| Author | Message | ||
     Brigadier General Jeremy Ironside - Supreme Commander, Defender Ground Forces |
The Great Library was an impressive facility, with a unique architectural style hinting at ancient Earth cathedrals, churches, and museums. High, vaulted ceilings with arching columns ran alongside the wall and under the ceiling ending in sharp points, the resulting ‘edge’ of the roof running parallel to Xanadu’s axis of rotation. Large paned false matter ‘windows’ lined the high walls, somehow tinted like stained glass to depict various scenes – some recognizable from Federation History, some not. The large main chamber of the Library was littered with computer access terminals and accompanying desks for study. Engineers and Archaeologists bustled about the chamber quietly, moving from terminal to terminal to conference on with their peers on the data they were accessing within the Library’s database. Off in a corner, away from the bustle of the work crews, General Ironside sat at a terminal situated beneath a false matter window mural depicting what had been unanimously agreed upon to be the Khitomer Accords. For a while after he had sat down, Ironside merely peered at the initial query screen in front of him. His mind was still trying to recover from the past few forays into the Fourth Chamber. Like many other members of the crew, he had elected to spend a few nights within the chamber – progressively moving closer to the mathematical abstraction barrier beyond which the Euclidian universe ended and the singularities appeared to diverge. Each night, his dreams were the same. On a featureless plane, he found himself staring at what appeared to be his twin. There were subtle differences – markings or scars that had been acquired in the past few years – almost as if he were looking at himself from several years prior. Without words or thought, his doppelganger clothed him in armour, and provided him weaponry, with which he then used to battle blurry and indeterminate forms – his copy always at his side, guiding his movements and indicating how to properly respond to the forms movements and counter-attacks. Each dream was almost identical, save for slight variations in the attack and defense movements used by both him and the forms, though it was apparent that each night the movements increased in difficulty and speed. The dream always ended with his doppelganger giving him a simple nod, and the plane dissolving around him as he awoke. Following his return to the second chamber, he had found his thoughts repeatedly returning to those dreams, which was why he was blankly staring at the terminal in front of him. Shaking his head to clear it, he quickly punched in a search key: “The Way”, a response from Alicia regarding that term had not been forthcoming. A “Classified” warning popped up onto the terminal, and the terminal reset to the query screen. Ironside frowned and rubbed his eyes, his mind racing over the discoveries of the past week, trying to decide how to proceed. His somewhat chaotic thought processes bounced him from topic to topic as he punched queries into the terminal. First, records regarding species with skeletal structures similar to those found by Coronado’s chief helmsperson, Maiko D’rall. Several similar species popped up, but none identical. Most records detailed various walking nightmares of one type or another, many with dangerous venoms and pincers. One entry in particular was interesting, however, in that it bore a strong resemblance to a Reorsan cord. He flagged that one and forwarded it to the biology department, and checked the astrometic database to see what planet the Cord-like species resided on, but the records were so old that it was near impossible to pinpoint the planets current location due to iffy stellar drift and an unknown time frame. He moved on, calling up any and all information on the Borg related to Xanadu and the spatial breakthroughs in Xanadu – other records had indicated that Xanadu and its special breakthroughs had caused the Borg to press so hard so fast. Unusually, the information that popped up was surprisingly abstract – the records spoke as if the Borg were legend and not real – as if the historical records available at Xanadu’s construction had no information regarding all previous Borg encounters such as Wolf359 or the Battle of Sector 001. Coronado’s own information database on the Borg was infinitely more complete than Xanadu’s. He flagged the Borg entry regardless and moved on. Punching in a query concerning the Nexus and its administration, the terminal quickly crashed and the screen went blank. Ironside frowned and punched the control buttons for a moment before moving to a separate terminal. Deciding not to press his luck, the General pulled up information in the databanks concerning the singularities and their function in Beckmann Translations. No summary appeared, but his screen began to fill in with a great deal of mathematical equations and translations. To make matters worse, the notations were in the pseudo-English that was apparently the Jjarrish language that was difficult to translate. He pulled together all the mathematical data and forwarded it on to Savant and the Engineering departments, assuming they likely be able to make more sense of it. Punching in queries regarding the special phenomenon Xanadu was programmed to respond to bring up a flurry of entries. Going through it was again hindered by the Jjarrish, but it Ironside was able to pick out that just under 100 such distortions like the one Xanadu had responded to weeks ago were on record, stretching back over thousands of years. They were, however, becoming more and more frequent, with the last one the 2nd in the current year. The largest two on record approached 70AU in diameter, both of which were relatively recent. Ironside proceed to wade into the information regarding the Alexandria City Memory. The records were an unusual mix of classified and unclassified, almost as if someone had attempted to classify everything regarding the memory, but did so in quite a hurry, and as a result didn’t do a very good job. The records that were unclassified gave the impression of a massive sentient computer network – composed of thousands of previously individuals whom had died while in Xanadu. He frowned and summoned Alicia, asking her whether it was possible to summon one of the individuals within the memory for questioning. She dodged his questions, but the General got the impression that one would have to enter the City Memory in order to talk to anyone inside. Snorting, Ironside suggested that one would probably have to get killed within the asteroid to get at the City Memory residents, which drew a laugh from the AI, though she paused and frowned briefly, unsure why she found that amusing. The General thanked Alicia before proceeding with more research, jumping from looking for theories on Probability Clusters (nothing) to non-corporeal life forms (of which there were plenty, but none referenced as ‘Jarts’ which was unusual, as Alicia had referred to the creatures as ‘without form’). He eventually narrowed down his search to any “non-standard” life form types. Though there was some difficulty in explaining this to the computer, it eventually spit out six species that couldn’t really be classified into any one group. One caught his attention: the Traxati. He drilled down to the Traxati entries – the Jjaro had been in contact with the Traxati while they were here. Most of the information was familiar – nothing they didn’t already know, but it opened up an avenue for exploration of the Jjaro that hadn’t yet been considered - speaking to the Traxati about them. He quickly jotted down some notes on the subject and forwarded them to Admiral LoraKor, querying him that based upon his previous dealings with the species when he went to them for help against the Pfhor, if such questioning would be possible. A specialist walking past the General stirred him from his research long enough to note that it was late. Closing down his terminal, Ironside gathered his PADD and notes, exiting the library and heading back for his small camp in the fourth chamber, wondering if tonight’s dream would be any different… |