Samantha_Kent

Unite, Simmers Seeking Revenge!

"And first, with relation to the mind or understanding, 'tis manifest what mighty advantages fiction has over truth; and the reason is just at our elbow, because imagination can build nobler scenes, and produce more wonderful revolutions, than fortune or nature will be at expense to furnish." ~ Jonathan Swift, A Digression on Madness from A Tale of the Tub

Welcome to STSF, M. Gomez -- it's good to have you! Hope you have as much fun here as I have! Feel free to ask around if you have any questions; we're a friendly bunch. ;) Your profile says you're from France so you may be interested to know that right now we have one of our Academy (training) games timed specifically to be convenient for European players -- it's currently on Sundays at 3PM EDT, which would be 8PM CET (until your clocks do their own daylight savings time switchover later in March, at which point it would be 9PM). Look forward to seeing you around! Welcome aboard. ^_^

"Rollin'...rollin'...rollin' on the riiiver..."

The severity of the situation didn't really hit Sam until after it was really too late to turn back. She was indescribably grateful for the willingness her little team had displayed to throw themselves headlong into the scheme she had cooked up with Eagle and Kat in their absence. They had just returned from that city where everything was rapidly going to hell in a handbasket; as Sam had paced sickbay waiting for their return, she had become more and more convinced that they would simply refuse to return again, dismiss the overeager young science lieutenant's idea, run for the hills. On some underlying level she supposed she'd even hoped they would. The risk involved here was considerable and Sam and Kat had flown at breakneck speed to set it up -- delay or uncertainty on the part of the returning hostages might have given her time to second-guess herself. But they had had given her none, had instead jumped onto the biobeds with a will and sent their consciousnesses into an alien computer network without a backward glance. They had trusted her idea implicitly, had not questioned her judgment. Even for Sam, whose heart was pounding with the need for speedy action, the rapidity of the decision had made her head spin. This whole situation did...the city, the gravity, the technology, her malicious doppelganger, the dying stars, her sudden authority -- not to mention the Cardassian. Torre Ze'Rea -- that was a Bajoran name! Bajoran...and yet shimmering into sickbay with Daena, Tom, Malik, and Archie -- for whom Sam had not really had time to spare a moment's thought -- was that unmistakable reptilian facial structure. That grey, rubbery look housed in the gold collar and grey shoulders of a Starfleet engineering uniform. Sam's stomach had bottomed out as if she had swallowed a boulder. This was the engineer on whose computer abilities Sam was banking the survival of them all? What was she doing here anyway -- what was a Cardassian doing aboard the Arcadia? But there was no time, and this Cardassian with the Bajoran name was willing and knew the layout of the Caress like no one else with her skills did, except Archie, and all Sam knew was that he was out like a light. There was no choice. So she swallowed her pride, her fear, and the abrupt, instinctive anger and settled herself onto a biobed next to Torre, let the alien neural links settle on her head, and relinquished her consciousness to the hacked Aether neural net. It was a dizzying, nauseating, disorienting experience but when she opened her "eyes" again, it had worked. She had settled into a body of sorts again -- distinctly alien but at the same time definitely hers. And that, of course, was when it really struck her what she had asked these people to do. Kat had said to her back in sickbay that she and Eagle shared the responsibility for the success or failure of this plan, but Sam didn't believe it. She couldn't. This was her plan, which she had dived into based on a shaky understanding of alien technology, the support and trust of the incredibly brave people beside her, and an ego bruised and humiliated by the presence and actions of Archie's "creation." She didn't pretend to know if this was the right choice or even the best choice -- she only knew that no one had stopped her, and in the chaos of the current situation that was not nearly enough to be reassuring. She forced the fear down as she looked around, following the Cardassian deeper into the Caress facility, trying to see everywhere at once, watching for signs of the AI that they had been told was here. Intellectually, she hoped they would able to get in and out without ever running into the interference of the marauding AIs. Pragmatically, this seemed remarkably unlikely. Emotionally...she wanted to see this inverted version of herself with her own eyes...so to speak. But that was not something to hope for. She almost got her wish anyway -- just as the Cardassian had begun trying to hack the database, Sam turned to find that suddenly there were two versions of Lieutenant Servo, the difference being that one of them was carrying a rifle and pointing it at Torre. Sam had half a moment to reflect that she had no idea what kind of mental damage they might sustain should their physical representations here be harmed, and then the firefight started and there wasn't much time to think about anything anymore. It didn't last long but it was enough to leave her shaking with adrenaline and terror. Prophets and Jesus God...what have I gotten us into?

I clicked on this thread from the "Unread Posts" list without really noticing which thread it was -- consciously I only registered that it was community, not IC, and that it was one I occasionally posted in. So I arrived at Tom's post regarding Wikipedia, raid drives, and Thomas Cook with the utmost certainty that I was reading the caption comments thread. Confusion ensued, followed by a shining moment of utter clarity.

Sam glanced at Kat Swan, to whom she was trying to explain her plan of infiltration into the Sam-Kent AI's stronghold, and then tapped her console, bringing up the access into the Aether computer network which the engineering department had hacked. "We can get schematics of the Aether's Caress neural interface technology. Theoretically it should be replicable here." Kat watched as Sam brought up the info. "The trouble will be getting by her. Isn't she in the thoughts of the others? Or can she read their minds? We wouldn't want her to know we are there before we are ready. Right?" Kat looked from Sam to Eagle, hoping she had this right in her own mind. Eagle looked up from the Tactical console for a moment and listened to Sam and Kat discussing the proposed plan. The power beam from the main dish had been integrated into the patch being sent to Aether and the initial charge being sent to the center. The level had been set to a nominal charge piggy-backing along on the carrier wave and modulated to just cause the AI some minor discomfort...hopefully drawing attention from Sam and Kat's plan when it was implemented.. Sam nodded slowly as Kat responded to the idea, her expression pensive. She felt entirely out of her depth with the levels of computer engineering being discussed here but she went into it with a will; there was no time for second-guessing now. "That is the danger; she does have control over much of the city's network, and she has the knowledge of the people who used the Caress. Our hacks into the mechanisms seem stable enough for the moment, though, and hopefully they'll last long enough to get our people in, and out." She glanced at Kat. "You had mentioned neural blocks...that might be a good last line of defense if she starts hacking back into our link the way we hacked into her systems -- freezing the link long enough to retrieve them." Kat nodded. "I can do that and I think that it can possibly be sent into the network via the mind chairs. A hypo to one of the umbilicals that go to the chairs possibly? I would have to get another look at them to be sure." Kat moved off to another console and logged into the medical information of the ship's library. "The drug pavulonizine should do exactly what we want. It should slightly sedate the neural interface." Kat looked down to the console again and mumbled to herself, "I hope." Eagle tapped into his console and finally brought online another modulation setting, to present the systems with ghosting imaging in the event the AI were to get too close to some of the aspects of their little ruse. "I have initiated another program to enhance our ability to remain undiscovered in the event the AI begins to try and find us -- merely let her chase ghosts in the machine if you will. Each ghost image can of course be duplicated as is necessary keeping her off balance and taking dead end leads," he said, turning to Sam and Kat, a distinct grin forming, "along with the neural interface you have in place and numbing her up a bit. The AI may actually begin to think she is losing her marbles." Sam nodded, listening to Kat as the doctor spoke. What she was saying sounded plausible; Sam knew no more than rudimentary field medicine so she would have to go with Kat's word on this one. "Good...we can have hypos of that created along with our people...that'll be our backup...if all else fails," she mumbled, then looked over at Eagle as he spoke up, nodding at him. "Also good -- the better we can keep her confused, the safer we'll be." She glanced down at the schematics of the neural link technology that she had pulled from the hacked computers. "We'll have to get this replicated and set up fast, though; we don't have much time." "I'll head down to medical and get the drug needed and fill the hypos," Kat said. "Shall I return here? or meet someplace else?" Looking at the ship's wall chronometer and then back to Sam and Kat, Eagle agree, "We have very little time indeed. You heard the commander's orders as well. The quicker we can get in and accomplish our mission the better. I have inputted the necessary beam modulations to keep randomizing that should keep her busy, unable to get a lock on us. Time indeed is getting close...we need to get this fish fried up and served." Sam nodded back at Eagle and tapped her console again, transferring the link schematics to sickbay. "I'll come with you," she said to Kat. "Between the two of us we can get the links set up and ready for..." She paused, then glanced at the others. "How big a team do you figure?" Kat shrugged at the question, not knowing completely how big this ordeal was. "I'm not sure." "Hmmm...." Eagle said. "We need at least a minimum compliment to get the job done...as well as having them where they need to be stationed. The AI may be easy to distract, but it is not stupid and we may not have much time. I would think five members to do the job should suffice." He looked at Sam and Kat. "How many do each of you need to effectively carry out the mission?" Sam shrugged uncertainly. "I haven't a clue...I can't say I've ever done this before. But we'll need an engineer, someone who can hack into her systems once we get there...security or two to cover our backs...Kat with her neural block...and..." She paused. She wanted to go; she wanted to be in there personally mucking up the plans of this strange, humiliating and frustrating version of herself, but would she do more good than someone else in her place? "Maybe me..." she allowed, then cracked a faint grin. "At the very least maybe I can serve as another distraction." "I can give hypos for injecting the drug to whoever goes, and tell them where to do it," Kat said. Eagle listened to Sam and Kat. "No -- just enough party to get the job done, Sam," he said. "I know full well what you are feeling; however we need to keep on target, just the necessary complement. This looks like we need one engineer, two sec,and a medical tech then...four it will be then. You're needed and way too valuable to this ship...both of you...to possibly be compromised. Kat, you and Sam, then, go and take what is necessary to get the mission done. Meet me back here on the bridge as soon as possible...the clock is ticking. Let's get moving." Sam sighed, frustrated, but nodded and jumped up to head for the turbolift, calling as she did so for officers from the requisite departments to meet her in sickbay.

Definitely more confident about this than I have been at any point up till now...looking good! Can't wait for it to come out! ::bounces::

Sam sat at the engineering console, flexing her fingers gently against the touchpads, her mind racing, but not in the directions it needed to go. Phoenix...it seemed so obvious now, of course. Twenty-twenty hindsight and all that; she could see it as clear as day. His behavior on the Saint-Epoch had been nothing if not cordial but there had been that nervousness to it; that same blasted uncertainty that she had seen with Brian, and with Malik, maybe even with Josh so many months back. She should have recognized it but she had been distracted, confused, concerned for other things and it had slipped under the radar. Naïveté had triumphed once again. And now he had gone to Aether, to this "pleasure center," and created a version of her with motives no one had been able to figure out yet, except that this fake “Sam-Kent” creation wanted to destroy an entire civilization. Sam told herself that her concern for this situation was an entirely practical one, concern for the people of Aether and for the integrity of those two huge stars hanging, dying, outside of Arcadia's hull. She wanted to pretend she was preoccupied by scientific curiosity, by the eternal question of "Why?" that always fascinated her -- why did this intelligence want the suns destroyed? How did her mechanisms work and how could they be stopped? But that was not what was on her mind now; she was preoccupied by a sense of humiliation stronger than any she had felt in recent memory. Commander Marx had all but shouted the situation to the entire bridge; he and Eagle acted as if it was common knowledge. How much of her personal life was open to the conversation of the command staff? How much of a fool did she look, with the third man in as many months apparently following at her heels? She could feel herself coloring as she stared at the console, trying to focus on the LCARS displays. Focus...focus...it doesn't matter...do your job...do your job...please... She stabbed her fingers down firmly into the LCARS, watching the display open up into a diagram of the deflector array. Eagle had instructed her to attempt a reconstruction of the array as a giant field coil, in the hopes of creating enough power to overload that other Kent's systems. The trouble was, Sam was not an engineer, and if this Sam-Kent entity could absorb the power of an entire sun, as she was doing her damnedest to do, then the deflector array would seem like a pinprick in comparison. At any rate, to interfere with the power flow entirely seemed inadvisable; Aether and its component forcefields would simply cease to exist, which to say the least would be unpleasant for those living there. In addition, Sam-Kent had all the cards here; she had the Aether technology at her disposal, and the added knowledge no doubt provided by her Starfleet captives. It seemed likely that she was the only one involved in the situation with the capability to halt the approaching nova, or at least the only one who could do it on their rapidly tightening time frame. Whatever Arcadia did now had to be delicate; Sam-Kent's control (such an odd thing, to speak of herself in the third person like that) had to be halted at the source without destroying her and especially not the surrounding power architecture. Years of scientific work had taught Sam that it was always easiest (nay, imperative) to look at what was established about a situation before trying to build new bits upon it, and she fought to focus on that now. What did they have? A floating city made to function by the use of pure energy-to-matter manipulation and neural interfaces. A city-wide computer network infected, controlled, and inhabited by a malicious program. But if Sam-Kent had control over the entire city, why had she closed off the section where Commander Alces had just been taken? There was an entire enclosed perimeter of the city where the AI had set up camp, around the Aether’s Caress facility that had started this whole mess; Sam-Kent had to still be centered in the Caress mainframes or why would she have gone to so much trouble to protect it? Clearly that was where they had to strike if they wanted to force her to relinquish her control. So they had to get people inside the perimeter, engineers who, given the proper access, could interfere with Sam-Kent’s systems and take back control of the city. It would take far too long to break into the mainframes where Sam-Kent’s highest security would be, but Arcadia’s computers, perhaps with the help of Aether’s own people, could probably get access to the more remote mechanisms – the city network, the neural interfaces. And if they could do that… If they could use the neural interfaces they could create people in the Caress, just as the pleasure center’s employees had. "People" in the loosest sense of the word, of course – more or less holograms, neurally linked to Arcadia officers -- but it was something, it would get them in behind enemy lines. Hacking the computers would take a better engineer than Sam was by a long shot; Jordan Black would have to be retrieved from the induction center. Sam seemed to remember that one of the others trapped with Archie and Daena was also an engineer...Torre Ze’Rea, that was it, a good strong Bajoran name. Perhaps she would know something to speed the process, and Medical might be able to help set up the neural feed. As the idea began to take shape, Sam's pulse began to race. They had to move fast but it could work. They could get people into the heart of Sam-Kent’s operation, access her mainframe from the inside, force her to release the city from her hold. It was a possibility, it was a plan, and it was all she had to offer. She spun in her chair, turning to face Commander Marx and Lieutenant Eagle at the rear of the bridge. "Sir!"

Am I the only person for whom this picture is not loading at all? O.o

I'm a published composer! ::freaks out::

I would venture that DC is more frustrating for driving than all three that you've mentioned -- I firmly believe L'Enfant was on some kind of hallucinogenic when he designed it. We were actually really pleasantly surprised when we moved down to Silver Spring from New Jersey and discovered that street signs are actually marked in advance in this state, which is something New Joysians are too tough for or something. But I suppose I'm biased. ;)

::gulps:: What did I do?

It's in my room currently...happy Mardi Gras!

Ahhhh, Maryland...where we will eat an old shoe if you pour Old Bay Seasoning on it and call it a crab.

It always unnerves me when I'm the only registered user on the online users list... O.o

Welcome aboard, Alex! Hope you have a great time here! Feel free to ask around if you have any questions. ;)

OK, this one goes to A9 all the way. Runner-up: Grom.

Theoretically my creative nonfiction homework will be done tonight, meaning two days before, not one, but that's still up for grabs at the moment. ::needs to hire someone to put a boot in her rear occasionally:: Ezri> ::hug::

I am a procrastination sensation. ;)

::sigh:: It is so unfortunate that I cannot continue posting in this vein without probably getting banned from the forums. :D This is definitely something we should look into doing at SLE though. ;) Can I correct your capitalization instead? ;)

It's a jump to the left and a step to the right, Abe. Then put your hands on your hips and *then* bring your knees in tight. Yeesh...get it right. ::rolls eyes:: I've totally hijacked this thread... ;)

::waggles eyebrows:: Thank you, Admiral. ;)

::steals a shot for herself:: I'm going to see Rocky Horror Picture Show with my roommate -- I dare you to get more romantic than that. ;)

Happy Valentine's day all. ;)