Dust to Dust

Posted on Wed Nov 20th, 2024 @ 6:24am by Ensign Mei Ratthi & Lieutenant Xex Wang

Mission: Mean Green Queen
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Mission Day 0 at 1300

[CMO's Office]
[Following 'Once More into the Breach']

“Shitting asshole of a nebula,” Xex spat, slamming his hand flat onto his desk. The resultant *smack* made the doctor hunch his shoulders and look guiltily through the transparent panels of his office. The unexpected sound had indeed caused a few of his staff to pause, looking his way, and he made a concerted effort to smooth his features and straighten his posture. He tucked his hands behind his back and moved around to the business side of his desk as though the outburst had never happened.

Soon enough, sickbay's regular rhythm returned and Xex could stop pretending to be even close to even-keeled. In the wake of his anger however, he was left drained and deflated; he leaned his palms on the surface of his desk and let his shoulders slump forward. He allowed himself one glance toward Timmoz in his stasis field-- the LMH had done a predictably excellent job of removing the offending lung and now Timmoz had been returned to his slow-motion descent into death-- and then jerked his eyes away. Staring at the Orion would do nothing productive. His gaze fell on the jumble of PADDs on his desk, a disarray he normally did not tolerate but for the moment was a fitting parallel to his state of mind.

In this current state of mind, he found himself offended by the minutiae of keeping a ship full of humanoids hale and healthy. While Timmoz battled for his life with only the poor weaponry of an ill-equipped doctor on a Starfleet vessel deep in the Delta Quadrant, the minutiae continued to blithely batter at his attention. Minor complaints came and went, reports needed filing, medical records required updating, requests blinked at him, demanding answers. How could he concern himself with amending a report from three years ago when a man lay dying slowly in his sickbay?

The short answer was, of course, he couldn't, and he didn't. The minutiae were stacking up. Marwol helped where he could, but some things needed the CMO's blessing, and Xex was feeling anything but blessed. Blowing out a dejected sigh, he glanced at the chrono. Liazra's most recent crop wouldn't be ready for some time yet. He was back to waiting. The word took on a sinister, cursed tone in his mind; he had come to dread the waiting.

As much to keep his hands busy as out of any real motivation to work through the pile of PADDs, Xex began shoving the devices about on his desk, lifting the corner of one here, sliding another atop its fellow there. It was the most desultory kind of organization imaginable, with predictably mediocre results. The comparison to a child pushing food around on their plate to try to hide the fact that they hadn't eaten any of it would not have been misplaced. Still, he had no better ideas for how to spend his time, so he seated himself and continued, propping his head in one hand and pushing the devices around with an outstretched finger.

An interminable time later, he looked up to find a cooling mug of brown liquid near his elbow and a cramp in his shoulder where he had slumped into his hand and stuck there for too long. Whoever had left the mug had also left a meal bar, and dutifully, Xex consumed the bar with automatic movements and began to sip on the lukewarm-- coffee? He thought it was coffee. Blowing out a despondent sigh, he watched the fine motes of dust rise from the surface of his desk. His medical brain catalogued them as mostly humanoid skin cells mixed with some hair and fingernail bits. His practical brain noted that he'd dismissed the cleaning drones one time too many if there was enough dust to float up off his desk.

His curious brain watched as the motes sifted slowly back down onto the desk's surface, creating a randomized pattern of tiny whitish specks.

Randomized pattern...

Something about those words stuck in his mind and he frowned, bringing his face closer to the scatter of specks, peering intently at them while trying to relax his brain, knowing that if he stopped chasing the thought, it would emerge.

Sure enough, like a rare flower, it began to bloom from the depths of his memory. The thought was not in fact about a randomized pattern, but the exact opposite. A beautiful, almost crystalline lattice of pattern materialized in the forefront of his mind. Feeling his eyes widen with the realization, Xex sat bolt upright and abandoned the cooled coffee, sorting quickly through the as-yet unorganized mess of PADDs across his desk. He half-stood in his haste, hunched over like some mad burrowing animal trying to find a hidden gem in the dirt.

Finally unearthing the PADD in question, he stood, thumbed it open and flicked impatiently through it. Though he hadn't been able to give Liazra's report on Shaddam IVa's dust the in-depth focus he thought it deserved, he had remembered some key points from her preamble and now flipped swiftly through the pages to the section on the odd way in which the dust adhered to itself in an extremely organized manner.

Grabbing the schematics and close-up microscopic images Liazra and her colleagues had taken of the dust, he enlarged them into the air above his desk. It was the work of but a moment to take similar images from the last batch of lungs they had grown and place them side-by-side. Lastly, he turned to the wall display behind him and grabbed the haunting readouts from Timmoz's biobed as his body had begun to reject the lung, placing them alongside the others. Xex took a half-step back and tapped his blunt fingertips against his lips, staring intently at each image in turn. His head tilted this way and that, tipping almost ninety degrees on its side as he finally got to the dust. Tentatively, he reached out and began manipulating the images, turning them this way and that, overlaying one on the other, stretching and swiveling and interlacing.

When, some unmarked amount of time later, Xex finally collapsed his work down onto a PADD, he looked brighter than he had all day. Energy had returned to his step, and his skin seemed to glow, its ashy, dejected gray giving way to its usual shimmer. PADD tucked under his arm, he strode through sickbay and out into the rest of the ship, too focused to have noticed the solicitous questions of his staff. A pair of techs shared a slightly worried glance in his wake, their concern tempered by the knowledge of all underlings that if their boss was happy, they'd be happy. Their twin shrugs seemed to say, 'Must be good news...' as the doors swished shut behind him.

[Deck 5]
[Liazra's Quarters]
[1324]

The door chime had rung at least twice. Perhaps three or four times by the time Liazra awoke, bleary-eyed and dazed after being pulled out of deep sleep by the infernal sound. Glaring up at the little light that served as a secondary indicator, she gave in to the call, rubbed her eyes, and shoved her blankets aside. She grabbed a dressing gown to throw over her pajamas- shorts and a t-shirt- and slid her feet into a pair of slippers. There was nothing to be done with her hair; she settled for pushing it away from her face and hoping it would stay back. It probably wouldn't. It had a mind of its own.

She shuffled out of her bunk and through the shared living room, wishing once again that at least one of her roommates had a remotely similar schedule. Working the quiet nights was fine for the most part, but it would be nice to have someone to share the afternoon door-answering responsibilities when friends decided to show up, unannounced, in the middle of her off hours, when all her roommates knew full well she'd be asleep.

Liazra rubbed the last of the sleep from her eyes and took a breath, intending to castigate the unfortunate visitor for the cheek of showing up at such an hour. But when the door opened to reveal who it was, Liazra checked herself. “Oh. Hello, Doctor. I thought you were someone else.”

"Liazra," he greeted her breathlessly-- had he run all the way here?-- not bothering with the pleasantries. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, as though full of energy that had nowhere to go. Waving the PADD in his hand, he continued, "It's the dust. The dust!" Xex seemed entirely unaware that he not only a) sounded like a madman ranting in the corridor but also b) had obviously dragged the poor woman out of bed. As she stared at him, blinking without comprehension, he tried again. "From Shaddam IVa. The dust."

“The dust?” Liazra’s brow furrowed, and she rubbed her eyes again as though to make sure she was actually awake and not having some surreal dream. When she looked again, though, Xex still stood on her doorstep looking like he’d solved all the mysteries of life. She sighed, then stepped back and gestured for him to come in. “Have a seat, then, and let me get some coffee. I just woke up, I’m not thinking clearly. What dust are you talking about, and what does it have to do with anything? And explain your thought process as though I’m not a telepath who can simply pull your thoughts out of the air and understand what you’re talking about. What are you talking about in general, what does the dust from Shaddam IVa have to do with it?”

Xex stepped past her, but continued gesturing with the PADD. "The problem is the interface, right? Where the new tissue meets the old, where the biosynthetic manifold is not compatible with Timmoz's physiology, right?" He knew he was talking too quickly, still slightly out of breath, but he couldn't seem to slow himself down. The excitement was like a living thing scrabbling about in his chest, demanding to be released. As he reached the small sofa, he turned to see whether or not Liazra was following, only to find that she had reached the replicator and was holding up a finger to forestall any further comment. Xex rocked back on his heels, then up on the balls of his feet again, unable to keep still while the replicator hummed and a shimmering mug appeared in the slot.

She kept that finger uplifted as she raised the mug to her lips and took a long drink of the steaming beverage she had ordered. Moments later- so many many moments, to Xex’s excited state of mind- Liazra lowered the mug took a deep breath, and looked up back at Xex. Her expression had cleared and she was nearly as focused as usual. “The interface, manifold, matrix. Whatever you want to call it. And the cellulose-based structures we’ve tried haven’t worked. They’ve all been either too rigid or too weak. But if I’m understanding you correctly, you think that, somehow, the dust from Shaddam IVa will allow us to create a manifold that will allow the synthesized tissue to mesh with Timmoz’s existing tissues. Right? If so, then how?”

By the time Liazra asked her question, Xex was beaming, and just about squirming out of his skin with impatience. "Exactly," he enthused. "Too little cellulose and the matrix is too weak to support the tissues, too much cellulose and it interferes with Timmoz's existing biology. As we saw." He grimaced slightly and quickly continued, "So what if instead of using more cellulose, we use a different framework to lend strength to the cellulose without losing the flexibility we need to interface with Timmoz's existing physiology? Look." Propping the PADD against his hip, he manipulated a few things on its screen, then threw the simulation out into the air. An extremely orderly latticework of particles sparkled into being and very slowly began to rotate so that they could view all sides of it. "This is the dust. It forms these matrices all on its own; it's part of what gives it some of its most unique properties, like the phaser-- nevermind." Refusing to be derailed, Xex waved off his near-tangent and gestured at the image. "See how easily that would fit into the matrix you've built? Wait," he said as he threw another image out beside the first, this the cellular structure of the new lung tissues they'd been growing. "See?" he prompted, still vibrating with excitement, "I've even run a few simulations..."

Xex trailed off as Liazra stepped up to the image and began to manipulate it herself, turning it this way and that with her free hand, examining it with what he fervently hoped was a critical chemical eye. Much though he wanted to be right, he couldn't help but want to be certain this time. He did not think Timmoz had many more surgeries left in him.

“I do see.” Liazra looked up at him through her lashes, though the gaze was more dubious than coquettish. Xex doubted she had a flirtatious bone in her body. “But I question it. So far, what we’ve see of the dust is its ability to maintain a lattice structure on a surface that already exists. That’s why you were concerned about it coating the lungs of the members of the Away Team. The worry was that it would prevent the gaseous transfer from the lungs to the bloodstream, not that it would form a secondary structure–”. She stopped then, going as still as a hologram that’s been paused. Xex seemed to lean toward her as though caught in her gravity, all his weight on his toes as he waited with palpable excitement for her to continue her thought. “Although. Once it had formed it’s lattice structure, that structure was strong enough to maintain its own shape, yet flexible enough to move smoothly with the organic layer it had settled on.”

She finally blinked and looked back at Xex. “If I’m interpreting your hypothesis correctly, our solution may be to use the scans of Timmoz’s healthy lung, reverse the image, replicate a pliable model for the dust to settle on so it can form the necessary shape, and then grow the new tissues either inside or among the lattice? Correct?”

"Exactly!" Xex crowed, "Exactly!" Then, as though dimmed by a switch, his expression peaked with worry. "That is, if it's even remotely possible. Can the existing framework we have be altered enough to accommodate the dust while still providing the scaffolding we need?"

“Assuming the individual dust particles are small enough and the lattice itself doesn’t grow too thick, I don’t see why not. From the reports I’ve seen, the lattice is robust enough to take quite a lot of abuse- from energy weapons, anyway. It’s worth a few simulations, anyway.” Liazra took another long sip of her coffee, then glanced down at her pajamas. “Let me dressed, and we can head to the lab and see what we can come up with, shall we?”

[Deck 5]
[Physical Sciences Lab]
[1655]

Patience, patience, patience, Xex chanted silently to himself as he and Liazra watched the preliminary diagnostics from their last few hours concentrated work. He had forced himself to leave a goodly cushion of space between himself and the containment chamber in which the samples were growing, and he had his hands tucked behind his back to stop them straying to any of the equipment. He couldn't help the bounce up onto the balls of his feet however, as the data began to populate. He glanced briefly aside to Liazra, unable to contain his excitement entirely.

They had run so many exhaustive simulations they had actually pinged as an anomaly on the system techs' diagnostics and had received concerned queries from the computer core duty watch. Xex did not feel apologetic in the least. They had to get this right this time. To that end, they'd gone back and forth, each trying to tear holes in the simulation. And when they did, they started again. And again. And finally, there had been no more holes to tear. Now there was just the waiting.

Normally, Xex left the biochemist to her labors, knowing how unpleasant it was to work with an audience, but this time, he hadn't been able to tear himself away. He'd watched the monitor as it followed her processes, magnifying some portions of her careful movements, while providing a continuous diagnostic of the health of the resultant sample. Now that she was almost done, at least they could watch together.

Finally, Liazra blew out a long breath and came to stand by Xex, arms folded, staring at the displays like she could make them give her the results she wanted by sheer force of will. The little line between her eyes was going to become a permanent thing at this point, but Xex was certain she wouldn’t care, so long as they got it right this time.

“How long?” he asked.

“Perhaps an hour? Maybe less?” There was more tension in her stance than Xex had ever seen in her before. Was she out of ideas if this didn’t work? He didn’t want to find out. “I’ve accelerated the growth as much as I’ve dared to. All the simulations have indicated that the dust matrix will work, but-”

"--only time will tell," he finished in a tired adage he used so casually most of the time. In this moment though, it seemed to hold weight. Too much weight. For once, Xex fell silent as they watched the samples. Although the changes in them were too minute to see with the naked eye second by second, slowly they did seem to grow, gaining mass and form in their individual little environments. As the minutes slipped by, Xex found himself closer and closer to their containment field until it nearly seemed as though he were going to press his nose up against it.

"It's going to work."

"It is showing every evidence of doing so in the simulations," Liazra agreed, making Xex jump-- he hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud into the almost reverent hush of the lab. Although there were more people about than there were during the duo's usual midnight shifts, the rest of Liazra's compatriots had caught the air of concentrated effort around the two and had left them well enough alone. It was as though they were encapsulated in their own little bubble of hope-- and desperation.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Xex then ran his fingers through his hair and blew out an embarrassed sigh, as though to excuse himself for startling. "Right. Yes, you're right. I--" His gaze strayed to the samples and he let it linger for just a moment before jerking it guiltily away again, focusing on Liazra. "I'll prep the surgery suite and brief the LMH. Do let me know if--"

“Anything changes. Yes, doctor. You'll be the first to know.” If there was a certain dryness to Liazra's tone, it was lost on the good doctor who, true to his word, was making good his exit, the lab's doors snicking shut behind him with a disturbing air of finality.


[Surgical Suite]
[Sickbay]
[1912]

This time, Liazra had stayed for the surgery. Standing outside the suite, she watched the LMH's deft movements as he worked the fine tools needed for the delicate surgery. Xex stood across Timmoz's body from the hologram, watching intently, and occasionally making some gesture she couldn't interpret or comment she couldn't hear as he assisted the LMH's efforts. Still, though the overall body language-- at least on the part of the CMO-- seemed serious, it lacked the tension she would have expected if the procedure was going poorly. Frustratingly, body language was all she had to go on; Xex had neglected to put the diagnostic readout on the exterior display space. Whether on purpose or not, she couldn't tell.

By the time Xex emerged from the surgical suite, leaving the LMH to monitor his patient immediately post-operation, he looked as tired as Liazra had ever seen him. Nevertheless, there was a subtle gravity to him, a deep satisfaction like the one that came with a job well done. How he could possibly know it was a job well done already, she couldn't say. He'd jumped to conclusions before...

“Before you say anything,” he said, perhaps reading her expression, “I'm happy with the surgery. I am reserving judgement on the transplanted tissue. Good enough?”

“I suppose,” Liazra said. “If I demanded you explain it all, I’m sure you would go into all the minute technical details that would go right over my head, just to spite me.” The corners of her lips twitched upward into a faint smile that seemed to indicate that she was- probably- joking. Xex often found it difficult to tell when she was amused by something. She was always so serious unless she was talking about one of her own experiments. “But the fact that you’re optimistic thus far is a good sign. I take it the dust’s lattice structure is meeting your expectations?”

“Yes!” Xex exclaimed with hardly-suppressed excitement and then, as though recalling that he was supposed to be reserving judgement, he cleared his throat. “That is, it looks promising,” he corrected himself seriously, “Look.”

He tapped a few commands into the surgical suite's exterior terminal, and then took whatever displayed in response and threw it into the air before the suite's doors, large enough for both of them to view. A nurse and his assistant who were cleaning up after their most recent patient-- a careless cadet who'd ended up with some fairly nasty plasma burns from an EPS conduit-- paused their efforts to look at the data, shamelessly eavesdropping on Xex's explanation.

The image was a microscopic one, magnified many times, and showing the orderly latticework of the dust creating a very noticeable scaffold on which organic growth was supported; a scaffold that seemed to be bridging the divide between two distinct sets of tissues. “See? The structure hasn't altered a whit, and it seems to be bearing the new tissue well. But please, don't let me lecture you,” his own gray eyes glinted as he suppressed a smile, “Tell me what you think.”

Behind them, the nurse and his assistant leaned a little closer.

Liazra was silent for an interminable amount of time. At least it felt that way to Xex, who was practically bouncing on his toes by the time she looked back up at him, her expression bland as ever. That lasted for all of two seconds before she broke into a real smile that lit up her features. “I think we’ve finally solved the riddle. You’re right. It’s holding its structure the way it should while being flexible enough to allow for the tissue’s movement and not interfering with the gas transferring in his blood.” That was more likely said for the benefit of the nursing staff- some of whom were leaning in so far they’d fall over if they leaned in any more. She glanced over at them, an amused eyebrow raised, then pointedly ignored them, her gaze resting on Timmoz for a moment. “How long do you think it will be until we’ll know for sure if he’s out of danger?” she asked.

Xex's poorly suppressed excitement bubbled over into a grin that flashed from ear to ear. "Exactly!" he enthused, rather more loudly than was typical for a place of healing. The precariously leaning nurse jumped at the exclamation, and hunching his shoulders with at least a touch of embarrassment, chivvied his assistant back to their duties, a flurry of low murmurs flying between them. Ignoring their audience, Xex surged forward in an excess of excitement, nearly sweeping Liazra into a probably-unwelcome hug when she spoke again, asking the all-important question. He paused mid-grab and nearly toppled forward onto her, managing to windmill backward enough to tuck his hands guiltily behind his back and clear his throat, trying to sober his expression. Nothing to see here, he was not about to embrace his colleague, really.

"At his current rate of cellular division and repair," Xex answered, glancing yet again over the constantly-scrolling diagnostics, "if he continues to improve through the night, I think we can-- what was it you said?" his lips twitched as he recalled a phrase from one of their many collaboration sessions, "Maintain optimism?" He lifted a finger, his twitching lips finally breaking into a grin again, "Cautious optimism of course."

“Of course. It wouldn't do to be excessively enthusiastic. But there is definitely a cause for optimism.” Liazra's answering smile was not as wide as Xex's. Not phased in the least by Liazra's customary constraint, the doctor's own grin widened as though to compensate for her reserve.

"Cause for optimism indeed," the doctor echoed, turning back to their patient with a lightness he hadn't felt in days.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Timmoz had a chance.



A post by:

Doctor Xex Wang, MD
Chief Medical Officer

Lieutenant (JG) Liazra Ranaam
Biochemist