Eight eyes are better than two

Posted on Fri Nov 8, 2013 @ 6:31am by Lieutenant Nicole Anderson

1,003 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: A Whole New World: Part 1 - Precipice
Location: Labs

The transporter beam had deposited Nicole and her range of samples i the center of her lab. She was supremely glad the beam placed her correctly and the computer recognized her codes. In her haste to get off the alien ship in time for the Commander's hunters she was afraid she'd put in her code incorrectly.

Finally she'd vanished from the alien ship and returned to the relative comfort of the Victory. She quickly divested herself of her EVA suit and picked up the sample case, placing it on a counter. She pulled out several vials, placing them in an old-fashioned rack and placed them i front of a blank wall, and set a remote camera in front of them.

She sat in front of her terminal and established a secure connection.

"Anderson to Yarin, I'm set up on board. Report to your lab as soon as you can," she said, tapping her combadge.

"I am in my lab Doctor, patching in now; what exactly am I looking at?" Yarin asked. Although he was sure about one thing, whatever It was was completely mummified there was no heat signature coming off of it.

"Your guess is as good as mine so far," Nicole said as his image came onto the small display screen by the work station she'd set up. It was a split screen showing him on one side, the samples on the other and below those images were readings her tricorder was taking of the row of beakers and vials. "We've got samples of the mummified being, the liquid medium it was lying in, and shavings of the metal used. Where do you want to start?"

"Let us start with the mummified remains I believe we will find the most pertinent data there."

"All right," Nicole said, moving through the samples. She pulled out of the smaller vials with a small piece of flesh. She added a liquid medium to it to help break the tissues apart and slipped into her scanner, putting it through its paces. "So what the hell happened that recalled us?"

"I am as clueless as you are Doctor; I was setting up here when all that took place." Yarin said. "So what have you found so far?"

"It's humanoid," she said, moving his image to one side of the screen and the readings to the other. "Definitely organic, carbon-based, somewhat normal cell structure: nucleus, cholroplast, mitochon--the hell is that?"

"What's what?" Yarin said.

"The cytoplasm," Nicole said. "It's been infused with an inorganic compound. Looks like part of the medium the body was found in. It looks like it's permeated every cell in the body. If that body was infused on a cellular level, it means...I've no idea," she said. "RNA transfusion directly to the medium to transfer organic data? Perhaps the way the species reproduces? Or recovers genetic information after death?"

"I would guess it is a means of reproduction. While it is certainly uncommon I do know of a few species that reproduce in this fashion when purely organic methods have failed, let us process the liquid medium next." Yarin said.

"We've barely processed this," Nicole said. "And how do they reproduce? Cellular duplication? Or a mechanical fusion of genetic material from two hosts?" She sighed, shrugged, and pulled up another vial and added it to the scanner. "Scanning," she said as she started it up.

"The means of reproduction depend on just how inorganic this species is, while cellular duplication would work for purely mechanical beings we have no way of knowing just how far the cyberdization process goes. We also have no way of knowing his this individual is a typical example of his race. What have you found on the liquid?" Yarin asked.

"It's...well it's a nutrient bath of epic proportion," Nicole said, reading through the molecular scanner's readout as it brought the initial findings onto their screens. "Some kind of augmented calcium, sodium, a high concentration of magnesium, phosphorus, idodine, a heavy dose of manganese, the usual trace amounts of copper, mylobdenum, selenium, et cetera, plus vitamins A, C, D, and a truckload of B-6. If it weren't for these inorganic compounds that I can't make heads or tails of, this would probably be the perfect cellular growth medium. Whatever she was hooked up to, it was designed to keep the organic parts of her healthy and her nervous system going strong."

"She, so you have determined gender then?" Yarin asked "Perhaps its cellular growth was an earlier attempt at prolonging life that culminated in her mechanization? Poax-dammit, I cannot gleam any more data from my current position. I am coming down there."

"You are doing no such thing," Nicole said, sternly. "The deal was limited exposure, and no one gets in this room but me." She picked up two more vials. "Let's run a closed test. It'll take some time, but we'll have a lot more data."

She placed them in another machine and sealed it shut. "Computer," she said, "I need a full molecular analysis of the two substances as well as their interactions."

"Acknowledged," the computer said. "Analysis will take approximately three hours, twenty seven minutes."

"I'll send over every reading I've got thus far, as well as all the visuals I've got," Nicole said. "Stay where you are, I'm coming out for now. Anderson out."

She closed the channel, forwarding everything to him before stretching and rubbing the bridge of her nose. She had no idea how long they'd been staring at the readouts, but she felt like they were still barely scratching the surface. There was a clue in there she was missing, she knew it, but she couldn't place it.

She packed up her carry bag and left her lab, locking it behind her and encrypting the seal. The lab was designed to keep things in, more than out, but she made sure that both were going to be equally impossible.


Dr. Nicole Anderson
CMO
USS Victory

Yarin
Lieutenant JG
USS Victory

 

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