[An away team made up of Colonel Jack O’Neill, Dr. Daniel Jackson, the android/AI Rommie, and Dr. Rodney McKay has been dispatched to investigate a seemingly derelict freighter. The ship’s service android, Maia, helps them gain access to the bridge where they are presented with three options: A) Acquiring crucial data from the ship’s computer, B) Investigating a fast-fading life sign, and/or C) Going to engineering and venting the drive before the core goes critical.]
Jack makes the call. They’ll split up. Maia and McKay will head to engineering to vent the drive. He and Daniel will investigate the life sign. And Rommie will remain on the bridge to decipher the corrupted data.
Maia leads the way to engineering, McKay trotting alongside her to keep pace. He tries to make conversation as they go, asking her how long she’s served aboard the Waldorf Astoria. She tells him she was commissioned for the freighter’s nine hundred and fifty-sixth voyage, a little over eight years ago after the previous service android was decommissioned and retired.
“What’s android retirement like?”asks McKay. “Custodial work at a museum?”
“Component donation of functional subsystems, followed by industrial recycling,”replies Maia matter-of-factly.
McKay is aghast. “Are you serious? That’s horrible!”
Maia doesn’t understand the reaction. “I will have served my purpose. I am the property of Traugott Corporation, and they may do with me as they wish. They may do with me as they wish, and my salvageable parts contribute to the betterment of the company.”
McKay is winding up to argue the point when they reach engineering. The doors slide open, and the sight inside stops him cold. Crawling across the floor, up the walls, and over the core itself are a half-dozen small, metallic spider-like machines.
What does McKay do?
A) Draw his weapon and fire. Drive them away from the core.
B) Run. Get clear and warn the others.
C) Trust in Maia. Let her handle them.
CHOOSE!
Previously On Amalgaverse…
You and 19 others have been stranded in an amalgam universe of myriad SF realities. All 19 are sci-fi’s Best of the Best. And then there’s you, uniquely qualified given your encyclopedic knowledge garnered from your world where these characters, their technologies, and their stories are fiction, beloved TV shows you have watched time and again. Together, all 20 of you have set off on the Enterprise-D, tasked with finding a way home.
For your first mission, you’ve decided to investigate a seemingly derelict freighter broadcasting an emergency beacon. An away team and puddle jumper have been dispatched to the ghost ship, anomalous energy pulses making beaming and communications a challenge.
After parking and cloaking the puddle jumper in the freighter’s hangar, the team crosses the airless bay into the ship proper. There, they make the decision to check out the waning energy signature of a containment field en route to the bridge. But they immediately encounter a utility unit that advances on them menacingly. Rommie connects to it and relays a shut down command that causes the robot to collapse.
Further along, they encounter a sealed door and Rommie informs them that the compartment beyond is exposed to space. She suggests locking down their current section and then unsealing the door since it’s the most direct route to the bridge – and that ebbing containment field. They do so. The door slides open to reveal an immense hull breach complicating their progress. Rommie leaps over the chasm and secures a tether to the other side, allowing the rest of the team to pull themselves over. But when they attempt to open the door to the next section, they hit an impasse. The door remains locked and will not respond to their commands.
O’Neill blows the lock with C4, allowing them entry into the adjoining compartment where they discover an android in a containment field, completing its regenerative cycle. When the android awakens, it informs them it is the caretaker of this freighter, the Waldorf Astoria, and warns them off pillaging its contents. Daniel assures the android, Maia, that they harbor no ill intent and ask for her assistance in accessing the bridge and restoring ship’s systems. But Maia remains suspicious. She requests a peer-to-peer interface with Rommie to confirm that your presence on the freighter is, in fact, benign. Rommie agrees, satisfying Maia’s request. Maia explains that her memory stores and parts of the ship were damaged after the freighter encountered an atemporal force during FTL transit. She offers to help the team access the ship’s systems in exchange for their assistance in tracking down and eradicating a mysterious entity that has boarded the freighter.
Maia helps the team access the bridge where they discover the freighter’s analysis of its encounter with the atemporal entity has yielded harmonics very similar to residual energy signatures from their crossings into this reality. This could hold the key to their return home, but the data is corrupted and Rommie needs time to decipher it. Daniel, meanwhile, notes that the life sign he detected earlier is fading, and he wants to check it before it’s too late. But Maia flags a more immediate concern – the likelihood that the ship’s core is in danger of going critical unless they vent the drive.
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