Sacred Shapes

Posted on 21 Dec 2018 @ 6:31pm by Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant & Lieutenant JG Matthew Plumeri & Petra Varelli Ph.D. & Crewman Leander Fionn

2,655 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 17 - Crystal of Life
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 3, Multi-Purpose Laboratory 2
Timeline: MD -150 - 0900 hours

[ON]

The doors to the corridor spread apart, allowing Crewman Leander Fionn to walk into the laboratory backwards. "I have it here, lot 66-F then," Leander said. The layout of the laboratory was ringed in LCARS workstations and specialized sensor clusters, but the centre of the compartment was wide open space. Leander backed into the room, pulling a brushed-chrome cargo case on an anti-grav sled. Despite the assistance of the anti-gravs, the way Leander was yanking on the sled's handlebar, he really looked to be putting his back into it. "Despite what the computer register told me," Leander said, "I managed to track the crate down in cargo bay one."

"At least it's not Lot 666 and a crystal chandelier," Petra joked. "At least you found it. Who knows it's here?" she asked.

His mouth hanging open, Leander bounced his gaze from the crate, to Petra Varelli, and back to the crate again. "You do?" Leander answered back, although he didn't sound entirely certain of that. "I have a requisition to bring it to the officer on duty," he explained. "It's from Starbase 73's backlog of uncatalogued artifacts."

Petra's eyes lit up. "An artifact? Really? From where? What planet, What dig? How old?"

Matthew was working at station three when the box came in the room. He listened as Fionn delivered the cargo box and to the explanation given. He swiped the LCARS display with his left hand and created a new workspace on the terminal. An inquiry screen came up and he queried the computer for the cargo lot number. "I have the information here Doctor Varelli" he said. His blue eyes scanned the data and picked out the salient points to read aloud, "Starbase seventy-three...lot NVPH 66-F. Registered on stardate 62823.6. Eight years ago? Walenburg expedition to Galen III. Item listed simply as, 'Alien artifact of unknown origin, perhaps Gallenite. Further research is needed. Blah-blah-blah....huh. Expedition terminated. And...." he searched the data for more information before turning to Varelli. "That's all she wrote. Looks like the expedition research team never followed up and this...item...sat in stowage all this time."

"Ahh," Leander sighed in pleased anticipation. If they couldn't go to any strange new worlds until they reached their new area of operation, this was the closest they were going to bring a strange new world to them. "Something entire new," Leander said, as he released the third and fourth locking mechanisms on the crate. He lifted off the lid, and the puff of dust that followed changed his answer. "Old," he said. "Entirely old..."

Petra grinned. She was secretly pleased that she was here and not Marisa. Marisa was the archaeologist, after all. But both of them studied Anthropology. She stayed back until the dust cleared and then stepped forward to take a look. "How wonderful. We need to take it out and clean it--carefully."

Matt stood up from his station and looked inside as the last bit of dust cleared. "Looks heavy...c'mon, let's lift it out and get a better look yeah? Over here, on the lab bench." He moved towards the lab bench and pushed aside a few PaDD's. "C'mon...ready?" He found two handholds and waited for another pair of hands.

Then, Matthew's face lit up, "Wait!" he said and removed his hands and snapped his fingers. "Music! We can't just pop the top and pull this out of the dustbin without some music." He thought a moment. Something of this peculiarity required something special. "Ah, computer? Dear? Play the Terran composer Johann Sebastain Bach's work, Brandenburg Concerto, BWV 1068, second movement, the Air on the G String please. Play...play the organ transcription. I like that one - it seems...fitting."

The computer whirred a moment, found the entry and played one of the many organ transcriptions. The soft flutes and warm tones filled the lab at a pleasant volume. The melody did seem to fit the occasion. Matthew closed his eyes a moment and breathed in...and then...out in a sigh. Lifting his head, he opened his eyes and looked at them with a grin, "Yeah....ok....now we're ready."

Petra chuckled. "Indeed we are. I'll have to remember you have a penchant for doing things to music." She took hold of the other end. "Ready when you are."

Together they lifted the device out of the crate and gently set it on the deck plate.

Petra began to brush off the dust. "There are markings on the outside. They don't look familiar." She pulled out her tricorder and walked around the device, recording it carefully.

Taking up another brush, Leander crouched beside the bench and began to brush away the dust from similar markings on another side of the artifact. His movements were light and quick. Each time the bristles touched the surface, he pulled the brush back to watch for any effect it may be having. "They could be describing something, or telling a story," Leander said, staring at the heavy artifact with wide eyes. He couldn't help himself from guessing at its purpose.

"I know, right?" Petra said. "Science has archived a lot of symbols. I'll see if any of these match. It will at least give us an idea of what we're looking at." She went over to the nearest computer console and entered in the scans. "Nothing yet," she reported. "That's a good sign that whoever built this hasn't been discovered yet."

Feeling the weight of it gave Matthew pause. It was a lot heavier than he thought it should have been. He listened and observed while Doctor Varelli and Crewman Fionn gave it the visual inspection. Matthew complimented Fionn on his brush technique, very delicate and careful like an archaeologist. Plumeri stepped back and out of the way as the two of them worked up close. From a few feet away this gave him an opportunity to take in the heavy object as a whole.

The object was in the shape of a dodecahedron, an eight sided object with triangular faces on each side and there symbols on each of the faces. Matt couldn't understand the symbols but they appeared to him like ancient glyphs. Series of fingerlike gashes and dots. Some dots were raised and others were indented. As Crewman Fionn brushed the dust away a deep, gorgeous blue was underneath. Not shiny as were it a gem. This had a magnificent luster that seemed to just soak up the ambient light. The glyphs on the surface appeared to him black in color.

Matt slowly walked around the object, just taking it in and not aware that he was humming along with the music. His tenor voice lightly singing along. As he walked around the object he noticed that the symbols, the glyphs seemed to be, for lack of a better word, they appeared to be the same forwards or backwards. From this new vantage point, he noticed that upside down or right side up the symbols complimented each other.

When the music ended, he stood back where he started and he mentioned this observation to Doctor Varelli and Fionn. "If this is language-like, then these symbols could have many layers of meaning. Of course, they could also just be designs that have no meaning. It's shape is interesting to me. One of the "sacred shapes" of geometry. This one, the dodecahedron would be the "aether" the air. Aulous...the winds." He scratched his head a moment. "Huh!"

"Or it's a high-tech dice-rolling device," Petra replied. She'd played a few ancient table-top games in university. Still, it was an interesting observation. She changed the parameters of her search, just in case it had any other species that used symbols that were the same no matter which way you looked at them. "The early Nanheliors used symbols that were the same from all directions. They meant different things based on their position. But they never developed a technology this sophisticated."

She looked at the device again. "Maybe they are supposed to be layered?"

Matthew looked at her a moment. "How do you mean? Layered? Each symbol fitting on atop another? How would you know where to start?" he questioned.

"We try different combinations and see if something fits," she said, shrugging. "And if it fails, we learn from it and try something else."

Crossing his arms but unable to successfully hide his smirk he asked, "Yeah...but suppose in our brave, brazen but very educated guess we activate the alien equivalent of the self-destruct? Or activate the curse that this thing carries? Or even, let the genie out of the...the...dodechehedron here and it doesn't want to go back in?"

Petra leaned forward, the tone of her voice low and teasing. "Yes, but it's the challenge of solving the puzzle that makes it fun. If we find that it's dangerous, we put it in a containment field or something."

He grinned, his eyes light, "Ah ha. I see. Forever new frontiers. I like it. Well, how about you Fionn? You were, after all, the one who dug this out of the dustbin of history. We have here something which none of us know anything about. The good doctor here is one for press buttons and see if anything kicks back. What's your approach?" he said with only a slight tease.

"I tend to be in favour of cautious risk-taking, sir," Fionn said. Squinting at the device, the reply came from him in an experimental tone, as if he were still weighing out the pros and cons in his head. "We'll learn the most by interacting with it the way its creators had done," Fionn said, "but I'd prefer to know what's inside before we go fumbling for the on switch."

Matthew though a moment and voiced, "Well.....we could put this through a low resonance particle scan? At least see what's inside as Crewman Fionn suggests? Maybe even determine a power source if there is any?"

"How thoroughly has it been scanned?" Petra asked. "That could let us see what's inside, too."

Given how they had more questions than answers at this point, Fionn stepped back from the device and set his brush aside. Having wandered back to workstation three, he began to sift through the appendixes attached to the data files on lot NVPH 66-F. "The science team on Seventy-Three only subjected the artifact to security scans, sir," Crewman Fionn reported on his findings in the log. He paused occasionally as he continued to read the details, saying, "They found no obvious signs of energy batteries, hazardous chemicals, or radioactive particles before they put the artifact in storage. In their notes, they recommend several sensor modalities, including a low resonance particle scan, as well as a counseling consult to reverse-engineer what we can learn about its creators by assessing the device's user experience."

"Okay. We can run it though science and see what the scans show," Petra said. "I'm sure Marisa will let us use whatever we need." She grinned at the other two. "And then we'll see what this thing does."

Matthew nodded, "Sounds like a plan. Give me just a couple of minutes. We can scan the interior of the...whatever it is and see if their are structures inside it? I'll page the Counselor and see if he's even available."

Stepping to a terminal, Plumeri accessed a few low-res particle scan templates to see if anything would match what they wanted to do. He found one that was very delicate and shouldn't trigger anything; the flip side to that coin was that it would take over an hour to perform the scan. "I hope nobody's in a hurry. This'll take about an hour." He also typed in a summons request for Counselor il-Llantrisant into the LCARS and the computer would locate and page Lake to this lab.

Petra nodded. "Fortunately, there isn't a wait to use the machine. At least not while we're in transit. Considering how long this baby has been sitting around, an hour or two is nothing."

"True. OK. I think...there we go?" Matthew said aloud. The computer responded with an acknowledgement, =A= Scan initiated =A=.

Matt nodded, looking proud too. As if he had just solved some puzzle and was pleased with himself, "Yes! That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!" He hopped up on the nearest table and sat his butt on it. "All we need now is a deck of cards."

From the open passageway to the corridor, Lake ir-Llantrisant hissed out a "tt" between his teeth. "I have too many performance evaluation workshops to deliver and not enough trainers," Lake interjected by way of introduction. The Romulan Chief Counselor had stormed the lab, wafting imperiousness behind him. Chest high and shoulders back, he marched into the compartment looking down on the gathered science personnel. Lake hadn't been in this mood when he received the summons. No, this mood was evoked within him when he identified exactly who had summoned him. Lieutenant Matthew Plumeri -- mister hot and cold, himself-- who appeared, to Lake's eyes, to alternate wildly between flirtatious and offensively defensive, on a whim. Which was why, Lake finished by saying, "If you're truly bored enough to play with cards..."

"Hey, don't knock a good card game," Petra said, grinning at Lake.

Tilting his head in Petra's direction, the expression chiseled into Lake's face softened. Immediately softened. "Well, I suppose," Lake said to Petra, an incipient smile forming on his lips, "On a mission of this nature, a card game could be classified as a team building event?"

"Oh, definitely." She nodded sagely. "Depending on what you play, it can definitely...break the ice."

Feeling his blood pressure rise again at seeing the Counselor, Matt pushed the thought away and tried his best with, "That's the spirit. Team building. How 'bout you Fionn? You in on a game of chance?" Plumeri asked as he started for the replicator. A game hadn't yet been decided on but whatever they ended up playing it would need to be replicated. That is, unless someone could pull a card game out of their bum on demand. The replicator would be a safer bet. "What are we playing then?" he asked over his shoulder.

Petra's eyes sparkled. "I'm up for a good number of games."

Matthew cast her a long glance and grinned, "Doctor Varelli, I think I had you figured for a different sort of doctor. It almost sounded like you were suggesting a game of strip poker!" His eyes were light and merry. The computer made a whirling sound and one could almost imagine the machine was blushing.

"Too public for that one," she replied blandly.

At that moment, Plumeri's comm badge chirped at him, =A= Lieutenant Plumeri. Please report to the Astrometrics Lab. =A=

Matt acknowledged the call with, "On my way." He got to his feet and said, "No cheating while I'm away. Fionn? You keep an eye on these two huh? Science and Counseling...that's a recipe for trouble." He smiled and excused himself and left the room.

Petra grinned at Lake. "I only cheat when it's in the rules."

Grinning back at her, Lake strayed from the scientists. He put one foot in front of the other, meandering over to where the alien artifact was being scanned by the laboratory sensors. Although he eyed the device, Lake didn't pay it his full attention yet. Just before the doors closed behind Matt, Lake asked aloud, "Don't they say: one can only truly be cheated by oneself?"


[OFF]

LTJG Matthew Plumeri
Science Officer/Historian
USS Galileo-A
NCC-80010

Petra Varelli
Forensic Anthropologist
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Sandoval]

Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant
Chief Counselor
USS Galileo-A

Crewman Leander Fionn
Scientist's Mate
USS Galileo-A
[NPC ir-Llantrisant]

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