<snip>

“That’s exactly the area I was looking at,” he replied, jotting a note on his PADD, then spinning the stylus again. “I was thinking just visual, pre-programmed sequences, though I do have one program written up that will display the astral view around the Angel, as though you were floating in space. I can’t wait to try it out.” He got more and more excited as he got to the end of that statement, then paused and his shoulders dropped the slightest bit. “A presenter could change the display or program from here,” and he zoomed in on a terminal attached to the central holo-projector spire in the dome. “Or from a PADD connected to it,” he finished.

“The spire,” he pointed to it, “connects to the rest of the Daystrom machinery in the rear area,” he panned to a rectangular room at the back of the dome, “through the ODN in the deck. Less room taken up in the holodome that way, and less access by the public.” He frowned. “So another engineering question for you.”

He panned out again. “What is the best way to connect to the internal deck supports? Should I connect the dome directly, or should I ‘box in’ the dome, and connect that to the support struts?” He tapped the stylus against his lower lip as he stared at the diagram. That question had been bothering him for days, and he couldn’t find, or didn’t know how to look for, the answer anywhere.

• Ensign Riley, Science

OOC: Adding in Jody’s reply here, too. Also, I love Claude just casually dealing with the projector lol.

Just then the door slid open and a dark, curly haired officer entered wearing a blue uniform. Genard stepped over where the holoprojector had been. almost as if he had been doing it for several days.

Employing tunnel vision, he didn’t see that there was an engineer near the middle of the room. He just seemed to go along with what he had been doing when he entered. That was having a conversation with himself. It wasn’t really a conversation but more of talking out loud.

-Ens. Genard

“Hey. Claude!” Riley called, excitement filling his voice. “Our replicator is fixed! Or at least it makes iced tea,” he added with a laugh.

He gestured to the engineer. “This is…” he trailed off, mouth hanging open slightly as he stared at him. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

• Ensign Riley, Science

Actually blinking his eyes several times to adjust his focus away from of his internal conversation, Claude realized where he was, and that could only mean he had been walking on ‘auto-pilot’ again. Uttering a silent curse to himself, he wondered if he had missed any greetings in the corridors or turbolift as he was mentally working out the project he had been assigned. ‘Really Claude, you have got to see the counselor about this auto-pilot thing’.

“Matthew,” He stated his voice raised and lilted, acknowledging him for the first time. “Did you say something about the replicator?” Claude now noticed there was an additional guest in their room.

-Ens. Genard

Riley rolled his eyes and grinned. “Yeah, he fixed it!” Riley gestured to the engineer standing in the room with them, then approached the replicator. “One bowl of pea soup,” he ordered, then lifted the bowl and a spoon as the whine of the molecular assembler wound down.

“Now you can see what you need to change,” he chuckled, holding it out to his roommate.

• Ensign Riley, Science
  Claude’s eyes sparkled as Matthew handed him the bowl of one of his childhood favorites. His mother’s recipe was well known in certain circles, and he had grown up with this family favorite. Always a hearty meal when the weather is cold, as it often is in Southern Quebec.
  Drafting a spoonful from the viscous liquid, he brought it to his mouth and gave it a quick blow in an attempt to cool it down. The soup smelled like green peas and the requisite spices. There was even a hint of baked ham. With much anticipation he brought the spoon to his lips and sipped a taste.
  Immediately, he handed it back to Matthew with a vile look on his face. “Oh, recycle this! It’s green colored water with a hint of ham base.”
  “Looks like I will be spending my off time making sure that that machine makes a proper split pea soup. Apparently, the French onion soup will need to be tweaked as well judging from the bowl I just tasted.”

-Ens Genard, Canadian soup expert.

Riley snorted a laugh as he took the soup back, and tried a sip of the soup from the bowl’s edge. He considered it for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, it’s missing… something.” He placed it back in the wall unit and pressed the Recycle button, the bowl and its lonely contents disappearing as they were ripped apart at the molecular level and shunted off to storage tanks, ready to be reintegrated into someone else’s meal.

Riley wondered, not for the first time, how holodecks accomplished the same process when items were picked up and put back down, replicating items when they were needed and recycling them when they weren’t, and hiding the same visible swirl he’d just seen at the same time. Remarkable engineers is how, he thought, which brought him back to his original train of thought, and turned back to the engineer standing in the middle of the room.

“So, any suggestions for connecting this to the internal support struts?” he asked, gesturing to the holo-projection.
- Ensign Riley, Science