Chapter 10 Chapter nine

"Oh please!" Jenkins said, thumping the monitor.On the table, a holographic image flickered and then disappeared.Jenkins patted the table again.Dahl looked over to his mate, Duvall, with Hanson, Finn, and Hearst, all crammed like sardines into Jenkins' can-like perch.She rolled her eyes. "I'm sorry," Jenkins murmured, ostensibly to the five crew huddled in his house, but actually to himself. "This is someone else's discarded equipment. I picked it up. It's the truck. It brought it in. Then I fixed it, but it still goes wrong every now and then."

"It doesn't matter." Dahl said, looking around carefully.In the storage space of this truck deployment center, apart from Jenkins and the five of them, it is full of the owner's collection: a huge holographic display table located between Jenkins and the five of them; a simple bed board; a wardrobe with Boxes full of sanitation and cleaning supplies; a dinner plate containing the food rations for the Yulian Field Service Team and a portable toilet.Dahl wondered how the toilet remained empty and usable.He wasn't sure he really wanted to figure it out, though. "Can't it start yet?" Hurst said. "I thought we'd be done by this point. I kind of want to pee."

Jenkins pointed to his portable toilet: "Please use it." "Then I'll hold back," Hurst said. "You can verbally describe what you want us to know," Dahl suggested. "It doesn't have to be an elaborate presentation." "Oh, that's necessary," Jenkins said. "If I were just narrating, it would sound pretty crazy. With a graphic presentation, it would make it...well, less crazy." "That's great," Finn said, giving Dahl a look as if to say thank you for letting us do this.Dahl could only shrug. Jenkins tapped the display again, and the hologram finally stabilized. "Ha!" Jenkins said, "Okay, here we go."

"Thank goodness," Hurst said. Jenkins manipulated the interface on the display table with his hands, unfolding a series of flat images in parallel.He selected the one he needed and flipped it up so that everyone else could see it. "This is the Intrepid." Jenkins slid his fingers across the display table, and a row of continuously rotating holographic images appeared above the display table.He said: "It is the flagship spaceship of the Cosmos Alliance fleet, and it is also one of the largest spaceships in the fleet. But to put it bluntly, it is just one of the thousands of spaceships in the fleet. From the statistical data, it was born at the beginning of Nine years, nothing special other than being designated flagship."

The image of the Dreadnought was shrunk, and then it was replaced by a line chart with the abscissa as time, one of which represented the Dreadnought, and the other represented the statistics of the fleet as a whole. "Its basic mission is to explore space, and it will also participate in military operations from time to time, but no matter what type of mission, its crew casualty rate is the same as the average data of Yulian, or even lower, because Yulian regards the flagship as a As a symbol of the fleet, most of the tasks assigned are not so difficult. But then, from five years ago, it became like this."

The chart scrolls to the last five years of data.Dreadnought's line soared suddenly, and then remained high compared to the statistics of other fleets. "Wow." Hansen exclaimed. "Whoa, that's right," Jenkins said. "what happened?" "Abernathy is captain," Duvall said. "He just happened to take over the ship five years ago." "The answer is very close, but not yet accurate." Jenkins said, waving his hands on the display table again, searching for his target in a large amount of display data. "Abernathy did take over the ship five years ago. Before that, he was the captain of the USS Griffin for four years, where he was an unconventional, risk-averse, aggressive leader. It has been widely acclaimed."

"'Take no risk,' or, to put it bluntly, 'let the crew die,'" Hurst said. "Maybe, but not only that," Jenkins said, opening the view of a battlecruiser, "This is the USS Griffin." chart. "You can all see that, despite Abernathy's claim to be 'risk-averse', there is no significant difference in crew mortality compared to other ships. Considering the Griffin is a battleship - a Yulian The battleship, which is even amazing. So the death rate of the crew of Abernathy's crew suddenly increased, and it was only after he took over the Dreadnought. "

"Maybe he's gone mad," Finn said. "His psychological evaluations have been good for the past five years," Jenkins said. "How do you know—" Finn paused suddenly, raising his hand in apology, "Oh, never mind, never mind this idiot question." "You're saying he's in his right mind, and he didn't deliberately put the crew at risk," Dahl said, "but I remember Captain Collins telling me that whenever anyone questioned the high death rate on the Dreadnought, the answer was always the flagship." You need to perform more dangerous tasks." He pointed to the screen, "But you told us that's not the case."

"It's true that today's field missions have a higher mortality rate," Jenkins said, "but it's not that the mission itself is more risky." He clicked on a series of ship images on the screen, "These are some of the Battleships and warships, they perform high-risk missions on a regular basis. Here is the year-by-year data on their crew fatality rate." One after another charts unfolded from behind the images, "You can see that their mortality rate is higher than the Yulian baseline, but—" Jenkins pulled out the data chart of the Dreadnought again, "—even so, it is far inferior to the Dreadnought, although the latter's missions are always characterized as relatively low-risk."

"Then why do people keep dying?" Duvall asked. "There's nothing inherently risky about the mission," Jenkins said, "it's just that there's something wrong with them." "Is it their ability?" Dahl said. Jenkins unfolded another picture, showing various awards received by the officers and department heads of the Intrepid. "The Intrepid is Yulian's flagship," he said, "Those who are incompetent will not be able to get in." "That's just bad luck," Finn said. "The Dauntless has the deepest karma in the universe."

"You may be right about the second part of the sentence," Jenkins said, "but I don't think it's a matter of luck either." Dahl blinked, remembering that he had said the same thing after struggling to drag Kerensky into the shuttle boat to escape. "There's something wrong with the officers here," he said. "Five of them," Jenkins said, "Abernathy, King, Kerensky, West, and Hartnell. Statistically, there was something very weird about them. When they When performing field missions, the probability of the mission suffering a fatal failure is increased. If more than two of them are in the team, the probability increases exponentially. If more than three of them are involved in the mission, it is almost certain that someone will die." "They're not among them, though," Hansen said. "Yes," said Jenkins. "Of course, Kerensky is always regularly repaired, even if the other four get bumped now and then. But death? Not their part. Never about them." "It's all very abnormal," Dahl responded. "Of course!" Jenkins said, and then called up the photos of the five officers, and then displayed the data chart behind the photos. "Compared to the commanders of the same level on other ships, the death rate of the field missions led by several of them is several times higher. This situation is unique in the entire fleet, and even going back to the nearly two hundred years of history of the entire Yulian, they are also unprecedented. Yes. The death rate of this order of magnitude can only be compared with that of the ocean-going fleet, and the officers of the latter cannot save themselves. The captain and senior officers will always die." "The only things that can do it are scurvy and plague." "It's not just scurvy," Jenkins scrolled through the photos of the officers. "Even now, officers still die, you know. Having a rank is sort of a way of dying, not Gold medal for avoiding death. Statistically, these five people should have died two or three times long ago. Maybe one or two people could have escaped various dooms. But all five people have survived to this day? The probability of being struck by lightning is even smaller." "They'll survive being struck by lightning," Finn said. "But it's hard to say about the unlucky players around you." Duval said. "You seem to understand the situation," Jenkins said. "So your conclusion is that none of this is possible," Dahl said. Jenkins shook his head: "There is nothing absolutely impossible. It's just that some things are very, very unlikely to happen, and this situation is one of them." "How unlikely?" Dahl asked. "In my investigation, there was only one spacecraft that showed the same or even more significant characteristics in the statistics of field missions." James searched the image data again, and then moved one of them to the screen.Everyone looked at it carefully. Duval frowned and said, "I've never seen this ship. I thought I knew all the models of spaceships in the fleet. Is this really Yulian's spaceship?" "Not strictly speaking," Jenkins said. "This is a Federation ship." Duval blinked inexplicably, then turned his gaze to Jenkins and asked, "What is the Interstellar Federation?" "They don't exist," Jenkins said, pointing to the ship again, "and neither does this guy. It's the Enterprise. It's fictional. It only appears in sci-fi shows. Neither do we."
Finn finally broke the silence: "Well, although I don't know what the others here think, but I have to say seriously, this guy is a complete lunatic." Jenkins looked at Dahl and said, "I've said this sounds like crazy," and he turned something up on the display, "but it's what it is." "The fact that there's something wrong with this boat," Finn said, "doesn't mean we're the stars of a bad sci-fi movie!" "I never said you guys were big stars," Jenkins said.Pointing to the photos of Abernathy, King, Kerensky, West and Hartnell floating on the display stand, he said, "They are the big stars, you are just playing tricks." "Great!" said Finn, standing up. "I'm so grateful for wasting my precious time. I need to go back to sleep." "Wait!" Darl called him. "Wait? Are you sane, Andy?" Finn said. "I know you've been obsessed with this for a while, but don't go on, you're going to go crazy. Our furry friend has Falling into delusions, even the real world will wipe him clean." "Although I am extremely reluctant to reach an agreement with Finn," Hearst said, "but this situation can no longer be described as right or wrong. I agree with him." Dahl looked at Duvall. "I'm sorry, Andy, but I have to vote for them, he's crazy," Duvall said. Dahl finally looked at Hansen: "Jimmy, what about you?" "Actually, I also think he is abnormal," Hansen said, "but he insists that he holds the truth." "Of course he thinks so himself! He's crazy!" cried Finn. "That's not what I meant." Hansen said, "When you're crazy, your entire thinking circuit is logically consistent internally, but what's self-consistent is only internally logical, saying outside your own head. It doesn't make sense." He pointed at Jenkins, "and his logic makes sense on a grand scale." "Except for the part that we're all made up." Finn snorted. "I didn't say that," Jenkins said. "Ah," Finn groaned, pointing to the image of the Enterprise, "fictitious, you crazy!" "It's fiction," Jenkins said. "You guys are real. But a fictional TV episode can also infiltrate and distort our real lives." "Wait," Finn waved his hands suspiciously, "TV? Are you fucking kidding me? Television died out hundreds of years ago!" "Television was introduced in 1928," Jenkins said, "and the medium of entertainment was not used until 2105. There was a television series chronicling the adventures of the crew of the Intrepid." "I'd really like to know what you're on," Finn said, "because whatever it is, I bet I could make a pretty good buck off it." Jenkins turned to Dahl and said, "I can't communicate with a guy like that." "Shut up, everyone!" Dahl said.Both Finn and Jenkins fell silent. "I agree it sounds crazy," Dahl said, pointing at Jenkins, "not even denying it to himself. But think about what we've all seen on this ship, think about the way people talk and behave. Terrible It’s not that this guy is saying we’re making a shit show, what’s really bad is that, as far as I’m concerned, that’s by far the most plausible explanation. Anyone who wants to disagree with me please speak up.” He looked around at his companions, all of them silent.Finn looked like he was trying to stay silent. "Fine," Dahl said, "so at least we'll get to hear him finish. Maybe it'll get crazier, but maybe it'll make sense. Either way, it's better than we're getting nowhere now." valuable." Finn finally said, "Well, then you owe us all a hand job." He sat back in his seat. "Handwork?" Jenkins asked Dahl. "It's a long story," Dahl said. "Well, whatever," Jenkins said, "you're right about one thing. The most plausible explanation for the state of the ship is that a TV show has infiltrated and distorted our real lives, and that's bad. But there's more. bad." "Jesus," Finn said, "it ain't bad enough, what else?" "All I can tell you right now," Jenkins said, "is that it's a bad movie."

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Notes: (Star Trek) science fiction series in the virtual universe.