in their eyes, but the energy that only youth can grant.

“Good morning Captain!,” they said brightly, and stood in front of the Captains desk, not wanting to sit without permission in front of a superior officer. Well, at least not in their domain. The doctor showed no reluctance in Sick Bay, but this was, after all, the Captains lair.

“If this is still a good time, I may have found something interesting in medical testing results you shared with me from other encounters with these so-called gods.” The scorn in the word gods was palpable, but other than that, the young doctor remained affable, if a bit odd.

"Oh? What's that?" Enalia's curiosity was piqued at this as she had assumed no new evidence had been brought to light, or if it had, that it had been further classified. Motioning to the seats on the other side of her desk, she continued. "Please, have a seat and tell me about it."

“Um, yes ma’am, thank you,” Asa moved to perch on the seat like an anxious bird. “I have enlisted the aid of the EMH to reverse engineer the data we have from the previous test. Don’t worry, he is sworn to secrecy, and his contribution have already proven invaluable to the effort. Whilst we were working on this last night, he revealed that packets of data pertaining to how the worship of supplicants is translated in energy by their organ was missing. What’s more, it was missing in a manner that seemed to indicate deletion instead of faulty or incomplete research. Is there any chance Starfleet has additional records we could be viewed to see? “

"Hmmm... Let's see what we can find out, then." Enalia pulled up the research data herself and looked it over but it was no use - she was no doctor and no scientist. She'd just have to take Asa's word for it. Instead, she ran a check on the files to see if there were any associated with them or if they had been tampered with. After a few seconds, her desk terminal seemed to lock up, then reset.

Holding her hands away from the terminal in surprise, she had an idea of what that meant. "Ok... I think I see... There are secrets even I can't know, is that it? My Yeoman might have better luck. She's normally in one of the pod's labs. I might be putting a bit more faith into her than I should be on this one, but she's made miracles happen in the past."

“Thank you for checking Captain, I will go speak with her now. Do I have your clearance to continue to trust the EMH to run scenarios and aid in research while I am otherwise occupied? He is more than competent and I believe can be trusted.”

"Yeah, he has an encryption processor installed in his matrix just for cases like this. He's more trustworthy than any other EMH I know of whether he knows it or not." Enalia turned back to the doctor and nodded. "To get to Ila, I'd recommend going to the mission pod's lounge and calling her from there. She normally seals the Intel labs pretty tight since most of them shouldn't exist."

Walking over to the nearby labs, Asa found the Yeoman indicated by the captain. They walked up and offered a hand, feigning confidence while stating “Yeoman Dedjoy? Doctor Asa Dael, if you have a moment?”

“Thank you Captain, then by your leave?” Asa replied, waiting until the Captain nodded before making their exit.

They boarded the turbo lift, resisting the urge to lean against the wall during the long ride to the mission pod lounge. Upon exiting, they called the Yeoman through the com badge stating, “Yeoman Dedjoy, this is Doctor Dael. Would you mind joining me in the lounge, or should I come to you? The Captain thought you might be able to assist with something.”

"I'll come to you, Doctor. Please stand by," replied Ila over the comms after a moment. It took her less than a minute to join the doctor in the lounge. Greeting Asa with a nod, she glanced over at the holographic displays along the far wall. The pod didn't have windows so the lounge had holographic windows linked to the sensor arrays to compensate for that and with the more subdued silver and grey late 2200 vibe the lounge gave off, it was a bit of a contrast to the golds and tans of the rest of the ship.

"What can I help you with, Doctor?" Ila asked as she sized up the rather androgynous being before her.

"Um, hi. I was working to see if I could replicate some test results from Starfleet in a holographic environment, but, well, the data is incomplete. Could you please look at this file and see if you can suss out where the missing data ran off to? Perhaps Starfleet redacted or withdrew part of the file, and if so, it would potentially be an enormous help to see the complete data," Asa babbled while handing over a PaDD with the confidential files loaded onto it.

Ila looked over the file properties of each file as she slipped into one of the chairs. Pulling out her own PaDD, she set to work with an analysis program from there as well. "Lucky, search your databases for fragments pertaining to..." Tapping out a few commands on her PaDD, she sent them to the computer. "These files."

"Processing. Analyzing data now." The reply from the computer was of a british voice rather than the normal feminine voice across the rest of the ship. "Partial data fragments found but I'm not sure you'll like them. They relate to project Symbiosis."

Ila's head shot up, looking towards the ceiling. "Well no... I probably won't..." She then fixed her doll-like gaze on Asa. "Doctor, this data is from experiments done by Section 31 to create a super-soldier that was supposed to defend the Federation in the event of a crisis. It went very badly. Are you sure you need this data?"

Asa's mouth went dry at the mention of the notorious Section 31. "Yes, sadly, I am. The data may hold the key to defeating Hera. The bits I saw were already....well, gruesome, but I will not turn away any intel that will keep this crew alive...."

Ila nodded and set back to work. "Lucky, replicate an Intel Padd and transfer the data to it."

"Processing," the computer replied, followed by the sound of the replicator activating nearby. Then the sounds of a PaDD operating could be heard as the porcelain skinned woman got back up and headed to the replicator to get it. Glancing over the data being dumped into it, she nodded. "Yeah this is well past gruesome... I think this violates every ethics and moral treatment code in the Federation, not to mention eugenics laws." As soon as the dump finished, she picked up Asa's original PaDD and handed both over to the Doctor. "Good luck."

Asa expressed thanks and made their way back to Sick Bay. "EMH, are you available to speak with me?" they called while loading the new data into the program they had been working on with the posh sounding hologram.

Stepping out from the sickbay offices, the EMH looked up from the PaDDs he was still reading over. "I am. Did you find the missing data?"

"Yes, thank you for coming. I have it loaded onto this display if you like," they replied and pointed to a screen on the wall next to their desk. Asa was reading over it on a PaDD as well.

"This is....nasty stuff. Light, who thought up some of this? It shows complete disregard for the subject...not to mention this NEVER should have been in real life trials!" the doctor was getting progressively more disgusted as they reviewed the intel.

Their face was crimson red, although with rage, not the customary embarrassment. Asa's eyes darkened as they resisted the urge to throw up. "It appears that a device is used to amplify worship into psionic energy, which was fed directly into the subjects. Are you seeing anything different? It's possible I'm letting my fury get away with me." they said in a cold, deep tone.

"No... I think I'm seeing the same thing..." The EMH wasn't programmed for extreme bouts of anger, but if he were, this would have triggered it. "This whole thing was a testament to unethical medical practices. It's like they sought out every possible thing they could violate and violated it."

“Well, at least we have all the data. It does appear that the so-called gods were using psionic energy from worship to fuel their power. Considering most of their rank and file servants are human (assuming our Intel is correct), the psionic energy coming into them would be extremely diffuse. This must be why they have a focus, like Apollo did with his temple. What are the known parameters for devices used in concentrating psionic energy? Do you know of any size limitations?”

"From the data we have, I have no way of knowing if there's a size limit or not. Just that the device wouldn't need to be very large for small collection. For larger collection, a system of temple structures..." The EMH drifted off in thought, contemplating the very nature of what he was proposing. "If you had a network of devices in every temple across a planet, you could collect energy from every being that mentions your name."

The doctor steepled their fingers against their mouth and made a hummmmm noise in the back of their mouth. After a brief pause, they replied, "I had a feeling it would be something like that. Apollo desired love, but he was only really getting fed, so to speak, by one person. You can force someone to chant your name, but not to love you. Double that when you actively make their life a living hell. But forced mantras? Yeah, that would do the trick. I'm guessing the devices would be spread out with several redundancies in place. Well, good thing I'm going to disrupt."

They began pacing the floor staring at the displays in front of them. "I'm seeing that the experiments attempted to transplant one of the organs from the Hellenics into humans, and then fed psionic energy into it via unwilling telepaths. Absolutely disgusting, but the energy was potent. Something in the human physiology rejects the transplant, and then also makes attempts to use it......explodey. So, lets put aside transplant. No one needs one of these damn things. How do we replicate the explodey factor. It is a terrible option, but might be a good one against Hera if it's all we got. Thoughts?"

"I suspect that their biology is evolved to handle it in a way that that would be almost impossible, but if we could reverse the flow..." The EMH ran a few quick calculations before finishing the thought. "Yes, we might be able to make them implode rather than explode."

“Well, even better! Less to clean up!” the doctor replied with a lopsided grin. “So, what do we need, and can I fit it in an away team bag?”

The EMH started running simulation after simulation to try and figure out the power levels needed to do it for an entity like Hera and eventually, his frustration started showing as he had to just start running them on the sickbay mainframe rather than in his head. Eventually, he had an answer. "Ok, you'll need three tricorders, the main device at the main temple... And the ship's main deflector... And about a thousand people wishing death upon her. Or... a portable deflector and about a hundred thousand people."

A mirthless chuckle passed through the doctors lips. They ran their fingers through their short cropped hair and rubbed the bridge of their nose. “Well, the three tricorders part is easy…I imagine the people wishing her death is pretty simple too. Can the Thor be used as a portable deflector?”

"Probably, but the ship would be useless at the time and she'd have to be standing still. That and there might not be that many people close enough to her temples." The EMH punched in a bit more data and tried to come up with another solution. "On top of that, she might be able to feed on the negative energy as well. There's mythological data that shows that some deities did so."

"Well shit." Asa concluded. They were leaving to go to the surface later today, and felt no closer to finding a way to defeat Hera. "Can you please forward the data we have to the Captain? It sounds like she will need this information more than I. The Thor won't be able to be that much of a target I don't think, and I can't make this strategic call anyway. I guess my best bet is to try to reduce her positive energy. Back where I started...." the young doctor sighed in frustration.

 

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