Stories from the Journeyman

[Varaven]

OOC Note: I am starting this thread to give a sense of what life is like aboard the Journeyman. I am trying to present the Journeyman as I think an advanced ship could exist within the framework of the Star Trek Universe... basically a natural progression and use of their technology.  Please feel free to write off anything I say here as the fevered dreams of a madman; it designed to be more of a Thought Experiment than a demand for canon.  I hope you find it enjoyable, and I would love your feedback.

If anyone wants this as IC knowledge, I imagine that the vast number of races (and spies) aboard the Journeyman will report similar experiences.

Conn Officer's Log:
A week aboard the Journeyman has taught me one thing: the Bridge is an illusion.  I don't mean that it's a holodeck -- it's certainly that too -- but I'm not even certain the Bridge of the Journeyman is entirely necessary, or that it even exists.

The Photonic nature of the Bridge was never kept from me.  During my orientation, it was made evident that any control panel or console could be altered to be similar to any console that was on file with a voice command.  The Cardassian Officer who relieved me initialized her customization routine, and was suddenly sitting in one of those high-backed, uncomfortable Cardie chairs facing an orange console.  They seem to have a vast number of interfaces on file -- reportedly recreated from holodeck simulations of the various ships.  It's admittedly clever, and it gives one the sense of working in a familiar environment; I'll have to be careful not to let down my guard.  Not only do I not want to get too comfortable, but I've heard enough stories where the safety systems on Holodecks fail to ever be entirely comfortable on them.  Furthermore, I imagine that the power draw to maintain such a simulation is HUGE.  From what I can find, this simulation runs on an independent power source, but if that power source was disabled, wouldn't the Bridge cease to exist?

I'm not entirely sure it would matter.

The other thing I am learning about being a Conn Officer is that the Journeyman doesn't really take commands so much as recommendations.  When the Captain -- err, Chief Operator -- gives a heading, it's already laid in before I turn the chair back around.  When he -- it? -- tells me to lay in a course, he's more informing me where we're headed than telling me to plot a course... the navigational computer does it much faster than I.

In battle simulations, the Journeyman automatically initiates evasive maneuvers.  Sometimes, when I put in a Defense Pattern, it simply ignores my command.  More often, however, what I get is a modified defense pattern... something not quite like what I wanted.  When I voiced my concerns to Nezumi, the Tactical Chief, she just grinned and said, "Yeah... you get used to it," in that smug way.  Then, however, she elaborated.  The ships sensors and computers work much faster than any organic brain, she noted, and the ship can make calculations and adjustments based on probabilities rather than instinct.  She strongly implied that it was "inefficient" (though she made it sound "foolish") to give an organic pilot full control of any system that a computer could manage.  When I demanded to know what the role of the Conn was, she acquiesced that organics sometimes see opportunities that a computer won't.  She also suggested that organic pilots make good "backups".  I'm not sure I've ever been more insulted... or uncertain of my chosen career path.

So, presumably if the Bridge fails, the ship can fly itself.  Presumably.  I'm not sure what, exactly, constitutes the "brain" of the ship.  Maybe it wouldn't matter on a ship that was completely without power anyway.

There's another matter, however... five days into the trip, the C.O. called for a routine "re-initialization" of the bridge.  Unsure of what this meant, I was the only one who didn't immediately stand up, and therefore the only one on the ground when my chair de-materialized.  I was angry at the lack of warning, but apparently it's something of a Rite of Passage.  One of the unusual things I did notice, however, is that some of the Bridge Officers dematerialized as well!  At first, I thought that some of the Bridge Crew were Photonic lifeforms, but I am told that that's wrong... that some of the Bridge Crew use holographic avatars which are projected onto the Bridge from -- get this -- other bridges.  Apparently, there are several bridges on the Journeyman... each with different atmospheric conditions to accommodate different lifeforms.  Furthermore, my image is also being transmitted to these other Bridges.

This has, however, led me to something of a disturbing thought.  Aboard this ship, the term "organic" refers to all biological organisms, and the term "sentient" appears to refer to any self-aware intelligence (the ship itself is considered sentient, which is wholly disconcerting in my mind).  There is, however, a lot of talk of "humanoids" referring to the Alpha Quadrant crew, but not the Gamma Quadrant crew.  Well, all of the Bridge Officers, including the C.O., appear humanoid.   Now, the C.O. appears that way because he's some sort of squishy fungus-man who can do that -- and I know that the C.O. is not a hologram (at least on MY version of the bridge), but I suspect some of the Gamma Quadrant crew are manipulating the appearances of their avatars to only appear humanoid.

I realize that I may have never seen many of my colleagues in a true face to face meeting.  Maybe the Photonic Bridge IS about creating a false sense of comfort.  If so, for what purpose?  Maybe I'm just getting paranoid...

[Varaven]

Engineer's Log:
I don't know what I expected, coming aboard an alien ship, but it certainly wasn't this.

Most starships are fueled by some type of Matter/Antimatter mix, though I have seen fossil and crystalline fuels as well. The Romulans forego fuel, and instead create an artificial singularity which, like a miniature black hole, produces a virtually endless power supply. I don't know how the Romulans sleep at night, knowing they're one computer glitch away from being pressed into nothing: I'd much rather be exploded than imploded. It's still better than the use of Omega Particles, I suppose. Some short-range vessels "beam" power supplies from the surface of worlds or satellites, but that generally requires a line of contact and is considered inefficient.

The Journeyman uses something I've never seen before, and I'm not entirely sure what to compare it to. Suffice to say, Quantum Physics was never my strongest subject, but I'll give describing it a whirl. When two particles undergo Quantum Entanglement, then whatever happens to one particle is mirrored in the other. Even in the early 21st century, this process was used to communicate simple messages; later, it was used to build the first Quantum computers. The fascinating thing about Quantum Entanglement is that the process occurs faster than the speed of light. Much faster, in fact. Since the particles are bound on the Quantum level, changes to one particle effect changes to the other instantly. Regardless of distance. Based on this, Starfleet is reportedly working on a Quantum Entanglement Communicator which would make subspace transmission look like a postman on foot carrying paper messages.

The Bloom, however, seem to have taken that practice to the next step. Instead of merely entangling a few particles, they hew two large crystals (roughly the size of a nacelle) and get the two huge structures to entangle and form what they refer to as a "Quantum Lattice". Their Chief Engineer, Twitch, tried to explain it to me, but he lost me somewhere between "Quantum Resonance" and "Entanglement-Prone Matrix". The upshot, as I've gathered it, is that they have found or synthesized (perhaps grown, knowing these aliens) a crystalline substance that is readily entangled on a very large scale using artificial means.

Once the entanglement is established, one of the halves of the Lattice is placed into a satellite unit and moved into close proximity to a star. The energy from the star causes the molecules of one crystal to become active, activating the molecules of the second crystal (i.e., heat). The second crystal is installed as the primary generator of one of the ships, which harvests the limitless energy from a star that is, potentially, an entire galaxy away. By sending commands along the same quantum "channel" to the satellite, the Lattice can be moved to be in closer or father proximity from the star, thereby increasing or decreasing the energy output.

In essence, then, a Bloom survey vessel runs on solar power, but it does not need to be in proximity to a star, because it carries a perpetual connection to a star in its belly.

I'm not certain how I feel about this process, but I must say that it is more efficient than a fuel-based system and safer than a singularity. That said, it definitely has its weaknesses. For one, if the other half of the Lattice (orbiting the star) could be located and destroyed, the Bloom vessel connected to it would immediately lose power. I am assured that a backup reserve exists, but I can't imagine it would function for very long on a ship this size. It might, therefore, be possible to disable a Bloom vessel without ever actually engaging it.

Alternatively, if a way could be determined to break the Quantum Entanglement, then the Bloom vessel would immediately lose power. In the Delta Quadrant, Voyager used a depolarization pulse to try to reunite two versions of itself separated by a Quantum Event; specifically a Spatial Fluctuation. Presumably, an artificial spatial fluctuation, or a strong enough polarization of the system might be enough to break the connection.

I have actually heard some of the alien engineers speak of a "Quantum Rechannelling Event" regarding a polarization of the system. Apparently there are failsafe to prevent this, but overdraw from the Lattice might still cause a "QRE". In this phenomenon, the entanglement would "reverse direction" and all of the energy of the ship would back-travel to the star it originated from. The exploitable feature here is that, at high-warp, a ship is basically a stone's throw from being energy itself (after all, E=MC^2). A QRE occurring at high-warp, therefore, might cause not just a reversal of the energy in the ship, but of the ship itself. The entire Journeyman might be pulled through the beam and spat out into the very star they were tapping tens of thousands of lightyears away.

No such thing as a perfect system, I suppose.