Lt. Cmdr. Alora DeVeau - "Reverse Aging Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be"
Amanda Nordstrom
((Quarantined Sickbay Suite – StarBase 118))
(Time index – 0800)
There were many quotes about time. Time waits for no man. A stitch in time saves nine. Time is on my side. For Alora, the latter wasn’t true. For Alora, time was at odds. Her body wasn’t working properly, not since the accident, and instead of moving forward in age, she was moving backward. Some might consider her lucky. After all, who wanted to get old? But for Alora, it was anything but luck.
Under normal circumstances, she could look to a life expectancy of up to a hundred and forty years. That was still over a hundred years. Granted, it wasn’t *guaranteed*, but it was still a long time. After the accident, and with subsequent ‘attacks’, Alora had lost five years within the span of fone. If such a trend repeated itself, she’d be dead in less than a decade. Getting younger was not something for her to look forward to.
Time was not on her side.
In truth, they had been using particles that still weren’t completely understood, like much of the universe. Oh certainly there was a lot they had learned, and every day they learn more, but compared to the vastness of the unknown, it was barely a drop in the bucket. And now? Now part of that unknown was how to fix her problem. And this problem would only lead to her demise. She really wanted to fix that problem.
But she couldn’t do it alone. Alora was no dunce; she knew she was intelligent, but she wasn’t a doctor. She had participated as a scientist, especially since the test subjects they ha started with were floral in nature, which *was* one of her specialties. Medicine was not. She’d served as a medical officer for a few months at one point, she’d done enough research to help out with medical problems, and she had enough knowledge to be useful if necessary, but this went beyond the scope of usual. This was far out of her league.
But maybe it wasn’t out of Cade Foster’s league. Maybe he could find answers to the problem that had, thus far, stumped the other officers who had looked into it. Were they still searching? Did they still seek a cure for it? Alora could only have faith that they were. But that didn’t mean it hurt to have more eyes on this, and one such pair belonged to a certain Cade Foster, medical genius.
Alora had approached him, but he’d had to return to his own ship - but now he was back, and he’d contacted her that time. He would be on the station and they would have a chance to get started – hopefully on the road that would eventually lead toward that cure she so desperately wanted. So when he told her to jump, she was going to ask how high. Fortunately, he just wanted to meet her in sickbay, so she complied and was there just as the chronometer switched over to the top of the hour.
Foster: Right on time.
DeVeau: I try not to be late, especially for people who want to save my life.
Alora gave him a smile and stepped in once he motioned for her to do so. Behind her, he locked the door, taking precautions.
Foster: So I did have a chance to read everything over. ::He gestured for her to sit in one of the chairs and gestured towards a stack of classified, locked PADDS on the desk in the back of the suite.:: You’re right, it is a complicated case.
She took the proffered chair, easing down into it an crossed one leg over the other. Hands laced together rest upon her lap and she nodded. The smile faded into an expression more solemn considering the topic.
DeVeau: Very much so.
Foster: So tell me – as you understand it, since you have a scientific and temporal background – what is going on?
Alora levelled her gaze at him. What was going on. It was simple and yet complicated at the same time. Knowing what she knew about Foster, he had a high enough security clearance to gain access to the files, but then again, like her, perhaps he wanted to hear it from the ‘horse’s mouth’ so to speak.
DeVeau: Cellular regression due to the infusion of tachyon radiation which seems to have altered makeup at a cellular level in the patient.
The patient being her.
Foster: And what was the triggering event?
Alora took a deep breath. They were now treading onto territory that delved into the past. Her past. Her past and her loss. She didn’t have to go into that much detail, she knew, but that didn’t mean it was easy.
DeVeau: The explosion of a tachyon particle generator. I was…placed into a storage unit in hopes that it might provide protection. The unit did prevent immediate death, but I was subsequently altered.
It felt weird talking about herself like that. It just felt weird talking about it, likely because it had been so *long* since she had talked about it, and even longer since she had talked about it in a clinical fashion in the hopes of seeking out a cure. The doctor nodded and took out a PADD to rever to it.
Foster: I do see you had a full level four cellular scan just prior to being assigned to StarBase 118. I also understand that you recently encountered a temporal anomaly on your last mission. ::He held up his hands:: no judgement there. I know how it goes in Starfleet. What I wanna see is if there is a trackable change and if the temporal anomaly affected the progress of the degradation at all.
Alora hadn’t thought about that at all. Yes,a temporal anomaly, but it had been mostly chronitons she interacted with, not tachyons. Then again, both were particles associated with time travel…which, in a sense, was happening to her. No travelling through time, specifically, but her cells were travelling back to an earlier state of being.
DeVeau: Of course. But before we begin, what do you know about tachyons?
Foster: ?
Alora nodded, then shifted, switching legs, her eyes lifting as if to see something that wasn’t there, her mind sifting through the information that was stored within.
DeVeau: So you know the basics. Tachyon particles do that, but here are more specifics. They come in pairs. Together the pairs slip, half goes forward in time, the other half goes backward in time.
Foster: ?
Alora licked her lips. Time travel was…well, it was sticky - the subject, and the actual event. What they were trying to accomplish wasn’t true time travel in a sense, but only utilising the particles in a way that hadn’t been tried before. Or since. The plans had been scrapped, the research abandoned. For now.
DeVeau: You’ll see in the files, and when I am scanned that the scans will register tachyon radiation, but it’s unstable. The medication I receive stabilises my condition and prevents the regression, but only temporarily. And…sometimes I’ve had ‘attacks’.
Foster: ?
The last time she had one, Nijil had, for some reason, realised something was wrong and got her to sickbay. That would be in her records as well, and it was the younger Foster who had tended to her at the time.
DeVeau: Medication was adjusted, I haven’t had one since, but there’s concern about resistance developing which would then require further modification.
Which meant that though Alora had a schedule when she took said medication, she had learned she should keep an injection on hand at all times, just in case. She didn’t want to get blindsided again.
Foster: ?
-- Lt. Cmdr. Alora DeVeau First Officer Starbase 118 Ops al...@blar.net M239008AD0