Alien Encounters

Posted on Sun Feb 15th, 2026 @ 4:22am by Lieutenant Irynya & Ensign Noah Balsam

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Pathfinder Station - Simulation Room 3
Timeline: Mission Day 22 at 1600

[Pathfinder Station - Simulation Room 3]
[MD 22, 1600 Hours]

Pathfinder’s simulation rooms were larger and far more sophisticated than the Sojourner’s holodeck and, because they were both brand new and designed for the specific purpose of training and evaluating officers, their emitters were so precise as to leave anyone in the space wondering how to tell where fabrication began and reality ended.

As it was, the best indicator that this was not real was that Irynya and Noah stood on what appeared to be a sandy expanse of land. The space surrounding them was a deep blue color, lightened slightly to make it possible for the two of them to see what was around them. Brilliantly colored formations flowed across the sand as if the particulate matter had coalesced into gnarly branching rock formations. Crustaceans could be glimpsed, dipping in and out of the craggy rocks and scuttling around clumps of greenery that waved around them. The light they did have was dappled, as if being disrupted by movement as it filtered down to reach them.

And all around them were fish. Hundreds of fish. Brilliant colors flashing and shifting as they moved. Though the simulation appeared to be under water, no breathing apparatus was required. It was as if the two officers had grown gills and could simply breathe the water that surrounded them. Movement was, however, restricted as the current of water flowed around them.

“Do you know that one?” Iry asked for what was almost certainly the 20th or 30th time since they’d started this particular program. This time she was pointing to a brilliantly orange fish with white and black stripes that was dodging in and out of some kind of unusual fern.

Noah was... invisibly uncomfortable, containing it as best he could. He'd lived a life underwater, in a lightless alien abyss beneath kilometers of methanated ice. But that was in a state of the art scientific colony. Well designed for air breathing bipeds. Not... free floating like a fish on the bottom of an albeit shallow ocean as he could see the dappling of sunlight. "Uhh... hmm..." Noah followed her finger. He was no oceanologist, nor a marine biologist. He'd only been to places like Earth for school. Irynya's notions of beauty and his own were vastly different.

"Uhh..." He stalled again. He did not like how he couldn't move because of the water and it vexed him. "No idea. I mean its a fish but..." He frumped. "I think. It has gills... its looks like a vertebrate... uhh... tail, fins." Now if she wanted to know about gelatinoid xenopolychaetes or xenomedusae, Noah could've clawed back at his youth when he'd studied these fauna... if you could call them fauna... in school. "Lateral uh... s-symmetry... not radial symmetry so. It's intended to move forward..." He trailed off. "But. It was pretty. Very orange." He smiled.

Irynya's responding laugh was warm and open. Unlike Noah, she'd been raised in the water. Her parents joked that she could swim before she could walk. Without any real regard for the unusual pull of the water around them, she took a few 'steps' over and slid an arm around her friend's waist, cocking her head to rest it on his shoulder a moment. "It is..." she said, still laughing softly, "very orange." She squeezed the arm she'd wrapped around his waist in a side hug and then moved away in a sort of slow motion glide, walking toward the odd plant where the orange fish had last been seen.

She reached the spot and stooped into a squat, bouncing slightly on her toes and placing her arms out to the side to reverse the momentum she'd gathered in her movement. "Computer," she called, "what is the name of the fish that was just swimming in this plant?"

The station's computer had a similar feminine neutrality to the tone of the computer aboard the ship. Now, it spoke, giving the impression not of filling the middle space, but being physically quite close to them. "This is a species of saltwater fish known as the Amphiprion Ocellaris. Colloquially it has been called a clownfish due to its unusual bright markings. The derive from the family Pomacentridae. Order..."

"That's good," Iry answered, cutting the computer off and twisting to look back at Noah. She looked as if she were about to open her mouth and say something when a large shadow cloaked them for a moment as an enormous creature swam over them. Irynya shifted backward, craning her neck until she nearly fell over into a sitting position. The creature was oblong, with a greater length than both of them put together head to feet. It's underside was white and lined as if there were grooves along it's belly. Two massive fins each giving the appearance of being serrated. Their wavy bumpy edges made the appendages appear almost scalloped as if the creature had been designed with its own lacy edgework.

"What... is... that?" Iry murmured, not directing the question to Noah or the computer so much as needing to vocalize the awe she felt as the animal swept past them.

What one Noah thought he knew from history. "Tha-that one's a whale." He attested with a modicum of confidence. "They aren't fish. They're mammals." Enceladus had myths much like Earth did, born of the brain's ability to fill in the gaps with fancifulness when facts eluded and emotions ran high. Earth had its kraken. Enceladus, its Ice Whale. "They're Earth's other sentient life form. Two species... uh, "Noah held up two fingers which he did with the viscous difficulty of water pressure. "Two different environments. We didn't understand how intelligent they were until they were gone." Noah watched its gliding beauty and enormous grace.

"Wait is that a whale, or a shark?" When he moved to sweep his hand to point, the water pressure dragged at him and he felt his low-gravity bone structure ached and pang with discomfort. That was going to hurt later, he could tell. "Tha-that might be a shark well... but... I think its a whale. Anyway about a hundred years ago, an interstellar probe came to check on them. And almost wiped us out." He looked sad a moment, "Cuz of our ignorance..."

Iry's eyes rounded and she half scrambled back to her feet, doing her best to walk/glide her way back to her friend. "I read about that," she said with curiosity in her voice. "Some kind of hijinks around Captain Kirk, if I can remember the Academy history lesson correctly." Unlike Noah, she worked with the water to let it hold her. It slowed her motion, but also helped avoid accidental strain. Her head turned in the direction the whale had gone. "Do you think the program intended us to talk to it?" she asked. "The whale I mean?"

Noah nodded at her first comment. "His crew went back in time to collect two new representatives of the species. Specifically Humpbacks. Earth's still recovering from what the probe did, really. T-turns out vaporizing oceans and ionizing atmospheres isn't great for a planet. I guess... weather control technology took a big leap around then."

Noah's eyes rounded and he grimaced, bit his lip and shrugged, "I-I don't know, this is your program. Are we supposed to talk to it. I don't have a Cetacean acoustic generator on me. My badge's back in the room." He'd deliberately left it there after the events in Ops. "I don't think I swim well enough to make their body gestures..." he added about the second half of their language.

As they spoke the space around them seemed to clear, fish darting away while others seemed to blend in with the space around them. Where before there had been a great deal of brilliant coloring, now the was open water. And the figure that Noah had pointed out a moment earlier moving toward them.

"What, umm," she started, eyeing the creature's approach. "What does a shark look like exactly?"

The creature that moved toward them now was smaller than the whale had been. Perhaps slightly longer than Noah was tall, but with a snout that came to an angular point and a tale that seemed to move with a deliberate laziness from side to side in the water. Small eyes on the sides of its head were dwarfed by the curve of its mouth. Despite herself, Iry felt her heart rate pick up a bit. It was a beautiful creature, certainly, but something about it felt predatory and she couldn't help the instinctive response that accompanied that.

"Uhhh oookay, no, that's a shark." Noah grimaced again, taking the instinctive step back through the hydrostatic resistance. The move was pure visceral instinct- bad scary predatory thing eat monkey, no matter how evolved. "Uhhh... re-relax Shark... I am not a seal or a fish... I won't even taste good." He looked at Irynya. "We. We don't taste good." The cold, some might say dead gaze of the shark studied them in its perpendicular course, trying to decide if these twiggy primates were worth of a flavor sample. "Computer, identify species..."

"Carcharhinus leucas. A common Bull Shark, native to Pacific waters." The computer intoned.

"Aaaand the safeties are on.... ri-right?" Noah blinked.

"Affirmative."

Irynya, like Noah, felt the instinctive desire to hide and suddenly understood why so much of the fauna around them had seemed to disappear or camouflage. She shrank into Noah's side a bit, not wrapping her arm this time, but somehow feeling more comfortable with a physical reminder that he was present. It really was a very believable program.

The shark continued its approach, all but silent as if it were the water around it that was moving out of its way rather than it moving through the liquid. As it neared it's line of a mouth opened ever so slightly, revealing a row of sharp teeth.

"Damn the safeties," Iry murmured before more clearly adding, "Computer, freeze program."

The shift was immediate. The weight of the water around them slackened, releasing its hold and returning them to normalcy. The shark, tail fin tucked slightly to the left, mid-stroke, hung still only a handful of meters away from them.

"Umm..." Iry said, flushing slightly at the way her heart raced. "Computer, how much time do we have left?"

"Your reservation ends in 15 minutes," the voice confirmed with infuriating calm.

The Risian looked to the man next to her. "I think I'm probably okay with stopping this one here... Do you want to try something else out for the last 15 minutes or..."

"Computer, anything else but this." Noah said as permission was given. He'd stood in a rictus of a freeze as the shark had continued toward him despite the computer's assurance. "And c-computer, you and I need to have a little talk later." The scene instantly changed at Noah's completely open and nebulous order.

The viscosity of water was replaced by the intense sensation of heat and pressure, but held off by the gentle thrumming of an orangish-tan force field. It fizzed and staticked as they now stood on a vast and empty plain. It was volcanic. Viscous, almost water like lava burbled and yellow, sulfurous plumes rose into the sky. The world felt "bent" in perception. Like they were looking at a world in a fishbowl. Everything seemed skewed and curving in.

The skies above were brown and yellow, occasionally an ocher of rusty red. The lightning- which seemed extremely common- was red. The plain below them- they seemed to be on some kind of plateau or mesa- was desolation in every sense. Not even a lick of life seemed to exist. Until one lifted one's eyes to the horizon.

It looked like... to be frank to Noah's and his nerd eyes, it resembled Superman's Fortress of Solitude. But on a much, much, much more massive, more dense scale. It was geometrically.... incredible. Yellowish, and seemed to have an internal luminescence. It was not natural- Noah didn't think. It had too much... alien aesthetic architecture to it. But completely alien, one obsessed with symmetry and geometry. It was a dense growth or construction of glowing crystals, with strange energy webs that seemed to billow in the wind like sails.

The sound was haunting... it was like... a chorus of ghostly bees. A strange moaning buzzing hum as the wind passes through the web-sails. The sails rippled with static charge and seemed to pulse when lightning struck them. Noah looked on at the details, squinting.

Next to Noah, Iry found herself gaping at the change. This new program, one that felt as if it had been selected at random to her, was nearly as foreign as the underwater exploratory program they'd been in a moment before. Now, though, the landscape was harsh and uninviting. The buzz of the field around them should have made her feel safer, but her heart rate seemed determined to continue galloping along at high speed.

She had already been standing close to Noah when she'd paused the underwater program, so she didn't even think when she slid her hand into his, threading her fingers between his own and tucking them up along the back of his hand. Sometime in recent weeks the habit of reaching for him like this had solidified. Not that she'd never held his hand before their shore leave, but the move had become more instinctive than deliberate, and to this point he hadn't stopped her or said anything to suggest she had overstepped her bounds.

Noah's fingers folded back into her's.

"Where..." she started to ask and then stopped, taking a moment to consider what she'd been about to say before starting over. "Do you think this is a real place?"

Noah's eyes were rounded and he shrugged in his exasperation. "Computer, where did you put us."

"This is the interface complex hub of the Tholian homeworld," The computer stated.

"And... why are we here?" Noah raised an eyebrow. When he'd said anywhere but in a shark's mouth, he hadn't expected this.

"The ambiguity of your stated request suggested the environment should be defaulted to the last public-use program in active recall archives." The computer explained as dispassionately- almost as if to say, "duh dude."

"Riiiight... uh....oh-okay...." Noah blinked. His head tilted. He looked at Irynya a few moments later. "Am I crazy, or is the computer sassy today?"

"She's definitely sassy," Iry confirmed, glancing sidelong to meet his gaze looking forward again and scanning the horizon. "Computer," she prompted after another moment, "Is the field we are in the interface complex hub or is the structure ahead of us the hub?" she asked.

"Glad it's not just-" But Noah held back as Irynya clearly addressed the computer. Instead he peered on at the threatening landscape.

"Correct." The computer stated.

The field that surrounded them was, clearly, designed to shield them from the crushing weight of gravity and the intensity of the heat. Irynya spared a moment's consideration for how that could work and then gave up trying. Whomever had been in the program had, she guessed, used the field too. Or it was protecting something more than themselves. Something like a doorway or hatch that might enable them to reach the structure ahead of them. Uncertain she dropped her eyes to the ground, scanning the space around their feet.

That somehow felt so... Tholian... to Noah. In no way were Tholian mindscapes like organic beings. Their minds, even to the likes of Betazoids and other telepaths, had a rigid geometry and parallel thinking. It was akin to mind-reading an advanced AI. Humans thought in linear fashion. Tholians thought in something akin to a lattice. And yet... even the idea of comfort, a welcoming, a formal reception area... was beyond them. It was likely deemed unnecessary. State your business on their world, and leave. They will respond. The answer will be binary- yes or no. And yet they were also so... enigmatic.

"You know the wormhole never would've been possible without them..." Noah chin jutted at the distant megaplex that he assumed was a Tholian version of a city. A hive. But not like a Borg collective. More like... specialized nanites driven by an AI directive. He raised a brow at Irynya, his hands resting on the backs of his pelvic arches. "And they just... showed up. At the right time. Some of the logs of the runabouts in the wormhole said they just appeared in the wormhole too. Like... they phased in."

Irynya's eyebrows crept upward even as she returned to scanning the space around them. "I didn't know that part," she said, "about the appearing I mean. But I had heard they were instrumental in the wormhole's stabilization." She glanced up to Noah, squeezing his hand once as she did, "Sometimes it's hard to wrap my head around how alien others can be."

A soft whoosh came like a tingly breeze in the background.

With an expansive gesture of her free hand that encompassed the circle of the forcefield that was clearly for keeping Tholia out rather, she guessed, than then in. "Like this. I bet the Tholians don't need a forcefield like this. Maybe the program knew to create one because we're not Tholian. But they could probably just... you know..." she cast about for a word that didn't sound rude to her before finally giving in and saying, "scuttle... over to the... the structure out there."

The field pulsed softly, almost like breathing, and flashed. Red lightning arced the sky and struck one of the mournfully harmonizing web-sails in the distance. Noah didn't see or hear it approach until it was on top of them. Had they called for the Arch? Was it a part of the program. Noah felt the presence, he thought probably after Irynya had.

It hovered approximately a decimeter off the parched, desiccated soil and rock. Its body... glowed. It was like watching a sunstone with an electric heartbeat. Breathtaking. Breaktakingly alien. Breathtakingly terrifying. From a point its abdomen-like lower form grew like a tapering crystal. Faceted. Gorgeous. Noah felt his jaw drop even as part of him stepped defensively between them and Irynya, his arm up as a safety catch.

His eyes scanned further. Four arms. Spindly. At its thorax and abdomen joined, there was a pulsing glow. Its thorax was... faceted and v-shaped. A head-like form jutted above, no neck. Two glowing golden eyes. It hovered above the two biologicals. A Tholian. A full on Tholian. Light began to flicker from its chest. Patterned. Rhythmic. Mesmerizing in a way.

How... in the hell... was it doing what it was doing? As the light entered their eyes, words... images.... intentions... entered the auditory canal. "Question. Designated function?" A spindly arm swept first to Irynya. Then to Noah. "Question. Designated function.." It repeated the pulsations of thorax light and with it.... it was almost like the words formed as reverberations in crystal. Like a tuning fork or singing bowl was trying to speak.

Like Noah, Irynya gaped, but a small portion of her attention--the majority of which was being spent trying to make sense of the being in front of them--flickered to Noah and to the arm he held out to the side, half blocking her from view. Her heart clenched in appreciation, but there wasn't time to do more than register the protectiveness of his stance.

"Is it," she said softly, not sure where to even begin, "asking us who we are?" It? She? He? They? Irynya hadn't the slightest idea where to begin in addressing the Tholian. Would it even be sufficient to vocalize? The words she heard, and those she assumed Noah must as well, were vocalized after a fashion, but in a way that was so different as to be indistinguishable to her from the creature speaking directly into her head.

It was impossible to look away too. The facets of the alien's body glinted, displaying not just its own deep amber, but the reflection of the red lightning and warm rust colors of the ground. Even the burnt orange of the forcefield undulated against its facets giving the solidity of its form an added layer of movement that resembled water, though not in any form Iry could directly recall seeing.

Why was it so... drawing in... to look at now, when, Noah recalled, it was almost painful to watch before? Like it bent and lensed light, like a prism. So what was different now? His eyes, rounded, searched, his throat felt constricted with stress. "Uh... I-I don't do know..." He really wished a scientist was in the room right now. Or even Counselor Qo. He had no idea how to talk to a Tholian. "F-full disclosure, Iry, I got a D+ in Xenocultural First Contact Theory." he swallowed. His throat felt dry. "I-I guess we just try." He looked at the Tholian's... face? I'm uh... I'm-I'm Noah Balsam... and this is my friend Irynya. If you need the sp-"

"Irrelevant designation. Inquiry. State function." Flashes of images in both their minds as pulsations of light re-commenced from its thorax. Faster. God, it hurt. It was like... an out of control series of running thoughts. Flashes. Tholians. Each looked different... different shapes. The pulses of images came with a strange smell. Like burning toast. Ozonous, charred, acridity. It wafted and seemed to end with a... coppery tang with vanilla?

Behind Noah's shoulder Irynya winced and drew breath in with a sharp small gasp. The pain that came with the onslaught of imagery felt as if someone were forcefully turning the pages of her mind and inserting information willy-nilly the way a child might try to force one shape through a hole designed for a completely different one. The smell pricked at her nose, making it burn while her eyes watered.

"Noah," she breathed, "I think it wants to know what we do. Like... what our function in society is. Don't Tholian's each have different functions?" She scrambled to remember the ones she had been taught. Risians were such a fluid people that the thought of limiting their identity to a singular function was uncomfortable, but she felt sure there must have been a corollary among to the Tholians to pilot. Someone had to control how their ships got from point A to point B. She focused on that, filling her head with trajectories, star maps, and controls. Thrust and speed and maneuvering. The feel of deck plates thrumming as the engines responded. "I'm a pilot," she tried, raising her voice a bit so that the designation would carry to the Tholian.

At first Noah thought he was having a stroke... images, pain, and the smell of burning toast. Irynya got there first. "Wai-wait, I thought... I read that they express some parts with pheremones... but..." He abandoned his self-reflecting query. "Engineer." He poked at his chest. He tried to fill his head with images of fixing things.

The glowing pulsations from the Tholian ceased, backing down to a warm amber ambience in their crystalline lattice. The smell changed to... again, burnt toast but then acetate? The thorax began to flash again. Lights. Flashes. Almost like strobes. The crystal resonated like someone teasing a goblet the size of a bus with an equally larger finger. Then came the onslaught. "Learn."

The first time hurt. This was... agony. Like neurons were on fire. They seared down the body. Images were fast. Half felt inverted into a negative. Half were upside down or... even inside out. A hard feeling of vertigo and then an imposed feeling of swirling tunnel vision. A lattice of threads... of... gas and stars. They were snapping or unraveling? "Insufficient!" An intense burst of burning toast. And it came with a driving feeling... it rippled in the nerves and came with the most intense feeling of being dehydrated. Or hungry.

Noah felt his consciousness was trying to wane. More bursts of images. Renderings of... strange weaving, woven, unweaving constructs and a feeling of deja-vu. Crying as a baby. Not just any baby. A crying boy. A crying girl. Tantrums. Crawling away. A hand, electrocuted, jerks and jerks back and away. Noah felt warm wet trickling over his lips. He couldn't find up or down. Where was... Iry.

"Iry..." Noah fell on the ground sort of like a swaying puppet being lowered on invisible strings.

"Learn." Pulsed with light at Irynya.

"Noah!"

It was all that the Risian managed to get out as he fell. She reached for him, feeling as if her hand was stuck in molasses, her whole body trapped in the impulse of what the Tholian was attempting to communicate. The flashing of the creature's thorax changed, strobing at a different frequency, the high pitched whine that accompanied it felt like a physical assault. Irynya's eardrums flexed into concavity and then back out again and pain shot through her head as if it was entering from one side and exiting the other only to be met in the middle by an equal and opposite stabbing sensation.

She tried to fight it, but doing so only made the pain worse. Her vision blurred down to a fixed point. Her hand. Reaching. Noah on the ground in front of her.

"Learn." The Tholian repeated and the Risian had the feeling of being a school child who had been caught doodling and was being called out in front of the class. Systems of stars expanded and contracted behind her eyes as if she were watching the birth and death of systems in a matter of seconds. A sensation of movement. Of arrival and departure and of waiting.

"Noah..." She tried again, as her vision narrowed further, and then everything went dark and she was falling.

Dark....

A light sound. Rounded and pleasant. Medical. Floating feeling. Slightly.... cool? A rhythmic pulsing sound. Again it was soft. Unobtrusive. "Doctor Xex? They appear to be waking up..."

---- An Unplanned Meeting By ----

Lieutenant Irynya
Chief Flygirl (Lover of Pretty Fish)

Ensign Noah Balsam
Systems Specialist (Not a Xenocultural First Contact Specialist)