Lieutenant Iskander al-Kwaritzmi’s personal log, supplemental. I am leading a team tasked with restoring the function of a stasis chamber on the planet Rellite. We have been working for eight hours restoring all of its functionalities. The machine is old — hundreds of years old — and while the vital support and stasis systems have worked impeccably on a closed loop, the outer part of the machine — mostly the interface and communication systems — had been corroded by time and by the copious amount of, hm, metallic decoration that had been added to the machine. We think that we have solved most of the issues and an attempt is being made at awakening the sleeper.

In the penumbra of the Chamber Room, the stasis chamber was whirring and wheezing softly as its hydraulic system came to life.

In front of it a small delegation had assembled. It was headed by the so-called Countess Frulenk and by Mister Frunk, and seemed to contain as many contradictions as its two leaders: a half of the group looked like decaying aristocrats of all ages, dressed in their least sensical attire, some of them even carrying some icons or banners; the other half of the group were middle-aged stern-looking conservatively-clad political operators.

The Starfleet team had been relegated to a particularly dark corner, from which they could monitor the technical details undisturbed. They had set up a proper command center, with a series of holographic monitors and remote manipulation possibilities: they attached via cables which snaked through the whole room unseen thanks to a collection of carpets.

Bringing the machine back to life had not been easy: while the innermost part of it was on a self-propelled loop and had not suffered any malfunction, the outside had been battered. Over the centuries the surface of the machine had been covered in “decorations”, mostly golden embellishments.

“How DARE you have REMOVED our regalia!” had screamed the so-called Countess when, two hours ago, she had come to look at the proceedings.

“Which regalia?” had asked Iskander trying not to get too distracted from the re-doping of a semiconductive wafer.

“ALL of them! You were NOT to remove anything!” she had screamed.

He had sighed.

“Please be more specific” he had said.

She had picked up an elaborate golden contraption that depicted floreal motifs. Iskander had himself removed it a while back and laid it on the side.

“This is an authentic jimernet made by the goldmaster Turnirk himself!” she had said. “It was an incredible honor to have Turnirk make it for our majesty, and cost quite a penny, and has been there for more than two centuries! Humans had barely left Earth when this was laid! And you just… REMOVED it? Barbarism! Absolute barbarism! What were you planning on doing? Stealing it?”

Iskander had sighed again, even deeply, and had abandoned the plan of finishing the semiconductive wafer in one go. He had put the alkaline deambulator down and had looked at her with all the patience he could muster.

“That authentic… jimernet… had been mounted over a panel. Below the panel is the heat exchange actuator of the stasis chamber. When the heat exchange motor is given power, the current creates a small magnetic field. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem — but it could induce a small current in the gold, resulting in a heat leak. This would be detected as a functional error by the self-diagnostics of the chamber, resulting in the abortion of the process.”

She had looked aggravated.

“Do not patronize me with big words, little man!” she had snorted.

“The stasis chamber is a complicated machine. Very sensitive to its environment. Adding metallic, conductive bits on top of it made it malfunction.”

“This isn’t a metallic, conductive bit, you gormless monkey! It’s the jimernet of a goldmaster!”

“Oh, I know nothing of jimernets. I only know gold as a metal. It was making the machine malfunction. If you want I can show you the scans and the diagnostics.”

“But this is… this is…” she had looked red, and had picked up a piece of cloth that Z’Xak had removed. “And this?”

“It’s a piece of cloth.”

“NO IT IS NOT! It is an araldic tzui-banner that my family had already on Tellar! WHAT IS IT DOING ON THIS TRAY!”

Truth to be told, the large spider, who probably couldn’t really quite grasp an insignificant concept such as “araldic decorations”, had put it on the floor. Iskander had then gently stored it on one of the many trays he had organized for the task.

“A tray is a better place than the floor” he had said.

“THE FLOOR! WHY did you remove it? Are you going to invent a reason that it’s metallic or something?”

Iskander had sighed and pointed.

“It was there. On top of that hole.”

“First time in my LIFE I see that hole, but it is VERY unesthetic! I can understand that someone, centuries ago, had to cover it.”

“That hole is an air vent, miss Frulenk. It’s literally how the person inside the chamber is going to breathe.”

She had grimaced.

“My noble ancestor must have taken it into account, certainly. Removing it altogether was entirely uncalled for, Starfleet.”

Iskander had stroked his chin.

“Well” he had said finally. “If you are asking us to endanger the life of the sleeper by respecting every single invaluable bit of material –“

“Of course not” had interrupted, arriving hurriedly Mister Frunk. Behind him, Ensign Ghoshal, who had probably seen the developing crisis.

Good man, had thought Iskander.

The politician had quickly resolved the tension — as he was much keener than Iskander was to find a diplomatic solution. They agreed that the removal of the ornamentation was reversible and temporary.

“Because — you can put them back into place, can’t you” he had asked Iskander.

“Of course. We have scans of the machine as it was in the beginning.”

“So you see, Countess! It is unfortunate that the sacred insignia of the machine have been temporarily removed, but we shan’t play with fate when the life of our Prince is concerned, isn’t it?” he had turned to her. “I’m sure that the Starfleet team will be delighted to stay here and put everything back.”

“It is BLASPHEMY that they should have touched any of it” she had snorted, but could not argue further.

Scronk Frunk had accompanied her to the door and then had come back to the Starfleet team. Could they do put all the decoration back in place overnight? Of course not. Then they’d have to remain as guests until they were done — they’d get rooms in the old servant wing of the palace.

And now the machine was working.

To be fair, repairing the machine had taken more than just removing the tacky decorations. It had been running for centuries and never properly maintained. The three engineers had found faults and flaws by the dozens: electrical wiring that would overload when pushed, condensators that had lost their capacitance, rubber that had been made stiff and unbending by time, cracked fluid vessels, leaky cryojuice pipes, computer subroutines stuck in endless for-loops, and a laundry list of non-critical defects so long that it seemed very critical.

It wasn’t a surprise that, when the Tellarites had tried a couple of weeks ago, the system had crashed twice and refused to proceed. The logs of the attempts showed that the stasis chamber had somehow created almost 300 error messages per second, ranging from trivial to critical, whereas its computer refused to run the de-freezing procedure if more than three trivial error messages were present.

But that part of the project had really amused Iskander. It was old technology — properly old, dating from a time when Earth barely had warp and Tellarites barely broke Warp factor 1.4 — and it gave him a warm and fuzzy feeling to touch and repair it. Some parts couldn’t be repaired but could be replaced by something modern — usually a device one tenth the size for a tenfold effect — and the human engineer had made himself a small collection of old Tellarite parts that could probably otherwise be only found in a museum. Scronk Frunk had shown no interest in them, so he’d be bringing all those small technological oddities back to the Redding to run full spec analysis.

The member of the team who had done the most work was, interestingly, Lieutenant Z’Xak.

The Ukarimi had quite clearly not understood why they were doing any of this. They had approached Iskander after some twenty minutes and had tappet with their vestigial arms on their stomach in the patterns that the universal translator was now able to convert into sound.

“I see unknown people” they had said. Their voice, in Iskander’s ears, was atonal, androgynous, detached.

Their language was peculiar, as always. The Ukarimi language had only two subjects — the first and the second singular. They could say “I am” and “you have”, but “it runs” or “we eat” were impossible constructions. Hence, instead of saying “you guys are eating”, they’d have to tap a verbal construction such as “I see you-and-many at the activity of eating”. That suited well their planet, as the Ukarimi were extreme non-social beings and almost never conceived of themselves as an “us” or of a group as a “them”; in Starfleet this wasn’t really that easy.

That said, the Ukarimi still used quite an unusual vocabulary. They had wanted to say “I do not know these people”, but they preferred to say “I see” to “I don’t know”, apparently.

“I also do not know them” had answered Iskander, who was unscrewing a panel. “They are important on Rellite.”

“You work with motivation for the unknown important people” had said the Ukarimi.

Iskander scratched his chin.

“They have asked for our help.”

“You help because you want to help the unknown important people?”

Iskander thought again. Interestingly enough, the Z’Xak had no qualm with helping someone who was in life danger — they had not seemed uncertain, for instance, when the Redding had lent its aid to the partially assimilated Franscini — but didn’t seem to think that anything more than a threat merited help.

“Yes?” he finally said.

“I evaluate the task as simple. I despair at their laziness.”

Ukarimi didn’t ask for help. They either took things made by others without asking — they had little concept of personal property — or they learned how to do something themselves. Z’Xak was several centuries old: they had spent almost all their life learning how to do things they wanted done.

“No, no. Remember what we said about non-Ukarimi being so short-lived? We do not have time to learn everything we need. They haven’t learned this. We are specialists and are going to help them.”

“I understand” tapped the big spider after a while. “I see an interesting task in front of us. I see technological challenges. I see possibility for growth. I understand the unknown important people receiving help.”

Without thanking or saying anything else, the big spider scuttled away. Iskander looked at them picking up a tricorder with its weird, uncanny hand-limbs, and start scanning.

Getting Z’Xak to understand that the decorations were emotionally important to the Rellites, however, had been impossible. But they had engaged themselves at amazing speed, fixing an incredible quantity of problems. They rarely worked outside of their field of expertise — warp field technology — but they were an engineering genius, no doubt about that. Not to mention, their composite eyes and their multiple limbs were of great use for an engineer: Iskander was almost a bit jealous of someone who could use simultaneously so many different tools.

And now the Stasis Chamber was warming up its inhabitant and bringing him out of his long sleep.

It was taking, truth to be told, quite a long time. The full procedure would take one hour on the ground of the tech being quite old. Nevertheless, the Tellarites had assumed positions: standing in four lines, looking towards the chamber, standing, standing, standing. Not one of them dared to move: probably out of some sort of cerimonial ritualistic duty. They didn’t speak either, and some of them seemed to be carrying presents in the form of clothes or food or stuff like that, held in outstretched arms.

There was even a child, probably no older than six, who was the only source of chatter and of movement. He kept asking his mother when the Prince would awaken, how long it would take, what the point of the machine was, where the Prince was, why they couldn’t turn up the lights, who the other people were. The mother would just answer in the most hushed tone, probably to tell him to be quiet.

Iskander was quite happy to be sitting down in the privacy of their remote control booth, hidden in the dark edges of the Chamber Room. They had put a holographic paneling that would shield them from view and absorb the sound, so they could talk. Sornia had bothered Scronk Frunk until he had had some food brought to them, so they were also eating from a platter of the Rellite version of ghrinbe — a food that Iskander hadn’t eaten since he was twelve, and which he remembered to be more acidic.

The only member of the team who seemed to be on edge was Nurse Ghoshal.

Well, there was no way of telling whether Z’Xak was on edge or not, as their eyes were lidless and inexpressive and their body language incomprehensible. However, they were probably just fine eating their small salad and typing calculations on a padd.

Until that point the good nurse had been rather quiet. He couldn’t assist with repairing a dilution fridge or rewiring hadronic actuators; his assistance had been mostly in the solitary task of diagnosing the biosigns and the vital support system.

He had however found something worrying.

“See this?” had asked the nurse to Iskander and Lieutenant Sornia, indicating a point on a scan.

The two engineers had looked at it.

“It’s a valve and a pump” had answered Sornia. “They’re working properly.”

“What? Yes. No. I mean, what’s inside. It’s a plasmatic infusion.”

“Ah” had said Sornia.

“There’s a small amount of it stored deep into the machine. During the wake-up phase, it has to be slowly infused into the stasis sleeper. You see, this sort of stasis is partially biological — part of the liquids of the body are extracted, stored into the machine, and then pumped back in when they wake up.”

“Yes” had said Sornia. “I trust you on that.”

“It’s… well, my scans indicate that the fluid is too thick and viscous” had added Ghoshal.

The two engineers had nodded.

“So it’s going to move too slowly?” had imagined Iskander.

“Quite.”

“Could that be dangerous for the person?”

“It could be deadly. Possibly. I’d suggest we rehydrate it.”

Iskander and Sornia had looked over the schematics. The fluid storage was mounted well below the sleeper.

“I’m afraid it’s too deep inside the machine for us to arrive” had said Iskander.

They had rummaged through a couple of options before arriving at the simplest. Their hosts had forbidden any sort of teleportation inside of the perimeter of the building — something about respecting the holinessof the place, whatever that meant — but a small amount of fluid could just be teleported into the plasmatic infusion to dilute it. No matter how deep it was inside of the machine, the transporter beam could get there.

They had discussed it with Mister Frunk. He had looked perturbed.

“Could your readings be inaccurate or your diagnosis be wrong?” he had grumbled.

“No” had answered Iskander, Sornia and Ghoshal in a chorus. Z’Xak was doing their own thing, of course.

“How could this problem have emerged? Is the fluid just too old or is it sabotage?”

“Impossible to say” had answered Ghoshal.

“Can you allow us such a small use of a transporter?” had asked Iskander. “We will use it only if absolutely necessary — if a medical risk exists.”

“Grmbl” had said Frunk. “The Countess regards this palace as sacred, and a transporter beam as a violation. There are sensors and an alarm will sound if something is beamed in or out, and planetary security will be called. That said — there is a code, of course. If it is communicated to the sensor system, the alarm will be disabled for one minutes.”

“That would be perfect.”

The Tellarite had looked at Iskander with great hostility.

“I am entrusting you with a great secret, Starfleet. The Countess gave it to me and she’d be very displeased if I gave it to a disrespectful monkey such as you.”

“We can talk to her.”

“Better not. I want your promise that you will not abuse it and not give it to anyone else, Mister al-Quaritzmi.”

Iskander had promised. The code was 123456789.

And now, as the machine whirred and purred, reawakening its sleeping inhabitant, Ghoshal kept looking over the vital signs and the wealth of bioreadings that he had. Half an hour into the procedure, he turned to his colleagues.

“The plasmatic infusion is flowing too slowly, Lieutenant” he said. “As suspected.”

“Understood” said Iskander. “Damage to the sleeper?”

“None so far.”

Iskander had already prepared everything: the doctors on the Redding had been notified, and an appropriate amount of water had been already positioned in the medical transporter pod. The engineer had to just push two buttons: one to communicate the very secure code to the building security, and one to remotely start the beaming process.

It worked like a charm. Due to the heavy pumping noise made by the machine, no one even could hear the noise of the transporter. A perfect operation.

_______________________________________________

After one of hour and a half of working, the stasis chamber opened on its, lifting its heavy lid, releasing big clouds of vapor around it.

The sleeper inside it groaned, exposed for the first time to air in centuries.

The Tellarites that had stood in front of the stasis chamber for the first time, to their honor, had been absolutely dedicated to the ritual, not moving except for the child and a couple of elderly men who had taken several toilet breaks. Now, Countess Frulenk advanced and spoke in a high and loud voice.

“Welcome back to Rellite, your royal highness!” she intoned. “You have slept for centuries, but the time has come for you to awaken from your slumber! I am your great-great-great-great nephew, Countess Frulenk, and behind me all that remains of your family and of the noble houses of Rellite are gathered. And this is Scronk Frunk, the chief of the Royalist Party of Rellite. Elections are coming, your royal highness, and the people are sure to vote for a restoration of the monarchy, they are guaranteed to make of you, the last viable prince of our noble line, King of the planet! Blessed be this day and blessed are you and I! Rise, royal highness, and rejoice! Everything has been prepared!”

And, still hidden into the bed of the stasis chamber, the “prince” spoke.

“Are you my mum?” he asked.