Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×08

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 22^nd Feb­ru­ary 2025

Guest Stars:

• Dr Helena Talia­ferro: Troubled head of Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge.
• Deep Space Sur­vey Probe 79-Alpha Sur­vey Com­mand Holo­gram (SCH): The arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence con­trolling the probe.
• Thought Lead­er Zora-Nel White: Com­mand­ing officer of the Cal-Mir­ran ves­sel Tol-Ner­ine.

Our mis­sion to recov­er a miss­ing probe con­tain­ing clas­si­fied data has become some­what com­plic­ated. The probe’s con­trol sys­tem appears to have spon­tan­eously become sen­tient, and it has now reques­ted polit­ic­al asylum with the Cal-Mir­ran gov­ern­ment. While both the Fed­er­a­tion and Star­fleet are quite clear as to the rights of sen­tient beings, this can­not be allowed to hap­pen, accord­ing to the Omega Dir­ect­ive under which I am forced to operate.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51280.6

Plot: Lex­ing­ton’s crew attempts to bal­ance their orders to recov­er or des­troy the probe’s data against main­tain­ing the Sur­vey Con­trol Holo­gram’s right to self-determ­in­a­tion and preservation.

The ‘A’ Plot: Fol­low­ing the SCH’s announce­ment, Cap­tain Kon­in ends com­mu­nic­a­tions with both it and the Tol­ner­ine, then calls his seni­or staff into a con­fer­ence. After a brief dis­cus­sion, he decides they should split their efforts. Azon­an, Zepht and Quinn will talk to the SCH, and assess wheth­er it is actu­ally sen­tient, or some­thing else is going on – this will form the basis for his final decision on the mat­ter. Raynor, mean­while, will work on a means of delet­ing the sig­ni­fic­ant data, or the SCH itself, in the event that there is no oth­er way to secure it.

Kon­in him­self retreats to his office where he begins research­ing pre­vi­ous Star­fleet encoun­ters with awakened intel­li­gences. He also pores over records of leg­al cases involving arti­fi­cial intel­li­gences, such as those of Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er Data and the Tyr­an exo­comps, find­ing some incon­sist­en­cies in how they were treated.

Raynor begins pro­gram­ming a soft­ware vir­us to seek out and des­troy spe­cified data with­in the probe’s data core, while caus­ing min­im­um dam­age to the SCH itself. Although he’s been asked to help Quinn and Azon­an, Zepht takes more of an interest in this pro­ject and offers his assist­ance to Raynor.

Azon­an and Quinn spend some time dis­cuss­ing the best way to inter­rog­ate and judge the SCH. Secur­ity is a major require­ment, as the pro­gram could wreak hav­ok if it had unres­tric­ted access to Lex­ing­ton’s com­puter sys­tems. Quinn sug­gests set­ting up a holo­deck to act as an inter­face, as they can be isol­ated from the main com­puter. They will still need to con­nect to the probe via sub­space com­mu­nic­a­tions, so they run a cable up a crawl­way to shut­tle­bay 1, where they can use a shuttle­craft for this purpose.

Kon­in stud­ies wheth­er Star­fleet or the Fed­er­a­tion at large have used illeg­al meth­ods to recov­er asylum claimants and oth­er fugit­ives. Unknown to him, this trig­gers silent alarms in the sys­tem. Boone dis­cretely points this out, can­celing the alarms and offer­ing to take on the task in order to dig out some of the more clas­si­fied material.

The SCH proves will­ing to talk, and agrees to appear remotely in the holo­deck, using the same juni­or Star­fleet officer image it used before. Quinn does his best to make if feel at home, but is a little baffled by the pro­gram’s appar­ent lack of interest in small talk. The SCH proves to be very mis­sion-focused, but is also well-versed in the philo­soph­ic­al implic­a­tions of its existence.

It bluntly states its desire to con­tin­ue to exist and, aware that the data it has col­lec­ted is a com­pon­ent of its per­son­al­ity, it refuses to con­sider delet­ing any of it. It is also pre­pared to do whatever is needed to ensure its con­tin­ued sur­viv­al, includ­ing threat­en­ing the ship and crew. It does, how­ever, prom­ise that if allowed to stay with the Cal-Mir­rans, it will not allow its data to be accessed and misused.

Quinn and Azon­an do their best to fig­ure out wheth­er the SCH meets the require­ments for sen­tience, and wheth­er it under­stands con­cepts like the Prime Dir­ect­ive. After their ini­tial sur­vey, the cap­tain joins them, ask­ing poin­ted ques­tions of the pro­gram. Even­tu­ally, the trio are con­vinced the SCH is both sen­tient and sincere.

Boone calls the cap­tain to present his find­ings, although they are not con­clus­ive. There is no record that Star­fleet has ever gone after polit­ic­al refugees, but there are per­sist­ent con­spir­acy the­or­ies that non-Star­fleet organ­isa­tions, like Fed­er­a­tion Secur­ity or Sec­tion 31, may have.

Cap­tain Kon­in now has a conun­drum: the SCH is evid­ently sen­tient, but his orders are spe­cif­ic about remov­ing the Omega data or des­troy­ing it. He comes up with the idea of grant­ing the SCH a refuge on Lex­ing­ton, while telling Hebert he was able to recov­er the non-Omega data, but that the probe was destroyed.

The SCH is wor­ried that the per­son­nel on the ship will change, as part of nor­mal crew rota­tions, and its refuge will become exposed, as well as not­ing that the ship itself will reach the end of its ser­vice in a dec­ade or two. Kon­in makes assur­ances to the con­trary, and hopes that they will even­tu­ally be able to make the case that the pro­gram is sen­tient in a Fed­er­a­tion court. The SCH agrees to his offer, on one con­di­tion: that an encryp­ted backup of its pro­gram will be held by the Cal-Mir­ran gov­ern­ment, in case some­thing does go wrong.

The Cal-Mir­rans agree to the arrange­ment, and the SCH trans­ferrs itself into an isol­ated holo­deck, where the seni­or staff are said to be “run­ning high-level sim­u­la­tions” until fur­ther notice. The longer-term plan is to move it to its own holo-emit­ter equipped quar­ters when pos­sible, and assign it a role on the ship. The Cal-Mir­rans take the com­puter core from the probe to store some­where safe, before Raynor des­troys the probe in full view of the sensors.

The ‘B’ Plot: Kon­in vis­its the med­ic­al centre, where he finds Doc­tor Con­ners work­ing in an isol­a­tion ward. Dr Tali­afi­erro has been placed in an induced coma for her own safety, and in isol­a­tion for the safety of every­one else. Con­ners has noticed that ther­agen has accu­mu­lated in her lymph nodes and believes that leaks may pose a danger to oth­ers. She explains that she is try­ing to fig­ure out how to remove it safely and syn­thes­ise a less tox­ic altern­at­ive for the Betazoid, but that this will take time.

The Arc: Cap­tain Kon­in is begin­ning to dis­play a deep dis­trust of Admir­al Heber­t’s orders, and of Star­fleet Com­mand’s motivations.

Obser­va­tions: The latest upgrades to the holo­deck sys­tems include the abil­ity to isol­ate them from the main com­puter sys­tems. This was deemed to be neces­sary after sev­er­al incid­ents in which energy-based life­forms or emer­gent arti­fi­cial intel­li­gences had used them to infilt­rate and gain con­trol of starships.

Dia­logue: Azon­an: “If it’s not sen­tient, it’s doing a damn good job of fak­ing it.”

Ref­er­ences: Fed­er­a­tion Secur­ity is the civil­ian secur­ity ser­vice of the United Fed­er­a­tion of Plan­ets, serving as both an inter­stel­lar police force and counter-intel­li­gence agency.