The Fall of Iconia

Chapter 8

A/N: We don't own any of the franchises making appearances in this story. We're just fans.

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Chapter 8

Iconia Prime...

Henry Deacon was in one of the computer cores of Iconia Prime. It wasn't the only computer core, but rather one of many. The Iconians had learned many millennia ago that redundancy was a very good thing. The construction of the sphere was designed around nodes of fifty. The center cell of each node held the machinery which would rebuild the sphere, as well as a computer core, and any other equipment that the sphere needed.

If the sphere were somehow destroyed, as long as one cell remained relatively intact, the entire sphere could, and would, rebuild itself. This redundancy allowed for millions of seeds from which a new sphere could grow. It also allowed for constant error checking in the SARAH mainframe.

"Captain Barclay is arriving, Doctor Deacon," Sarah announced.

Henry looked up from where he was working. "Thanks, Sarah. Go ahead and bring him in here."

In response, Reginald Barclay entered the room, seemingly from thin air.

"Welcome, Captain Barclay," Henry told him.

Barclay stood with a small memory unit in his hands, unmoving for several moments, just taking in the sights. The computer core was a huge chamber. There were shelves lining the walls, containing innumerable small boxes, every one with an optical cable leading into it. Spaced throughout the center of the room were what appeared to be large tanks. There were six of them, each a cube about ten meters on each side. Their walls appeared to be made of some type of optical receiving material, which shimmered from millions of red points of light. They flickered on and off as they transmitted messages to and from whatever was contained inside.

"Wow," he said as he finally stepped away from the place where Sarah had deposited him. "This is, impressive."

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" Henry said as he watched Barclay's reaction. He didn't often see a new reaction to the computer core. The last one had been when The First's non-Q counterpart had entered for the first time. That had been less than satisfying as Spock was a Vulcan. His only reaction had been to raise an eyebrow and murmur, 'fascinating'.

"Want a tour?" the Iconian scientist offered.

Barclay nodded his head, and followed as Henry walked toward one of the six 'tanks' in the room. As they neared it, a panel opened on the side, and they were able to enter. Henry turned and watched Barclay's face as he realized what he was looking at. The captain's jaw dropped as he took in the largest diamond he had ever seen.

"It's a logic diamond," Henry explained. "There are six of them here, which form the cores of a photologic processor. On the deck below, there are twelve more, each fifty percent larger than this one. They are used as Sarah's memory."

They exited the tank and walked to the nearest wall. "Do you know what these are?" Henry asked.

"If I had to guess, I'd say this is an absolutely massive network hub," Barclay responded.

"You're exactly right, Reg. May I call you Reg?"

"Yes… that's fine. That's what Commander… sorry, Captain LaForge always calls me."

Henry smiled. "And call me Henry, ok?"

"Certainly, uh...Henry." Reg agreed, smiling back.

"Each of these modules connects to a node somewhere in the sphere through quantum entangled molecules. We learned early in the development of the sphere that there was simply too great a distance involved for standard electrical, or even optical connections between different sections of the sphere. Entangled particles just don't have the bandwidth necessary to transmit the data we need."