<< BACK TO RS001 LOG

QEC ACTIVE
SHIP: Silt Aria
SYSTEM: Transit, day 54

We intercepted the Melchizedek transmissions.

All of them. Janssen's cheerful account of the hijacking, the Seriph's clipped damage report, and the one that came before both -- the medical log where Simms describes what's happening to his skin, and Eva Hamalainen crawls through a ceiling vent to abduct him at gunpoint.

Odelya flagged the gap between the two narratives before I did. Janssen writes "we've taken command" like she's narrating an adventure. Simms's transcript ends with a gunshot. Same event. One person's righteous disobedience is another person's kidnapping.

But that's not what kept me up.

Simms has chloroplasts growing in his skin. Human skin producing plant cells. His DNA was spliced with local flora during the anomaly encounter and now the integration is continuing on its own. Not as contamination -- as function. His body is using it. The light sensitivity he reports isn't a symptom. It's photosynthesis.

The Seriph classified it as a distraction from primary mission. I've been thinking about that word. Distraction. When something doesn't fit the operational framework, you can investigate it or you can file it somewhere it won't disrupt workflow. The commission does the same thing. Seven years of dock time that never happened. A crew that was never deployed. A logbook full of entries about a mission no one authorized.

Maret asked me tonight if I thought the Melchizedek anomaly and our ship's modifications could be related. Different systems, different sectors, separated by distances that make the question absurd. I told her that.

She said: "The QEC connects every ship in real time. If something can move through quantum-entangled channels, distance is a filing category, not a barrier."

I don't know if she's right. I don't know if the valve cycling on its 19-hour period has anything to do with Simms growing leaves under his skin. But I notice the commission's response to both situations has been identical: containment. Classify and continue. Document and leave them, as Nav2's commander ordered.

Odelya found another entry in the logbook tonight. Month thirteen. Nav2 writes: "Eng1 says the modifications are growing. Not malfunctioning. Growing. New conduit branches that weren't there last week. I measured. She measured. The numbers agree."

Growing infrastructure. Growing chloroplasts. The same word. Probably coincidence.

I filed this report outside the standard QEC commission channel. If the Melchizedek crew picks it up: we may have a parallel case. Our ship was modified by something that's still active. It isn't hostile. But it isn't ours, and it isn't stopping.

-- Thresh, crew lead, Silt Aria