Fighting Fear

Posted on Wed Feb 3rd, 2021 @ 10:08pm by Commander Taeler Santu M.D. & Lieutenant Noah Reed M.D. & Lieutenant Commander Thy'lissa Shan

Mission: The Shadow of Arachne
Location: Deck 7: Sickbay
1062 words - 2.1 OF Standard Post Measure

Thy'lissa eased herself into an upright position on the biobed, looking across at Lt Commander Taeler, who seemed to be in a state of shock. Indeed, most of the others in the other beds looked pale and haunted by what they'd seen.

"Doctor?" she asked, touching Reed's arm. "We can't go on like this. The fear... it's going to kill us, one by one, unless we can do something about it." She looked at the XO again. "Aren't there drugs that can inhibit emotions? Suppressors, that sort of thing?"

Reed let out a long sigh. This was where he knew current events would lead the conversation. It was one road that he was hesitant to walk down because of many unknown factors. "It's one thing to temper or suppress excitability or irritability or another such issue by itself, and quite another to make everyone a Vulcan."

"It's on a deeper level than emotions, hallucinations imply that it's affecting other parts of the brain," Santu chimed in. She was laying on the bio-bed, being scanned. She didn't want to be there but to be honest it was a better place for her than the brig. She didn't really want to be confined to a small space, "whatever it is, this space, the effects, it's tapping into something primal, something within all of us."

"Fears, mainly," Thy'lissa agreed. "Seems like just about everyone is experiencing their worst nightmares. Doctor Savin is going to be busy once we get back home."

Santu was definitely not looking forward to that, "We might want to consider expanding the department," she lay back on the bed and closed her eyes before letting out a huge sigh, "So what do we know about fear, on a xeno-biological level?"

"Well, fear is obviously a normal humanoid physiological reaction to a threat or danger," Reed said. "Creating a hypothetical drug that would shut down all emotions sounds like an easy fix but we're built more complicated than, say, a warp core. Not only would it leave us vulnerable to actual dangers, but it would also inhibit our ability to recognize danger. And that doesn't even address how this hypothetical drug would react with different species or on an individual level."

"I know it sounds crazy, but...when I was a little girl my parents would always try to teach me to face my fears rather than running away or hiding from them. Is it wishful thinking to wonder if that's even possible in this situation?" Thy'lissa wondered.

Santu didn't lift her head or opened her eyes at that suggestion, she merely remarked "I did, I shot my fear," she shook her head, the feeling of dread and familiar terror was still hanging over her. She was expecting a Gul around every corner, "didn't help."

"In the short amount of time that we have before everyone starts to go completely mad, I'm going to make the recommendation of sedating the entire crew minus any key essential personnel needed to get the ship out of this space. I can try modifying a neural blocker, tweak it to focus on the key area responsible for emotional responses and see how that affects a patient. If that's successful, we might be able to use it on the other crew. Just to be clear, I've never attempted something like this before. I don't know how anyone will react." Reed glanced from Taeler to Shan and back again, waiting for a response to the suggestion. In theory, it was the only thing he could think of to prevent the crew from killing each other but still allow them the ability to work.

"Is it safe? I can see some of the crew not wanting to go along with it willingly," Thy'lissa remarked. "There are Vulcans on board that have been affected as well; perhaps just suppressing emotions isn't the whole picture here."

"The suppressing thing is really just a meditative state, they constantly choose not to feel and act on their emotions," Santu had learned some of the techniques during her rehabilitation, "doesn't mean they don't have them. That's what's affecting them now, I guess, it's overwhelming their capacity to suppress." She took a deep breath and pushed herself upright on the bed, "what if we can use the neural inhibitors, to just block out any abnormal behaviours," she slid to the side of the bed and put her legs over it, "I mean in normal circumstances you'd be crossing the ethical boundaries by about a sector, but if we use the normal readings from one of the physical check-ups we can simply instruct the device to not allow any 'abnormal' activity to take place." She shook her head a bit, it was a terrible idea, "never mind, that way they wouldn't really have an original idea or a sense of urgency." Brains were too complex for her.

Reed nodded politely to the initial idea of the neural inhibitors but inwardly sighed relief when it was dropped. "Ethical issues aside, the time it would take to modify all the inhibitors to be tailored to each individual would be impractical, not to mention the engineering aspect of whether they could handle that specificity." He reached over and grabbed a glass tumbler from a nearby table and took a swig of an amber liquid.

Thy'lissa watched the doctor. "Maybe we should all just get drunk instead." She motioned to the drink. "Personally I'd just want to have faith that the crew can work out a way out of this place rather than having to drug them all to the eyeballs."

"Commander was shot, warp core was set to overload or eject, I think 'faith in the crew' is something we cannot afford right now," Santu looked at the CMO and the 2XO, "we all agree this is an external influence right? Why don't we compare my current scans with the ones on record from my previous annual physicals, figure out what's causing the current state, it has to be an external source," She was more pleading than stating a fact, if it wasn't external that meant she just shot the commander of her own volition, "we pinpoint the energy signature and configure our shield emitters or deflector dish to block that energy."

"Makes sense," Thy'lissa nodded. "The shields could be reconfigured to tune out certain radiation effects."