Phantasms (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on 23 Aug 2024 @ 7:47pm by Commander Morgan Tarin & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Lieutenant JG Rafe Caradec & Lieutenant JG Serran & Lieutenant JG Saelihn Valenis & Lieutenant JG Delainey Carlisle & Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater & Lieutenant JG Montgomery Vala & Lieutenant JG Nusien & Ensign Mimi & Ensign S'Ers-a M'Lyr'Zor & Ensign Amanda Turell & Master Chief Petty Officer Toren Vral

3,451 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Episode 20 - Reconstruction
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 1, Conference Room
Timeline: MD 01, 1841 hrs

[ON]

The early evening hours aboard USS Galileo-A were proving to be as insipid as any other recent day in memory. The compact Nova-class starship had returned to its home port of Regula I almost two days prior, and now lazily orbited the science station while routine maintenance and standard operational evolutions continued. Ongoing investigations continued into the nature of chroniton emissions recently detected in the vicinity of the vessel but so far no conclusive evidence had been brought to Command. Nor had any anomalies or malfunctions been detected within the ship's computer cores and subprocessing network. None of these strange happenings demanded immediate cause for alarm, but one unexpected element of the ship also appeared to be acting in an unorthodox manner: the crew.

Over the past 53 hours - ever since Galileo-A had departed from its system test location in a nearby sector grid - new reports had slowly started coming in from various personnel across different departments regarding unexpected and unidentifiable 'hallucinations'. That was the word for lack of a better term, and as the hours had progressed, so too did the amount of first-hand accounts. And if there was one critical ailment or malfunction which could incapacitate the starship, widespread psychological breakdowns were certainly one of them.

Commander Morgan Tarin stood near the replicator within the mid-sized conference room on deck 1. She'd ordered an all-hands officer meeting less than an hour ago to address this issue, and she now impatiently checked the chronometer on her PADD in the hopes of making time itself fast forward to her desired minute of the hour.

Allyndra had gotten the message and was surprised to be one of the first people there as she entered. She nodded toward the captain, "Good day, ma'am." She took her traditional spot at the end of the table opposite where the captain would sit. She couldn't help but glance a moment toward the right-hand chair where the Executive officer would sit. She had become aware that Commander Blake had transferred off the ship.

Sera walked through the double doors as they hissed open to allow her entry. She knew she was early, but to be alone with the captain and XO? Ah well, statistically speaking with her propensity for early arrival it was bound to happen eventually.

"Captain...Commander." Sera said by way of greetings, intent on making her way to one of the empty chairs at the conference table when everything shifted to a different iteration of the conference room...the scene was now set with Tarin, Blake...and another officer wearing Admiral pips.

The three officers from the future Galileo stood at the head of the conference room. Sera knew none of them on any level; perhaps that was preferable. It made what she was about to say easier, because there was no friendly entanglement involved to temper her words.

“With respect, this is a violation to the Temporal Prime directive.” Sera began calmly, although inside…well…She raised a brow as if to emphasize her point. “ALL Starfleet personnel are strictly forbidden from directly interfering with historical events—in this case bringing us from our time to here—and are required to maintain the timeline and prevent any alterations. Your actions are the exact opposite of non-interference. You had no right to remove us from our reality, regardless of the current…difficulties.”

It didn't take long. One step to the next, really, but it was long enough that she stumbled and grabbed the back of one of the chairs to steady herself.

Vala came just afterwards, barely watching where he was going as he scrutinised the aheaf of papers he clutched in on hand. He lingered at the doorway for a moment, mouthing something to himself, then finally looked around.

He nodded at the two commanders then silently took a seat next to the Deputy Engineer. "Sera." He said softly by way of a greeting, before spreading his papers in front of him and poring over them once more.

Toren entered with his usual sense of purpose, his pounding feet audible long before his arrival in the room. He entered and looked around before acknowledging those present in a gravelly tone, "Captain, sirs." His antennae bobbed as he gave a respectful nod, then he took his seat at the table.

Only a few moments after the COB came both Ensigns Mimi and Turell, the latter definitely surprised to be asked to attend a meeting. "Captain." Mimi greeted Tarin as she entered. She flashed a smile at Allyndra as she moved around the table and eventually decided on taking the seat next to her friend.

Deciding against taking a chair, she'd leave that to her boss Saelihn, Amanda took up a typical security officer position, just inside the doorway off to one side.

Nusien strode into the room and was pleasantly surprised to see that one of the chairs had been replaced with a stool that he was capable of sitting on. He appreciated the way Command of the Galileo had gone out of their way to make him comfortable in his position. He sat on the stool and began looking over notes on his PADD as he awaited the meeting to start.

Galileo's chief science officer followed in right behind her medical counterpart. Under her arm she carried the PADDs containing relevant information and in one hand she held a pencil that she was fidgeting with. Sitting in this room with all these people she'd need some kind of object to keep her hands busy, probably better a pencil than an orange.

Spotting Vala across the table Ullswater gave a little nod of acknowledgement. He had come prepared, they both had. No chasing ghosts ships today. She aimed for the free seat closest to the captain and sat herself down. Beneath the table she clutched on to that pencil.

Rafe walked in, nursing a headache, and therefore drinking some very strong coffee. He saw no seats available so he leaned against the bulkhead near the window and to the right of the Captain. Something was going on and it was affecting the entire crew. And he didn't think anyone had any clue as to what it was, which was...frustrating, to say the least. If he was a betting man, which he was, he'd bet the Captain had had about enough of not knowing.

With purposeful strides, Delainey Carlisle made her way to the conference room, inwardly weary but outwardly focused. She knew she needed to project strength and calm despite the increasingly disturbing psychological symptoms spreading amongst the crew. She knew she wasn't, and wouldn't be, alone in trying to solve this problem, and she knew she was going to give it nothing less than her best.

All of these thoughts were perfectly logical, and yet, she found herself ducking into an alcove just before the conference room's entrance. This was a hell of a topic for her first crew briefing since her return, and she mentally worked to prepare herself for what she was about face, not the least of which were the worried countenances of people who were still getting to know her as a person, let alone a therapist and physician. Then of course there was the Captain, who, as best as Carlisle could tell, wasn't Delaney's biggest fan, although one interaction was hardly enough to judge an entire relationship no matter how tense it may have felt.

The truth was, she still felt a bit like an outsider to the vast majority of the crew except her medical colleagues, and even that was closeness not born out of time or experience, but out of crisis and tragedy. She knew time and increased interactions would change this feeling, but nothing she could do now would have an impact, and that was a very lonely feeling.

Carlisle allowed a moment for all of these feelings to wash over her, then took a steadying breath and a swig of raktajino before squaring her shoulders and assuming her game face.

She entered the room, making sure to meet the eyes of everyone who met her own.

Serran like most of the crew had heard about the hallucinations. In fact his son Theo had had one. So far he had not had one himself.

He was a little late to the meeting because he had run a system-wide diagnostic to make sure there were no anomalies with it.

Directly behind the operations manager strolled in CWO3 Lamar Darius, one of the vessel's three conn officers and member of the officer corps. The captain's priority briefing notification had pulled him from his shuttlebay maintenance duties but obviously this assembly was more important. Then, as he entered the crowded conference room and swept his eyes across those present, he saw her: the yellow-collared Vulcan woman who was now passive-aggressively making his life hell with an influx of new required maintenance reports. She was the DENG, and there was no avoiding her or her new wrath. He wondered why Lieutenant Fynn wasn't present. His dark brown eyes locked on to Sera's face then shifted back to the captain...then performed the same action again while he took his place at the rear of the room.

Unfortunately due to the timing of Saelihn's arrival all the seats had been filled and she decided to stand near Amanda. They hadn't really conversed much since Saelihn's arrival on the ship, something she would need to change, but right now Saelihn was acting Security Chief until an appointment was made or a transfer in occurred. The departure of their command structure almost immediate you could be forgiven to say it had been fate all along... if you believed in such things.

Tarin performed a brief mental head count of all commissioned and chief warrant officers, along with the COB and yeoman. Everyone was present and accounted for, and they were running only a minute behind schedule. She brought a glass of water with her and sat in her designated chair at the head of the slightly curved rectangular table before addressing the assembled group.

"Let's get started. We don't have time to waste," she prefaced before tapping her PADD and linking it to the large wall-mounted LCARS display. The blue, silver, and gold emblem of the United Federation of Planets along with its pitch-black background screen quickly blinked and now showed a slowly scrolling list of recent incident reports.

"Over the past 53 hours - ever since we departed sector grid zero-zero-two for Regula I - various members of the Galileo crew have been reporting...well, 'hallucinations' for lack of a better word. Visions or daydreams, I can't be entirely certain. Many of you are already aware of this and were reporting these happenings within your departments to me. This 'phenomenon' affecting us appears widespread but doesn't seem to be causing any direct harm; physically, that is. Psychologically? I don't know what's transpiring, and we need to find answers immediately.

"I want to start by identifying what we know and what we don't know: let's share our personal experiences and those from our department's personnel, find some sort of common denominator, then work the problem. If this keeps persisting, I'll have to put the ship on operational restriction and engage quarantine measures. Let's make sure it doesn't come to that. The floor's yours," finished Tarin to the rest of the group.

"I have not had a 'hallucination' yet." Mimi was the first to speak. "But I have had strange dreams the last couple of nights. I met another Nekomi, in a Starfleet uniform. Something about her seemed so very familiar but I did not recognise her. The dream felt so real like I was in the room with her, I could reach out and touch her."

Sera listened to Ensign Mimi give a brief synopsis of her strange dreams. Sera did not dream. No, her episodes were all wide awake. Her eyes illogically darted to Chief Warrant Officer Lamar Darius before she could stop herself. Fvadt. Forcing her attention back to Commander Tarin, Sera logically--although with great reservation--shared her experiences.

"I have been having a number of hallucinations...although I am uncertain if that is the correct term to apply to my experiences. Some have involved my senses such as taste or auditory but others..." She looked somewhat uncomfortable, and for a Vulcan, that was something. "Were of a distinctly physical nature. Others have involved interactions with you, captain, which never happened. I have meditated on these episodes but have not been able to extrapolate why these events are occurring."

"I understand the issue is widespread, but has it affected one species more than another, or are any species immune, at least so far, to these visions?" Serran asked.

Darius half-raised a hand from the back of the conference room. He'd listened to the engineering ensign's recollections and felt it necessary to add his own. "I had one of these...whatever you want to call it? I don't know the right term. But I now know information about another crew member that I shouldn't," he revealed, his eyes flicking to Sera then back to the captain. "They confirmed it when it happened and we were in the same room together. How can a vision or hallucination be something from our imaginations but also real?"

Vala finally looked up from his notes, shuffling them into some semblance of order. They were covered in spidery Rihannsu letters and numbers, linked by lines, arrows and diagrams. He glanced at the Conn Officer who had just spoken and a scene of them squaring up to one another flashed through his mind. There had been anger and... madness? Something about... Sera? He shook his head to dissipate the aberrant image.

"The Science Department cannot account for the... fancy of imagination," he began in a dry tone, "But based on the anecdotes heard here and our own experiences, it seems possible that the crew at large have been experiencing Spatiotemporal Visual and Auditory Anomalies, as we call them in my field." He looked over to Commander Tarin, "The origin of them is still being examined, but I consider it likely that the Chroniton wave sensors picked up during the systems test was indicative of a temporal event of some description and these 'hallucinations', I would speculate, may be of some kind of alternative present, or future."

"I have run several medical tests and cannot account for images, dreams or visions that have been reported. Like a few others, mine have been in the form of a dream. I seem to have had one in which dealing with a Klingon attack while this ship was nearly defenseless." Allyndra shrugged letting her wings rustle slightly. "I am not sure what all this represents at the moment."

So the reports were true... Tarin had privately hoped there was some sort of overly-interpreted mycological abuse involved between a select group of crew members and not something as wide spread as what her department heads and officer corps were reporting. She exhaled a breath through her nose before speaking. "Well, it appears the original reports are confirmed and don't seem to discriminate between members of any particular department," she began to deduce before looking to the blond Vulcan operations manager. "Though Mister Serran's question is a pertinent one which I want you, doctor," her eyes flicked to Warraquim, "to immediately follow up on once we disperse."

"Yes, captain," Allyndra replied. "Detecting changes to neuronal systems based upon temporal events can be done, but is difficult. That being said, I will see what I can come up with."

Tarin curtly nodded then pondered the Romulan science officer's interpretation of recent events. It was...abstruse consider her limited scientific knowledge. "Mister Vala, you mentioned spatio...temporal anomalies? Alternate timelines? Futures? Explain. You must still believe that we experienced a temporal event two days ago during our systems test - why?"

Vala shifted his papers a little and kept his gaze on Tarin. "Temporal mechanics are my speciality, sir. And prior to my time in the Federation I was intimately familiar with the technicalities of the cloaking devices of my people."

He looked a way for a moment. He could have sworn for a second a green Starfleet Admiral had been next to Tarin... glaring at him.

He cleared his throat. "That is to say, I am certain what we saw two days ago was not a Rihannsu cloaking device. And yes, if I was to postulate," he looked back to Tarin, "A temporal event seems likely. I have... witnessed not entirely dissimilar phenomena before and... yes these 'hallucinations' are not uncommon when exposed to temporal fluctuations. It is possible we are seeing how things might have been." He looked around the room. "It may be wise to make records of things we see so we can... piece everything together."

The captain didn't like this. Nothing made her - and other starship captains - more uncomfortable than the prospect of encountering a confirmed temporal situation. The unpredictable nature of such circumstances was often directly at odds with their duties of non-interference, and even the most introductory Academy science courses had taught them the dire consequences of the butterfly effect. Magnified at scale and across time? These encounters could be ruinous to the entire galaxy...and perhaps the universe as they understood it.

Biting her bottom lip while discreetly fidgeting with her short fingernails beneath the table, Tarin allowed a moment of silence to pass while she processed the science officer's hypothesis and recommended course of action. "Let's be crystal clear here," she finally replied to Vala. "When you say 'how things might have been', you believe this temporal event is a result of time travel? Specifically involving Galileo? And these hallucinations - visions - are some sort of aftershock involving this ship and the crew?"

"An alternative time line incident might explain some things," Allyndra added. "Think of it like waking up after having too much to drink. There are faulty memories and half-glimpsed thoughts. It would certainly fit some of the reports."

Vala nodded. "I stand by that theory, yes." He gestured with the papers in front of him. "It is difficult to prove something that in many ways no longer exists within our temporal plane, but I believe with further tests the mathematics will bear out." He began leafing through the sheets in front of him.

"Such hallucinations are not without precedent. Temporal incidents happen more than one might generally expect." He found the page he was looking for and moved it to the front, examining it for a second. "Spatiotemporal Visual and Auditory Anomalies typically evidence some kind of manipulation of events. Whether it was by an entity travelling back to this point or the Galileo itself travelling... elsewhere is challenging to say." He looked back to Tarin. "These 'hallucinations' may be the only way of knowing what exactly happened."

An audible sigh escaped Tarin's lips while she ran a frustrated hand down across her face which then slapped against the top of her toned thigh before coming to a rest in her lap. As much as she wanted to refute this theory and label it as both presumptive and preposterous, the current phenomenon was unexplainable until it wasn't, and this meant the most prudent solution was to pursue every lead possible while adhering to the scientific method. "Do the rest of you concur with Lieutenant Vala's assessment?" she asked the surrounding officers within the conference room. "Any alternative theories?"

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CMDR Morgan Tarin
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Sofie Ullswater
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Delainey Carlisle
Chief Counselor
USS Galileo-A

CMDR Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Saelihn Valenis
Security Officer
USS Galileo-A

ENS S'Ers-a M'Lyr'Zor
Deputy Engineer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Nusien
Deputy Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Rafe Caradec
Senior Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A

ENS Mimi
Deputy Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Montgomery Vala
Deputy Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

MCPO Toren Vral
Chief of the Boat
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Vala]

ENS Amanda Turell
Security Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Mimi]

LTJG Serran
Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

CWO3 Lamar Darius
Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Tarin]

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