Log:Aftermath (part 1)

Worlds Apart 2014/07/27 	 Mesmer Paragon Ten Interface Nicky Winters Toby Anthony Quinn Paul van Sterran 3

Starguard - Reception Area The reception area has muted black tiled floor, with the walls and roof painted off-white. The secretarial desk enclosure is barely twenty feet from the double set of glass doors. To its left is a large double-hinged door ominously labeled 'Security'. A seating area full of soft couches is to the right. Down the hallway that leads deeper into the building is the office of the Director of Operations and the exit to the landing field outside.

It has been two weeks since the unidentified spaceship arrived at Enceladus and the heroes were forced to defend themselves. In that time Starguard has hauled the ship to the Moon where it has begun disassembly of it, sending the parts down to Earth for further research. Autopsies have been conducted on the corpses and preliminary reports have been filled out. Paul van Sterran has called together those members of the expedition that could be reached to discuss the events and to inform them of what has been uncovered in a final debriefing, the theory being that extra insight might trigger additional memories in members of the expedition.

Ten arrives, having already found a cup of coffee, and leans up against the wall, waiting for the debriefing.

Nicky is standing by the drinks trolley serving coffee and other drinks and snacks to those who request such. She seems privately amused by something but is diligant in performing her task. Paragon gets a warm smile when she enters the room.

For that week, Allison has been... well, she's worked on about a dozen projects. One of them was trying to eke out whatever data was available from the computers on board that ship. But for the last few hours, she's set up shop once more in Starguard. She's got a few systems up and running, sitting in a single chair while multitasking between displays. With others coming in, her AI informs her so that she might be somewhat sociable, but she basically dismisses that for now. Just... working. The work is so much more engaging than socialization.

A ray of pink light is seen in the sky as Toby and Paragon head to Starguard. And somewhere near the building, the ray takes an erupt turn and hurls to the ground, disappearing to reveal Toby clinging to Paragon's back. "We're here." Toby proclaims happily, unclinging and floating towards the entrance. Toby gestures Paragon to follow as Toby heads through the building, and presumably, the two of them make their way to the room where all of the others are. Toby waves to the others present, nodding, but not speaking.

Oh, and Toby's only wearing a pair of swimming trunks right now, with her radio comm and a bag that contains a towel and sunblock. She literally does not have breasts, it seems.

Ten eyes Nicky a bit curiously and a bit suspiciously.

Nicky has been playng a little game with Allison. She's replaced Allison's coffee multiple times, waiting for Allison to become so engrossed in her work she doesn't notice Nicky doing it. So Allison has had a 'magically' refilling always hot cup of coffee at her side for almost two hours. And hasn't noticed yet.

Paragon follows along behind Toby, saluting her. "Thanks for the lift, Toby." As she arrives to where the others are, she offers a wave. Her head pans to Nicky and she smiles behind her faceplate, standing akimbo. "Well hello!" she says warmly.

Anton's time is much divided, as such he hasn't done much with the craft, after his acidential erradication of it's members there wasn't much the mentalist could do to assist the research and so he left it to those individuals with more technological interests. He has arrived early and is re-reading one of those ancient manialla folders that everyone used prior to the invention of notepad computers.

Paul van Sterran looks around to the assembled heroes. "Thank you for coming here today," he says. "Hopefully today's meeting will give us some more insight into what has been a rather confusing incident." As he speaks Anthony Quinn, garbed in a conventional business suit rather than his powered armor, arrives. van Sterran gives Quinn a sharp look, clearly annoyed at the lackadaisical attitude of the consultant but not commenting at this time.

Ten says under her breath, "Zombies from space."

Coffee has been imbibed by Ally. As has candy bars and other sources of liquid and solid sustenance. But then again, she could eat tree bark and get the same benefit from it these days. All she needs are materials she can break down. In the end, she has in essence a Mr. Fusion in her stomach... or maybe it is a Ms. Fusion. She lifts a hand and waves towards Quinn but doesn't look up from her computer screens. But then Paragon arrives and she turns to wave her way with a smile... hesitating as her eyes fall upon Toby. She shakes her head... and then goes back to work.

Paragon finally notices Allison buried in her work, wanting to say hello, but this is official Starguard business, and she's doing what she does best. So she waves in return, stands back, folds her arms over her chest, and puts on her best listening face for Paul van Sterran. The last bit of her effort is lost due to the helm, which makes her look neutral as always.

Nicky waves discreetly to Paragon when she thinks nobody is watching.

Van Sterran passes out folders to each of the heroes who have shown up, including Toby. The folders contain a stack of reports, the top of which provide the records and immediate debriefing statements of the heroes involved.

Paragon does, however, afford a wave back to Nicky, and a sideglance at Ten at the mention of zombies before looking back to Paul. She rolls her shoulder discretely, helm tilting down ever so slightly.

Paul nods to Ten. "Yes, that is part of the reason for this meeting," he says. "As near as we can tell they were not 'space zombies'. They were quite alive when they emerged from their ship, but we will cover that in a little bit. For right now I would like to talk about the ship itself."

Adding the folder under his current stack, the mentalist doesn't need a recap of events he was present for after all. "They... right." Anton agrees with Paul as he refutes the space zombies statement.

Ten frowns. She doesn't like the thought that they were alive - did she fail to save them?

Toby eyes Van Sterran, and the others present. She hasn't seen some of these people in a while. Toby glances at the folder filled with various documents, before looking back to Van Sterran. She should probably look through them at some point, but people are talking right now, and she's more interested in the talking people than the written papers.

Toby lands and stays off to the side, looking up to Van Sterran, listening.

Ten eyes Nicky again. . o O (Why's she here? Maybe it's vampires from space?)

Nicky takes the glance from Ten as a request and goes quietly over to Ten, picking a path that avoids passing in front of anyone's line of sight. She's carrying a coffee pot and offers to refill Ten's cup when she gets to her.

 suggests Julius. Ally just shakes her head. "Okay people." she mutters, sounding mildly distracted. "The computer on board their ship was unusual. It was almost like it was designed to be difficult to use. The quantum variance was literally only point zero three. While the programming seemed to be written in a blend of German and Russian."  says Julius in her head.

She rolls her eyes and waves, "Julius will explain further." she mutters as she turns back to her screen and a projected hologram comes from one of the systems... showing a holographic head as well as two other 'screens' for presenting data...

7/27/2014 11:29:35 AM> Ten accepts the refill anyway - she had just about finished. "What's your interest?" she whispers to Nicky.

Nicky whispers back to Ten. "I'm just helping the canteen staff out. It's a lot more interesting doing that than sitting in a cell all day every day."

Anthony Quinn was just beginning to rise when Allison suddenly launches into her talk about the computer system. He looks a bit surprised as she begins to speak but quickly retakes his seat.

"The language aspect seems to be mirrored in the ship itself," Anthony says. "The various labels and warnings within the ship seem to be sort of a mish-mash of German and transliterated Russian."

Ten scratches her head, vaguely remembering some history. "Wasn't part of Germany in the Russian sphere of influence for a while, last century? Could it possibly be anything to do with that?"

Anton quirks an eyebrow as he hears about the language cohesion, "Sounds like a cold war era conspiracy theory gone wrong." He remembers when it was 'vogue' to hate on both countries for their communistic tendancies, "Some sort of legacy project perhaps?"

Quinn shrugs his shoulders. "It's possible. This thing is like a rabbit hole. We keep finding things that go deeper and deeper."

"The medium with which they stored the data was unusual. A Non-Volatile high speed crystal memory, quite stable and efficient. But with an operating system that seems intentionally designed to be difficult to use." begins Julius. "The computers controlling the ship were... strange. They had approximately sixteen computer cores. When data became altered due to anomalies or simply mistaken readings, a core would be shut down.. burned out, so to speak, when it disagreed with results presented by the other cores. When Allison here connected with the system, it treated her as an anomalous core and tried to order her shutdown. When she began to override the programming, the entire system turned itself into a brick to avoid being altered. The odd thing is that while the computer technology is far in advance to... the most generic computer tech in use today... myself not included." Yeah, Julius seems capable of boasting about his own advancement a bit. Hey, he's well built and proud of it. "... the ship itself did not seem to be as advanced as the computer on board the ship. It came from a point in space near Neptune... from a location their own files called Tigel. But it transported to Neptune's moon, Oberon... before relocating to Iapetus by means that we have been unable to differentiate from simple matter translocation or ... teleporting. Perhaps via a wormhole... which also begs the question of -how- they performed such a task. But from there they launched with the results we already have seen. It seems that -their- records for locations of various celestial bodies did not match the -actual- locations of such bodies. It is our considered opinion that they are from an alternate universe, and made the crossing in this... translocation."

"If they translocated using a wormhole," Quinn says, "it wasn't done with any form of drive on the ship."

Ten says, "Sounds like you still have more questions than answers."

Toby nods to the explainations, but looks a little lost. She nods towards Ten, shrugs, and continues listening.

"Perhaps there Russia and Germany won the great war..." Anton muses. "Technology advances in different stages here and there... redundencies would indicate that they expected corruption, suicide pills to prevent data leakage from their dimension to us both similar to the regimes of the great war..."

Anthony frowns at that as he listens to Anton. "But why would they expect corruption of the cores?" he asks. "Julius just told us that they have access to a highly stable and efficient crystal circuitry design."

"They also used units of time that were close and similar to our own, but.. not identical. Their measurements of time used a standard year with three hundred and sixty five days, no accounting for additional time by means of a leap year, and each day was referenced by a number between one and three hundred sixty five. Then, each day was broken down into ten thousand time units. Each unit was precisely zero point eight six four seconds. Another fact that leads us to believe they are from elsewhere."

Yeah, that's Julius but Ally looks up, "That's a good point." she says to Quinn. "Perhaps we should send a team to the location they translocated -from-."

Julius pauses as she speaks, and then adds, "That might be a good idea. Now, the computer had a very limited initiative. It seems the only thing it could really choose to do on its own was initiate... self destruct. An ability that was lost when the cores melted down to avoid reprogramming. Now, the interface for the computer was... standard keyboard. No voice, or even speech synthesis. For such an advanced system, this seems strange. The rocket itself used fusion power and yet... the drones it launched to defend itself used primitive chemical thrust rockets. Another... anomaly."

Paragon remains motionless as she listens to the information provided. It's all a bit over her head, but she's getting bits and pieces from it. Something something wormhole, something something alternate dimensions. She's sure someone will help her understand later, but she's impressed with the amount of knowledge her companions have.

Ten says, "Hm, exactly a 365-day year? That seems improbable. It sounds more like a system that might be used by ex-Earthers to keep a semblance of home while in long spaceflight, or something?"

Quinn shakes his head at the possible anomaly with the missiles. "I think I can explain that," he says. "Their engine was a fusion drive but it would be difficult to scale it down to the required size for a missile. Additionally it would probably prove cost prohibitive to use such an engine in an expendable vehicle. Finally, firing those missiles would put the craft in the path of their exhaust, which would not be desirable."

Ten says, "Though then if from here you wouldn't expect the different subdivision."

Nicky has forgotten her self appointed task of coffee server and is listening with rupt attention, albeit a lot of what is being said is going straight over her head.

"Or, they were unsure how the crystals would interact with our solar system." Anton suggests, "This has all the earmarkings of a scouting mission whose purpose was to prevent tracebacks. Their technology is good, but not good enough for interstellar flight I would imagine... so if you are a despot who needs more natural resources... why not just jump to another dimension grab the stuff you already mined and jump back?"

"Yet another reason to investigate their jump off site. See if there is any evidence of their presence there. If not, then it is even more likely that they came over from... elsewhere." says Allison as she disconnects from the programming thing she was working on. "I've been setting up a probe to try to scout that location." She pauses and then smiles to Julius. "Thanks Jules. Don't worry, your molecular circuitry is far better than their crystal stoarge, but... I might be able to give you an upgrade by improving on their designs."

"The ship definitely was not capable of interstellar travel," Quinn agrees. "At least not by itself. Strictly sub-light. There were cold sleep berths but I doubt they would work well enough for a journey to even the closest stars."

Ten says, "So in brief, you've got us together to tell us you big-brains haven't a clue? Is there anything definite you can tell us?"

"Oh, we've got plenty of clues," Quinn says. "It's just that we can't fit them all together yet. I think that it quite possibly would be a good idea to send out a scout to Oberon and see if we can figure out how they jumped from there."

"If we are sending a team, I volunteer." offers Ally. Duh, she -has- to know how this is being done. Plus, she wants to investigate the tech. Duh.

Ten says, "OK. So we don't know where they're from or what they were doing here or why their ship makes no sense or why they're all dead? Or do we know the last thing?"

"I think that their deaths are linked to the computer's desire to brick itself before it allowed itself to be subverted. Whomever sent them... would rather they, and the system... die, before allowing themselves to be altered or interrogated." says Julius. "That is the one consistency in all of this."

Paul van Sterran nods. "We know why they are dead," he says, "but let's save that until the autopsy reports. If Interface and Julius are done talking about the ship's computers I believe Mr. Quinn has some insights into the ship itself." He looks over toward Allison.

And Allison gives a gesture that manages to convey... 'sure, go ahead' while at the same time seeming almost like... 'if you want to discuss the unimportant details.'

Ten goes to sit down. Sounds like this will be a long debriefing, and even if she doesn't get stiff a change of position is comfortable.

Anthony Quinn steps up as Allison makes the gesture. "The hull of the ship is composed primarily from a molecularly bonded crystallization of an Iron-Nickel alloy," he says. "It also possesses traces of other elements such as carbon, cobalt, chromium and beryllium to buttress the molecular structure but the overwhelming majority of its composition is Iron-Nickel. It almost certainly was not a mining ship as it lacks any significant amount of cargo space, nor did we uncover any tools that we can determine might be used for mining. We did uncover quite an arsenal of weapons, however."

Ten says, "Huh - am I right in thinking a lot of that stuff sounds like asteroids? Could you tell if the materials were formed in a strong gravity field or not?"

Quinn nods to Ten. "Five points for the woman with the staff," he says. "Most stony asteroids are composed primarily of Nickel-Iron with some other trace elements. The crystallization may have been conducted under microgravity but it is difficult for us to be certain."

"It would seem highly improbable that the ship was intended for interstellar flight," Quinn continues. "There were cold sleep capsules present, although they had not been used. However the fusion engine only possessed enough fuel for about 18 days of continuous burn. While this seems like a lot it would only propel the ship up to about one third the speed of light meaning it would take approximately ten years to reach Proxima Centauri. Since that would leave you with no fuel to decelerate you would reasonably only get up to about half that speed, so twenty years."

"So, it's like this ship was made primarily with materials found in asteroid mining, and constructed in space. This speaks of advanced techniques as well." suggests Ally.

Ten says, "But it's not a mining ship.... was it maybe constructed precisely to get back to the inner system or something?"

Ten says, "Hm, I forget. Are there rocky bodies in the outer solar system or is it all icy bodies out there?"

Quinn nods to Allison. "Oh, it gets better than that," he says. "The primary reason we can't be sure that the ship was constructed in microgravity is because of two of the devices we found on the machine." He pulls up an image on one of the presentation screens. "This appears to be a food dispenser." The object on the screen doesn't seem to be anything more than maybe a microwave oven.

"The outer system is a mix of icy and rocky bodies," Quinn says to Ten, "but primarily if you were hunting for stony asteroids you would probably search in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter."

Ten says, "So what if it wasn't miners. Maybe some - I dunno - military or scientific outpost - out there for secrecy or something?" She shrugs. "Just a thought."

"Did this dispenser, work like an oven, or a replicator?" asks Allison.

"Like a replicator," Quinn answers. "It was attached to a bin filled with carbon and water along with smaller quantities of nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and various trace elements."

"Hrm, that could be useful." says Allison. "So they had avancements there, and yet very primitive interfaces as well as things like... the rockets. I really want to find out, and maybe visit, where they came from now."

"How much firepower? How difficult to repel would it be if they had more of these things?" Anton asks.

"Bins were refilled by reclamation systems that broke down waste into these various compounds," Quinn says. "The same system also functioned as the atmospheric scrubber, pulling the carbon dioxide from the air, separating the carbon, then either releasing the free oxygen or rebonding it to other elements to store it in a more solid form. The second device was likewise a replicator," the screen changes to show a much larger box, this one more the size of a conventional oven. "This one seemed to be designed for tools, weapons, and general equipment, however, rather than food."

Ten says, "Is anything of identifiable manufacture?"

"I want one." mutters Allison softly, almost to herself.

"The ship's firepower is what I would classify as 'significant'," Quinn says. "I'm sure that the Guild can field ships with considerably more firepower but this clearly did not seem to be something you used to just drive around the neighborhood, unless you lived in New Jersey."

Quinn turns to Ten and asks, "What do you mean?"

Ten says, "Any of the tech - is it based on any tech from this Earth, or some other Earth, or some Guild world that we know of? You know, even if it's just the heads of the screws that give it away."

Paragon's eyes wander to Allison, a soft smile playing across her lips behind the faceplate. New project for her little sis. Her eyes flit back to the others as she resumes listening to the information provided.

Quinn seems to equivocate for a moment. "It is hard to say," he replies. "As they seem to possess some form of molecular fabrication they are most likely capable of building anything they have the science for, so I would not imagine that anything they possess is an import. However, quite a few things seem to be well in advance of terrestrial sciences, such as these replicators. On the other hand a great deal of the basis for their science does appear terrestrial, just more advanced."

Ten says, "So could we be dealing with a fusion of two technology sources? Or maybe say some science station that was founded with old-fashioned tech but they invented all sorts of new stuff while living god-knows-where? But maybe that's really unlikely, unless there were super geniuses."

Quinn considers that for a moment and then says, "Probably more the later than the former. When I look at this stuff I don't see anything that I have a really hard time understanding, at least in theory. There doesn't seem to be anything truly alien, just more advanced. Interface's reports on the computer are strange, though. If you were to ask me I would say that nearly everything seems to be fifty to a hundred years more advanced. Even the underlying computer technology seems more advanced yet its implementation is much more primitive."

Paragon rubs the back of her head at Quinn's summation on the technology, perplexed. "So alternate future wormhole wibbly wobbly...stuff," she says to herself in the simplest way she can understand it.

Ten nods. "Um - we couldn't be dealing with time travel or something? At least for the future tech?

Quinn considers that for a moment. "It's possible," he says, "but hard to say. If they are from the future then what explains the primitive computer implementation? On the other hand, if they are from an alternate dimension then why did they chose that landing spot on Enceladus?"

Ten says, "Or someone with primitive tech got hold of some future tech? But no, that doesn't explain the controls being made deliberately hard to use...."

Quinn thinks about that as well. "What do you mean by 'got a hold of'? he asks.

Ten says, "I dunno. Found a wrecked timeship and - I dunno. You're the billionaire inventor genius. But sounds like just the thing some secret research might have been being done on.... back with the old Cold War conspiracy idea, I guess"

Quinn ponders for a moment. "So...something along the lines of a ship from the future crashed a hundred years ago on Earth and a secret joint West German-Russian project was built around it that took it out to Neptune where they have remained completely isolated ever since?" he asks.

Ten says, "Yeah. But now you put it that way, it seems preposterous. I plead blonde."

Quinn shrugs his shoulders. "Actually, it is a more complete picture than anything anyone else has been able to come up with," Quinn says, "but it doesn't answer certain questions. Why did they think the solar system would be in a different arrangement after their jump? Why would they be revealing themselves to make an attack on that particular spot on Enceladus?"

Ten nods. "I guess we should have stuck around to see if we could find anything special about that spot."

Quinn shakes his head. "I can already tell you that," he says. "There's nothing of interest about that site except maybe historical. That's the spot on Enceladus where I drilled through the crust last year."

Paragon's eyes flicker a bit. "That exact spot?"

Ten says, "I guess if was a time jump, or meant to be a time jump, that could account for the arrangement being wrong?"

Ten says, "that can't be a coincidence!"

Quinn nods to Paragon. "Or close enough not to matter," he says. "You're talking about a distance of under a hundred meters. It isn't like I dug a huge hole so only a couple of people would be able to stand on that spot at a time."

Toby is just standing there, processing all of the information when Quinn notes the exact spot-thing. "Wait." Toby nods to Ten and Paragon, before looking back to Quinn. She hmms.

Ten says, "Um - could they have missed by a year? I mean, if time jump is a possibility. Or they thought it was a possibility."

"Primitive interface." Toby mutters, considering it. "What's the advantage of having a primitive interface? It'd be simplier and easier to implement, wouldn't it? And if the people working on this system were really intelligent, they wouldn't need an interface more complicated than a keyboard with a command line. More time to work on other things."

Quinn thinks about that for a moment. He seems just about to speak when Allison cuts him off. "The time that Quinn went out there still doesn't match with where they expected the alignment of the planets to be. The time they thought they were going to was when Iapetus was at its closest to Enceladus."

Ten says, "So - what times *do* match where they expected it to be? If any?"

Quinn arches an eyebrow and then looks to Interface. "That's a good question," he says. "Can you work-" Allison cuts him off and says "83 years and 43 days from now. At least that is the closest occurrence to the particular planetary alignment they seemed to be operating under. As planets follow a cyclical path this particular pattern has occurred in the past and can also be expected to occur in the future. However the time frame for such a configuration would be of interest primarily to geologists."

Ten says, "Of course you were taking a core sample there.... huh. So why did you pick there?"

"Nice to know I wasn't the target," Quinn says. "Kind of worried me for a second." To Ten he replies, "Really not much of a reason. It was in more or less the middle of a fairly open patch. It was a good location to dig but it isn't like it was a one in a million spot."

Ten says, "And you found nothing special in the core sample? And there's nothing special you missed that could be found in the future, say?"

Quinn gives a shrug of his shoulders. "Hard to say," he answers. "Enceladus is kind of like the Earth. It isn't completely stable since it has an ice crust over a liquid ocean. In a hundred years I suppose it is possible things could have shifted to the point where there's something valuable pushed up, but it doesn't seem likely. It isn't that unstable so the odds of something happening in that time frame are very remote and even if it did the effect would be more like an oil field. It wouldn't be highly localized and if you go to an oil field and you ask five geologists where the best place to build a rig is you'll get five different answers. They'll be in the same general area, but they won't be -that- close." He points to the map of the landing site.

Ten says, "So we seem to be coming back to it having to do with you. Somehow."

Quinn nods. "I guess so, but honestly I can't think of why. I didn't leave anything behind or anything like that."

"They had a lot of firepower." Toby notes. "And they were, chronologically, close, weren't they?" Toby shrugs.

Paul van Sterran says, "Why don't we move on to the autopsy reports? Perhaps something in one of them will help to provide some sort of insight." He looks to Toby. "What do you mean by 'chronologically close'?

Ten says, "What *were* you doing there? I mean - why were you taking the samples and were you doing anything else?"

"Well, it wasn't /that/ long ago that he went there, was it? Especially if they're from 83 years away." Toby offers. "If they /could/ time travel, it'd be pretty close, wouldn't it?"

"I was primarily looking for the existence of primitive life in Enceladus' oceans," Quinn says to Ten. "Enceladus has the only other large bodies of liquid water in the solar system, so one theory is that very simple organisms may have evolved in the water beneath the ice crust. However I wasn't able to find anything. Not even molecular." He then turns to Toby. "On the one hand it seems coincidental," he says, "but on the other it looks like they were aiming for a different time. They didn't expect the moons to be in the configuration they were in. If someone had managed to figure out how to travel in time I would think they would be smart enough to account for planetary movement."

Quinn blinks as he says that. "Oh, son of a bitch," he says a little quietly as something occurs to him.

Ten tilts her head. "What?"

Quinn says, "There's nothing there now, and it isn't likely that there will be any resources that spring up there in 83 years, but what if something gets built there?"

Ten says, "Right. Place in out solar system with water."

Quinn nods. "Exactly. With an unlimited energy source one of the biggest requirements for a colony would be water, which is why I was toying around with the idea."

"And I'd bet that, if /anyone/ had the resources and intelligence to build something there..." Toby starts, gesturing towards Quinn. She shrugs a little.

Ten says, "And the spot where you already surveyed would make sense."

Quinn nods to Toby. "But it really hasn't been much more than an idle thought," he says. "Daydreaming stuff. I haven't been giving it any serious consideration."

Ten says, "Um, we're not causing any temporal paradoxes by figuring it out, are we? I mean, if the guess is right."

Quinn shakes his head. "I can't tell," he says to Ten. "Temporal theory isn't really my thing, but even if we are I think we'll be ok. It isn't our past we are in danger of altering."

Toby shrugs, and scratches the back of her head, "Either way, uh, this sounds like we now have even more questions."

Paul van Sterran nods as he stands. "We do," he says, "and unfortunately I don't think the autopsy reports are going to make things any clearer."