Subspace Rift

[Donovan Wright]

Wonder if any of you can help me. I'm currently on a small scout class ship sometime after Kirk and before Picard. The problem I and my crew are having is that we are phasing in and out of subspace, and each time we phase some of the molecules in our bodies are being left behind. As you might appreciate this is a little disconcerting, not to mention uncomfortable. Our crew is suffering from severe stomach problems and headaches which only seem to be getting worse. Does anyone know if there is a way to enter subspace to retrieve our missing molecules and to then get back out again? Any help would be appreciated before all our brain molecules are floating around in subspace and we forget how to fasten our pants never mind fly a starship!

[Ergi]

First of all, welcome to the boards!

Regarding your question, I would rather be concerned about my DNA, than about the major structures, anyway, I don't believe there is a canon solution to your problem. The situation your narrator has brought you in seems pretty unfair to me, I usually try to make my adventures solveable without the use of technobable/unusual use of technology. If suppose you are in the middle of an adventure and your GM is awayting your solution by the next playing session, therefore I would contact him and ask him about the way he wanted the adventure to take. I suppose he wants you to use the transporters or something else, he might have hinted to at the beginning of the adventure. That is, of course, assuming he has no interest in torturing his players.

[Donovan Wright]

It's possible he may have hinted at some way to retrieve said missing molecules but nothing springs to mind. And yes, he has been known to torture crew members along the way We'd had some kind of ideas about using the transporters but nothing solid has beamed it's way into our minds I'm guessing that it's not possible to lock onto anything in subspace from normal space. The condition was caused originally by a subspace pulse emitted from a planet which somehow caused us to begin the phasing. Thanks for the reply Ergi - let's hope we can find a solution along the way!

[7 of 11]

You could have your science officer roll on the skill Science:subspace. Or if your Science Officer has the tier 3 ability Theorize he could roll or even Tier 1 Fuiled Research or Tier 2 Scientific Protocols. It could help to know what you're facing but studying it a little closer. Best wishes.

7 of 11
A

[stephane]

Or you can try to bribe the GM.

[Donovan Wright]

Hmm are you our GM Stephane?

7 of 11, that is a good plan with only one slight flaw...we don't have a specialist Science Officer Our crew compliment is currently 4, an acting captain, doctor, helmsman/engineer and a tactical officer. We accquired our ship under.....well it was a case of fixing up a small scout ship or we died basically. We haven't found anyone yet who could add to our crew to get us up to the 9 required to man it properly......basically we are in a pickle A small crew getting smaller by the molecule!!

[Ergi]

I suppose you have already visited that planet ...

[Donovan Wright]

Not yet, but that's the first thing to do in the next session, go back to the planet, find the source of the subspace pulse and then try to modify it in someway to reverse the effects it is having.

[Tobian]

Hmm interesting conundrum. Ok well I am assuming here that you have encountered some kind of anomaly / are in some kind of anomaly which is causing this.. if it's continuing to happen - the most important thing to do is work out WHAT is causing it before you can work out HOW.

A roll on your sensors / tricorders using your phisical science / space science skills should help to determine what kind of anomaly you are facing. Once you've done that you can then work on a way to counteracting that anomaly.

Your GM has kind of opened a can of worm because 'phase' and 'subspace' are interconnected yet not mutually so. Something which is out of 'phase' is in a transitional state of spin relative to your dimension. Subspace fields can contain and cause phase effect, but they aren't apparently neccessary all the time.

So to say you are going out of 'phase' - does this mean like Kirk when he fell in and out of spacetime in the Tholian 'interphase' - which was a transitional area of space which conjoined subspace and space, or was it temporally out of phase, such as the effect caused by the 'phasing cloak' (which would never have been heard of in your time era yet) - which causes a different set of problems! This is primarily because we have two different paradigms with regards to concepts here.. Humans cannot survive in subspace - they evaporate (which could explain alot!- such as Kirk in the subspace interfold - he was inside subspace) however if you are 'out of phase' then it's not so harmful - examples being Data when he sent himself 0.4 degrees out of phase in Times' Arrow (or Geordi la Forge and Ro Laren in Remember me). In the case of Data he enveloped himself in a low level subspace field to partially separate himself from spacetime before using a phase transition attenuator to move his region of space out of phase (which could also be an answer!).

Ok first things first. Don't use the transporter untill you understand what is going on. if you are simply losing mass then it's of no consiquence, and it might help. If your molecules are still there in a relative sense, then by transporting yourself away, the transporter may not be able to lock on to those out of phase molecules and you could loose them permanently!

Without understanding what is happening I would say.. if the effect is being caused by an external factor, such as a strange region of space / spatial anomaly etc, then get away from it and then do what you have to (well unless it inviolves you interacting with the anomaly. )... The next step is one of dtermining where all your lose molecules are. if they are floating around then there's little you can do.. However you could possibly find a lose strand of living hair - use it's DNA and reprogram the transporter to rewrite all of your DNA accodingly - which should mitigate any minor celular damage (the DNA being the most important part!) - What happens to you depends on how much this thing has changed you.. Since we've seen them do this twice in TNG - once was where they used a previous Biopattern from the computer database to rebuild someone from a prior time - which would have the negative side effects of making you lose your memory to that point... The second was less damaging - thinking back to the episode where Picard, Keiko, Ro and Guinan were all transformed into children - and their missing DN was 'added' from old skin samples... However either of these could be outside of what you can do in this era as transporter technology is not so advanced and may not have a 'buffer' yet!

Another suggestion I could make is to use a component of the transporter - the phase transition coils. These are responsible for moving matter out of phase, and dematerialising it. Perhaps you could create a dohickey, or reporgramme the imaging coils to pick up this 'phased' matter and them simply phasing you out entirelly and back in, effectivelly resetting the phase of all your matter...

Without knowing more about what's causing it or the specifics of that era's technology I can't think of more to suggest...

[Tobian]

As an additional thought.. if you can't get your errant matter from the 'phase' anomaly, then to repair DNA damage (0nce you've removed yourself from the source of your problem) then a Doctor could synthesise a retrovirus which could be used to reinject healthy DNA from stored records (or living tissue samples etc).. This should easilly be possible with that era's technology because we can almost do that today!

[Donovan Wright]

Phew.....Tobian that's some thinking process there!! Thanks a lot, I think there's quite a few ideas in that that I hadn't really considered.

The anomaly that caused our phasing was some kind of subspace pulse emanating from a planet. We visited that planet and found a very old but very advanced computer that we believe was responsible for initiating the pulse in the first place. We believe that for whatever reason this pulse had been used on the local population so causing them over time to become less advanced than they had once been. We believe this was done by subjecting the planets inhabitants to it and it had the effect of removing specific molecules from the locals brains, so causing them to become less intelligent. We had some minor contact with the locals, and they were on a par with 16th/17th century humans in terms of technology.

When the phasing takes place in each character, it is over in a milli-second and the character remembers nothing of it except for a shooting pain. There is nothing noticable to observers either. Memories are not being lost yet, so if we were able to reverse the effects of the subspace pulse then perhaps we may not have any long term detriment to ourselves. I don't think I mentioned that as well as some molecules being missing, others have been found by our doctor to have seemingly exploded in our bodies - cells that have been taken into subspace and returned to normal space having been destroyed when they appeared in subspace?

Anyway.....quite a lot to go on with now so thanks a lot!!

[Balok]

I think my first attempt would be to return to the planet, and attempt to access the ancient computer. I'd specifically be looking for files on the exact nature of the pulse, and failing that, on what the creators of the machine tried to accomplish.

If this machine generated the pulse, then presumably it can reverse the effect. That's not guaranteed to be true, it's certainly possible to develop and use something before you know how to undo the effect. But it's a place to start looking.

If you know what the builders were trying to accomplish, then you might be able to figure out why you were subjected to the pulse, and you might be able to figure out specific ways to thwart the effect. You might also know what to expect, which could give you some clues.

The warp bubble of a starship serves as an interface to subspace. Perhaps the engineer could modify the warp bubble so that it acts as a subspace mirror -- so that when your molecules attempt to phase, they'll be instantly "reflected" back into position. This doesn't solve the problem of the existing missing molecules, but it might halt the process before it gets worse. And it might even stop the process where it is.

[Owen E Oulton]

Since this isn't a rule-mechanics question, perhaps one of the Moderators would toss it over into the Narrators' Ready Room, where a lot of non-CODA GMs hang out. More ideas would probably come your way...

[Tobian]

Bah I think I'd eat your GM alive with technobabble LOL

You're welcome.

Ok well piecing together what he's said helps to make it more explainable but of course opens up more problems...

This pulse is interupting a natural biological process in your body, but it's being very specific in how it's doing it, so I suspect that the pulse is keyed to key neuro-transmitters associated with congnitive processes - since it isn't attacking your memories. Why it's affecting Humans is another matter (which you can probably gloss over 'cause it's trek ).

I agree with Fesarus - you could most likelly modify your warp bubble, shielding or even your deflector array to cancel out (with the use of a inverse harmony) or shield (by creating a subspace barier keyed to it's frequency).

It's possible you could use the small portable armband subspace field generators to achieve the same effect in the field, or even modify a tricorder or commbadge.

As to the actual emmiter it's self, how you deal with it will be decided by how your GM deals with things like the Prime directive. In Kirks Era, Kirk would dalk it down using speil about Love and it would blow up, but in TNG you'd have the moral dilema that the Prime Directive prohibits you from interfering with a culture - even if that culture is 'wrong' in your eyes - they may have done it to themselves - a technological 'omish' ray - enforced renaisance era existence.

How you look at it depends on what you find, by investigating their culture. Mitigating factors would include.. Are they aware of space travel / faster than light drive; do they know you are aliens; have they requested assitance to free themselves from it OR even; are they doing it to you on purpose, to recruit more people to their cause on a xenophobia basis (as in they want to enforce their beliefs on everyone).

generally I would say you learn as much about them as you can; learn as much about the machine as you can and make your determination based on that. Firsly learn how to block it, so you aren't being affected by it, then work out if they are knowingly doing it to themselves and if they are aware of it and don't want it anymore - and most importantly ASK for assistance THEN you can give it.. beyond that you simply put your tail between your legs and leave.. leaving a few quarantine bouyes so others don't get affected too...

[Tobian]

Actually, having had another thought about it I'm reminded of an episode of Farscape that could be applicable (though not likelly)..

The crew kept on having momentary blackouts, and initially it was thought that they were just having some kind of weird effect.. But when they replayed what had happened to them, it turns out a life form had been flying through the room, sending them into some kind of shock, shaking their bodies violently, causing bleeding from noses (always a clear sign of something bad in Scifi!) and unexplained missing time..

Thinking on that.. Maybe the subspace pulse sendsyour body into subspace where some form of life form is eating / destroying those specific molocules - performing surgery on you, removing your limbs and putting them back in you, creating clones ofyou and all sorts of other nastiness - then putting you back again.. because in subspace time is not the same, and since you were effectivelly 'unconsceous' during that time, it's impissible to say how long you were in there, except by measuring the specific telemeures (not sure on the spelling) of your DNA, which is a genetic body clock - as if time is moving forward for your body, it will believe so, even if your watches don't say so..

That probably isn't what is happening, but it would certainly add a quite sinister and disturbing aspect to the adventure