Chronicles of Sol: The Fall-Chapter 242 - Two-Hundred and One Of Crystals and Babies

With the first loads of minerals being brought in by the mining teams, the council was getting together for a meeting.

Countryman walked into the room, noting the people in the room. He wasn't the last one this time, but not by much. Chief Medical Officer Robins came in right after him.

Taking his seat he addressed the room. "Alright then we've got some good news with this field."

Ruri nodded and held up a sample of Ephon Crystals, "I have with me a sample of the local crystals, it has much higher purity then what we have been working with."

Smith frowned, "I'm a little lost, what do we even do with these crystals? I've never seen anything that used them?"

"Our technology doesn't really use it, aside from a planet cracker, our applications for Ephon Crystals are limited. But…" Countryman gestured at Vera, "Why don't you enlighten the council?"

Greyman commented, "Some of us already know."

Countryman gave him a look, "Yes but the Council has been reorganized since then."

Vera took charge, "So it was. Now then, Ephon Crystals are highly prized due to their hyperspace properties. Most notably hyperdrive engines, and more importantly to us, they can be used in multi-spatial sensor arrays. That, my dear friends, is what we are focusing on right now. The new generation sensors we are working on are multi-spatial. Able to peer through multiple layers of hyperspace at once. Now, if we just needed basic low-resolution tracking sensors we'd be done already, but we don't. We are looking at the crystals for the lens of the sensor so to speak."

"Alright that I can understand," commented Technician Redfox. "Since we have these, how long before we have the sensors we need? Also, could we develop a hyperdrive?"

Countryman chuckled, "Sure, if we knew the first thing about hyperdrive, but we don't. A project like that could very well take years, I'd rather focus on the sensors first. Not to mention I still haven't given up hope of getting out of here at the next surfacing."

Ruri interjected, "At the very least the surfacing might be rather illuminating. If we see how the storm transitions from hyperspace to normal space. It might give us clues as to how hyperspace windows actually work."

Security head Baker spoke up, "As interesting as that is, I'd like to know. How long would it take us to develop a hyperdrive if we started now?"

Ruri and Vera looked at each other, and then Ruri spoke. "It's hard to say. We know the end goal, we know Ephon crystals are involved. But beyond that, we know nothing. If I had to guess, it would be a project of several decades. It took us nearly fifty years to develop warp drive, and we had a lot more resources at our disposal at the time. Running into the Cathamari gave us a shortcut that accelerated our program; without that, we might have taken longer."

Kurtz frowned, "I'm not sure I like the idea of being here for that many years. Is there anyone aboard that would know more about hyperdrive technology?"

Vera shook her head, "No, most of the Valorians aboard aren't going to know anything."

Reia, the main Valorian representative, interjected. "I did some checking on that. We have a few scientists, Vera's an expert in shield technology. We've also got a few experts on plasma and fusion technologies. A couple well versed in computers. Even someone with an advanced degree in materials science, but no one with a degree in multi-spatial physics. Trust me, Vera asked me to look since such a person would be a big help on the sensor project, but they'd also be vital to designing a hyperdrive."

"Doesn't sound like a promising project then," said Kurtz.

Smith quickly concurred, "No, it doesn't, and we have other concerns. I do agree that the sensor project is more immediately required."

Robins took this moment to interject. "Now that we are done considering and rejecting a hyperdrive research project, perhaps we can discuss the data I have."

"Right, you mentioned new data."

"Well, it's been nearly a year since the treatments, in that time I've noted a few trends. I'm seeing a definite pattern of minor mutations among the populace, thankfully the detrimental ones seem to vanish within a few hours. More interestingly, is the birth rate, we've seen a spike in twins: almost half of all births over the last year were twins. There is also something to note about the gender ratio as well."

"What about the gender ratio?"

'It's skewed, very heavily skewed. We saw very few males born during this period, if the trend continues we are going to have a lot of harems in the future."

Countryman frowned, "How heavily skewed?"

"Only one in fifty was born male."

"That's a lot of girls," commented someone sounding rather concerned

"Yes, well, I'm already looking into ways to get the number more even."

Redfox said, "Speaking of mutations, I've been watching the fish, we've seen something similar. Males have become quite rare among the fish as well, but the fish have also become increasingly prolific. We have done some targeted gene therapy to get the population growth curve under control, so far it's working. Maybe I should share my research with Chief Robins?"

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"Sounds good to me, you two get together and look into this."

Reia frowned, "What kind of mutations are we talking about?"

"Well I don't know about others, but my neural tissue has increased in density by almost twenty percent over the last year and several organs vanished in the same time frame. All things I reported to Robins."

Everyone looked at Countryman, "Why didn't we hear about this?"

Robins answered, "I asked him not to tell anyone else but the captain's biodata has been invaluable. He's changing faster than anyone else."

"Faster!?

Robins nodded, "By several orders of magnitude, it's quite intriguing." He pulled out some holograms, "The captain has lost all of his vestigial organs, his own nanites subsumed them."

"SUBSUMED!? Why, they are supposed to maintain his body aren't they!?"

Robins sighed, "I was getting to that."

Countryman answered, "They subsumed them because they are following a new genetic plan. It's like watching evolution on steroids, I'm not even sure what they are replacing them with yet, but I don't think we are going to stay human much longer."

Reia frowned, "Do we have any idea what's causing the mutations, was it the serum, or something else?"

Robins nodded, "We've identified the cause, stopping it is another issue. The serum itself triggered a hyper-evolutionary adaptation process, we think it's ultimately beneficial, if a little debilitating at times and it's only going to speed up. Isanir exposure seems to act as a catalyst."

Vera blinked, "If it does, then a solution seems obvious, we should raise shields."

Robins said, "That would help but it would only slow the process, not stop it."

Countryman interjected, "Not to mention, if we activate the shields we won't be able to draw power from the storm, we'd end up eating into our fuel reserves."

Ruri nodded, "Unfortunately it would only be a temporary measure at best."

Reia spoke next, "I think instead we should be discussing whether or not we divulge this information."

"I'd vote against it at this time. Most people haven't really noticed, the incidents are easy enough to dismiss at the moment. Telling people now may only serve to make them panic. However, in the meantime, this issue should be the center of our medical research."

"Right, let's avoid telling people we made a mistake."

Everyone let out a breath and shared looks. For a moment they were all silent, the room awkward until finally someone looked at Redfox, "It's not like we had a better choice. We were dying, the serum gave us a year where we weren't wondering if we'd live to see another day. The mutation problem is honestly the lesser issue. Knowing what I know now, I'd still vote to deploy it," said Countryman.

"Well if he's fine with it, I think we can all be. He is most affected after all."

Robins sighed, "Speaking of him, I didn't finish going over what we've observed." He directed attention back to the holograph, "In addition to neural tissue density increase, and the loss of vestigial organs. We've noted an increasing degree of integration between his cybernetic implants and his organic components."

Robins zoomed in on the brain, highlighting the structure, "The captain previously had large sections of his brain replaced with cybernetic analogs. Those analogs, while still there, have restructured themselves, following a pattern we haven't figured out but they are in line with the changes to his brain structure. His intelligence charts are up, problems that would previously have been an issue for him, are solved in seconds. We tried an IQ test but the results were meaningless, he's gone up over two hundred points. So we've designed a new set of tests. We used a computer to directly compare his abilities, he beat the computer by thirty to forty points on all metrics. He was faster with more correct solutions."

"Wasn't he already smart?"

"More like mentally fast, and now he is getting smarter. Ruri, Vera, even myself, everyone shows increased IQ scores and better testing results in general. This appears to be a trend, the scores and tests just confirm it. The population seems to be getting smarter."

"So you are saying the captain is a template for what?"

Robins looked around, "We don't know, but the captain might be right. We aren't going to be human for much longer and the Valorians aren't going to be Valorian for much longer either. Whatever we are becoming, both species seem to be following the same path.'

"Are you sure?"

"No, we'd need another year to be certain, but a trend in the data is showing. We are going to keep an eye on this and continue to study it."

"Moving aside from our mutation issues, where are we on the sensor project?"

"Well as I mentioned earlier we have low-resolution sensors now. Medium resolution is still a ways off, now that we have a source of new crystals, we are going to look at new ways of shaping and refining them. We need to figure out the ideal lens shape. Our last test with a lens got us a somewhat better resolution but the energy draw was atrocious, three hundred gigajoules per second, but we did get some interesting data on the layers below."

"Interesting you say? Enough to predict one of those hyperspatial eddies?"

"Not by a long shot, we'd need more data, but it's a start. Now that we have the crystals, our research should go a lot faster. I suspect we will have the optimal lens structure by the end of the month, perhaps two at the latest. After that we will need time to collect operational data and create prediction models. If all goes well, we could be predicting eddies in as early as three months, six at the latest."

"Sounds good, looks like that project at least is going well."

"Yes, well, that won't be the end of it. I mentioned the energy draw? Our prototypes have all had high energy requirements, a full array is certain to have similar if not greater power draw."

Countryman nodded, "It sounds like the sensor project won't end in six months, we'd merely have reached the practical use phase."

Greyman concurred, "So it does, sounds like we should be making plans to budget a mark two program."

Kurtz said, "I can get that done, I'm doing most of it already. Just get me the material requirements and expected power allocations so we can budget it."

"We don't need to start right away..." suddenly alarms blared.

The computer interjected, "Alert, multiple hyperspatial ruptures detected!" The ship rocked."