Star Trek tech: Quantum Resolution Revisited.

Last time.

Well, first, go reread that old one.

You done?

Welcome back!

Now the new stuff!

Okay, so thanks to H&I playing TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT 6 days a week, and having DIS, PIC, LD, PROD, and SNW on disc, I have some new info to add!

When I last left off, I was pretty damned sure lifeforms could be replicated by the transporter/replicators with non-quantum resolution.

Now, I'm not so sure.

First, let's talk the TOS-ENT reruns.

According to DS9, replicators have pattern buffers.

But, they must be molecular resolution pattern buffers, or they could create life.

And holodecks/holosuites have a big replicator under the floor, so they must have pattern buffers, so holodecks/holosuites have pattern buffers.

And those are called "holodeck buffers" or just "holo-buffers".

So! Let's redo "Our Man Bashir" with that knowledge.

The body patterns and mind patterns are separated, and the body patterns are re-integrated as holo-characters in the holodeck, and the mind patterns are held in every scrap of station memory "including replicator memory" which includes the buffers.

Buffer memory, even molecular buffer memory, is bigger than solid-state memory.

But, it's more unstable.

Think RAM. Yeah, buffers are giant RAMs that are bigger than the hard-drives.

So, 5 brains eats a lot of data, even with help from replicator buffers.

But how much data?

Well, we kinda-sorta find out in Discovery.

There, they encounter this dying planetoid sized organic blob 100,000 years old, and it hacks into their computer, and downloads all of its life knowledge, and then "the sphere data " becomes an AI in their computer that refuses to let itself be removed.

This becomes a major plot complication that can only be relieved by jumping 900 years in the future.

"The sphere data "is said to be several yottabytes.

Lawrence Krauss in "The Physics Of Star Trek" calculated that if you stored a transporter pattern at a kilobyte an atom, it would be 10 to the 28th kilobytes.

Which works out to 10 yottabytes.

That would mean the Discovery computer (without help from buffers) can hold about 10 transporter patterns if you gut everything else out.

But this is insane. DIS is pre-TOS, and DS9 is 100 years later, and can only hold 5 brains (with the help of buffers).

So, a quantum transporter pattern must be way more than a yottabyte (or ten).

So, the resolution must be scanned down even more than electrons and quarks!

It must go all the way down to pure photons!

That must be some damned telescope/microscope the transporter is packing!

If they're beaming pure photon energy, (and bosons, and tachyons, and any number of other exotic frinky-frat particles) then that explains some weird discrepancies my previous post didn't account for.

Like in TNG's "The Most Toys" where Data fires a disrupter, and the disrupter beam gets beamed, and O'Brien sifts out the beam, and shuts off the disruptor.

This could only happen if the transporter slurps up the frinky-frats.

And this could only happen all the way down to fundamental pre-matter particles.

Also, on DS9's "Playing God" they discover a proto-universe with intelligent life inside evolving at super speed.

They beam the goddamned UNIVERSE onto a runabout, and take it through the wormhole to plant it somewhere safe, like taking a frog back to its pond.

That's some teensy-weensy frinky-frats they're beaming if the lifeforms in THE UNIVERSE made it safely through the trip.

So, yeah, "quantum resolution" isn't what we thought it was.

It's even crazier.

So!! Let's redo TNG's "Lonely Among Us" with this knowledge.

Picard gets possessed by an energy being (made of whatever frinky-frats) then beams himself out as "pure energy" (frinky-frats and all) into the nebula the energy being came from.

Then, his mind-pattern hops into the ENT-D computer, and has himself run through his body pattern, and re-materialized.

The body pattern is storable in solid state memory as "a transporter trace" so it being dumped from the buffer is fine, and they're not wrong that they have it on hand.

And if energy-Picard downloaded into a transporter buffer at frinky-frat resolution, that'd be more than enough storage without having to gobble up all the solid-state memory.

Combine the mind and replicated body pattern from two buffers into a third, bam, matter-Picard.

Just like re-combining the mind and body patterns in "Our Man Bashir".

Only difference is, DS9 has only the one transporter, a shitload of replicators, and transporters on docked ships.

Whereas, the ENT-D has transporters out the yin-yang.

So, it was actually an easier trick to pull off with Picard.

So!! Why does the mind have to beam at frinky-frat resolution?

Well, now it's time to address the elephant in the room with the Trek mythology.

Telepathy.

TNG explains the mumbo-jumbo behind telepathy, but I can't remember the episode to save my life, so I'll go with Discovery.

The Vulcans believe there's a quantum realm that connects all mind in the universe.

Humans scoff at this, but Vulcan mind powers are shown to work, so.....

Wait, Vulcans believe in the quantum mind-realm, but in ENT they scoff at time travel?

Vulcans are weird.

Anyway, Michael Burnham was injured by Klingons as a little girl, and Sarek mind-melded some of his katra (lifeforce and memory) into her to keep her alive.

Adult Burnham still carries that katra piece in her noggin' and builds a mind-meld transmitter thingy that sticks to her face to find Sarek in an ion storm.

So, however this transmitter works, it taps into the quantum frinky-frats.

Pattern buffers didn't have to be involved, because it was brain-to-brain.

So, apply this to "Search For Spock".

I broke it down so that Spock's katra was just a regular neural electricity download.

But if it's quantum frinky-frats, and the resolution of the transporter (and the buffer) has to be bumped up to accommodate the frinky-frats, then not so much.

But then, apply this to Nomad bringing Scotty back to life in TOS's "The Changeling".

Scotty was freshly dead, so Nomad's medical repairs got his body going, and Scotty's frinky-frats were probably still tingling about waiting to be jump-started.

But, do humans have frinky-frats?

Well, in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" the galactic barrier boosts the ESP level of Gary Mitchell and Dr. Dehner.

They already had high ESP, and this was on file, so all Starfleet officers take ESP tests, apparently.

This is never mentioned again.

But, they go back to the galactic barrier in later TOS, and in Discovery, so WNMHGB happened.

Then, in "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" Miranda Jones is a human telepath who can even do mind-melds.

So, yes, humans have frinky-frats.

And the frinky-frat mind-realm is basically the force from Star Wars.

Star Trek has the force now.

If that bothers you, get therapy, cuz it's not going away.

And like the force, it can be channeled into and through objects.

Like the Stone Of Gol. A telekinesis amplifier.

But the victim has to be angry.

In the SW universe this would totally be a Sith amulet.

Also, there's the jewel thing in TNG's "Man Of The People" that makes a link between the villain-of-the-week and Troi so he can suck her lifeforce, and turn her old in the process.

Which, I guess would be another Sith amulet.

Or the orbs from DS9 which are the ultimate amulets.

Or the candle in TNG's "Sub Rosa" that has a ghost stuck to it.

We never quite find out if Ronin is a high-ESP human who preserved his frinky-frat pattern, or an alien energy being posing as a human, or a human who merged with an energy being.

Whatever he is, a phaser blast can kill him.

So...phasers are Ghostbuster guns.

Starfleet officers are Ghostbusters.

There's another universe spliced in.

And speaking of ghosts; in TOS's "A Wolf In The Fold" it turns out Jack The Ripper is an energy being that hops from body to body through the centuries; feeding on fear like Freddy or Pennywise.

They trap him in a body, and beam him out into space on wide dispersal.

So, even back then, there were hints the transporter beamed frinky-frats.

So, long story short, TNG cranked the transporter up to quark resolution to explain why they don't ressurect the dead, and why they still need doctors.

But Discovery ret-con cranked it up to frinky-frat resolution to justify the quantum-mind woo.

But, that's in the mythology, so needed doing anyway.

Discovery just formalized what was already being hinted at.

Anyway!! Getting back to those buffers!

There's a couple times where minds are downloaded that seem to conflict with the data capacity limits seen in "Our Man Bashir".

Voyager's "Lifesigns" and "Heroes and Demons".

"Lifesigns" the Holodoc downloads the mind of his Vidiian girlfriend into a holographic body.

We're told she's in "the holographic buffer".

Now, in the holodeck, there's a replicator to make food, and clothes, and props.

So you need a buffer for that.

But the Doctor's holographic system just has holograms and forcefields.

What does he need a buffer for?

Well, in "Tuvix" we find out sickbay has a medical transporter. They use this to split Tuvix apart.

So, it's for performing molecule surgery without the actual transporting part.

But, I'm also gonna assume it aids in site-to-site transport from a planet directly to sickbay.

And ret-con on Strange New Worlds, this is exactly what the medical transporter is for.

As well as holding a patient in the buffer for stasis preservation.

So, I'm gonna go with Denara Pel's frinky-frat resolution mind pattern was actually downloaded into the medical transporter pattern buffer.

So why is it called a holo-buffer?

What does it have to do with the Doctor's regular functioning?

Two theories.

One, given a transporter can beam all the way down to photons, his soft-hologram image is turned into hard-light by having the photons constantly transporter re-jiggered.

This is a bit overkill given forcefields are proven to be a separate tech of their own.

Theory two; like a replicator pattern, the Doctor's pattern is booted up from solid-state memory, de-compressed, and loaded into a buffer.

This would explain all the times his program threatened to futz out like he's in RAM instead of a hard-drive.

But doesn't explain, if he does futz out, why he just can't be booted up from solid-state memory again with some memory loss.

So, I'm afraid we're going to have to consider option 3.

The Doctor's program is so big and greedy, it's constantly running off a dedicated pattern buffer.

He's always in RAM.

Unless he's in the mobile emitter, which is 29th century tech.

But then the emitter is vulnerable, so he's always in danger.

This is a really stupid thing for Starfleet to do, but it accommodates the sloppy writing of his character's mechanics.

This is how the Doctor works.

Madness, but there it is.

So!! Getting back to Denara Pel; the Doc's holo-buffer was either compressed to make room, or it can handle multiple frequencies, like calls through a phone line, and her frinky-frat human mind pattern was put into the holo-buffer along with the Doctor.

But...her pattern, unlike the Doctor, starts to degrade.

Humanoid frinky-frat magic-juice can't be sustained forever.

Unless you're Scotty, then you can make a buffer hold you for 75 years.

But I'll assume some alien energy-Gods were looking out for Scotty.

Return favor for saving the universe multiple times.

Maybe even as an apology for being taken over by Jack The Ripper.

So, that's "Lifesigns".

Now "Heroes and Demons".

An energy being manifests in the holodeck, and gobbles up Kim, Tuvok, and Chakotay.

They're later restored, so their patterns went somewhere.

Either...

One, their body patterns went into the holodeck buffer, and their mental frinky-frats went into the frinky-frats of the creature.

Two, their body and mental frinky-frats went into a random transporter pattern buffer anywhere on the ship, and the creature hacked the computers and sensors to hide them.

Either one works just as well.

So, that squares those two episodes away.

One more thing, and it has to do with both the transporter, and frinky-frat lifeforce.

TAS's "The Lorelei Signal".

A bunch of hot alien babes send out a signal that acts like the song of the Sirens to lure all the Enterprise men to their planet.

They beam down, and get captured, fitted with magic headbands that suck out their lifeforce, and turn them old. Like Troi in "Man Of The People".

The Enterprise women are immune, save the men, and run them through the transporter with their old transporter traces, and restore them to youth.

Wait, what?

The transporter makes frinky-frat lifeforce now?

Okay, how to reconcile this shit?

"Man Of The People" actually helps us out.

The amulet not only sucks life from the victim, but store's the villain's bad vibes in them.

Like a living picture of Dorian Gray.

The villain is tricked by the crew into thinking Troi died, so he seeks out a new host, and then is prevented from making the link, thus breaking the link to Troi, and sending all the aging and bad vibes back into him, and killing him.

If the headbands in "The Lorelei Signal" work in a similar fashion, taking the headbands off should have broken the link.

But unlike Troi, for whatever reason, the body damage didn't reverse.

Thus the transporter rewind.

Their bodies had enough frinky-frats without the headbands, they just needed an extra goose from the transporter.

My head-canon is the "Man Of The People" amulet had a more refined mystery element.

The Lorelei headbands were corrupted junk metal.

So, that resolves all the inconsistencies between the tech, and the magic, and the mind-storage capacities, and all that.

But is quantum resolution still bullshit?

Can a transporter create life after all?

Well, yes, and no.

The Genesis torpedo in "Wrath Of Khan" and "Search For Spock" can.

That's spinoff transporter/replicator tech.

But David Marcus cheated with proto-matter.

Whatever's in proto-matter also has the needed frinky-frats.

And those frinky-frats sure goose Spock back to life.

But, the Genesis planet goes all to shit, so it's not worth it.

Piss away a whole planet for one little Spock?

Not cost effective at all.

So, in the Trek universe, no.

Quantum resolution is no longer bullshit.

Discovery nailed that down.

In our world?

I suspect not.

I suspect we can build a cell, and grow it into a person.

3-D printed people.

Like in "Orphan Black: Echoes".

But, we'll see someday.