Star Trek: Starbase 777 - outpost-laboratory-4

What was once a science lab, now sported a giant bruise in it's center - that being the explosion site. From it, like veins, sprouted the same weird flowers that have overtaken the outpost from the outside.

“Hey, look! It’s that creepy flower again. Did it come out of the explosion?” It was the first thing she noticed upon entering. She wasn’t a botanists or anything but that flower was definitely weird.

"Again?" forgive him, he was knocked the hell out. Saren followed suit, hanging behind the small group but giving the place a curious look, "The damage is... not too bad, all things considered."

“You mentioned that you guys were studying a contained anomaly, right?“ She asked Kiaso. Stumbling over the flowers she made her way closer to the center. She observed the equipment that was remaining.

"That we did. Well, the scientists did. I was moreso focused on keeping the perimeter clear and safe," the Trill responded, giving the large spot in the center of the lab an uneasy side-eye. "Man. This is gnarly. Hey, some of the furthest science consoles seem to have mostly avoided the radius of the... blast?.. Let's call it that. Oh, and that computer too."

Seht had pulled himself away from the computer and had reconvened with the other party. "Hi! Hi, hello. Here. Here to help." (edited)

"The flowers were outside of the outpost," Iviaan replied with their volume turned low to mimic a whisper. "I'm sure they're lovely, in an odd sort of way. I wish I could see..." They steered closer to the explosion site, lingering to begin to scan, see if they could pick up anything lingering. Particles from ....temporal.....stuff. They didn't know, they were a doctor, not a scientist..

Silver was also looking at the explosion site, but not really at the flowers. She was mainly trying to see what damage had been done, and how to repair it in order to maybe.. re-contain that anomaly that had been studied and kept here, or something along those lines.

The consoles and the computer Kiaso mentioned, seemed to ineed be in a somewhat working condition, besides some taken battering and melting to their outer shells (and a lovely array of flowers to boot). The consoles and equipment that were closer to the center, were less lucky - melted and burned to a near crisp, overgrown and charred - it was hard to discern, but perhaps something got salvaged underneath all of that growth, for example the remains of the "holding cell" that Kove mentioned previously? Iviaan could pick a large trace of chronitrons on these marks. An unsurprising confirmation.

"They are odd. They look like they are stuck in three phases at the same time, if that makes sense," Saren frowned. "Makes me wonder what species this is... something native to this planet, or a temporal guest?"

"We haven't seen these flowers before, and it is nowhere on our registry of flora," Kiaso shook her head. "Evidence suggests it is the latter. Would also explain the fog and the changed coloration of the forest outside - these things seem to occasionally drop pollen of similar coloration, when moved a lot. "

Totally there the entirety of the time, Paco simply looked around the lab with the occasional pass of the tricorder. "Does the lab have any internal sensors or surveillance? Maybe that could give us context on what happened, at least before... this" Paco asked as he carefully approached the less damaged consoles further away to see if they could still turn on and maybe gather data from it. * *A scan of tricorder would give off large concentrations of chronitons, as Iviaan probably found. However, Paco had a different thought from that. If their 'temporal guest' was most likely invisible due to being phased by a chroniton field, there is a way to disperse it right? And that would make it reveal itself?? "Hey Saren..." Paco piqued up. If one wasn't sure about something, it is best to ask. Asking questions are what scientists do after all, he guessed. "If chronitons are why our 'guest' is phased out, then eliminating or neutralizing them would reveal them... Anyons are generally used to disperse chroniton fields, right?"

"Some of the systems here are on an older side. That computer there, has been used as, like... a data console. It registered each individual experiment, and would note down what was happening with every update on the procedure," she scratched her head. "I hope that makes sense. I'm a security officer, not a scientist. But I think I get what you mean, and it's likely you'll find something there."

The Romulan's already slanted eyebrows furrowed: "What do you exactly mean by "phased" in this situation, Paco? As in, being invisible? If so... possibly, yes. It is something that is used with cloaking devices, I am pretty sure, but... that would mean we need to close the "breach" that is pumping out this temporal anomaly into the dome, first."

”In order to fix the breach, we need to know where it is.“ She stated, rummaging around in the rubble looking for the containment apparatus.

He nodded to the engineers addition. "If I may... when we got attacked, I got an impression that our eldritch friend had basically popped out of nowhere, outside of our time and space. Maybe out of an invisible anomaly-induced time wound, I don't know. I am saying that, because it disappeared in a blink. Poofed out of existence. And given what I've heard people here say about things just popping in and out of nowhere randomly..."

"Okidoki, that's good to know." Paco responded with a thumbs up to both Kaiso and Saren before he proceeded to the computer over there to check if recent experiments could reveal any relevant information to them. "I believe Anyons are harmless to people, so we could... In theory, make a field around ourselves, somehow, as a measure against the popping in and out thing, but yes, that can be for later once we find where the breach is first." Paco proposed as he looked through the data console.

It took a little bit of time to boot, but... surely, there were multiple folders of data, with the newest one being just around four-five days old.

"...damn this is old..." Paco very quietly said to himself, hopefully not enough for other people to hear. Of course, he is more used to the newer stuff, but he could respect older equipement as he basically just idly stood by and patiently waited until filed popped up. "Okay. So the newest set of data was probably almost a week ago. Let's see what we have here...." And so, clicky clicky Paco made to the files.

Hey, respect your PADD's grandmother. Anyways, it was exactly what Kiaso said it would be - a beat-by-beat log of what was happening in the lab while an experiment was being performed. There was even some video feed, though fragmented. Given the amount of data, how would Paco want to go about searching for something juicy?..

2

Paco sorry. Paco will respect grandpa PADD now. Anyways, being situated in the Computer sciences lab long before the social sciences lab became a thing, and living with an Engineer, Paco would pick up a trick or two over his time in 777. If there was a chance to get something juicy.... Paco was definitely going to get himself some juice!

Possibly the best place to start was at the latest instance available. However, it was... riddled with errors?

What kind of errors. Did the errors seem natural with 'ooga booga beeg boom boom'... or was it something more sinister.... something like it was tampered on purpose?! Maybe it could be something Paco could fix himself, if not, well they do have an engineer nearby. But let's see what can be done first.

Klaa studied the equipment including the computer console. Keeping note of the damage. What was consistent with damage via the explosion? Was anything faulty prior that may have led to the incident? (edited)

"Oh god oh shit the whole laboratory suddenly exploded with the power of thousands of suns" type of errors. As for Klaa's careful inspection, she could conclude that despite the age, the equipment was well cared for. Which... in itself, might've posed the problem. Not the good care, but the age. While normally not a problem, it certainly did not compete with the newer tech - and, perhaps, any attempt to do something out of it's scope, could end in a tragedy?..

But was there anything before that?! Maybe 15 minutes before thing go boom. Or did nothing happen, and then all of a sudden a thousand suns exploded? Maybe it's just the computer playing games against him. Must troubleshoot and fix. Paco also scanned the computer with his tricorder in case there was something that needed it to open up. For the mean time... "Ensign Klaa, the computer's mad at me. I might need some help."

”Coming!” She said, brushing the dust off her pants as she stood up. Making her way over to Paco, she began to look at the computer.

Same things - an archive of all the performed experiments in this lab, with the latest log opened. The last registered instance in this log was full of errors. Perhaps the moment of the explosion?

Welp. Prior to beeg boom illicited nothing, let's see what exactly was recorded at the moment of explosion itself?

If instances before the errored one were checked, there were statistics and also numbers - values of different parameters that were recorded. They were... concerningly high.

”Well that looks concerning.” She said, looking over Paco’s shoulder. “The head Comander was in here when the explosion happened, right? What was he doing?”

"The numbers... they are bad.... very high..." But which metrics are very high?! Somethings, in statistics, are supposed to be high, that's how you know when data is valid and correlates. Other numbers are supposed to be low, and if too high beyond what can be tolerated, it means very bad things... also was there any media like audio or video they could check out.

Comparing numbers to some previous instances of the log, or even some other experiments, showed that these parameters exceeded what was normal to a dangerous, unsustainable degree. Something that, perhaps, an engineer could deduce to be just too much for even retrofitted older tech...

"...can we upload this to PADD or tricorder?" Paco asked Klaa like an elderly asian man trying to figure out smart cellular telephone device. If the data seemed too much for the retrofit computer, maybe it could be well within the technology of Modern PADDs and tricorders. "Number too high. I'm not sure if its because whatever happened was that bad, or if the console's too old..." (edited)

”I can try to reconfigure the file but I’m not sure if it’s going to show anything different. And if the numbers are correct then it would likely have something to do with the system failure. A spike like that would have most definitely overwhelmed the old tech. I’m assuming that it was not something anyone expected to have happened, otherwise the facility should have been updated instead of retrofitted.” She told Paco.

"They may have...." Paco said as he turned to look over at the consoles closer to the center. Although they may seem overgrown, charred, and burnt to nearly a crisp, maybe there could be something under there that can be useful for them. "You try what you can here... I'll go try to take salvage..." Paco said with a thumbs up as he headed towards the center of the explosion to investigate with tricorder on one hand and phaser on the other... would it be bad to shoot or cut the roots of scary weird flower? Maybe. Paco holstered it back.

The numbers were showing up in the danger range, not going out of the machine's range. The issue was that this tech was too old to handle such numbers adequately, hence why it - possibly - all kaboomed. That, however, raises the question as to how this could've happened - surely an outpost with 20 years of experience would know it's limits and not go overboard?

That is a fair question. "Why?" Paco asked both himself and everyone in the room as he frustratedly gestured towards the consoles as he continued to search through to find something. "I think its safe to say... Yeah, Ensign Klaa is right, the consoles may have exploded from being overloaded. Everything we're reading exceeds what these things can even handle. And this is equipment you all've been handling for two decades." Paco explained before he turned to Kiaso. "The question is not, why not update these at all, it's what were they working on that necessitated the need to push the equipment this far anyway? and Why? " *He asked. Maybe the remaining crew in the outpost would know? It's hard to be certain. "If reconfiguring the files here doesn't work, maybe the shuttle's computers could handle it."

Seht (also here the whole time) turned at that comment. "Does... does that mean we'll have to go out there... to the shuttle?" He asked with wide eyes.

"We assigned someone to stay behind right?" That's something some away missions do, he guessed. "We could call whoever's in the shuttle and ask them to come here, if that's feasible."

Ignoring the Intel officer for her own mental health benefits, she crossed her arms and leaned against one of the surviving tables, deep in thought: "Okay, while I wasn't here for all of the experiments, I will say... the last one was conducted under Commander Rhadam. From what I've gathered later, Commander Amunn-Ho was, mmm... not up to date with these decisions, which is not something that I've really pondered about before, because that happens every time and stuff, but with everything that has happened so far and what you're saying right now..."

5

”petaQ.” She muttered to Shet. “Comander Rhadam, what happened to him?”

"...Okidoki... Who's Commander Rhadam?" Paco asked, because OOOH new name! Internally, he was absolutely not amused. If he were one of the scientists here, and doing all that, he would've gotten fired the moment Starfleet found out. Theres a difference between 'Independent Research' and 'Not telling your boss you may make the computers explode, and possibly more bad things may happen'. Paco then turned to Saren. "I feel it's your call, sir. Calling in the shuttle here, so we could properly read the data if we're unable to fix things from here." Also, was there something underneath the growth over the consoles in the center Paco had been going through.

"Dead," came the laconic answer to both questions. "Found his corpse after the lab cleared out. Our two Commanders were not friends, but they were not enemies, either. I wonder what happened..."

Saren nodded to that, and pressed his commbadge to bother Autumn, who, unknowingly to all of them, was currently going through it.

"....my condolences..." Very efficient answer. Paco liked that. Rhadam being dead, not much.

2

As for the things underneath the growth... Paco at some point could come to a conclusion that he needs to be very careful, as he found broken pieces of... something... underneath the weird plants.

"I think there's something by our shuttle," he murmured, concern evident in his voice. "But it's too far away to just run there..."

"Hey guys..." Paco called out. He practically stopped whatever he was doing and began scanning it with his tricorder "Think I found something... a bunch of broken somethings... I dunno if I can go further than this."

Klaa let the computer run the reformatting program she had set and when over to assist Paco. “Whatcha got?”

A half-broken contraption, from which the roots of the flowers were sprouting out like spilled innards. This is where the infamous temporal anomaly was held in... and where it exploded. There was a video of that moment, too. Heavily damaged at the end - evidently the camera was taken out in the blow - but before that, the team could see an Aurelian woman coming in, feathers on her head ruffled, and run closer to the consoles, while everyone else were looking alarmed.

"...holy shit I think I found the roots of the weird plants" Paco answered when he looked closer. "I think this is where all the weird flowers came from... Where this all started..."

"Creepy." Seht murmured. "Do you think we can use that for something?"

“could the flower have anything to do with the anomalies going on around here? I wonder what would happen if we cut them off from the base.” She mussed out loud. (edited)

Breathing out a sigh of relief after hearing Autumn's voice (and being confident that it was real, given how little interaction they had beforehand - a surprising benefit in this case), Saren stepped closer to the ongoing excavation in the middle. "I wonder if this is where the Sunhead came from as well," he said, expression thoughtful. "These flowers are not native to this planet - Kove has mentioned that before. Maybe the failed experiment caused the fabric of... time and space itself?.. to just break, and now there are things bleeding through into our plane. At least, that's what I've gathered so far from what we have on hand."

Her eyes were glued to the screen, watching the video intently. "Amunn-Ho disappeared here. Maybe she was literally dragged through the... whatever the hell, a gap in space??"

Around that time, Saren got the comm from Autumn. "Okay, is there anything we want to do here? Besides the copy of the logs, which is something you have already gotten," he asked the group. "If not, we could begin leading the survivors to the shuttle, and then perhaps go looking for the rescue team."

"Um...." Seht tapped his fingers. He was still absolutely terrified, but he had an idea that may make things a bit safer for everyone. "Is there a way we can reverse these experiments? Like, with the original code and processes? Maybe we could get rid of these plant things and the Sunhead."

“The containment unit, could it be repaired, or at least Jury-rigged to work again?” She asked. (edited)

"I don't know too much about temporal sciences, but I could probably get whatever program ran the experiment to work again if so." Seht added to Klaa's suggestion.

She really didn’t like this coward, but maybe he could be useful. She thought to herself. “I suggest taking the parts to the shuttle to work on.”

4

"Perhaps that could be a good decision, " Saren looked up, where the survivors would be. "I just want to get those people to at least the most relative sense of safety. Paco suggested using the anyon charges to dissipate it. If we have found ground zero, then the, ah... treatment-- should be applied to this room, first. Then, slowly and surely, everything else in this dome would get decontaminated, for the lack of a better word."

"We could evacuate first and try to treat it after," Iviaan chimed in. "That way everyone will be safe in case something goes wrong."

"That could be the best course of action, I think," he nodded his head in agreement a bit too eagerly, and immediately winced.

"I'll start that while you all prep the experiment, then. I'll be of more use then..." With a small adjustment of their hoverchair, off they went.

"Ah," what an... interesting development. Saren kept looking down at his commbadge, as he had just finished talking with Suun, a conflicted look on his face. "They have found the Commander, alive. Apparently the... thing?.. helped them out." (edited)

“Helped?!” She asked in shock, as she continued gathering the broken pieces of the container.

Seht looked back and forth between the Vulcan lieutenant and the computer. "Um... so is that a 'no' on the sending it back, then?"

"That's what the Commander said, so yes, helped," he nodded to himself or maybe Klaa, or maybe both. "We should... maybe put a hold on the idea, for now, and focus on moving the survivors."

“Sounds good. I’m still taking this with us just in case.” She said with the parts still in her arms.

All of the valuable data, and broken pieces of the "cage", were all taken out of the laboratory, to be then brought to the shuttle waiting outside of the outpost, alongside the survivors.