Panic! at the Starstone

Chapter 4 - Asking the Difficult Questions

The lift doors opened onto the floor containing the Archives. Jian presented her identification to the security officer at the entrance, who made her check her weapon then waved her through.

She stepped inside and looked around, an expression of delight showing through on her normally reserved face. The Archive's Cortex filled a cavernous space 60 meters from end to end, 10 meters high. In every direction, rows of servers like library shelves ran perpendicular to the main pathway stretching from the main entrance to the far end of the hall.

Ever since joining the Starfinders, one of Jian's great delights was walking into the Archives. She imagined it was what coming home felt like. All around her, soft indicator lights flashed to acknowledge the continued health of the nano-gel data matrices containing the sum of all knowledge the Starfinders had acquired. All data was backed up in redundant stores across different server racks. If one nano-gel matrix failed, it could be pulled out, replaced, and within seconds the data stored in the previous matrix would begin downloading onto the new one.

The dataphiles who operated the Archives had one of the most important duties of any member of the Starfinder Society - to preserve all of the knowledge their organization had acquired, sometimes at great cost.

The physical Archives were built sometime during The Gap. There had been some version of the Starfinder Society extending back into the past, but all the data that had been stored on the servers in those days had been lost when The Gap had erased memories, both biological and artificial, all across the galaxy.

The room was emptier than usual today. Jian supposed that those Starfinders skilled at gathering information had likely been asked to help with the official investigation into the Starstone attack, and were probably engaged elsewhere. She recognized Simulation-4, one of the dataphiles she had worked with in the past, sitting at a terminal entering metadata for a stream that was being uploaded.

Jian walked over to her. "Greetings to you, Simulation-4," she said formally.

"Greetings to you, Jian'chi," the other android woman said in response. "What brings you to the Archives?"

"I'm having trouble with one of my ship's sensors," she replied. "My matter composition scanner has started producing an anomalous reading for the asteroid field approximately 140 light seconds from the station."

"Anomalous in what way?" the other android asked.

"An unexpected concentration of Calcium and Vanadium ions that wasn't there when I took a baseline reading a few days ago."

"Before the Starstone attack," Simulation-4 filled in.

"Right," Jian agreed. "Several of my ship's systems were damaged by the explosion, but the matter composition scanner seemed fine in every other respect. Before I tear it apart trying to find the source of the error, I wanted to be sure that the issue is the sensor, and not evidence that the asteroid field at that position has actually changed."

"I'm nearly finished with this data stream," Simulation-4 said. "If you can wait 2 minutes, I can help you set up a scan from here. Our sensors installed at the apex of the Lorespire were mostly shielded from the explosive outburst, and if the matter composition scanner has been certified, we can use it to check your readings."

"Thank you," Jian said.

Simulation-4 returned to her task in silence. Jian waited patiently. She looked around the room, and noticed a small group had formed near one of the search terminals. Likely a research team that was working on an investigation of some sort together. Most of the other terminals sat unused.

A few of the other dataphiles sat together in front of an open rack, peering at the data matrices inside it and carrying on a low discussion. The shape of the room made it difficult for sound to travel, and they were speaking quietly, so she couldn't understand what they were saying - not that she was bothered by this, since it wasn't her conversation. But it was a little unusual to see them apparently unsure what to do where maintenance on the Cortex was concerned.