Cracking an alien egg.
Posted on Wed Sep 11th, 2019 @ 8:13pm by Lieutenant JG T'para & Commander Doctor Farkas Vanth DVM/MD
2,103 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission:
[ USS Shanghai] S1E8 Light of the past.
Location: Medbay
“Anything?” T'para called from the isolation ward as she looked over her shoulder. The ensign at the console shook his head. Still nothing.
The Human/Vulcan hybrid ran her fingers through her hair though as she ran her fingers across her new horns she shuddered at the touch. Was this going to be permanent? Was this going to be the new her?
She was better able to control the new sets of wings she sprouted and walk on her new feet, but the tail was still a nightmare to control and she kept sitting on it.
The sound of the sickbay’s door opening caught her attention as did someone being directed towards her. She placed the large silver orb on the table and gave a polite smile to the Caninoid. “Hello there, you must be Doctor Farkas Vanth” the hybrid said politely.
Having just come from what s/he could only assume was a department head briefing Vanth was still in hir approved specially modified uniform without hir labcoat. Upon entering sickbay, s/he had been greeted by one of the staff, and once asked, directed over to Doctor T'para. At 215cm, Vanth literally had to look down at the woman; now s/he understood what Xalanth had meant by ‘altered.’ S/he canine-smiled, hir tail wagging lightly and in a slow, but friendly manner responded, “I must be; I guess I’m filling in?” Sensing the woman was a tactile telepath, Vanth decided to forgo a hug this time. S/he admired the woman’s more exotic features in particular the ones they had in common; the digigrade feet and tail.
“Yeah we had no chief medical officer assigned to us and I was filling the role. Not that I can do that in my current state.” T'para said running her hand across her head.
Vanth frowned, “I don’t understand, what about your current state won’t allow you to perform your duties? Are you in pain? I’m guessing you’re referring to your current appearance – you’re a Vulcan aren’t you – I rather like it,” s/he smiled, ears perked and tail loping side-to-side. “That is, I assure you I can do the job, and I thank you for your confidence, though.”
“Half-Vulcan. On my father’s side, the doctors think though they can’t be sure.” The hybrid responded. “I still haven’t mastered my new limbs yet so I can’t perform medical duties. I don’t want to be performing surgery and knock someone or something over.” She said one of her upper wings moving slightly as she said it.
“Besides.” She said turning back to the orb. “Someone has to try and get this working so we can hopefully start fixing everyone.”
“‘Fixing everyone?’” Amiri parroted in the form of a question. “Were there others affected in similar fashion to you?” The Caninoid turned to the spherical as if noticing it for the first time. It was just hovering there, in the middle of the room. “What is it? Where did it come from?” S/he pulled out a medical tricorder from somewhere in hir labcoat.
“The colonists down on the planet are affected though there are a lot worse off than I am.” T'para responded. “You can see what I mean from the cam. footage from the away team.
“I will gratefully review it later. Right now, I’d like to review what information you do know.” Vanth tried to remain on task. “Also, since I was born with digigrade feet, I’d like to offer any assistance you’d like in mastering your new body.” S/he smiled, trying to remain pleasant and friendly, but not flirty. Hir tail continued to wag lightly. S/he tried to keep in mind the Vulcan-hybrid might prefer to work with her partner too. “Where did this come from?” Amiri repeated as s/he checked the scans on hir tricorder.
“The planet. Most likely it’s an artifact from the collective-of-light, but as we can’t find its artifact file, we can’t be sure. It doesn’t fit their method from the last time we encountered them.” T'para said as she sat down on the chair. She let out an ‘owe’ as she had sat on her tail again. “And any help would be appreciated.”
Doctor Vanth had been steadily moving closer with intrigue, anticipation, and excitement of potentially making a breakthrough. S/he had not been made aware of an isolation field, so s/he bounced off it with a slight yelp, hir fur frizzing and standing on end from the static jolt. S/he shook vigorously to rid the feeling, but much of hir fur remained upright. Hir eyes happened upon the monitor near-by. “Are these your scans of the artifact?”
“Yup. It’s made of the same material that other collective-of-light artifacts, but that doesn’t make any sense. The collective-of-light didn’t use genetic…” The hybrid began before remembering the events had been classified. “Sorry about that I keep forgetting that Starfleet had the incident classified. Do you want to know about the first time we encountered the collective?”
Doctor Vanth frowned and emitted an ultra-low grumble, how could s/he help if s/he was going to be stonewalled at every turn. “If I’m going to help you on this mission, I’m pretty sure that gives me clearance, if not, then I need to be given clearance, or I won’t be able to do my job.” S/he tried to forget about the bureaucrats for a moment and return to hir chipper mood. S/he doggie-smiled and hir tail picked up wagging again. “Yes, anything you can share will be helpful.”
“Okay you may want to take a seat it’s a long story.” T'para said as she ran her fingers through her hair.
‘Dog-tor’ Vanth backed over to the nearest biobed and hopped up, sitting cross-legged (so-called Indian-style) on it.
“It all started when the ship we were on was sent to the planet of mantis prime. A starfleet probe had detected some signs of previous inhibition and they wanted the crew to take a look. I was assigned to the underwater activation due to my ability as a free diver.”
Amiri nodded, “Mm-hmm,” participating with active listening. S/he wanted to talk to her more about free diving, but it would have to wait until later.
“We recovered a few artifacts from the sea bottom one of which was a necklace bearing a certain image. When we were cataloging it and the other artifacts the ship’s first officer activated it somehow and the memories of one of the overseers of the collective of light took over her body. She put out a story about how her peaceful collective had been attacked and nearly wiped out. She then said she needed other people in her collective to survive so my boss volunteered. She asked me to monitor her which I did. Next thing I know I found myself back on the ship which had become a battleground between the collective of light and dark. Turns out the collective of light could physically hijack electronics to broadcast a brainwashing signal.”
The hybrid looked at Farkas wondering if s/he had any questions.
Vanth lowered hir legs over the edge of the biobed. “Wait… there is a Collective of Dark too?”
“Yeah. A real nasty bunch. Only interested in brute force for conquest which was why the two collectives decided to split. "
Amiri still had more questions, “where is your boss now?”
“Doctor T'Avarak is back at Starfleet Medical. She’s the head doctor; Starfleet has studied the artifacts we’ve recovered during the first encounter.”
“How many artifacts did you recover?” Vanth asked the Vulcan doctor.
“Half-a-dozen. Most of them are harmless though.”
The visiting doctor wondered a few more things, “During all this, when did you find yourself being altered?”
“I only found out that I was altered after the crew successfully pulled me out of the collective.”
“Wait a minute?” Vanth was confused. “You’ve been to their realm?”
" Well if you can call me me after they wiped the memories of my life from my head with there brainwashing." The hybrid responded.
“Could you tell me more about the brainwashing signal please?”
“I can’t remember anything doctor. The last thing I can consciously remember was sitting down to monitor a medical computer; next thing I found myself on a slab back on the ship. The uninfected crew found out they could pull people out with a neurotoxin that shuts down the brain’s electromagnetics. Thankfully they had plenty if the antidote.”
“Do we have a defense against the brainwashing signal?”
The hybrid shook her head. “Other than keeping electronics switched off I can’t think of anything. Thankfully this hasn’t done anything so far.”
“Then since our shields are of a static-electric charged-plasma based, then they’re useless. Have we tried to negotiate with these two collectives?”
“That’s the thing doc their tech shouldn’t be working anymore. We we’re able to broker peace between the two collective overseers and they agreed before leaving their possessed bodies that they shut down any remaining collective tech. How this is still working is a mystery.” T'para said looking at the orb.
Vanth glanced over at the orb, semi-transfixed by it. “Is this the only artifact we have left? Could there be some residual energy from the other realm still powering it somehow? Like some light sources after their electricity is switched off, they continue to glow – I’ll be it dimly. On the other paw, maybe there is another orb like this, and they’re bonded in quantum entanglement?” S/he stood up and began to circle the orb. S/he felt useless just standing there doing nothing but gazing at and asking questions.
“The only one that’s still active. It may be broken and that’s why it didn’t switch off with the others. If we only…” the hybrid said as the doors opened again.
One of the nurses still in the HEG ((What is that?)) stepped through the doors holding a biological sampling container. “Lieutenant, commander we’ve managed to get a biological sample from patient zero. We needed to use an industrial laser to cut through her skin, but we’ve gotten her DNA.”
“So, we know who she is?” the hybrid said with hope coming back into her voice.
“We’ll have the results in a few minutes.” The nurse said as he headed over to the DNA analyzer. It only took a minute before the result came in with a bleep. “And we have an ID she’s Hiada Oraabo a Deltan/Betazoid hybrid who’s the assistant colony administrator.” The nurse said as the results came onto the screen.
An idea went through the hybrids brain. “Doctor Vanth do you think we could replicate her brainwaves from her last medical scan. It should be in the colony database. There may be something in it that affected the orb.”
Doctor Vanth thought for a moment. “Hmm, I’m not sure. The mammalian brain is a complex weave of nervous and cerebral tissue, complicating things by synapse and neurons firing off randomly all at once. We’re not just talking about a few electrical signals here. We might be able to, but it would be tricky. We might be able to get an approximation if we could utilize the holodeck, but I couldn’t guarantee the quality of the facsimile, and it would be alive.”
“It’s worth a short rather and I can’t think of anything else to try.” T'para replied.
Doctor Vanth suddenly had a better idea. “Come to think of it; are we equipped with an EMH? We should have all the holoemitters we need here right? We should just be able to create what we need right here without risking exposing the rest of the ship to whatever this orb-thing is radiating that seems to have a mutagenic effect on most humanoid.”
“That could work.” T'para said with a grin forming on her face wondering why she hadn’t thought of that before. “It should take us a while to get it set up, so I suggest we get started straight away.”
Lieutenant JG T'Para
Medical Officer U.S.S. Shanghai
(PNPC Xalanth)
Doctor F. Amiri Vanth D.V.M., M.D.
Substitute Chief Medical Officer on loan from U.S.S. Saigon
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