Problems of Being the Nerd

Posted on Thu Jul 24th, 2025 @ 3:50am by Ensign Hannah Thrace

610 words; about a 3 minute read

Sometimes just sometimes I hate being the nerd. Starbase Obsidian is presently sat orbiting the Ocampan homeworld, a red gem of a planet in a mostly unexplored area of the Delta Quadrant, sixty seven years on from when the USS Voyager was thrown out here. The problems? Oh there are plenty of those and not all to do with our location though it is the Ocampa and the planet are most concerning. All the estimates done by the crew of Voyager indicate that the Caretaker, when he sealed off the Ocampan underground settlement, left the Ocampa with an energy surplus that would last approximately ten years. Assuming the Ocampa became aware of that information, a possibility but not a guarantee, it's possible they may have been able to ration the energy somewhat but it's highly unlikely they'll have been able to stretch that to sixty seven years and even if they have there's no new energy unless... well unless a little bit of deduction from the Voyager logs proves correct, but only a detailed look at the planets surface would prove that one way or another.

On paper, the biggest concern remains that the Ocampa likely don't have the means to survive underground indefinitely, if all estimates were correct we'd expect to see a declining population due to outside factors such as illness, malnutrition and so on leading to a lower quality of life. The average life span of an Ocampa on their homeworld was nine years at the time Voyager was here, it's likely lower than that now, however we know based on the Voyager logs that the Ocampa can live closer to twelve or fifteen years, it's entirely possible that under the right environmental conditions they could live longer still. We don't know for certain because no one's ever really been forced into asking the questions that the crew on this base now finds themselves asking.

The Ocampa homeworld is an M-Class planet, it meets the criteria of an M-Class planet in all but one respect - there is no water on the planet, this being the case due to an accident caused by the Caretaker millennia ago, otherwise referred to as "the debt that cannot be repaid" in the Voyager logs. Under normal circumstances the path forward would be the one in the textbook, seed the planets atmosphere with water and let the change take effect gradually, we've already found a comet that we could do this with but then we run up against time and space. Terraforming the planet that way will take years to accomplish, that's years of likely having the Ocampa aboard the base. That would also apply for any refugee's we manage to rescue from the Alpha Quadrant, we know we're out here for the long haul and as we're a sanctuary we're going to need space and on the base that space is finite. If we can terraform the planet then that largely solves the problem. The question though remains how?

I imagine if I went to a counsellor or Fara or a fair number of the crew they'd look at me and say "Isn't this what you do, find a way to do the impossible?" well yes fair enough when you've pulled the practically impossible rabbit out of the hat a couple of times you earn that reputation but this one? I don't know, if there is a way I'll figure it out but there are days I'd love to not be the know it all. In the meantime I've got some dolphins to get settled onto the base, courtesy of Commander Haines coming through with some of his old contacts.

 

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