[snip]

Glen contacted Tinga to update her. =/\= Tinga! Captain Rogers has informed us to tell you not to fire your phasers inside. That black rock simply reflects the phaser beam back at you. If you discover a control tube room for some kind of computer network, let us know. There will be circular holes in a binary coding system, with metal rods of various colours to configure and change. We are working on a solution for the code now. =/\=

=^=Acknowledged. I’d like to take a crack at that code myself if we run across it.=^=

Tia sat at her station and began the algorithms to try and figure out the coding. The information opened to her to access was added to the data already running and she started playing with the various combinations of sequences trying to see something, herself.

Glen found it peculiar that William and Tia would each work alone on solving the code puzzle. He thought it said much about the personalities of his two officers. He wasn’t going to make them collaborate; working independently might actually be the quickest way to solve this code if they weren’t just repeating the same methodology. Which officer would find the solution first? Now that was a question, thought Glen.

Meanwhile, Glen watched the split-screen views of the two “away teams” at work. That’s what the Merrimack had decided to call ‘landing parties’ now, and it seemed to be quickly spreading from Starfleet Academy to all Starfleet ships.

Until Tiastri or William came up with, at the very least, some partial solution to the code, then there was little more to be said. Glen watched the split viewscreen as Captain Rogers team fiddled with the control rods and Tinga’s team made further inroads into their own pyramid. He wished he was down there too. Sitting in the Captain’s chair while the landing party went without him was rather unusual.

“Helm and navigation,” Glen instructed, “don’t lower our state of alertness. Just because I turned off the noise and flashing lights, I want you to continue to monitor our long range scans. I have a bad feeling about this!”

”..Aye Sir..” The Helm and Navigators said.

Tia glanced at the others who were also working on decoding the markings. A thought hit her and she tapped into the older archives to see if it matched anything from old earth. If she could make just one connection… even if it was from some obscure alien reference from before light speed travel…

Checking things over by Tinga, no matches came up for her in the language databases. Their were partial matches like those of the Mayans on Earth or Aztecs but nothing definite. For Tia there was one finding of an old news article from Earth about a ‘crazy theory’ of a hidden planetary defense cannon somewhere in Syberia of old Russia but no one had ever found such things. Yet the ‘crazy’ article did go on to mention strange designs ‘hidden’ from the public at the time that did somewhat match many of the designs that Rogers had provided them about the Finite Stone, unfortunately ancient historical records of the time being what they were from World War 3 on Earth not much more was there to go on.

William growled quietly at his screen for not giving out any useful information yet. He cross-referenced any information in the old Ancients files he’d just been cleared for with any and all of the related information. He disliked not being useful immediately although in the back of his mind another him reminded himself that he was just being impatient and unreasonable.

Checking through the information he had found with that of the Ancients didn’t find any matches, but just checking things on the Ancients found similar though not an exact match on their operations of color tube computer processing. Colors seemed to be the key for making the system least among the Ancients and their cousins the Elders in turn work. So perhaps for the Finite Stone’s creators it was a similar thing.

From what the database records had the color schemes for the Ancients were as follows:

Red - Seemed related to external tactical offense/defense matters
Gold - Seemed related to internal security offense/defense matters
Blue - Seemed related to power generation
Silver - Seemed related to repair drones
Black - Seemed related to navigational affairs
Purple - Seemed related to more general purpose computer matters and tying in with the other above systems

Now this was of course in relation to the Ancients and Elders, there could be differences of varying degrees when applied to the Finite Stone’s computer system Rogers found, care would have to be taken when implementing the ‘programming colors’

Watching his officers working away, upon seeing the colours displayed with their meanings, Glen had a sudden flashback, “Ah! Yes, I do remember those colour-coded tubes that the Ancients and Elders had now! I think Doctor Cross worked the cipher out, but more by a blundering process of trial and error and extreme good luck, rather than any determined cryptography. Are we making any progress?”

Then Glen wondered, Had they also had help on cracking the colour codes from ENTITY, the AI that had occupied the NX-Memorial starship, or from those other ships that had come from their future, the USS Europa and the USS Dresden, or from that alien who had called himself Q? The fact was that his memory of those events wasn’t that clear any longer, and that Ancient “worm” that had crawled into his brain and had controlled Glen from within his mind, was probably to blame for that.

Glen tried to dismiss those painful memories. Reliving them wasn’t healthy and this rumination upon them was harmful. Just telling himself not do it wasn’t enough either. This brooding over and dwelling on his experience, magnifying his misfortune, and hosting his own pity party would only serve increase the problem. He would really need to stop this negative thinking otherwise it would become so ingrained that he’d have difficulty changing the way he thought at all. Glen’s thoughts returned back to the here and now where he was still needed. This was just a code that required a solution. No more, no less. The similarity to the Ancient and Elder technology had no bearing upon finding an answer, and neither did rehashing negative events. Why were the memories invading his mind now whenever he had a few minutes of silence?

So caught up in his own thoughts was John Glen, that he didn’t even know whether William or Tiastri had answered his inquiry. So, he asked again, hoping that it didn’t sound like he was pressing them, “Have we made any progress?”

William spun around in his chair “Well our files mention a color-coded system as you apparently recall, with the similarities between what we have here and what we had there. Although from what I understand we can’t assume that these color codes will translate over, at least the team should be informed of these color codes but they’d need to take care when identifying which correlated with what.” He explained.

“So, we can’t really help them more than that?” replied Glen. It had been a long shot, but he had hoped for something a little more. “Tinga hasn’t come across these codes yet, but Captain Rogers asked me if we could help him. I guess he can make random combinations and see what happens. That’s exactly what was tried by us before, last time, but back then circumstances were dire and the need was more critical! If they aren’t in any danger, I don’t really want them putting themselves into new danger by tripping off some kind of alarm.”

At that point, Glen noticed Tinga had begum speaking into an orb. It appear to be replying. This was a positive development, so he stopped talking to William to watch the viewscreen.

-Glen, CO