Posted by Lieutenant Shock (Chief of Security) in CIO’s Office- Building Trust

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Faye Calloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in CIO’s Office- Building Trust

(snip)

She snorted. “Beyond. It’s classified by several levels, but as I said in the briefing things are on a need to know basis. I’ve decided you need to know.” It wasn’t a small or idle decision either. Faye could definitely be impulsive, but when it came to her work she was exceedingly calculated. She sipped her coffee and set it to the side away from the console where she might knock it over.

Why did she snort? Shock did not understand. He made sure to remember this as part of the pattern of behaviour in Calloway. She was not easy to understand or interpret, and Shock wanted to do his best here. This was a relationship worth investing in.

Turning in her chair to the screens in front of her, Calloway entered some keys and three screens came to life. One showed a lateral schematic of the Athena, one showed the same view of the Manhattan-class USS Manhattan, and the third has some computer code displayed. “Welcome to Project Bastion Redux.” She focused on the image of the Manhattan and tapped some keys. Dots lit up all over the ship. “These are what we’ve dubbed informational nodes. They are areas where incoming and exiting information pass through on the way to their destination, whether it be to a computer core and then the communications systems, or vice-versa. This semi-sentient virus has capabilities we don’t fully understand, but in all my simulations I had narrowed down the communications systems as the main point of corruption, because that is how it mostly likely would enter the ship. Sensors being a close second but less likely. Still, we covered our basis.

“With the Manhattan, I installed capture nodes at all those junctions you see, with one main experimental bottleneck defence device at the main junction to the communications system. The idea with the nodes is to slow down potential threats, but still allowed vetted signals to pass through at their regular, if not better speeds. Since the ship was in the Delta Quadrant, I toggled that process with improvements to the subspace relay system to allow real-time signals to pass through the wormhole back to the Alpha Quadrant, so the Manhattan and Event Horizon Station were not cut off in an emergency. It also had the added bonus of allowing the crew to talk to their families far more easily and that was good for morale given we were so far from home.”

~Faye Calloway

Nodding to show his understanding, he was not sure what to say. In his past encounters with Calloway, she had a habit of misinterpreting him, and he of her. Had he understood her? Should he ask her about what installations are being made on the Athena now? Should he go over the threat of a semi-sentient virus?

“Tell me more,” he cued.

– Lt Shock (COS)

At the prompting, Faye brought up computer code onto two of her screens and let it start scrolling. She let it go, her eyes skimming it with ease, despite the speed. “This is our program, handwritten by yours truly. Every last command.” She glanced at Shock. “You see, people assume that so long as you have a template, you can just toss it into a new situation, a new ship, and it will be good to go. Nope, not with this. I can use this as a base template, but the Athena is a different beast of a ship, different mission profiles, energy usages, different needs. So every single line of code will have to be to gone over by myself and tweaked based on the information I can get about the various functions of the ship. Fortunately for me I am married to someone who will happily give me that information without a fuss… mostly.”

It was a curiously analogue system that Calloway had created and coded. With Calloway’s intelligence and experience, Shock was forced to accept that this system must be superior to any of the current alternatives. Perhaps, he thought, that a human brain – embedded with disturbances in the consolidation of personality, the way trauma might interfere there, along with her acutely high intelligence (Shock surmised it must lie three, or even, four standard deviations above the mean) – makes the programme difficult for others – natural as well as artificial intelligence – to understand, and thereby more impenetrable. The difficulty then, Shock thought, what would happen to the system if something were to happen to Calloway. Trauma to her head, dementia, or, worse, death. How then?

Could Shock assume that there were safety nets in this system? Surely, there had to be, anything else would be illogical. How else would she have had the approval and confidence to do so? Yet – there was something strikingly illogical by Calloway’s entire interpersonal functioning.

“This redundant firewall system is designed not just to capture a potential infiltration, but dismantle it. Whatever it tries to do to our ship, it will counter it. For a time, at least. The capture node contains a nanocomputer that can act like someone like me can, which means it can hack into the viruses base code and disrupt it.Eve if it doesn’t stop it, it will slow us down, which gives us real people time, and in a situation like that, time to respond and mount aa defence is precious. We need every second we can get.

~Faye Calloway, CIO

By hearing this, Shock was transported back to his teenage years, studying biology back home on Vulcan. His neighbour, Korek, is now an immunologist. Korek would patiently sit down after the school day and help Shock understand how the Vulcan immune system worked. Later, Korek and Shock would learn that the immune system of most humanoids worked in remarkably similar ways – just like Calloway’s immune system for the Athena. Calloway treated the Athena as a patient. Calloway was Athena’s immunologist, she was Athena’s Korek.

“Impressive, Ms Calloway,” Shock summarized. He was genuinely impressed, and a feeling fleeting over his torso communicated to him a sense of awe – even a gratefulness that she was with him and the others on this ship. With Calloway’s work so impressive, why was she on this ship, and not in Starfleet Command? Or at Starfleet Academy? Or even, better still, the Vulcan Science Academy? Without dwelling on that question – it was probably due to her interpersonal function and psychological disability – Shock still sensed a bit of hesitation around it. There were many ‘what ifs’ in his head. What if something happens to Calloway? What if someone beats her system? Moreover, there were questions, based in apprehension of what she had told. Backchannel communication, being fed information from her husband, mostly? Creating and maintaining a system only she has full view over? Was she unreasonably narcissistic, untrusting of others?

Calloway flashed him a grin. “I know.” It wasn’t an egotistical statement, or least not intentionally. Faye had hidden her skills for so long that this process of revealing them and being okay with exactly who and how she was had been exceptionally freeing. “The R&D department and I had a lot of fun brainstorming possibilities and this seemed to be be the best and least intrusive to the rest of our systems.” Less intrusive but more work for her and others.

Shock had to stop his thoughts. He had to trust the logic in Calloway’s system. She had received especial confidence from the captain to do this. It was – without any proof indicating foul play – not Shock’s place to question that. Not now. But he would bear it in mind. That was his job to do, as chief of security.

“If this system is activated, when and how would you need Security’s aid?”

– Lt Shock (COS)

“Ideally? Nothing. If everything is working as it should, no one should notice anything. And really, this is going to be a data monitoring project between myself, Engineering and Operations. But I get that you are looking out for the security of the ship, and this is a piece of it. So I wanted you to understand how it works. I will be training some of our computer systems staff in the whole operation and they’ll be under mine and the Chief Engineer’s authority.” Faye shrugged. “However, you can be a part of the security screening process if you like. This is all still ‘Need to Know’ and I want to keep this process secure as we start the installation process.”

~Faye Calloway, CIO