Extreme Risk (sci-fi, grim)

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undergrain1
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Extreme Risk (sci-fi, grim)

Postby undergrain1 » Thu Sep 17, 2009 7:32 am

Pre-requisite for understanding all the references in this story is the TV series "Star Trek: Voyager" and the episode "The Equinox".

Extreme Risk

Ensign Peter Sandford rose from his quarters on the starship USS Equinox, lost in the Delta Quadrant for four weeks. It was 0125 ship time, early yet in the night watch. He dressed in casual, loose-fitting clothes, picked up the isolinear chip with his hacking routines, and headed for the only working holodeck. He was due on duty at 0600, which gave him four hours to enjoy himself.

The holodeck was technically reserved for training programs, but Peter wanted to indulge himself in a long-standing urge since childhood when he’d been on a wilderness trek with his family on Pollux IV.

He walked through the deserted corridors. So many of the ship’s small crew complement had died when the Caretaker pulled the science ship 70,000 light years across space, that normal security detail was simply out of the question. To add to his confidence in not being detected, the ship’s internal sensors were also badly in need of maintenance. Engineering was overworked and understaffed.

Peter arrived at Holodeck 2, slipped in his chip and overrode the command lockout. He loaded his program, “Mudbog7”, and deftly deactivated the safety protocols, engaged the interrupt lockout, sealed the doors until the program finished its cycle, and blocked the room from transporter beams. Unless someone on board was more brilliant than him, which he had been told was not the case, nobody would be barging in to interrupt his final adventure. He took his chip out of the reader slot and tucked it into his pocket.

The doors opened, and Peter walked in, staring in anticipation at the forbidding-looking jungle, and watched behind him as the doors closed. After a few seconds hesitation, the computer hid the holodeck doors. Quite unnecessarily, the computer highlighted a tree stump. Peter thought, what the hey, went over, and lifted part of the stump’s top, a gimmick from a 400-year-old television program about World War II prisoners-of-war. Inside, there was the holodeck control panel. Since problems encountered by the starship Enterprise a few years ago, holodeck controls were always made accessible in this way in case voice access was off-line.

Peter pulled up the menu and nodded approvingly that all his override protocols were still secure. He dropped the stump lid shut, and then walked forward, as the jungle scrolled along the floor and walls of the 16 foot wide, 24 foot long holodeck. The computer did a good job of illustrating infinite distance horizontally and up into the sky. Now, he’d be putting it to use for vertical exploration at negative altitudes.

And there it was, just as he had programmed it.

An expanse of black mud, parts of it glimmering in the light of several large, bright moons and a distant, secondary star. Bubbles popped on the surface from time to time. Peter slipped off his loafers and put one foot onto the mud, not his weight, and pushed a bit. The mud near his foot quivered and wiggled like a waterbed. Peter’s heartbeat quickened.

The expanse was about nine feet across and ten feet wide. Peter had told the computer to make it at least ten feet deep, but beyond that at the random selection of the computer. The first manifestation of his safety override.

Peter stepped back and then ran forward to jump across to the middle of the mud, and immediately the mud yielded to his legs and most of his thighs and then he continued to sink steadily, watching the mud rise, coating and staining his clothes with its clinging, peaty substance. It was cold, chilling him deeply. In a few minutes, the mud had reached his armpits.

But this mud was holodeck-programmed. Ordinary mud was too dense to allow the relatively low density of a Terran’s body to sink below a safe buoyancy point. Klingons usually went neck deep. Vulcans might only sink rib deep. The lithe Andorians bobbed like corks at waist depth. The stocky Tellarites went down like an anvil.

Peter’s second safety override now became evident. This mud was just low enough in density so that he would not be buoyant. He did not stop sinking at his armpits. Thus, he watched as the mud rose over his shoulders, tongues of it pushing over them, and closing shut. It rose around his neck and reached the bottom of his chin before rising along the front of it.

The Equinox was lost. The Federation was 70,000 light years away. If he’d qualified for the higher psych profile demands of a fine ship like the new U.S.S. Voyager, due for launch a matter of weeks after the Equinox entered the Badlands, maybe he wouldn’t be in this hopeless pickle, surrounded by hostile aliens like the Kazon. Peter would never see his family, his fiancee, ever again. There were worse ways to die, especially if the Vidiians showed up again. He’d love to give them a piece of his mind, but they’d take all they could get of the rest of him.

So, with calm resignation, Peter felt the mud rise over his lower lip and pour into his mouth. The third effect of his safety override - actual drowning or suffocation. He swallowed the mud as it kept refilling his mouth, rose over his ears and blocked out sound. No more tasting the emergency rations that was almost all that the replicators were allowed to dispense. Three times a week, they could dine buffet-style on more substantial food, but even it was bland and not that inspiring. His taste buds would be spared it anymore, just this slightly bitter-tasting mud.

Thankfully, he’d also overridden the computer’s warning, that annoying “Fed Comm Voice” recorded decades back by venerable Dr. Christine Chapel after she’d retired from active service. The Feds should’ve changed the voice twice since then to some refreshing new voice. Chapel’s voice also reminded him of the rather annoying Betazoid special ambassador he’d shown to a shuttle once for her ride to meet the famous Enterprise.

Other sounds Peter wouldn’t miss were the acerbic, terrible bedside remarks of the Emergency Medical Hologram. Alarms indicating life support failure. The orders of Captain Ransom and Exec Officer Burke. His crew chief, Marla Gilmore, who ordered him around like a raw cadet, perhaps because, he admitted, Burke ordered her around with not that different an attitude.

The mud rose over his nose, cutting Peter off from the air, the foul, stale air that the crew had been breathing for five weeks with only some of the air purifying equipment still on line. It was chemically and biologically safe to breathe, it just lacked the freshness of outdoor air on Earth and hundreds of other planets. He wouldn’t miss it... much. Phaser coolant would have improved the ship’s air with some pungent variety to die with. Maybe he should have programmed simulated coolant aroma to be bubbling out of the mud. Too late.

The mud steadily rose and reached for Peter’s eyes. He’d seen worse horrors: the Caretaker’s intrusive needle pushing into his gut to take cell samples. The ugly Kazon. The horribly-disfigured Vidiians. The swirling maw of a singularity as another ship was dismembered while falling into it and the Equinox strained its engines to escape. Dying crew members. The snarly face of the EMH.

All those sights were ended as the mud coated his eyes. As it rose up his forehead, it reminded Peter that his hair was scratchy with dandruff and needing a trim - a luxury now with the ship short on supplies and replicator power, and the barber dead four weeks ago. Too bad they didn’t program the EMH as an EHH - Emergency Hairdressing Hologram. Then again, Zimmerman would have probably made its barber conversation program inferior as well.

The mud rolled over Peter’s head and soaked down into his hair, so no more worries about dandruff and long hair. Oh, yes, when it covered his cheeks and chin and throat, it spared him further painful shaves with a dulling blade. The electric shavers were out of adjustment.

The mud pushed inside his ear canals, wetting down the ear wax that had accumulated to trap the dust in the air. Peter could no longer hold the foul air in his lungs and he let it out, hearing it bubbling upward to the surface. He wasn’t actually sinking into the duranium floor - merely the computer had raised the “surface” of the simulation upward, and if it was deeper than 14 feet, the simulated surface of the ground would become only a memory artifact. If anyone could open the holodeck doors, they’d be going uphill while still walking on relatively level ground, not aware that the other holodeck occupant was below the apparent floor.

Peter inhaled, sucking the mud through his nasal passages, another result of his safety override, and feeling stabs of cold as it slid into his lungs. He continued to exhale air and inhale mud, even as he swallowed it and the mud reached his eardrums. He heard his doomed heart pounding furiously.

He wondered how deep the mud had been made by the computer. It could have made it as infinite as space if Peter had wanted it to, though there would be no point in doing it or not doing it.

Finally, his consciousness began to fade, and his life signs, monitored by the computer but not reported to anyone, were falling into the danger zone. Ordinarily, medical help would already be present. The crabby EMH would be bending over him, frowning and chewing Peter out for his reckless endangerment of life. He wouldn’t miss it.

Peter Sandford, Ensign, commissioned 2366, seemingly doomed to a humdrum career in the lower ranks, died. Thirty minutes later, his revival hopeless, the computer determined that his program parameters had been satisfied, the program now complete, and it shut down.

Peter Sandford lay sprawled on the floor of the blank holodeck, not a speck of the simulated mud in sight outside or inside of him.

At 0607, Gilmore paged him. His commbadge was in his quarters. The computer couldn’t locate him, but it did report that he had an override in latent status on Holodeck 2. Burke went there with a security detail, opened the doors, and stared inside at Peter’s prone form. They rushed him to Sick Bay, where the EMH pronounced him dead due to suffocation; his lungs scarred and unable to transfer air to blood; his eyes scarred; etc., etc.

“What did this man die of?” demanded Captain Ransom.

“I don’t know, Captain,” the EMH said flatly.

“I might have an answer,” reported Burke. “The only program on this chip...”

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Chimerix
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Re: Extreme Risk (sci-fi, grim)

Postby Chimerix » Thu Sep 17, 2009 8:37 am

hehehe... and Trek finally gets a proper quicksand scene!
The difference between theory and reality is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and reality.

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PM2K
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Re: Extreme Risk (sci-fi, grim)

Postby PM2K » Thu Sep 17, 2009 6:18 pm

Heh, heh.... cool! :D

jack c
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Re: Extreme Risk (sci-fi, grim)

Postby jack c » Thu Sep 17, 2009 10:42 pm

i have often wondered if virtual reality will advance to the Star Trek simulation-room stage. Who knows? I never envisioned the internet, and several other Trek gadgets are routine nowadays. Good story idea.

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stevensenechal
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Re: Extreme Risk (sci-fi, grim)

Postby stevensenechal » Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:35 pm

I always felt Star Trek Voyager deserved a mucky death for it's trite, uninteresting and pretentious screenwriting. Thank you for giving it a decent death scene!
Arrakis trains the faithful.

steve70
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Re: Extreme Risk (sci-fi, grim)

Postby steve70 » Tue Oct 22, 2019 11:00 am

Just come across this thread after doing a search of old stories.

Interesting story; considering the number of episodes produced in the various Star Trek series from 1987 to 2001 (and also the later series not shown on terrestrial channels) seems strange there was never an episode featuring a character in mud or quicksand.

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SinkerCutie
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Re: Extreme Risk (sci-fi, grim)

Postby SinkerCutie » Tue Oct 22, 2019 2:13 pm

steve70 wrote:Just come across this thread after doing a search of old stories.

Interesting story; considering the number of episodes produced in the various Star Trek series from 1987 to 2001 (and also the later series not shown on terrestrial channels) seems strange there was never an episode featuring a character in mud or quicksand.

Actually, you mean from 1987 to 2005. There's Star Trek Enterprise, too.

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cbqdbq
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Re: Extreme Risk (sci-fi, grim)

Postby cbqdbq » Mon Feb 17, 2020 6:02 am

i like the refs to things Peter wont miss

emergncy rations, the voice that sounds like Lawaxna Troi, the remarks and sight of the hologram doctor, alarms, orders of captain and others, foul stale air, caretaker needle, Kazons, Vidians, black hole, long dandrufy hair, dull razor blades.

i think i mgiht remember Vidians as creatures that took stuff from others to keep themselves alive.
cbqdbq
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