Swap Shop

Posted on Sat Dec 19th, 2020 @ 1:23am by Oliver Lucas & Jinx Jorasco & Liha t'Ehhelih

Mission: Mission 12 - Railway
Location: Infirmary
Timeline: MD 02 - 11:00
1242 words - 2.5 OF Standard Post Measure

In the absence of an actual medical doctor, Oliver found himself faced with a kind of medical problem that even a seasoned and experienced medical professional would probably struggle with. An event that defied all scientific and medical knowledge. The act of transferring a consciousness between bodies instantaneously without their knowledge or seemingly without any sort of technology. It was a conundrum.

"So..." he said awkwardly, glancing at Jinx -- who didn't look like Jinx. Apparently it was her underneath the Human woman's face. He found it hard not to stare. "I really have no idea where to start. Looking at your basic medical scans is about as far as I know what to do."

Avalon Hadley -- now Jinx Jorasco -- looked up, saw the other Human staring, and blushed. Right. She was Human now. That meant she might be attractive to other Humans. The Kisongo had never considered that. She didn’t know if Avalon was dating anyone. The way Oliver was staring -- were they maybe in a relationship? But he knew she was Jinx, so...was she supposed to do something? This was confusing.

“Did you find anything in the medical scans?” Jinx asked, going over to Oliver. “Probably some anomaly in the brain scans?” She stood near Oliver now, looking on with him at the readings they had taken from various swapped people. It was odd, standing the same height as other people, not having to lug her stool around. Everything was built for her size for once!

"I have the last scans from the Captain, back when he was in his body," Beya said, handing a PADD to Oliver. "As far as I can see, there aren't any significant differences." The Orion shook her head. "Half of me thinks there should be; even if the consciousness is the same, it's sitting in a different physical brain. On the other hand, we know brain waves don't change for people who undergo sex reassignment, so..." she shrugged. "I guess relatively similar hardware doesn't have that much influence on coding."

"There's not much about this sort of thing in the computer library. Experimental technologies at best, nothing practical. There's something about it happening by accident to a Starfleet captain on a ship called Enterprise. But that was down to ancient technology nobody understood and was destroyed soon after." Oliver shrugged. "That was temporary, too. Maybe we'll get lucky and people will revert back by themselves?"

“Maybe,” Jinx said. “Is there any data left on that ancient technology?” she asked. “We have a better understanding of a lot of things now than back then. Maybe we could find something? No one has reported finding any strange...objects or whatever that might have done something like this? I haven’t found any exotic radiation or anything on the sensor logs that could indicate something,” she admitted.

Beya thought for a moment. "A couple incidents now that I think about it. Both tied to Anu'anshee artifacts. And both involving ships called Enterprise... Huh." Her head tipped to the side. "Something about that ship name seems to attract weird stuff like a magnet."

"Never really heard of it," Oliver shook his head. "I guess we're still left with more questions than answers." He ran another scan over Jinx. "Everything biologically seems normal. Brain scans are as they were before. It's hard to say whether we can even begin to explain how it happened, never mind how to fix it."

"It would be easier if we knew how it happened so we could work from there," Beya said, and sighed. "But lacking that, we could try some approaches. Stress, neuroelectric stimulation... or since it seemed to happen during sleep, putting two people who swapped under and seeing if they swap back."

"You want to experiment?" Oliver frowned. His only point of reference for that was back in the Borg 'liberation' units he'd seen. They were grim environments at the best of times. "How many people are going to want their body exposed to that sort of thing when they're not even in it?"

"Not without their consent! Consent is important," Beya replied indignantly, offended anyone would even think that of her. "But people want their bodies back, and if there's some stimulus that might make that happen, we should at least give them the option to try."

“It’s better than twiddling our thumbs,” Jinx-Avalon said. “It might give us some more data. I would volunteer my body. I would have to talk to Avalon about hers. And we can ask some of the other crew.”

"All right." Oliver held up his hands, still not completely sure what they were doing. "Find some volunteers. I can scan them. The rest is up to someone who can figure out the science behind swapping minds with other people."

"I'm not sure I qualify there," Beya said, frowning. "But I'll go see what I can dig up in the records."

“I am not an expert on it, either,” Jinx admitted. “I did read about a Klingon case in the 2250s where the Klingons were trying to make sleeper agents during a war with the Federation. They altered a Klingon to look Human, and imprinted the identity of a Human prisoner on him. That could be a route to explore. Beyond that, other than Singh’s research into synthetic neural nets might provide clues.”

Lots of 'maybes' and 'clues' but nothing really solid. It made Oliver feel a little more despondent than he already felt. "There's also Borg collective consciousness to look into," he noted, coming up with yet another angle. "Lots of minds all jumbled together, maybe some of them shoved back into the wrong places. I suppose that gives me something to read up on."

Beya looked at him sympathetically -- that couldn't be an easy thing for him to research. "I can help with that, if you want," she offered. "Once we have some ideas, we can send private messages to the people we know are affected, asking if they'd be willing to take part in trial studies for reversal."

"Well that makes a lot of sense," Oliver agreed. Finally it sounded like he'd said something helpful. "I was only assimilated for a little while, and the recovery process took most of it out. Hey, if we get people back into their own bodies again maybe that'll come in helpful too."

“Talking to the Borg Reclamation Project couldn’t hurt,” Jinx-Avalon agreed. “No one has more experience with it than they do.”

"You want to do that talking, be my guest," Beya said stiffly. She was not going to contact Romulans, especially ones from the so-called Free State. "I'm going to pull up Federation research and make some comms to see if anyone has heard rumors of anything like this. If there's body swap tech, I'd bet the Syndicate wants it or already has it."

"Makes sense to me." Oliver nodded. He bristled a little at having to dig up some old wounds, but in order to fix this problem, they needed it. "Let's reconvene later and see what we come up with."

“Do you want to make that call?” Jinx asked Oliver gently. “I don’t mind doing it. I just wasn’t sure if you knew people in the Project.”

"I..." Oliver hesitated. "Used to. It's okay, I can call them." Just won't be pleasant, for either of us.