Posted by Lieutenant Mykl Najjar (Chief Medical Officer) in Main Sim: Bridge: Within the Expanse

Posted by Gamemaster Nosferatu (GM) in Main Sim: Bridge: Within the Expanse
Snip

Pawl was feeling a bit of strain. But he was making notes on the console of everything he was feeling. Noting the patterns, etc., from his mental voyage. As the stress was getting to him, he struggled to keep himself planted as it were. Pawl tried mentally to speak to the unknown to see if there was a reply. ~Can you hear me or understand me?~ Pawl sent out into the unknown. Pawl also strengthened and refocused his mind in attempts to strengthen his mental anchors and his mind to protect any sensitive secrets of his and the Federation/Starfleet.

[[Lt ]] [[Pawl Batario]]
[[Chief_Engineer]] [[Uss_Chernov]]

The moment Pawl extended his thoughts beyond the fragile boundary of his own mind, the universe did not answer—

—it shifted.

At first, it was subtle. A faint pressure behind the eyes, like the sensation of descending too quickly in a turbolift. The ambient noise of the ship—its steady hum, the distant thrum of power conduits—began to dull at the edges of his perception, as though something vast had placed a hand over reality itself and listened.

Then the patterns came back.

Not as passive impressions this time, but as structure. Repetition. Intention.

Across the sensor overlays scrolling on his console, the data he had been logging began to align—waveforms that should have been chaotic now echoed one another in impossible symmetry. Subspace harmonics folded inward, mirroring the cadence of his own neural rhythms.

Engineering telemetry flickered.
• OPS READOUT: Power flow variance +0.7% across EPS grid—non-random oscillation
• SCIENCE FEED (passive): Low-level psionic resonance detected—source unlocalized
• ENVIRONMENTAL: Temperature drop of 0.3°C localized to Pawl’s position

And then—

Contact.

Not a voice. Not language.

A presence.

It did not speak in words, but Pawl felt it brush against the outermost edges of his mind—testing, tracing, learning. His reinforced mental barriers held, but the pressure increased, like a tide pressing against a seawall, searching for weakness, for meaning.

For a fraction of a second—barely measurable—his thoughts did not feel entirely his own.

The question he had sent outward returned… distorted.

Not echoed.

Interpreted.

A ripple moved through his awareness—alien, immense, and utterly indifferent to scale. Where Pawl perceived himself as a single mind, the presence seemed to perceive him as a pattern—a signal among many, briefly illuminated against a much larger, incomprehensible structure.

And then it responded.

Not directly to his words, but to the act of reaching out.

The pressure surged—
• ENGINEERING ALERT: Shield harmonic drift detected (±2.3%) without external impact
• SENSORS: Localized spacetime curvature fluctuation—bearing coincident with Chernov’s position
• MEDICAL PASSIVE MONITOR: Elevated neural activity—Lt. Batario approaching cognitive overload thresholds

On Pawl’s console, his notes began to desynchronize—text lagging a half-second behind his inputs, as if time itself around his station had slipped slightly out of phase.

The presence did not push further.

It withdrew.

But not completely.

Like something that had noticed… and chosen not to act.

In its wake, the patterns collapsed back into noise—though not entirely. Residual symmetry lingered in the data, faint but undeniable, like the afterimage of something too vast to fully perceive.

And one final impression remained with Pawl—unbidden, untranslatable, but unmistakable:

He had not called out into empty space.

Something had heard him.

And now…

It knew where to listen

Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare
OOC: Apologies for my sudden LOA, I was very ill with a spring chest cold and needed a couple of days. It’s finally broken:)

Occ: No Problems, I can understand and relate to being down sick a lot myself. Suprising I haven’t gotten sick recently with all the weather ups and downs with the temps and one day snowing and cold and other days rain.

Having always been protective of Pawl, Kastarak had had his eyes on the passive medical monitor output through his padd. He had noted that something was going on, perhaps that Pawl was getting some kind of telepathic interaction or empathetic understanding. That is why Kastarak had not disturbed. But now, seeing the warning of cognitive overload, he wanted to stop Pawl, but wasn’t sure how safe it was to stop him. If there was an active telepathic link, severing it without the parties doing it themselves could lead to permanent cognitive damage on both ends.

Kastarak hailed Dr Sovan. He thought a fellow Vulcan physician would be able to help understand the intricacies of telepathy and its medical problems, and tend to Pawl.

=^= Kastarak to Dr Sovan. Lt Batario is in a suspected telepathic link of unknown format. The passive medical monitor shows elevated neural activity, and measurements are approaching cognitive overload thresholds. Please advise. =^=

Kastarak, Cpt
Commanding Officer

Pawl seemed to be getting somewhere with the entity. Even though it was still limited, he did his best with what he had available. He noticed he was really struggling with keeping locked to his mind or body. He felt himself slip from time to time. But he regained his anchor. But he was not sure for how much longer he could do this. Pawl kept trying to communicate. He was starting to show signs of stress on his face. He could vaguely feel Kasarak’s mind showing signs of worry. But he did his best to focus more on the situation at hand than on trying to multitask; he was doing enough with taking notes and mind travel.

[[Lt ]] [[Pawl Batario]]
[[Chief_Engineer]] [[Uss_Chernov]]

=/\=Najjar here, Captain. I’m on my way.=/\= The CMO arrived on the bridge a few moments later and made her way directly to Batario. Pulling out a medical tricorder, she scanned the Betazoid. “He is definitely in contact with something. His levels of neurotransmitters are four times what they should be. The safest thing for me to do would be to give him a neural suppressant, but I can’t guarantee it would work because we don’t know what he is in contact with. Orders, Captain?”

Lieutenant Mykl Najjar
Chief Medical Officer USS Chernov

Forster then conducted a temporal scan of the vessel because it seems to be shifting in and out of our area of space time, and he started to think maybe if we generate a little bit of gravitons directly at the vessels hull we might be able to pull it out of it temporal flux for us to get a decent scan on it. He gave the idea to his captain to see what he says.

Lt. John Forster (CWO)

The bridge did not return to normal. Not fully.

Even as the sensor noise reasserted itself and the sharp edge of that impossible symmetry dissolved back into chaotic readouts, something remained just beneath the surface—like a pattern refusing to be forgotten.

At Engineering and Ops, the numbers continued to drift.

• OPS: EPS flow variance now cycling in repeating intervals—no longer random
• ENGINEERING: Shield harmonics stabilizing… then slipping… then stabilizing again, as if being “tuned” from an external reference
• SCIENCE (passive): Residual psionic resonance persists—now phase-locked to Lt. Batario’s neural patterns

Near Pawl, the air felt… thinner.

Not physically—but perceptually. Sound lagged by fractions. Light seemed to hold just a moment too long before settling.

And then—

It touched him again. Softer this time.

Not the probing pressure from before, but something more precise. Focused. Curious.

The strain on Pawl’s mind spiked sharply—

• MEDICAL: Neural activity exceeding safe threshold limits
• MEDICAL: Cognitive feedback loop forming—risk of cascade failure imminent

On his console, the desynchronized text halted entirely. Then, without input—It corrected itself.

Every note he had taken reordered. Clean. Structured. Refined into a pattern far more complex than he had written… yet unmistakably derived from his own thoughts.

A response. Not in words—but in understanding.

Across the ship, the effect rippled outward:

• SENSORS: Localized spacetime distortion tightening around the Chernov—radius decreasing
• TEMPORAL SCAN (Forster): Target fluctuation narrowing—object beginning to “resolve” within normal spacetime bands
• GRAVIMETRIC READINGS: External field reacting to internal neural activity

The entity was no longer simply observing. It was… aligning.

And for the briefest moment—just before the strain threatened to overwhelm him completely—Pawl felt something new from it.

Recognition. Not of who he was. But of what he was doing. Reaching. Learning. The same as it.

Then the pressure surged once more—sharper, more dangerous than before—

As if the next exchange would not be passive.

As if the line between observer… and participant… was about to disappear.

Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare

“Sir, I can’t let him continue without attempting to help. This thing he’s attached to is going to burn his mind out.” Mykl reached into the medical kit and brought out a neural suppressant. “I have to break contact with it or we might lose Lt Batario!” She reached out to place it on Paul’s head.

Lieutenant Mykl Najjar
Chief Medical Officer USS Chernov

Kastarak, having found himself micro-dissociating with all things going on, tried snapping out of it. He was losing Pawl, his love (albeit repressed love). The pain in the gut was unbearable. If he hadn’t known better, Kastarak would have guessed he suffered from ileus. But he didn’t. He knew. This was heartache, anxiety, panic.

He rose from his seat, purged the emotions as much as he could (though at this time, his emotions were, in his own description, incontinent).

“Doctor, do what needs be. You are the attending physician. Do what you can to save him.”

“Other stations, report! Situation? Hypotheses? Recommendations?”

Kastarak, Cpt
Commanding Officer