Post #310 "Unlikely Guests"
Posted on Tue Feb 10th, 2026 @ 2:32am by Lieutenant JG Maddy Dale & Lieutenant Marty Stokes
555 words; about a 3 minute read
Mission:
A New Beginning
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: current
*Bang* the sound of a cup hitting the desk woke Maddy, rather predictably she'd been digging into the medical mystery of their thirty seven new guests to the point where she'd fallen asleep on the couch in the office she shared with Marty. It must have been when she'd started running comparative analysis and database searches that she'd passed out she thought as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and looked up at Marty "Please tell me that's coffee." she said as she propped herself up.
“Strongest we’ve got,” Marty said pushing it toward Maddy. “What have you found?”
"Something I didn't expect to see." Maddy said sitting up before taking a swig of coffee, she activated the office's holo emitters to display a 3D image of the specific gene sequence she'd been looking at "That's in all thirty seven of our new guests in sickbay." she sighed "And there's no medical explanation for a universal genetic sequence like that to be in the DNA of multiple different species." she took a beat "Now what if I tell you that we've seen this sequence before?"
“Where?” Marty asked curiously. “I don’t recall seeing this anywhere.”
"That's because you were affected by it rather than by doing the research." Maddy said "Do you remember an incident aboard Ghost Station where you and a few other members of the crew were transformed or rather regressed to children?"
“Vaguely,” Marty said thoughtfully.
"Well at the time we couldn't figure out why it only happened to certain people on the crew." Maddy said "A few months later when we got handed those crystals just before the Zaj incident we discovered this sequence when we investigated how the crystals were interacting with certain members of the crew, those being the same people who'd been turned into children months earlier." she paused for a moment "You ready for the headline?"
“Well yeah,” Marty said with a nod. “Tell me!”
"This." Maddy said bringing up a 3D image of a DNA profile "Is the DNA profile of the Cardassian brought over from those ships." she brought up a second profile "It's an exact match to this one." she could see the question forming in Marty's mind "The second profile belongs to Yujas Ritt and was taken as part of his last routine physical a few days ago."
“Oh damn,” Marty said quietly. “It’s permanently altered, isn’t it?”
"Yep." Maddy said "But remember the DNA itself isn't harmful, it simply in this context raises a few questions."
“I guess so,” Marty said thoughtfully. “What now?”
"I don't know I'm a doctor not a temporal scientist." Maddy said "All I know is we've got thirty seven presumably future versions of people on this crew in our sickbay."
“Yeah,” Marty said absently. “I suppose we can’t send them back?”
"Probably not, we don't know the first thing beyond identity." Maddy said "At least not right now."
“True,” Marty said with a grin. “I guess that means we got more time to study them.”
"And if we can work out how much older they are then we'll have an idea as to when they're from if nothing else." Maddy said
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Lieutenant Marty Stokes
Chief Medical Officer
Starbase Obsidian
Lieutenant Junior Grade Maddy Dale
Asst Chief Medical Officer
Starbase Obsidian
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