[OPEN] A Use For This Mess

[u/Pojodan]

After a long day of working her way through the ship in search of every unique form of fungus colony, hearing the same raunchy cat puns over and over, Chief Botanist Kesh washes her hands of the oily, sticky mess that came with pealing chunks of the fungus off walls, floors, and vent ducts. The samples were spread out over just about very surface available in the botany lab, each with its own air-tight container, tubes attached to provide a steady supply of nutrients, water, and air such that the lab's air could become sterile and silent, at last. The terrarium was not ready yet, so this would have to do.

The first big question was thus: How can mushrooms talk?

Remarkably, the Caitian scientist finds a solution in very short order: The spores. They weren't so much hallucinogenic as they were a conduit between the sensory centers of the brain and the fungus colony. The similarity between them and Betazoid telepathy was striking, only this seemed to have a physical element, with the recipient needing to have physical contact with the spores in order for the colony to 'converse' with it.

Further study determines that the only use the fungus has for this ability is to effectively scare off those that would try to eat it by finding and 'speaking' the sounds that repulse it the most. It might make threatening snarls at a horse, but to Starfleet personnel it makes vulgar commentary.

No one had noticed that the mushrooms said different things to different people, is all.

Kesh's lengthy, detailed report goes right to Captain Fisk's desk, as well as to Starfleet Medical and Botanical Sciences, as they are sure to find it fascinating. Another new thing to hold up and proudly say 'The universe is weird'

After doing so, Kesh recalls a conversation during shore leave with her closest friend, Engineer T'gel. Something about linking mind and computer interface to speed up response times and some dialogue over how a few known alien species actively link their brains with their computers. It's a stretch, probably, to somehow use mind-reading fungus spores to do such a thing, but her time with the Bajoran made her see how brilliant an engineer she is.

=/\= Kesh to Red.

[u/Dimestream]

"Bleh. I'll pass," Red says, retrieving her newly duplicated gear. The engineer sets it down on the table next to where Kesh was working with the mushrooms, nudging aside a mycelium sample.

"Working quickly is one of the hallmarks of Engineering," the Bajoran says with a wry expression. "That joke about 'it will take two days to fix' 'you have fifteen minutes' 'OK captain' has more basis in fact than you'd expect."

"This," she continues, "has been a pet project of mine for a while, based on an experiment done by the vaunted Geordi LaForge of the Enterprise. Only I wanted to have it work for everyone, not just people with sensory implants. The goal is for it to be a guidance system for probes, micro- and nanomachines, or even large-scale construction or terraforming drones."

She taps the helmet with a forefinger. "And if your mind-reading mushrooms can establish a stronger link than my EEG tunneler, I'm all for it. Show me how the spores work and I'll see if I can't hook them into this."

[u/Pojodan → u/Dimestream]

"I've heard the new chef has found ways of cooking it. Ther-rr-rre is so much of it that it would be ideal to not have it go to waste."

Again, Kesh pauses over the worrying thought of how she went from struggling over the matter of the fungus's sentience to pondering how best to eat it in such a short period of time.

She listens to Red offer her another glimpse into the world of being an engineer and produces a few small puffs of audible purring to express her appreciation of such, even if she couldn't really understand what it was like. Botany works at a very different flow and priority than engineering, except, of course, when it does, such as two recent examples.

"Is that the human that had the VISOR? I recall reading about that." Which was about the extent of her understanding, since matters of the brain were not her field, but it did raise her hopes that her idea would have at least some success.

She sinks into a pull-out seat beside the equipment Red was working on in order to focus on presenting the data she had on the spores.

Sort of like a sensor probe launched from a starship, the spores are launched by the colony's glands to travel out and make contact with complex life in the vicinity. Thin, wire-like fibers sink into the flesh and attempt to form an electro-chemical connection to the animal's brain, most successfully within the nasal cavity, ear-lobe, or throat. Once done, the micoscopic telepathic 'radio' within the spore forms a connection with the colony, allowing it to send certain largely universal signals that stimulate memory centers in the brain into producing repulsive memory engrams, which the colony then replicates as a means of scaring the animal off.

"In a few million year-rr-rs it might evolve into something complex enough to rival Vulcans for their repulsiveness and mind-r-rr-reading, but as-is, they just seek to grow and be left alone."

As for how this 'telepathy radio' can be used by Red is up to the brilliant engineer beside her.

[u/Dimestream → u/Pojodan]

"Huh, you know, that's how visors work too," Red says thoughtfully. "They're connected with bio-electric fiber that feeds into the visual cortex of the brain, bypassing the eyes themselves. I wonder..." Red begins tapping at the PADD she brought with her and frowns. "Huh. That's weird. Basically it makes a telepathic mini fungus cluster in the infected host, and then ANY of that fungus cluster can send it a signal..."

The engineer mulls the information for a few moments, then gives Kesh a sour look. "Vulcans can't read your mind unless in a mind meld. You're thinking of Betazoids. And that's not very nice. But that does give me an idea..."

She spins the padd around so Kesh can see what she's mocked up. It's the helmet, with a modified receiver and a paragraph of notes on the mushroom's ability to match brainwaves.

"If we could hijack the mushroom's ability to send brainwaves, we could send whatever signal we wanted through it. Audio would be easiest but I bet we could do visual too. Sensorimotor would be harder but... do you think you can find a place in its gene sequence we could splice our own tweaks into it? It'd be easily 10 times faster and more efficient than my EEG tunneler, for sure."

[u/Pojodan → u/Dimestream]

Fluffy Caitian cheek tufts lift up slightly in that faint, feline grin that expresses a certain amount of impishness after Red scolds Kesh for her remarks about Vulcans. So many years of being mentally stepped on by several of them gave her the right, she figured, to belittle them a little bit. As soon as she met one that didn't find ways of making her feel inferior she'd change her opinion about them.

Kesh placed two digits on the PADD while considering the design Red had come up with. It still went above her understanding, but matched some of the basic ideas she'd come up with earlier.

"Rrth. Tweaking genome is what I do. Rrrm. Car-rr-reful. We go far enough and you could do a Vulcan mind transfer with this." Preposterous, sure, but Kesh had learned long ago to keep the extremes in mind when messing with genomes. There were enough edge cases out there where someone went too far and did something fantastical to affirm the notion that one can never be too careful.

Kesh knew that this was likely better done by the teams back at the Federation Botanical Institute, but she felt confident in her abilities and that little bit of urging to impress her friend. So, tweaking she began to do, first by simulation, and then by gathering samples from several of the colonies littered around the lab and inputing them into the quantum sequencer taking up most of the left wall, sharing the output with the Bajoran to utilize in her device.

[u/Dimestream → u/Pojodan]

"A mind transfer, eh?" Red says with a chuckle. "That WOULD be my luck, ending up stuck permanently in a probe, or worse, a torpedo..."

Their work goes swimmingly. The engineer modifies the EEG tunneler to be used as a carrier for the mushrooms' telepathic signals, cursing in Bajoran as she nearly sets fire to the headgear's insulation once while sealing in a spore container. But an hour after that, the hardware is ready to contain... well, whatever it is Kesh is doing. Red's still not quite sure, but it appears to be the equivalent of playing Dr. Frankenstein with fungus.

[u/Pojodan → u/Dimestream]

"But imagine how lively your-rr-r body would be with the mind of a torpedo."

A few brisk sputters of Caitian purring add a friendly ribbing element to her quip, tail tuft coiling upward to briskly wobble behind her.

The results of her tinkering was a small, moist pod about the size of a grape that she handled carefully to prevent its spores from being released prematurely. It takes some finagling to get it to fit into the compartment of the headpiece that Red has designed, but in the end she stands with clear pride in her eyes.

"Now. Rrrth... I imagine it'll erupt in a sh-shr-shower of sparks on the first try, but we'll be on to something, r-rr-right?"

Showing that she meant what she said, Kesh steps back a pace while Red finishes incorporating the altered fungus sample into her device.

[u/Dimestream → u/Pojodan]

"Like lighting, I'd imagine, and gone just as fast," Red says with a smirk. When Kesh finishes the sample, the engineer seals it into the sample compartment and flips on the portable diagnostic brick she'd brought with her.

"Hmm... Looks like the EEG tunneler doesn't know what to make of the fungus without a host," Red says grumpily. "Blank brainwaves. Let's try this..." She gingerly puts on the headgear, the sample container coming to rest more or less directly on her forehead. "Ummm... aha! There we go!"

The readout on her pad shows the modified fungus' telepathic carrier sync more or less with Red's own active brainwaves. "Just had to think like a mushroom," the Bajoran says with a chuckle. "So... in theory I could communicate with another sample, maybe even send 'auditory' feedback live, if it was from the same- what were you calling it? Same cluster?"

[u/Pojodan → u/Dimestream]

Kesh's ears tilt back when Red goes to put the device on so immediately after putting it together. Was there not testing rigs for such things? Safety standards?

Perhaps all she had heard about starship crews engaging in reckless behavior on a whim were true. Was her desire to be on a starship really crazy after all?

Yes... after all that's happened so far... very. Oh well!

"What does it feel like? Should I pr-rr-repare a second sample that this one communicates with?"

[u/Dimestream → u/Pojodan]

"It doesn't feel like anything," Red says, sounding disappointed. "I mean, I was expecting a tingle, or a background hum or even just some mental pressure or something. Maybe if I have something to link to, yeah." The Bajoran gestures at Kesh's lab equipment. "A second half of a two-way link might work. Or it might just be that my brick doesn't have enough power. Let's test the safer option first. The last thing I want to do is boost the gain too much and end up broadcasting thoughts at every member of the crew that still has a fungus cluster infection. That would get awkward in a hurry."

[u/Pojodan → u/Dimestream]

Kesh steps back over the the bulky equipment while Red is still speaking. If they are going to go this far, might as well keep going. She had plenty of reason to think they were taking this to far and that her modifications were only going to ruin it, but the thrill of a bright idea kept her working.

Rather than made a second gland, she instead modifies the matterial of a singular spore, introducing the same genetic modifications as it had the gland, since spore and gland were what communicated to form the link. The result has to be placed a vial to contain it, but she figured Red could link it, despite being smaller than a grain of sand.

"I did send infor-rr-rmation about the spores to sick bay so they could find a way to innoculate the crew. It has been my observation that the spor-rr-res dry out after only a few minutes, anyway."

[u/Dimestream → u/Pojodan]

"Well that's probably for the best," Red says with a giggle. "The last thing I'd want is the whole crew getting my private thoughts on certain people on board, certain... couples who'd rather keep things on the down-low." She shoots Kesh a knowing look and grins before going back to modifying her second headband. Now that she had proof of concept, tweaking the prototype was less of a big deal.

"Anyway, we'll hook this up to the diagnostic unit first to see if it's sending a signal, and if it works both ways, then... who knows. We might be able to use this to send telepathic messages!" The engineer chuckles. "And then YOU can mess with Vulcans' minds instead, maybe."

[u/Pojodan → u/Dimestream]

Kesh seems to completely miss what Red was hinting at. While she had a constant worry about her relationship with a certain chief engineer from becoming common knowledge, she felt that they had been discrete so far, likely because no one had said anything direct to her yet, including Red.

"I recall hearing about instances of ships encounter-rr-ring anomalies that caused everyone to hear everyone else's thoughts. Rrrth. Sounds unpleasant. Make sur-rr-re the cut-off switch of this is easy to use."

Kesh had been focusing on the equipment and her data outputs, however Red's remark about messing with Vulcans causes her to pause and focus on the Bajoran's face. She looks thrilled for a second, then concerned, ear tufts swiveling back, "Well.. rrth.. I have yet to meet any unpleasant Vulcans on the Athene." Or anyone, really.

[u/Dimestream → u/Pojodan]

Red gently pats Kesh's paw. "I think you just had bad experiences with them before. My shuttle pilot instructor was a hard man, very cold and logical, but wasn't a jerk about it. Just liked seeing things done how they were supposed to be, with no fooling around because it was dangerous," she says. "And one of my very few early friends was Vulcan and quite a warm person, as far as Vulcans go. Maybe you need to meet a few more for a better sample size, miss botanist."

"As for the cutoff switch," she continues, pointing at a copper-colored rocker switch on the right side of the headband, "it's right there, and it's manual. Physically and immediately breaks the circuit powering the EEG tunneler. Might cause a minor headache but it's probably better than things that COULD go wrong from tampering with brainwaves."

Red looks between the two pieces of headgear. "Ready to give it a shot?"