<SNIP>

Standing from the workstation he’d been seated on, Rowe cross the space to pat the younger scientist on the shoulder. “Khiryn, seriously don’t stress about it. Doc thought you were nice.” He smiled at the man before turning his attention back to the display. “Why don’t you walk me through what you’ve found?”

• Rowe

OOC: That works! More like an astrometrics lab.

IC:
Ensign Donivas still felt embarrassed and knew he’d be falling on his sword before the Doctor at some point. But, at James’ urging, he tried to push the social shame away for the time being.

Khiryn was tired, and eyed the tea the other man was drinking. He’d been up late last working the datasets and hadn’t gotten much sleep. Stimulants tended to hide the fatigue that was the first sign of a flare up, so the Akaali ignored the drink and resolved himself to being a little weary for the rest of the day. And I need to make sure I get a solid eight hours tonight.

He turned away from the screen and took a seat at the station next to James. “I compared the sensor data we have with other known phenomena… both as an interconnected whole and as individual data points. The closest thing I could find came from micro-fissures in space time.” He typed a few commands into his station and pulled up a different image. “While the federation has cataloged hundreds of micro-fissures, we still don’t know much about them. And while they share similarities, they are all different.”

Ensign Donivas typed a few more commands so both images were displayed simultaneously… their anomalous readings against a known micro-fissure. “The delayed echo our sensors saw could be coming from the these fissures. Active scans on known fissures result in a similar form of signal delay or diffraction.”

He let Rowe analyze the screen for a few moments before continuing. “The bad news is, all the known fissures are isolated instances. No two have ever been found this close to one another. In order to match up with our readings… we’d have to be talking about dozens of fissures all in this one system.”

Ensign Khiryn Donivas - Science Officer - U.S.S. Athena

Rowe takes a silent moment to circle the display, just absorbing Khiryn’s words and trying to ‘see’ the connection they presented. “It’s good that you ran the whole and independent data points… it allows the contrast to show.”

“Not all unexpected news has to be bad…” Rowe said as his mind worked down a rabbit hole.

Taking another pull off the tea, Rowe’s face takes on a pensive expression. “Do we know that these are active fissures?” He moved around the projection again as a thought took hold in his mind.

“I think you’re onto something with the signatures being related… but what if we’re not looking at an active event… what if we’re looking at the aftermath? Residual stress in the fabric of spacetime?”

Looking at the younger scientist, Rowe tried to make sense of his train of thought. “What if we’re looking at the evidence of something having happened, instead of something happening? What kind event could leave that kind of wake?”

• Rowe

Khiryn nodded as he mentally evaluated Rowe’s idea and watched the display. “Thats a good thought. They are different enough from known fissures that I couldn’t make a positive identification, despite the correlation. They have more in common with an active fissue than the usual spacetime noise, though.”

Spacetime noise or “foam” was a general term that encompassed the trillions of subatomic fluctuations in spacetime that were too tiny to analyze individually. In theory, micro-fissures opened and closed all the time.... they were just too small and too brief to be measured.

“That being said… our data _could_be old, and we’re seeing the decaying remnants… or maybe its the opposite…and its just starting to form?”

He ran a quick analysis of the data they had available, but saw no statistically significant drop in the readings… not that couldn’t be accounted for by the sensor distance or astrometric contitions. “No.. that’s no good. If they were just forming, we’d expect the readings to increase in strength.”

He leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair. “So were back to your question of what could cause these spacetime scars. Some sort of inter-dimensional travel? A celestial moth gnawing on the very fabric of the universe?” Ensign Donivas was simply freethinking at this point… letting the ideas flow until something clicked.

Ensign Khiryn Donivas - Science Officer - U.S.S. Athena

“Better a celestial moth, than a celestial Godzilla…” Rowe said in an attempt at a joke, and then realized his error… “Sorry… Human cultural reference.” He shrugged slightly “Like they say, if you have to explain the context, the joke’s probably not worth telling… besides I’m not sure I can contextualize the human fascination with giant creatures leveling cities anyway.”

“I’m afraid we might be a little ahead of ourselves by asking what caused this, when we’re still not quite sure what this is.” Rowe said as he moved closer to the projection again, studying the scale markers around the hologram.

“I wonder if a probe could get us a better look, we’re a little far out… but I’ve got a buddy on the USS Sagan who owes me a favor… and he was always kind of a golden child, I bet he could sweet talk his superiors into at least squeezing in a high-res sensor pass.”

• Rowe

James’ comment sparked a memory. “Oh… were you able to pull any sensor data from this region from other vessels?” Right now they were working only in the data Athena collected.

Lt Rowe was right about needing better data from a high resolution scan… but more low resolution data would also be helpful. It could help fill gaps in the sensor data and might show a larger pattern they just couldn’t see with their limited data set.

It was unlikely, given their current data set, but it might also indicate when these anamolies started appearing.

Ensign Khiryn Donivas - Science Officer - U.S.S. Athena

James thought back on the previous day and a slight smile crossed his face. “I haven’t yet. I got a little ‘distracted’ after my shift was over yesterday.”

Taking another pull from his tea, Rowe considered the mystery before them. “It looks like we’re asking the same questions from different vantage points… So let’s do this…”

“I’ll reach out to the Sagan and start digging through Federation sensor archives. Even low-resolution data from ships that transited this region could tell us whether we’re looking at isolated anomalies or part of a much larger pattern.”

He glanced back toward Donivas.

“In the meantime, I’d like you to take the historical approach. If these really are scars, then every survey we find without them narrows the window for when they first appeared. We may never identify the exact event that caused them, but if we can determine when the scars weren’t here…” He shrugged lightly. “…that’s still a valuable piece of the puzzle.”

• Rowe