Chapter Text
“I was stationed on Khepri VI of the Benthos System in the Delta Quadrant. The Federation classified it a type O planet, and it was 97% water. Like Earth, the oceans were salt, but the concentration was significantly higher. It was a recent addition to the Federation, and as such I was sent to catalogue the life forms found there.
“Because the weather pattern was so hostile, my team and I were forced to employ a large vessel, about 100 metres in length. Her Captain coined her The Advent . She was a decommissioned naval ship that housed roughly 30 crew members, including the 11 members that made up my research team. My team and I were stationed in the Southern hemisphere of the planet and were planning to explore the trenches along what used to be a coastline. The trip was supposed to be eighty cycles, we were scheduled to move to the Northern hemisphere by cycle forty.”
“Did you end up in the Northern hemisphere?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Did you complete your exploration in the Southern hemisphere before…”
“Ah, yes. The crew and I catalogued three hundred species, eighty of which had about forty to fifty subspecies. If the oxygen concentration of the oceans weren’t so high, we’d have been able to bring up a few specimens for more extensive studies.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I tried to bring a few life forms to the surface, but as soon as they met the weak concentration of oxygen in the air, they suffocated. Kara wasn't able to figure out how they died so quickly before the expedition was cut short.”
“Kara is?”
“Doctor Kara Lu’Nal was responsible for the overall health of the team, and any specimens brought to us alive.
“I see. When did you encounter The Anomaly?”
“The Anomaly showed up on the scanners initially on cycle fifty three. It was a large biomass, likely the Morawanocetus. They’re really quite fascinating creatures; very docile and calm, but the most extraordinary thing about them is their bioluminescence! They aren’t the ones glowing, though! It’s actually these tiny little micro-organisms that suction onto the surface of their skin like hitchhikers, except they pick off parasites that come along and try to burrow into the eyes of the Morawanocetus!”
“What made this Morawanocetus an anomaly?”
“It didn’t match the sizing chart we had drawn up of previous encounters. Granted, we had only come across seven others, but none of them exceeded lengths of 130 metres. This biomass showed to be exceeding nearly 250 metres in length. Because we had yet to encounter any creature larger than the Morawanocetus, we took to classifying it as an anomalous Morawanocetus. We later decided to just call it ‘The Anomaly.’”
“When did you reencounter the Anomaly after cycle fifty three?”
“Ah, that would have been cycle seventy one. We were beginning to make departure preparations, starting with safety checks.”
“Safety checks?”
“Yes. We are required to make stock of all equipment not provided by the ship’s crew, and since this was such a large expedition, there was quite a lot of equipment to take stock of. Everything needed to be packed up and ready for when the orbital vessels came to bring us back onto the Starfleet ship that was to arrive during cycle seventy six.”
“Why seventy six?”
“That was according to the schedule given to us by The Federation. My best guess is that they wanted to be sure my team and I could leave by cycle eighty by providing a buffer time to get cargo loaded.”
“That seems like it would be most efficient. What happened on cycle seventy one?”
“I encountered The Anomaly again.”
“Yes, you stated that earlier. What happened with this encounter?”
“Well, nothing at first seemed out of the ordinary. The scanners picked up that same large biomass, directly below The Advent as it had been previously. When Leo dropped a pair of ROUVs down to see if we could get a visual, they reached the ends of their tethers before we could manage to pick up anything except sonar.”
“Leo is?”
“Leo was in charge of anything unmanned- drones, ROUVs. He was also our cartographer. He’d taken a few subversive vessels to the seafloor and mapped out the terrain where possible.”
“So you were, at this point, completely uncertain as to what this mass was? Could it have been a carcass?”
“Initially, I thought it might have been a burst of thermal activity because of how it showed up on our thermal scanners- we were above a series of thermal vents at that time- but the sonar ruled that out. Thermals indicated heat signature, and sonar indicated mass, so it had to be something alive. And it was alive, because it had been rising closer to The Advent ever since we first picked it up on our scanners.
“At first I was excited at discovering a new species for our catalogue. This creature easily broke galaxial records as the largest life form ever encountered.”
“Did it appear in the exact same way it had during cycle fifty three?”
“Yes. It floated into the picture at the depth it had been previously. Sonar had put it at 500 metres below when we encountered it on cycle fifty three, but The Anomaly encountered during cycle seventy one had sonar depths of at least 2500 metres. As it came closer and closer, we could see clearer on the sonar that we had greatly miscalculated the overall length.”
“Do you think this was the same anomaly for both encounters?”
“No. The first Anomaly was clearly smaller than the second, but both initially showed to be fairly massive creatures. We surmised that it might have been a youngling of the second Anomaly. This was not proven to be correct.
“The ROUVs we kept deployed, and eventually they started to pick up bright blue lighting, the same bioluminescence we observed on the Morawanocetus, but more vibrant, like LEDs or something. It was beautiful.
“The creature kept surfacing, but it shifted towards The Advent’s starboard side. At that time sonar’s put it at 200 metres below the surface. It was huge- massive. At least 2500 metres, maybe bigger. Definitely not an anomalous Morawanocetus, even though they looked quite similar in shape. It was a huge whale- just gigantic.
“When it surfaced, the creature let out a spray from a blowhole about a kilometre from our starboard bow that extended maybe 500 metres up. The lungs on this creature would have been massive . I get shivers just trying to picture it.”
“What happened next?”
“Nothing. It just sat there, partially surfaced, completely docile. It was looking at us though, I could see it had its eyes open and was watching. Almost like it was just. . . Waiting for something. God, I’ll never be able to get that gaze out of my head for the rest of my life- it was terrifying - it didn’t even look alive! It looked like a machine, but it was breathing and- and moving!”
“Take a moment, please. Breathe, become aware of your body and just breathe with me, Captain.”
“No, nonono- that isn’t- that’s not who I am! My name is Amara Emerson! I was selected by the research division at The Federation to head an educational expedition on planet Khepri VI of the Benthos System!
“I’m a scientist, for Christ’s sake! My name is Amara Emerson! I was partnered with Doctor Kawarda. We were stationed in the Delta Quadrant, on a class O planet. My name is Amara Emerson. I’m a biologist. I graduated from BCIT’s class of 3450. My name is Amara Emerson. My mother is Eloise Laine; my father is Hugh Emerson. My name is Amara Emerson. My name is Amara Emerson! My name is Amara Emerson! My name. . . My name is Amar. . . My name is Amara. . . Amara Emer. . . Emerson. . .”
“Put her back under.”
“My name is Amara Emerson.”