A Box, A Recording, And Endless Mystery

Posted on Thu Apr 26th, 2018 @ 1:15am by Captain Remas McDonald

1,684 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: S1:2: Rubicon
Location: Main Science Lab
Timeline: MD 17 11.45

Intricate was a word for it. It had all the finery of a baroque clock and an Escher painting rolled into one, with the exterior panels and their cutaway sections revealing ever more detail within. It sat on a dais, slowly rotating in front of a battery of high-intensity scanning devices.

"It looks bigger than when we found it," he remarked from behind the sensors. "Then again I don't know what sort of size a 'simulated consciousness' with a few thousand years of subjective reality on its mind would be. Maybe it should be smaller, who knows?"

"Well," Alice said as she moved from the device to device, checking readouts and making slight adjustments, "I can tell you that it hasn't changed size in any measurable way. It is clearly active, with its own energy signature, but so far, isn't trying to make contact with ship systems." She gestured over her shoulder at the containment field surrounding the room. "Though I intend to put up a fight if it tries."

"I like the optimistic streak that you think we could. Whatever this thing contains was able to use the base matter of its construction to make anything it needed. Imagine a Starfleet vessel able to do that, able to make a component to fit an immediate need without having to return to a Starbase for out fitting?" Remas mused. "Would make our mission a little easier on the logistics front of things. Speaking of being optimistic-"

He turned and gestured to the three forcefields which contained the resin encased remains of the Malignant Matter samples.

"Can you assure me that stuff is dead?" he asked. "I saw it take off a leg, and the wound began to sprout protrusions in seconds."

"In theory, this material ... " Alice said as she turned toward the Captain, "attempts to convert matter. How does it do that? I suspect that its leading edge has to make a determination. Start the process of conversion or not. That speaks to some sophistication. What I can tell you so far is that its not one cohesive whole so much as its many smaller parts working together as a whole. Right now, there is no measurable activity. And when I say measurable? I mean that we're monitoring the resin as well as the material itself."

"An ounce of caution buys you a good nights sleep," Remas muttered. "What sort of countermeasures do you have in place here in case you detect 'measurable activity'? That Malignant Matter..."

He frowned.

"That's a mouthful of a name. You said it was sophisticated? Well, let's call'em Clock Makers then, for all the intricate and timely woe they seem to bring to folk. So, this Clock Maker makes a bid for freedom, what do we do other than seek answers from a Higher Power?"

"Fanciful," Alice said as she leaned forward to check a readout, a curtain of hair sliding forward along the side of her jaw to hide her frown from view. "Everything alive can be affected by a set of complicated variables. Reactions to heat, cold, pressure, gravity, etc. It survived, thrived, in deep space and on Ensign Shadi's leg. So, its adaptable. What's interesting is that the collision of the twin black holes caused the spores on the ensign's leg to disintegrate along with the remainder of the spores back on the Ark. That suggests a connection between disconnected samples and also an interdependence."

She signed as she leaned back against the edge of a work table. "That's the long way round. In short, we don't know enough about it to say what, if any, effect we could have on it. The safest thing to do, if it starts growing, is to teleport it as far from the ship as possible. I suspect that its not getting what it needs to grow. But that's a theory at best. Could be in its shock, since the larger portion was destroyed, and it will come back to life ... or it could be that there's not enough left. That if the resin were removed, it also would crumble. There's really no way of knowing at this point."

"There's an old Rish tale called The Devil In The Jar, have ye heard it? Classic tale of hubris amid trying times from the dark old days of the first flotilla. See back then the colonists on that ship knew they were not headed for paradise. That their warm yellow star was actually a tidally locked pair of brown dwarfs that had been fooling astronomers for a century or more. So those ships of the Belle Terre expedition had a choice, attempt the fifty-year transit back to Earth on gasps of air and fuel, or try to make a go of it around the stars Crisis and Catastrophe," Remas said, settling on the edge of a workbench.

"Much debate was had, arguments. This was where the Rish would rise to wander the stars, using the gas from the giants to fuel us, and the rocks to build our ships. Not worlds for us save for trade. But there was one captain, Ferros was his name: master of the ship Cerberus. He was young, a second generation captain of the flotilla. He conspired with his engineers to eek out a warp factor of two from his engine, something barely able to make it to warp one safely. When the rest heard of his plan, the recklessness with every life on his ship, they tried to stop him."

"He went ahead anyway, tore the shuttle pods from his hull that had latched on to bring sanity to his bridge. His engineers had figured a way to make his plan work, and so did it. And for a moment it all seemed to work. Right up until his antimatter containment failed and five thousand souls were atomised. Now instead of a hero, he is the cautionary tale of knowing the limits of that which keeps you safe," Remas nodded and pointed a finger at the resin encased samples. "That is not how I want the Traveller entered into the history books, Dr Kuan. Am I clear?"

"And yet, you brought it onto the ship." She cocked her head slightly to one side and considered her answer. "The man in your story clearly wasn't a scientist. There would have been ways to conduct tests of a new engine that did not jeopardize the safety of the people on the ship. He didn't see that as a factor or an option. He would not have worked for me for long. Having said that, to discover anything about that sample requires a measure of risk. Your spores are dangerous, Captain. And to borrow an adage from Earth, somewhat shorter than your story, sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.' She folded her arms across her chest. "How much do you want to know about this spore?"

"Everything," Remas said with a sigh. "In a month we'll reach Messier 4, a little after that if all goes well the colony will have found a site suitable for habitation. Once that happens we can unpack the large industrial replicator that will begin construction of a second Phase Space Accelerator. Once that begins, if the Long Jump Project hasn't been defunded into a college basement on Vulcan, we might be in communication with Starfleet again. And that...needs to be reported."

"Yes ... it ... does," Alice agreed. "And a way to study it safely be developed. Possibly set up a lab on a dead asteroid ..." She chuckled. "I don't think it would be wise to ... poke it ... while it's on the ship."

"Surface scans, noninvasive data retrieval. Mayhaps move the whole collection into a sealed escape pod ready for jettisoning over the side?" Remas said, eyeing the curved bulkhead that lay flush against the hull. It still had the sheen of freshly painted metal, befitting its new status. "Every bit of data, even the smallest detail, log it under the code name Nightmare Green. The main computer will handle encryption from there. Any development, you alert me immediately any time of the day or night. And I'll look into getting you an off ship lab to play with it in once we're settled.""

"Which is about what we're doing now," she said. "I'll put in a request to engineering to orchestrate the escape pod." She gave the Captain a considering look and nodded. "That's not a bad idea ... If it gets me a safe lab, I'll include everything including observations, speculations, and anything else you want, right down to and including how many times Dr. Ru'Fiz stroked his ears." She chuckled slightly at the thought; she liked him well enough but he was entirely too fond of his own ears.

"Do not mock our microbiologist least yee wish to hear from the Sentient Resource Department. Small and fierce he is, which is why his lab has a ceiling two feet lower than the norm," Remas said with a chuckle. "I'll talk to our Chief Engineer, see if he can't rig up some sort of holo presence system so you can work by one remove from this remote lab. Wouldn't do to have you poking things with a stick, only to be gobbled up by his ravenous monster. If ravenous monster it be."

"Sound observation is hardly mockery, Captain," Alice said, though the corners of her lips quirked upward slightly, giving lie to her otherwise serious expression. "From what I know so far, it is certainly aggressive. I look forward to seeing what the Chief Engineer can come up with."

"I'll see if I can pry him away from his new prized possession, that Morning Star robot we salvaged from the Ark. Seems quite taken with it," Remas mused, and turned towards the door. "I'll let you know when I know more, much in the same way you'll inform me when you know more."

"Of course, Sir," Alice said but she was already turning back to the bank of monitoring devices and the mystery there to uncover.

 

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