97%

Posted on Sun Feb 20th, 2011 @ 1:01pm by S'anra

Mission: Hippocratic Hijacking
Location: Makeshift Science Lab, Braken Administrative District, Braken III
Timeline: After "Braken's Scientific Quandaries"

S'anra slid another sample under her scope. She'd made several observations of the virus behaviorally, based on the differences between the samples and the conditions of the patients they came from. The virus seemed to be almost exponentially more present in the more severe cases, but S'anra had only found signs of a fairly slow reproduction rate. It was likely that these patients had multiple exposures to the virus over time, rather than a single infection which spread rapidly through the body.

The virus itself was intriguing as well. It was a fairly simple virus, lacking a lot of excess material. With the exception of one small tail-like structure, every part of the virus appeared to have a particular, clear function in helping the virus survive. It was fascinating that something so small and so simple had such a profound effect on the humanoid body. Genetically speaking, it seemed familiar, she wanted to say she had seen it before. She had already ran it through her own tricorder, which contained medical knowledge from the Empire she brought with her, but it didn't get a match. However, her decrepit tricorder lacked the sort of processing power of a Starfleet computer. Unsatisfied with the result, she decided to seek a second opinion.

Viruses mutate and evolve, just like all other biological organisms. While the Starfleet computer had no recognition of the virus or it's similarity to any known virus in it's own database, she was hoping that perhaps it might be able to come up with something out of the Romulan records as well. After a few minutes, she figured out how to get the Starfleet computer to accept the data output from her personal tricorder she had brought with her.

"Computer," S'anra stated, "Analyze the viral DNA sample and compare it with all available medical data. Find the most similar match and display." While a ship's computer core would likely manage such a task in moments, she was not expecting an immediate response. And the computer obliged with a simple affirmative jingle, and displaying on screen an estimated wait time of an hour, while scrolling rapidly through the records it had been given.

Hopefully, the two she had told to analyze the environmental samples would be able to figure out where the virus was coming from, because it obviously wasn't spreading person-to-person. She was glad that she could work without the cumbersome quarantine equipment required when studying diseases that could spread airborne. Her own gloves and the sealed sample containers afforded enough protection in this case.

She glanced back at the computer readout, momentarily losing her thoughts in the rapidly-scrolling data screens. She hoped it came to a result quickly, as the longer it took, the more people would die.

"Match found. Similarity 97%."