Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade James Rowe (Scientist) in Side Sim: The Morning After (Lower Stellar Cartography)

Posted by Ensign Khiryn Donivas (Scientist) in Side Sim: The Morning After (Lower Stellar Cartography)

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade James Rowe (Scientist) in Side Sim: The Morning After (Lower Stellar Cartography)
James Rowe entered Lower Stellar Cartography a couple of hours before his duty shift was set to start. He crossed the room to one of the workstations and within a few keystrokes had the projection he’d been working on yesterday pulled up… a few more keystrokes overlaid the information that Khiryn had sought him out to deliver. The room was quiet at this hour, its usual bustle replaced by the low, ever-present hum of the Athena’s systems. Rowe kept it intentionally dim, allowing the holographic projection dominating its center to provide most of the illumination. Suspended in the air, hundreds of stars shimmered against the darkness while faint sensor overlays drifted lazily between them in translucent layers of blue, amber, and white. Every few seconds one of the highlighted anomalies pulsed softly before fading again, as though the projection itself were breathing.

Around the perimeter, inactive workstations stood ready, their displays dark save for the occasional status indicator. The only movement came from the slow rotation of the stellar map as it continuously adjusted perspective, allowing different relationships between the overlaid datasets to emerge. What had begun as three separate streams of telemetry now occupied the same three-dimensional space, inviting comparison rather than demanding it.

In the silence, the room encouraged an uncommon kind of patience. There were no alarms to answer, no hurried conversations to keep pace with, only the quiet invitation to observe… and perhaps, if one looked long enough, to finally notice something that had been there all along.

James moved across the room and took a seat on the edge of a workstation. As he nursed his morning Asaam, he just allowed himself to observe the projection.

• Rowe

Khiryn walked into the Stellar Cartography Lab and was startled to see that it was already occupied. His eyes widened even further when he saw that it was displaying the very datasets he’d been studying well into the night.

He squinted into the room’s dim lighting, and he saw that the figure inside was none other than Lt James Rowe. “Damn… not only did you have the same idea I did… but you got here earlier.” He smiled and shook his head as he walked in. Ensign Donivas’s eyes scanned the display to see if James had gleaned any additional insights while he’d been asleep.

Rowe smiled at the younger man over the rim of his cup and said, “I had a superior once tell me, ‘that if you’re going to stay up hooting with the owls, you’d better be ready to soar with the eagles the next morning.’” Taking a sip of the still too hot Assam, “I never got the chance to ask him which he considered himself to be.”

“I want to apologize again for interrupting you last night.” A bit of heat reached Khiryn’s face, and he hoped it was dark enough in the lab to hide it. “I swear I am normally more aware of my surroundings. I spent most of my off time looking into it last night… and when I found that correlation, I really wanted to talk to you about it.” He didn’t look at James, and instead kept his eyes on the display as he spoke.

OOC: I didn’t see a description on the Mythology Specs (other than it being 2 decks tall), but are we thinking it looks something like https://www.deviantart.com/auctor-lucan/art/Stellar-Cartography-Star-Trek-Theurgy-763538210 ?

Ensign Khiryn Donivas - Science Officer - U.S.S. Athena

OOC: I was actually envisioning something that felt a little more work friendly as opposed to shipboard observatory. https://i.postimg.cc/WbQFDNz8/Stellar-Cartography.png

Standing from the workstation he’d been seated on, Rowe cross the space to pat the younger scientist on the shoulder. “Khiryn, seriously don’t stress about it. Doc thought you were nice.” He smiled at the man before turning his attention back to the display. “Why don’t you walk me through what you’ve found?”

• Rowe

OOC: That works! More like an astrometrics lab.

IC:
Ensign Donivas still felt embarrassed and knew he’d be falling on his sword before the Doctor at some point. But, at James’ urging, he tried to push the social shame away for the time being.

Khiryn was tired, and eyed the tea the other man was drinking. He’d been up late last working the datasets and hadn’t gotten much sleep. Stimulants tended to hide the fatigue that was the first sign of a flare up, so the Akaali ignored the drink and resolved himself to being a little weary for the rest of the day. And I need to make sure I get a solid eight hours tonight.

He turned away from the screen and took a seat at the station next to James. “I compared the sensor data we have with other known phenomena… both as an interconnected whole and as individual data points. The closest thing I could find came from micro-fissures in space time.” He typed a few commands into his station and pulled up a different image. “While the federation has cataloged hundreds of micro-fissures, we still don’t know much about them. And while they share similarities, they are all different.”

Ensign Donivas typed a few more commands so both images were displayed simultaneously… their anomalous readings against a known micro-fissure. “The delayed echo our sensors saw could be coming from the these fissures. Active scans on known fissures result in a similar form of signal delay or diffraction.”

He let Rowe analyze the screen for a few moments before continuing. “The bad news is, all the known fissures are isolated instances. No two have ever been found this close to one another. In order to match up with our readings… we’d have to be talking about dozens of fissures all in this one system.”

Ensign Khiryn Donivas - Science Officer - U.S.S. Athena