A Masterpiece Conspiracy

Posted on Wed Apr 25th, 2018 @ 11:06am by Captain Akiva ben-Avram
Edited on on Tue Jul 3rd, 2018 @ 5:11pm

Mission: S1E1: Bynars Be Bygones
Location: Bynaus: Canton 0101-1 Commissary
Timeline: MD 6

As far as commissaries went, this place was dull. Akiva sat in an awkward half-reclined chair against the wall of the establishment. The central area might have been reserved for heavy foot traffic, but with no other customers coming or going, one would never know it. In lieu of a barista, the counter had a self-serve replicator and a menu board rendered unreadable by the burned out backlighting. And the ceiling... well, Akiva was seated below one of the few patches not covered in soot or mold.

Were it not for the two Bynars huddled together in the far corner, Akiva would have been alone in rank squalor. How in the world was this place advertised by the Federation News Network as a feature attraction for the capital canton? That it had a Praxis interface dispenser in the corner was the only reason Akiva stayed. Fashioned as an elastic headband with internal wiring, the wearable interface would allow non-cybernetic beings to cruise the Praxis in the way it was intended to be accessed.

Akiva clicked his tongue as he considered the headband he held in hand. While he knew himself to be above the minimum recommended Intelligence Quotient for safe use of a Praxis interface, it was still a surreal thought. Akiva already had his PADD set on an auto-config to peruse the Bynar global network, but there was only so much tedium that could be filtered out of binary code. If he wanted answers, he would need to dive into the deep waters.

"Well... I've come this far."

Akiva jostled the headband, then said a quick prayer to Ha'Shem before sliding it around his forehead and temples. An explosion of stars and crackling sound interference filled his mind not unlike fireworks and retinal burns. In reality, his cerebral cortex was deliberating over which sensory inputs to accept -- or so the user guide had prewarned.

After an eternal instant of migraine-inducing vertigo, he threw his head back and yelled. But when his voice echoed back into his ears, it was distant and filtered. He slapped his hands on the half-reclined armchair, but the sound and sense of touch felt numbly muted.

"Are you well?"
"It is his first time."
"Is it?"
"Obviously. Watch him."

Akiva whipped his head in the direction of the voices. He was taken in by the shock of a transformed environment. Gone was the dilapidated commissary. That is, only the physical appearance of it. If he looked closely, Akiva could see the shaded silhouette of the grungy tables and walls, but they were washed out by the glowing Bynar pair and the menagerie of holographic fauna and flora surrounding them. Their half-reclined chairs were overlaid with images of stuffed pillows and cushions, their nondescript clothing now luminescent togas, and in place of their empty table now a half-naked Orion girl serving them fruit from a gilded platter. Having become intimately familiar with the Orion physique -- and sparing a thought for how he missed Laena -- Akiva noted those physical proportions were not quite natural.

The scene was too much. Akiva began snickering, though his humor faded when he tried to move and found he couldn't. Try as he might to get up, Akiva felt paralyzed. The most he could manage was a terse squeak.

"Help," he whimpered.

"Oh, my."
"He looks stuck."
"Of course he is. The propagation is incomplete."
"Did he not read the disclaimer for foreigners?"

Though their speech patterns were different from the norm, Akiva knew when he was being mocked. Humiliation made him want to slink into a deep hole. That feeling quickly passed as indignation riled his temper.

"Do you treat all tourists this way?" Akiva asked with a sigh.

He blinked. No longer was he in his chair, but he was across the room, standing before the Bynars. And robed. Akiva looked down at himself only to see a toga similar to the ones worn by the Bynar pair. "Oy vey..."

The Bynars erupted in a chorus of screeching clicks that may have equated to laughter. Abruptly, in mid-crescendo, that vanished in a flash of light. The flash, though momentarily blinding, carried with it a sense of knowing. A latent streak marked their fading path like dusty particles drifting through a laser beam. Instinct from somewhere between conscious and unconscious broiled through Akiva's mind, pushing him in pursuit through the Praxis.

His mind became a streak, pressing through the luminescent streets that were lit in a bright holiday setting. The trail of the fleeing Bynar pair began to diminish through rapid zigs and zags until dissipating entirely. The world reoriented itself around him in a virtual display--or was it that his mind reoriented itself within the virtual display? In some ways, it was a two-dimensional mural overlaying the real-life image of the devastated world of Bynaus, yet in others, it was an engrossing virtual experience which enticed his senses away from physical reality.

Towering buildings of pure light surrounded him in an odd blend of futurist fantasy. Digital personas rose and fell from the physically non-existent glowing structures which overlaid the decadent urban sprawl. Some Bynars rushed past him in the same supersonic manner that he--or, rather, his perception--had moved, although others fluttered about like winged pixies or luna moths. Rather than doorways, these virtual buildings seemed to be entered through access panels with connecting lines of myriad colors between them. Looking down at his feet, Akiva saw himself to be standing on a green one.

"I wonder what that means..." he muttered aloud. His voice, somewhere distant, echoed weakly in his ears. He attempted to cross over to a red line and found himself bound by an invisible barrier, not unlike a force field. When he pressed a hand against it, the barrier flared against him in a burst of flame.

Firewall. Akiva wryly chuckled at the literal representation.

He followed its line with his eyes only, patching through a network grid of crisscrossing multi-colored data lines that went all over the canton. Eventually they converged into a massive hardline of red fiber-optic cable that jutted several kilometers away toward some sort of distortion. Akiva squinted, and when he did, his eyes magnified by a factor of 10. Were he in the desert, he would've thought it was a mirage. His years of experience as an Ops man insisted that his vision was not deceiving him -- it was a warp field. And access to it was restricted by a labyrinth of protected firewalls represented by red lines. What would a warp field be doing out in the middle of--

More giggling arose from behind him. Akiva turned around and saw a Bynar pair watching him with great amusement. Admittedly he could not be certain if it was the same pair from the commissary, but the mocking glint in their eyes suggested as much.

"I'm looking for someone," he said to them. "Could... would you show me how to navigate your network?"

In a joined motion as if puppets on strings, the Bynar pair pointed toward a massive blue edifice. It appeared as a solid blue cube the size of a mountain with gossamer spires and turrets rising above it in rotating frequencies of transparency and opacity. The massive silver chevron of Starfleet jutted out from it like a figurehead on a ship's prow.

Akiva decided to try the blue data line adjacent to the green one on which he stood. Rather than repel him, he found himself taken in and consumed by it. The surrounding imagery changed immediately. Rather than a glowing city of virtual towers filled with a virtual population, he found himself surrounded by a star field with a sole blue data line leading from his feet to the blue palace, as he came to think of it.

The spread of starry light overhead evoked feelings of longing for Laena. Many a fond and happy memory involved watching stars together in her Stellar Cartography lab. While she couldn't be credited with creating them, he couldn't help but admire the artistry with which she introduced him to her favorite clusters and nebulae. He took a breath to still his aching heart. When this was over, he resolved to make things right between them.

Seeing himself alone, Akiva pressed onward toward the blue palace. Were there so few Starfleet personnel on Bynaus that no one else was accessing the database at this time? Perhaps no other Starfleet office was brazen enough to access the Starfleet database through the Praxis.

As he began to walk, a security checkpoint shot out from the blue palace facade and erected itself before him.

"Access to Starfleet database is restricted. Authorization required."

Akiva smirked at that. Even in the Bynar's marvelous Praxis where dull binary code came to life in fantastical detail, the Starfleet computer's voice was still disembodied.

"Authorization ben-Avram Two-Zero-Resh-Six-Alef-Tav." Akiva crossed his arms and waited to see what would happen.

The computer warbled its acceptance. "Authorization recognized. Access granted."

In another rush which precipitated shifting within the Praxis, the Starfleet emblem magnified to fill his mind's eye. When it receded, the star field was gone, replaced by gentle blue corridors comprised of the same texture and hue as the outer palace walls. As before, the ground was marked by data lines, though all of these appeared in brighter luminescent shades of blue. Akiva knelt down and strummed the data lines as one might strings on a musical instrument. Words, images, and registries brushed across his consciousness in brief snippets that were impossible to piece together on their own. It made him think of broken transmissions which only contained jumbled words and sentence fragments.

"Biynah," he said aloud, forcing himself to concentrate. The Praxis seemed to respond to subliminal inductive reasoning, so if he held Biynah in his mind while--

One of the blue lines flickered. Akiva felt a spike of hope within him, perhaps for the first time since he'd left for Bynaus. When he grasped the flickering data line, the corridor walls shuffled apart and reorganized into a solid platinum door. The nameplate read: AMBASSADOR HANNOK. Akiva frowned at reading it. Whatever files the Praxis contained regarding Biynah were on Hannok's protected server.

After days of attempted contact with no response but a clerical runaround from the ambassador's aides, it was particularly frustrating to be closed out now. But what could he do? Computer specialist though he was, Akiva knew there was no way his Starfleet authorization would give him access to a Federation ambassador's office records. Praxis or no Praxis.

Akiva turned to go, but was stayed by the flicker of green light from under the door. He paused, not knowing what it could mean. Did the Bynars have some sort of backdoor access to the Starfleet network?

"Computer," Akiva said on a hunch, "end program."

The computer warbled without response this time. In the glimmer of changing worlds to which Akiva thought he could never grow accustomed, the pristine blue corridors gave way to slate marble floors and ceilings with vaulted pillars and interactive murals adorning the walls. It could have led to a museum of natural history... or a medieval torture chamber. Akiva shoved those thoughts aside as he laid his eyes on something more interesting. A green dataline which streamed under the unchanged platinum door and into the chamber within.

Strange that the green dataline, which Akiva had taken for a public channel, appeared within the secure Starfleet mainframe. Or, since he had evidently logged out of the Starfleet database, the Praxis had reconnected him to the nearest data line for his virtual location. This was a level of computer programming that was beyond him. All he knew is that the secrets to Biynah's abduction were hidden away here.

Akiva followed the data line through the door, passing through it like a hologram. As he entered the ambassadorial suites, it seemed like the setup to a bar joke: three Ferengi, two Bynars, and a Vulcan. The latter Akiva recognized as Ambassador Hannok from his public file, one of many individuals with which Akiva had familiarized himself during the long trip from the Gamma Quadrant. The ambassador seemed to be in mid-argument with the Bynar pair who were just shy of apoplectic.

"And I repeat, Your Excellencies, that the matter is well in hand."

"It does not..."
"--seem so--"
"... to us."

Hannok frowned deeply as only a Vulcan can do. "Give my team of specialists time to complete their study. They report that they are on the verge of discovering the cause of the quantum outbreak."

"Do you always discuss--"
"... sensitive matters..."
"-- in front of Ferengi marauders?"

"DaiMon Nudd is a representative of the Ferengi Alliance," Hannok said, "and an ally in this crisis."

As the ambassador spoke, digital profiles appeared over the heads of Nudd and the other two Ferengi. Mug shots, criminal charges, known associates... the list went on, and all of it incriminating. Somehow Akiva had access to the Bynars' data queries through the Praxis. And, via their link, Akiva could see the same data they did. It did not speak well for the ambassador or his alleged allies -- DaiMon Nudd, in particular, who was exiled from Ferenginar for association with a crime boss whose name was redacted.

"We fail to see..."
"--how a wanted Ferengi criminal--"
"... is any ally..."
"--to the Federation."

Hannok folded his hands behind his back and stepped around behind his desk. "Allow me to explain: I agreed to assist with a 'sensitive matter' for considerable compensation, but its completion has proven difficult. As a result, I had to call in a set of favors to buy more time, but even that has failed to yield adequate results within the desired time frame. Therefore, extreme measures have been approved."

The ambassador waved his hand, at which point two Ferengi snapped their energy whips into the air. All the Bynar pair could do was cry out, but it was too late. They were subdued in bands of crackling plasma.

"What..."
"--is the--"
"... meaning..."

Gurgling choked out the rest of their words.

"Did you think your report to Internal Affairs would escape my notice?" Hannok rubbed his sore jaw for a moment, which made his temper flare all the more. "I am the Federation, you walking antiques! Had you done as I said, then everything would have been just fine. Your computer network would have changed, adapted, and continued on until the next supernova. But you just had to go and blow the whistle. My benefactor cannot tolerate that."

DaiMon Nudd stepped from between the two whip-wielding Ferengi and produced a disruptor pistol. Unceremoniously, he pointed it between the eyes of one Bynar and fired.

The Praxis display around Akiva blinked as if suffering a power surge. A kaleidoscope of discordant colors filled the room as reflected from the shock and terror of the living Bynar whose paired mate lay dead on the floor.

"No!" Akiva shouted.

An instant before DaiMon Nudd fired upon the second Bynar, a beep came from the console on the wall. It was perfectly synchronized with Akiva's outcry. Hannok nodded at the Ferengi who had pocketed his energy whip, giving a silent gesture to check the panel. The Ferengi reluctantly complied with a grumble, though his deft fingers indicated a stronger finesse with panels than with weapons.

"DaiMon Nudd, someone is watching us!"

"What?!" Hannok exclaimed. "That cannot be possible!"

The Ferengi continued clacking away at the wall console. "It's a new proxy connection piggybacked off of the hardware Praxis connections from those two." He corrected himself. "Or, uh, one."

"Allow me to rectify that," Nudd said. He shot and killed the other Bynar.

For Akiva, everything went black as the connection severed. He felt aware that he was sitting rather than standing, and that his clothes were drenched in sweat. Ripping the headband off of his head, he rolled out of the lounge chair back in the commissary and vomited on the floor. He had come to reclaim his daughter Biynah, but evidently he had stumbled into a masterpiece conspiracy.

When he got his breath back, he wiped his mouth with one hand and tapped his combadge with the other.

"Akiva to Kaz..."

As he spoke, the echoing of footsteps filled the commissary. In the instant it took his eyes to adjust, Akiva came to recognize his old friend, Storr Garlake, being accompanied by a slightly taller Asian man in a blue Starfleet uniform with glowing blue eyes to match. Jaw agape to the floor, Akiva stammered to continue.

"... y-you aren't going to believe this."

END