Posted by Captain Alexander Cochrane (Commanding Officer) in Auxiliary Bridge- Late Night Tinkering

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Auxiliary Bridge- Late Night Tinkering

Posted by Captain Alexander Cochrane (Commanding Officer) in Auxiliary Bridge- Late Night Tinkering
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Her eyes showed the smile long before it reached her mouth and Faye gestured with her head towards her work area, before running a hand over her teal coloured hair. It had faded and the rich brunette that was her natural shade was showing through. “I normally greatly dislike bashing my head on things to get work done, but when it works,” she said with mock seriousness. “Come on over and I’ll show you what I’m up to.” She didn’t have to. In reality, all Calloway had to do was say that it was classified and that likely would have been the end of the conversation. But there wasn’t anything going on here that she couldn’t show him. Others couldn’t know or didn’t need to unless absolutely necessary, but he was the captain and she could let him in on at least some of it.

Cochrane nodded once and then took off his jacket as Calloway had, and then layed himself on the deck and slid under the console so he could see. Apparently, the new CO wasn’t afraid of getting dirty when necessary.

Grabbing her tricorder, she crouched down and made room for him so he could see the network of chips and relays that were a part of the communications terminal above. “So, I know it’s weird for me to be here, but this is actually a sensitive area most people don’t think of. And my job is this weird mix of science, engineering and security. It’s my job to think laterally and sometimes diagonally to where potential threats may exist in the data framework, and…” She reached in and around the side to the place she had been looking at right before he entered. She pulled out a chip and showed him. “One little chip encoded with anything unusual could create some interesting side effects.” She offered it to him.

Cochrane took the chip and examined it from multiple angles it looked like any of the billions that were part of starships anywhere in the galaxy.

“That one is actually fine, but what I’m doing is adding a layer or protection throughout the ship in key area.” Faye scrunched her face slightly as she searched for the right words. “Think of it like a doctor inoculating the crew against a series of illnesses. That’s sort of what I’m doing. But some processes require more in depth work and modifications than others. This is a simple one, but there’s no good time to really do it, so I chose when most people wouldn’t really be about.” That explained why she was still working at this hour, and had set part of her uniform to the side, but she was curious what drew him here so late.

~Faye Calloway, Data Specialist

Cochrane paused for a moment and then said “So instead of giving the patient a shot and letting the immunization work it’s way through their system, you are hard wiring nodes into the body that will react whenever and wherever the ‘bug’ might make it’s appearance?” he asked.

Cochrane, CO

They were in such close proximity that she had to pull her head back to properly look at him, but it was clear by her expression that she was actually impressed- not an easy feat with Faye. “Yeah, actually that’s a good way to put it.”

Calloway gestured to a few components. “I’m creating a network of these nodes as you put it so that if something breaches in a less expected way, it’s caught within a net. We can create little shells to instantly capture errant programs, where they can then be evaluated properly to see if they are actually a threat.” Faye looked at the blinking lights and smiled a genuine smile as she spoke. “But I’m doing what physicians find near impossible: I’m trying to create a vaccine for an illness I know very little about and can’t entirely predict. You can look out for the symptoms of an illness but by then it’s too late, so I have to take all the symptoms and create a network of redundancies that can handle whatever the Delta Quadrant wants to throw at us.”

~Faye Calloway, Data Specialist

Cochrane looked around at the inner workings of the console and said absentmindedly “You could always do a tertiary counter-measure and design a program that would work as a overarching immunization does as well. Put a program in place that would act as a benign test bug every so often at random intervals, just to keep the nodes from going to sleep on you, or letting you know if any were starting to go before they actually put a hole in your net. I mean, chips go bad. Might as well know before hand, correct?”

Cochrane, CO

She grinned and shook her head slightly. “Already on it, Captain. Hence why I’m dragging equipment about the ship. And why I was given so much cargo to work with. I was given latitude to construct, deconstruct, rebuild, whatever. I have to adapt on the fly.”

Faye pulled back away from the inner workings of the system and with one knee up and an arm draped over the knee. “But this is all the experimental side of my work. Who knows how any of it will go at any point. There will be the usual testing and threat evaluation of data coming and going form the ship, but this”-she gestured in a circle with her index finger to the chipset-“is why I have taken over an entire lab. Command cares a lot about making sure the Manhattan is protected when it’s not within arms reach of Federation support. After all, it’s a big galaxy out there,” she said with a hint of excited awe.

~Faye Calloway, Data Specialist