Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×12

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 19^th April 2025

Guest Stars:

• Deep Space Sur­vey Probe 79-Alpha Sur­vey Com­mand Holo­gram (SCH): Self-aware arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence from a long range probe, cur­rently resid­ing in Holo­deck 4.
• Sutar­k­is: Ori­on mas­ter criminal.

I’m con­tinu­ing my efforts to teach the 79-Alpha holo­gram, who I’ve christened “Suzie”, about life as a Star­fleet officer. For the next les­son, I’ve decided to intro­duce her to leis­ure activ­it­ies, start­ing with the relax­ing pleas­ure of a nice hike.

Peter Quin­n’s Per­son­al Log: Stard­ate, 51464.1

Plot: Zepht and Azon­an wrestle with a rogue arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, while Quinn and 79-Alpha become embroiled in a kid­nap­ping on the holodeck.

The ‘A’ Plot: Quinn vis­its Holo­deck 4, where he takes 79-Alpha to a sim­u­la­tion of a north­ern moor­land on Amin II. They hike onto the moor, where he explains how this helps calm the mind, as well as strengthens the body. 79-Alpha quizzes him on how this would bene­fit her as a holo­graph­ic lifeform.

As they con­tin­ue to argue, they are approached by a non­des­cript shuttle­craft, which flies over­head before land­ing close to them. Two Ori­ons jump out, point­ing dis­ruptors at them, then a third appears from behind them to grab 79-Alpha. Quinn ini­tially tries to sum­mon the holo­deck exit, but there is no response, so he is forced to try to reas­on with them. Real­ising they’re about to open fire, he grabs a rock and knocks out the closest. The oth­ers escape, tak­ing their host­age with them.

Quinn needs a shuttle of his own to give chase, so he hur­ries down to the nearest part of the coast, where he should be able to get hold of one at the small vis­it­or facil­ity. There are none present, but he requests a vehicle from the cent­ral resort, and waits in the bar for it to arrive.

The three seat shuttle­pod that arrives is not quite what he wanted, but he takes it any­way and flies back towards the loc­a­tion of the kid­nap. Even with the Type-15’s lim­ited sensors, he is soon able to identi­fy an ion trail lead­ing deep into the cent­ral moun­tain range. Inform­ing the author­it­ies of his plans, he pur­sues, arriv­ing near one of the highest moun­tains on the planet.

In defi­ance of all logic and sur­vey records, the 6,000 metre high moun­tain is crowned by what looks like an Earth goth­ic castle, access­ible only by a cable car from a ter­min­al at its base. There’s a strong deflect­or shield around the castle, so there’s no way to land any­where near it, for­cing Quinn to put down next to the cable car terminus.

Quinn gets out, decides the cable car is too obvi­ous, and resorts to his climb­ing skills, ascend­ing the sheer cliff face in front of him. Holonov­el logic appears to apply as he make much bet­ter pro­gress than he should, and he soon reaches the half-way point. There’s an arti­fi­cial open­ing into an interi­or space, and he spots a guard hav­ing a quiet smoke. He launches him­self into the room and knocks out the guard, tak­ing his gun before pro­ceed­ing up a stair­case with­in the cliff.

At the top of the stair­case, a door opens into the court­yard of the castle. Spot­ting two guards on the walls, he care­fully times his cross­ing to the main entrance of the cent­ral build­ing. The huge double doors open into an entry hall con­tain­ing lots of antique fur­niture. 79-Alpha is stand­ing at the top of a stair­case to the upper levels, next to a sat­urnine Ori­on male in even­ing dress. The Ori­on intro­duces him­self as Sutar­k­is, com­ment­ing that his “guest” has finally arrived.

Quinn tenses for a fight, but he is sur­roun­ded by thugs with guns, and it would be a sense­less sac­ri­fice. Instead, he agrees to Sutark­is’s offer of a cup of tea. The Ori­on soon gets to busi­ness, con­firm­ing that 79-Alpha is his host­age. His terms for her release are that he be allowed out of the holo­deck, as he is cut off from the wider world. If this does not hap­pen, he will kill both of them. Quinn strings him along, stalling for time in the hope that someone is listen­ing in from outside.

The ‘B’ Plot: Zepht is in his quar­ters, examin­ing a small group of Tilikaal arte­facts, which he thinks are designed to fit togeth­er, the puzzle obsess­ing him. Turn­ing over the largest piece, a sphere about the size of a large orange, he finds a small depress­able pan­el and presses it.

There’s a flash of light and Zepht is thrown across room, before passing out briefly. When he wakes up, the sphere is hov­er­ing in mid-air, with red lights light­ing in sequence around it. He tries to touch it, but is burnt by a force field.

In main engin­eer­ing, Azon­an is double-check­ing recent repairs, when the con­sole and lights are affected by a power surge. Raynor calls from the bridge, alert­ing him to power anom­alies across the primary hull, and that Quinn has been stran­ded in Holo­deck 4. Sigh­ing, Azon­an puts down his PADD, assigns work crews and goes to deck 10 to investigate.

He takes the tur­bo­l­ift, but the power fails mid-jour­ney, leav­ing him and a sci­ence ensign stran­ded between decks. After noti­fy­ing the bridge and try­ing to reset the power from inside the car, they climb out of a main­ten­ance hatch and climb up to the nearest Jef­freys tube. After crawl­ing a short dis­tance, they emerge next to a tur­bo­l­ift entrance and warn the group wait­ing there that the net­work has shut down.

He reports in to Raynor and is told that the officers’ quar­ters have been cut off by a mys­ter­i­ous force field. Azon­an revises his plans and takes the stairs to deck 8. Meet­ing Raynor at the end of the cor­ridor, he dis­cov­ers that the force field is mani­fest­ing as a glow­ing orange region of res­ist­ance, rather than an out­right wall of energy. Mus­ter­ing their determ­in­a­tion, the two of them push through the field and Raynor over­rides the lock on the the door to Zeph­t’s quarters.

Inside, Zepht has con­cluded that assem­bling the remainder of the arte­fact will resolve the situ­ation, and is try­ing to com­plete the puzzle. Azon­an agrees with his con­clu­sion and they man­age to assemble a kind of sup­port frame for the sphere. Unfor­tu­nately, the sphere simply floats in the middle without touch­ing any of the frame.

Not­ing that one of the spare parts resembles a cable, Azon­an finds a port on the sphere and man­ages to plug it in, des­pite burn­ing his hand on the force field. Unfor­tu­nately, this has no effect, so they try using a suit­able tool to press the “but­ton” again, which res­ults in the sphere shut­ting down and drop­ping to the table. Raynor checks with the bridge, dis­cov­er­ing that the res­ist­ance field has shut down and that power has been restored to the ship’s systems.

Unfor­tu­nately, Holo­deck 4 is still locked, with Quinn trapped inside.

They head down to deck 10, where they find the door to Holo­deck 4 unre­spons­ive, fail­ing to respond to over­ride com­mands. While the run­ning pro­gram appears to be a simple land­scape sim­u­la­tion, the safety set­tings are turned off. They are unable to gain access to a video feed of what is going on inside the holo­deck, although a tri­cord­er is able to pick up the sounds of a conversation.

Fil­ter­ing these sounds allows them to determ­ine that Quinn and 79-Alpha are still with­in the sim­u­la­tion, which has been hijacked by a rogue pro­gram. That pro­gram appears to be a Tilikaal arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, ori­gin­at­ing from the arte­fact in Zeph­t’s quarters.

They are able to use intern­al sensors to con­firm that Quinn is still phys­ic­ally present, but are con­cerned that if they use the trans­port­er to beam him out, then the AI will almost cer­tainly harm 79-Alpha. Shut­ting down the holo­deck to reset it would res­ult in the dele­tion of both AIs.

While they are debat­ing, Sutar­k­is, the iden­tity adop­ted by the Tilikaal AI, allows Quinn access to his com­mu­nic­at­or, so that he can relay his demands. After some dis­cus­sion, it is clear that Sutark­is’s primary aim is to trans­fer into the ship’s main com­puter sys­tem, which can­not be allowed to hap­pen. Azon­an and Zepht decide that their best plan is to try and pull 79-Alpha out into the con­trol sys­tem of a probe at the same time as Quinn is beamed out. This would leave the AI trapped in the holo­deck, where it can then be deleted, but would require impec­cable tim­ing to succeed.

They set up con­nec­tions, assur­ing Sutar­k­is that they are com­ply­ing with his request, then pro­ceed with their plan. Sutar­k­is is trapped, while 79-Alpha and Quinn are recovered intact and none the worse for their experience.

Azon­an then takes a moment to admon­ish Zepht about play­ing with ali­en arte­facts out­side of fully-isol­ated labor­at­ory environments.

The Arc: Anoth­er Tilikaal arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence makes an appear­ance, and seems to be just as insane as the oth­ers we have seen.

Obser­va­tions: Zepht has taken to study­ing some Tilikaal arte­facts dur­ing his off-duty time in his quar­ters. These are primar­ily doc­u­ments, but oth­er puzzles have also attrac­ted his attention.

Amin II’s primary con­tin­ent spans a num­ber of dif­fer­ent eco­lo­gic­al zones, and the oper­at­ors of the shore leave facil­it­ies have taken the oppor­tun­ity to make many of them avail­able to vis­it­ors. This includes a region of coastal moor­land in the north that resembles north­ern Bri­tain on Earth.

Dia­logue: 79-Alpha: “Do not call me Suzie!”

Azon­an: “Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er Zepht: do not play with unknown arte­facts in your quarters!”

Ref­er­ences: This is just the latest in a long line of near dis­asters involving holo­decks and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gences, most not­ably the Enter­prise’s exper­i­ence with the James Mori­arty holo­gram in 2365. Star­fleet seems unable to pre­vent this kind of event from recurring.

Tilikaal arti­fi­cial intel­li­gences have pre­vi­ously been encountered in “Pun­ish­ment and Crime”, “The Ori­on Heist” and “Coda”. All of have been implac­ably hos­tile, and mostly likely insane by Fed­er­a­tion standards.