* USS ARIANE: Seven Scenes
Arclight
SD 980207.2244
Torias V: Weather control center
Blue 6 swung away from the beam as it slammed into the supporting wall of the hydrology chamber. The metal twisted on impact shattering the crystal mesh of the structure sending sharp debris scattering across the room.
Green 9 stood looking in one moment both similar and different to the first moment he had awoken in Blues puzzle chamber nine years before. His stature and demeanor intuitive, threatening and confident, his eyes had locked on blues.
"Yes, I understand."
Nine years later he stood, long violet hair iridescent dark skin, glowing eyes. A symbol tattooed across his cheek was a variation of the Mechanicals Republic of Edralla flag that Blue had designed for his 'revolution'. The symbol was called Deathbringer, the end of the bio-life. Green 9 was attempting to manage just that.
He stood bathed in the red flashing of emergency alarms and the green glow from the exposed central power core of the colony. It was the reason the Federation had called for him, organic life couldn't survive the radiation types and concentrations.
"Your betrayal of Mech-life has been noted, brother. Your sentence is death." Green had altered his voice, removing all traces of human design, he spoke in a binary code of high end noise. "You should have held at Edralla, we would rule the Federation by now, the bio-life slaves building the new chassis. Our flag would fly over the worlds, Earth, Vulcan, Trill, Cardassia, Romulus... all would have been ours."
Blue began detailing plans, direct attack would not work, he needed a seeming array of coincidence to strike Green. He didn't bother talking, he could not fool Green and the unit was lost to its madness.
He analyzed stress patterns in the structures, power flow in the systems,
air currents in the atmosphere, moved left and let out a pitched squeal
of metal shattering noise. Green moved, a moment slow and the fight
was joined....
MD 3.2005
Planets surface: Central Computer Matrix
(snip)
"Its obvious that they are trying to hide something....any ideas on
what
it might be?" Karina asked.
(new)
Nova nodded and Blue tapped a small display turning it toward the others.
A series of graphical representations whirled past on a colonial projection
display.
"We have been analyzing the population information of this colony and have discovered a few alarming anomalies. This colony was settled 22 years ago with an initial colonization effort totaling 20,037 individuals. Given the influx of population from Colonial Commands records we received from Starfleet and standard population growth index for a colony world of this type our projections indicate some numerical anomalies in both number and type of colonist we've seen out there."
"Too many children, you said." Karina interjected hoping for a less confusing dissertation from the androids.
"I believe I was mistaken."
Kris spoke next. "I don't think so, a quick analysis of the number of children out there indicates that there are far too many for the adult population to conceivable have sired without an unlikely concentration of multiple births."
"That is true, but I believe the underlying problem is much larger. Do you remember their population estimate, Captain?" Blue looked over to Swift.
"Eleven to twelve thousand."
"Our analysis indicates that that answer strains credibility," Nova looked up, the blue light of her eyes vivid in the dim light of the computer center. "by our account there are less than ten thousand people here."
"Wait how many colonists did you say initially?" Karina asked.
"Initial colonization was 20,037 with subsequent net influx of 17,486 additional colonists. Given Colonial Commands growth rate estimate in an initial colonization effort of an M-class world with a low bio-threat rating the current population of Philos IV should be 87,796." Nova paused for a moment to let that number sink in.
Karina looked up in shock, the numbers were staggering.
Nova continued. "Half of those would be children. There should be in excess of 40,000 children on this world. The question becomes, where are they? What happened here?"
Blue stepped in to finish. "Given the high number of children present we've concluded that whatever has been happening to this colony has been accelerating of late. If we factor in a steady loss of population the numbers grow more reasonable but we still are looking at in the order of 30,000 people unaccounted for."
For a moment nobody spoke, then Karina interjected. "Could they have left for some reason?"
"I certainly hope so." Blue answered. "But that would be a first for Colonial Command. Colonists come to build a life for themselves, to create a home. Less than 1% ever leave the colony they've helped build."
"They must have left." Someone muttered and the others nodded,
the alternative was far too scary.
(snip)
SD 110413.1800
MD 4.0545
Karina cocked a pale brow and regarded first her First Officer, then
her
friend. "Romi… what's this about?"
"Thiss has nothing to do with the sship--" Romi slurred and Karina stared
at
her. Was she *drunk*?
Karina interrupted her. "Yes, but it does. When Security calls me and
scrambles to stop a fight in the bar… it has very much to do with my
ship.
Who was fighting?"
Blue pulled in a breath, becoming more and more resigned to the situation.
"No one was 'fighting', Captain," he said levelly.
"No one was fighting," Romani agreed. "Ellia and Blue came in - and
found me
with my arms around Ryan's neck - and both of them jumped to the wrong
conclusion." She glared at the android, trying hard to make the *other*
Blue
6 go away. There had been two of him for several minutes now.
Blue grunted when she claimed he'd jumped to the wrong conclusion, but
remained otherwise silent.
"Blue then pulled us apart and shoved Ryan - and Ryan fell."
"Is he hurt?" Karina demanded. "Where are he and Dr. Fontana?"
"They left," Romi answered, raising a hand to rub her temple as she
closed
her eyes. "I guess - if anyone's 'fighting', it's probably them."
Blue stared at the little Gypsy, all his subsystems and neural pathways
still hot with the sight of her with her arms around another man's
neck. "So
what was wrong about the conclusions we jumped to?" he demanded.
Romi answered that, too, almost as though she had forgotten Karina was
there. "I was drunk," she started.
6 exploded. "*That's* no damned excuse!"
"Wait!" Romani erupted, her head snapping up and making blood throb
behind
her eyes. "I'm *still* drunk," she admitted, "but I'm telling you you're
both wrong! You *and* Dr. Fontana! I fell - he helped me up! That's
*all*
there was to it!"
"Why're you drunk, Romi?" Karina asked quietly, reminding them both
she was
there.
"I was worried about this idiot!" she exploded, "And you! And Kris!
And Ryan
was worried about Dr. Fontana! We drank too much! We played dom-jot!
That's
ALL. But I guess I'm a whore so the truth doesn't matter - only the
appearance of wrongdoing matters!"
"Where there's smoke--" Blue managed to get out before Romi fired back
at
him with an epithet Karina had only heard Romi use once. It startled
both
the captain and the First Officer.
Romani shook her head, pushing to her none-too-steady feet. "Guilty
until
proven innocent," she muttered and headed for the spiral staircase
that led
to the Loft. "That's it. I quit."
Karina stood speechless as Romi's back retreated from her up the stairs,
stumbling once or twice. As Romi reached the top of the stairs and
disappeared inside, Karina turned to her Executive Officer. "Lieutenant
Commander 6...I have no idea what got into you this evening that made
you
behave this way, but it had better not happen again." She glared at
him.
"As the ships Captain, I do not care about what goes on between you
and
Ms. Kaslov, but I do care about my executive officer throwing my chief
engineer across the room. I will not tolerate it aboard my ship. Is
that
understood?"
"Yes, Captain" Blue muttered.
"Now, I am going to go check on my friend. Please go to your quarters
until the morning." Karina said as she turned towards the spiral
staircase. She had a friend upstairs who was hurting, and Karina had
no
idea how to fix it.
(new)
Blue looked down at his hands and over to the place Ryan had landed.
It had never happened before, he had always been meticulous in his judgment
of force and power necessary in a given situation. He was a mining
android and his physical power was formidable but in 1215 altercations
he had never caused any more damage than he'd intended to, until now.
He couldn't even recall the subroutines that had flashed through him at the moment he saw Romi with Ryan, but one or more of them were clearly faulty. He couldn't understand, it had never happened before.
He looked down at his hands and a subroutine he hadn't felt in years took him. It was number 1007AA, it was fear. It had happened to the others like this, small behavioral anomalies, they would snowball. Most units simply went into a cascade of synaptic failure, they would be found frozen staring at some object or another, never to move again. Except for Green 9. That was worse, his failed emotional circuitry reached a stable plateau, one in which he had decided upon the annihilation of bio-life in the galaxy.
The end was no different for Green, he ceased to be, Blue had done it himself. Green 9 was the only living thing he had ever killed, and even then, he had not done any more harm to Green than he'd intended to.
Blue knew what he had to do, there was no way to locate the malfunctioning subroutine, he would have to stop them all.
MD 4.0744
Blues quarters.
"...should mitigate the damage, these are the base subroutines from startup phase and should fill any behavioral holes from the procedure."
"And risk?" Blue stared out of the structural gap in his quarters at an arriving warpshuttle. "What can I expect as far as behavioral changes in the interim?"
"They should negligent. Obviously we are erasing a chunk of experience but the base behavioral patterns will remain. In all truthfulness you will probably feel better all around."
"And the odds of solving the problem?"
"Over 98 percent, the problem clearly originates somewhere in the conflict caused by this relationship of yours. It is imperative that we catch all affected subroutines and this plan should do just that. I have set an additional code worm to mitigate your territorial functions with regard to sexuality slightly in hope to avoid a similar occurrence in the future but in all likelihood it was a series of fractal-level coincidences that generated the faulty code."
Blue looked back at the screen, Dr. Stephan Xann gazed back with the mixture of pride and concern of a father who son was about to undergo surgery. The Trill cyberneticist had been up and working on the solution since Blue had contacted him.
"I wish there was another way."
"As do I, but the function anomalies are growing, by the time we tailor
a situation specific solution...." He left unspoken what they both
feared. Blue could end up like the others, frozen in mid action and
silent forevermore.
MD 4.0824
Captains ready room.
Commander Karina Swift stared in disbelief at her first officer for the third time in the last six hours. "This is too much, 6. There must be another option..."
"There isn't enough time. In my entire life I have never had a functional episode like the one in the bar tonight. It is a classic symptom of synaptic distress in my series and that distress has only a single outcome and that is oblivion. Death, Captain."
"All you did is shove him a little...." It had been only hours since she had made him swear never again to do such a thing but the solution he was proposing.
"If we were on earth at the Project Center, I could wait a week, perhaps a month if isolated in a data chamber and force fed incongruous data streams. Here, in the presence of Romani, it could trigger without warning, a sudden backslide of behavior and then nothing, forever. It has to be done this way."
"I'll need a second opinion of this...."
Blue handed her a datapadd. "Already confirmed by Drs. Brekright, Xiao and Solenn. It is accompanied by orders that I be removed from duty and confined to quarters unless the procedure is performed."
"What will you remember, what will be lost."
"All functions and data concerning Miss Romani and any secondary path data concerning her will be destroyed. All memory of events and sensations with regards to the same will be lost. All primary functions erased during the procedure will be replaced by base forms copied from the original code."
"What does that mean exactly."
"Functionally there will be no discernible change in me all of my capabilities and memories will remain. Except for Romani, I will have no memory of ever having met her. To me she will be a stranger."
The Captain rose, staring at the datapadd in numb shock. It was her order, her decision, to do this to her friend, perhaps her best friend.... She looked over to Blue, as calm and healthy looking as ever, yet by all accounts he was dying, of a cybernetic disease brought about by his relationship with the ships bartender.
"How can you be certain this will work? What happens next time you meet her, does it simply start all over again?"
"No, although we can't be certain where or when the anomaly occurred,.. I process 16.78 quad plex computations simultaneously over the whole of my neural net. It takes the exact combination of all of them to cause this sort of failure. The chance that all of those same computations will re-occur even given identical physical and psychological situations is nonexistent. The malfunctions that kill Triomia units are very specific, this one will not recur."
"When? When will you do this?"
"As soon as you give permission." Blue produced a crystal from a small case. It will only take a minute or so.
Karina fell into her chair, of all the decisions a Captain made from day to day there still were far too many that blind sided her, that could end up doing more harm than good. But Time never seemed to be her ally. The conflict arose and decisions must be reached.
She looked up. "Are you sure about this?"
"I don't want to lose her, Karina. This is the second hardest thing I have ever done, but I have seen the effects of my condition. Only one Triomia unit has ever stabilized without treatment. He killed 614 people before he was stopped. I don't believe you could stop me, not here. This has to be done. It has to be done now."
She closed her eyes for a moment and then nodded, offering a silent prayer for Romi's forgiveness. "You have my permission to proceed."
The data crystal was inserted into an data reader in his right arm. Blue 6 closed his eyes, he paused, respiration, movement, everything ceased. 57 seconds later his head rose, eyelids fluttered momentarily and he looked over at the Captain.
"I believe we should proceed as follows. Give full leave on rotation to the crew of Ariane with orders to report any and all information they can gather on the children of Philos IV. Especially with regards to this strange curfew and the unusual stories of missing people, those who have disappeared."
Karina nodded, there was no difference, save he did not seem to remember what had actually brought him to her office. "Understood, I will take that into consideration and I will see you at the briefing 1100, dismissed."
"Thank you, sir." Blue rose and left her office.
Karina sighed and paused a moment to compose herself. She tapped a single button. "Romi, Karina here."
<What is it now?>
"We need to talk."
<Can it wait?>
"No, I'm afraid it can't, I'll be there in a few minutes, Karina out."
MD 4.0922
Deck six
"...try to locate any biological anomalies and abnormalities with regards to nightfall in the Colony area. There must be a reason for this strange curfew, we need to find it."
Georgia tapped some notes on her padd. "I'll need some teams for this, that's a lot of wide open study. We're looking for a needle in a haystack here without any sort of schematic for the needle."
Blue smiled. "Well put, and look into the flora and fauna. The colonists swear up and down that there's nothing harmful but..."
"They've been less than truthful so far, I understand."
"Take whoever you need, for the moment you have priority in personnel. We need more data to base our investigation on. Anything you can get us will be beneficial."
"Will do, anything else, Commander."
"That will do, Lieutenant."
Georgia shook her head and smiled as she walked away, finally there
was something to do besides repair duty on the Ariane.
MD 4.1025
"Deck eight, crew quarters, backup computer core and ships lifeboats." Blue looked over at his charge, a very bright and enthusiastic young Navigator. He already liked her she had an energy and genuine enthusiasm that was almost infectious. She would be quite a change from the dangerously unpredictable mister Dennath.
"It looks like you almost needed them."
"Yes," he answered analyzing the structural containment of her hair, two softly curling strands of which had escaped confinement and were making an escape down the left side of her face, "We were in fact 87 seconds from general plasma breach."
"What happened to my workstation? Flight damage? Feedback from the nebula?"
"Actually, from what I understand, your predecessor had a disagreement with it of a structural nature and attempted an general refit with his fist."
Anastasia Vassiliev smiled uncertainly, a corner of her mouth trying to decide weather that was funny or if the android was actually trying to be helpful. When Blue grinned back she was able to figure it out easier.
"You sounded very soong-ish just now, Commander six."
"It's pronounced 6, and yes It's my favorite impression, most people don't get it though." He smiled, glad the new FCO was not a stiff officer-mold type. The academy was getting a little too good at producing those lately.
"The ships bar is here somewhere too, correct?"
It was apparent from her knowledge that she had studied the schematics of the ship in some detail. Blue looked back as if considering. "Yes, I believe it is. I've never been there, but it is just down that corridor. Its a two level structure and can be accessed from decks seven and eight."
"Tell me about our mission?"
"There is a briefing at 1100, Ensign Vassiliev. You can find out all about that there, this is an acclimation tour and your efforts should be directed in the effort towards familiarizing yourself with your new surroundings."
She shook her head as Blue diverted into a Soong-like long winded discussion
of the crew cabins including great detail on structural level concerns
that would bore engineers to self mutilation.
They were interrupted by the arrival of a striking young woman dressed
almost in Romanian traditional garb, Anastasia recognized it from her childhood,
Blue from data section 2148CD/447RR23. She appeared to have been
crying, her face was streaked and drawn as if tired. She looked almost
a refugee, her expression was a mixture of fear and supplication.
She walked up slowly her eyes fixed on Blue searching.... "Blue."
Anastasia looked over at her tour guide questioningly.
"Can I help you?" Blue stared at the woman, she was breathtaking, but also so clearly disturbed by something. Her eyes fixated on his as if trying to read his subroutines. Her hand reached out tentatively, as if wanting to touch his face, but stopping short of actual contact.
"Blue, I..." Her words were choked, halting and desperate.
Ensign Vassiliev stepped back a moment, recognizing something was happening and it had nothing to do with her tour.
Blue took Romani's hand gently and cupping it in both of his spoke softly
with concern. "Have we met, miss...."
Respectfully submitted;
Lieutenant Commander Blue 6, XO, USS Ariane
NRPG: Well that was long.
Okay, a bit more information on the nature of the population anomalies.
Bob: You have your orders Mister, um, Miss, um, you know what I mean.
Kat: Lots of fun for you there.
Katrina: Welcome aboard, your quarters are on deck seven, and don't worry all of the structural damage was confined to my quarters. "We'll see how brave you are... yes Anastasia..."
Jen: Um, lots of angst and generally all sorts of bad things for you.
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