The Dream Team

Posted on Mon Jul 18th, 2022 @ 1:57pm by Petty Officer, 1st Class Christian Tremblay & Lieutenant Avira zh'Kenarh M.D. & Lieutenant JG Ethal Reade & Ensign Isaac 'Zac' Hughes & Ensign Vincent Marlow

Mission: Mission 6 - Memory
Location: Deck E - Sickbay
Timeline: Day 301 - 1100 hrs
1685 words - 3.4 OF Standard Post Measure

Christian carried a Stack of PADDs from the Science lab as he pressed the button to open the sickbay doors with his elbow. Upon entering, he saw the assembled group watch him as he hurried over and set the PADDs down on the nearby desk. "I'm sorry I'm late. The metallurgical analysis on the pod took longer than I anticipated," Christian said with a slight embarrased look and he handed the results to Lieutenant Reade.

Ethal took the PADD eagerly. "No need to worry, these results are important so I'm glad we got them," She said with a smile and gestured to the recently acquired PADD. Although Ethal seemed happy she was holding back her concern for their situation. With no time to waste Ethal started looking over the results.

As the ship's resident xeno-archaeologist, Vincent Marlow only had to bring a single PADD with him. He had ran various scans of the pod's livery as well as the language protocols used in the system's control inputs and monitors. While it had been enough work to keep him busy, it all boiled down to a single PADD and some theoretical concepts.

Avira had wondered why they were assembling in sickbay but was happy she didn't have to move somewhere else in the ship to be included in the discussion. The autopsy had been long and gruelling and had yielded no significant results, much to her chagrin. She was living and wired on the human's caffeine to hopefully make it through today.

Hughes, leaning against a bulkhead to the side, wasn't sure if he was there because they needed his input or because he'd been openly suspicious. He likewise wasn't immediately convinced that their explanations would permit him to relax entirely but, as a rational man, clinging to paranoia wasn't a strategy that sounded particularly appealing. The current working theory had implications that seemed impossible to fathom on top of piecing together the muddled mess of his recent memories, and so he regarded the conversation with furrowed brow but held his tongue.

"I ran the scans taken of the pod through the spectrometer looking for any potential markers about its origin. Starfleet keeps a record of where the building materials are sourced from for each ship. The metalurgic makeup of both the pod in the launch bay and our own escape pods matched. However, there was one item of note," Christian said as he explained his readings for the assembled group. "The metal used to construct the pod in the launch bay was had a different molecular make up than the pods stored in our own ship," he continued.

Ethal started to get a picture of what this was starting to mean in her head but she both needed some more time to fully rule out any other options and also did not want to silence anyone else's opinions on this subject. "We already have the information of the mismatch quantum variance to our Universe. But I have also run some detailed scans and analyses of where we found the pod and what I can tell, this pod was forced into our space. There are traces of tears in the fabric of our space where it entered."

“As far as culture is concerned,” Vincent Marlow began. He lifted his fingers as to count off his points, “A scan of the consoles and the markings of the pod indicate an identical language as our own. Key phrases and markers match our own English almost exactly. The paint and livery are virtually identical to our own, with only minute variances due to position of the paint, artist error, or splatter effect.” Looking at those in attendance to gauge interest, Vince closed with, “Regardless of origin, it is as if we are looking at a carbon copy of ourselves.”

Avira nodded along to the information Marlow was sharing, "The medical records corroborate that. For the most part, these people are exactly like the people that were assigned to this vessel. There's some medical history that seems misplaced or misaligned, but for all intents and purposes they are clones of people we know for a fact are not on the ship or killed in action."

Except for the glaring hole in the entire argument; it's insane.

Isaac didn't profess to have any kind of working knowledge on the kind of phenomenon that might explain what the group assembled in front of him were trying to claim, but he did know what far-fetched looked like, and sounded like, and felt like. Inter-dimensional travel was a difficult enough explanation to swallow before you took into consideration the limited scope, at least from their side of the veil, of an escape pod somehow managing to rip a hole in the fabric of space. His frown, a mixture of pensive consideration and deep concern, knitted his eyebrows together before his baritone rumbled upwards through a cleared throat to pose the obvious.

"So, if we're from somewhere else, how did we get here?"

"I don't think that we have the scientific knowledge available to know that," Vincent stated, shaking his head in confusion. "The only thing we have is the Scientific Method. The hypothesis is that we believe the escape pod that brought you to us is not from our universe. We are all able to observe that pod and the beings aboard are almost, but not quiet perfect, copies of what exists or did exist here. The minor differences exclude time jumps." Pausing his external thoughts for a moment, he looked at the notes he had been taking. Looking back to Isaac, Marlow asked, "What can you remember about your escape? Was there anything unusual about the area of space, something like an ion storm? What were the circumstances that drove you to the escape pod?"

"We lost everyone."

To be fair, a lot of Isaac's own recollection was hazy, he'd nearly been one of the casualties himself. Pushing off the wall, he approached the group and stopped, hands in pockets still, to run his eye over the assembled evidence.

"The Commander will be a more reliable source of information on that but I don't recall any disturbance, or storm. Just...one creature and its feeding frenzy."

The doctor's eyes lifted, scanned the worried faces in front of him, and came to settle on his counterpart's.

"I couldn't speculate as to why it suddenly ramped up its intensity. Jamesson said, when he encountered it latched onto me, that it didn't seem rational anymore, no further pretence towards its assumed identity. I have residual TGA, which we'd started to observe in the crew just hours before the massacre. Confusion, inconsistencies, lapses in judgement. Jamesson ordered the evacuation but, as far as we know, we were the only pod to actually jettison. "

Avira looked at the others gathered around her, it was all starting to fall into place and a mental fog seemed to be pierced, lifted. It was becoming more clear to her that Leyton's death seemed to be related to the creature the other-universe people described. "The early experiences and reports from Hughes and Jamesson seem to match our current reports, so it would seem there is an imposter among us." She crossed her arms and her antennae gently swayed back and forth. "Any ideas as to how to flush them out before more people die?"

"If we have been infiltrated by an imposter who is adept at looking like us, we don't have many options," Vincent stated. "I'm just an archaeologist so I can't really help with the more abstract parts of this problem, but I know cultures. Even the most insignificant historical differences in our universes could give rise to sharp branches in a person's history and medical makeup, sort of like leaving a mission patch behind on an away mission for another culture to find." Stopping himself before he ventured down the rabbit hole, he said, "Could we compare medical records from before we left Earth to who is on the ship now? For those in our universe, any and all changes would be documented. For those from somewhere else would be far different due to having lived a different life, if their record even existed."

Christian watched the officers around him as the weight of what Avira was suggesting hit him. If it was true, and there was an imposter amongst them, the next question would be how did they come aboard. He thought back to when that opportunity might have presented itself, and one instance soon came to his mind. "The asteroid," he said to no one in particular. He then looked up and saw all eyes on him. "If there is an imposter amongst us, the only time where someone could've come aboard was when we investigated that asteroid," he said before looking to Lieutenant Reade, "Remember ma'am, we had to analyze all those samples."

Ethal looked back at Christian for a moment before it clicked in her brain on what he was talking about. “Yes, your right though the actual trip is a little hazy about what happened that day.” She sat biting her lip as she tried to recall what happened that day. She looked to Avira but clearly left the question open for anyone to answer “When did the crew’s headaches start? I started getting mine around the time we returned from that asteroid.”

When Avira tried to think back on when it all started she felt a bout of vertigo bubble up. "Ehm." Her antennae twitched a bit trying to compensate for the unsteady feeling. "It would be about the time of the asteroid expedition." A moment of clarity made her realise that the first time she experienced her vertigo issues was when she was giving the away team their medical check up. "There might be someth-..."

At that moment, the ship's general alarm sounded from the comm panel. As the group looked towards it, the announcement came through, "Security Condition Reed 4. Deck G, Port Side." The group looked to each other as the alert repeated again.