The Secrets Of The Pathstone

Posted on Sun Feb 21st, 2021 @ 3:57pm by Lieutenant Commander Evelyn Rozia & Commander Ichiko Gail

Mission: New Beginnings
Location: Pathstone Complex

Evelyn had been directed out the doors and towards a pair of figures that she'd been assured was one of the Dalacari engineers that made the Pathstone project work. She had a bright smile on her face as she approached and waved a hand, "Good afternoon, I think it's afternoon at least. I'm Commander Evelyn Rozia and I was told you were expecting me?" She glanced between the pair, trying to give each of them equal attention until one started talking so she's know where to focus her attention to begin with.

A pair of nods, and a smile across each face, "Indeed. My name's Vol Catiff, I'm the primary Engineer aboard the complex, and indeed I've been expecting you. I hope you don't feel cheated that any tour of the facility will be simulated but..."

"... in addition to station security, it's almost more practical to have areas of the station come to you as opposed to going to them." the pair snickered. It was hard to tell a male Dalacari apart from a female without intense study, since their body structures were so similar. Though, the snicker gave it away, Vol was a male. He motioned to the doors behind him, which would iris open into another room. Black walls, white lines laid out in hexagons. This was a simulation room.

"I've been informed of your curiosity into the workings of the station, and indeed our core technologies. While I appreciate any curiosity, there may be questions I'm not allowed to answer..."

"... as per station integrity and security."

She raised her hands in acknowledgement, "I can understand and agree with you on all of the above. This station is absolutely monstrous in size, so not having to walk or transport all over to see things saves lots of time. And I can also respect information security and integrity, because if I were to host you on board Astraea, the same situation would apply." She allowed herself to be ushered into the simulation room, "I can only assume that this is much like a holosuite or holodeck?"

"Correct. The simulation rooms on the Pathstone complex are top of the line, and can construct office spaces, medical quarters, or any other room required. For today, they'll be becoming..."

"... any room we need, so there's that. So I suppose the first point of order would be your first question. It's going to probably either be about the drones, or the facility itself." he paused, "Just a hunch."

Evelyn chuckled, "I'll definitely have a couple questions about the drones, but I'm definitely a bit more interested in the station to begin with. This is... Large. It dwarfs the largest station that we've got in the Federation and even some of the smaller moons within our borders. How do you manage the artificial gravity along the habitable sections of this place, much less feed everyone? I'm sure that the replication machines can synthesize a lot of the food, but do you have huge hydroponics areas? And for meats, how is that handled?" She knew she was babbling, but it was definitely along the same tangent, mostly.

The entirety of the holosimulation room shifted to an external view of space. The local star donimated the view, with the Pathstone facility orbiting it. None of the fleet was shown, for obvious security measures, but the Astraea was visible. "We mastered artificial gravity ages ago, it seems. We use it extensively in our villas planetwide so our guests can enjoy comfortable casual gravity. For a Dalacari, comfortable gravity..."

"... is heavier than what you're used to, and yet you don't feel any different of a pull down then you did on your ship." Vol gave a pair of smiles. "There's less habitable space than you'd imagine, but we make due."

"As for your other questions, our fabrication systems are slightly ahead of the curve than your systems, if I gauge some of the incoming intel reports properly. This station receives almost all..."

"... of its power from conversion turbines, siphoning off stellar mass and converting it to energy. In turn, we use that energy and mass conversion to feed into our fabricator banks. If more is..."

"... needed, we send drones to the closest planet and mine a few thousand pounds of matter from its crust." he explained. "As for hydroponics, we don't need as many greens as you do." he pointed out.

"Though, we do have air filtration systems running to keep the air pleasant and useful. As for foodstock, the lunch you had prepared this afternoon was from a fabricator unit."

"I would never have guessed..." Evelyn nodded, "I'd say that's a big plus, I do know that our own replicators are fantastic at precision matching, but I find that they don't do 'raw' vegetables very well, so we tend to have hydroponics rooms to grow some." She paused for a few seconds, not to gather her thoughts but deliberately so that the next question didn't appear to be trying to take the subject from a 'safe' subject to a 'forbidden' one for a 'surprise' reaction.

"I've obviously never been here before, but I was able to review reports from the crew of the previous Astraea that transited the Pathstone and I've been trying to figure out the how of it's function..." She cringed slightly, glancing between the pair, "I'm sure that this is one of those subjects you can't go into any sort of depth on, but if I could ask, is it akin to a stable wormhole? I'd love to know as much as possible about it, but..." Evelyn trailed off.

Kol gave a chuckle, "We're primarily carnivores, but we supplement our needs through the fabricator. We don't need to eat much in the way of greens, though we have to eat some." he didn't sound too happy about that. Eating your veggies seemed to be a universal struggle.

"Though, to answer your next question, I actually *can* answer that. No. It's not *akin* to a stable wormhole, it actually is one. Let me know if I'm going too fast, but the Pathstone complex..."

"... houses over twenty kilograms of matter that exists in a quantum entangled state with the other Pathstone facility. We charge up, they charge up, the matter starts spinning and..."

"... once every particle is aligned, we induce a quantum collapse and encourage the two linked chains to shorten the distance to nil. Then we have about two standard hours of time when..."

"... matter within the horizon is affected by both halves of the entanglement simultaneously. Then it's just a simple matter of getting matter horizon A to let go, and matter horizon..."

"... B to take over. To the passenger within the field, it's a vibrant light show and the never interrupted sensation of motion. Now that I'm saying it out loud, it's actually more of a..."

"... scheduled quantum event rather than an actual wormhole, but between you, me, and the budgeting board... it's a wormhole."

"An artificially activated wormhole using a coordinated quantum entanglement event!" Evelyn exclaimed excitedly, mind whirling about the implications of it. It would require both sides of the event to be not just on the same time schedule, but down to the microsecond, well, maybe down to just the second or tenth of a second. That would take some thought. "That's absolutely awesome, I mean it! It would require a massive infrastructure for anything more than two ends..." She trailed off, then looked at the the Kol on the left, "How many of these are there? And can any one transmit to any of the others or are they dedicated from one to another? And I'm guessing that coordination is done through the Ts'usugi bouy network since the two of you are allied closely?"

"The Buoy network is specifically how we coordinate." Kol offered, then looked to the left in that universally bashful manner. As though complimenting Pathstone was the same as complimenting a child's achievement to their parent. "At the current, there are two Pathstone installations. This one, and the one in the..."

"... Delta quadrant, as you call it. We were initially planning for more, but when it was posed to even a Rank Fifteen Thinking Engine, the final result was the same. Impossible with current..."

"... understanding. The only way to open more routes would be to construct more Pathstone complexes and then pair them. I think the financial divisions would prefer to let their..."

"... wallets cool off a little before financing another set." at that, Kol chuckled. "Between station fabrication, infrastructure, and the quantum entangled matter I don't know what the most..."

"... expensive part of the station is." he joked, a good laugh the whole time.

Evelyn laughed right along with him as she tried to quantify how many resources had to go into the building of one of these, "Step one, mine out one planet of all usable materials..." She said, only half-jokingly, an idea getting into her head, "Depending on how the quantum matter is contained when not in use, the multiple destination effect could potentially be solved just by selecting the appropriate 'set' for the destination and utilizing that. If the ship passing through doesn't penetrate through the event horizon in the local plane and it's only one side of the event horizon for entry and egress both? Keeping the secondary destination matter separated should be child's play." She shrugged, "Simple possible solution, but I'm sure you've thought of it already."

"Well, that's how we got here. Dead husk of a world, mine through to the mantle, process into a mass fabricator ring, and then construct the parts as needed." Kol explained the birth of the Pathstone complex. Built on the grave of a dead world.

"The world is surveyed first. Please." he almost discounted the notion. "Though, at the current, multiple destinations through one array is slightly out of our grasp. For the moment, though, we're ..."

"... quite content with the arrangement as is. If anyone could figure out how to do it, though, it'd be the Ts'usugi. Their mastery of quantum matter is beyond impressive. They were..."

"... the ones that supplied the twenty kilograms of entangled matter. To each site, I might add." he pointed out.

"Which had to be a pain in the arse." Evelyn agreed, "But I'd say perhaps bring that up at some point when you feel the time is right, just as a suggestion. What's the worst that could happen? They say 'No, it's a bad idea, forget about it.' or something along those lines!" She grinned brightly, then decided to change the subject again. Evie didn't know how long she'd have to ask questions and wanted to make the most use of it, "Power sources? I'm going to have to guess that it's multiple sources? Otherwise you'd probably need to create your own small enclosed star to give yourself enough power to run the facility."

That last bit puzzled Kol a touch, "You.. You do know we're in orbit around an actual star, yes?" he turned his collection attention back to the holographic representation of the local system. "We don't need a small one. We just siphon off stellar..."

"... matter for conversion into usable station energy. Best projections say we'll run out of energy in about ten... yes, ten million years." Kol chuckled.

"Though, one singular power source. Stellar in nature. Capacitance reactors to convert and store energy for the Pathstone wormhole. Three percent of the power we gather from the star..."

"... goes towards all other station activities and needs. The rest is stored to be used for the quantum effect."

And thus the greatest conversation between engineers occurred on a station built to span the gulf of the entirety of the galaxy. In the end, Kol had to cut things short, duty calling and such, but some of the veil of the greatest mystery in the cosmos was pulled back. This was Pathstone. It had a name, a function, and a purpose. And, like many of the other great wonders of the universe, it was slightly less magical once the individual pieces were uncovered.

Majestic still, but seemingly less magical.