Welcome to Star Trek Simulation Forum

Register now to gain access to all of our features. Once registered and logged in, you will be able to contribute to this site by submitting your own content or replying to existing content. You'll be able to customize your profile, receive reputation points as a reward for submitting content, while also communicating with other members via your own private inbox, plus much more! This message will be removed once you have signed in.

Sign In Sign Up

Cptn Moose

STSF GM
 View profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    528

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Cptn Moose

  1. Posted · Report post

    BTW....  election judge...  I'm from Flordia and confused about the ballot....

    Well then I'm ready to move down there.  Moosethusela here clicked on "null vote" to scope out the early polls, and now the thing won't let me change my mind. : )

     

    So, sorry I can't choose sides, er ... lend support.

     

    But to take a page out of Trojan diplomacy, let me just say that I would have cast my vote "for the fairest".

  10. Posted · Report post

    Mission Brief, Stardate 10306.18

     

    Jaruq and Trichon float through empty space, yet cannot be picked up by ship sensors.  They should have been beamed to the USS Revere, an old freighter on a covert reconnaissance mission.  The freighter has disappeared, along with other members of the crew.

     

    In order to rescue them, the Arcadia has left Starbase 36 defenseless against an invisible, put potentially technologically advanced foe.

  11. Posted · Report post

    "Stones on the Pond of TIme"

    Stardate 10306.17

     

    The enlarged pictures of Jaruq and Trichon slowly tumbling through space on the main viewscreen reminded Alces of the anti-gravity ballet on Windsor Prime.   There were differences of course.  The Windsor Ballet was graceful.  But the Windsor dancers were also unrestrained, and so parts of them would travel in completely different directions than their torsos.  The result was choreographed chaos.  Alces would have been amused by the metaphor under other circumstances.

     

    "Alces, can we get a lock on them yet?"

     

    "Not yet, Captain," he said as if he was making a child wait for dessert.  "There is no reason to assume from the visuals that their life support is failing, and I don't think our foes are about to reveal their position simply to vaporize two helpless engineers.  We have time to figure this out."

     

    "That assumes our foes still have an agenda and are hanging around to complete it," said Moose.  "If we have to pursue them, every second spent here makes their trail that much colder."

     

      Alces felt like a jerk.  He had been so focused on the task at hand, he had forgotten that Siebin, Marx, and Lo'Ami were also missing.  There were three parts to this mystery: a mysterious ship that defied sensor readings, the covert freighter Revere which had disappeared, and the engineers of the Arcadia Ballet who were visible only to the naked eye.  There had to be some element linking them all together.  It was time to study the global picture.

     

      "Were there any abnormalities in the particle density analysis?"  There rarely were, but Alces was clutching at straws.

     

      "We haven't analyzed the readings yet," answered Ens. Vortex from the secondary science console.  "We're trying our best, Commander, but we're looking in a lot of directions and you always insisted we do that last.  Too bad the other Garnoopy didn't stick around to lend us a hand."

     

      "The other Garnoopy?" asked Alces, spending an absent-minded glance on their new Operations officer while he tuned out Vortex's excuses.  "You mean there's more than one?"

     

      "There was for a moment," replied Vortex.  "And get this, he was a Lieutenant already.  But then he just faded away.  There were some slight temporal energy readings at the time, but they dissipated too quickly to be real.  No one else really saw him.  I wrote it off as a sensor echo."

     

      "Slight temporal readings, eh..."  Alces drifted away, lost in thought.      This sounded familiar to him, and he was trying to recall why.  "Oh my stars and garters," he muttered as a possibility came to mind.  "It would explain why we can't get sensor readings ... it would explain why we can't get a lock on Jaruq and Trichon ... and it certainly would explain why the Revere disappeared.  Captain!  They're skipping stones."

     

    "What are you talking about?" asked Moose, in one of his 'I don't have patience for this' tones.

     

    "Don't tell me you never skipped stones across a pond as a child," said Alces and he approached the Captain in the center chair.

     

    "Of course I did," replied Moose.  "What does that have to do with anything."

     

    "Everything, Captain.  Everything.  Suppose for a moment you're a salmon ..."

     

    "Zar, I'm not in the mood," Moose warned.

     

    "Oh, grow down and work with me here," said Alces.  "There you are, floating in your pond, when something attracts your attention.  You look up and you see a stone.  But when you look again, the stone has vanished.  Yet you can see the ripples and feel the waves.  Your senses tell you something has happened, you just can't see what."

     

    "Because someone's skipping the stone across the pond, and it has moved on," said Moose.

     

    "Exactly," said Alces.

     

    "But we've seen the ship more than once.  Stones don't change direction and come back."

     

    "That's true," muttered Alces.  "Except on Rageb VI, where the magnetic poles regularly change their polarity causing all sorts of havoc with planetary trajectories ..."

     

    "Zar.  Stay on point."

     

    "If you insist."  Alces sighed heavily.  "You're still a salmon, but now you're swimming upstream.  And you happen to be swimming at exactly the same speed as the stone.  Glance up, there it is.  Blink and it's gone, although the ripples are there.  Blink again, and the stone has reappeared.  Of course, you can't really blink because you're  a salmon.  But just for the sake of the example, pretend you're a salmon on a planet where fish have eyelids ... even though one doesn't immediately come to mind.  Better yet, you've mutated.  Let's suppose you're a mutated salmon with eyelids.  Do you see where I'm going with this?"

     

    "Out the nearest airlock," said Moose dryly.  "Alces, this makes no sense.  We've been at Starbase 36 for the past two days.  We haven't been moving."

     

    "We're always moving, Captain.  Just not through space."

     

    "Through what then?" asked Moose.

     

    "Ask Lt. Garnoopy," answered Alces ominously.

     

    Moose pondered this for a moment.  "Are you saying that our foes are traveling in a different time than we are, and are only skimming the top of our temporal plane occasionally?"

     

    "They're probably a week behind us," said Alces.  "They pop in and out, charting our course and speed, and follow along in their own space in the direction it seemed we were heading.  They're never here long enough for us to get a clear reading on them, so they're virtually impossible to detect.  The Revere went to investigate.  They appeared long enough to tractor them inside, and poof, they were gone.  We beam our away team to the last known location of the ship, which is no longer there to be beamed onto."

     

    "So then, where are Jaruq and Trichon?"

     

    "Caught in a ripple, Captain.  We can see them, but they're not really in our time so we can't lock onto them.  They should ride down the crest eventually, in which case we'll have a small shot at beaming them back before the ripple takes them away again.  Hopefully, time is moving slower for them than for us.  Or at least at the same speed.  If they live for a week inside one of our minutes, their life support will fail before we can do anything for them."

     

    Moose stared at the engineers tumbling aimlessly on the viewscreen.  This was too far-fetched to be believed.  Who had command of this type of technology?  How did they get enough power to control it?  Why were they interested in a handful of refugees from a slave colony?

     

    "This is highly advanced temporal theory, Captain."  It was as if Alces could read Moose's thoughts.  "No one known to the Federation has ever been able to execute it.  Yet this is the only theory I have that fits the fact pattern.  If I'm right, then these people are very clever, and very advanced."

     

    "Yet not so advanced that we're beneath their notice.  How do we prove your theory?"

     

    "We use what we know to rescue Jaruq and Trichon.  If we're right, we'll be able to bring them home."

     

    "And if we're wrong?" Moose asked.

     

    "I'd best get to work," said Alces, leaving the question hanging in the air.

     

    Cptn Moose

    with help from what's-his-name

    USS Arcadia, NCC-1742-E

  13. Posted · Report post

    Ruca,

     

    I had wondered where you had gone.

     

    Although I'm crushed that our time together in the Academy wasn't as much fun for you as it was for me. ;-)

     

    j/k.  I'm glad you found your way back.  You're a good player and you'll be wearing Ensign pips before you know it (or before your boss takes away your free time again).

  15. Posted · Report post

    Welcome to the STSF.  Yours is a very good question and it's one I talk to cadets about after every game.

     

    You're there to help build the story, not to just react to what the GMs say is happening.  Not only is it acceptable, it's desired for you to make up what the scan reveals, providide as Grom Vik said, that's it's consistant with what's happened in the sim up to that point.

     

    In the Starfleet Academy folder, I've posted several "Tips From The Moose".  Tip #2, called "Play With What's In Your Pocket" is all about this point.

     

    Check it out and keep those questions coming. : )  Welcome again.

  18. Posted · Report post

    Microsoft announced today the launch of their newest web operating system, Calvert 22.0.  The system differs from their previous version 21.0 in that the thrill of buying liquor has worn off.  They expect enhancements like 'a scosch more room' and short term memory loss will slowly begin to be released sometime after version 25.0 is on the shelf.

     

    Happy Birthday Randy.

     

    Moosethusela

  19. Posted · Report post

    We were thinking that we'd loosely keep this out here for about two weeks, which ends sometime this weekend.  But we'll keep it out here longer if folks are planning to jump in.

     

    If the folder is suddenly gone, then webby moved it to the Arcadia section where it can still be accessed.

     

    Don't let the arbitraty deadline get in your way.  Feel free to participate.  We'll keep the light on for you. ;-)

  22. Posted · Report post

    Moose appreciated the thoroughness of the buffet table, even if he picked at it absentmindedly.  Under any other circumstances, it would have been magnificent.  Alces had outdone himself, as always.  But right now, he couldn't relax enough to enjoy it.  Besides, it wasn't really for him.  It was for the person he was about to become.  And this was at the center of his anxiety.

     

      For Christopher T. Moose, captain of a Sovereign class starship, defender of galactic injustice, and once even destroyer of a world, was a psicophobe.  It had taken him years to work through the paranoia he developed over telepathic contact; the sole souvenir from a brief, but all-enveloping love affair he once had with an empathic metamorph.  He had struggled to develop amazingly strong psychic defenses and to protect his mind from unwanted intrusions.  And over time he realized that telepaths, like all life forms, were not inherently good or evil.  Some just made bad choices.  And he began to relax.

     

      But he still didn't like people in his head, and he was angry with himself over his anxiety.  He felt he had come so far towards mastering his phobia.  He was fooling himself.  He was still damaged.

     

      "I think they're ready for you, Captain," said Alces.

     

      Moose wanted to run.  The door was right there.  His mind was his own and he didn't have to let anyone else touch it.  No one would dare judge him over this.

     

      Except himself.  Again, this wasn't about him.  It was about Lo'Ami.  Arphazed was in trouble and needed his help.  How many times had the trill risked his life for the ship and the crew?  How many sacrifices had he made simply because Moose had asked him to?  How could Moose live with himself if he couldn't do this one, simple thing?  Yet he faltered.  Why wasn't it simple?

     

      Alces led him into the main room, where Erko was waiting to begin the process.  "Are you sure you want to do this," he asked?

     

      "I'm sure," Moose said, hoping his voice did not betray his fear.  The Vulcan was a slave to protocol.  Moose hoped he asked all of the participants that same question with just that tone.

     

      "Then do your best to relax.  My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts ..."

     

      Moose closed his eyes and waited.  He waited for the familiar sensation of slipping away.  He waited for the tell-tale ping of an alien touch in his head.  He waited ... for nothing.  Nothing happened.  Why had nothing happened?  Even when he wanted to, couldn't he lower his mental defenses?  It was selfish of him.  He had failed.  He failed Lo'Ami and he had failed himself.

     

      He opened his eyes and was struck by how different the room looked.  It seemed crisper, harsher than he remembered it.  Nothing had changed, per se.  It was like seeing it for the first time.  He opened his mouth to apologize and was as surprised as anyone to hear what he actually said.

     

      "Hello, I am Ilsen Lo'Ami," said Moose as he looked around the room.  He passed over Alces and his eyes locked on the other Trill standing quietly off to the side.  "And you are?"

     

      "Arphazed.  The new host."

     

      "Splendid," he said jovially.  "And you made it to space.  Look at you in your fleet blues.  Science division, isn't it?  Or did you become a doctor?"

     

      "No, a scientist."

     

      "I was going to be a scientist.  A mathematician, actually.  It was my skills in warp field dynamics that brought me to the attention of the Symbiosis Commission.  But in the end, that was not the life for me."

     

      "Why not?" asked Arphazed.

     

      "I was too impatient.  I didn't actually work math, I saw answers in my head.  And then I had to slow down and justify my conclusions through traditional means.  It was very frustrating, like constantly trying to explain how you know your shirt is blue.  And then I got a little older and a little more impatient, and I suddenly realized I had a blind spot."

     

      "You couldn't see?"

     

      "No, no.  In my head.  I discovered that I couldn't compute asymmetrical energy flows.  Even when I sat down with a computer to do the calculations, I just couldn't grasp them.  And you certainly can't create a warp field that stays stable without accounting for them.  At best, the field collapses.  At worst, we can only guess what would happen."

     

      "But the computers compensate for those."

     

      "They do?  How extraordinary.  If there's time, you must tell me how you did it.  Scientists were struggling to break Warp 7 back then, but I had my sights on a larger prize."  He paused nostalgically, as if his memories were taking him down an unexpected road.  "They all said it was theoretically impossible to go faster than Warp 10.  But I saw a way ... I could feel the answer my head.  I bullied and pushed to get funding for a prototype, which I built into a remote controlled shuttlecraft.  But I only had one chance, and it failed.  The shuttle disappeared mid-flight, as did my funding.  No debris was ever found, so it must have disintegrated.  But I always knew it was because I had been careless with the asymmetrical energy calculations."

     

      Moose's head turned to study Arphazed.  He was still conscious inside his body, even though he had been the one speaking.  He wondered how the young trill would react to this story.  It sounded very familiar.

     

      "What did you do after that?" asked Arphazed.

     

      "My father became ill shortly thereafter, so I returned to the home world to run the family business.  It was an Inn in the grain belt called 'The Crazy Stallion', but all the locals called it 'Ilsen's Inn-sen'.  They thought it was funny."

     

      "No!" exclaimed Alces, unable to contain his surprise.  "I was there once.  It was a beat-up little shack with dozens of kids running around, screaming.  But it had the best home-brewed ale in a dozen systems."

     

      Moose felt himself grinning uncontrollably, basking in what Ilsen must have taken as praise.  "That was the place," he said.  "I married my grade-school sweetheart and we had 7 kids.  The eldest was a handful, he once took ..."

     

      The rest of the time was spent with stories of kids and animals and a happy time long ago.  Ilsen was a good story teller, and everyone in the room got swept away in his memories, except for Erko.  And all thoughts warp equations were left far, far away to be pondered another time.