Answers Are Slow in Coming

Posted on Fri 29th May, 2020 @ 5:39am by

1,165 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Unknown Space
Timeline: MD 3, 1842

McCord leaned back with a disgusted sigh. "Sir, I don't know if we're ever going to back track this to the source of the problem. If Hari can't diagnose it ...." She shook her head.

Henry looked at McCord with a quizzical look upon his face. "Sir?" He asked. "I can't recall the last time you called me sir. Now I know we are in some serious trouble, aren't we?"

Laughing, Riko said, "Old habits still die hard in the subconscious, I guess." Sobering, she added, "I feel like there's absolutely no way to go backwards, since we don't have navigation coordinates, and I think if we take off in any direction, it's only going to make things worse." She looked back at the large section of space pictured on the science console.

"You know how on Earth, if you're lost, they always say either stay where you are and wait for someone to find you, or head downhill and find a water course to follow? Well, we don't know where downhill is, there's no water out here, and that only leaves us with staying put ... but no one is looking for us." Sighing, she rubbed her forehead, which was beginning to ache.

Henry walked over to his friend and placed his hand on her right shoulder. "Riko, we are going to be okay. You do know that don't you? All we have to do is figure this out just like we have figured out dozens of situations on Samurai.

"We will find our water source, or it will find us. We have our distress beacon on repeat. But we are going to find our way."

"Oh, sure, I know," she looked up at him and smiled. "It's just that right this minute, I'm not quite sure how we're going to pull off the miracle. But we will." She looked back at her console, pushing aside thoughts of the one time the miracle wasn't enough and they lost good friends. "At least no one is shooting at us right this minute!"

"True." Henry said as he too recalled the worst day of his time on Samurai. Shaking the feeling off, Henry refocused his attention on the problem at hand. "O.K. We need to figure out why the bio-neural gel pack went haywire and took control of the ship. These are a new type of gel pack that the Federation has just finished developing. Mind doing some sciencey test on some of the packs?"

Laughing again, Riko said, "Sciencey thing? A new technobabble term? Do you have something in mind, or you want me to just wing the sciencey stuff?"

"Actually there is something," Henry said as he turned to the nearest console and retrieved the neural gel packs specs. "The neural gel packs enhance the calculation speeds of the ship's computer system. Just like any neural network, something harmful can disrupt the pathways that make up the network. What if something got into the gel packs and somehow infected them and made them go haywire?"

"So ... maybe it wasn't the AI? Or maybe the AI was the thing which got into the gel packs." McCord became the complete scientist, now that she had a working hypothesis. She posed questions, but wasn't really asking someone so much as thinking out loud. "How could we test first if there is something that is in the gel, and second if the AI was corrupted in some way? Henry, do we have any more from the batch that weren't installed in the ship?"

Henry went over to one of the storage compartments located underneath the seating area and pulled out a silver Starfleet case. "This is one of the original Bio-neural gel packs for Samurai's new system." Henry walked it over to Riko and handed it over to her. "I have isolated the AI's in the individual ship's systems after I wild ride. We should be able to run any test we need within those isolated systems."

"Alright! Now you're talking! I can compare the unused ones to the ones that went crazy, and we'll see what we see. I need to get these downstairs to compare them. I'm glad we converted space down there for a lab, even if it's small. It would be nice to have a tidy cause-effect solution," she said, then stood up, grinning. "That's a term we scientists like to use ... cause-effect."

Henry chuckled at his friends' joke as he ran his own test on the Bio-neural gel packs. The grin on his face lasted until he heard the terminal beeping, letting him know that the computer had found something.

"Unknown biological fungus?" Henry read as he looked at the computer-generated analysis on the screen. He tapped his combadge, knowing he was beginning to be out of his depth. "Riko, I know you just left, but I need you to come and look at something the computer just discovered. This may be what we are looking for."

Riko tapped her com, "Be right with you. I'm almost set up here, and the testing can run on its own."

In minutes McCord was back on the bridge, asking, "What've you found?"

"Take a look at this?" Henry said to the scientist as he pulled up the computer's analysis on the screen in front of them. "I have never seen anything like this before." Henry moved out of the way say that Riko could read over the analysis of the fungal bacteria.

"Huh. Endosymbiosis. Haven't seen that, but I've read about it. Computer, show the symbiotes together." A microscopic picture flipped onto the screen and Riko leaned close to check it and then straightened.

"Look right here," she pointed out to Henry. "See how the bacteria are localized within the cytoplasm of the cells of the fungi partner? The bacteria grow within the membranes of the fungal vacuoles, always. This is how the two unite, but what caused it in the AI gel packs?"

Tapping her thumb against her chin, the scientist thought for a moment. "Computer, show analysis of unused units against the gel packs which were used, vertical alignment." Another picture flipped onto the screen. "Highlight the endosymbiosis pairs in red."

The computer complied, and Riko said, "As we suspected, they had no infection, as it were, until they came in contact with our systems. So now ... where's the bacteria in the system? Or the fungus, for that matter! In most cases, bacteria provide the fungus with some form of metabolic benefit while the fungus often provides a suitable living environment. But we shouldn't have either one in the yacht's systems, so where did it come from? The gel packs are sealed units, and we can see there's nothing in the unused ones."

"Well, could we have picked it up from the from Nāmaka?" Henry asked. "Can certain types of radiation allow for bacteria to grow in some biological entities?"

Look for more in an upcoming episode!

 

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