[snip]

“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.

Kord thought he might have heard the Orb’s original language before, but he couldn’t be sure as he didn’t understand the language. It had just sounded familiar.

Glen thought that Kord seemed to recognise the Orb’s native tongue. “Have you heard that before?” he asked.

When the CO spoke to Kord, Tia turned to look. She kept forgetting how old her lover was and it never failed to amaze her when he said something that reminded her that his and her chronological age difference was measured in centuries and not decades. She hadn’t been able to shed any light on the colored objects and was actually surprised she had lost track of things around her to the point she hadn’t realized progress, though minimal, was being made behind her.

Glen gave the Avenger an update =/\= Captain Rogers. I’m afraid that we aren’t making much progress on the coloured rods. It is similar to something we’ve encountered before but not the same at all. I’m sending what our database shows was the previous meanings of the different colour code combinations, but there is no guarantee yours will be the same. Sorry, I can’t give you better news. I have had my best people working on this. =/\=

-Glen, CO