Cerulean Stars - Interlude - Paperwork

Cerulean Stars - Interlude - Paperwork

Founder Report

Author - Lieutenant Commander Raine Brooks

Primary Encounter Stardates - 48220.1 to 48220.6

Section 1

To prephase things, it's important to keep in mind when reading this that this was a telepathic encounter, so everything experienced was interpreted through the lens of my own mind.

That out of the way, the Great Link is a Hive Mind made up of billions of Changelings that, for all intents and purposes, is broken up into six distinguishable aspects that my mind interpreted as colors which are as follows.

• Purple - Roughly 30% of the Great Link - This personifies its general desire for Order, Control, and Safety. And also what I would consider their general Ego. (This association likely came from the color of Jem'Hadar ships.)

• Green - Roughly 30% of the Great Link - This personifies its general Fear, Caution, Secrecy, and Paranoia. (And I'm pretty sure I made this mental association because of the Romulan love of Green.)

• Yellow - Roughly 20% of the Great Link - This personifies the equivalent of its Superego. (I get the feeling this part is used to being ignored by the rest.)

• Orange - Roughly 20% of the Great Link - This is the personification of their shapeshifting. (Too complex for me to really explain more.)

• Red - Roughly 10% of the Great Link - This personifies their drive and determination. And also their id. (Klingons?)

• Blue - Roughly 10% of the Great Link - This personifies their desire to figure out and learn new things. (This association is absolutely because it's the Federation/Starfleet's color. And honestly, I think we could get along with this part really well.)

You'll note of course that that adds up to more than 100%, to which I'll just say it felt like there was overlap in places.

Each separate Changeling is of course made up of all of these colors, but to varying degrees that usually result in one or two colors being heavily dominant above the rest. And it's those dominant colors that go on to form the general percentages you see when they become a part of the great link.

Section 2

The next section will describe specific impressions I received about the various primary colors I was able to get impressions from.

• On the Dominion - The Purple and Green parts tried to hold back the association, the Yellow parts felt it was a great necessary shame that defined them, the Orange parts didn't care either way, the Red parts considered it a part of them that was/is, and the Blue parts didn't want it to define them.

• On the Vorta - Eris's Race, the only impression I got about them was oddly from Yellow, and that was connected to a feeling of a promise upheld. (Obvious missing context.)

• On the Jem'Hadar - A feeling of pride from Red, and sadness/guilt from Yellow. (Possibly important missing context.)

• On Raine Brooks - Purple, expected my failure or mental overload. Green, wanted to try and break my mental partition but was overruled by all others. (Given that likely would have killed me, I'm more than a little glad for this.) Yellow, was happy/right. Orange, didn't care. Red, didn't care. Blue, smugness/wanted to poke me with a stick. (Told you, Starfleet.)

• On Security Chief Odo - Yellow, guilt for what was. Blue, smugness for a plans success.

• On the Alpha Quadrant - Yellow, guilt for what will be. (Not reassuring in the slightest.)

• On Solids - Purple and Green, a general dislike. (I suspect past trauma from the context Iris gave.)

• On other shapeshifters - Orange, a minor feeling of challenge.

• On non-corporeals - Purple and Green, a feeling of scorn/fear. (Maybe they've met Q?) Orange, difficult. (To change into maybe?) Blue, interest/desire.

• On The Borg - All, unknown. (We should send them a general tactical primer, because nobody deserves the Borg, and now that we know about the Dominion it's only a matter of time till the Borg do too.)

Section 3

The following will be a series of personal theories and musings on the encounter.

Upon our landing the Great Link sent out six representatives, three with generally male presenting forms, and three with generally female presenting. As Security Chief Odo will attest to if asked, Changelings can have preferred genders, though I am not sure if the sex the six appeared in was their preferred one, what they randomly decided on in the moment, or part of some sort of plan.

On a similarly interesting note, the male/female pairs seem to have at least somewhat coordinated their ages. Iris and Indigo (The male changeling who spoke up.) both seemed to match Odo in choosing a general age that I would say is comparable to a present day human between their 60s to 80s. While the other two pairs seemed to cover the range from humans in their 40s to 60s, and ones in their 20s to 40s.

The fact that these six mirrored Security Chief Odo’s chosen form outside of its age and sexual dimorphism however suggests to me that they had something in mind by their choice. And my personal theory is that they were attempting to see what type of person Odo would gravitate to. 

That this ended up being the oldest of the female figures should not be even minimally surprising to anyone even remotely familiar with Odo given the problematic formative years listed out in his files. Because of which I will once more reiterate my desire for psychological staff to be assigned to the station, as most of our Bajoran staff continue to suffer from various levels of occupation related trauma.

Continuing on, we arrive at the problematic point of names. I call it problematic because changelings of the Great Link don't have names as we know them, they instead identify each other by mental impression. Now, while this works particularly well for them, anyone with even a modicum of xeno-psychology training will be able to tell you that for non-telepathic races a lack of verbal name tends to lead to depersonalization.

To help combat this I have taken to assigning those directly encountered changelings with verbally useful names reflective of the “color” of their mental impression. Unfortunately that amounts to a grand total of two, the female changeling that handled things with Odo, Iris, and the male changeling who spoke up briefly during our encounter, Indigo.

Rounding things out will be a personal musing on just why the Great Link is centered so much around the idea of “control”. Experience has taught me that Security Chief Odo has what is functionally an eidetic memory paired with a near perfect ability to judge size and position. So show him a room, take him out before moving something in it a single millimeter, and then invite him back in. And he will instantly be able to identify what object was moved and by how much.

I suspect this ability is an intrinsic part of what allows his species to so effectively duplicate things they have glimpsed only for a moment. However I also suspect these things have led to a general resistance to the idea of change occurring outside their control.

It’s not an overwhelming psychological drive of course, Odo has shown that at most it manifests in a general annoyance at personal things not being where they are supposed to be. But it is easy enough to see how over thousands of years of effectively isolating themselves in the Great Link with no exposure to the general chaos of the universe it could evolve into a feeling that they need to control others.

Section 4

This portion will cover my preliminary security suggestions.

Suffice it to say that the knowledge that the Founders of the Dominion are semi-corporeal shapeshifters has thrown a few of my previous suggestions out the proverbial airlock. 

The biggest one is that there is functionally no way to keep the Dominion fully on the opposing side of the Wormhole. In fact, I would even go so far as to surmise from bits of already gathered information, that a number of Founders have likely already made their way to the Alpha/Beta quadrants.

Full counter proposals for this potential infiltration will of course have to wait till I can convince Security Chief Odo to help generate a minimum baseline for Founder shapeshifting capabilities. Though I will suggest a peremptory caution in assuming that Odo's shapeshifting limits will be shared by the Founders themselves given their much greater age and experience.

One thing I believe it likely both share however, is the inability of most psychics to feel their minds, and while that will make detecting potential infiltration by inorganic vectors more difficult. It makes detecting potential infiltration via organic vectors simpler. The utilization of Betazoid personnel resources is the most obvious answer, as even just a basic mental brushby should in theory be capable of identifying a Founder in the case of most races.

Other suggestions include putting in place a buddy system for any officer conference trips, as those would be prime vectors for replacing said officers. Utilization of the new EMH for medical screenings of officers returning from conferences or shore leave. And a more extensive network of non-mass based motion sensors in cargo and docking areas. 

The last is due to a recent personal discovery that Changelings can control their mass.

For allies who may or may not be reading this, and who may or may not have any concern for the personal freedoms we in the Federation consider important. A system of round the clock monitoring should provide a significant level of protection so long as the Founders still need to regenerate to at least some level. The vulnerability of this type of system will of course be the same as many others, IE the potential falsification of data or the replacement of people overseeing said monitoring.

Section 5

Diplomatic suggestions.

As much as I might wish otherwise, my brief encounter with the Great Link was enough to show me that I would be a horrible choice for any future diplomatic attempts. Because while I might be briefly capable of connecting to them on their level, the rest of me is so fundamentally counter to the feelings I got from them that I'd likely be relegated to the type of mental consideration most humanoids dedicate to an amusing pet.

Also I'd probably be really really bored, and my daughter would kill me if we had to move to a planet where the only other person to talk to was me.

My personal suggestion would be to try and send a Medusan, while I wouldn't give such an approach more than a coin flip chance of succeeding, and even less of them being invited to visit the Great Link. There was enough interest there that the Founders might send one of their own number to actually have a talk with the representative instead of just tossing the issue to one of their servants.

It’s possible these percentages could be increased some by sending our diplomat with the captured Dominion member Eris as a further peace offering, but I am unsure how much value the Founders actually place in the other members of their Dominion.

Section 6

General threat analysis.

Unfortunate as it is to say, I’m not sure it’s actually possible to avoid a war. Even destroying the Bajoran wormhole, an idea which I question the possibility of  given the aliens inside would almost surely act in some manner to stop us if we tried, would at most delay things by a century or two.

And to be perfectly honest? I suspect that theoretical future war would be much much worse for us. Because every sense of the Founders I got during my encounter painted them as the type that would spend the intervening centuries building up and preparing for that conflict with a singular focus we would find almost impossible to match.

That's not to say I think it impossible that given hundreds of years the Founders might change their opinion on the Federation. Because though small I consider it an actual possibility due to the fact that we're perfectly happy to leave others alone if asked. 

However even if they do, I strongly suspect they will not be willing to afford the same latitude to the other powers in the Alpha/Beta quadrants, with the sole exception of maybe the Tholians. Whose extreme level of isolationism might see them considered a non-factor.