Dark and Distant Waters

Posted on Sun Jan 16, 2022 @ 4:08am by Lieutenant Commander Elli-Navine

Lt Ellie Navine, Personal Log

I think it was predestined...

We tested a very exciting new technology. The Xec have developed wormhole threading using exotic matter. But their technology requires them to transport the far end physically and move it into place, the tunnel within remaining securely formed by the exotic matter which the Xec have threaded through the porous Quantum foam's minuscule apertures in space-time. These are surprisingly stable gateways, which have promise for future travel constructions, should the Xec continue to exchange their research with the federation. It's easy to imagine spaceports between common Federation systems where people can fly their private vessels between them on holiday with such a simple model. It may be a far way off until such a system is constructed safely and broadly, but I really do anticipate following its development. I'm tickled pink to have been part of the first cooperation with the Xec to help them establish a stable wormhole causeway to their new colony system of Tublalt.

When our mission was complete, Sen, the Xec lead engineer for the project, shared an interest in testing a theory with the use of our deflector dish. The concept was that Exotic Energy could play a similar role in expanding the apertures in the quantum foam as Exotic matter does for their wormhole architecture. The theory was that such a wormhole opened via deflector dish emissions would be temporary, but could accommodate the ship that had opened it, relying on a warp bubble for stable passage.

The computer models held. And we took test flights on a Danube class runabout, having outfitted her with additional science modules and shields and juiced the power, we were successful on our first attempt! I went along with Olixia and Pride. It was a thrilling ride and had no adverse effects. Starfleet greenlighted further testing using Sen's models and we worked together closely. I found Sen's delight in the project infectious, though not everyone was so thrilled. Doctor Artopolis was sure it would come to some tragic ends and insisted on continual health monitoring.

When it came time to have a trial of threading the Potemkin herself through the Quantum Foam, there was some serious hesitancy. I honestly think it was Lt McIntyre's emboldening presence that tipped the scales in the conference room when he reminded everyone that we would still all be on our respective homeworlds just watching the stars go by if it hadn't been for all of the intrepid people who had taken risks like Earth's Zephram Cochrane. I would have cited Bev-Joraine, but no one would have gotten the Grazer reference. Anyway.

We made the fated test run. On the other side, our Warp bubble collapsed unexpectedly and we lost engines. I thought it was one coil, but when i got out on the hull, later it was three, dammit. Anyway. That wasn't the worst of it. The sheer insanity, i mean, I can hardly even believe it and I was there. We were in The Great Attractor. Astrometrics had to explain it to me twice because I'd never heard of it myself. Probably because it was such a huge concept I'd put it out of my mind as it may as well have been fantasy talk for all the use I would have imagined it would come to in my career. The great attactor is a point in our galactic super cluster that is pulling the galaxies towards it. And it's unfathomably huge. It's empty of any of it's own systems, it just pulls them in. There were strange stings of energy towards which suns were being hurled from outside amd all around the "crust" of the spherical void million of light years in diameter, were a large proportion of artificially ruined stars, which had been snuffed out prematurely into embers. we were surrounded by dead suns. we detected space battles with signatures akin to the Tenzim weapons we had encountered while we battled them in the Nagzim's star system. Only... it seemed they were likely many orders more powerful and we opted to keep our distance.

Not that we were going anywhere, or could have had any hope of making it back. We ascertained that the exotic energy method had been set up for failure, as exotic energy could open a way through the foam, but also dragged into it's track many thousands of other apertures at the same time. As time inside the aperture is strangely still, we were unable to witness this and abort the test. It's unlikely i'll want to try that again before we develop some kind of navigation to handle the foam threading snarls in the pre jump planning. We all agreed it would have been terribly nice of Sen if he'd shared about the possibility in our testing and planning phase. But I think he failed to mention it because we would have shut the testing down and he knew it. I think he was too excited about testing the research to take the possibility seriously. I'm not mad exactly though because.... well. I believe in a sense the whole affair was predestined.

We're dead in space and received a communication, seemingly a federation one from a twenty year old Federation signature. The hailing party was an enormous... well, it was a ship that looked something like a cross between a child's kite and a starfish. The captain had some very familiar traits, being at least bajoran, vulcan, and trill from what i could tell at a glance. The captain said she had been expecting us. She called herself Tenzi Carter and explained that in 2377 a colony ship, the USS Dax Ion had run into a naturally occurring unstable wormhole and found itself 250 million years in the past! They survived and settled on a planet and continued to grow and further development, beginning their own federation. Frankly i had the most difficult time trying to understand the technology they've achieved! The bulkheads inside their ship, if you could call them bulk heads were coated in materials that my tricorder couldn't even parse out. They brought a few of us aboard with some kind of instantaneous transporting technology that didn't seem to opperate on any pattern buffers or signatures at least not that I could make out. I'm frankly unable to explain it. We were simply whisked. The most curious part of the tour... well there were so many that I could go on for days talking about what I saw, I have so many reports to write. I'll probably be debriefing all month! But the part I feel the most need to tell is that they had a kind of.... Scrying eye. Using a pocket dimension computer like the one we saw on the Nagzim homeworld, they power the analysis of possible futures. And it's in this sense that they saw us coming.

But it got me thinking. About cats and Schrodinger. Is it possible that by the act of looking, they participated in laying a path for us? Can looking into the past cause the stability of future events? Is it possible that they aren't just looking but.... calling up futures to some degree by selecting them. Quantum Theory was never my strongest subject but... It's weird action is that... it behaves differently when you're looking as opposed to when you're not.

I suspect that our trip may have been literally written for us simply by it having been contemplated. And so it is that science and philosophy intersect.

I'm going to see if anyone else from the senior crew is as likely to be at the ship's bar as I am now. I don't know as I've ever felt this small and insignificant in the universe as I do after our unbelievable trip into intergalactic space.

Tenzi Carter says that she can get us home easily. I hope it's true because I know I can't get us back even when I do finish the coil repairs. I'd be afraid to try threading the Quantum Foam again without navigation protocol. We'd have to pick a planet and call it home, I think. The Potemkin wasn't built for these dark and distant waters.

 

Tags: TBR#007

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