Life, But Not As We Know It

Posted on Fri Nov 27th, 2015 @ 7:52am by Captain Charybdis MacGregor & Lieutenant Commander Siivas McKenzie

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Taking Chances
Location: Zaryx 4 agricultural colony
Timeline: 2265
Tags: Zaryx,Siivas,psi

The communicator flipped open smoothly and tuned easily... someone was maintaining the away team's equipment quite well, the chief science officer noted

"Lieutenant Charybdis to Bonne Chance, please respond."

"This is Bonne Chance, go ahead Lieutenant." The reply came almost immediately; the ship was listening and still monitoring them closely. Commander Ak'Ahar apparently took watching over the landing party from orbit quite seriously indeed.

"Has the science station collected the scans that I requested?"

"Yes ma'am, those scans are available now. Would you like to have them transmitted to your location?"

"Yes I would, and thank you. Standing by."

With that, Charybdis held her tricorder and watched as the downloading data scrolled by at high speed, her eyes flickering across the information on the tiny screen. Once the download was complete, she returned to her communicator.

"My compliments to Ensign Sato, Bonne Chance. Charybdis out." She flipped the communicator closed and sheathed it, then turned her attention to the tricorder. As she reviewed and correlated the data Charybdis turned to Doctor McKenzie and raised an eyebrow without looking up from her tricorder screen.

"Well go ahead," he chuckled. "You're dying to tell me something."

"How often do I get to show off how brilliant I am to someone who can appreciate it?" she replied, looking over the top of her tricorder with a wry grin.

"Daily?" he replied with a smirk, and she stuck her tongue out at him in a classic display of maturity.

"According to the scans I've collected here and from the Bonne Chance, the fungal life forms appear to be not only living beneath the surface, as shown by the thermal scans, the borders of their colonies appear to be marked by the above-ground myconid 'sentries' so to speak. And according to these readings they are radiating energies on both the alpha waves at 8.93 HZ and theta waves at 5.97 HZ." she relayed.

"In short, brain waves, Doctor," she said with some small sense of the dramatic. "I believe that the fungals are a colony or hive-mind life form, and unless I am mistaken, they are indeed intelligent. Is there any way that you may be able to confirm or deny this hypothesis?"

"Well, that explains the anger I can still sense all the way out here," he said, crossing an arm over his chest and putting one elbow to it to chew on his thumb gently. "I'd say it's rather pissed then. Hmm," he crouched suddenly and placed both hands flat against the ground, "If I fall over, catch me please."

"Absolutely, Doctor." Charybdis knelt down beside the physician, then set her tricorder to monitor his vital signs in addition to the half-dozen other things she was demanding of it at the moment and took his shoulders in her hands.

"I believe they are upset at the colonists for planting and forcing them to compete for soil nutrients as well as disturbing them with the vibrations from their farming implements. There may be more, but unless we can establish some way to create a dialogue with them we cannot be certain. I am sorry that this falls to you, Doctor, but..." she trailed off.

"Since we don't have a Vulcan science officer to famously do this," he chuckled, "it falls on the Deltan doctor."

"Consider it one of my many failings as a Vulcan, Doctor... along with not living at one hundred and eleven pounds, not waiting every seven years to mate and not being the worst party guest onboard." she quipped cheerfully, then her tone became more serious. "If there is anything that I can do to help you, say so... and I will bear you to the infirmary if this injures you somehow. Small comfort I know, but better than false assurances..."

"Try to not think about the captain," he replied more seriously. "Non-Humanoids have the same kinds of problems with humanoid sexual impulses similar to the way you might think of your parents having sex at their age. You start thinking about him, I'll pick it up, they'll get echoes and who knows, Mushroom-zilla?"

Self-discipline wasn't her forte, but she understood the potential gravity of the situation, and she focused. "You are attempting something with considerable personal risk at my request, Doctor. My attention is quite focused and I will endeavor to keep it so."

She always sounded pedantic when she was trying to be unemotional. In that was she was quite stereotypical of her kind.

With a fading smile, Siivas' breathing leveled out and his body relaxed and yet at the same time went motionless, save his breathing and pulse, it was if it ran on automatic and the normal resident was away on a trip.

The pulse of the colony was there, and easy to feel, as were the nearby colonies of their similar brethren nearby, as it had always been. They became aware of his presence in their plane, and reached out to him, inquiring. He had not approached with the violence of dislodging nor the murder of sentries, and instead came to them as a civilized being. He sought not territory but enlightenment, and they responded without acrimony.

Siivas paused and listened, expending his perceptions, wider and wider he sought the frequency of their consciousness... there! At the very edge, very low in the scale, the equivalent of the subsonics plants make amongst themselves, so low was their telepathic frequency. With his attention honed, he narrowed his focus and brought all of his perceptions to bear on that narrow margin. Their empathy was easy but their thoughts were hard tor each, deep, as their place in the earth where they hid amongst the darkness, the minerals and the moisture.

He visualized roots reaching from his 'direction' towards their roots, to mingle and entwine gently, communicating a great distance between them as an allegory of their types of life.

They sensed his reaching, the growth of his consciousness in amongst their roots, not displacing but intertwining, seeking not to disturb but to harmonize, and they welcomed him in their song, the slow yet subtle harmonic that was the lifesong of the colony, and they put aside their fear of that which was other and they offered their understanding, and invited the newcomer to share the song with them... the song of life and the universe.

The universe that was the substratum of the whole of their existence, with the burning lands above where danger was omnipresent but still from which came life-giving moisture and nutrients that filtered down to maintain the colony, as well as the cool of the stratum below, from whence came the minerals and the coolness which calmed the warmth from above, creating the balance always to be sought for the health of the colony.

Siivas visualized roots descending from above, from the burning heat, and few with roots amongst many that had none. He visualized dim things with shallow roots that did not twine, that were weak and stunted, he visualized brighter mobile objects with no roots that absorbed the nutrients of the dimmer rooted ones and he visualized brighter rooted ones (like himself) capable of twining roots to commune, to gain understanding. He visualized thin spindly weak roots connecting himself and those like him to the dimmer versions above the ground, in the bright/hot place and the limited understanding and communion he had with them.

The colony felt his efforts and welcomed him as a visitor that approached them in kind, and offered him their coolness and dampness to share with them. He came not as an intruder, but as an emmissary, and they recognized him as such and afforded him a place amongst them, yet not as a part of their body.

In the fields, Siivas breathing held but his body leaned forward and his muscles shifted, his body lifted up as his shoulders rolled forward and pulled his hips with him, the legs balancing as they rose and his body aligned perfectly into a handstand. Never once did his breathing change, never once did his consciousness seem to emerge from where it was. It seemed that his body, as extension of his distant mind, aligned itself to how his mind was now. Around them the earth stirred softly and pale domes rose spontaneously in a circle, centered on Siivas. Fleshy vertical slits turned outward in the pale humps, gill-like flanges in dark purples seemed to flutter within; the air seemed charged as what appeared to be sentries of some sort had risen to protect Siivas, and by extension Charybdis.

The science officer was out of her depth in this situation- the realm of extrasensory perception was well known to her as a concept, but her own personal experience was nigh nonexistent, at least in the useful sense. When the Doctor's body moved she moved around him, reluctant to break contact. As crippled as she was in this matter, she somehow sensed that he needed her as an anchor of sorts- whether it was true or not was beyond her scope of experience, but when dealing with an empath following one's feelings seemed the best course of action.

Gingerly she spread the fingers of her left hand and placed them across his smooth scalp, and watched her scans as his own alpha waves diminished and his beta waves became more active, even as his theta waves aligned with those of the fungal life forms, and the frequencies she had previously detected all showed increased activity. As the circle of myconids slolwly sprouted around them both like a faerie ring of Earth legend, she watched her scans and remained alert. She could not help the Doctor where he was now, but she would do what was within her capabilities in the realm of the physical sciences.

Silently she prayed to Janus to protect her friend, and remained focused on the task at hand.

Those Below experienced him, and he in turn experienced them, and they shared their song. The slow, rhythmic pulse of their lives was far different than the frenetic beating of his own heart's song, but the songs blended and made harmony, and Those Below felt it to be agreeable. Curiosity was put forth- it had been many generations since the above others had begun to do harm against the colonies, yet this was the first time any had sung with them. The colony was curious why it had been so long for the song to reach the above others, but they welcomed the contact so that war could cease in this generation

Siivas indicated that those above has short stunted roots and that very few, so very few, had roots long enough to make contact. He portrayed to them a sense of frustration between them and their inability to twine together as he and the colony did now and that he and those like him could and would be able to twine their roots with Those Below. Siivas showed that Those Above spread out and seemed ignorant of Those Below, the colony, because their roots could not reach them. Siivas expressed regret for the imperceptions by Those Above of the colony, that they did not realize that Those Below were in fact, like themselves, intelligent life. He expressed how, when his roots twined with Those Above while some of his roots still twined with Those Below, how sorrowful Those Above would be that they had misunderstood and had caused harm.

Siivas finally created images of Those Above pulling back their influence and the spread of their food across the surface, leaving the spaces of Those Below free of invasion yet, keeping amongst them one or more of those who could twine roots with those below.

Those Below were of accord with this reality, and the possibility of raising future generations in harmony, without danger from invading roots and vibrations was pleasing to them. They sang of it to the nearby colonies to consult, and soon the song returned from even the most distant of colonies that this would be desirous and pleasing, and that the return of the places above to their right way would return harmony to Those Below again.

Siivas asked them to bide, sending patience and reassurance and promised to return, then sent images of him moving up and twining roots with those above, to explain. Those Below saw the wisdom in this, as spores could not be seeded without such action. Bountiful spreading was sung upon him and his efforts, and it was expressed that when he returned he would be welcomed amongst Those Below.

Siivas, his body in a headstand above, suddenly smiled gently and with a deep inhalation, opened his eyes and brought himself gracefully to a crouch. With the gentlest of brushes of his fingertip, he stroked the skin of the closest of the spore pods, making the skin of the myconid dimple in ridges.

"Doctor? You are unharmed?" Charybdis asked as she pulled back her hand, sensing that whatever support she may have provided was no longer needed. The statement may have seemed foolish, but the concern in her voice belied the simplicity of the query.

"I am well," he smiled up at her. "They're a beautiful consciousness and so very unique."

"Then you were successful in communicating with them? Remarkable! Now we can educate the settlement and teach the colonists how to avoid planting over the fungals, and they in turn will stop blighting the colonist's crops?" The science officer seemed rather excited by the prospect.

"I think we can do better than that," he chortled a little and stood, then carefully stepped over the sentry-ring. "But first we'll have to see how thick-headed the colonists are about the idea of sentient mushrooms." He smirked brightly and gestured to her communicator, "Would you like to do the honors of calling the captain and explaining?"

She stepped daintily out of the faerie ring as well, and returned his smirk with her own trademark expression. "I tend to think the Captain will always take my presentations better in person..."

 

RSS Feed