Pennington Award Last Words

[Jorahl 0]

Pennington Award

 

There is much weight given to a person's last words. It's like asking one to sum up their entire existence in a single phrase. Noble men have had their final words etched in stone and remembered for ages. Last words have changed

the tide of battles, altered the path of Empires, and led the faithful through many trials.

 

"You must act...". Fine last words to give your compatriots in arms.

 

But beyond such romantic ideas most people's last words consisted of more screaming and moaning then eloquent verse. Gasps for breath or inaudible curses at death itself passed over the lips of most that faced their ends. Death can be quite impatient and seldom waits quietly for it's turn in a conversation.

 

Given all that, in this modern age there was one word that proved the most common as final words, "Energize".

 

The most important step in a successful molecular transport is the destruction of the target. The transporter beam locks onto it's victim and begins to rip it apart into the most basic particles possible. The cremated bodies of the dead have more of their original substance remaining than that which a transporter has gotten a hold of. It was a disturbing thought one had to push from their minds anytime they chose such a means of travel.

 

But then, after hundreds of years of use the transporter was a very controlled and precise collection of machines.

 

A disruptor on the other hand was very indiscriminate in the way it chooses to shred apart matter. This was a fact the confinement beam of Aegis' transporter scanners were finding out. The automated system was already struggling against the patchwork of overrides and alterations now in place. The demoleculizer was taken offline and the first half of the transport protocols were bypassed. Power for the remaining systems had been shunted through other areas. The matter stream itself bounced between one buffer to the next in an odd game of keep-away. The computer system, which honestly would rather be worried about putting this jumbled vaporized soup back together somehow, was otherwise tasked with keeping the whole ordeal a secret. Despite the madness of using a disruptor as the first step in a transport, Aegis' computers dutifully went about their orders.

 

Likewise, Lt. Victors followed orders that made very little sense.

 

Not that much of what was going on around Aegis now made sense. The shipyard had been evacuated and completely powered down. Being stationed on Midpoint, the transport relay station set on some tiny rock between Aegis and the shipyard, seemed pointless. It was already one of the least glamorous jobs on Aegis. Most people going between the two chose to simply take a shuttle. When they did transport, their patterns would spend but an extra second in Midpoints buffers before being carried on to their final destination. Lt. Victors figured only about 2% of Aegis' occupants were even aware that this little station existed. Even less then that had a clue why she was here, seeing one end of this pipeline was closed for business. Midpoint was truthfully living up to it's nickname among the transporter chiefs, Mud-point.

 

And mud was about the state of the pattern now being fed into Midpoints transport buffers.

 

Lt. Victors stirred in her seat in the break room as she heard the sounds of the buffers spooling up. If someone was transporting over they should have signaled first, that was procedure. More madness she surmised. Setting her drink aside she moved to the transporter room half expecting to see the automated systems already materializing the traveler on the pad. Instead she found about every alert possible lit up across the transport panel. Immediately taking her station she began trying to assess the situation. "Holy crap!" was her conclusion. Not in the most evil of Academy simulations programmed by the most vindictive of instructors had she been handed a transport in this state. The energy conversion rates were well over tolerances, the pattern integrity was swirling like a typhoon, there were additional waveforms gnawing at the confinement beam, and there was no support or additional data from the transmitting station. In fact all contact with Aegis had now gone dead. If the station had exploded, could that have explained this signal? She didn't have time to dwell on such things. She started one sequence after another. The pattern sloshed and shifted around the buffer but would not stabilize. Three times so far the panel hummed dissatisfied with an unsuccessful re-sequencing. The pattern was slipping away. The confinement beam was failing. In a flash the traveler would be lost. "Flashport!" the Lieutenant yelled.

 

Flashport: Transporter operator jargon for a rapid dematerialization and rematerialization sequence bypassing all safeties and chances to abort the process.

 

The swirling hurricane in the pattern buffer was ripping itself apart before it could be materialized under normal operations. Lt. Victors had only the time for one more try. She would have to dump the entire pattern onto the pad as quickly as possible. It was all or nothing. A flashport might just be able to solidify the signal into something whole before being scrambled again. All safeties were quickly switched off. Power now built up in the sequencers. The transporter control panel was all dark except for the three iconic sliders. She held her breath and quickly swiped the controls.

 

There was a flash....