Is There a Needle in This Haystack

Posted on Thu Oct 8th, 2020 @ 4:30pm by Chief Engineer Michael Burnstein & Ka'see 'Cassie' Anderson (*)

Mission: Mission 12 - Railway
Location: The Grotto
1255 words - 2.5 OF Standard Post Measure

Burnie looked at the tricorder and frowned in frustration. Too many weird readings to even begin to sort out what, if anything, here might be responsible; let alone where it might be. He sighed and looked over at the woman wearing his body. "How far did you get with cataloguing this stuff? Because I think we're going to have go bit by bit running narrow-focused scans to find anything."

Cassie sighed as she stepped into the grotto and just blanched at the sight. It sometimes felt like a never-ending story whenever she stepped into the room. She wished more than anything that she did not have the skill set to go through it but she did. “That area is catalogued.” She pointed to the large area they were stood in but as she led further into the room it was apparent that there was a larger area of not looked over than looked. “Don’t touch…” Cassie lent out to stop him touching a console in the middle but the console burst to life and a man appeared on the screen above them.

“Every damn time. Burnie meet The Collector” Cassie hissed. He was older than most people had ever seen with waxy skin. He looked ill, coughing and wheezing

“They will never find my stash… never in a million years would someone think to look in a space that I made my Engineer completely strip out. They are going to walk past it every day and never see my collection of beautiful and deadly things. If they do it will be there funeral. I hope they almost do find it because they will never be able to enjoy it.” He chuckled again which started off another coughing fit as Cassie shook her head at the former owner of the ship. She had seen it so many times now it was memorised.

"Charming," Burnie remarked dryly. He looked around. "So, if I were an obsessive crackpot, where would I stash a body swapper...?" He started walking toward to uncatalogued area. "More importantly, what could have shifted or gotten hit with some energy to activate it?"

"He is not really that old or degraded. We know he is El-Aurian." Cassie pointed out admitting that she knew a lot more than she let on. It was no known outside of Gregnol, Jeassaho and a few other people who had been affected by the Shatterverse as it was now called. "Nothing looks different than when I saw last in here. What do the logs say?"

"He doesn't have to be ancient or degraded to be a nutcase," Burnie replied, opening the logs and scrolling through. "Nothing... nothing... nothing... nope, nothing..." He blew out a frustrated breath. "If something here triggered this, it isn't showing up in these logs."

"I know that but just mean he is not as sickly as this video suggests." She muttered taking the log to look over herself. No one had been in there since her. "Well either I messed up and got myself involved in my own mess or something else is afoot here." Cassie looked around trying to see if anything had been knocked over.

Burnie looked around too. There had to be a better way to do this than by brute force process of elimination. "Tell me, has there ever been a case where something in here just randomly activated?"

“Not since the first time the crew came in here when they first found this place,” Cassie explained thinking back to what she had been told about the virus that had decimated the crew.

"Okay, so not likely," Burnie muttered, rubbing his ...Cassie's... chin. "And no one has been in here but you according to the logs. What area were you working in?"

"I was working in this area. It is stuff from my time." She admitted looking a little lost for a second before shrugging. "It was a trip down memory lane more than anything." She did not like admitting that sometimes she felt like slipping down that path but it did happen and she was slightly embarrassed.

It was strange to see the subdued emotion he'd learned to pick up in Cassie showing in his own posture and expression. "Nothing wrong with that," he assured. "But the body swap in from the Enterprise records was from your era, so we should probably double check here."

“Era sure but was nearly a decade after. I did have the pleasure of meeting it’s first Captain though. Robert April had fantastic cardigans.” She mused for a second before shaking her head. “Tell me about this incident. I think I’ve missed it in my studies.”

"It's been awhile since that tech history in the Academy, so I admit I don't recall the details, but an archaeologist uncovered a device that swapped people's bodies. She had wanted to be a Captain, but washed out - probably because she was a little unhinged." Burnie made a circling motion at temple height with a finger. "But she and Kirk had apparently had a ...past... so she got him to go out walking with her and pulled the swap to take his place. It didn't work in the end, and the transfer wore off..." He frowned. "I wish I could remember why. Something to do with her being emotionally unstable or something."

Cassie frowned at the name Kirk. Every time he was mentioned she wanted to roll her eyes comparing him to her own Captain. Where had Starfleet gone so wrong? “So we could have a device like that onboard and it just swapped people close by?” She mused looking at the items she had in front of her. “Nothing here is like that it’s all decorative and historical stuff.” She had no idea what some of it was but collector had obviously taken time to collect it for a reason.

Burnie ran the tricorder over it all for good measure, then frowned. "No odd readings - if it was any of this, there's no sign of it." He puffed a sigh. "I don't know what else to do here."

Cassie gave him a look that spoke she did not know either and that was a weird feeling for a scientist. “Maybe we need to head to sickbay or something take this investigation to more people?” Maybe it was time to admit defeat and get help and support. Cassie also didn’t want to admit but she felt like she needed to use the bathroom room and that was just plain awkward.

"Okay. Yeah, if this has affected anyone else, they're probably in medbay," he admitted a little dejectedly. Then as he thought about it, he perked up. "And if there are others, that might give us a way of triangulating back to a source."

"I like that idea. It had to come from somewhere and I bet it only worked on people who were asleep." She mused thoughtfully as they left the Grotto with Cassie sealing it back up. It was not something everyone knew about after all. "It takes a lot of power to do something like this from whatever caused it and from us." She presumed.

"I haven't noticed any signs of a power drain," Burnie mused. "So it might have drawn from elsewhere, but I'll run a full diagnostic on power levels to be sure. That'll take some time to complete though, so we might as well check in with medbay after I set it going."