Insight and Introspection

[Turris Morran 0]

The ripples on the water sparkled like millions of diamonds, emblazoned by austral sun set high in a cloudless sky. It was Sol, that sun, Turris knew somehow. And yet somehow it gave off no heat, cast no shadows, fueling his angst. Not even the serene tropical landscape before him could calm his nerves. Something was terribly wrong here, something horrid or devious. Seeming from out of the sand rose something, an capsule of some sort. This capsule held some special significance to Turris Morran, caused some feelings to well up inside him that he tried so desperately to quell. The object shined like a beacon, seeming to draw in all of the suns light only to cast it back at him with a vengeance. Smoke rolled off the sides of it. No, not smoke. Condensation. A sudden chill ran through him as he reached out to touch the object, but with a brilliant flash of light the object changed somehow. It was starting to open. What's in it? Again he reached out, squinting, trying to see through the fog that billowed from it's core. A voice, his voice, spoke with urgently to him. "You know what it holds. Power!" Darkness engulfed him.

 

With a frightened yelp, he recoiled, pulling his knees to chest and pressing against..something. Slowly opening his eyes he found the gazes of his companions staring back at him. Some of them wore furrowed brows of worry, some the open mouths and wide eyes of confusion. None of them looked very pleased to have been startled in such a way. Among them the Vulcan seemed least pleased. Oh, dear. What was her name? Price. No, Reese or something like it. Caprice! That must be it. But what Vulcan mother would name her child that? No, that's certainly not it.

 

"It's lieutenant is what it is," Turris said aloud. A few more looks were turned to his direction, but he barely noticed them, if at all. His attentions quickly gravitated inward, and recollection of the dream began to surface through the fog of wakefulness. He never cared much for that Freud fellow, "He'd likely say it was my mother inside the capsule," but he could not help but wonder if there was some sort of interpretation to the nightmares he'd been having of late. No, he knew precisely why the dreams persisted, why he so often found himself sweating beneath his sheets in the middle of the night watch. Power, ha! What would I do with power? Muck it up for everyone else, that's what I'd do. You lack the focus for power.

 

Focus! That's what he needed right now, something to focus on. Echococcosis. The virus had proven to me more resilient than he had ever really anticipated. The initial algorithms he had designed to predict the level of RNA mutations in a given time had been complete failure. Fifteen out of every two-thousand samples displayed some sort of mutation, usually redundant, but at times troublesome. Forty-seven documented variences in the iscosahedral structure had been found, five different strains exhibiting pleomorphic traits. Of course the serum could be easily adapted to all of these mutations, but he feared that if constant growth was maintained it would be impossible to keep up. What else had changed since he received the last data? Time was of the utmost importance.

 

Of course that wasn't what troubled him the most. What he found most strange was that the twelfth, fourteenth, and sixteenth sequences in the virus' genome were highly susceptible to disruption from genetic drift. Any strains that encountered a mutation to one of these allele's either killed it's host cell immediately or simply failed to replicate itself. It was a rarity in nature, almost to the point of improbability. That and the virus' genome contained very little in the way of pseudogenes and other "junk" sequences. It was all very..efficient.

 

"What should really be bothering you is the fact that you're spending your evening in a Romulan cell! And you're sitting here worrying about numbers," said a voice in the back of his head. Suddenly he was very much aware of his surroundings, a dark room with a too-low ceiling and very little in the way of...accomodations. It took a few moments to realize that the people sharing the cell with him were only Romulan-looking. Friends. The thought gave him a chill. I only hope by the time we get out of here I'll still be able to distinguish foe from..."friend". Moments later he was leaning his head against the wall, his eyes closed, imagining a beach where the ripples on the water sparkled like diamonds.