A Fistful of Dark Matter
Posted on Sun Feb 7th, 2016 @ 5:56pm by Ensign Ian Bren & Commander Patrick Leroy & Lieutenant Tess Rutheridge & Lieutenant Riley Sukotav
Mission: Further Challenges
* Galileo Science Center *
Riley arrived back at the science center right on the dot of two hours, though he’d had to run from the turbolift to the main entrance. He stopped outside the doors, straightened his jacket, then stepped inside casually as if he had all the time in the world.
“Hey Ian, how’s it going? Where’s the Commander?”
“In his office,” Ian answered, ducking down and looking back at the doors of said office. “Things got tense around here really quick.”
“Oh?” Riley wasn’t too surprised. “What happened?”
The office doors opened in that moment revealing Commander Leroy with his particular ‘special occasions’ scowl and what happened, Riley realized, was that he was right into his crosshairs.
“Welcome back Lt. Sukotav.” Leroy greeted him without changing expression. “I think we have a problem. The calibration of the instruments hasn’t been performed as it should have, we lost a cycle of experimentation and the full procedure has to restart from scratch. This time at a double-time rate so we’re going to take the matter right in our hands.”
The Juniors around tried to make themselves scarce as he scanned Galileo’s main room “Have you heard me Mr. Bren? You’re one of the volunteers. Back up Lieutenant Rutheridge at science IV station.”
“Yes sir!” Ian scurried over to the Station and started keying in the necessary beginning steps.
Riley shot Ian a sympathetic look and followed Patrick to another station. Just beyond them was the sphere, mounted on a platform. He entered the initialization commands, then turned to Patrick as the computer set to work. “Level 10 forcefield in place, sir.”
“Very well, let’s start with the proton projector and rise temperature to 5,200 kelvin degrees, equivalent to an orange spectrum star. Mr. Bren be ready to record any variation in molecular structure.”
“Projector online and...here we go.” Riley pressed the panel, then looked up as a light went on behind the forcefield, surrounding the sphere in a white glow. “Temperature at 2000 and rising,” he reported.
“Recording,” Ian announced, belatedly, even though he’d been recording. He kept splitting his attention between the actual sight of the sphere and the site of the sphere on his console. Eventually, he started just watching the console as the real sight got too bright to look at.
The force field whined and sparkled for some seconds as the experiment progressed then Leroy stated loudly “And now Lt. Sukotav ...3 ...2 ...1, shut down.”
The brightness slowly waned from inside the contained platform and the sphere was visible again, unchanged to the eye.
Patrick scrolled his monitor taking a mental note of the informations important to him, while he addressed the other members “Any strange readings from all your stations?”
“I am reading no changes to the dark matter inside,” Riley reported. “Internal temperature unchanged. Ian?”
“No odd readings from here,” Ian replied.
“Very well, is time then to start a photonic pulse variance measurement to test the sphere’s outer shell resistance. We’ll make it brief to avoid any possible rupture, even if I’m most sure we’ll not be able to damage this material. Mr. Bren… Mr. Sukotav… Anytime you want.”
“Alright Ian. Set the initial variance for .35 and a pulse of five seconds,” Riley instructed. “Then we will see where we are. Proceed.”
“Bringing the oscillating controller online, Sirs,” Ian said, pressing a series of commands into the console. “In 3... 2... 1... it’s on.” He watched the sphere and announced, “Stopping in 3... 2... 1....” The machine stopped its pulsing. He frowned at the readings on his console. “No change recorded here.”
“Very well, increase the variance to .6 and time to eight seconds,” Riley said. “And let’s hope for the best.”
Sighing to himself, Ian went through the same process again, just longer this time. At the seventh second, he noticed a change and shouted, “The polarized carodine is cracking!” He didn’t need to abort the test - the computer automatically shut it down as the timer hit eight seconds. He leaned towards the console, looking at the image of the sphere there. “Oh... I don’t like the looks of that.”
Riley looked at the console and then brought up the readings on the tiny nebula inside. “Huh. Get this - the nebula is still reading stable. There seems to be some sort of redundancy, a field around it that’s protecting it like a second shell.”
“It’s quite logical to assume that the Krenim thought about a kind of life insurance when they decided to play with such a force…” Said Rutheridge scrolling the data on the station monitor “Let’s have the computer crunch on these data with a detail to atomic level to monitor the exact sequence of the event.”
“Well, at least we have a partial response for the XO about a way to deconstruct the device… The only problem being how to render inoffensive the dark matter within…” Patrick said voicing his thoughts. He stood there then, pensive, chin between thumb and index looking at the readings on the terminal screen…
Silence fell in Galileo for some moments giving pause to the staff involved in such an important analysis.
“Mr. Bren.” Leroy said in the end, “Operate a modulated quantum stream analysis of the field acting as a secondary shell. The point is to understand if we can be able, with our technology, to replicate a similar construct.... Tess help him out with this, And you too Lt. Sukotav even if I’m sure our Mr. Bren will be able to surprise us.”
That said Leroy devoted his attention to the screen close to him typing commands and conducting further extrapolations of his own.
Glancing at Riley and Tess, Ian quickly recalibrated the sensors and started the quantum stream analysis as ordered. Nothing happened for a seemingly long time. Finally, information started streaming into the computer. “Sir, I’m detecting a series of nanowave signatures. The inner shell seems to be an alloy of tellurium and beryllium crystal.”
Leroy perked an eyebrow. “Good job, ensign,” he said addressing Bren then turned to Sukotav in a lower tone, “This is valuable information we’re getting from the item and… The nanowaves signatures can easily be mistaken by an inexperienced eye. It seems Ens. Bren may have a knack for this.”
“Of course he does, sir,” Riley answered. “We should set that sensor to record from here on out. This thing is supposed to be stable, I’d like to be sure of that. Once we have a continuous record, we can run a simulation to see if the shell is degrading any at all.”
Leroy nodded with Lt. Sukotav words, “I agree to that. Even if that means asking some more time to Captain Hawke and we should be prepared to be denied that. She’s been clear about how short our time is on this matter, even if she didn’t set a deadline… Only an urgency.”
“Maybe an engineer’s perspective in this would be valuable,” Ian suggested. “Riley could call Reva in.”
“Uhh...Reva’s not available. She is departing any time now for a surveying mission,” Riley answered. It was pretty close to the truth. “We can call in Lt. Jenkins, the CEO but she will have to examine this data without seeing the sphere.”
Ian looked over at Riley and frowned. He’d have to ask about that later.
“I could take care of sending the data and our requests to Jenkins.” Rutheridge offered.
“Yes, do that.” Leroy replied “I recommend the utmost discretion though. This experiment, and especially the Krenim device, is a classified matter. We do not want to have a leak on this until cleared by the XO.”
“Aye, I’ll do that Sir.” Rutheridge responded with a nod.
“Now… We have to devise a safe method to vent the incredible energy of the dark matter contained within the sphere. If we’ll not be able to duplicate it Captain Hawke wants it destroyed. Albeit stable at this moment the force inside this little nugget could vaporize SB900 and vitrify Archadia III. Any ideas?”
“The simple answer would be to find what can neutralize the energy,” Riley answered. “Simple to say, though likely hard to do since dark matter absorbs anything entering it. It will take some time to investigate.”
“I’ll set up a computer simulation to see if that will come up with an answer,” Ian volunteered.
Riley checked the time and was surprised to see that it was already past 0800. His stomach growled. “Once he gets the simulation running, I think some food is in order.”
“I think you deserve a break.” Leroy stated “Go, I’ll stay here monitoring the progress.”
“Thank you sir.” Riley flashed him a smile. “Let’s get breakfast, Ian. Shall we bring you anything sir?”
“No thank you, I’m not hungry.”
“Very well.” Riley stepped away from the panel before him. “Ready Ian?”
“Yeah, how about that pancake place on the Promenade?” Ian suggested as they headed for the door. “And when did Reva get picked for a survey mission?”
******************
Commander Patrick Leroy
Lt. Tess Rutheridge
Lt. Riley Sukotav
Ensign Ian Bren
