Piecing Together the Puzzle
Posted on Fri Nov 28th, 2025 @ 1:46am by Lieutenant Alexandra Blackstone MD/DSAPM
Edited on on Fri Nov 28th, 2025 @ 1:51am
1,161 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission:
Peril at the Unification Accords
Location: Secure Science Lab - U.S.S. Astrea
Timeline: MD 10 - 2300 hours
ON
Alex had done nothing but worry herself and over-analyze everything that she could garner from the memories she had salvaged from the Ambassador's mind. She had spent most of the day in sickbay undergoing a full exam and beginning the process to return to duty. She did not expect the process to be easy and she was fully aware of the implications of her actions but she could not afford the time to fret over them at the moment; there were more important things at stake than the repercussions of her own actions. The death of T'varel simply did not sit right with her and though she had intended to return to her quarters she found herself instead at the door to her secure lab. It took her a moment to realize where she was but when it set in she nodded to herself, an idea growing in her mind.
She put in her access code on the lock for the door and scanned herself in quickly and quietly, glancing down the corridor in both directions before stepping into the lab and locking the door behind her. She didn't expect to be interrupted but she also did not wish to have something disturb her for a little bit.
Once she was inside the lab she took a seat at a tall seat alongside the main worktable, glancing over the controls and workstation that had she had only just truly gotten to her specifications days before the Astrea arrived at Barisa Prime. It had been over a week since she was last in her lab but it felt good to be back in it. She activated the computer and verified that it was only attached to an isolated and secure node of the Astrea's computer to prevent all information concerning the lab from being accessed from externally. She picked up the wreath that she used to read the activity of a patients neural network and that was used to translate those readings into something that could be uploaded to her synthetic brain.
It deviated from the original purpose of her research but she was certain she could alter one of her prototype wreaths to create a reconstruction of what she had in her brain that might be able to be walked through in a holo-deck. She turned the wreath over in her hand and smiled as the first part of the puzzle slid into place and she picked up her tools, breaking the wreath apart into its base parts; those being an advanced neural stimulator which was required to amplify neural activity so that the wreath could pick it up. It was the most important part of her wreath, the thing that enabled the knowledge of a potential patient to be preserved in a cybernetic brain. It was theory... so far but she found herself in a unique position to be able to give the tech its first actual field test. The other components were a variety of sensors and a specialized scanner that served to actually initiate the transfer of a consciousness. These were what she had to actually modify slightly but it should be a simple matter. Quickly she got lost in the work and several hours had passed when she looked up again and stretched her wrists and arms which had begun to cramp.
The finished product before her on the table, laying amidst a variety of scattered tools was bulkier than the slimline wreath it had started out as and it wasn't the most comfortable thing to have resting across ones brow but it benefitted from having nearly three times the processing power and had additional scanners that were able to single out specific memories or scraps of knowledge; though it would require a very thorough knowledge of both binary and neuroscience to know what you were working at. Her work had taken its first step from theory to practical and the prototypes around her restored a little bit of the hope she had lost watching T'Varel go down.
She connected the wreath to the console and booted up her program as though she was going to transfer a consciousness and then placed it across her own brow. After she ran a couple of checks to ensure that everything looked to be running according to her design she leaned back, closing her eyes and letting herself fall back into the details and memories that would permanently be a part of her mind despite not belonging to her herself. She allowed herself to immerse into the section of her mind that would forever belong to Ambassador T'Varel of the Vulcan Confederacy. She felt a small shock across both of her temples as the neural stimulators kicked in and her head spun wildly for a moment as the program began to sort through what it was picking up. She had keyed in the past 48 hours for a time frame to pull and she couldn't begin to explain the feeling as the wreath went to work, parsing out the data and transferring it to a Isolinear Storage chip.
She forced herself to walk through the memories, both her own and the Ambassador's from the past 48 hours and when she was done the computer gave a soft feminine "Neural Duplication Complete" as the wreath spooled itself down. For the first time Alex realized that she was running hot as beads of sweat ran down from around the wreath to settle in the hollows of her shoulders and across her collarbone. She gave it another ten minutes and then carefully lifted the wreath from her brow, gently placing it back upon the workstation. She blinked a few times, the lights in the lab seeming brighter than they had earlier and she rubbed at her temple as the all too familiar pain where her head had struck the bio-bed when she herself collapsed upon breaking the meld throbbed uncomfortably. As her vision cleared and she readjusted to the light levels she turned to the console, checking that the transfer was complete and she grinned widely at the green lettering across the computer screen.
Neural Data Integrity at 100%
She let out a small celebratory "whoop" and climbed out of her chair, leaning against the workstation unsteadily for a moment. There was some minor nausea and vertigo from the process but her work had passed beyond theoretical to something solid, albeit one that had foregone transferrance to a cybernetic brain. She was far from in a position to be able to explain that choice. She ejected the isolinear chip from the wreath and placed it carefully into a storage box, tucking it into her labcoat and heading back to her quarters talking softly to herself excitedly the entire way.
OFF
Lieutenant Alexandra Blackstone
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Astrea
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