Lt. Robin Hopper: Man in the Middle
Lt. JG Kivik
((Amity Outpost – Grand Mezzanine, The Brew Continuum))
Robin watched with amused interest as the 5’2” J’naii lifted the Extra Large cup of Raktajino off the counter and brought it to nir lips with a satisfied sigh. She was surprised to see that the little Science Officer didn’t grow warp nacelles and take off after nir initial sip.
Kivik: I really need to speak to someone about setting one of these up aboard the Kitty Hawk.
Hopper: You drink one of those every day?
Kivik: ::Smiling:: Oh, sure. Well, not one of these necessarily. I try to change it up. But once I found out they serve ‘extra larges’ here, I’ve never looked back.
The Barista set Robin’s medium chai latte on the counter with a confirming nod, eyebrows raised. Robin giggled.
Hopper: Okay, well, I don’t know how you do it, but whatever works for you. ::Smiling:: I will stick to my normal-sized beverages.
Kivik: ::Shrugging and laughing along:: It’s all in the metabolism. ::Gesturing towards the train platform:: Shall we? Don’t want to keep Wong and Reade waiting for too long.
((15 Minutes Later – Medical Center, Crusher Wing, Conference Room))
As the door whooshed open, Kivik stepping in just ahead of her, Robin smiled and waved in greeting. Ikaia, of course, she knew – but the other man, whom she figured must be Kivik’s roommate, Lt. Reade, seemed just as friendly.
Wong: Aloha! Good to see you two. Please take a seat!
As they moved to the nearest seats, Robin caught Kivik’s eye momentarily. The J’naii did a double-take and pointed emphatically to nir upper lip, scrunching nir forehead ridges. Robin squinted for a moment before reaching up and wiping the little milk mustache away from her own upper lip.
oO Always a great first impression, Hops! Oo
Reade: Heyo! Pleasure to see you Kivik. ::To Hopper:: I do not think we have seen each other before. I am Lt.JG Scotty Reade, engineering officer.
Hopper: ::Smiling, slightly awkwardly at her own initial appearance:: It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a bit about you from the good Lieutenant.
She nodded at Kivik.
Kivik: ::With a cheeky wink:: Scotty. ::Turning to Ikaia with a smile:: Ikaia.
Wong: I’ve got water in the middle of the table for anyone who wants it.
Reade: I will happily take some more water.
Hopper: Thanks, Ikaia – I’ll stick to my tea for now. ::Rolling her eyes at herself:: I might need to save the water for ‘cleaning up’ after.
Kivik: ::Pouring a glass for Reade:: Here you go, Scotty.
Robin placed her hands on the table in front of her and pulled herself into a more upright posture, prepared to take in the days’ assignment.
Hopper: So – what’s on the docket?
Wong: Anyways, the reason why I have all of you here is because well…. You’re all familiar with what happened with Commander Ukinix, right?
Reade: I am aware of what happened.
Hopper: I picked up a little bit from Rivi… And Kivik told me a little more. But I wouldn’t mind a refresher. I actually haven’t met the Commander yet.
Kivik: Well, the confounding variable with that, Hopper, is that there are currently two Commanders you might need to meet. As I mentioned during our onboarding tour, Commander Ukinix was accidentally split along the genetic line – Human and Betazoid. You see, we were utilizing experimental transporter technology under very unusual conditions.
Hopper: Ah. Right, yes, during the last mission. The gravity well. I remember your model.
Kivik nodded, then indicated Wong should continue.
Wong: We need to work on the reversal process in case those two want to merge back together. To recap, the MST split Commander Ukinix apart into two unique individuals. Totally calling it MiSTing, by the way. I mean the use of the MST itself. Not the splitting our XO into two people part.
Reade: Interesting
Hopper: ::Ribbing him (verbally) from across the table:: Sounds like you have your priorities straight, Ikaia.
Robin chuckled, convinced she saw the smallest hint of a blush forming on Ikaia’s face.
Wong: Ahem! Anyways! So Kivik, Hopper, have you had a chance to look into what happened with the MST and as to how this happened in the first place?
Reade: That is a good point to start at.
Kivik: We’ve made some progress on that front, yes. With Lieutenant Hopper’s assistance, I’ve managed to put together a more robust model of the gravity well’s event horizon. We were working with a lot of shallow data, given how little time we had to properly study the anomaly. Fortunately, our latest batch of Science Officers included several physicists who understand these phenomena better than I do. ::Motioning to Hopper:: Care to expand on that?
Kivik pressed a few buttons on the table’s central console, and a detailed holographic model of the gravity well, complete with tiny Kitty Hawk, Independence-B, and shuttlecraft appeared above them, rotating slowly.
Hopper: Sure thing. This model captures the moment the MST pattern enhancers managed to ‘lock on’ to the Commander – ::to Kivik:: Is that right?
Kivik nodded.
Hopper: So, digging into our model a little more, what we can see here are large-scale gravitational waves acting on the boundaries of a subspace pocket – these were triggered by the interaction of the Independence-B’s warp field with the nearby benamite field, if I recall correctly.
Kivik nodded once again.
Hopper: Now, the interesting thing about this – and this was mostly only known theoretically prior to this incident – is how the gravitational waves affected the temporal fabric as well. As I’m sure you’re all aware, matter passing into the gravity well was split into various temporal fragments, which released hundreds of trillions of tightly-packed tachyon particle clusters.
Robin looked around at the table, noting that everyone seemed to be following thus far.
Hopper: It will be difficult to confirm this without looking directly the transporter data, but off of these preliminary findings, I suspect that the same sort of tachyon interference crewmembers experienced would have affected the transporter sensors as well. In other words, rather than sensing one man-in-the-middle with mixed DNA, they may have been inadvertently ‘spoofed’ into detecting two individuals.
With that, Robin took a seat – waiting eagerly to see if anyone would have further ideas or questions to discuss.
Reade: We could look into the MST logs.
Hopper: I’d be fascinated to see those. As someone with mixed ancestry myself, I guess I have a sort of vested personal interest in finding out if this sort of thing could happen again under other circumstances. ::Shrugging:: Then again, two of me might be kind of fun.
Wong: Response
Kivik: I’ve actually acquired some assistance with processing those logs, thanks to Commander Core. The data’s still pretty fresh, but an Engineer might have better luck with it. ::Looking at Reade:: Scotty?
Reade: Interesting. Let me take a deeper look.
Kivik unclipped nir PADD, found the relevant file, and passed it over to Reade.
Kivik: Feel free to send yourself a copy as well, since you’re on the project Scotty.
While the Engineer looked over the logs, Hoppe expounded on her thoughts.
Hopper: So what you’ll want to look for, assuming our theory is correct, is evidence of tachyon interference in the pattern enhancer’s processing. I can’t say for sure, but I suspect you’d see unusual duplications. ::Looking to Wong and Kivik:: As we noted, matter was being split into ‘fragments’ and these fragments were being duplicated. The pattern enhancers would have had a heck of a time trying to decipher all that – especially if they were being bombarded by tachyon clusters simultaneously.
Reade/Wong: Response
Kivik: Tell us what you see, Scotty.
Hopper: ::Putting her hands out on the table and leaning forward in anticipation:: It’s tachyon displacement, isn’t it? ::To Kivik:: I just know it.
Reade/Wong: Response
Kivik: That is very interesting.
Hopper: Is there anything else unusual?
Reade/Wong: Response
TBC
