Ensign Imril - The Eureka Moment
Chris Taylor
(( Holodeck 2 - Deck 2, USS Artemis-A ))
Imril: You said it was growing. I’m no expert, but the only way that could happen is if it was ‘feeding’ somehow. But on what? Something that could supply it with neutrinos? Like a coronal mass ejection? A charged plasma belt, like the Bajoran wormhole is anchored to?
Gnai: Correct, it needed some sort of fuel to expand, likely some sort of subatomic particle as you postulate.
There were countless variations on the theme of “wormhole” across the galaxy, which left the net still fairly wide. Sources of particles that might feed a wormhole were fairly common, but ones strong enough to coax a wormhole big enough to swallow a planet, those were rarer.
Imril: Could it have been something on or being emitted by Galador I itself? Something that drew the wormhole to it? Some experiment or technology was spitting out neutrinos? ::Eyes widening in speculative wonder:: Like a projector… Lieutenant, could the source of the wormhole have been Galador I?
Gnai: ::thinking:: This doesn’t think that the planet itself was the source of the wormhole, given that the ancient Galadorans were able to observe the wormhole’s effects on the system and create the arc ships that carried them off-world towards Galador II…
Imril: The planet, no. A planet radioactive enough to spit out neutrinos in the amounts I’m thinking of would have made the place unlivable for your people without a wormhole’s help. But possibly something on the planet . A supercollider. A high number of nuclear reactors. A wormhole or soliton wave projector seems unlikely, since you haven't mentioned any of your folk working on such projects back then. But all it takes is one genius crackpot testing their ideas in a way that goes badly.
If Zephram Cochrane’s missile-shaped ship had exploded over the sky of 21st-Century Montana, who would have ever known there’d been a warp engine onboard?
Gnai: It certainly could have been drawn to the planet by some form of emissions like that, yes…
The Lieutenant didn’t seem all that thrilled with this line of speculation. But sometimes scientific inquiry led to places you didn’t want to end up at.
Imril: It’s speculation, again, I know. I’m just looking for something that the computer will accept as sufficient to initiate a simulation at this point. We can swap in other factors after we get one.
Gnai: ::gesturing for its PADD back:: Wait, this might have something that would help. Galadoran technology is… slightly different from that found in the Federation. Perhaps it was something to do with that which produced the fuel for the wormholes rapid expansion.
Much of the revealed data revolved around the Galadorans’ novel approach to light-based computing. Something that Imril hadn’t needed to deal with when they’d repaired Gnai’s exosuit. It was largely chemical and optical based, standard enough. Where it varied from the ‘usual’ means of organizing digital information and relaying commands was the use of liquid mediums in place of solid-state means such as fiber-optic cables or isolinear crystals. Light passed through a number of fluid filled chambers, be they artificial of the Galadoran’s own bodies.
All brilliant solutions for computing in a watery environment, but ones that came with caveats of space due to water’s resistance to compression and the supplemental items needed to direct the information impulses (such as lasers and mirrors). It explained a lot about the lack of hard data about the Galador I system and its destruction. Storage space really did come at a premium with this technology, or at least its ancient version. Starfleet’s methodology of hoarding every scrap of information ever discovered simply was never an option for those who had fled Galador I.
But it didn’t provide an immediate suggestion as to what might have been on the planet that could have produced neutrinos.
Imril: This is fascinating stuff. Really. I’d have to study this form of computing, though, how it developed before and after the planet’s destruction, before I can work it into all of this. “”Tlaking to themself:: How can you improve upon a water-based computing by generating greater energy…?
Suddenly, Imril realized that the technology wasn’t the solution to the mystery. The water which contained it was! They hadn’t accounted for the fact that ships full of aquatic beings would also be necessarily full of water!
They swiped back to the padd’s navigation data.
Imril: All of those ships, full of all of that water, moving all of that mass… The only way these velocity numbers make any sense is if the ships were putting out power levels of… Fusion Engines! There’s your nuclear reactions right there! The more slapdash the build -- and I think we can safely assume your ancestors were building in a hurry -- the more neutrinos emitted as result of inefficient reactions!
Gnai: Response
Imril: Cause and effect. The ancient Galadorans detect a wormhole, determine its a danger to the system, to themselves, and build up a fleet to survive it. A fleet whose very existence drew the wormhole towards their world like a hungry scavenger. Escaping the planet accelerated its destruction.
Which was, granted, was quite different from causing it.
Gnai: Repsonse
Imril handed back the padd and started tapping commands into the platform’s railing computer. Tying in mass/velocity data from the computer’s starship database. Galadoran vessels, Xindi-Aquatic ships, any others they could think of known to entirely flood their vessels. The maneuverability ratios were markedly different from the ones they could expect to get from Starfleet vessels, even with the limited aquatic accommodations for cetaceans and other select crew. Ships which the computer had defaulted to in its failed attempt to create a simulation.
The computer digested the new information and spat back a series of equations and a ready green signal.
Imril: Computer, initiate simulation utilizing the supplied aquatic starship parameters. Highlight all planets, planetary dwarves, and moons large enough to be spherical in the same manner as my journal program.
The computer chimed its compliance. The space below the observation platform became filled with the visage of a moon, barren as Earth’s but pale as Europa. Beyond it, on the black horizon, a blue-green ball that was the approximation of Galador 1.
A series of circles lit up. Drawing attention in some cases to the pinpricks of light that were the barely-visible planets, scattered along the solar plane. Many more circles followed, centered on points too dim to see. As did the ball of white light which was the system’s star. Thankfully, the holodeck thought to dim the star this time.
Finally, a swirl of pinks and purples appeared. Ribbons of light located almost opposite the star and slightly above the solar plane as defined by the planets. It was more-or-less five times as far from Galador I as its moon was. The wormhole; its hungry, wide-open maw facing Galador I, the moon, and the two officers.
Gnai: Repsonse
(OOC: Some notes on Galadoran computing tech were lifted right out of the species wiki page. The consequences for data storage in that medium are my own speculation and were discussed with/ approved by Lich. Also, I’m assuming Galador I had a moon based upon the impact the resultant tides would have had for development of complex life on the planet.)
Tags/TBC :)
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Ensign Imril
Engineering Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240110I12