What is Invisible to the Eye

Posted on Tue May 26, 2015 @ 12:31am by Lieutenant Penelope Naroot & Lieutenant Nicole Anderson

4,057 words; about a 20 minute read

Mission: All this has happened before...
Timeline: After "Movie Night"

Tom laid awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling in his dark room. In the last ten years, he'd never filed a complaint of any sort when it came to his accommodations. He'd always learned to make the best of them as he really was a simple person. Yet now, as he stroked Penny's arm as they lay in his bed, a mixture of two feelings floated in his mind. The first was discomfort. Never before had his twin-size bed felt so small. It really was more of a bunk, though for it to truly be a bunk, there had to be another bed above or below it.

The other was... what was this feeling exactly? It wasn't simple satisfaction or happiness. Yes, both were present, but it was a mixture of those two and more. Even now as he held a sleeping Penny in a warm embrace, Tom could only smile. His hand continued to stroke her arm back and forth in a semicircular motion. Just the touch of her smooth skin was electric. He hoped this feeling never went away...

He froze, even stopping his hand from stroking. Was it that simple? He stroked once more, paying attention to the motion. Tom moved his hand again, this time, extending the stroke down the arm, the action mimicking a mathematical wave. He repeated the stroke and paused. Repeating it again, he slowly analyzed the smooth motion, performing the calculus in his mind.

Tom had to get this out of his mind and into the computer. For years, he'd toyed with Montgomery Scott's theorems of interplanetary transports. Typically, transporters could only go so far, but as every good transporter specialist thought, if you could send extensive data packets so easily through subspace to other planets, systems and sectors, surely you could do the same with a transporter signal.

He carefully slipped out of bed, taking extra caution to lay Penny down comfortably and stick a pillow under her head. He couldn't leave his quarters in his current fashion. Grabbing a white undershirt and a pair of gym shorts from his closet, Tom quickly dressed and typed a message into a nearby PADD for Penny should she happen to wake before he returned. He slipped out of the room into the dimly lit corridor (hooray for standard practices to dim the lights at "night") and made his way to Holodeck Two. A few taps at the panel loaded the program he'd been using throughout his career and stepped inside.

The holodeck was still generating the room by the time he entered, replacing the black and gold grid with his "lab," a recreation of the large cargo transporter room he'd maintained for so many years at Utopia Plantia when he first enlisted. He'd made several modifications over the years, including a high-performance pattern buffers and tweaks to the annular confinement beam emitters. Countless other modifications he'd implemented over the years, some of which he was slowly implementing into the Victory's systems. It wasn't that he was afraid to make changes, but it was a matter of training the individuals on board, and making sure that processes were followed to the letter. One mistake would easily cost lives.

But that was neither here nor there. Tom walked over to his console and began to enter the calculations for the equation that he'd just created in his quarters.


****************************

Penny wasn't sure why humans had developed the concept of 'boredom.' To her, if you had nothing to do, you went and found something to do, that's just how it worked. If boredom was the inability to keep one's mind occupied, Penny didn't think she'd ever suffered from it. The only time she came close was when she would have to lie still, waiting for others to fall asleep. Usually it didn't take long, and she had mastered pretending to be asleep long ago.

Lying with Tom she found rather enjoyable, and the rhythmic stroking of her arm was soothing. However, after an hour her mind had run through all her standard fall back thoughts. She was toying with a new proof of Fermat's Last Theorem when he suddenly stopped and changed rhythm. She didn't move, but she turned her focus to him. His hand motions had changed, and she weighed whether or not he was trying to wake her for more social interaction.

She was definitely surprised when he instead attempted to "subtly" get out of bed, leaving her behind and a moment later left his quarters. Part of her was slightly hurt he had the energy to bound out of his quarters like that, and she made a mental note to step up her game. But curiosity won out over insult and she picked up the padd he'd left.

Hey sweetheart. Had an idea that couldn't wait. I'll be in the holodeck if you need me.

Tom

Penny shrugged and put the padd down, quickly slipping into her shorts and tshirt, tucking her wand into the waistband of her shorts and leaving his quarters barefoot, almost skipping down the corridor. A few of the late-shift ensigns were staring at her but she ignored them, extremely curious as to what Tom was up to.

As she approached, she whipped out her wand and aimed it at the controls, activating them and opening the doors. She stepped inside and looked around, her eyebrows up in surprise. "Okay," she said, "not quite what I was expecting."

Tom had ignored the sound of the doors opening; he'd been too focused at tapping buttons on the console. His ears, however, perked up the moment Penny spoke. He looked up just in time to see the doors disappear under a holographic covering. "Hmm?" He asked a full moment before her comment registered in his head. Shaking it off, he excitedly said, "Come in! I didn't think I woke you."

"It's all right," she said, looking around. "I'm a light sleeper." She examined the transporter padd, then circled back around to Tom. "So, what's the b-b-big deal that got you out of bed?"

Tom looked up from the console with bright eyes. "Interplanetary transport. Captain Scott started work on it more than a century ago, before he retired. Many have been trying to figure it out. I've been working on it nearly twenty years myself." That was the simple version of the story.

Penny ran her wand over the console and looked at the readouts, shook her head, then looked again. "So you're trying to beam people directly through subspace, using the wavefronts between the two layers as a medium of propulsion for the signal? Creative, if risky."

Tom paused, unsure of why he was so surprised she knew so much about it. "It's very risky," he confessed. "No one's even dared to test with cargo containers. Unless the gain structure remains intact, the pattern disintegrates after so many miles, no matter how it travels."

"That or your power feeds back and you blow out your circuits," Penny said, looking over the control board. She looked up at him and grinned. "I almost sound like I know what I'm talking about, right?" She giggled and skipped over to the transporter padd, sitting down on it and scanning it with her wand, looking over the readings. "One of my quadmates my freshman year at the Academy was in the Engineering track. Spent a semester project on trying to redesign one to work long distance. It was all she talked about all day and night. Drove us crazy." She leaned back on her palms. "I tried staying up and helping her with some of the math but eventually I told her she wasn't going to 'rock the galaxy' with it."

"What about me?" he asked, standing and walking over towards her, smiling as he went. "Do you think I could 'rock the galaxy' with it?" His tone was jovial, lacking any sense of seriousness. He'd spent twenty years on the subject, and truthfully, he wasn't any further than when he first started. Tom never really planned to solve the problem. Had he truly meant to, he would have chosen a more solitary life instead of his many adventures.

"Well," she said slowly, "you've definitely r-r-rocked mine," she grinned at him and stood up, putting her arms around his neck and bouncing up on her toes to give him a kiss.

His lips locked with hers for a tender moment. Grinning himself, Tom placed his hands on her waist and looked into her blue eyes. "You okay?" he asked, referencing the brief stutter he'd just heard. They hadn't been at this for very long, and Tom distinctly didn't recall her stuttering before.

Penny tilted her head. "I'm fine, why?"

He shook his head. "Nothing." Smiling back at her, he affirmed, "never mind. Maybe I'm more tired than I thought."

She pouted and stroked his arm. "Maybe you should come back to bed then? Or do you need to finish running your simulation?"

"It's been running for twenty years," Tom said, not breaking his gaze. "It won't hurt letting it run for a while longer."

Penny blinked and thought for a moment. "Wow," she said, "I wasn't even ac--" she stopped herself quickly, realizing she was about to be extremely impolite. She immediately kicked herself mentally and changed tracks almost seamlessly. "--ademy material then." She grinned up at him and blushed.

Tom couldn't help but grin at her embarrassment. He'd known from the moment his eyes first spied her that she was younger than he. That, or she'd found the fountain of youth on some distant planet. Tom released a hand from her hips and brushed her cheek. "It doesn't bother you, does it?" he asked, referencing the age difference.

Penny glanced sideways at his hand. "No, I barely feel it," she said as his hand brushed over her scar. She blinked quickly, her mind providing an analysis of their conversation. The fact that it took over four seconds bothered her, but she was too busy revising her response to worry about it then and there. "You meant your age," she said after a moment, blushing again. "And no," she said, then got a coy grin. "Clearly it hasn't slowed you down in any way."

She reached around and gave him a playful goose on his behind, then skipped out of his arms before he could grab her, giggling madly. She walked back over to the transporter platform. "Twenty years," she mused. "Well, we can't say you're afraid of commitment." She scanned the open panel containing the transporter buffer again, eyebrows raised, when a sudden discharge made contact with her hand and knocked her backwards.

She landed with a thud, blue eyes staring blankly.

"Penny!" Tom shouted, rushing over to check her. Her blank gaze was little short of frightening. Somehow, those incredible blue eyes lacked the life they once had. Even as he knelt, his mind began to evaluate what he had handy. He had no tricorder or combadge handy. This was, however, a holodeck meant for use without a control surface. "Computer!" he shouted out, moving to check her pulse, "standby for emergency transport for two to sickbay!" He'd thought briefly about carrying her there, but the transporter would clearly be faster than a turbolift ride up four decks.

Tom waved his hand over her face. "Penny? Can you hear me?" Her body had taken quite a shock, and he'd seen others get jolted like that before. What happened to her, however, was something unlike he'd ever seen. Her lack of movement and unending blank stare was growing more eerie by the second.

System Reboot.
DDS Active
004 030 021 934 991

Verifying FEDLAN connection.
EMOTSuB Active

Systemic Anomaly detected. Attempting to correct.
Unable to correct.
Attempting to quantify and isolate.
Quantify unsuccessful.
Isolation partially successful, rerouting.

Startup successful.

Penny's eyes came into focus and she blinked a few times. "One-Two-One ready," she said. She blinked again as her memory returned and looked at Thomas. "What happened?"

Tom heaved a sigh of relief. His sat on the floor with a thud, letting the feeling of relaxation flow through him, if only for a moment. "The holodeck safeties lapsed. Your wand acted like a mini lightning rod, and you took a hit." The expression of relief evaporated, and a more serious one replaced it. "We need to get you to sickbay and have that arm checked out. What was it you just said?"

Penny blinked again as her mind ran a few scenarios. "I'm sure I'm fine. I was asking what hap--" she stopped and sucked in air quickly, eyes scrunching in pain as she attempted to sit up. "Okay," she hissed, "maybe Sickbay's a good idea."

"Hold still," Tom said, sticking his arms under her back and legs. With one smooth motion, he picked her up and rose to his feet. "Computer, energize." Their surroundings shimmered with blue light before morphing from a model of a transporter room into the center of sickbay. "Doctor!" Tom called out, looking around for Doctor Anderson.

A nurse immediately rushed over with an anti-grav gurney, helping Tom lower Penny onto it carefully. She pulled the gurney towards a biobed, calling for assistance. "I need a tricorder and a biobed set up for--"

"Belay that," Nicole said, rushing into Sickbay. She was still in her off-duty clothes, but her staff immediately complied and the nurse guiding Penny's gurney steered her around.

Nicole walked briskly up and pulled the nurse aside, flipping open a tricorder already in hand and scanning Penny quickly. "All right, this is going to take some work," she said, looking up at Thomas. "What happened?"

"We were in the holodeck," Tom began to explain. "I was working on Scott's theorem for interplanetary matter transportation. Penny was near the pattern buffer, using her wand, and she got shocked. The safeties should have been active, so I have no idea how she could have got shocked like that."

Nicole scanned Penny again and then snapped her tricorder shut, giving her a very gentle pat on the shoulder and a reassuring smile. She then turned to her nurse who snapped to attention. "All right, I'll get her on a table. I want no one disturbing us unless the ship is about to explode." She pulled Penny's gurney back and steered it around, aiming it for the surgical bay. "In the mean time," she said to the nurse, "find Mister Barnes a seat. Lifting someone with an injury can put quite a strain on the idiot-us anterior muscles." She grumbled as she pushed Penny into isolation and shook her head.

***************Surgical Bay*************************

As soon as they were inside the smaller surgical room, Nicole came around the side of the gurney. "Computer, seal the doors," she said. She stood back and leaned against the wall, arms folded over her chest. "Explanation?"

Penny let out a sigh and sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. "The holodeck safeties were working," she said. "I must have accidentally tapped the conduit with my--" She lifted up her wand and whimpered. "Aw, man. That's going to take hours to fix."

Nicole frowned. "You don't do anything 'accidentally'," she said. Her nostrils flared and her eyebrows went up in surprise. She stepped close, sniffing again. "If you were human, I'd have a good guess as to what distracted you." She wrinkled her nose. "All right, let's take a look and make sure you're all right."

As Penny pulled her shirt off, Nicole opened her tricorder back up, scanning her quickly. "If I'm reading this right, physically you're functioning fine, at least physically." She reached out and pinched a place on Penny's collarbone, a seam in her chest opening and a panel swinging outward, revealing her inner workings.

Nicole reached in and tapped a few controls, scanning again and frowning. "How long have your systems been at this capacity?"

Penny sighed and looked around the room. These invasive procedures weren't frequent, but she disliked them when they had to happen. As Nicole activated a manual diagnostic she winced and squirmed a bit. "Careful in there," she said. The diagnostic readouts were scrolling in front of her eyes and she was immediately rerouting problems.

Nicole sighed and closed her up, the skin healing itself flawlessly. "You appear to be all right," she said. "You're running a bit slower than normal, but it doesn't seem to be a problem. But if you keep having trouble, you need to tell me, and we'll call Tommy."

Penny sighed and pulled her shirt back on. "I'll be fine. I just need to quantify a few things with Thomas." She looked around the room. "So, how long is this supposed to take?"

"Well, to keep up appearances I should take at least thirty minutes, but we'll say I'm brilliant and come out in twenty." Nicole gave a small smile. "So, you finally snagged a human hm?"

*****************Sickbay***************************

Tom sat outside the CMO's office. The surgical bay didn't have anything that would serve as a waiting room, and Tom wanted to be out of the way. Amazingly, sickbay itself was quiet, save for a nurse that didn't join the doctor in surgery. He found it odd that the doctor chose to do this procedure without an assistant, yet the nurse appeared to be fine with it.

He'd already got a good lecture from her about what not to do with someone with an injury. Having served in a war and several other conflicts over his years of service, Tom was at most mad at himself for forgetting his training. Of course he knew that! He just had never been so attached to the person he was trying to help before. In fact, he was most concerned with getting her help than actually helping her.

Tom spun a half-full glass of water in his hand as he leaned back into the chair. He knew better than to ask the nurse to see how much longer they'd be. It didn't matter if it was five minutes or five hours. Tom found his energy quickly depleting. He thought he'd be lucky just to get out of sickbay on his own power. But he'd stay until he knew for sure Penny would be okay.

After twenty minutes, Nicole emerged from the surgical bay, pushing Penny back out on the same antigrav. Her eyes were closed and her face a picture of serene contentment. She snapped her fingers at a medtech to help her gently transfer Penny to a biobed and glanced at the readings before looking over to Thomas and beckoning him over.

The finger snapping immediately brought Tom out of his daze. Another second longer, he was certain sleep would have enveloped him. He tried to be patient, waiting in the nearby chair and watching as the doctor and the tech did their work. Once he caught the doctor's gaze, Tom hopped out of the chair, leaving his glass of water behind, and walked over to the biobed.

"I thought you'd want to be here when she wakes up," Nicole said, gently. She took a hypospray and pressed it gently against Penny's neck, stepping back as her eyelids fluttered.

Penny yawned and coughed, blinking up at them, then smiling at Tom "Hi..." she said quietly. "Sorry about all this."

Tom instinctively grabbed her hand and smiled. "It's okay," he said softly. "I'm just glad you're all right." He looked up at the doctor and added, "She is going to be all right, doctor?"

Nicole huffed and folded her arms. "I would say so, if she can avoid any other large shocks to her system." She nodded to them both. "I'd prefer she stay overnight, but if you want to escort her back to her quarters, I'll allow it." She looked at them both, and the way Thomas was looking at Penny and felt her cheeks burn a little. "I'll let you two talk. Mister Barnes," she said, nodding goodbye, then turned to Penny. "Traitor." She swept away, padd in hand, making her report.

Penny smiled at Nicole's retreating form affectionately, then sighed and looked back at Thomas. "Help me up?" she said, sitting up slowly and swinging her legs over the side.

"Easy..." Tom said, his training kicking in for the first time. He slipped an arm behind her and helped her slide off of the bed. "I should probably take you to your quarters," he said. He didn't mean to imply anything by the suggestion. The truth was that her bed had to be bigger than his twin mattress, and likely more comfortable for her to recover overnight.

Penny hopped down to her feet an let out a sigh, stretching gently and letting out a giggle. "Well if you insist," she said.

He guided her out of the room and towards a turbolift. Waiting outside of it for it to arrive, Tom looked down at Penny. "Hmm," he said, just before brushing her recently smoothed cheek with his free hand. "The Doc seems to know her way with a dermal regenerator." His tone was disappointed. Tom didn't realize how attached he'd been with the scar until it was gone.

"Nic is top notch with a reg--ohmigosh!" Penny exclaimed, feeling his hand move across her cheek. She brought her own hand up and felt her now smooth skin. Her mind still felt a bit sluggish, probably from the forced reboot, and she realized that her skin had automatically reverted to its correct layout. It took her a half a moment to come up with a response, and she couldn't help ignoring how slow that felt.

"She's been nagging me to get rid of it since it happened," Penny said. "She must've taken advantage of the opportunity." She sighed as the turbolift arrived and they stepped in. "Now I'm back to being the babyface on board," she pouted.

"Well, I think you look beautiful," Tom argued as the turbolift doors opened. Ushering her inside, he added, "with or without the scar." He couldn't help think though that if Penny hadn't wanted it gone, the Doctor shouldn't have done it. "I might have to have a word with the Doctor."

"I'll be one of your pallbearers," Penny said, resting her head on his shoulder. A moment later, the turbolift deposited them near her quarters. "Don't be too hard on her," Penny said as they walked the short stretch of corridor down to her cabin. "She m-m-means well. She's the kind of doctor who hates seeing her patients less than perfect." She walked through the doors to her quarters and dropped onto her bed. Her quarters were arranged according to a very simple system that afforded her maximum access to her belongings with minimum storage space required. In other words, everything strewn about.

She had a lot of personal affects, collected from various missions and trips with her former crew, and she had them placed exactly where she wanted them with a distinct path from the door to her desk and to her bed.

She let out a long sigh and scooted over against the wall, making room. "Feel free to lie down, you must be exhausted," she said, frowning.

Tom looked around the room, taking note of the various items strewn throughout the room. Indeed, he was exhausted, and he took careful and clunky steps on the way to the bed, unlike her graceful moves. He laid beside her, facing her as he reached to stroke her cheek. Tom felt his energy rapidly drain from his body, figuring it would only be a few moments before sleep took hold. Had he had enough energy, he would have said something. Instead, he returned her frown with a smile.

Penny smiled back and put a hand on his chest, nuzzling her head under his chin. She tracked his pulse and listened to his breathing until it slowed and she could confirm he was asleep. Once she was sure, she gently lifted her want out from the waistband of her shorts and began looking it over, wanting it fixed sooner rather than later, while the back of her mind worked overtime.

*He's a good man,* she thought, smiling. *Mission accomplished.*


JP

Thomas Barnes
Transporter Specialist

Nicole Anderson
CMO

Penny Naroot
Helmswoman

 

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