Ensign Lo'Ami's personal log, SD 10211.21

[ens_loami 0]

=/\= Personal Log of Ensign Arphazad Lo'Ami =/\=

 

::Begin Recording::

Personal Log, Stardate 10211.21; First day on the job, in orbit above Risa.  The night before I had been drinking with my academy buddies ... a nice, smooth, 24 year old scotch - the real thing.  I was expecting to arrive finding the crew missing on shore leave... not in some partial parallel universe.  Turns out one of the crew tried to beam up a second-hand Romulan cloaking device.  The energy from the transporter must have activated the device.  I didn't get much time to scan it, because the acting commander - a Marine - decided to destroy it.  That's just like Marines ... shoot first and ask questions later.  We might as well have a band of Klingons on every starship, just in case we have to perform an emergency massacre.  

 

From what I could gather, the device was based on the principle of varying the subquantum phasing of energy, making the matter and energy under its protection invisible, because they are partially out of phase with the rest of the energy and matter in the universe.  A potential theoretical side effect of partially dephased matter is a subtle interaction between the matter in it and that in slightly different phases, including this universe's normal one.  That must be why we were able to "communicate" by issuing computer commands.  Along with the data from the U.S.S. Enterprise's encounter with a quantum fissue, I think I can make a compelling experimental case for the J'Ram-Hartman equation.  Look for my publication in the next issue of the Journal of the Federation Physical Society.  

 

This crew really is ... something else.  I come on board as assistant science officer... and they want me to be the only scientist and engineer on the ship... if it weren't for you, Nemrod ...

 

:: looks down at his now bulging belly ::

I wouldn't have had a clue.

:: returns the symbiont to its normal internal position ::

 

After beaming up the first group of phase-shifted crew, we learned that there was yet another.  With one of the subquantum phase shift variances known, a correlation analysis of the original transporter signature revealed the other one, and we beamed aboard the rest of the crew, this time, a little more cleanly, into transporter room 2.  There I was, standing there, datapad in left hand, cross-circuiting the transporter controls with my right hand... the XO and the others materialize on the padd, and... I ...

drop my datapad...

 

Right there, with the XO whom I'd never seen before, right in front of me.  All I could do was fumble around and say "Ens...ign ... Ar....pha....zad ... Lo...Am...i" pick up the datapad, and complete "reporting for duty, sir."

 

After the full crew was accounted for, we were able to use a warp field to break out of the phase-lock that had kept us in place, and get out of there... I never thought I would be wishing to get away from Risa.

 

Truthfully, this cloaking device worries me.  That kind of technology had not been heard of since the Pegasus incident.  Why was it on the black market?  Also, we destroyed the device with a phaser blast -- a shot of energy that seemed to have narrowed the gap between the phases of the three crews.  By the reciprocity principle, this means that the gap between us and the device must have widened - I am not convinced that we have seen the last of this cloaking device.  And, if such things are around, by how much can they change the phase of energy?  A full 2*pi phase shift would introduce the device into another quantum universe.  And, as we know from old 23rd century reports from the Enterprise, and more recently from space station DS9, not all quantum universes are populated by friends.  Imagine that... an enemy uses one of these devices to slide armies between different quantum universes, conquering the entire multiverse.  It would be worse than the Dominion, the Klingons and Romulans combined.  

 

But, enough musing on the apocalypse... my first day on the job is over...

and I'm starting to think I should have taken that position at the Daystrom Institute.

 

:: Looks at symbiont again ::

Sometimes, you just get me into more trouble than you're worth.

 

Signing off...

 

 

=/\= End Recording =/\=

[Guest LtCdr Dacotah]

Nice Log, Ensign!!  Now if you could just figure out a way to make the Captain give me back my lipstick, I"ll be in your debt  ::(:

 

Dac