Touchy Feely

Posted on Fri Jan 6th, 2023 @ 9:50pm by Captain William Maddox & Lieutenant Commander Aarix Teral & Lieutenant Jayla Kij MD

1,231 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: World Wide Web
Location: USS Daedalus, Cargo Bay 4
Timeline: Just following arrival

"Why not send a probe?"

Maddox asked the question as the doors to Cargo Bay 4 opened, revealing racks of equipment pallets and storage bins.

"A robot can't catch a head cold, can't be swayed by ideological doctrine to go against its orders, and it can't contaminate a pre-warp civilisation by providing them with trivia about mid-22nd century Irish comedians. But then again, robot can't think, or feel, or use their instincts to do the right thing at the wrong time to save the day. It can't look at a sunset, and marvel at it, and wonder where to go next," Maddox said, peering at some of the containers before turning back to his chiefs of medical and engineering. "Either one of you know how the early International Space Agency on Earth discovered the first Martian bacterial fossils in the 21st century?"

“I’m afraid my knowledge of Mars is limited to Bowie Base 1,” replied Jayla apologetically. “A Holonovel,” she added as explanation.

History wasn't Aarix's strong field, but he did know about the discovery of the fossils. The colony hosted an annual festival on the discovery, though it often felt more like a science conference. Since the first discovery, people had been collecting fossils and speculating the Martian conditions for harboring such life. The tools used in the discovery, though, Aarix did many a school project on those. "Like most early space missions, the discovery was by accident. They had sent the Delphia rover to scout potential sites for the first colony and the mission lasted an extra five sols just to collect samples. The rover was equipped with multispectrum cameras and a sonic dremel used to etch away the rock with a level of precision that put Renaissance artists to shame. The precision was on the order of a millionth of a centimeter." He then slightly tilted his head, "what about it?"

"Little known fact, the discovery of life on Mars was made the sol before it was offically discovered. Delphia sonic dermal was pretty powerful for the time, had to given it was on Mars before the terraforming effort took off. So much so that it excited the calcium atoms in the fossils to the point they fluoresced under certain UV wavelengths. The rovers on board AI ad logged the low level UV anomaly, but because it never happened again the AI wrote it off as a fluke. It was the unpaid intern at the ISA offices doing the scut data work that saw the first glowing traces of life beyond Earth and alerted the scientists. Of course a month later the joint NASA/JAXA mission to Jupiter discovered the Europan mega lobsters, and suddenly glow-in-the-dark bacteria corpses weren't in the public imagination." Maddox sighed. "Then World War Three happened and we didn't pull our heads out of our asses until some Vulcans noticed the Pheonix."

He gestured to the cargo bay.

"People are the key to exploration out here in the universe. Thinking, observing, and creative people. Robots are cool, but they are tools. To that end, you stand in the remains of a project set up to merge those two things. Actually started out on the USS Enterprise-D back in the late 70's, got shelved due to some teething problems and then the Dominion War. Ah, here it is," Maddox grinned and stepped before a crate, tapped the lock code in, and opened it to reveal carefully wrapped packages in sterile plastic sheets. "The goal of the project was to allow a person to be able to experience with the full range of sensory perceptions they have now the same metadata as a Class 5 probe. Where a probe might overlook some vital innocuous-looking clue, a curious mind might wonder why that bit of rock was glinting way over there."

Aarix listened to the explanation before giving Maddox a little half-smile. "It sounds like we're recreating the 21st century era virtual reality technology, but providing more than sight."

"But how does medical come into this?" asked Jayla, still not quite seeing her part.

"The basis of the technology was an immersion suit, a precursor technology to modern neural interfaces. The problem we've run into testing this technology for the Icarus, and why it wasn't on board when she flew, was the psychosomatic responses," Maddox said. He reached up to his collar, undoing it enough to allow his collar to fold down, revealing the left side of his neck and upper shoulder. The skin there was puckered, warped, flowing in that way wax might under extreme heat. "I was testing the probe when a fuel pod ruptured. It was in zero-gee and in a vacuum, but those class-D metal fires don't care about that. The probe was slagged, but for the five seconds, it took to disengage the neural link to it the top half of my torse began to blister. For those five seconds, I was experience the full sensorium downlink from the probe. Burning but not burning."

He pulled his collar back up.

"I don't recommend it. Your job Doctor is to find a way to safely make the link tenable. If its not possible, then we'll drop it. But a probe like this, with a human intellect guiding it, could go places and see things no living soul has ever witnessed. The original probe chassis is rated for skimming the liquid metal core of a gas giant. That would be one hell of a holopic on the mantle piece," he joked.

"I suppose the first step would be to figure out why it happens," replied Jayla, brow wrinkling. "Because it really shouldn't. But, yes, I see your point."

Aarix couldn't help the slight grimace at the Captain's injury. It reminded him of his own mishaps and the handful of scars he had to show for it. He was also a little squeamish, but would never openly admit that. "Knowing this project will surely require trial and error testing, we'd have to come up with a way to safely test it."

"That's why I stole the best engineers and doctors in Starfleet and hid them away in the Reef Stars. The project notes are available, and unlike the OSI file on the Proetus Drive, you don't have to take a hypospray to read them," Maddox said with a chuckle.

Aarix gave the man a slight smile. "Good. That made me motion sick for a few hours." He remembered how the walls looked like they were constantly falling toward him, and he ended up letting someone else take over engineering for a few hours so he could focus on not hurling. "So, what's our timeline?"

"Faster would be better, but safer is best. Take your time, get it right. This technology will augment our exploration, but its not a game changer," Maddox said.

"Sure, makes sense," the engineer nodded. To Jayla, Aarix added, "I suggest that we take some time to read the project notes. We can follow up later on an R&D plan."

"Absolutely," agreed Jayla. "Progress is made on the shoulders of those who came before. Or something like that."

"Teamwork makes the dream work," Maddox said with a chuckle. "But no, in all seriousness, more engineering work than medical, please. Like I said this is a tool, let's not break people making it."

 

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