Cybernetics Lab: The Ghost Between

Cybernetics Lab: The Ghost Between

Name: Cybernetics Integration & Analysis Chamber (CIAC)
Location: Deck 7 – Cross-Stratum Core (between Medical and Engineering), USS Heimdahl
Function: Biomech interface vault, post-sentient deconstruction wing, identity remediation unit

Narrative Origin

No one designed it for comfort.
It was built by necessity—and guilt.

After Heimdahl's early recon flights into the remains of the Solarian Reclaimers, the crew encountered the first fully-integrated neural crucifix: a being held alive by its implants because it wanted to die but the machine refused.

Bio couldn’t cut it. Mech failed to understand.
So a third space was born—where man, machine, and meaning are disassembled in equal measure.

They called it the Cybernetics Lab. But those who work there call it something else.

“The Ghost Between.”

Operational Role

CIAC is where biology and machinery negotiate their existence. It is where implants whisper memories, prosthetics scream with phantom pain, and invasive systems are taught to forget their previous masters. Designed for examination, rehabilitation, and interrogation of biomechanical constructs—especially sentient or post-sentient subjects—the Cybernetics Lab is both asylum and autopsy chamber.

Core Features:

• Synapse Bridge Array: A multidirectional neural-interface chamber where organic nerve clusters can be mapped, simulated, and unbound from machine control. Also used to isolate consciousness echoes in neural lattices.
• Soong-Class Heuristic Forkbench: A half-holodeck, half-disassembler unit that simulates the behavior of implants before actual contact with host tissue. Essential for working with legacy androids, Borg tech, or rogue cybernetic constructs.
• Sub-Neural Remediation Chamber: A soft stasis field where memory-persistent entities (like sentient prosthetics or partially assimilated nodes) can be persuaded to “sleep” without full deletion. Often used for ethical stasis of Borg-recovered individuals.
• Cyberpsychiatric Isolation Pod (CIP): A single-person, sentience-sealed room for those experiencing biomechanical disassociation. Swayze refers to it as “the room where screams don't echo.”
• Vonn’s Rack: A hybrid workbench built personally by Dr. Elias Vonn. Can interface with any mechanical neural system, simulate a shutdown sequence, or convert foreign bio-mech logic into a readable language.

Trait: “The Ghost Between”

Effect: When a crew member uses this lab for any of the following, reduce Difficulty by 1:

• Extracting or disabling cybernetic implants
• Rehabilitating subjects affected by forced augmentation
• Studying Soong-type, Borg, or alien bio-synthetic entities
• Integrating sentient tech with organic hosts
• Interrogating memory-active implants or devices with identity fragments

Narrative Quirk:

This lab remembers. Not just the tech. The people who passed through.

Tasks that involve personal trauma—whether through Borg pasts, failed augmentations, or invasive AI—often cause the lab’s systems to behave unpredictably.

Possibilities:

• Nyx stutters or loops a phrase from a voice the crew hasn’t heard in years
• Aze sees his own hands before they were updated
• Berza’s implants attempt reconnection to a network that doesn’t exist

Security Protocols:

• Deck 7 is sealed by triple authorization: Chief Engineer, CMO, and Tactical Officer
• Psionic dampers installed in the walls, after a partially assimilated Betazoid attempted mind-merge with the ship
• All operating systems run parallel to—but separate from—Nyx’s interface matrix. Swayze audits quietly from below.
• Emergency purge will NOT destroy stored minds, only suspend them in memory-neutral state

Known Events:

• Aze Interface Lockout – Attempt to reboot legacy Soong failsafe triggered his facial mimicry subroutine on random crew for 17 minutes. Emotional aftermath unresolved.
• Berza’s Dream Recoil – His cortical implant transmitted a waking nightmare into the lab’s mainframe. Recorded as encrypted poetry.
• The Silence in Pod 4 – Unknown patient left after Delta run. Implant powered down. Voice still detected inside, asking for "its hands back.”

CIAC is not where machines die.
It’s where they decide whether to keep living as part of something else.
The Cybernetics Lab does not judge. But it always remembers.