Getting some ideas down on paper

Posted on Mon Jun 9th, 2025 @ 8:09am by Consul Andrinn Orin

Mission: Season 6: Echoes of the Zynari
Location: Orin's Personal Quarters
Timeline: MD6, 0300hrs
1035 words - 2.1 OF Standard Post Measure

[ON:]

Andrinn was sitting down in his personal quarters, enjoying a bit of tea. He had ordered the computer to give him sweet tea from Earth, but instead got Earl Grey Tea instead. While it was a little bit sweet and helped Andrinn with his craving for something sweet, it also had a bit of a citrus flavor. It was something that Andrinn found a bit bitter and made him wonder if it was related to the events of the last few days and weeks.

Over the last few days, there had been a variety of issues that occurred throughout the entire ship, causing havoc amongst the crew and civilian population alike. At first, it was minor. A faulty light here, a wrong drink order there. But, it started to move up to stuff like the holodecks reading people's brain waves and causing people to face some of their deepest fears.

Andrinn had been working with Rin, the Intelligence Chief onboard the Elysium. They were thinking that the issues with the holodecks were related to the new and elusive Zynari and they thought it might've been a way for them to communicate. But, something that didn't cross Andrinn's mind until afterwards was how dangerous the holodeck interactions could be for someone like Rin, who was an ex-Borg. It was pointed out to Andrinn after he said something stupid about it and thus, made Andrinn want to do more to help out with the holodeck idea.

The idea of working with the holodeck in order to speak with the Zynari was a solid idea, but he wanted to help figure out a good way for the crew to interact with them without giving up too much. Andrinn was the Chief Diplomat and felt a bit responsible for making a good impression and getting the Zynari to stop what they were doing with the crew.

Andrinn's first thought was to start looking into the recent events with the holodecks themselves. Since there had been more than one incident within the holodecks themselves and they were pulling stuff from people's minds, Andrinn knew that it could possibly show a pattern that the crew could exploit if they wanted to use the holodeck as a form of communication.

Pulling up the most recent holodeck logs, Andrinn delved into what the holodecks projected over the last few days and who was using the holodeck at the time. He wanted to make special notes of whether it was a singular person or multiple people using the holodeck, as well as note what was being projected.

Rin was absolutely right about one thing. What was being projected onto the holodeck was usually something that people feared. Heights, animal attacks. What have you. But, something that Andrinn was looking for was something that might've been out of place when the people were on the holodeck that they might've missed. Different people had different fears and they could hold cultural or historical prospectives.

That was the way that Andrinn could figure out what was Elysium's crew and what might've been Zynari. Rin's example could be Borge related and anything that might not have been related to that might be related to the Zynari.

Andrinn was inputting several weeks worth of information into the second PADD that he had grabbed. What Andrinn was seeing was the typical stuff. Fear of stuff like clowns, fear of the oceans or water, fear of heights. But, as Andrinn was going through some of the simulations and watching what was happening to the crew, there was stuff that didn't look or feel quite right. Minor stuff at first, but it started to become a pattern.

One crew member of the Elysium was using the holodeck when it recreated a skydiving incident. The parachute didn't deploy and when Andrinn played it back to when she jumped, none of the other skydivers had parachutes. But, they were still jumping out of the plane. Another crew member was using the holodeck and it quickly changed over to a farm back on Earth. Andrinn knew that this crew member had a fear of a few farm animals. But, instead of farm animals chasing him around, he was being chased around by animals you'd find in places like Africa. Animals like elephants and zebras.

It just left Andrinn scratching his head and wondering why the Zynari would have summoned stuff that was almost there, but not quite. Maybe they had been reading the minds of the crew, but couldn't clearly see what their fears or thoughts were? Or was it something more cultural? Was it something that the Zynari didn't or couldn't understand.

All that Andrinn knew was that he had to add it to the list and keep going through the logs for the holodeck. He wanted to see what he couldn't figure out for Rin and the rest of the crew. Andrinn worked for what felt like hours on cataloging the information from the crew.

Before too long, Andrinn began to stretch and began yawning. He realized that the tea he had ordered up earlier was starting to go cold and that it had been a few hours since the meeting with the rest of the senior staff. Andrinn looked back down at the couple PADDs that he had and realized that he had so much information already. But, Andrinn didn't want to give up.

At least, not quite yet. Andrinn wanted to see if there was any sort of pattern between the people that had gone into the holodecks and had their experiences. However, Andrinn started to rub the bridge of his nose and was realizing how truly exhausted he was. He wasn't going to get anywhere tonight and finally decided that he would get some sleep.

Saving all of his current information and everything that he found out, Andrinn saved it both to the PADDs themselves, his personal database, and the computer core. Andrinn wanted to make sure that nothing was lost or erased before he could come back to in the morning.

After all of that was done, Andrinn took a shower and hopped into bed to a restless sleep.

[OFF:]

Consul Andrinn Orin
Chief Diplomatic Officer
USS Elysium