Posted by Fleet Captain Drudoc Andone (Commanding Officer) in Main Sim - Fulcrum Runabout - Reality Bubble Tests!
[snip]

The second bubble flickered wildly, pulsing more visibly now the definite sudden change then change again had put some kind of effect on it. In this case as they watched the energy pattern grew smaller until it winked out, vanishing off sensor scans and from the containment field/bubble. It was possible the sudden shifts of molecular transport and transport again had caused it to lose its molecular coherency and energy matrix. Effectively they had just killed it by accident.....

Mini-Fayth looked over to where the second reality bubble faded out, a sad look crossed her face and mind quite strongly at that, but also strongly of fear and confusion equally. Tears began to drip down from her eyes, and she wiped at them in more confusion. “..What is happening to me?” Mini-Fayth said. “..I feel empty, hollow, and I leak this.....fluid.”

GM CockRoach

Sharah felt it too and it physically moved her, she blinked rapidly. They had been trying to stop an accident not create one…the guilt washed over her as well as mini-Fayth’s grief. “You’re sad, what you are feeling is called sadness, and grief. Grief means you miss someone or something that won’t come back. That fluid is called tears. Humanoids leak tears from their eyes when they are feel sadness or grief.” She took a deep breath, she couldn’t afford to get lost in the feelings of those around her. “I am so sorry, we were trying to send your friend home. It was an accident, something went wrong.” She watched herself, this was a dead end. But now what to do with miniFayth? “Do you know how you came from before to be like you are now?”

Lt jg Fayth, CSO

There was a pause and sniffle from MiniFayth, she shook her head no. “..No, there was just emptiness and formlessness then a rush of.....something and now I’m here and sad at the loss of the other one!” She said, her end tone of voice sounding a bit hurt and angry.

Caelian stared, dumbfounded, at his monitors. It had just… fallen apart. He’d done everything by the book to abort a transport in-progress. The sensor logs showed that it hadn’t fully reconstituted in space, not that it should have mattered. The runabout was right where they’d picked it up, the conditions for transport should have been the same. It didn’t make one shred of sense to him.

“I did everything by the book,” he whispered sadly, trying to shake the hollow feeling in his chest. “Everything… by the book.”

—Caelian Weir, Engineer—

V’alura startled at the sound of alarms. She turned to the sensors monitoring the lifeform and watched, helpless, as its pattern slipped away into nothing. “Oh no,” Her fingers flew across her screen, attempting everything she could think of to recall the pattern, to pull it back from nothing like a rabbit from a magician’s hat. It was too late, and the second lifeform was gone. V’alura blinked, startled by how sudden it had happened, but she had to focus.

“Caelian. . .” V’alura reached over, and gave the engineer’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “You didn’t know.” She said. “None of us could have known. . . We’ll figure out what went wrong and we won’t let it happen again.” Her free hand tapped across her console screen, pulling up every bit of data the computer recorded.

Ensign Belmont (science)

Startling slightly from the unexpected contact, the engineer seemed to shake himself before turning and giving the comforting hand a grateful pat. “Right.”

Tapping a few commands into the console, Caelian set his station into a diagnostic mode before taking up his toolkit from under his chair. When something goes wrong, he could hear his father say, it’s going to be your job to make it right. That, figlio mio is an engineer’s duty. A Weir’s duty. His brain raced with all manner of formulae and mechanical queries as he mentally ran simulation after simulation. In every case in his experience, it should have been a successful abort-and-retrieve scenario—matter or energy, he should have gotten it back intact! Frowning, he knelt at the aft of the runabout and started looking over his first concern: the modified boridium power source.

Mazi had taken the helm with Fayth taking on the scanning of the miniature version of herself. As she heard the reaction of the others, she spun around in time to see the small energy field blip out of existence. She wanted to comfort Cael, but Belmont had helped to reassure him. She would see if he was all right when they got back. “Ma’am, we are at a stop once more at point of origin,” she said to Fayth as she powered down the small shuttle as she saw the computer running a diagnostic. She assumed it was coming from Cael so she just let it go to let him see if all was well. She couldn’t see anything wrong from her end.

Mazi Eng

MiniFayth listened to this exchange, she seemed to be fuming in roiling frustration, sadness, anger, and confusion all rolled into one. Then as if to roll another boulder of a problem down their hill of problems sensors began picking up that the reality bubbles of all sizes near them were ‘vibrating’ for lack of a better term. They showed signs of a low electro-static connection now. In essence those closer to each other regardless of size seemed more ‘in touch’ with those others nearby, in turn this change seemed to act as an attracting magnet to others not so near. Finally yet in turn MiniFayth seemed to sense this alteration in the environment. “..The empty forms, they......they sense the loss I think.” She stated though even she it seems wasn’t sure how she knew this in her new state.

Caelian grit his teeth against the wave of guilt that rushed over him, tried to focus harder on the diagnostic task at hand. It should have worked, he snarled to himself. It should have been fine. I didn’t mean to kill it. It’s my fault it’s gone.

He winced when the back of his hand brushed too close to a linear compensator, cradled it to his chest out of reflex. It was then he realized that he, too, was mourning the loss. A single tear slid down his cheek, a cool furrow through the field of warm skin. He’d joined Starfleet with the fool notion that being an engineer would help him save lives, make them better. His logical and scientific mind knew that mistakes were like to happen, that it would always be a statistical probability, but his heart didn’t want to accept it. Watch over it for me, Kendra, he thought sadly, almost bitterly.

Though it was excruciatingly difficult, Caelian turned to the small lifeform and lowered his gaze. “I’m so very sorry, little one.”

On sensors a larger reality bubble brushed against the runabout’s shields, it lit up the shield barrier but did no real damage at the contact other then to bounce off. “..They want answers to the loss of form..” MiniFayth echoed.

Anxiety shot through him as he felt the jolt from the energy collision. In a tiny voice, he murmured, “Time to go?”
—Caelian Weir, Engineer—