Seeking Solutions

Posted on Mon Jun 7th, 2021 @ 5:18pm by Lieutenant Commander Deanna Celes & Ensign Connor Carrick

Mission: A Dark Looking Glass
Location: USS Washington

Deanna sat next to Connor as the two looked over the data that was pouring in. Something happened to allow this incident to occur, and the captain had tasked them with finding our what exactly it was. They knew what some of the variables were, but they had yet to discover what caused the bleed through that ultimately caused the switch.

Connor watched the data flow by and kept shaking his head. Nothing obvious was making sense about this. "Computer, please analyze the sensor data from 10 minutes before the shuttle transporters began powering up until 1 minute after materialization completed. Filter for anything found within this sector, anything normally generated by strong ion storms, and anything from the shuttles, the ship, or the station."

Connor looked over to Deanna with a questioning look. "Everything I've seen from the collected data shows that the ionic surge hit the shuttles, causing a leak, which in turn amplified the ionic surge and the moment of transportation. Do you think there was something other than a quite literal 'perfect storm' that lead to this? Do you think there was outside manipulation or interference?"

Without waiting for an answer, though still hoping for one, he said "Computer, secondary task. Perform a long-range scan and look for any sub-space, temporal, magnetic, gravitational or quantum anomalies within 300 light seconds of our position."

Celes thought quietly for a moment before answering. "Well, we are in relative close proximity to the only stable wormhole known to exist. The Badlands aren't terribly far away, and the Bajorans and Cardassians both say that things in the Denoris Belt are prone to oddities. Subspace, gravitational, and quantum anomalies are not uncommon in and around DS9 it would seem. Considering the number of battles fought around here in the last decade and the amount of ordnance used, that could also be a factor. Plus, DS9 simply has a history with these jumps to the Mirror Universe. It is almost as if the veil between the two universes is thin here, almost transparent in a way."

Connor had to acknowledge that there were any number of factors that could have lead to a disturbance. He waited for the computer to finish processing the tasks he assigned it while racking his brain for clues. He wished he had the time to go paint while he tried to work through this. Finally the computer began to flash a results.

As Connor examined the results, he became more and more frustrated. The first processing didn't reveal anything that doesn't normally exist around here. The second process produced a list of anomalies in the area, but none of them appeared to be of influence in the incident. He went back through them all two more times. Connor did not like not having an answer. He also didn't like how is first significant task aboard the Washington was making him look.

Finally, he turned to Deanna and said "I'm just not seeing anything beyond a storm surge at the worst possible moment. I feel like I'm missing something, but I just can't see it." He pointed to the list of anomalies. "Do you see something we should be worrying about?"

Deanna looked over the computer results. "Where did the storm surge come from?" she asked matter-of-factly. "We were not dealing with a storm here, but rather the storm was in the Mirror Universe. Which then makes me wonder why they were dealing with a storm and we were not. Now here DS9 sits just outside the wormhole, but in the other universe it is still in orbit of Bajor. Can the location of the station be of significance?" Celes looked to Connor in hopes that he might have an answer to her musing.