Wonderland

Posted on Sun Mar 23rd, 2025 @ 4:52pm by Lieutenant Commander Deanna Celes & Commander Jonathan Grayson & Lieutenant Commander Shoniara T’ghann-Travis MD & Lieutenant Inara Senn & Lieutenant JG Kate Kono & Lieutenant JG James Phoenix

2,919 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Genetic Purity
Location: Sleeper Ship in Orbit above Planet
Timeline: After Colony

Jon was standing in the transporter room waiting for the others to arrive. He had a phaser on hip and a tricorder in his hand and he was wondering what they were going to find on the sleeper ship. They would go and be cautious but as he promised the captain they would go over the data with a fine-tooth comb as well as take readings of the ship.

Deanna checked her phaser was set on stun and then placed it back in the holster on her hip. She then checked her tricorder before holstering it as well. She was looking rather serious. It was obvious she shared in the same worries as the captain.

Shon arrived carrying her medical pack. She nodded and smiled at Jon and Deanna. Picking her phaser up from the click on her hip she checked and set it to stun. She was excited about the medical possibilities she might encounter on the ship and, for once was not nervous. A new Vulcan meditation cycle had just begun sent to her from the monks at Pashat and it seemed to be working. She had found that she could compartmentalise her feelings of anger, aggression and fear.

"What can we expect Commander?" she asked Jon.

Jon looked to Shon. "A sleeper ship Shon and all that goes with it. No life signs detected so, highly doubtful there are people still on board. I would just caution all of you, be aware of the technology you are dealing with as well as the era it came from."

The transporter room door opened and the tiny energetically slim and quick Asian girl squeezed through before the doors could finish the cycle of retracting into the walls. She did a jumping twirl as she skipped the steps to the transporter pad and cleared the raised platform with a spring in her step. Her backpack tugged at her shoulders and sent her stumbling backwards momentarily before adjusting her footing to not fall over like the leaning tower of Piza after centuries of archeological rizz. Kate didn't bother to check her phaser. She was the intelligence officer and knew what setting it was on.

Inara walked in reviewing a PaDD and looked up. "Alright. I'm going to give some suggestions. Don't touch anything. These people were scientists yes, but they swindled and killed a bunch of elites in the twenty first who thought they were going to build a one percent utopia on another planet. Greed, ego, and betrayal. Typical Brutus style bullshit."

"Hail Caesar. We who are about to die salute you" Deanna said jokingly. "Early 21st century Earth technology will be limited, but that doesn't mean the people that were on these ships will be limited. We can't be sure exactly who or what we might encounter. Could be Augments, could be normal folk, could be nothing but corpses. The captain has preached caution, and I am inclined to agree. I worry when the captain and Inara are on the same general wavelength."

"Amen on that." Jon whispered.

"Let's hope we do not encounter Augments." Inara noted. "During the Eugenics Wars, one of them killed a room full of people with a pencil."

Deanna couldn't help but let out a soft chuckle at that, seeing the image in Inara's mind as she described it, and the name of the Augment, John Wick.

Kate's face scrunched slightly as her almond eyes darted toward everyone on the transporter pad with her. "Wait, if all they were planning on was to build only one percent of their utopia, we don't have anything to worry about. They're a bunch of underachievers..." Kate rubbed her chin in confusion.

Inara smirked. "Let me explain, back in the twenty-first, some of the most terrible people on earth got rich and began to make life miserable for everyone. They were called the 'One percent of Society.' They failed, of course, and they knew they were going to fail. Like an academy binge party gone to hell. Fun and malicious deeds, until a certain Betazoid Cadet decides to vent Anesthetize gas into the party so she could get her precious beauty sleep." Inara mentioned.

Deanna looked over at Inara and Kate and simply offered a wry grin.

"That was not an admission. I just said a certain Betazoid Cadet made sure they crashed. There was no evidence implicating anyone sedated a binge party on campus, nor would there ever be any. Now let's get this mission over with. I'm hoping we don't have to use out ship's impressive arsenal."

Deanna hit her comm badge, =^=Celes to lieutenant Phoenix. We await your arrival in transporter room 2. =^=

Seconds after Deanna spoke to Phoenix over the comms he entered the room in a rush, wearing his usual tactical vest with supplements. He had read the mission brief. This mission would require his expertise. He wasn't going to take any chances though. He also knew how deadly augments could be. Worse though, while he was frozen during that time, he had been a witness to the events that sparked the third world war. You could never be too careful.

James caught his breath. "Apologies for my tardiness Commander."

"Glad you made it" Deanna said with a smile.

With the arrival of Phoenix, the away team was now complete. Deanna gave a look at Jon, saw he was ready, and then looked over at the transporter chief, "Energize." The transporter activated and they dematerialized in the standard blue hue, and moments later they materialized on the ancient space craft.

Deanna instantly pulled her tricorder out and began scanning. They were standing in a section of the ship where they could see the control center as well as sleeper units, all of which were covered in a thin layer of dust. "The air is a bit stale, but still breathable. Not detecting anything harmful in the air, and radiation levels are within tolerance. Do you concur doctor?"

Jon nodded as Deanna gave her report on the air. "Kate, come up here to the control center with me and let's see what secrets we can uncover."

"I concur." Shon replied as she began her scans for anything that could be considered alive.

Phoenix kept his head on a near 360-degree swivel. There could be anything that would try to kill them. He wasn't taking that chance. He scanned the vicinity with his tricorder. "No hostiles at the moment sirs" he reported.

"I want to search for any medical facilities there may be." Shon said looking at Jon for permission.

"Sure thing Shon, Take Phoenix and Inara with you. Stay in contact and be alert for anything." Jon replied.

Inara shook her head as she examined the ship. "Cryogenic stasis. Might as well put someone on ice next to the roast." She noted as she scanned and began to access one of the primitive computers. "These are not modern computers in any sort."

Deanna scanned the area. "Appears to be computers from the early 2030s. We should be able to interface with them easily with our tricorders." She began to move towards the computer systems. "Shon, I'm detecting lifeforms in some of these cryo units. Some of them are still active."

"Do not touch anything Deanna." Shon warned scanning the units. "Strange." she walked in between the cryo units. there were thirty of them but only eight had something in them. Shon wiped the panel a small sliver of ice on her glove. "This seems to have been a simian, but it has been altered, larger skull, humanoid fingers." she shivered not knowing if it was the cold of the cryostations or what she was seeing. The overhead lights flickered contributing to the atmosphere.

She moved on and wiped another faceplate, she jumped back. "Deanna this one is humanoid! Vulcan."

Deanna was scanning the simian station when Shon announced that she had found a Vulcan in stasis. "You cannot be serious" she stammered as she walked over quickly to look. She scanned it just to be sure her eyes weren't betraying her. "Confirmed. It is a Vulcan. What the hell is a Vulcan doing here in stasis?" She looked back at Inara, "Inara, your mystery just grew tenfold. The people here are definitely the same that created the ape world we encountered a few months ago but look at this. They have a Vulcan in stasis."

Jon's voice came from the control center. "Say what? Please repeat what you just said."

James raised an eyebrow of concern. His gaze snapped towards Shon. "Did you say a Vulcan?" This raised even more alarms in the Lieutenant's head.

Kate tapped away at the consoles and stepped back from the screen.
"Sir," Kate said to Jon despite knowing this was interrupting him. "There seems to be a high level security system in place here. It says 'Windows Update - Please do not turn off your computer.'" She shook her head at herself as she realized from her old life what this meant. "Wait... Nevermind. This isn't a security protocol. It's just a byproduct of greedy corporations." Kate waited until the update was done and she was then met with a pin number challenge. Kate typed in 1234 just to see if it worked. It worked.

"You said these guys were supposed to be smart?" Kate asked on the open communications system. "Their passwords suck. I'm in!"

Shon had been silent whilst she scanned, because she was half Vulcan it had become somewhat troublesome. “Surak’s sake,” she breathed. This is no ordinary Vulcan, the augmentations are massive, she is hardly Vulcan at all. The damage an army of these beings could do!”

"Because they had no reason to defend themselves from anyone, Ms. Kono. They had already killed everyone who knew when they were launching from French Guiana." Inara mentioned. "A Vulcan you say? Perplexing... Something happened on this ship, and I will need to recover some of these SSD drives. The thing about NAND Flash Memory is that it's data degrades if it is not powered every now and then. But there's some ways to recover data. I might be able to get some data off this ship's drives.

Deanna looked to Shon, "Are you saying they have turned this Vulcan into an Augment? That is a level of insanity I can't comprehend. Even the Klingons didn't push it that far."

"If the computer works, the SSDs should probably be fine," Kate pointed to the working computer. "We probably have nothing to worry about."

Shon continued, "Fascinating, I think whoever did this was experimenting," she looked at her tricorder. "I am getting strange readings from the ...... neurotransmitters are off the scale, glutamate and gamma aminobutyric acid has converted raphe nuclei from the brainstem into what looks like....Surak, this Vulcan IS half Klingon." Shon stood back..."how can that be?" she asked herself. "I would love to get this specimen on the table."

Jon's head snapped around at Shon's statement, "The only way that specimen is going over to the Washington is under a full security blanket and when is Sickbay under heavy restraints. I don't want to run the risk of it reactivating."

"I can understand that Commander but the chance, the opportunity to study, to find out exactly what, how and why it was done" she exclaimed. However, I will continue to check the bio stasis units."

"I want to know when they encountered Vulcans and Klingons. Based on the technology in here, humans wouldn't make First Contact with the Vulcans for 30 years, and Klingons was 50 years, so this could be changing the history books" Deanna stated firmly. "I think we should transfer this specimen to sickbay. We can transport it directly to sickbay into a medical stasis unit to allow the medical staff the ability to look it over in safety, and we can have security there as well if you like. I would suggest that the captain is likely to destroy this vessel once we return."

"Make the necessary arrangements Deanna," Jon replied crisply. Though he wasn't happy having that thing aboard the Washington.

Kate began downloading logs and file data from the computer systems that were still viable enough to get data off of, which was surprisingly plentiful, and focused on transferring it all to her Tricorder for analysis later. She caught herself admiring one of the terminals as the data transfer continued. She picked at a sticker that said, 'Turn off your computer 12-29-1999' and observed it. The monitor was the only one amongst the rest of them that weren't LCD or Plasma.

"Someone really liked their old stuff amongst old stuff," Kate said more to herself than to anyone else. "Hipsters..." She concluded as she flicked the sticker onto the ground.

Inara responded. "Windows? Seriously. Too bad Microsoft no longer exists for two to three years of telemetry to be sent to them."

James smiled. The whole situation made him anxious, but it was moments like this, seeing old relics he practically grew up with, that made him rest a little better. He turned a little bit and noticed another terminal. He scanned it with his tricorder to see if it was somewhat safe. It appeared to be. He switched on the monitor to find that the screen was distorted but not cracked. "You poor thing. Who hurt you?" he muttered to the computer, not really caring how he sounded.

Phoenix also noticed that on the working bits of the screen, there was another blue update screen, but it appeared to be frozen screen. He also didn't completely blame whoever damaged the computer because Windows was notorious for its long updates.

Deanna scanned over the other cryo-units and saw that the others that had people in them seemed to have standard run of the mill humans inside, and none of them looked happy to be to be there. "Shon, take a look at these people. I don't think they willingly participated in this. I don't read anything abnormal about them, so they aren't Augments. Perhaps some sort of slave labor. I'm going to search these computer files and see if I can locate any biographical information."

Shon moved over to Deanna and began her medical scans. "Deanna the hippocampus, the part of the brain that deals with long term memory has been tampered with." She moved on scanning the next specimen. This the same but..the hippocampus has been totally removed. Whoever these poor people were they were treated barbarically. Experimentation to effect a compliant workforce, poor things." She walked along the rows, the spring in her step now gone. "Oh no" she whispered. "Deanna, there are children here as well."

The blood drained from Deanna's face hearing this latest update. She fully expected certain barbarities, but to experiment and mutilate children was a bridge too far. She slowly made her way over and took a look at what Shon had found. It appeared to be genetic experiments that had tragic side effects. Trying to increase muscle mass had unintended consequences, or at least Deanna hope they were unintended.

Inara spoke. "Be careful with the Windows file system, it wasn't the most stable thing, and after all this time, this extended run-time might have produced some file degradation." Inara noted. "As for this ship's computer, I don't think windows was using it. NASA, for spacecraft, did not use a closed source OS like Windows, and they used Debian Linux. It was efficient for a better operating system than Windows, but surprise, surprise. People used Windows." She smirked at the desktop computer and James. "You wanna know what happened to the poor thing? They humans put Windows on it. In computer terms, it's like being tortured by the computerized version of the Obsidian Order." Inara mentioned.

"Well now, I'm going to the ships command center. More than likely the ship was repurposed to store these poor augmented fools. Unfortunately, now that they're augmented, with or without their will, they're in for a life of superior mediocrity and envy, as the Federation likes to turn augments into second-class citizens due to paranoia and human obsession over the Eugenics wars. Be careful with them. Augments are... damaged people, as the universe tends to balance out the strengths and weaknesses of a person somehow, someway." Inara mentioned. "Who knows, maybe these poor things might join starfleet, we can put them in Red Squad or something." She entered the control room.

"I'm not sure that is wise. I think it might be more humane to just leave them in stasis and incinerate the ship" Deanna said is a low, emotional voice.

Kate finished scraping all the information off of the computers into her tricorder. She walked over to a door and waited for it to open. Kate double checked to make sure that the ships power was back online. Once she double checked, she stepped away from the door and then back into it again.

Kate pulled her phaser and then paused. Her brow furrowed in contemplation before reholstering her phaser and reaching for a latch on the door. With a deep reverberating clunk, the door opened. Kate shook her head and rolled her eyes as she stepped through the doorway.

"Off to see what's behind Door El-Number-Oh', Two-Ro.." Kate said as she squeezed her slender frame through the doors.

"Wait Kate." Jon shouted after her but was too late, she was already through the door. "Damn impulsive kid." He muttered.

TBC

 

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