Here's a bit of a throwback to a classic DTK story and the TNG episode that inspired it… hope you like it! :)
Disclaimer: Digimon and Star Trek and all official characters are the property of Toei and Paramount, respectively. While I do own a copy of Windows, I don't own Microsoft. ;)
In Space, No One Can Hear You Blue Screen
Captain's Log, stardate 47612.6. The Koushiro has detected a mysterious object in orbit around the planet Karuba III. Against my wishes, we're taking a closer look because my wonderful First Officer says we're supposed to be explorers! Naturally, I have a feeling this thing is gonna come back and bite us in the—
"Assume standard orbit, Captain?" Henry asked, motioning to the viewscreen. "We're here."
"Do I interrupt you when you're recording a log?" Izzy huffed, crossing his arms.
"We can always circle the star system while you finish up," offered Henry. He seemed unfazed by the glare the redhead gave in reply.
"Let's just get this over with," grumbled Izzy.
"Very well, sir," said Henry. He thought it best to take the high road and not give Izzy's hostile behaviour any sort of response. "Ryo, anything on sensors?"
The Tactical Officer studied his instruments. "I've got something off the starboard bow. Bearing zero-three-eight, mark twelve."
"On screen," said Henry.
A cylindrical object slid into view. It had solar panels on either side that looked like small wings. Along the top and bottom were strange markings that appeared to be some sort of alien language, but not one that any of the bridge crew could immediately recognize. The object was adrift, with no indication that it was moving under its own power. In fact, it appeared to be dead in space.
"Alright, I've seen enough!" snapped Izzy, rising from his seat. "Go to red alert."
Ryo hesitated for a moment, but then sounded the alert klaxon. The bridge lights dimmed as backlit panels on the walls pulsed with a soft, red glow.
"Captain, isn't that a bit premature?" questioned Henry. "There has been no indication that this object poses a threat to us."
"Poor misguided Henry," Izzy said with a patronizing gesture. "You'll never make Captain with that attitude!"
Henry managed to quickly suppress the affronted look on his face. However, it was almost as if Izzy had a precognition. All of a sudden, the object began to emit an eerie blue glow. A bright white light illuminated the strange markings. The object now appeared very much alive, with just a hint of menacing. It seemed to grow larger on the viewscreen as it closed the distance between itself and the Koushiro.
"Alright," said Izzy, his eyes focused intently on the object on the screen. "Back us away, slowly…"
"Hey Izzy!" Rika called out from the Ops station. "I'm reading a massive energy surge coming from that thing!"
Ryo glanced down at his console and then looked back up, a puzzled expression on his face. "Captain… the object is either scanning us or getting ready to fire!"
A beam of bright blue light shot out of the object and crashed against the Koushiro's shields. The bridge crew lurched in unison as the ship reeled from the hit. Alarms went off at several consoles, indicating that the ship may have taken some damage.
"Okay, definitely not a sensor scan!" Ryo reported, laughing slightly.
"Alright guys! It's ass-kicking time!" Izzy said confidently, punching his hand with his fist. "Ryo, give me phasers and photon torpedoes!"
The Tactical Officer's fingers flew across his console as he worked to get the weapons loaded and calculate the optimal firing arcs.
"Well, that escalated quickly," Henry deadpanned. Nonetheless, he made his way to the Tactical console to assist Ryo.
Another beam impacted against the shields. The force was enough to knock Izzy back into his seat.
"Where are my damn torpedoes?!" he demanded, turning around and glaring up at Ryo.
With his finger hovering over a big red button marked 'FIRE', Ryo took a brief moment to strike a heroic pose. "Hasta la vista, baby."
The Koushiro let loose a full spread of photon torpedoes at the object, which was preparing to fire yet again. Perhaps it was a bit overkill, as torpedo after torpedo rained fiery destruction down on the object, which shattered into countless pieces from the resulting explosion. The shockwave that followed rocked the ship slightly on impact. Just as soon as it had started, the object was gone.
"…hasta la vista, baby?" Rika groaned, giving Ryo a look that was a mix of confused, amused, and annoyed.
"It's, um… it's a line from a movie," Ryo replied awkwardly. He then adopted an indignant expression. "Oh, come on! Don't tell me you've never heard of the Terminator!"
Rika and the rest of the bridge crew simply stared at him with blank expressions. Ryo surmised that they probably weren't all that familiar with Arnold Schwarzenegger or the Terminator series. It had been over three hundred years, after all.
"Well, I know what we're watching next movie night!" he said, quickly returning to his usual cheery self.
"Now that that's done and over with, we should get going," said Izzy, who was all too eager to leave. "Willis, lay in a course for Starbase 411, warp 6."
The blond-haired pilot input the necessary coordinates into the helm. "Course set."
"Engage!"
Nothing happened.
"Hey flyboy, I said 'engage!'" said Izzy, tapping his foot impatiently.
Willis checked the readings on his console. "The helm's not—"
Before he could finish, the Koushiro suddenly blasted off on its programmed heading and speed. That was definitely odd, but stranger things were about to happen.
••••
Henry stood alone in the Turbolift as it headed down to Engineering. He wanted to look further into the strange delay that occurred with the engines earlier. He could hear the mechanical whirring of the elevator seemingly growing louder as it continued its descent, but, initially thought nothing of it.
"Computer, halt," Henry said, expecting the Turbolift to stop at the next deck.
The elevator didn't stop moving. Instead, the whirring grew even louder, raising Henry's concern. However, nothing could have prepared him for what happened next.
"Computer, emergency stop!" Henry ordered, with a little more urgency in his voice.
"Unable to comply. LiftControl. exe has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down," the computer replied in its calm, female voice. This didn't sound good at all.
The Turbolift stopped briefly. Thinking the emergency stop might have kicked in, Henry made his way to the door. He had barely taken two steps forward when the elevator started moving again. This time, it began a rapid freefall down its shaft.
To say that Henry wasn't at least somewhat frightened would have been a lie. However, his emotional discipline took over immediately. He struggled to keep his feet firmly planted on the floor as the massive g-forces pulled him towards the ceiling. He only had seconds before the elevator would reach the bottom of the shaft, where certain death awaited. If only he could reach the control panel by the door; he might be able to activate the manual override.
"It looks like you are trying to stop the Turbolift," said the computer, stating the obvious. "Would you like me to help?"
"Yes!" Henry groaned. Both feet were now off the floor and he was slowly floating towards the ceiling. "Emergency stop!"
The computer beeped in compliance. The Turbolift stopped abruptly, and Henry fell to the ground with a painful thud. Before he could get up, however, the elevator shot forward through a horizontal shaft. The force knocked Henry back and pinned him against the wall.
"Computer, I said 'stop!'" yelled Henry. This was really starting to push him to his limits.
"Attempt to restart LiftControl. exe has failed. Insufficient resources," the computer simply replied.
Reaching the end of the horizontal shaft, the Turbolift proceeded to freefall down another vertical shaft. Henry needed to get to the control panel. This had to end now.
"The creator of this fault did not specify a reason," reported the computer, as if trying to explain its unusual behaviour.
After what felt like an eternity, Henry was able to reach the control panel by the door. Pulling off the cover and examining the insides, he identified what appeared to be the override switch. Keeping his fingers crossed that this would work, he gave it a yank.
"Manual override engaged. Initiating emergency stop."
••••
Henry staggered into Engineering, still heavily traumatized from his wild ride in the Turbolift. Thankfully, his Vulcan cool prevented him from showing it (mostly). Without it, he would have been spewing out all sorts of colourful curse words that were highly inappropriate for a ten-year-old boy.
"Oi, laddie!" Chief Engineer Matt called out in his usual faux Scottish brogue. Noticing the drained look on Henry's face, he added, "you alright?"
"Never felt better," Henry grimaced. "Though I have the sudden urge to… kill whoever invented the elevator."
"Well, they'll be long gone by now, lad!" Matt laughed, slapping Henry on the back. He failed to notice the deadly glare the Vulcan boy shot him.
"So, what have we got?" asked Henry, wanting to change the subject.
Matt gestured to the Master Systems Display on the wall, which featured a large cross-section image of the ship. He pointed to several blinking red lights. Next to each light was a small grey box containing seemingly nonsensical text. However, one particular red light caught Henry's attention. It was next to the warp nacelle. The accompanying box had a big red 'X' on the left-hand side.
"Kernel32 caused an invalid page fault in module PlasmaRegulator. dll at 0137:bff74966…" Henry mumbled, reading the text aloud. He had never seen that kind of error message before.
"That's why the ship didn't jump to warp immediately… I think." Matt explained, although he himself seemed doubtful at his conclusion.
Henry studied the other messages on the screen.
'Runtime error 217 at 0270F382.'
'A required DLL file, UniTrans32. dll, was not found.'
'The exception 0xc0000096 occurred in the application at location 0x0040bc27. Click OK to terminate. Click CANCEL to debug.'
"It's like nothing I've ever seen before," Matt shrugged, unable to offer much assistance. "I'd trade ya my house in the Hebrides fer a way to translate this gibberish."
Henry was tempted to ask if Matt had ever even been to Scotland, but ultimately decided that was a discussion best saved for another time. Re-reading the last error message, he felt compelled to click either 'OK' or 'CANCEL' and see what would happen. At the same time, he knew that doing so would be illogical—and highly risky—considering how little he understood the error. For all he knew, either option could inadvertently activate the ship's self-destruct system.
"Wait, are you sure that's safe?" Matt questioned, as if reading Henry's mind.
"Only one way to find out, I guess." Henry sighed. Part of him could not believe he'd just said that.
"If you accidentally blow up the ship, I won't tell the Captain," Matt said with a wink.
Henry's finger hovered back and forth indecisively between 'OK' and 'CANCEL.' It was now or never. In a rather human move, he closed his eyes and let fate decide for him.
The effect was instantaneous. Nearly every computer display in the room suddenly went blank, only to be replaced by a bright blue screen moments later. The whole ship seemed to shudder as the engines abruptly disengaged and the Koushiro came to a screeching halt. Alarms began to go off as smoke billowed out of vents in the walls and sparks flew out of several consoles. All around, engineers and other crew members scrambled to get things under control. Unfortunately, they weren't quite sure with to do. They simply ran around trying their best to avoid the smoke and sparks more than anything.
"It looks like you're trying to shut down the warp core," the computer announced calmly. "Would you like me to help?"
"No, don't shut down the core!" Henry replied quickly. Unfortunately, the computer had other plans, it seemed.
"Runtime error: Core32. exe has terminated in an unusual way," the female voice reported a moment later.
Other aural warnings from the computer soon followed. Each one sounded more bizarre than the last.
"Not ready reading drive A. Abort, retry, fail?"
"An error occurred while displaying the previous error."
"A fatal exception has occurred in the Lavatory Control Subsystem. Could not write to memory. Press any key to initiate dump."
"Oh, my poor lass!" Matt howled, practically in tears. "She's hurtin', the poor girl!"
"Oh, for the love of—" Henry growled, his patience wearing thin as he jabbed at one of the blue screens. "Seriously?!"
A rapid beep cut through the noise. Neither Matt nor Henry even had a chance to acknowledge it when Izzy's voice bellowed over the intercom.
"Did you guys just break my ship?!"
••••
Matt and Henry entered the bridge looking like they'd just finished running a marathon. Rather than put their lives in the hands of a potentially homicidal Turbolift, the two decided to take the scenic route—climbing countless ladders and crawling through a vast maze of Jeffries Tubes.
"Welcome to the bridge, gentlemen," Izzy greeted them sarcastically. "So good of you to finally join us."
He immediately diverted their attention to the viewscreen. Instead of offering a spectacular view into the cosmos beyond, the screen had a rather mundane-looking block of white text against a blue backdrop. It was not unlike the blue screens Henry and Matt had encountered down in Engineering.
"Care to explain?" asked Izzy, waving a hand at other consoles on the bridge. Most of them were displaying the same blue screen.
Matt gave Henry a 'friendly' slap on the back. "Hoo boy, laddie! Who woulda thought pressin' one button would lead to all this?"
Henry's eye twitched. Not bothering to hide his irritation this time, he threw Matt a dirty look, as if to say 'Thank you for just ratting me out!'
Apparently, Izzy caught the hint. He rounded on his First Officer. "You did this?!"
"Oh, shut up!" Henry snapped, before grudgingly adding "sir."
The awkward silence that followed remained unbroken until a voice cried out "Wait a second!" The bridge crew turned their attention to the source of the sudden outburst. It was Ryo. His eyes were focused on the viewscreen in some sort of awestruck gaze.
"Windows!" he said, almost in a whisper.
"Come again?" asked Izzy.
"I can't believe I didn't see the signs earlier!" Ryo cried out excitedly, still not making much sense. "Yes! It's all coming back now!" He began typing away rapidly at his console.
The image on the viewscreen changed to that of a plain, yet strange interface that the others had never seen before. On the top left corner were several icons bearing titles like 'My Computer,' 'My Documents,' and 'Recycle Bin.' At the bottom of the screen was a light grey bar that contained a few smaller icons, including one at the very left that said 'Start.'
"Windows, guys!" Ryo repeated, pointing to the interface on the viewscreen. "This is Windows!"
"No, that's the viewscreen," Izzy insisted, as if explaining to a child.
"Guys, this is an old Earth operating system called Microsoft Windows," Ryo explained. "It was immensely popular in the 20th and 21st centuries. I never thought I'd see it again!"
"Somebody call Sickbay," Izzy said dismissively. "Ryo's officially gone crazy!"
"No," Henry cut in. "I think he's on to something."
Izzy crossed his arms. Whatever Henry just clued in on, he wasn't following.
Taking Henry's cue, Ryo tapped a few keys on his console. The viewscreen image instantly switched to a more colourful and familiar-looking LCARS interface. However, at the center was a grey text box that resembled the Windows interface. The box contained a large red 'X' and the words 'unhandled exception' beside it.
"This here," Ryo said, pointing at the box, "this is a Windows error message."
Suddenly, the lights flickered and the image on the viewscreen was replaced by a block of white text on a blue background once more.
"And that," Ryo continued casually, "is called the Blue Screen of Death."
Henry raised an eyebrow at the peculiarity of the name.
Ryo then brought up an image of the alien object they'd encountered earlier. He overlaid a small video of it firing on the Koushiro, along with what appeared to be a detailed analysis of the blue beam it shot out
"And this is where it all came from!"
••••
It took a few more tries to get everyone to connect the dots. Ryo hypothesized that the shots the alien object had fired wasn't an attack, but rather, an attempt to communicate. Further analysis revealed that each shot contained a data stream, one of which was carrying a copy of the object's native operating system—believed to be Windows. Because the crew destroyed the object before it could finish its data transfer, the incomplete copy of Windows must have mutated and subsequently tried to overwrite the Koushiro's existing LCARS operating system. Predictably, the less-advanced (and incompatible) Windows struggled to maintain control over ship's comparatively modern and complex systems. Ryo surmised that LCARS was still trying to fight back the 'infection.' That would explain why the computer began to exhibit Windows-style errors, while at the same time, could still partially function like normal.
Now, the crew had to find a way to get rid of Windows and return the computer to its original state.
"Why don't we try pulling the plug?" Matt suggested jokingly. "Who knows, maybe the computer will forget it's been actin' like a numpty all day!"
Ryo's eyes widened. "That's it!"
"What's it?" asked Matt, slightly panicked. "Lad, I wasn't serious! Ya pull the plug on a system like this and…"
He made a gesture that seemed to suggest the ship would blow up, or that they would all die horrible deaths, at the very least.
"Yeah, guys!" Izzy seconded Matt. "Stop trying to destroy the ship!"
"Please, sir, just hear me out," Ryo implored. "It's called a 'system restore.' They did it all the time in the 21st century."
"Borgus frat!" Matt exclaimed. "All the time? What kind of bonkers technology were people running back then?"
Ryo laughed. "Okay, maybe not all the time. But it was a common enough practice."
"Common enough…" Matt shuddered, alarmed at how Ryo could approach the topic so casually. "Thank God we don't live in the Dark Ages anymore!"
"It's not as bad as it sounds," Ryo explained. "We can reboot the computer in Safe Mode and purge Windows from there."
Matt and Izzy looked horrified at his suggestion. Henry, however, looked like a light bulb had just come on in his head. He realized where Ryo was going with this.
"If we wipe the computer clean," Henry pondered, "we can then reload the LCARS backups from protected memory."
Izzy turned to his First Officer with a 'not you too!' look.
Noticing that Izzy was getting quite uncomfortable with the plan, Ryo looked at him reassuringly. "I promise; we won't destroy the ship."
"Do you swear on your life?" Izzy pressed, still looking somewhat unconvinced.
Ryo nodded reluctantly. In his mind, he knew it probably wasn't the wisest idea to bet his life on nothing going wrong. When it came to technology, something could—and usually would—go wrong. It was just the way the universe worked.
"Alright, let's get this over with," Izzy relented, resigning himself to Ryo's idea. At this point, he didn't have much of a choice.
"I guess we'll leave you to it, then, laddie!" Matt told Ryo, slapping him on the back in a 'good luck' sort of way.
The Tactical Officer did a double-take. "Wait, what? I thought you—"
"You're the expert on this Windows thing," Izzy explained. "We'll let you take care of it!"
"Sir?"
"What's the matter, Ryo? Afraid you'll destroy the ship?"
••••
Ryo stared apprehensively at the screen in front of him. The window was completely blank, save for the text 'C:\WinCARS\Desktop' and a blinking cursor beside it. The rest of the bridge crew watched him with bated breath, waiting for him to enter something—anything—and see what would happen next.
"Well?" Izzy prodded impatiently.
Ryo took a deep breath and turned to face the others. "You know, guys, it's been ages since I've had to even look at a command line interface."
"But you have experience working with them, right?" asked Henry.
"Sure, I've used the DOS prompt once or twice…"
Rika, who had been silently observing everything the whole time, was losing patience. She grabbed Ryo by the collar.
"I thought you said they did this all the time in the 21st century," she said testily.
"Yes, they did. Other people did," Ryo started to explain, "I might have picked up some stuff along the way, but… I wasn't… I didn't stay for very long, and—"
"Type something already, you blockhead!" Rika screamed. "If your time-traveling geekiness won't kill us, I will!"
Ryo frowned. He certainly didn't like being called a geek. However, he reminded himself that he was likely the crew's only hope. He slowly began typing out 'rstrui. exe.' Holding his breath, he pressed 'Enter.'
Nothing happened.
••••
Nearly half an hour passed, and Ryo had made very little progress with each system restore attempt. The computer simply wasn't cooperating. Ryo was getting more and more irritated by the minute, as evidenced by how hard he was jabbing at each key as he typed, and the occasional snarl, immediately followed by a fist pounding on the console.
"Is there a problem, Lieutenant?" Henry asked. He sounded genuinely curious and a little concerned.
"I'm trying to access a directory in drive C," Ryo said slowly, typing in the same command for the umpteenth time. "But it keeps telling me…"
He pointed to the screen, which displayed the message 'Not ready reading drive A. Abort, retry, fail?'
"And when I do this…"
The screen flickered and promptly displayed an all-too-familiar block of white text against a blue background. Henry could not help but share Ryo's frustration. He, too, had come to despise the Blue Screen of Death.
"So much for our 'expert,'" Izzy muttered under his breath, but loud enough for Ryo to hear.
"Why don't you give it a try, O Captain, My Captain?!" Ryo raged. "Maybe you'll cause a freaking warp core breach!"
Rika cast a glance at the two of them, but said nothing. Even she knew better than to provoke Ryo, who looked quite ready to bash the screen (and possibly someone's face) with his fist, a sledgehammer, or some other blunt heavy object.
Perhaps even the computer sensed the rapidly rising tension. What happened next caught Ryo—and everyone else present—completely off-guard.
"It looks like you are trying to delete Windows," a familiar female voice said. "Would you like me to help?"
Hope you enjoyed that one! And yes, the computer did actually help them restore things to normal in the end. I feel I should also say that, for the record, Henry and Ryo are fairly tech savvy. However, Windows' quirks can sometimes try the patience of even a saint. ;)
Thanks for reading, and I'll see you all next time!