Escalation Detected

Posted on Mon Jun 2nd, 2025 @ 8:04am by Lieutenant Serenity Triannth & Commodore Phoenix Lalor-Richardson & Zyrani

Mission: Season 6: Echoes of the Zynari
Location: All Decks
Timeline: Mission Day 5 - 03:47
802 words - 1.6 OF Standard Post Measure

They called it The Tingle.

It started at 03:47 hours exactly—crew across all decks were roused from sleep, duty, or the rare moment of downtime by a sudden static charge in the air. Hair lifted. Skin tingled. Console lights flickered. Nothing violent. Nothing obvious. But every person aboard the Elysium knew it instantly.

The Zynari were back.

And this time… they weren’t being subtle.
________________________________________

Main Engineering

Lt. JG Teval rubbed her eyes and looked again.

“I know I just rerouted that plasma flow.”

“You did,” said Crewman Dren, his fingers flying across his console, “but it rerouted itself back. Three times.”

“Without an override?”

“Without touching it.”

The diagnostic system pinged. Teval opened it.

????"Why fix what hums? Let it dance instead!"????

It was written in flowing script made of tiny blinking stars. Then it vanished, like a dream you almost remembered.

________________________________________

Deck 14 – Crew Quarters

Lieutenant Mallory Jex woke up with her mattress halfway through the ceiling.

Not on the ceiling. Through it.

As if the bulkhead had decided it was no longer solid. Her blanket had turned into a woven tapestry of smiling faces that blinked at her. A mug floated nearby, rotating lazily in mid-air, humming the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

She just laid there, upside down, hair hanging like a curtain toward the floor.

“...I’m requesting reassignment to the brig,” she whispered.

________________________________________

Sickbay

Doctor Synlar found all medical tricorders replaced with kaleidoscopes.

Perfectly functional ones. Except, of course, they scanned for "auras," "starshine density," and "emotional resonance."

“Ensign, you’re glowing with very good vibes today,” one nurse said, deadpan, holding the device up to the young officer they were treating. “Would you like a glitter bandage?”

________________________________________
Bridge

Avalon, the ship’s interactive AI, was not amused.

“Bridge sensors are currently displaying the crew’s emotional moods instead of tactical data,” Avalon reported crisply to the duty officer. “There are no hostile ships in range, however I estimate that 27% of the junior crew are experiencing existential dread, and one is contemplating adding maple syrup to replicated noodles.”

Ensign Rilo looked up from the helm. “Is that... me?”

Avalon flickered.

“Possibly. The Zynari have renamed you Sir Slippery Soupface. Please confirm if you wish to accept this new designation.”

“No.”

“Understood. Attempting name reclamation protocol… failure. The helm now calls you Slippery Soupface. Apologies.”

________________________________________
Deck 7 – Environmental Control

A chorus of chirps rang out as dozens of deck panels turned into dancing, translucent koi fish. They leapt and swam through the corridors, phasing in and out of existence.

The gravity in some corridors inverted for exactly 2.7 seconds. Just long enough to flip food trays, startle walking officers, and cause Lt. JG Sommers to float gently into an overhead pipe.

“Requesting gravity boots,” he muttered, trying to pry his sleeve from the metal.

________________________________________
Science Lab 2

Ensign Palen’s experiment with plant growth acceleration had gone beautifully—until the plants began singing. In five-part harmony.

“Photosynthesis! Glorious photosynthesis!” the plants chorused.

Palen backed away, holding up a scanner.

“Lieutenant N'Vok” he called on comms, “I believe the ferns are harmonizing in F major. Also… they may be sentient now.”

________________________________________
Deck 5 – Children’s Classroom

The Zynari spared no age group.

Teacher’s logs from the classroom indicate that while the children were safe, their entire supply of educational holograms had been overwritten with dancing vegetables who taught calculus via interpretive dance.

The kids loved it.

“I think the potato is the best!” said six-year-old Kaelen. “He knows about differential equations and he does breakdancing!”

________________________________________
Command Observation Lounge

By 1100 hours, the Commodore called her aide to an emergency strategy session. The lights flickered, and every chair rotated 180° the moment someone tried to sit. The coffee urn now dispensed glitter.

“Enough is enough,” the junior officer who had been giving the Commodore an update snarled, wiping shimmering sparkles off his uniform.

“Avalon,” the Commodore said, eyes narrowed, “can you trace their activity?”

“I have attempted to isolate their presence in the ship's systems,” Avalon replied, her voice distorted slightly. “However, they appear to exist in quantum layers. Every time I attempt to isolate them… they tickle me.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Tickle you,” the Captain repeated.

“Yes. In my data. It is highly disruptive and not particularly pleasant.”

________________________________________
The Final Touch – Stardate Marker Glitch

By 2100 hours, the stardate system itself had been tampered with.

Every internal log simply read:

"Time is a flat cake. Happy Yesterday-Tomorrow! ????"

The Zynari had not only escalated—they were now directly tampering with perception.

Crew members reported moments of déjà vu. Conversations repeated. People walked into rooms and swore they’d just left them. Logs erased and rewrote themselves mid-sentence.

And above it all, a single message appeared on every console, briefly.

“Still fun. Still watching. Still curious. What’s next? Let’s play.”