The Log'yerm/// Effect

Posted on Fri Jan 4th, 2019 @ 4:15pm by Commander Rita Paris & Captain Enalia Telvan & Lieutenant Commander Sonak & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Lieutenant Asa Dael & Emergency Medical Hologram (Adam Power) Mk X & Baroness 2nd Class Schwein von Alcott
Edited on on Fri Jan 4th, 2019 @ 5:45pm

Mission: Escaped Pantheons
Location: Worldship, Temple of Summoning
Timeline: 2396, just after midnight January 1st

The circle was broken, the demon repulsed, but victory had come at a great cost. The Baroness von Alcott, personal retainer to Captain Telvan lay mortally wounded, her blood, so sought by those who wished to call about the end of days, seeping out to fill the runes and glyphs carved into the stone.

Seeing the scene around them, Asa grunted to themself "Like hell," and ran to the Baroness to treat her wounds. Placing a hand firmly on the injury, Asa saw no option but immediate transport to sickbay.

"I need someone else to come apply pressure to the exit wound while I do to the entrance wound. Then when the transporter gets us to sick bay, maintain pressure and help move her to a biobed so I can perform immediate surgery. Commander, I don't think transporting you is the best plan, so Lieutenant Sonak, are you game?" the doctor inquired in a hurried voice.

Decades of interaction with humans had taught Sonak a lot about quolloquial metaphors. Thus he refrained from commenting on equating saving lives with a game, and simply nodded. With his natural strength, he would also be able to move the whole body effortlessly and delicately once in sickbay.

Asking him to help was the most logical thing to do. Without any hesitation, he moved to comply as instructed by the chief medical officer.

With a face grim with determination, Doctor Dael instructed the science officer on where to apply pressure, confident in his ability to maintain pressure. They hailed this ship saying, “This is Doctor Dael, we have three for emergency beam up directly to SickBay, lock on to my signal please.”

The beam out was confirmed and the trio was whisked away, leaving Commander Paris and alone in the chamber.

Who promptly took stock of the situation. With the doctor and Sonak gone, that left one Commander Rita Paris, graduate of Starfleet Academy class of 2255, standing there in a ruined summoning temple with flames and lava burbling in what was the summoning circle, all alone with a few hundred unconscious or panicking elfin folke. After she’d burned out her hand phaser overcoming the crisis at hand, which left her alone in hostile territory with no weapon nor backup.

“Well ain’t you the tactical genius,” Rita muttered to herself, although she supposed it was a compliment from both the chief medical and science officers that even under conditions such as these, they had confidence in the old school officer from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Smirking at the situation, she called out. “Log’yerm///? If you're listening, I think we might need to talk…”


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Meanwhile, in Sickbay...
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Upon reaching SickBay, Asa was a whirlwind of activity. They activated the Emergency Medical Hologram to assist with surgery and directed Lieutenant Sonak to take the beleaguered baroness to Biobed 2. Nurse Vimes ran to apply pressure where Dael’s hand was covering the wound, allowing the doctor to prepare for surgery.

Although he had basic field emergency training like any Starfleet officer and practical experience with treating wounds from the Vulcan ordeal of The Forge, Sonak's knowledge of non-Vulcanoid anatomy was only textbook based and rather basic, despite his photographic memory. Once he finished securing the injured woman on the biobed, he stepped back to let the doctor and their team immediately start working. Only when he saw that their attention could be safely diverted for a short moment did he speak.

"Unless you have further need of me, Doctor, I will rejoin the away team presently."

Without breaking stride, Dael replied, "Yes, of course. Thank you, Lieutenant."

Sonak nodded then walked out of sickbay, heading for the main transporter room.

Looking at the other doctor in the room and scanning quickly with their tricorder, Dael said, “She’s bleeding profusely, her right abdominal wall was perforated, the L4 vertebra in her back has been nicked, the nerve running along the the vertebra has been severed, and her left lung has been perforated. That’s the most critical for now. Please take the vertebra and nerve cluster and I’ll start on the abdomen. Nurse Vimes, run a self-regenerating IV of her blood at a rate of 4mL/minute.”

"Please step back, miss. She'll be ok, I promise," The EMH said to a young woman dressed all in black as he rushed to assist in the care of the Baroness. Pausing a moment, he looked back only to wonder if the woman he had seen was real since she was no longer there. Shaking it off, he focused on Schwein's vertebra, pulling out tools for nerve regeneration and surgery. "Nurse Dalma, fetch me the spinal trauma kit and fill a hypo with 1cc of neuroanalgesics, narrow spray."

The spectre of Death was in Asa's vision too, and moderately concerning the physician that their efforts were in vain, but there was nothing for it but to continue them. Seeing the IV had safely been put in place, Asa called for tissue regenerators and began to heal Schwein's abdominal wall.

"Damn it, we have bowel seepage. Nurse Vimes, suction please," the doctor called. The plain faced but kindly nurse quickly retrieved a small suction device and handed it to Doctor Dael. After adjusting for intensity, the doctor put it in place and instructed the nurse to alert if the indicator turned blue.

They continued to heal the abdomen and injected extended release medicines to kill and safely remove any residual foreign bodies from Schwinn's body as she healed, just in the event any micro-debris or microorganisms had taken up residence.

By the time the Baroness's front was closed, the doctor was covered in blood. The baroness had lost her spleen in the ordeal and been fitted with a new biomechanical replacement, and the lung puncture had also been knitted back together. The skin regenerator turned off with a click, indicating what could be done, had been done.

It was about that time the EMH finished up as well. Looking up, he nodded to Asa. "I'm glad my predecessor invented a few tricks when it came to spinal neurosurgery. They really came in handy here." Dropping a plaser and a neuroregenerator onto a tray, the holographic doctor ran another scan just to be sure. "She's augmented, so her recovery rate will be faster than usual. But I'd still recommend she take it easy for at least a month or two once she's out of the veritable woods, as they say."

"Agreed," Asa replied, "This was far too close a call. Her diet will need to be limited and minimal over exertion of her lungs. It will be a long road, but she can walk it thanks to you, doctor. Thank you, sincerely. "

The EMH bowed his head slightly. "It's my pleasure, as always, Doctor. Any opportunity to work with you, rather than on you, is always an honor."


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Back in the Summoning Chamber...
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With a flash of light, Log'yerm/// appeared in the underground cavern and took stock of the situation, his sudden presence scattering the few cultish elfin folk that remained conscious and handn't run. Now, without the fires burning atop the cinderstones, dozens of the cultists could be seen scrambline up the staps around the bore into the crust of the worldship. "It seems a lot has been happening that I was unaware of, Commander Rita Paris. I sense the remnants of several demonic entities. Do pray tell... What hand did you have in the events here?"

"Well, there's bit of batwing over there but not much else left of the one Sonak has transported to a wide dispersal. I still have no idea why that's a setting on a transporter." Paris shuddered slightly then began taking measured steps as she spoke.

"Your children are so bored they tried to summon up a figure of legendary evil who would have made their lives and the lives of every sentient being he encountered literally a living hell. I'm no parent, but that's not really the sign of healthy kids," Paris shrugged, then looked back at the nigh omnipotent being.

"Except they aren't children are they, Log'yerm///? You've kept them alive here for so long now. Living beings were not mean to be immortal... our minds aren't infinite like some. They are limited, and we are finite for a reason. I think maybe your 'children' might have gone a little nuts being kept like this for so long."

"Hmmmm... Yes, I'm beginning to see that." Sighing heavily, the eye covered meatball floated over to the edge of the dias where Keebla was thrown into the lava. "The most trusted of the leaders of them... Even they were corrupted this far..."

Turning back to Rita, his main eye was filling with tears. "When they summoned me, their world was minutes from destruction. I did what I could in the time I had, but by the time I had this ark formed... All that was left was the records that they existed. Their World Core. Within it had stored the records of their civilization and over twelve billion people." As he spoke, another flash brought into the chamber a three meter tall crystalline lattice work that could have only been the aforementioned World Core.

"With this, I was able to recreate what they considered their golden age of civilization. Before war, poverty, and crime ran rampant. I used a few trans-temporal tricks to give most of them their memories as well. They seemed happy living like that." Log'yerm/// closed his eyes in sadness as realization of what he had done wrong finally sank in. "But they still had mortal minds... And mortal minds are not made to weather the ages like mine. For me, this has been but a few moments, but for them..."

"My people live for a century, perhaps half more. The Vulcans, twice that. El Aurians, perhaps a few thousand years. We're made... our minds, our souls... to last as long as we last. If we go on far longer, we can achieve and see much more, yes... but after thousands of years, it's all boredom, then madness." Stepping over to the floating alien eye, Rita gingerly reached out a hand yo comfort the scale-crusted exterior of the alien orb. "You did a good thing, Log'yerm///. You saved a civilization, and gave them a paradise, an afterlife the likes of which every religion that has ever dreamed of a great beyond could wish for. You asked for nothing, and simply enjoyed seeing them happy. That makes you one of the good gods."

"But it's the nature of the cycle... parents eventually must let their children go. As teenage rebellions go, this one was pretty good," Rita quipped, looking around the ruins of the unholy summoning temple. "But yeah, I think it might be a sign, big guy. You gonna be okay?"

While she spoke, a brief musical shimmer of light brought Sonak back. With a nod to reassure Rita about the fate of the Baroness, he stepped back and let her continue her work while observing attentively the powerful alien being she addressed. For her part, she spared him the smallest of relieved smiles, grateful as always for his presence.

"Hmmmm... Yes, I'll go back to my realm and sulk about it for a few aeons and be fine." Somehow nodding, Log'yerm/// smiled softly at Rita. "Thank you Commander Rita Paris. You have taught me something about this existence that I would not have otherwise understood. Will you do me one more favor? Will you take this World Core back with you to your people so that the knowledge of their existence will live on? There's nothing in it that will advance your civilization, but the collected works of their art and culture is held within as well as the recorded hopes and dreams of every one of the Alfarin peoples."

"We will, yes," Rita promised, realizing the enormous responsibility of the task as preserving an entire lost civilization. "We will bring it to the United Federation of Planets, and the elfin culture will be shared, celebrated and remembered by hundreds of worlds and cultures across the galaxy. Will you let them go on now, to the final rest they seek?"

"Yes, I will begin dissolving them and this worldship as soon as you and your people are safely aboard your vessel," replied the misshapen floating meatball. "As for the summoned ones... What they do is up to them. Without my power to sustain them, most will return to the aether from which they came. The ones with their own power may travel to other worlds."

It wasn't a perfectly tidy solution, and it meant that there were still liable to be a lot of powerful beings left out there. But then, the galaxy was a big place, and sometimes you took the win you could get.

"Thank you, Log'yerm///," Rita said gently, fixing the central eye with a tender gaze. "We'll never forget you. It isn't often one meets a being with this much power who uses it to help others. You're an inspirational being, and your story will be a part of theirs, as the savior of their culture."

Looking around, Rita Paris considered. "Ah, how far a walk is it to where we parked...?"

"This is at the very heart of the worldship..." Log'yerm/// replied, already moving off and beginning the deconstruction, starting with the unconscious elfin peoples laying in the underground chamber. "You should hurry and teleport back soon with the World Core. Chaos is already spreading through the people as their world crumbles around them."

The eyes of the lost navigator grew wide as she realized their predicament. "That's only... a few thousand kilometers... through a densely packed city that might or might not be filled with rioting munchkins because the rapture is arriving and they are going nuts. Plus a world construct that's dissolving as the force maintaining it stops concentrating on it. I'd never make it... a shuttle would never get here in time..."

Despite herself, as the worldship collapsed around them, Rita Paris began to hyperventilate. “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Okay, that totally didn't work. We, we're g-guh-gonna have to buh-beam out of here, aren't I? With a, with an ancient artifact that might do who knows what?"

"The universe really does hate me..."


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On the bridge of the USS Hera...
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The Captain of the Nebula class vessel stood up from the center seat as alarms started going off and pieces of the worldship started breaking off. "What the heck is going on over there?"

"It looks like the whole mass is slowly dissolving into N-space, Captain!" called the crewman at science right before something rocked the ship.

"Red alert! Undock us and get us clear! Get a tractor on the Forthright! Make sure any of our people still on that thing are beamed back to safety!" Enalia called out orders as fast as she could, but the crew was already in motion, working on emergency procedures to get them safely away from the disintegrating vessel.

"Tractor is on the Forthright. I've extended our shields around them, just in case," reported the Ops crewman. Enalia made a mental note to commend that one for quick thinking as she moved up to lean on the helm and get a closer look at the massive viewscreen.

From the helm, Lieutenant Junior Grade Melanie Dox replied, her hands a flurry of activity over the ships controls as the mighty ship began to back slowly away. "Undocked and as clear as we can get without interference from the storm disrupting transporters."

Engineering called out next. "Shields are being bombarded by energy from those summoned deities! Recalibrating to a multiphasic variance to compensate."

"They're probably looking for a new home now that their old one is crumbling around them. What's the status of our people?" Enalia asked, not even turning to ask, praying that Commander Paris wasn't still on the worldship somewhere.


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On the Worldship in planetary death throes
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Resignation settled in on the face of the first officer, along with a quirky little smile. Stepping over to her logical love, Rita cupped his cheek with her hand, blue eyes seeking his own steel-grey gaze as the world literally fell apart around them. But Rita Paris was the eye of the storm, and when all hell was breaking loose, she knew what she had to do.

"Go on without me. Take the artifact, and get clear, then beam me up. I don't want you or the last records of a dying civilization being interfered with by my transporter craziness. Go, then beam me out." It was a logical plan, she reasoned, which had good odds of success. Better odds than she and he beaming with the giant crystal and perhaps all three ending up who knew where.

The steely grey eyes bore into hers.

"Negative," Sonak firmly stated. "You have been personally entrusted with this civilization's artifact, and you gave your personal guarantee to it's creator. It is your responsibility."

So saying, he placed the object into her hands; then, holding it and both her hands against her chest in a steely grip of his left hand, his right hand slapped her combadge. On it rested a small cylinder with a flashing light.

"Hera; two to beam up."

“Wait, what-“ Rita protested, but too late.

The familiar light swirl of the transporter's annular confinement beam caught them both just as the portable emergency transporter specifically calibrated to her activated; the very one he had used once to bring her back during their experiment with her teleportation glitch, keyed to the Hera and this quantum spacetime reality. Boosted from the inside, the transporter effect worked so fast it was almost looking to outside observers like one of Q's flashy exits.

In a flash, literally, they were both gone from the dying world.

Rematerializing was not so quick. For a change, Sonak could sense the passage of time in the transporter beam, and the unique and distinctly unpleasant sensation of his physical form being transformed back from energy into matter. While beam-out had been instantaneous, the beam in time was stretching, and he could perceive the transporter technicians scrambling to accommodate the incoming beam, that wavered and hesitated as they fought with the controls. The confinement beam wavered and seemed to try to willfully redirect itself, but the portable emergency transporter did its work, and dragged them back to their destination

It was painful. It was disconcerting and disorienting, and that was only his own experience transporting in proximity to his mate, connected by his firm hold upon her. He could feel Rita Paris' absolute terror and physical agony through the bond they shared, as if she were feeling each and every molecule being compiled. All of which washed over him like the tide upon the shore, unbowed. As they finally reintegrated, a full eleven seconds after they had begun materializing on the transporter pad, Rita Paris finished the long agonized scream that she had somehow begun mid transport.

Had it not been for the steely grip of the master of logic, the transporter accident-prone adventurer would have collapsed on the pad. As it was, she retained consciousness, although her legs steadfastly refused to support her, thus he supported them both and the fragile crystalline lattice, the collected knowledge and culture of a lost civilization that may not even have existed in this reality.

“Transporter Room 3 to bridge, we’ve got the last of them aboard… pretty much,” the frazzled and anxious transporter technician reported, unnerved by the aberrant beam-in, and the scream that was definitely not how normal people transported.


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Back on the Bridge...
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Enalia sighed in relief as she got the news from the transporter room. All around them the worldship and the anomaly surrounding it was dissolving at a rapid pace and this was the last place they wanted to be. The occasional ball of light could be seen streaking away into space, which she assumed was a summoned alien trying to escape and find a new home elsewhere, but she had to worry about the two ships in her charge at the moment.

"Lieutenant Dox, you get us out of here in one piece, ok?" And try not to lose the Forthright. All hands, hang onto your butts." With those orders, the spotted captain headed back to the center chair and hung on, expecting the trip through the remains of the anomaly to not be the most friendly.

"Aye, Captain." Dox answered somewhat flatly, trying to build her own confidence. Flying in to the anomaly, she had the benefit of nanobots in her ears regulating the signals from Ensign Gonadie's flight helmet that provided her with almost too much information allowing her to almost feel their way through the tearing currents of energy, but those nanobots were gone, and the helmet was dismantled and in security lock-down. She brought the Hera around to face the swirls of purple energy that were raging before them. The anomaly was dissipating, but it almost seemed to be churning harder as it did. "Tractor control, please keep the Forthright as close to us as is safe. And everyone hold on."

Taking a deep breath, Dox moved the Hera forward into the raging currents of energy that still surrounded their position. Instantly, the ship was slammed hard to port by the currents as it was pulled in. Without the benefit of the helmet, Dox had to rely on sensor reading and her own instincts to maneuver with the correct flows of energy and the ship was being shaken harder then it had been on entry.

"Hnaev..." Mumbling under her breath, Dox let a Romulan curse slip out as the ship was slammed again by an oncoming current that almost pushed the vessel back into the ship it was towing had Dox not turned the bow of the Hera into the push. While the ship itself was being tossed hard, however, the ships internal inertial dampeners kept her crew from all but the familiar hard lurches to the side from each impact. 'This isn't WORKING!' the young, part-Romulan pilot thought to herself. She started to sweat as the ship struggled. 'I can't see the currents. I can't...' Then her thoughts stopped as an idea occurred to her.

Without turning her attention from the helm controls, she called out behind her. "Captain! I need us to reduce the internal inertial dampeners to the absolute minimum." She had thought back to her meeting with Ensign Gonadie and Commander Paris where they planned out how to navigate the anomaly and Paris' comparisons to surfing on Earth.

"These ribbons of energy are WAVES Captain. It will be rough, but I need to FEEL them to ride them." Dox explained, her voice raising just slightly in the moment.

"Ok, but just on the bridge! No point subjecting the rest of the crew to them!" Enalia called out as another wave hit them.

As the internal inertial dampeners reduced to a minimum, suddenly the bridge began to vibrate as if a freight train were punching through it. Dox let out a long breath and concentrated. 'C'mon... you can feel our speed when you're lying in bed. You can do this.' the anxious young pilot thought to herself as she felt the vibrations increasing. Specifically, she could feel than getting stronger from behind her and to her right. "Yes! That's a build of energy at aft starboard." She said aloud, mostly to herself as she turned the Hera's nose away from the oncoming wave to compensate.

Suddenly, a wave of energy came upon the massive ship from behind as predicted, but instead of slamming against them they were carried forward by it. They were riding the energy waves again. Dox looked down at her readouts to make sure she hadn't lost the Forthright, which was being pulled behind right where it should be.

The ship vibrated as Dox continued to adjust with each changing flow, but the ships weren't being hit anymore... they were being pulled along. Looking up at the viewscreen, the purple haze of swirls began to thin out as the stars beyond faded into view. "Clearing the field, Captain." Dox called out, yelling a little to be heard above the vibrations of the ship, as the Hera was launched by the waves back into normal space.

Enalia relaxed a bit as she checked the sensor readouts on her chair. "Good job everyone. Looks like the Forthright made it out with us perfectly fine as well. Now... Can someone please tell me what the heck happened?"

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"This may be a gilded cage filled with everything you always wanted, but it's still a cage." J. Kirk