An Adventure in the Archives

Posted on 23 Mar 2025 @ 11:48am by Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater & Lieutenant JG Selon Illialhlae & Ensign Mimi

2,571 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 21 - Helix
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 4, Planetary Science Lab
Timeline: MD 02, 1622hrs

[ON]

Rhombic disphenoidal has the dihedral two group with symmetry subgroup. That's two, two, plus. Rhombic pyramidal has the cyclic two group with vertical symmetry. Two. Rhombic dipyramidal has dihedral...

While the soap, warm water and flannel did there work to clean up her face, Sofie calmed her mind with the Coxeter descriptions of the Fedorov groups. Things she knew, things she could control.

She reached for a towel and began to dry her face. It had become nearly impossible for her to hide that she was unwell but it still paid to show that at least you were aware and making an effort. Maybe she could no longer perform perfection but she wasn't going to walk around looking like she didn't care.

Dihedral 2 with horizontal mirror plane. Two two. Focus on the things you can control.

Mimi would be in the lab on deck three within the next few minutes. Though Sofie considered this work very important, this was not a great day. The meeting with Sera that morning had left her unsure, shaky and just as sick as ever and the idea of pouring through endless uncategorised records looking for clues to the site of the lost planet of the Nekomi was filling her with dread. She wasn't sure she could make it through. Imperfections right now could mean messing up the whole project. She needed another set of eyes.

Face dry, uniform back on. Smile and get to work.

As she walked through the corridors to the lab she went through the list of research projects she had in her head. She knew pretty well who was meant to be in each lab at any time. That door that was just approaching on the right? The planetary development laboratory: Selon would be working there. He could be a good candidate for this kind of work, with a strong research background and an overlapping set of interests.

She paused outside the door. What was she going to say to draw him out?

"Just pitch it to him, Sof. Remember that first time you met him? With that kind of ambition how could he resist getting involved with a landmark discovery like this? It's basically a first contact." The fiery voice in her head seemed correct, as ever, and the stinging sensation in her hand was a welcome change from the foggy malaise of Vulcan mating illnesses. Selon was likely her best option.

She went up to the door, it slid open, and with her best attempt at a cheery look on her face she called out to the Lab's inhabitant "Lieutenant Illialhlae! Are you busy? I'm currently searching for a lost alien civilisation. Thought you might be interested."

Selon's sensitive ears perked up at the mention of the words "lost, alien, civilisation" in sequence. Between his recent meditation session on the holodeck and now the prospect of relevant, novel research he felt more alert and clear minded than usual. "If you're asking for my expertise as an archaeologist I'm afraid subspace has a dearth of dig sites..." Selon demurred with a bemused smirk as he closed out of his LCARS session and looked up to Sofie. "What is it you require?" Selon's back straightened as he put his arms behind him. This should be good.

She gave a tilt of her head in the direction of the corridor in an indication for him to join her. "Tag along, I will explain while we walk. By the way, have you met Ensign Mimi?"

Selon's interest was now thoroughly piqued. "Yes I have." Selon rounded the table and took Lieutenant Ullswater's invitation to start walking down the corridor ahead of her. He could not pretend to know the Nekomi Ensign 'well', barely at all, but Selon had found her amiable enough, if guarded.

"Her people, the Nekomi, we have no idea where they come from. At some point they established interstellar colonies but other than the location of one of those we know nothing." As they came to a junction Ullswater indicated to the direction of the turbolift "Heading to the multipurpose labs on deck 3."

The two of them stepped into the lift and she continue the narration and it shot them up a deck. "No real records in the FASD, which means we're scouring the unindexed archives. It's a lot of legwork at the moment, you pick out some document or report that references anything in proximity to the last known contacts with the Nekomi or in the location of this one potential reference to the Bespiri, scour it for any passing reference to an unusual traveler or trader, see if we can cross reference that with anything. We just trying to find some initial clues, something that one day might lead to contact."

The door to the turbolift hissed open, depositing them on deck 3. For a momentary beat Sofie stopped talking, she nodded in the direction of one of the labs and before there was enough time to get a word in, she carried on, "You're Arch & Anth right? I don't have to tell you how any of this works, you're probably more used to archive work than I am. Anyway I need an extra pair of eyes so I'm conscripting you."

"Sounds fair." As something of a historian and a laureate academic Selon had indeed spent his fair share of time in archives over the years. After his graduate school studies he traded books for getting his hands literally dirty at dig sites but afterwards on the Oakland he once again spent his duty shifts in the archives of over a dozen newly contacted worlds which had yet to develop a planetary computer system or database uplink. Sometimes in pursuit of his own research goals and in the interest of friendly cooperation he had assisted in this endeavor, though hardly to anywhere near completion.

"After I met Mimi I reached out to a friend who works for the Federation Science Council to see if they had any leads on the Nekomi." Selon and Sofie entered the multi-purpose lab and saw Owen and Travis working on some sort of geological experiment. "Travis, Owen, don't mind us, we're working on a personal project." He said, attempting to shoo away Travis's attentive and eager to please and/or help nature and preempt Owen's own curiosity. "Other than the logs of the crew of the Charleston there was nothing." Selon sat down at one of the computer consoles and logged in to Memory Alpha. "Not exactly a promising start."

"I think it's worse that you realise." Sofie's voice was quieter, Mimi could enter at any moment and she didn't want to reveal how little hope she had in their efforts. This was important and she wanted to impress both the importance and the difficulty of the task on Selon. "The Klingon records are equally sparse when it comes to them. It's almost like their whole society is a ghost. If I didn't know Mimi I'd probably conclude that the Nekomi don't exist or are extinct. I'm not all too hopeful about this project but I owe it to both Mimi and Tarin to try and make something work. I greatly appreciate your assistance."

"An admirable sentiment but if there truly is nothing here..." Selon looked towards the door as Mimi entered.

Though she thought that the whole thing was a forlorn hope just as the last several attempts over the years had been Mimi was still willing to take up the unexpected offer from Tarin to use the ships resources and crew to help with the search for her people and so here she was stepping into one of the science labs. "Good afternoon Lieutenants." She said greeting both scientists.

"Mimi! Good to see you. I think you've already met Lieutenant Illialhlae." There was a moment where she wasn't sure if she needed to say more. Could a smile and cheery disposition hide forever what was likely obvious? Be straight up, don't try to hide what is clear. "I've been feeling ill so I've drafted in some help for today."

Sofie didn't let a moment pass before she continued, the last thing she was looking for today was any expression of sympathy. She pulled up a program instance on the screen that resumed right where they had left it: full of the driest, most boring manifest reports imaginable. "I suggest we keep going where we left off the other day: those trade records from Alpha Carinae."

Selon gave a grimacing wince. Sofie truly was plumbing the depths of information stores if she had resorted to the exactingly formatted and yet terribly insipid and jumbled reports from Canopus. He found it hard to believe that somehow reports from that island of misfit functionaries had yet to be entered into the Federation-wide database but perhaps someone had neglected to do so out of mercy. In trying to spare others the jejune reports of their exploits they had doomed Selon, Sofie and Mimi to resort to personally sifting through every last word of them by hand.

"Going to be a long day..." He muttered to himself as he started to run a search to see if it was possible to narrow down the amount of reports he would have to look through.

"All the best days are!" She tried very hard to project some humour and excitement into her voice but Sofie had already had a very long, very difficult day and it had been very far from being classified as one of the best days. No, her attempt at humour utterly failed in it's delivery.

She sat and got to work, not worth wasting time on comedy if you're going to fail this badly. As she began poring over the first record she gave everyone a gentle reminder of the goals. "We're looking for any unidentified traders or passengers that might fit the profile of a Bespiri or Nekomi person. Or, alternatively, any records that reference other documents or contacts with unidentified traders or passengers that we could then follow up on."

The choosing of Canopus to start the search was definitely an 'all roads must lead to' strategy, Alpha Carinae was an important system with several M-Class worlds that allowed it to serve as an axis of commerce and trade so Sofie's thinking was counting on a Bespiri or Nekomi trader making it that far. With the report from his friend at the Federation Science Council fresh in his mind however, he had doubts that reports from a Federation system, with the swath of the Klingon Empire between them and what was presumably the Nekomi's point of origin, would be telling. Still, Selon went about his work as he had been bade and sifted through the dry and perfunctory reports. One. At. A. Time.

"I do not think you will find any evidence of a Nekomi or Bespiri in federation space or anywhere on the far side of that space, Kemi was quite a long way away from federation space." Mimi told them. "I know we traded with a few alien species because we had no choice but I do not remember seeing any federation species. We should focus more on long range exploration ship records."

"The problem is that outside of Starfleet and the Federation Science Council those reports wouldn't be public and we would've found something by now if any other Federation ships had come across a Nekomi or a Bespiri. Our best hope is reading between the lines, sifting through secondary accounts of unknown alien travelers, crewmen or traders to see if we have a match." Selon mused as he continued reading a report on the subject. It was more engaging than most but that wasn't saying much. It was only at the end that Selon realized the report was describing tail feathers rather than actual tails and he silently cursed to himself in Golic.

"At the very least Canopus is at the border with the Klingon Empire. That's why I imagine they have the best chance of encountering people who have traded with the Nekomi." Sofie added to the other scientist's words. At this point she too had plonked herself down in front of a screen and had brought up an equally useless report about a trade expedition that had passed through carrying trellium D. Admittedly this type of investigation was not going anywhere quickly but she wasn't going to let them sit idly by. "We've sent record requests to other worlds outside of the Federation but it might be weeks before they get back to us. If they get back to us."

For the next half hour they continued to sift through the various reports from the various worlds of Alpha Carinae, making the smallest dent in the enormity of their task which would probably fill many more hours than the less than one they had already expended. "I don't suppose either of you have found anything yet?" Selon's tone was beleaguered as he finished reading another report about an alien crew that even he could easily identify as Tamarians but whom the somehow provincial customs officer writing the report did not know of.

The words in front of Sofie were dancing, they had been for some time now. As much as she tried to concentrate she couldn't keep them still. She'd known she wouldn't be working at her best today but truly in the last 20 minutes she hadn't even made it through a single report. "Nothing yet." She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them the room was spinning lethargically.

There was going to be more of this, Sofie had booked the space for two hours, same as the last time, same as the next. That promised meditation with Sera couldn't come soon enough. If this continued to disrupt her work people would start asking questions, questions would turn into medical examinations which would undoubtedly lead to the end of her career. She needed a new plan and she needed one quickly.

In the meantime there was no use continuing right now, Sofie couldn't do anything useful here. "I need to take a break, I'll be back in ten." She shakily pulled herself to her feet and nodded in the direction of the door. "Feel free to grab yourselves a drink or snack, we've got a long way to go."

Archival research was one half of the twin dream of Archaeology and Anthropology but Selon couldn't shake the portents that he was delving into a nightmare and he wasn't talking about the asinine records this research entailed. No, there was something about digging into the past of another person, of a people, that didn't want to be found, that resisted discovery. His thoughts drifted to a high minded concern that he was somehow violating a culture's autonomy by trying to discover more about them but he brushed it aside. No, there was something else about this that didn't sit right with him, and it was going to be a devil of a time finding out just what that was.

[OFF]

--

LTJG Sofie Ullswater
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Selon Illialhlae
Anthropologist
USS Galileo-A

ENS Mimi
Deputy Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

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