Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft - This is What Meta is For

[Carter Schimpff]

(( Hazardous Materials Lab, Deck 11 – USS Artemis-A ))

Cole: Backup first. Then the next seal. Let's not let the mysterious box make the decisions.

Breys: I think I see a spot we can pipe it in right… here. The conduits are made for Romulan tech but I think you can make it fit.

Tarsan: I can make it fit. Anyone got a hammer? ::holding up his hand:: Joking, joking!

Silveira: Let’s keep both hammer and jokes aside. Just remember, no explosions.

Roy’s right eyebrow rose by perhaps a millimeter.

No jokes?

He turned his eyes slightly toward Commander Silveira, taking in the man’s posture, his voice, the ironclad refusal to let absurdity into a room that had already made a series of generous invitations to it. This, Roy felt, required medical consideration. Vitor Silveira, as previously observed, was not a man allergic to gallows humor. He had never seemed the sort to banish jokes from a hazardous materials lab unless something rather serious had lodged itself under his ribs.

Perhaps there was still a trace of Callisian influence in him.

Perhaps command stress presented differently in tactical officers.

Perhaps Roy should order a... supplementary... physical when this was over.

Bancroft: Commander’s orders. Though personally, sir, I think we ought to allow the Ensign one joke – if he’s successful. As a treat.

Vitor tilted his head in Roy’s direction. Roy chose to interpret the gesture as deferential and legally binding.

All right, then. Surprise physical postponed.

For now.

Tarsan brought the external feed into alignment. The lab’s systems responded with a low, layered hum as power moved from ship to console, console to field regulator, field regulator to an object that no one in the room trusted and everyone in the room was now, regrettably, professionally obligated to understand.

The crate answered.

It was barely a sound. A thread in the background pitch, almost too faint to separate from the lab’s own machinery.

Cole: Wait. Something in there just shifted. 

Cole raised her hand, palm outward. It was a simple gesture, but it carried the authority of a security officer who had decided the entire room would benefit from remaining uneventful for the next several seconds.

Everyone stopped.

Tarsan: When you say… shifted?

Silveira: Care to elaborate Lieutenant?

Cole: ::not moving from her listening position:: It sounded like there was a change in pitch from within the box.

Bancroft: Do you have a theory on what might have caused it?

Cole: Grandpa Dorian used to say the worst machines were the polite ones. The ones that kept working right up until they decided not to. This feels like one of those.

Cole looked at everyone around the room, then leaned back toward the crate, listening with a focus that made Roy instinctively lower his own breathing.

Breys: ::quietly:: What is she doing? 

Tarsan: ::shrugs:: I don’t know… but we haven’t got long until the power gives out.

Bancroft: By my readout, sixty seconds at best. 

Breys: May I ask what you are doing, sir?

Cole: Trying to decide if this thing is an imminent threat or not. 

Breys: You don’t have to do that alone. I think I can help from here. I can give you a higher resolution image of what you’re working with as the scanning frequencies slide into place. 

Cole: I’ll take the help. Right now I’m working with one suspicious noise and a bad feeling.

Roy looked toward Breys.

Bancroft: D’tin, do we have any better idea on what’s inside yet?

Breys: This inner layer is the Multi-Adaptive shielding the tricorders found, it’s like cloak lite for sensors. Once Lieutenant Cole finishes with her inspection, I'm going to try an antiproton scan.

Breys flushed a beautiful shade of crimson-chartreuse.

The forcefield threw a soft harmonic sheen across the casing, a shimmer that passed over the crate’s surface like a pressure wave across water.

The sound inside answered.

Breys: With permission of course, sir.

Tarsan: Sounds good to me - not that you need my permission ::grinning wryly:: 

Silveira: Your call Lieutenant.

Cole: ::steps back:: Alright. Let’s see what it’s hiding.

Bancroft: Let’s have that scan, D’tin.

Breys immediately set to work at her console. Data began to scroll across several of the overhead monitors, first as meaningless interference, then as shadowed bands of density and return. The crate did not become transparent so much as less committed to being opaque.

Breys: Activating antiproton scan now, we should be getting a clear outline of internal components soon, no details though.

Tarsan: ::breathing a sigh of relief:: Power supply stable again - don’t think it’ll last for more than an hour or two but it gives us some breathing room.

Silveira: That will be enough time. We have to crack this as soon as possible.

Cole: Then we use the time we’ve got. Does anyone have any ideas?

Roy, still watching the scan resolve, lifted one hand faintly.

Bancroft: ::idly:: I believe Gavrin mentioned something about a hammer?

Silveira narrowed his eyes.

Alright, fine. No jokes. 

That surprise physical was definitely back on.

Breys: I’m no Engineer, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Do any of you recognize what we’re looking at? Are we even sure it's technology?

Tarsan: I really really hope that’s not what it looks like… ::checking the scanner, confirming some readings::

Silveira: I never seen anything like that.

Cole: I don’t know what it is yet. I do know someone thought it was important enough to hide behind shielding and power management.

Breys: Any ideas on how to get a clearer picture on what this thing is before we open the box completely? Maybe a probe?

Roy looked immediately toward the only engineer in the room.

So did everyone else.

There were, Roy had discovered, few social experiences more clarifying than being the only person present with a useful specialty for a particular question.

Gavrin Tarsan went pale, which Roy found understandable. He also began adjusting his console, which Roy found admirable.

Tarsan: I don’t think we need to - I know what it is. I’m picking up neutrinos. I am… very sure that’s a repurposed spatial trajector. 

Silveira: A what?

Cole: Gavrin, I need the version that starts with what it does, not what it’s called.

Roy had encountered the term before, though mostly in Starfleet Medical’s large and troubling catalogue of ‘Technologies That Make Search-and-Rescue Physicians Develop Headaches.’

He stepped closer to the display, translating as much for himself as for the room.

Bancroft: Spatial trajector. Think of it as a sort of reverse-transporter. Instead of disassembling you and reassembling you somewhere else, it disassembles… well, physics mostly… and brings you and your destination together in space and time.

Breys: Response

Tarsan: So uh, remember how I thought there might be an intelligence in there? You’d need somewhere to store the neural matrix. I think rather than using it as a transporter, they’ve used it to fold space in on itself to make a sort of… dimensional pocket.

Silveira: How could that happen in such a small container? And with what power?

Cole: I don’t know how, but I’m starting to think “because they shouldn’t have” is part of the answer.

Bancroft: Well, it certainly explains the modified singularity drive we found. D’tin, did your scans show anything unusual about the backup power cell? Exotic materials, nonstandard regulators, anything that looks like it was designed by someone with a grudge against Euclid?

Breys: Response

Tarsan gestured at the overhead monitors.

Tarsan: I don’t know. It’s possible the pocket will crumple in on itself and destroy the entire thing. Or uh.. It might turn itself inside out and everything inside the pocket would try and… inhabit the same space as everything around it. 

Silveira: That’s… Confusing and it sounds bad…

Cole: So best case, it collapses and we lose the contents. Worst case, reality gets… ::moving her hands together into a single tight ball::

Roy drew a slow breath between his teeth.

Bancroft: Huh. Second time today my entire existence has been threatened by advanced engineering. ::glancing between Cole and Tarsan, the faintest smile under his mustache:: And I can’t help noticing that the two of you are present in both incidents. ::kindly:: D’tin, in the future you might consider requesting a transfer if you’re ever assigned to a team with the three of us together.

Breys: Response

Tarsan: Yeah uh, the metaphor kinda falls apart there. 

Silveira: Or on itself from what you said Ensign. 

Cole: ::shrugs:: That’s the trouble with metaphors.

Roy cut his eyes toward Cole.

Bancroft: ::leaning forward:: You, of all people, have trouble with metaphors? I may need to sit down.

Breys: Response

Silveira closed his eyes, took a deep breath and rubbed his neck before he spoke again.

Silveira: Let’s see if you are right, Ensign Tarsan. ::He looked at the others:: Anyone have any other thoughts?

Cole: We need to know whether opening the box reveals the contents or collapses the conditions keeping them where they are.

A fair assessment, which was unfortunate.

The universe delighted in fair assessments that left no pleasant choices. Keep the crate sealed, preserve its internal conditions, protect the lab, and learn almost nothing useful. Open it, gain evidence, possibly destabilize a pocket of folded space that might contain machinery, data, an intelligence, or simply the very rapid end of their existence.

There was also the matter of command expectation.

Munro would want answers. MacKenzie would want answers faster and with fewer survivable excuses. Roy had technically risen beyond the rank most susceptible to being airlocked for investigative disappointment, but Captain MacKenzie’s relationship with technicalities had always seemed highly conditional at best.

And it was, in fact, Munro who had promoted him.

Which meant MacKenzie might still consider him emotionally, spiritually, or administratively airlockable.

Bancroft: Unless something’s changed with our sensor tech in the past ::checks chrono:: few seconds, it sounds like the only way we’re going to learn what’s inside is to actually open it. D’tin? Gavrin?

Breys/Tarsan: Response

Silveira nodded.

Silveira: OK we can also try that. Just remember, no boom on the box

Cole: If that pocket is real, then this isn’t a box anymore. It’s a boundary.

Roy returned his attention to the containment controls and verified the lab’s layered protections one by one. Forcefield. Radiation suppression. Atmospheric isolation. Biohazard quarantine. Blast baffles. Emergency site-to-site lock. Subspace monitor.

The last one gave him pause.

He did not know why at first.

Then the crate hummed again.

Bancroft: The HML’s safety protocols are still active, Commander. I’m… almost entirely sure we’ll be fine.

Breys/Tarsan/Silveira: Response

The seam separated by a fraction with a soft metallic click.

The sound inside changed immediately.

The hum and whine climbed into a sharper register. Roy watched the corresponding sensor ripple move through the scan like a pulse traveling down a nerve.

Cole: Easy. That sound changed the moment the seal moved. Nobody rushes the next step.

Bancroft: I’m picking up what looks like trace antineutrino residue. Can anyone confirm?

Breys/Tarsan/Silveira: Response

Cole: So the good news is, it’s interesting. The bad news is, it might be thinking.

Roy consulted the data on his console, feeling the medical part of his mind reach for familiar categories and find only inadequate, empty containers.

He expanded the signal capture, stripping out the antiproton sweep, the lab’s power feed, and the containment field’s harmonics. What remained was thin and damaged, but it repeated with ugly persistence: a packetized burst riding inside the same tonal shift Cole had heard.

The box had not simply made a sound.

It had changed pitch to carry information.

Bancroft: Or trying to talk… that change in pitch we heard? I think it was an automated distress signal. I’m seeing what look like communication signals. Outbound.

Breys/Tarsan/Silveira/Cole: Response

Roy shook his head.

Bancroft: Respectfully, don’t shut down the signal – let’s just make sure it doesn’t get wherever it’s trying to go. ::looking up reflexively:: Computer, erect a level-ten subspace damping field around the Hazardous Materials Lab. Isolate the lab from all internal and external communications relays. No outbound subspace, EM, tachyon, or carrier-wave emissions without command authorization.

Computer: Acknowledged. Level-ten subspace damping field established. Hazardous Materials Lab isolated from communications relays. Outbound emissions restricted.

The lab changed.

Not visibly, not to anyone watching with ordinary eyes, but Roy felt the systems settle around them with the strange pressure of being inside a room that had just stopped belonging to the rest of the ship. The air still moved. Consoles still hummed. The overhead lights still cast their clinical glow across the crate and the people gathered around it.

Yet the compartment had become an island.

Whatever the crate was saying, it was now saying it into a jar.

Breys/Tarsan/Silveira/Cole: Response

Bancroft: So, whatever we’ve got in here has antineutrino residue and is trying to phone a friend. Possibly the same system, possibly two different but interconnected systems. Anyone have any theories?

Breys/Tarsan/Silveira/Cole: Response

TAG/TBC

===

Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft

Assistant Chief Medical Officer

USS Artemis-A

A240205RB1