Engineering a Miracle

Posted on Fri Feb 3rd, 2023 @ 12:47am by Lieutenant Iblis Ilkun & Kiala & Commander Ash Randall & Lieutenant Ramat'iklan

2,799 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Short Treks
Location: Sickbay, USS Enterprise
Timeline: 3189-03-16, 10:45

Doctor Kiala stood at the entry to the Sickbay staring at the closed doorway. It had been several months since they had been thrown forward in time and the Enterprise was still barely operational even after all this time. More than half of the crew had disappeared or were dead and those left behind were scraping by. The Primary Sickbay in the Stardrive was still offline which had meant that the Secondary option in the Saucer was all that they had left as an option for the time being. While it was still more advanced than most ships, it was a far cry from the capabilities of its counterpart.

Ever since they arrived in this time everyone aboard had been coopted into some role or another. Most of the time she had been responsible for taking care of her grandchildren so that her son could command the ship and her daughter in law could heal. Kiala still couldn't believe what all had happened when they arrived here and how close Luzol had come to death. If she hadn't completed the surgery - brain surgery no less - her whole world would have been upside down. Even though she didn't really get along with Luzol, her son did love his wife. She had to respect that.

The damage was still done though. When they arrived here she knew that they were facing an upward battle, she knew she had to give her son the space he needed to command, but it had been difficult with the hours he was putting in and the strain it was causing for his family. The kids barely saw him, he'd shut his wife out of command decisions on a vessel she was - technically - in command of, and she'd been left to try to pick up the slack. When her son had come to her with the truth about everything going on she was reserved and polished - it wasn't every day you found out that you were a duplicate of someone who died centuries ago - but she really wanted to just scream. At least she was trusted again.

Shortly before the Enterprise returned to Svaian II she had gotten a call from Commander Ash regarding their situation and being trapped in the future. Ash had had a bit of a rough go of everything since they arrived and, more to the point, she had genuinely wondered if the Commander was on the verge of a breakdown. Now she was more worried that may have happened. As she entered the Sickbay, she looked around to see who was on duty.

Ramat'iklan had, admittedly, begun to grow just a bit tired of working on the Captain's personally assigned project - watching sickbay's one 'special patient', noting and logging her behavior, talking to her when need be and medicating for her temporal illness as and when needed, all in the hopes of one day being able to devise a treatment from the data he collected. Part of him felt quite silly doing so, frankly; he was a general practitioner and combat medic, not a counsellor who was trained in the myriad of intricacies of the mind - which so far seemed to be the only thing wrong with the Commander. Mental and behavioral abnormality and that was all.

When the doors to sickbay hissed open and Kiala entered seeming worried Ramat'iklan glanced up from his PADD and put it away. She probably wanted to know how the Commander was doing; she'd been one of the project's most staunchly involved members since it started. "Admiral. How may we assist you?" He asked. Admiral she no longer was, but he felt it was only right to address her as such. Besides, it wasn't like she'd ever tried to tell him to stop calling her that...

Nearby, Ash lay on a bio-bed and was, very, still while Ramat'iklan greeted Dr. Kiala. It was, difficult, not to fidget and laying, perfectly, still was an enormous challenge. The drugs didn't help, though, Ash had not let on as much. The engineer pretended the drugs were helping and Ramat'iklan pretended he believed her and that was how things had been going since being confined to sick bay.

The El-Aurian doctor had noticed that Commander Ash was nearby and laying on the biobed, her mind quickly starting to analyze what she knew of the existing condition and what could potentially be going on in addition. Not that many would realize she was doing it. She walked, laser focused, toward the central workstation where Ramat'iklan was working. Having realized she had addressed him.

"Ramat'iklan, my old friend, nice to see you again," she answered politely. "I was just coming down to check on your patient."

Ramat'iklan glanced between her and the straitjacket-wrapped officer on the biobed a couple of feet away. "Commander Randall is... as you last saw her. I continue to treat her temporal illness and analyze her behavior but I am afraid that none of the medications I administer seem to rectify, or help rectify her mental state." As much as he could pretend that he believed the words that came out of the Commander's mouth, Ramat'iklan could not lie - especially not to one so experienced as Kiala. Lying was a coward's tactic, especially in the medical field which required full and frank disclosure, regardless of the nature of your intended message. "I believe her issues are psychological, not biological. If I were to postulate, perhaps having realized that we will likely never return to our own time and what we used to know, and are now trapped in this splintered, crueler universe has... affected her." This he said in a much lower voice. You know, the whole thing about not speaking about someone else when they were present. That thing some people were very, very touchy about.

Commander Randall turned her head the direction of Ramat'ilan and Kiala and regarded the pair for a few seconds. "Doctor Kiala. It is good to see you." She said, quietly, and looked directly at Ramat'iklan. "It's important that there be hope." Ash said, cryptically, and chuckled a little at some, private joke, that only she knew and either wouldn't or couldn't tell them. "That's funny. I don't care who you are...that, there, is funny." She added and turned her head to look straight up. "A good joke." She muttered and went back to silent and still.

When they reached Cold Station 12, and later the Stargazer, they'd been introduced to many of the new technologies of the day. One of them was the Federation's Tricom Badge, a multi-function device that incorporated the functions of communicator, datapad, tricorder, and even transporter into one unit. The problem was it was all controlled by hand motions that were fairly similar to one another. The Doctor made a fist then an upward open palm as she watched Ash in the distance, somewhat irritated to have opened the holoPADD instead of the tricorder.

"I meant to do that," Kiala said sarcastically, soon after tapping the badge to deactivate the datapad. She sighed as she squeezed her hand over the Tricom to activate the Tricorder functions of the device, beginning scans of Ash in the process. The doctor typed on the holographic interface, "Ash, I'm going to run some scans. It should only take a moment," she had the privacy filters on so that the results were opaqued to the Commander.

The engineer looked to Dr. Kiala. "Okay...scan away." She replied, in a chipper tone.

"With all that has been going on how have you been feeling Ramat'iklan?" Kiala asked as she adjusted the scanning field.

Ramat'iklan had long learned not to underplay his own feelings. "My feelings are irrelevant" and all that usually tended to yield something about 'you are not a robot, you are a person with emotions and opinions and feelings' and all that fluff that he hated hearing. Hence he'd learned to simply give an answer that was an acceptable middle ground between that and a full account of his actual feelings: "I feel normal. As I usually do." Ah, perfect. "My duties continue on regardless. That is what matters." He glanced back at the Commander, twisting his lips slightly at her bleak choice of words. "I believe I have had my point on the nature of her symptoms proven. I believe she requires a counsellor, Admiral, who is willing to work with her to resolve the great sense of hopelessness that seems to dominate her thoughts. Or, if she will not see one, a friend at least, someone she will open up to of her own volition."

"Duty is important, Lieutenant," the word choice was purposeful, "but there is more to life than duty from time to time. When we confine ourselves to the stations of life we can miss out on the reality of what is out there. Even as little as a joke can change the future. One an engineering friend of mine used to share was "'What's the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons; Civil Engineers build targets.'" It was an intentional joke.

"That is a gem." Ash commented, quietly, but with a little bit of mirth in her tone. "I can't tell you my joke. Only the punch line." She stated, with a little nod.

Kiala smirked, "Well you are a bit of a mechanical engineer, Ash, I'd be happy to hear your joke."

Ash shook her head. "I can't tell you my joke. It's...classified. Besides, I told it to the Captain and he didn't think it was funny at all." Ash responded and shrugged. "Probably my delivery." She mused.

"I know my son ordered that Ash's condition be handled as classified," Kiala continued, "but did he authorize a referral for the Counselor? Or to Jardok?" It was strange to be suggesting the Chief Science Officer, but Jardok had been a member of the Department of Temporal Investigations before he signed aboard to use the Enterprise to travel to Vulcan.

Ramat'iklan's expression barely changed as he swiped through his new holo-PADD, noting the Commander's rambling down in the already annoyingly extensive list he'd been keeping so far. It was like he'd done it way too much by now and had become desensitized to it. Thus far, every single rambling, uttering, quip and joke had a common theme: a great sadness, or hopelessness, or melancholy, or... well, you get the idea. Why hadn't they already assigned a counselor to the case? Speaking of counselors...

"If the highest ranking officer on the project deems so." He replied. "Which, technically, is you, Admiral. I defer to your far more extensive opinion."

Kiala nodded, "Too bad the Counselor's off the ship at the moment. The Captain sent her on the mission to Risa's surface to help restore order with their weather system's malfunctions." The older El-Aurian crossed her arms as she looked at the Chief Engineer. She paraphrased what her counterpart had said, "Ash keeps jumping from sadness, to hopelessness, to melancholy and then back again. Almost sounds like the predicament that we're in." She grinned as she said it. "A future full of darkness, much different than the one we came from, I'm surprised all of us aren't in here wrapped in a straitjacket."

"That may be as is. Therefore we are fortunate that the vast majority of us have our sanity intact to help those who do not." Ramat'iklan stated flatly. "And to ensure that this ship remains operational. Without them we would be far worse off and we ought to be thankful for it." A very Jem'hadar answer. Push forward no matter the circumstances, till the battle is won. Obstacles were all but secondary and even tertiary concerns. Swiping his hand through his holo-PADD Ramat'iklan closed the interface and glanced at the replicator. "May I get you anything, Admiral? Commander?"

"I'm fine, Doctor, thank you," Kiala said as she deactivated her TriCom. "Ash, what do you think?"

Ash looked to Dr. Ramat'iklan, turning her head to a degree that would be painful to most. "The usual...water." She replied to his offer and then looked to Dr. Kiala, her expression, very, serious. "I think my current condition is due to several factors. One of them is fatigue. I'm, permanently, plugged in to the temporal fabric and experiencing the now, and 3 seconds from now, at the same time. It's been a bit...wearing." She explained, quietly. "But, that's only in my waking moments. When I'm asleep, I'm not keeping things in focus and experience temporal drift and it doesn't really make for restful slumber, if you know what I mean?" She added, and then shrugged, as best she could in the straight jacket. "Another factor is I know things that I can't tell anyone else. Sworn to secrecy, unto death. Pretty important stuff too and I can't say a word." She continued, with a little look to Ramat'iklan. "And, of course, there that, almost, overpowering and oppressive presence of evil and darkness everywhere that, thankfully, almost no one else has any inkling of, so, I'm having some difficulties wrapping my head around it all and more." She summed up.

Kiala smiled warmly, "Is that all, Commander? What do you think, Ramat'iklan?"

Ramat'iklan had paused to diligently note the Commander's utterance on his PADD verbatim - words that, like everything else she'd said so far, said- no, screamed that what she needed was a counsellor, not any kind of expertise he or the Admiral or anyone else on this project (who were, notably, not counsellors or even psychology trained) could offer. "I think she needs to have a conversation with counsellor R'elle. I will notify the captain of this and, if necessary, provide him with the logs of what she has said and done so far." He stated as he walked across sickbay to fetch the requested glass of water. "And perhaps the expertise of lieutenant Jardok. It might just be possible that he might know a way to counteract the temporal drift she is experiencing, which would hopefully alleviate some of the symptoms we cannot treat." Ramat'iklan began to type a message to the chief science officer on his holo-PADD. Anything to get the ship's chief engineer back.

Ash chuckled. "What's really funny is I worked very, very hard to overcome the degradation of this ship caused by its transit to this time without revealing why we were having all the problems we were." She said, and then giggled. "Along with everything else...Shhhh, it's a secret." She added.

"Well now we know why my son made this whole endeavor classified," the El-Aurian woman answered with a sigh. It was enough to know that they were all, potentially, quantum duplicates. Now they found out that the ship may be too. She tapped her TriCom, "Lieutenant Jardok."

"Hello Kiala," the Vulcan answered.

She looked at Ash then the Jem'Hadar, "Lieutenant, there is an issue in sickbay that requires your immediate intervention."

"I understand, Doctor, but I'm tied up on the Bridge. We are in the process of assisting Risa with their weather issues. I am actively scanning several dozen satellites."

"Sounds boring, Lieutenant. I'm sure that the Captain will approve you to join me here," the Admiral answered. "Tell him I asked for you and that I'm in Sickbay."

The Vulcan sighed, "Standby."

"I wonder what Willian will say?" Kiala said annoyed.

Ash shrugged. "I have no idea." The engineer replied, quietly, and looked to Dr. Kiala. "How desperate is the situation?" She asked. "Seriously...my sense of impending doom has been overwhelmed for months so I have no feel for what's happened or what's going to happen." She added.

"I'm on my way, Doctor," Jardok reported from the Bridge.

"Looks like I still have some pull," Kiala joked. "Jardok used to be a Counselor before he returned to Science. I think he'll be a good person to help."

Finally someone who was more qualified than he to look at the Commander properly - and possibly tend to both aspects of her condition. Ramat'iklan grunted his acknowledgement and sat down next to her biobed. Weeks after weeks of research and chasing leads and only now did anyone bother to invite someone more qualified, or in this case several times more qualified, to look at her? Odd.

"I hope he likes surprises." Ash mused, with a chuckle, not explaining what the surprises might be but, clearly, amused by the prospect of discovery by the science officer, Jardok. The engineer was carrying a, gigantic, load of chroniton particles and all her attempts to shed that load of particles, by various means, had failed.

 

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