Lieutenant JG Ollie Bergmen - 2b 7e 15 16 28 ae d2 a6 ab
CPT Arianus
(( The Office Building, Afalqi Project Launch Complex, Meranuge IV ))
Storm: Messenger client?
Alex giggled, which caught Ollie’s attention. He expected a lot of things, but seeing Lieutenant look like a kid with a hand in the cookie jar? That came unexpected…
Storm: Let’s open that up first.
Bergmen nodded to the command and turned his head back to the keyboard and monitor.
Bergmen: Aye, ma’am.
Ollie tapped the app, and the screen flashed with the new data. There was not much to see; only a few text channels had ever been opened, and, if not usernames, then at least the work titles were quite what one would expect. Jetibate. Fli'nt. Ta'Mora. A couple of other engineers…
Ollie felt Alex's glance over his shoulder as he scrolled through the list of channels, and he grew increasingly uncomfortable. Yet when she noticed something he almost scrolled past, he was glad for it.
Storm: That one ::gesturing to Havun and User 5871:: Looks intriguing. Let’s open that one up.
Storm’s hand rested on the edge of the table next to Ollie’s, and she leaned in, hovering just behind his shoulder as he scrolled up one channel back to User 5871 and opened the message exchange.
Bergmen: Someone probably just forgot to set the username. But good catch, Lieutenant.
But at first glance, it was clear how far from the truth Bergmen probably was. The text was definitely not standard.
If it was a text at all.
Storm: Is that a code? Or maybe a cipher?
Alphanumeric code transcription at first does not make any obvious sequence. It wasn’t source code, because that would require additional coding signs. The length was unitary, so it was probably not coded messages. Plus, messages were too short for programmable code, too lengthty for cipher.
oO That doesn't make sense. Oo
Bergmen: No idea, Lieutenant. ::reaches for his tricorder and begins data analysis:: I will try to run it through the Starfleet decoder, maybe it will find the answer.
Ollie watched the tricorder screen as data scrolled by. It was outside his expertise. And he could only hope that the device, attempting to make sense of the nonsensical data, would find the answer. Hundreds of possible ciphers and coding matrices had already been tested and ruled out, and the lieutenant was beginning to get a little nervous, evident in the way he drummed his fingers on the tabletop each time the tricorder eliminated another couple of possibilities.
Bergmen: Still nothing, ma’am. ::sighs and looks at Storm:: It’s possible we will not get an answer. So far, it doesn’t appear to be any known code or cipher.
Storm: Response
Bergmen gasped for a response, but his words were cut off by the tricorder's beeping. Ollie looked back at the screen, but the device was still working. One thing was clear. It had found why it was so weird.
Bergmen: It’s LZMA. ::looks back to Storm:: Eh, it’s compression pattern, ma’am. (beat) Basically, if you want to transfer like a big chunk of data, you compress them via known repeating variables, so you mark what’s repeating, and just use one specific code with position specification, so you have like twenty letters code covering the lyrics of a song and…
Tricorder beeped again, and Ollie glanced back at the screen. His silence deepened with each heartbeat. His expression changed. Shifted from that academic expert face to someone who didn’t believe what he saw in the datastream scrolling by. And was horrified by what he saw.
He understood. Not the code, that part still did not make much sense to him, but the pattern. He saw that pattern too often to be able to recite its rules even if woken up after a two day long shift with less than an hour of sleep.
Bergmen: No, no… it cannot be. That… (beat) That doesn’t make sense. No, that’s wrong. ::looks back to Storm:: It decodes… (beat) No, not decodes, because it’s like shifted from LZMA, so more like estimates… But if you would apply LZMA… (beat) It’s people, ma’am… Eh, not a people. Biodata. Transporter beam biodata.
Storm: Response
Bergmen: Ma’am, no. You cannot simply replicate people or copy their transporters’ buffer imprint out of the system. Transporters are highly sensitive devices for that. (beat) And even if… (beat) With a compression as heavy as LZMA... any attempt to decompress the pattern back and piece together a living being would be futile.
Yet the flashing text on the tricorder screen told a different story - 94% possible match to the transporter imprint pattern.
Storm: Response
(( OOC: Agreed with Alex she will add Jaran tags in her sim tonight so I will end it here ))
TAG/TBC
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Lieutenant JG Ollie Bergmen
Operations Officer
U.S.S. Artemis-A
A240009JC1