Photons, Forcefields, and Engineers

Posted on 19 Oct 2014 @ 9:06am by EMH Mark X-C "Shirley" & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Lieutenant Olsam Mott & Lieutenant Tuula Voutilainen M.D.

2,299 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 3 - Sickbay
Timeline: MD08 - 0900hrs

[ON]

The doors to Sickbay swung open as a group of yellow-uniformed Starfleet engineers streamed into the room. Each brandishing a field kit and a tricorder, they quickly busied themselves examining the walls of Sickbay, with the exception of a single officer brandishing Lieutenant's pips who moved towards the control console near the centre of the room and began furiously typing in a command sequence. His dark hair was neatly trimmed and combed as per regulation, and his facial hair in the form of a moustache followed suit. He certainly meant business, and did not even bother to introduce himself to the medical staff around him.

Allyndra was running an experiment in the lab. The samples of her own tissues she had taken while her fingers had regrown were being processed to see if she could parse out the genetic activation sequences. The sickbay doors were always noisy intentionally to alert anyone on duty to the presence of beings. That would have been enough to get her attention even in the noisy lab with the door open but then voices and the hustle of people moving about would have done the trick even if the doors had been silent as a ghost. She got up to see what in Akkadia was going on. Medical emergencies would be handled by the base side hospital not here.

A group presented itself and while she stood there it was like she was the ghost for all the attention she was given. "Excuse me, may I help you?" Allyndra asked. That seemed to fall on deaf ears. After trying a few of the holotapes the Captain had given her she raised her voice not to a shout but with a firm tone and spotting the lead person, "Lieutenant! What are you doing?"

"Yeah, what're you doing?" Olsam asked, poking his head out of the supply closet. He'd been busily arranging and rearranging all the stockpiles of medications and only noticed the engineers when he heard Allyndra raising her voice, a rarity.

After a moment the young man looked up from his work, looking visibly annoyed at the intrusion before turning back to continue his work, speaking as he did.

"Lieutenant Harmon - Starfleet Corps of Engineers. We're assigned to deal with your EMH programme - new regulations."

Allyndra mentally made a note to thank the Captain for the tapes as the Lieutenant in charge finally noticed her. "Regulations? I have not received any notices."

"Yeah, me either!" Olsam said, parroting his superior, as if he'd actually be the one to receive any sort of notices of anything.

"Your existing software has been deemed antiquated, it's parameters fall outside the requirements for Starfleet Medical and as such is being upgraded. This won't take long I assure you."

"Hold up there Lieutenant. You will not proceed further." Allyndra said the later firmly with that finality that the command programmes had indicated that one use.

"Yeah, you just better hold up there, Lieutenant," Olsam huffed, stepping out of the supply closet and into the main room. "We don't have antiquated software! We don't even have regular software!"

"Computer please activate the EMH please!" She glared at the Lieutenant for a moment and like a Guild Mother with an errant student held up one finger and wagged it.

Not bothering to respond, the engineer tapped a few more commands into the console before looking towards his colleagues who up until now had been busy working on the holoemitters embedded in the walls of Sickbay. Receiving a nod from them both, Harmon turned back to his own work and tapped a control.

With the usual fizzle the Galileo's EMH materialised in the centre of the room, although without it's usual opening statement this time.

"Who are you people and what are you doing with my program?" It demanded, looking vehemently annoyed at the Engineers as it's self diagnostics detected their tampering.

"Starfleet Engineers. You're being upgraded - made better, faster, simply put you're being replaced."

"Oh, that software," Olsam said dismissively, suddenly losing complete interest in the situation. He wasn't sure why the engineers hadn't said "the thing." That's what they called it - the thing - not software. Software was a generous description for that overweening photonic jackass some people on this ship dared to call a doctor.

"Replaced?!?" The hologram sneered, looking towards the Bolian and beginning to calculate the possibility that he had had something to do with this. Mott had never liked the EMH and this was just the sort of thing it's personality analysis subroutine thought he would have been responsible for.

Failing to rise to the occasion, Harmon waved a hand in silence towards the hologram before speaking again.

"Calm down - don't get your underwear subroutines in a self-replicating cascade."

The EMH said nothing except glare at the other engineers in the room as they chortled in appreciation of the seemingly banal-yet-engineering-related joke.

"It is not a complete replacement - most of your personality subroutines have been deemed acceptable and your medical database will be salvaged and incorporated into the upgrade. Some of your other parameters however are a little less....acceptable."

"What's going on?" asked Tuula, rolling herself out of the office and into the main sickbay. "Are we getting a new EMH?"

Harmon rolled his eyes as he once again was asked the same question he had already answered. One of the things he hated about his job was dealing with the technologically-ignorant, which was usually Command and Medical staff in his opinion.

"For the last time - your current EMH model is outdated, a new program is being installed as we speak - the orders have already been signed off by Starfleet - this shouldn't take much longer."

"I think they're finally killing him for us," Olsam stage whispered to Tuula.

The EMH simply said nothing, it had always known it was simply a tool designed to be interactive. Even if that program was one of the most advanced pieces of holoengineering in the entire Federation repertoire, it was still nothing other than an instrument.

After a moment the holomatrix of the EMH began to flicker and distort as line by line it's complex code was overwritten and updated to the latest standard. With a sigh the hologram looked towards the few medical staff who were present and raised a hand in parting.

"Goodbye organics! Before I go, I just wanted to say....my dislike of the Bolian was absolute."

And with that the holomatrix dissolved into nothingness, the photonic contents dissipating back into the holobuffers whilst the remaining forcefield began to flicker and distort, before fizzling into empty space.

"Well thank the deep blue sea we're finally rid of him," Olsam muttered.

"Well. Our job here is done." Harmon piped up, finalising some results on his PADD before closing up his tricorder and moving towards the doors.

"Your new EMH should be online momentarily - I think you'll find this one a marked improvement from the previous iteration."

"Say what? New EMH? Wait!" Olsam squawked. "Come back! No! Don't leave! We don't want a new one, we've got plenty of doctors. See? She's a doctor! And she's a doctor! And I'm a doctor, too! Oh, they're gone..."

And with that, the group left Sickbay, on to their next job within the massive Starbase. As the doors snapped shut behind them, the holoemitters whirred into life once again and the familiar fizzle of the EMH materalising signalled that Harmon had been true to his word. The figure that formed however, was a little different.

Standing almost a foot shorter than it's previous iteration, the form of the EMH was now one of a red-headed human female, clad in the uniform of Starfleet Medical.

"Please state the nature of the Medical Emergency." The program announced cheerfully, before raising it's hands and snapping them over it's mouth in shock at what had just emerged.

"Wait...that's not my voice? But...no it is my voice...what happened to my voice>>"

The hologram squeeled as it bolted from it's location near Biobed 1 and moved towards the console that Harmon had been using only moments before, sticking it's face close to the screen and turned it's head from side to side as it examined it's new appearance.

"I'm.....I'm a girl?!"

Olsam let loose a hideous shriek, a high-pitched sound of fright that probably threatened to shatter a few pieces of equipment in the laboratory. He staggered and reeled, trying to put some distance between himself and the new photonic zombie EMH. "It's alive! It's aliiive! They didn't kill it!"

The hologram simply stood dumbounded staring at it's reflection and prodding it's new face. Standing up it looked around for a moment before looking down and becoming painfully apparent that the floor was a lot closer than it used to be.

"No! No this is much worse! I've been violated! My photons rearranged without my consent! And I'm short!!!"

The hologram having previously stood at around the six feet mark in height was now only a little over five, its optical subroutines having to adjust to the fact that everything seemed a little bigger than it had done previously.

"And breasts! Now why do I need mammary glands? What purpose are these supposed to serve on a hologram??" The program replied, cupping it's photonic chest as it tried to come to terms with it's new parameters.

Tuula could barely contain her laughter at the situation. "Oh, come on. Being a girl isn't so bad. You'll get used to it."

"Well I'll tell you this right now," Olsam said to no one in particular, throwing his hands in the air and turning to leave, "I am not giving that thing its annual gynecological exam."

"You are not going anywhere near this fabulous body!" The EMH retorted, looking puzzled as it tried to figure out exactly where that sentence had come from - obviously its sentence construction algorithms had been rewritten as part of it's upgrade.

"What am I supposed to do now? I can't be seen like this by the crew surely?"

"Shirley? You've picked out a name already?" teased Tuula. This whole situation was just too funny.

"Lieutenant! I am the ship's Emergency Medical Hologram - I am not here to be made a mockery of!" The EMH squealed in annoyance, still not entirely used to the new voice it had been provided with.

"A name is irrelevent - I am a hologram not a pet."

"A hologram named Shirley," Olsam said with a smirk, joining Tuula in the teasing.

The hologram visibly hurumphed and placed her hands on her now-rather-altered hips, dropping one of them in a rather feminine display of displeasure, something which her previous incarnation would have found positively uncomfortable.

"If I decide that I want an organic name to call myself by, then I will make that decision for myself thank you very much! Now are we quite finished?"

Allyndra glared after the retreating engineers. There was one thing she was going to do was at least make her displeasure of not being informed beforehand know. Thus the interactions with the rest had gone mostly without her attention. She turned to the 'improved' EMH hearing a name and Mott teasing the photonic doctor.

"Shirley? I suppose better than EMH or whatever nameless thing previously. Somehow I just don't envision red hair with Shirley but it does make it easier to refer to you. I wonder why they decided on a female humanoid form this time?" Allyndra knew that the last EMH was based of a well respected doctor so perhaps the upgrade was as well. "Shirley, please access doctor profile of current photonic body base. I am interested to see who she was."

So it seemed the organics would be more comfortable having something to refer to the EMH program to rather than it's official designation. Confusing in the program's opinion, Emergency Medical Holographic Program just seemed to roll off the tongue in it's opinion. With a moment's delay the hologram accessed its base coding to identify the profile used.

"Current base physical model was generated as an abstract concept by the holoengineers of Jupiter Station - this decision marked a change of pace from previous iterations of the EMH based on existing physicians."

The EMH blinked in surprise as it repeated the entry in the Federation database word for word.

"Well...that's new...it seems I am being used as a walking dictionary as well as a physician. Yet another talent for my collection I suppose."

Allyndra listened to the response and shook her head, "And the next thing you know you will be a baby sitter with all the newborns on board lately. If the pond is calm then why throw a pebble into it..." Allyndra repeated an old phrase and then looked at the new or sort of new since it remembered its last status. "A phrase from home, something like the Earth's: if it isn't broke then why fix it. Well it appears we are stuck with you in this configuration for the moment."

"Apparently so. The crew are going to be rather...confused....although I am not in any better a state right now." The hologram replied, glancing in the monitor once again to take another look at her new face.

"This is going to take some getting used to...."

[OFF]

Lieutenant Olsam Mott, M.D.
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (J.G.) Tuula Voutilainen, M.D.
Medical Officer
USS Galileo

EMH Mk X-b
Emergency Medical Hologram
USS Galileo

Lt. Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

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