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Day 02 [1800 hrs.] End of the Day

[ Lt. JG Hi'Jak | Geological Lab] Attn:  @Hastata-Nerada
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Jack just wanted this day to end. He had been going since 0800, and most of his day thanks to his encounter with Martin  and the ensuing fallout had been spent outside in zero g's, he had been going now for almost a full 10 hours, and all he wanted was to sleep. Part of him was considering calling up Trent. 'I give, if you need me I'll be in the brig.' at least the Brig had a bed!

But no this pain would not end, he had at least one more week of this to look forward too meaning there was no actual end in sight, and he wasn't even really done with this shift. He still had work that had to be done, and something he had to talk about. He had submitted the request in writing as Trent had told him, the subject he had sent to Martin was 'I got a puzzle'.

And a puzzle it was, The goelogical lab was running some more scans over the unique pyramid box, the only Relic that Sera had managed to find that had any real value, and he had kept it on his person since then. The theurgy had more resources than Starbase 84, which had been unable to recognize any of the composite materials. He was hoping that the deep pressure scanners would be able to tell him more.

Re: Day 02 [1800hrs] End of the day.

Reply #1 –
[ Lt.Com. Vivian Martin | CSO Office to Geological Lab | Deck 07-09 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Kaligos
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A puzzle. That was all Martin had gleaned from Hi’Jak’s message. It had been nearly seven hours since Martin had been attacked by cultists and then rescued by and apparently threatened by mister Hi’Jak, the individual who had sent her a peculiar notice from out of the blue. Martin wondered about it as she sat in her newly acquired office with a mug of coffee in hand. It was puzzling really. Was this his way of apologizing? When she had heard the notification for the message on her terminal she had swiftly sat up, thankful that the soreness from her encounter with Sithick had died down, and spent a few moments studying it, with a most quizzical expression on her face. She did feel that the situation was a salvageable one, there was no mistaking that, and whether or not Jack decided to play along or not would remain to be seen.

With a sigh, Martin stood up from her myriad mental meanderings and walked out the door to her office. It wouldn’t be long before she reached the geological labs on deck 9 but not soon enough so as to leave out room for rumination. Martin took another sip of her coffee as she walked softly through the corridor and into the turbolift. Although she seemed docile and calm on the outside, she was nonetheless wary and cautious for any other sign of the Devoted of Morali. This mad cult, this profane violation of duty and regulation had grown out of control as far as she was concerned. Martin always preached that tolerance of organized faith, no matter how strange was to be of key importance, but this had gone too far. When it came to violence, that was the line which Martin drew when it came to such things.

The rest of the trip to the geological lab was relatively uneventful and when Martin entered its premises she took a few moments to survey her surroundings. There was Hi’Jak, and a most curious pyramid he had with him. She briefly cleared her throat and announced her presence to Jack. “Mister Hi’Jak,” she said, “What can I help you with?”

Re: Day 02 [1800hrs] End of the day.

Reply #2 –
[ Lt. JG Hi'Jak | Geological Lab] Attn:  @Hastata-Nerada
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The lights of the Geological lab were dim. Jack's tiredness from his work outside the ship and the fact that his migrain had advanced to a state much worse than before had caused him to turn them down low, which did admittingly give the room a slightly more intimidating vibe. He had also switched his consol's readout from English to Klingon, finding the broad brush strokes of the more iconography based language easier to read while his eyes were adjusting. When Martin cleared the air he looked up from his consol and actually smiled towards her.

"Welcome, please close the door." He asked slightly shielding his eyes from the light of the hallway. "After our last encounter Trent had me working the outside of the ship, helping the repair crew, and qoute, being a lacky. I'm afraid to say I haven't been feeling all that well lately. Not sick mind you, I don't get sick, just... tired."

If Martin cared to inspect him, Jack would have what appared to be bags under his eyes, and a soreness to his body. He was tired, run ragged, and was trying to kill the clock. "I did not however call you in for a pity party. I made my mistake, and I bare the work."

Jack gestured towards the puzzle box. Walking over to where it was situated. Gesturing for the commanding officer to follow him. "Like I said I have a puzzle." He turned towards her.

"When I did my interview to come aboard this ship, I asked my interviewer to complete a Rubiks cube. I timed them while they did it. They thought it was a bit of a joke, but, but there were a couple of reasons I asked them to try it. The first was that the rubix cube is an exercise in pattern recognition, it's a childs toy. A computer such as the one that runs this ship would be able to solve it in under half a minute my best time is about seven minutes, and The average human can take about three hours to fix one. The person who interviewed me took about ten minutes before they gave up."

"This is an artifact I stole from Starbase 84 before I left. I ran scans of it using 84's computer to try and see what it was made of, and the results came up with unknown alloys." He indicated at the pyramid. "Is a puzzle box. It's like a rubiks cube, only so much worse. I have been working on it since yesterday, all in all I have put in nine hours of work and I can't seem to match a single side. if that's what it even wants."

"Scan's couldn't tell me what's inside it, and it was found in a temple where the other items were carbon dated at least a couple hundred years old. Yet the locking mechanics built into this are... devastatingly brilliant, like so much so that I don't think it's been built yet." Jack looked at Martin with a rather serious expression running across his features.

"So to recap, I have a childs toy, that was found buried in the past, and built in the future." A small smile graced his features. "You gotta admit that's a pretty cool puzzle."

Re: Day 02 [1800 hrs.] End of the Day

Reply #3 –
[ Lt.Com. Vivian Martin | Geological Lab | Deck 09 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Kaligos
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Martin listened patiently as Hi’Jak explained himself. So Trent had sent him to work EVA, there was that at least. Martin nearly suggested seeing Nicander if Jack was feeling under the weather but held her tongue. She felt that if Jack wished to avoid the “pity party” as he called it, then suggesting that one should see a doctor would be the last thing she should do. After all, Martin reasoned, perhaps he was merely tired from working on the exterior of the ship all day. At least he admitted to making a mistake, this was progress, a step. Martin made a mental note to ask Trent about what Hi’Jak had truly meant when he admitted to being party to his old superior’s death on Starbase 84. It was Hi’jak’s next statement however that really piqued her interest.

A puzzle box it seemed, from a dig site of some kind. Martin peered at it while Jack explained what he had found. A curious device it was, if it was even a puzzle box. If it was composed of unknown alloys who knew what it could do. If it was like the probability-attering device once encountered by Deep Space Nine, did it grant eternal good fortune when one managed to solve it? Could it grant wishes or replicate material wealth? Was it the source of mythology on some far off world or kingdom? Did it contain something better left untouched? The possibilities were endless. But for now, there was business to attend to.

Martin straightened herself and addressed Hi’Jak directly. “Indeed it is quite an interesting puzzle, if that is even what we are looking at here.” She said. “How exactly does it work, from what you can tell? What kinds of moving parts does it possess and what kinds of scans have you performed so far?” Martin asked.

Re: Day 02 [1800hrs] End of the day.

Reply #4 –
[ Lt. JG Hi'Jak | Geological Lab] Attn:  @Hastata-Nerada
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"It's a combination lock of some sort that much I can figure out, but bugger me when it comes to the combination." Jack said softly as he picked up the triangular puzzle to show Commander Martin. He held it flat in his hand pointing as he did his best to explain.

"There are grooved lines and markings along almost every section, but it devides neatly into rotatable connective points. From the scans I know that this is a first outer layer which is highly mold-able." He said as he took two areas pressing them with his for finger and thumb and rotating them with ease so that they swapped sides. "All in all there nine sections to a side each that can be moved independently. The tips and points of the puzzle box can not move."


To emphasize the action he gripped the box with both hands and gave the best attempt to try and shift one of the corners he could but they remained defiantly locked into place. "This means that there are four sides, with 9 movable pieces, which leads us to a possible combination that is about." Jack ran the numbers off in his head and did a quick approximation, nine to the power of four (repeated four times) with the additional bonus of the fact that each peace on the block can be arranged on it's own side, making nine to the power of nine different combinations on each side. "A metric fuck ton of possible combinations, which is approximately, six point eight Quintilian that's a six and an eight followed by two hundred zero's."

"Of course my math could be off, but I've usually been good at coming up with massive numbers on the fly, it's a talent that kind of got me through warp, and temporal mechanics in the academy." In essence it was likely impossible to open this thing within his or Martin's life time unless they got extremely lucky. even with Thea's brain working on the project it might have taken a while, not that he really wanted to share his find with a warship.

"In essence if we played by the rules of the game we will never win, which is why I'm trying to what everyone does with these types of things. I'm trying to cheat. There is a christmas present under all that wrapping and I'm going to peel enough of it to take a look at what the puzzle box got me."

Re: Day 02 [1800 hrs.] End of the Day

Reply #5 –
[ Lt.Com. Vivian Martin | Geological Lab | Deck 09 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Kaligos
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So, a combination lock eh? So this would be an interesting sort of puzzle. Martin paused and observed patiently as Hi’Jak picked up the puzzle to show her. It was a curious sort of box, one she felt like she had seen similar items of back home on Edessa. But those could not possibly be related, as those were mere children’s toys sold by a shop in Providence. Oh how she had begged her father to have one, but at the end of the day had come away empty-handed.

The grooves and lines on the box fascinated her though. Perhaps some kind of symbology at play here? No, definitely some form of symbolism, else why would they be placed at such regular intervals and along the edges of the individual pieces? With nine movable pieces that indicated a relatively simple combination, only... Oh, actually quite a lot of possible combinations. Six point eight quintillion as Jack pointed out ever so helpfully. Obviously neither of them would ever see this box opened if they tried every combination, so there must be another way to get through it. How? Well, as Jack so kindly offered, to cheat.

“And just how, Mr. Hi’Jak, do you plan on pulling that off?” Asked Martin, as she looked over the box. What secrets did it hold? What possible treasures did it contain? Or was this an ancient alien’s way of playing a practical joke on poor interloping humanoids such as the likes of Martin and Hi’Jak? The sheer possibilities. “Are you going to crack it open with a coil spanner, or do it delicately? I must know this before I give any sort of authorization regarding the… rather interesting artifact you have here.”

Re: Day 02 [1800hrs] End of the day.

Reply #6 –
[ Lt. JG Hi'Jak | Geological Lab] Attn:  @Hastata-Nerada
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"Nothing so dramatic, besides we hit this thing with a hammer than we loose the valuable things we could learn from it, internal components and such." He placed the puzzlebox on the table for a moment, in truth he had considered the same options that  Martin was suggesting now, but he couldn't actually bring himself to break something like this. It was too much a piece of art. Plus what ever had been entombed in the small device likely hadn't seen air in at least a handful of centuries, this meant that extraction had to be handled extremely carefully.

"Like I said I want to take a peek at it's internal components, so I'm having the computer run every kind of test it can to determine the metal and it's density, at which point I'm planning to set up a sonic resonator, to an imaging device." An irresistibly smug grin spread across Jack's face.

"I'm gonna give it an ultrasound. The vibrations will bounce around inside the box, and tell us what's inside we will get a picture, not a good one, nothing with color, but it's a starting point and it will tell us if this thing is worth cracking open albeit carefully." He elaborated on the subject looking to his boss for permission and waiting for Thea to chime in that the scans were complete, that he could at least have something to compare it with.

Re: Day 02 [1800 hrs.] End of the Day

Reply #7 –
[ Lt.Com. Vivian Martin | Geological Lab | Deck 09 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Kaligos
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The fact that Jack wasn’t about to take a hammer to the puzzle box was a significant relief to Martin. She would hate to break apart such a piece of art with such blunt instruments. In her eyes this box should be explored with delicacy, should not be bent, spindled, or mutilated. This piece of workmanship was to be preserved lest some potential hidden within it remain forever undiscovered. Who knew what lay within that could be disturbed by their indelicate probings into this pyramidion.

“So,” Uttered Martin. “You plan to use sonic waves to survey the interior shapes and inner workings of this… puzzle box? An interesting proposition to be sure. But how do we know that this material doesn’t block sonic emissions?"

All while Martin spoke, she pondered what to do. Could they use a micro-resonance scan? Could they perhaps use some form of alpha particle to bombard the box and see how it interacted? No no, there had to be a more logical approach. An object such as this had to be composed of some kind of compound, even if it wasn't one the scanners recognized. It couldn't be composed of any new elements, any undiscovered elements would be too unstable to maintain any sort of reasonable half-life. No, this would definitely have to be some mix of alloys of known elements, which means it had to have some identifiable combination to it. Which in turn meant that it would have to have some way of being penetrated by scans.

"Tell you what," she said. "Let's try your ultrasound at first, and if that doesn;t work, we can try taking a sample of the alloys and materials and try to perform an analysis from there."

Re: Day 02 [1800 hrs.] End of the Day

Reply #8 –
[ Lt. JG Hi'Jak | Geological Lab] Attn:  @Hastata-Nerada
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"Everything has a vibrational frequency, and with that frequency we can see through items with the exception of a solid block of metal, but." He picked up the puzzle box, and tossed it towards Martin, a simple under handed throw towards her to help showcase a point. "It's too light to be made out of a solid block."

"Aside from the fact that it clearly has a moving set of mechanics that this should give us a small look into, we can tell that mathematically it's too light. Even when dealing with an unknown material you can make approximations  thanks to it's pyramid shape it's fairly easy to estimate volume and density, and the numbers i have ran when dealing with it's weight simply don't add up. So it's either hollow or it's extra-planar, in either situation it's scientifically worth while."

"And if this box is made of mythical vibranium or some other mystic metal immune to kinetic energy, well... it would be our duty to rip it apart atom by atom until we could replicate it, and then proceed to Plaster that shit all over Thea's hull, a truly absorbent metal such as that would be immune to energy weapons. Which would render our warship with the most powerful hide in the galaxy."

Re: Day 02 [1800 hrs.] End of the Day

Reply #9 –
[ Lt.Com. Vivian Martin | Geological Lab | Deck 09 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Kaligos
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Too light to be made of a solid block indeed. As Martin caught the box, she noticed that it was far lighter than it should be, despite the fact that Jack shouldn't be tossing a priceless and potentially fragile artifact aside. The fact that it seemed to have moving parts should obviously imply that it it possesses some degree of open space internally, and would suggest that it contained a myriad of component ingredients, but despite that it still seemed too light for its given size. Martin wasn't sure what extra-planar meant, possibly something to do with bending dimensions of some kind.

"Personally, my money is on hollow." Martin said, as she held up the pyramid and peered at its exterior intricacies. Unfortunately, once again, Hi'Jak's following references flew right over Martin's head. She didn't know what "mythical vibranium" was, but she could assume that it was some kind of strong and ultralight metal given the context. Admittedly, Martin liked his idea of coating Thea's hull with the alloy, provided they could crack what it was made of in the first place. An entirely absorbent alloy would go a great way towards protecting the vessel and its crew.

"I concur." Martin replied. "Which means that we had better get around to figuring out what makes this thing tick, and fast." She held the box out and towards Hi'Jak. "So, let's see what we can gather from this thing."
 

Re: Day 02 [1800 hrs.] End of the Day

Reply #10 –
[ Lt. JG Hi'Jak | Geological Lab] Attn:  @Hastata-Nerada
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The tests went underway, and as Jack loaded the triangular box into the scanning bed, the readings he got back were extremely muddled he moved a hand over his face for a moment as the sensors tried to run deep scans, but the device was annoyingly more thick or perhaps more advanced than he had given credit to the thing not impossible all things considered. He looked at Martin slightly disapointed as he ran some quick estimations.

"We aren't gonna get an answer tonight." He said disastified. Somehow he honestly thouight that since this ship had three advanced computer cores that this would have been over in a flash. However it seemed most of that processessing power was already in use and to make sense of this muddled reading it needed to compile over night.

Jack let out a yawn, he honestly could do with a nap, and this thing while neat wasn't that important it could wait. "Martin, the ship won't be done scanning this thing till tomorrow morning, I've had a long day, permission to stop working and get some sleep? We can meet up here in the geological labs first thing tomorrow before I go on this away mission thing and take a look at the results with a fresh set of eyes and a good cup of coffee."

He rolled his shoulders slightly true to his word Trent had Jack doing a ton of drudge work and his entire body was sore, if he was gonna have a date with Jaya tonight if she even shows up Than honestly he wanted to take a nap and have a shower first.

"I have a date anyway, I think this can wait." He waited for her to dismiss him as she was the commanding officer, but the moment that order was given he was out of the lab wanting nothing more than to go to his quarters and drop dead.
 
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