"Searching For Solitude In A Crowded Room"
(Previous Post: "Executive Defence")
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Stardate: 60326.0845
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Stellar Cartography
Had the Stellar Cartography Lab been on a planet such as EARTH instead of inside the USS ANUBIS, the Shillian woman would have witnessed not only a sunset but also the subsequent sunrise had she taken the time to look out of any sort of window. Because the Chief Science Officer had not left the large star-filled room since their departure from SURIAL III she had no idea of the passage of time, driven by the all encompassing drive to get to the bottom of the mystery that she had been investigating.
The scientist had reviewed every nanobite of available information concerning the attempted transport of the Intelligence Operative to the surface of the planet including all of the astrological data that the sensors had gathered during that time period in case an outside element had influenced the transport causing it to fail. By the time Ensign Summers had walked into the room the Chief Science Officer had been reviewing the possibilities that a class-8 sub-space anomaly that had been detected over thirty light-years away from SURIAL III had somehow caused a quantum shockwave that had interacted with the atmosphere of the planet causing a drastic shift in polarity which resulted in the transporter pattern to be dispersed more so than had been anticipated by Lieutenant Commander Enaii.
In order to facilitate the review of all of these elements and their possible interaction with the transporter system of the USS ANUBIS and the atmosphere of SURIAL III, the Chief Science Officer had requested that over three dozen additional screens be displayed on the curved surface of Stellar Cartography. That alone had been more than enough to stop the Chief Medical Officer dead in her tracks, not at all certain as to whether or not it had been safe to interrupt the Shillian scientist as she navigated from one screen to the next at a rate that proved to be more than Ensign Summers could follow.
Mesmerized by the way the oversized holographic screens were being made to vanish, appear or change position being overlapped one on top of the other, the Chief Medical Officer had barely been aware that she had been joined by the Executive Officer who had come looking for her.
"Is Lieutenant Commander Maya all right?" The First Officer of the USS ANUBIS asked hoping that the situation relating to the Chief Science Officer would not prove to be a distraction to the quest for information concerning the Chief Engineering Officer.
"She is fine," Ensign Summers replied in a whispered voice, her eyes unable to be pried away from the dance the holographic screens were being made to display. "As far as I can tell Lieutenant Commander Maya is either trying to find out why the transport of Lt. Commander Enaii ended as it did or she is trying to solve the universal grand unification theory."
"That good?" The Executive Officer said in a rhetorical tone, not having imagined that the Chief Science Officer had been so involved in whatever she had been working on.
" I cannot be certain because she is going through all of this information faster than I can make sense of it. All I know for sure is that she has been at it since we left SURIAL III and that some of the formulas that I saw flash by are like nothing that I have ever seen and I have to wonder if even Maya knows what she is looking at," the Chief Medical Officer said, elaborating as best she could while still being captivated by the work being done by the Shillian scientist.
As important as the quest for information concerning Lieutenant David Dawson and the possibility that he had been under some sort of unnatural influence the Executive Officer saw that addressing the situation that the Chief Science Officer had put herself in needed to be resolved now before the Shillian woman made herself sick depriving the ANUBIS of another senior officer.
"Maya," the First Officer called out trying to draw the attention of the Chief Science Officer away from her work, "can I have a word with you."
"Sorry Commander," the Shillian woman replied without slowing down in the slightest way, "but I really need to complete this line of research as I have uncovered several elements that could possibly account for the change in the atmosphere of SURIAL III which would prove to be the cause of the transporter malfunction and therefore clear us of any wrong doing as there would not have been any way for us to be able to predict all of these occurances before they had actually taken place. All I have to do now is to identify the way these elements came to interact with one another and reach the atmosphere of the planet when they did. I have been able to theorise as to how the majority of these elements came to have an effect on the atmosphere of the planet but I have yet to discover how some of these were able to travel the several light-years of empty space in the time they did. At the moment I am entertaining the possibility that a naturally occurring trans-warp conduit with possible quantum properties opened up and enables the radiation from a collapsing neutron star to reach SURIAL III when it did which would explain why the transporter matter stream was so badly dispersed when it came into contact with the atmosphere. The additional interaction of the gravitational shift caused by the overlapping orbits of two suns in a nearby system would also explain as to why it was nearly impossible for us to reconstruct the matter stream once it had been dispersed."
Before the Chief Science Officer could continue, something that she gave every impressions of being ready to do, the Executive Officer stepped in and placed her hand on the shoulder of the Shillian scientist. "Maya, it wasn't your fault. If you want to blame the universe for what happened, you do not need to go searching for proof. No one on this crew or on NEW ALEXANDRIA is going to blame you, and neither should you. Accidents happen, and as much as we all might want to want it otherwise it did and there is nothing that any of us can do about it. You need to let it go."
For the first time since she had entered Stellar Cartography the Chief Science Officer actually looked away from the large curved screen to meet the eyes of the hybrid Executive Officer. "Commander, if I can figure out what happened maybe we can go back and find a way to get her back," the scientist said while on the edge of tears. After having been made to be the last of her race, the Shillian woman had discovered a new family in the members of the crew of the ANUBIS and it made sense that she did not want to lose any of them, regardless of the circumstances.
"Come," the First Officer said, taking the Shillian by the arm. "I think some food will do you some good."
Under the escort of the Executive Officer the Shillian scientist abandoned her research and exited Stellar Cartography with the Chief medical Officer in tow, something that the First Officer had been very happy for as she still needed to speak to Ensign Summers about any and all medical data that could be used in the defence of their chief Engineering Officer, Lieutenant David Dawson.
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Jessica Solarik { maya_992003@yahoo.com }
Lieutenant Commander Maya
Chief Science Officer
USS ANUBIS
"To see the world in a grain of sand, 2005 post #391
and a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour."
- William Blake (British, 1757-1827)
