Technical Report

Posted on 18 Dec 2015 @ 8:12pm by Lieutenant Wilhelm Von Haeften & Lieutenant JG Cyrin Xanth
Edited on on 31 Dec 2015 @ 6:19am

2,146 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 10 - Symposium
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Chief Science Officer's Office
Timeline: MD23, 0903 Hours

[ON]

Cyrin was running just a tiny bit late, in his mind, for a quick meeting with the Galileo's new Chief Science Officer before he started his shore leave. He'd actually shown up with a couple of minutes to spare, the carefully detailed report he had spent the last weeks on ready to go and as polished as anything he'd done before. But when he actually had arrived at the office doors, the young Trill found himself hesitating. Commander Kohl had been difficult to deal with, at least for him though not everyone else, for many reasons. What if this new superior was even worse somehow?

As was often the case, Cyrin's mind had began to work overtime, coming up with and analyzing far too many scenarios, possibilities, what ifs, and unlikelihoods. What if he made a bad impression? What if the new chief didn't like his work, or his methods? What if they just didn't get along? What if he said the wrong thing? What if, what if, what if...

Before he could make himself any more nervous, Cyrin reached out and tapped the panel on the wall outside his new boss' office, three minutes late, a bit wild-eyed, hair messed up from where he'd been tugging on it with worry, and a stack of PADDs tucked up beneath one arm.

Lieutenant Wilhelm Von Haeften, Chief of Science aboard the Galileo set his coffee down as he examined the PADD before him. His office was full of Shore Leave requests from various personnel in SCIDEP, and the German wanted to give each and every one their full attention rather than 'pencil-whipping' the forms.

At least th damned forms they use are identical to the Reserves Wil thought to himself.

The door chiming brought him back to reality.

Must be that Ensign Xarth

The CSO looked at the chrono: three minutes late. Plus or minus five minutes was punctual enough for the German's taste.

"Come." he called out.

The tall, lanky form of the ships' astrophysicist walked in quickly at the call. Not so far removed from the Academy, Cyrin stopped a few feet in front of the desk, snapped his heels together, put his back ramrod straight, and gave a proper announcement. Or at least, he tried to.

"En-Ensign Xanth, uh uh, r-r-reporting as ordered, uh, sir."

Instantly, the young man's face began to flush red, a colour that creeped out from beneath his collar, worked it's way up as high as his ears and forehead. The brown spots that ran down the side of his head stood out sharply then. Anxious grey eyes tried to stay looking at the bulkhead beyond the human, but couldn't help a quick glance. There was literal fear in them, and even the PADDs he held clattered for a moment as he shook. Internally he was berating himself, a conversation he'd had many times in the past. He was a Starfleet Officer, not some frightened Cardassian Vole, but tremble he did nevertheless.

Wilhelm sketched a salute to acknolwedge the report of the more junior officer; no salute had been offered by the younger man, but habit made the German do it before he realized it.

"At ease." Von Haeften ordered.

The air rushed out of Cyrin noisily, his shoulders slumped, and his posture sank at least an inch. "I uh, I b-brought my n-notes and um, my report, sir," he began, still talking fast. "About wh-what I learned on our l-last...well, I w-wouldn't call it a uh, mission, n-not a proper one. Ordeal? Uh-uh-about the vortex and it's p-pro-properties?" With that, he stepped forward and introduced six new PADDs to Von Haeften's desk. Each one was filled with dense, unwieldy mathematics measuring and defining a singularity with trans-dimensional properties, gravimetric readings, radiation maps, and more. It had taken weeks to gather and process, even not considering the events in the other universe, with more than a few sleepless nights before even the scientist trained in this field could begin to make heads or tails out of things. As usual, Cyrin hadn't tried to write anything out in a way that was easily understood, but instead provided every single bit of relevant data he could think to, no matter how complex or esoteric it may be.

Wilhelm was mildly annoyed that the young ensign would dump PADDs onto his desk without asking, but noted that the young man was nervous to a degree Wilhelm had not seen since...

Since I was a young Ensign. Von Haeften thought wryly.

"First off son, relax. You are not in any trouble here. Have a seat while I look this over briefly." The CSO said, motioning to the vacant seat with a wave of his hand.

"Aye, s-s-sir," Cyrin mumbled, ducked his head, then folded himself down into the offered seat. He did his best to not fidget.

Wil took up the first PADD and looked at the figures before him. It was denser than refined Einsteinium, and Wilhelm could only pretend to grasp the math behind it; his specialty was history and physical sciences, not math. Still, he put up an air of understanding as he look over the data, hoping its secrets would be revealed to him.

After a few minutes of looking at several PADDs, Von Haeften set them down and looked at the jittery young Trill.

"Cyrin right? [This is good.]" Wil said, the second sentence stated in the CSO's limited Trill. The German hoped to put the younger man at ease by speaking his mother language without the translator.

"Yes, s-sir, and th-th-thank you. I-" Cyrin stopped, blinked, and cocked his head to one side like a curious bird. He'd grown so used to using Standard these last few years that his own language had caught him off guard, coming so unexpectedly like that. He really didn't know how to react to that, but ventured, "[Cyrin is my host-name, yes.]"

"Easy son; I'm afraid I used up most of my Trill with that last phrase. I can say a few pleasantries, count to ten, etc; I'm afraid I don't have the skill needed to carry on full conversations yet. [Sorry.]

Wilhelm pitied the ensign; he knew what it was like to be scared out of his wits by his superiors, men who seemed to be full of boundless wisdom and little patience. Wil hoped that he would never be that to his subordinates; it was his job as a senior to counsel and mentor those more junior than himself.

Trying to bolster and build the young man up, Von Haeften said "I'm just a historian myself and well-versed in math; think you might be able to talk me through this data?"

There were only a few ways that Von Haeften had available to him to put Cyrin at ease. One would have been to talk about (proper) football, or surfing. The other was invite the scientist to actually discuss his science. Cyrin's face brightened, his chin lifted and his eyes stopped trying to avoid the other man's, and though he started out a bit roughly things got better as he went along; at least, he spoke more clearly but his explanation was only slightly more comprehensible than his data, which wasn't saying much.

"W-W-Well, you see, s-sir, I discovered that um, that the singularity - uh, m-most of the crew w-w-was calling it a v-vortex, but given the nature of the gravimetric d-distortions, it's really a kind of quantum singularity - that it was a stable artificial artifact that propagated th-through space, sub-space, and the inter-dimensional medium." Cyrin began to gesture to give emphasis to certain points. "C-Commander K-K-Kohl, he ordered m-me to learn everything I c-could about it, so...but he's gone, you're here. Anyways, um, as I was saying, it was artificial, but that's plain to s-see. It was our own secondary deflector grid that c-created it. The stability though, that was the unexpected part. Given the sh-sheer number of variables involved in a random discharge being able to create a singularity of this type, and I'm talking on an order of magnitude of trillions, that's just odd. I've f-factored in the spacial distortions that damaged the ship, but didn't destroy it, the radiation signatures that we detected after passing through it both times from the hull and biological samples, the subspace echoes that extended out to 3.2798 light years from the formation point in space, and even figured out why there was a displacement of 132.293 kilometers both times. It's all in there, the PADDs, along with some other energy gradients that I still can't make sense of but looks like they might just be random fluctuations caused by the stress of expanding universes 'pressing' against each other in the multiverse's medium. Probably not significant, especially since my simulations show different measurements each time but with the same results." Cyrin waited expectantly then, a half smile on his face.

"Right." Von Haeften said. This science was beyond him; the Academy only gave you the basics of general sciences before you choose a specific field of study, such as Von Haeften's history. He did know a few things though, and decided to use them to draw this bolstering confidence out of the Trill.

"Wouldn't the confluence of multiple universes pressing down upon the fabric of space-time create a Kakoua Effect, and thereby create a rip therein? What was this QS' event horizon limit? What about its complex wave functions? Did they match Chladni's figures of acoustic modes of vibration in classical physics?"

Cyrin's small smile had widened significantly now, and he had completely forgotten to be nervous, "You'd think just that. I certainly did, at first. But the modulation of the energy discharge was so specific as to create only a relatively small connection between the two universes. The actual 'passage', if we can call it that, was a perfect circle, balancing the stress evenly so space itself didn't fracture any further, so no Kakoua Effect. R = 3.0 x 24 km for last stable particle orbit, I actually just stumbled on that one somehow. And the acoustics were way off, but I think that's because of the inherent chaos when mixing in laws of physics from outside the two universes."

Wilhelm smiled mildly at the young ensign. "See? Not hard to be confident once you get excited about a passionate subject is it?" the German pointed out.

"This is some [good stuff]. How about you lead the scientific brief about the findings we'll have after shoreleave?"

Cyrin's smile slipped from his features and his eyes grew round, "M-m-me, s-s-sir?" He swallowed hard and sat back in his chair. "I uh...w-well, I s-suppose I uh, could..." Cyrin looked anything but thrilled by the idea. "Uh, uh, anyways, w-welcome aboard, s-sir," he added in a lame attempt to try to steer the conversation elsewhere.

"Relax Ensign. If you show even half the confidence and competence you just showed me here, you'll do just fine; I have faith in you. [You'll be ok.]" the CSO said.

"Have a briefing format ready to me by..." the German paused as he checked the calendar.

"...Next Friday. I'll take a look and see what I can offer in terms of advice."

Perhaps to his credit, Cyrin didn't protest or complain about an order he was obviously uncomfortable with, but nodded his head, "Aye, s-sir." He wondered if this would turn out any better than the last time he gave a briefing to the rest of the department. The looks he'd gotten when delivering his report on the asteroid in the Mirror Universe hadn't been all that...friendly. And besides, how was he to know that it had a cloaked base on it? It really hadn't been his fault. He'd get to work on it right away as well; Cyrin wasn't exactly under orders to meet with a counselor from the Symbiosis Commission during shore leave, but he had promised Commander Stace he'd do just that and wasn't about to disappoint her. The sooner he could get his responsibilities on the ship out of the way, the sooner he could face that challenge.

"Sehr gut*. On your way Faehnrich**." Von Haeften said, sketching a salute to let the young Trill scientist know he was free to leave.

"Uh, uh, aye sir," Cyrin replied, leaving the collection of incomprehensible PADDs as he headed for the door. For a moment he paused, turned to look back at the ship's new CSO, his eyes a bit wide and round, then hurried on his way.

*Sehr gut - Zar-Goot: Very good.
** Faehnrich - fAAn- Reek: German naval equivalent of Ensign

OFF:

Lieutenant JG Wilhelm Von Haeften
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

&

Ensign Cyrin Xanth
Astrophysicist
USS Galileo

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