A Nest in the Dark, Part 1

Captain's Log

Stardate 48423.1: We have completed our delivery of supplies to The Foggy Peak system and are en route to star system 66-3-R-M2 to perform a search for a Starfleet planetary survey probe that has stopped sending telemetry months ahead of its decommissioning. The time it takes us to travel there should be uneventful, and gives us some much needed time for routine ship’s maintenance and diagnostics.

The Hanesawa, traveling at warp speed to the uncharted 66-3-R-M2 system, encountered a vast subspace field that began interfering with their engines. Lieutenant Cohnson was able to determine that two nearby Starfleet subspace relays were also out of their intended fixed positions, and extrapolate that the ship was now off course, all effects of the massive subspace field. As the Captain stepped onto the bridge, the ship shuddered. On the viewscreen, the star trails contracted and deepened in color, becoming red before another deep shake and the ship dropped to sub-light speeds. Space outside of the vessel became strange; instead of the starscape filled with stars from across the spectrum, only the brightest stars were still visible as dull red specks. Ahead of the ship was a diffuse red glow on the edge of the visible spectrum. Sensors indicated that the “edge” of the glow was nearly 5 AUs from the ship’s current position, though it was being drawn towards it by the curvature of the subspace field. Lieutenant Cohnson engaged the impulse engines in full reverse, slowing but not stopping the ship’s trajectory into the unknown center.

Chief Engineer Hagen launched a probe into the anomaly, which found that the glowing haze had a distributed mass of about half a Standard Solar Mass over a diameter of approximately one quarter AU, and that the little energy radiating from it was primarily in the infrared spectrum. Calibrating the probe’s sensors for infrared light, they were able to determine that the cloud was in fact made of trillions of small objects: 30 cm square, flat panels. There was also a small M-class star at the center of the objects, but all of it’s energy was being absorbed by the panels surrounding it. The panels would re-emit waste heat which was then itself absorbed by panels further in orbit in the cloud, on and on to the outer orbits which barely emitted any wasted energy. The readings from the probe also indicated that as it moved deeper into the cloud, its internal chronometer was moving increasingly faster than that of the ship.

Captain Ral hailed the cloud, expressing non-hostility and asking for explanation, receiving no answer over the comms channel, but in the form of a change in the movements of cloud’s constituent panels. The panels had until then been moving not at random, but intentionally in orbits and lines around the center, changing now to make a large open space in the cloud of panels large enough for several starships to fit into. A knot of panels also appeared to be converging at a point within the new tunnel-like space.

Science Officer Ma’a’yan scanned the now strange external stars, discovering two reasons for the disappearance of most and the red dimness of the rest: a temporal acceleration, meaning time was moving much faster in their local region of space as compared to the rest of the universe, and a symmetrical subspace field. Lt. Hagen’s knowledge of computers led her to understand that this is similar to how Starfleet computer cores work, producing a symmetrical subspace field within the core in order to accelerate time and perform computations relatively faster than outside of the field. Her knowledge of warp systems also allowed her to explain why this caused the Hanesawa to drop out of warp: an asymmetrical field, such as the one generated by a starship to propel it through space, cannot maintain form within a symmetrical field. This information reminded her of a thought experiment, known as a Matryoshka Brain, a massive computer system powered by harnessing the entire energy output of a star, similar to a Dyson Sphere. Matryoshka Brains were considered only theoretical, though much like Dyson Spheres, an example of which had recently been discovered by the Enterprise-D on stardate 46125.3, all evidence seemed to suggest they were currently trapped within one.

The scans of the outside stars also revealed that the entire subspace field and the cloud within were moving through space.

The Captain ordered the ship into the seemingly welcoming opening in the cloud. As the ship neared it, the empathic Lt. Hagen sensed countless sentient minds operating at incredible speeds, unable to pinpoint any individuals. Lt. Ma’a’yan used her telepathy to attempt to reach out to any one specific mind, successfully reaching their thoughts, though it appeared to live out an entire life in the blink of an eye. She glimpsed a being without physical form, living within a computer simulation, free from want or need, changing the simulation as it desired, and eventually choosing to reach the end of its life.

As the ship approached the mass of panels within the opening, they began to resolve into a coherent shape: a near perfect duplicate of the Hanesawa, made entirely of the panels with absolute black on one side and mirrors on the other. Scans revealed that a habitable atmosphere, matching the one internal to the ship was forming within the doppelgänger. The Captain attempted yet another hail, answered again only by the duplicate ship moving alongside the Hanesawa.

The crew prepares an away team to board the strange craft…