Waste bin full of paper, clever rhymes, see ya later

Posted on Thu Sep 24th, 2020 @ 9:22pm by Lieutenant JG Mattias Constantine & Ensign Elegy Nascimento

Mission: Mission 3 - 100
Location: Deck F - Science Lab
Timeline: Day 39, Month 2, Year 0 23:30
3059 words - 6.1 OF Standard Post Measure

The digital invitation sent to Mattias Constantine had requested a cross-departmental confab about the Vrav's language. (The small print posed a question about what inferences could be made from the same.) The sender of the invite, Elegy Nascimento, had lost track of the time, and had created less than inviting environs in the science laboratory. The musical stylings of an R&B superstar from the 2140s --at eardrum-piercing decibels-- greeted all who entered the lab. Meanwhile, the Science Officer, Elegy himself, remained hunched over the life sciences workstation, blissfully oblivious to any who entered. His half-eaten bowl of algae had been abandoned, somehow on the other side of the compartment, atop the department's pet rock.

Standing just outside the door to the laboratory, Matt checked his PADD once again to ensure that he had read the invitation correctly. That moment of hesitation strengthened as he heard (and felt) the sounds of loud music through the door. The muted frequencies soared into a dynamic range of soaring trebles and booming bass as Constantine threw caution to the wind and opened the door. Musically inclined himself, he couldn't help but bob his head to the groove as he looked around and spotted the source of his invitation.

"Ensign."

Lieutenant Constantine walked a few paces closer to the workstation.

"Ensign!"

Startled out of his investigative reverie, Elegy recoiled from his workstation. He sat bolt upright and he yelped a gasp of surprise — although the music drown most of it out. Catching the communications officer in his peripheral vision, Elegy said, “Lieutenant Constantine!” He winced slightly as the input from his cochlear implants told him that his own voice was mostly drown out by the music too. So Elegy slapped the mute button on his console to silence the music coming from his comm panel.

Elegy took a breath. He ran a hand through his dark hair, which was approaching shaggy lengths beyond regulation. He took another breath. And then he smiled and acted perfectly natural. Lowering his voice from before, Elegy said, "Lieutenant Constantine, thank you for coming."

"It's no trouble at all. Great choice in music, by the way, that song definitely had that forties groove about it," Mattias nodded in approval, knowing that it was likely that the tune would be stuck in his head for the days to come. "So, what's going on? Something I can help you with?"

At the musical compliment, Elegy offered a bashful nod of thanks from his perch on the workstool. He leaned back, bracing his elbows again the console behind him and raising his legs, slightly, to rest his boots on a higher rung of the stool. "I've been trying (and failing) to genetically design a better algae for the Vrav; to make amends for what we took from them," Elegy said to answer Mattias' question about his mission. "The crux is it needs to be simple enough for our protein resequencers to produce it, but complex enough to meet the Vrav's nutritional needs. ...And it's not like we have a full biological profile of the Vrav."

"Ah yes, trying to capture the magic and recreate the work of millions of years of exoplanetary evolution in the matter of a few hours on a workbench in a flying petri dish with seventy of your closest friends. I suspect we'll be fresh out of prepositional phrases by breakfast," Matt chuckled as he closed the remaining distance to the workbench. Along the way, the communications officer snatched a stool away from an unoccupied station and plopped both it and himself down next to Ensign Nascimento. "And hey, you never know, maybe we'll get to play god a bit too. C'mon," Constantine gestured with his chin, "bring me up to speed on what you've got so far."

While he snickered at Constantine's comment, Elegy typed in the command to access an algae chemical analysis on a display to the left. Waving a hand at the image, Elegy said, "This one is the Vrav algae we've already processed into raw protein stock." Gesturing to another chemical analysis on the right, Elegy explained, "That one is just about the top-tier algae our protein resequencers can produce." The computer added yellow circles and red lines to identify the components from the Vrav algae --such as unique polypeptides and linoleic acid-- that were missing from the Starfleet-made algae. As he spoke, Elegy watched Constantine's reactions to the information, since he'd already spent far too many hours staring at theoretical algae.

"Because we can't recreate the exact algae we've taken from the Ud Clan," Elegy said, "whatever algae we provide them as reparations needs to be efficient in its feed conversion." In the same breath, Elegy sounded deeply ashamed of Atlantis' inadvertent theft of Ud Clan's food source, and yet also his curiosity was deeply aroused by the challenge before him. He spun his hand in the air to emphasize the estimations he was about to make. "An individual Vrav should only need to eat, say, a pound of nutritious algae to feel nourished," Elegy said, "instead of fifty pounds of algae to actually digest the same nutrition."

Elegy blinked, and he took a breath, and he looked to Constantine with trepidatious anticipation. "Can you guess how many pounds of this algae" --Elegy pointed a finger at the algae he and the science crew had designed-- "a Vrav would need to eat to feel nourished?"

Rubbing his chin in thought, the communications officer peered at the assemble of eukaryotic, photosynthesizing organisms and shrugged. Any number he guessed would truly be just that - only a guess, but Constantine was enjoying the conversation and the company, so he pulled a number out of the ether. "I certainly hope it would be a single digit number, or else eating is going to turn into an all day event for them. Actually, that might not be a bad idea, all things considered. It'll keep them busy, anyway," Matt chortled.

Staring down the analysis on the display, Elegy said sadly, "No." The vowel came out elongated with fresh disappointment. "It wouldn't," Elegy added and he tilted his head in Matt's direction. "The answer is zero. Zero pounds," Elegy said and his hands offered a ta-da flourish, ironically. "The simulations say any Vrav who ate this algae would swiftly die from anaphylactic shock."

The revelation sobered Constantine's laughter to the point where he paused for a moment to recollect his thoughts before continuing. He was quick to empathize with Ensign Nascimento, having struggled himself not all that long ago with coming up with a workable translation algorithm so that they could even communicate with the Vrav. Now, the pressure had shifted off of him and onto other departments, but Matt knew that the entire team still needed to pull on the rope together.

"Don't get discouraged, I was in the same spot two weeks ago. We'll chip away at this thing together. What I lack in scientific knowledge I make up for in communication skills and as a sounding board for ideas. So, what about their biology reacts so violently to this extra spicy algae?" Matt queried.

Stabbing at the computer display with his index finger, Elegy pointed out the elements on the chemical analysis that had been highlighted by the computer. "This has a 78% chance of being an allergen; this one, a 61% chance, this, a 42% chance," Elegy explained, sounding every bit as discouraged as Matt had observed. "If the members of Ud Clan survived the allergic reaction," Elegy said with a bit of a self-hating sneer, "Horizontal gene transfer from this microRNA may damage their lymphatic systems."

Shrugging helplessly, Elegy sighed out the last of his frustration and then sucked in fresh air. Angling his head in Matt's direction, Elegy's curiosity jumped out as he said, "We just know so little about Vrav biology. The simulation is being powered by calculations from my Vulcan colleagues. Any information you can share about their language, their physicality, their behaviour could inform what we know about their feeding and biology."

"I might be able to help you there," Matt nodded as he listened and watched. So often, moments of creativity were fragile enough to be disrupted by a misplaced or mistimed interjection, so he took great care to not disrupt Elegy's train of thought. "Some of what we were struggling with when coming up with the translation algorithm was what we couldn't perceive. We literally couldn't hear the frequencies they were using for a huge chunk of their language, but once we started listening for it, we had the breakthrough we needed to get a working translator." the communications officer explained.

Reaching into his pocket, Matt tapped a few commands into the device which caused the display sitting atop the workstation to flicker into life. A series of equations were left justified on the screen with a frequency graph displayed on the right.

"This is either horrifically boring or scintillatingly interesting, but here's the initial equation that models the data we were able to pick up. A quick Laplace transform to the frequency domain showed us exactly how much we had been missing," Constantine gestured to the area on the graph above normal human hearing range. "They seem to be capable of using sound as a defense mechanism as well. They... shouted or screamed their way out of our negotiation. So loudly, in fact, that we had to plug our ears."

Looking like a child being told that Santa Clause was, in fact, real, Elegy gaped at Constantine for a full ten seconds. His sapphire eyes went wide and a tittering laugh escaped his throat. Finally, Elegy spoke so that he could insist, "Scintillating, Lieutenant. Sentient behaviour is always scintillating." --Elegy was practically vibrating with excitement as he went on-- "They screamed at you as an attack? Did that-- did that feel better or worse than a phase-pistol stun?"

"Easily worse. It's complete sensory overload. Violent enough to cause Dr. zh'Kenarh to throw up shortly after leaving the area."

At Constantine’s description of the Vrav scream, Elegy recoiled slightly, rocking back on his stool. "Her poor little antennae," Elegy said in concern. Constantine's first-hand experience quickly reminded him that this had happened to his crewmates, and not simply observed in the wild. "That sound hideous," Elegy remarked and he bumped his shoulder against Constantine's shoulder. Elegy asked, "Were you okay, Lieutenant?"

"No worse for wear, thank you for asking. Nothing that a little extra work at the laundromat couldn't take care of anyway," Constantine emitted a low whistle, closing his eyes for a moment as he recalled the awkward shuttlepod ride back to the Atlantis. Upon reopening them, the curious look that Nascimento was casting him cued him into realizing that, at best, his explanation was half complete. "Ah, you see, what I failed to mention was that I had to carry the good doctor out of the area. And, uh, she became ill mid-extraction," Matt emitted a chuckle through a grimaced expression. "I felt bad for her, I really did."

"Oh no," Elegy intoned, with thinly-veiled horror behind his eyes. "There aren't many physical sensations much worse than vomiting," he said and he shook his head once. "It makes me cry. Every time." Elegy cleared his head and he pointed at his cochlear implant in the ear closest to Matt. "Lucky me, I avoided any Vrav screams when they boarded the ship," he said. "I can't imagine what it would have felt like with these."

"I couldn't fathom," Matt shook his head. "Even if you were able to shut off your implants in time, it was the sort of overwhelming sound that you can feel. Regardless, I'm sorry I don't have much else. I don't know that there's anything we can take from that to help with our algae situation."

Elegy waggled a finger at the data Matt had provided, and he insisted, "This is plenty. Truth takes time." Cocking his head in Matt's direction, Elegy said, "I'll share this with the rest of the team. We never know when inspiration will strike... or how. What made you think of the Laplace transform in your analysis?"

"Well, I'm sure you have your mentors and the people in your field of study that you look up to. One of mine was a professor at Vandy by the name of Kuznetsov. She was famous for her frequency analysis, and quite possibly had one of the best minds on the subject. I still apply her method of analysis to this day. Changing the domain in which you solve a problem can help change the way you think about said problem," Constantine fondly recalled his tutelage. "The Laplace transform is especially helpful because it takes some very, very convoluted equations and simplifies them into polynomials in another domain. You do the hard work with the easier equation, then you convert it all back to something you can actually build at the end. If only there were a biological equivalent."

His eyes widening at the chemical analysis on the screen, a bit of a sigh escaped Elegy's lips. He hadn't intended it. "It's all so theoretical," Elegy said, his words were only crispy with frustration around the edges. "There's value in this study. This could benefit some people, some day, if not the Vrav themselves. And there's virtue in this work; in our labours to truly make amends for what we took." --Elegy looked to Constantine, as if he might have the answer-- "But we don't even know if the Ud Clan will accept a gift from us in the end."

Mattias rubbed the bridge of his nose as he remembered his interactions with the Vrav; it was the communications officer's turn to bear the yoke of frustration. "They just stonewall us over and over every time we try to negotiate. The only opening they've given us thus far has been this food replacement," Constantine reopened his eyes and offered an apologetic look towards Elegy, realizing too late that his statement might add more pressure on top of what the scientist was already with. "Somehow, I get the feeling that they'd manage to blame us for the gift."

A beat of silence fell over the conversation.

"Reminds me of some of my exes, actually," Matt chuckled to himself.

Snickering at the comparison, Elegy was struck by the mental image of Matt at a romantic dinner with a Vrav, both of them chewing on the same piece of algae. "That leads to the obvious question," said Elegy, his bright eyes full of intrigue, "have you ever rekindled a friendly relationship with an ex?" Raising his palms defensively, Elegy spoke through a crooked grin, when he said, "I'm only asking as a student of behaviour, of course, never as a nosy gossip."

"No, never," Mattias grinned. "But to answer the question, yes. My last breakup didn't go so well because she was cheating on me with another so called friend of mine, so I left that one at forgiving and forgetting. The one before that, though, was the first time that I was able to break up with someone as a result of a mutual, adult decision. We're still friends, but to stretch an analogy here, our friendship is a bit like if a cow were to eat some of our algae sample here. When it comes back up, it's still recognizable, but something is definitely different."

An absolute guffaw of a laugh exploded from Elegy -- to the point, he nearly fell off his stool. "Oh my god; iconic," Elegy muttered as he composed himself. In his mind, he followed the metaphor back to where it had started and forward to what he could learn from it. All the while, the humour drained from his smile. "I suppose Ud Clan doesn't even have fond memories or diplomatic relations to fuel us into a regurgitated friendship," Elegy said. He tapped the screen of artificial algae significantly. "All we have is this and a couple of broke-down protein resequencers."

"Hmm, actually," Mattias rubbed his chin in thought, a movement that his close friends took as a cue to take a step or two back just in case the brilliance of the forthcoming idea was dangerous, infectious, or perhaps even both. "Maybe there's something to regurgitating. It doesn't necessarily have the same wretch-inducing connotation to others as it does for humans. Maybe there's a strain of Vrav bacteria or fungi that can act as an intermediary. You see where I'm heading here? Maybe something can break down the allergens."

His head tilted back, Elegy stared at the overhead, using it as a blank canvas to allow the connections and calculations to play across his mind's eye. "Thaaaaaaat's exciting," Elegy said, elongating his vowels as implication after implication locked into place. "Now that's a borderline orgasmic thought, truly. That might even earn the name Constantine to become the taxonomical genus for any Vrav fungi we do find."

Snapping his gaze in Constantine's direction, Elegy excitedly said, "Of course, we've already parsed the scanner logs backwards and forward, but could there be other physical traces of the Vrav that remain within boot treads or the creases of field jackets... either from the planet or from their intrusion of this ship?"

"Almost certainly. FIrst law of forensics, right? You never enter and leave a room without leaving some sort of evidence you were there behind. That being said, it shouldn't be that difficult to find something, considering the bloodshed inflicted on both sides by our response to their boarding party. Life has a funny way of working out like that, you know?" Constantine grinned weakly, doing his best to see the silver lining on what was otherwise a horrific evening. "All that senseless violence, yet the aftermath might hold the key to solving the algae conundrum."

After breathing out a single humourless, "Heh," Elegy shared a lopsided smile of his own with Constantine. "If we can create the right protein resequencer pattern for the algae," Elegy remarked, "I'll write Ud Clan a thank-you note and deliver it personally."