Analyze

Posted on Tue Nov 24th, 2015 @ 7:48am by Captain Charybdis MacGregor & Lieutenant Commander Siivas McKenzie
Edited on on Sat Apr 28th, 2018 @ 2:44am

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Taking Chances
Location: USS Bonne Chance, Deck 6, Sickbay
Timeline: 2265
Tags: Siivas,sickbay,bonnechance,cheeseburgers

Lieutenant Corben had left the Bridge, and never returned for the rest of his shift. Lieutenant Charybdis had scanned the vessel, and he simply wasn't aboard any longer. The questions were mounting, but the answers were coming no faster. She had no idea what was happening here, while the mounting pressure for the need to solve this mystery was definitely pressing upon her with an ever-increasing urgency.

Steepling her fingers and furrowing her brow, she analyzed the scan data. Everything appeared to be normal in space. Starbase 4 appeared to be normal. She experimented with a few different burst scans, but nothing yielded any results of note. In short, she was at a dead end. There was nothing more that she could accomplish on her own, without a fresh perspective.

She almost missed Suval. Almost.

There was no help for it... she had to consult with the Doctor. Perhaps the Chief Medical Officer had noticed what was happening and would have a different perspective from which the problem could be approached. Perhaps he had been running scans of his own and had found a pattern. Perhaps he was completely oblivious to what had been happening, and needed to be informed.

The Capellan Commander Ak'Ahal had gone to the engine room to look for the errant Lieutenant Corben, and had yet to return to the Bridge. Charybdis didn't have the heart to scan the ship to see if he was still aboard... she liked him, and she decided that embracing false hope, that perhaps he was still searching Engineering, was better than a negative discovery. When her relief arrived, she handed off her duty station and went directly to Sickbay.

As much as she did not care for telepaths, instinct told her not to discuss this using the ship's comms. And Charybdis was nothing if not a creature of instinct.

Siivas seemed to be waiting for her, standing in the middle of sickbay with feet slightly apart and hand folded behind his back, his uniform perfectly correct though he wore a nearly-filament thin chain of latinum around his hairless brow with an emerald-like gem centered in it. "I've disabled security's access to medical and given tasks to my staff," Siivas told her pointedly and gestured to his office; the door was open and on the desk sat a steaming pot of coffee and two gigantic cheesy burgers.

The voice in her head that was never wrong told her to run like the wind, but Charybdis quelled it. There was a time and a place for evasion, and this wasn't it. Yes, it was unsettling that he was expecting her. No, it was not a good sign that he had insured their privacy... but then, however telepathic he may be, the Deltans were renowned empaths. She had been mulling this over all day, and that made for a convincing argument that he may just have picked up on her distress and her intentions. Or he might already be aware of what was happening and knew more than she did, and had simply been waiting for her to come to him.

Plus he had cheeseburgers. What villain hatching a dastardly scheme brought cheeseburgers?

Ingrained training be damned, she was going to trust him. She needed his help, and if she was wrong she was liable not to have the luxury of regretting her mistake. She sighed and smiled at him hopefully.



"So you've been expecting me, then?"

"I believe the cheeseburger shall speak for itself," he replied with a grin. "It may taste slightly off but that was the best we could do to cleanup the program when I had them replicated," he explained, following her into the office and sitting after she had eased herself into a chair. He poured coffee and made sure cream and sugar were within reach and then took a gigantic bite of the greasy cheesy monster, managing to get his lips closed as he chewed.

While breakfast may have tasted a bit off, the cheeseburger tasted just like it was supposed to- warm, a bit greasy and a lot like love to the Lieutenant. She managed to inhale a bite of it before speaking... the condemned shall eat a hearty meal at least.

"So Doctor... you were expecting me... you knew I was coming. Do you know what is happening? I understand the symptoms, as it were, but the cause is apparently beyond my capacities."

He covered his mouth with one hand as he was still chewing and spoke, so she could "see food" him. "Ah'thin sa spash phock'd," he rolled his own eyes at himself and worked to masticate it properly and get it swallowed. He picked up his cup of coffee and held it, ready for the "wash-down".

Even sensitive hearing took a moment to analyze that, and her first guess was not the correct one. "Space pocket? You mean a subspace distortion of some sort in the area of the Bonne Chance... perhaps a stable point, but something that we wandered through like an eddy in a stream?" Her eyebrow raised characteristically, but she was speaking with one of her hands, unlike a Vulcan. The other was maintaining a secure grip on the cheeseburger to insure that when she wasn't speaking she was taking another bite.

He swallowed mightily, pulled on the coffee and managed not to choke before he nodded and gasped for air. "Pardon, forgot ta eat yesterday an this is tha first meal. I'm fookin starvin," his accent had changed to a brogue and he looked a little cross. "So yea, 'got stuck in one back in twenty-one-fifty-four fer a wee bit an woke up all Rumplestilstin nearly a century after so yeah, seen this bit b'fore."

Chewing had to happen occasionally, and in this case both parties of the conversation needed to manage it. "Good burger, by the way... I must get the food dispenser code. So assuming that you are correct, how do we detect the anomaly, how can we analyze it, and from there, hopefully we can find a way to break free of it." She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "My last scan of the ship shows one hundred and seventy-three crew left... I am uncertain of the fate of Commander Ak'Ahar, but you are currently the only original senior staff left aboard the Bonne Chance."

Brow furrowed, she radiated anxiety. It didn't take a Deltan to tell that she was working hard to maintain her calm, and as prescribed, the cheeseburger was indeed helping. The Doctor knew his patients well.

"I ken," he agreed. "'Been keepin tabs on me patients," his agitation appeared to start to cool and his skin became less red, "and late on gamma I've been using the lateral arrays to do some sightseeing of near-space. So far, there's nothing amiss to science. But as a Deltan with spatial dysphasia, I have a pretty good sense when space is wrong and it's really wrong where we are right now."

Spatial dysphasia affected approximately one out of a thousand Deltans, and it was debilitating to them when it struck. It was known to be a manageable condition, but it was still a hardship to bear. She did not know the specifics but she seemed to recall that it would render most afflicted with it unconscious, or worse. The Doctor, apparently, had grown somewhat accustomed to his condition as he appeared to be functioning satisfactorily. And the sneaky devil was playing his cards close to the vest as well... even as she had become aware of the problem and been quietly investigating, he had done the same.

"So if this is a subspace anomaly... a rift, a tear, a pocket, as you say... how can we break free of it, how do we rescue the crewmen who have been lost, where are they disappearing to... oh... oh no..." She put the cheeseburger down in horror and sat back, stunned. "If... if we are currently a part of a subspace variance event and we are out of phase with regular space... if the crew is becoming slowly attuned to real space, then does that mean that they are reappearing... in real space... without the ship...?"

He slowly nodded, watching her. "I'm as yet unsure how that's happening though," he explained. "It could be like radiation, there's an as yet undisclosed half-life we're unaware of, there could be a third-party yet to be revealed that is taking them away or something else." He paused and sipped coffee, "I can tell you this one is different than anything I've felt before. It feels like its interacting, somehow, with the emotions of those on the ship."

The rising panic in her froze just that quickly at his words, locking itself down as she gulped. She took an impressive deep breath and exhaled it slowly, steadying herself. When she met the Doctor's gaze again, she was calm.

"I am a scientist... for every action there is a cause and a reaction, and this phenomenon is no different. The answers are there... we just have to find the right question. We have eliminated the usual and the possible, so now it is time to consider the unusual and the impossible. Broad EM spectrum scans have not produced effective results, so we must narrow our scans to unusual particles... neutrinos... tachyons... anyons... a particle signature, perhaps, or a variant warp field interaction with the ship has somehow generated. I must create an algorithm to run a multi-scale Gaussian Markov random field test, but this is not my area of expertise. Can you help me, Doctor?"

"I believe I can manage that," he replied with a demure tone and a smile. "While I finish my burger."

"While...?" she repeated to him, and despite herself, she smirked If he was indeed the author of this situation, he was masterful at it, and if not then he was a damned fine psychiatrist, she mused. Her left eyebrow raised on its own and she leaned forward to retrieve the remaining portion of her own cheeseburger to begin working on finishing it.

No matter what happened from here, there was no sense in wasting a damn fine burger.

 

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