Posted by Commander Amelia Manning (Executive Officer) in Mess Hall

Posted by Ensign Clinton Reed (Engineer) in Mess Hall

Posted by Ensign Issac Forgrave (Security Officer) in Mess Hall
Posted by… suppressed (11) by the Post Ghost! 👻
<Snip>
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

not a bad billet Stores thaught as he tried yet another iteration of coffee ala Forgraves. “ The problem with replicator recipes is most simply dont have enugh culinary drift” Stores had found him self indulging in his replicator hobby hoping to make a brew that would fool Issac. So far he had replicated and experimented with different beans, grinds, water mineral content and brew methods. “One must do more than enter a generic algorithm to approximate drift one must insure each ingredient exhibits variance”. Sniffing the replicated watch cup, with his eyes close. Then siping the coffee and holding it in his mouth like a wine taster. “ ah, that should do it” * just have to run it for a few weeks to make sure nothing sckunky comes up*
As Stores enjoys his work, his computer terminal chimes. “ ah, my Kentucky style moonshine samples…”

Clinton “Stores” Reed.

OOC: Thought that was an interesting hook; hope you don’t mind if I pick it up again. I’ve got it in my head that this might continue a few weeks later, in the mess hall one morning. It being a public area, others would be welcome to join in, of course.

IC:
Wandering into the mess hall that morning, Issac filled his plate and eyed up the open seats. Seeing a familiar face, he smiled and ambled over to join Stores.

“Morning, Stores. Ya doin’ alright lately?” Taking a seat, he set his plate and thermos down on the table, before pouring himself a mug of coffee.

“Now, rumor says you been working on getting something a bit better than the standard coffee out of the replicators lately. You had any luck, or should I brew some more for ya? Issac had a twinkle in his eye, contrasting slightly with the earnest, helpful expression he wore.

Ensign Issac Forgrave, Security

OOC,
not at all. I posted it as a bit of character background, if it becomes a hook it’s great.
IC,
Stores looking up, and a grin spreading across is face wile he lounges back in is chair. “I have in deed, my young freind! It’s under “Issac’s brew”. Might not be perfect but it should been the stock recipe and I would love your opinion.” Leaning forward to retrieve his seemingly ever present watch cup and taking it in both hands and positioning it under his nose wile Forgrave went to fetch himself a cup.
OCC,
I plan a few more exposays to help flesh him out and provide more hooks.

Clinton “Reed” Reed, Supercargo

OOC: Hope you don’t mind me barging in… ;) – Joana

IC:
The words reached her ears as Manning was walking back toward the doors. With a quick glance around she spotted the two officers in conversation, and slowly moved closer to their table. They were an unusual pair, to say the least. Of course, she had heard the whispers about the new Ensigns, but she had not yet had the chance to meet them. Command’s decisions were Command’s decisions, and she wasn’t used to question them.

“Why replicate coffee when you can have tea?” The voice carried a strong British accent that would make it obvious to most members of the crew who its owner was. “It’s much healthier, much tastier, and it really only needs water. I have a few spare cases of English Breakfast if you care to try…” The last sentence had a clear sarcastic undertone, but it was not immediately obvious whether the XO was joking or being serious.

Cmdr. Manning, XO

OOC,
Dear lady you are welcome, as is anyone else who cares to join in!

IC,
Stores looks up to see who the new arrival is, and recognizing the XO from her picture in the Dresden’s “bio” he cracked a big grin and pushes away fron the table to stand up. “Well hello Boss, good to make your acquaintance” sticking out his hand” Mr, Forgrave is from a place called Kentucky, and those folks are still holding a grudge over tea taxes” Stores face shifts from his shit eating grin to a wry smile and a wink. “ My self I am not predudice when it comes to my alkaloid stimulents”

Clinton “Stores” Reed, Supercargo

Amelia couldn’t help but smile as she shook the Ensign’s hand. It was nice to see him walking out and about given the circumstances in which he had gotten on board the Dresden. Manning knew the crew could be quite suspicious, but she was glad that the man didn’t seem to care.

Laughing, she turned to look at the other man, who had just been pointed out as ‘Mr. Forgrave’, before turning back. “Well, Mr…” Amelia’s words trailed off, clearly in search for a name or other form of address. “Earth was a much different place 600 years ago. What happened in the past, must stay in the past. But I’m always glad to know that there are other tea drinkers out there.”

“Reed. Clinton Reed but the fleet types on my last ship took to calling me Stores”
“Issac’s Brew.” As Forgrave spoke the request into the replicator, he wondered what to expect. ‘Stores’ had certainly seemed to know his way around a ship, and no reason to expect that wouldn’t lead into replicators too. Well, it Smells damn good… Issac wasn’t a connoisseur by any means, but he had spent the last 15 or so years brewing coffee the old-fashioned way. Replicated coffee wasn’t bad per say, but it was distinct - every cup of it tasted the same; and he thought it had a slightly… shallow flavor. Issac would say similar things about most replicated foods, but he’d admit having trouble differentiating some items.

Figuring it would be appropriate to taste-test it in front of it’s creator, he carried the steaming mug back to the table, arriving in time to see the XO was present, and to catch ‘Stores’ mentioning Kentucky.

“Mornin’ Ma’am.” Issac nodded politely in greeting; setting down his mug before extending his hand to the XO. “Uh, please feel free to join us if you’d care to. Though Stores is right - I might have to pass on that offer of tea; I fear my ancestors may haunt me if I accept any from ya. Way I heard it, there was a big to-do over the whole thing, threw a bunch in the ocean some… oh I reckon about six centuries ago.” Issac tried to maintain a straight face at this statement, but quickly gave in to let a large toothy smile cross his face, complete with a short laugh.

With a smile still in her lips, Manning nodded back in acknowledgment, eyeing the contents of the man’s mug. She assumed that was the famous new brew the pair had been discussing prior to her arrival. “I understand, Mr. Forgrave.” Amelia said with a hint of playful sarcasm. “No grudges held from my part, but my ancestors wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t at least try. Remind me to take some tea the next time I visit Kentucky.”

“And Kentucky, Stores? I am hurt by your baseless accusations, sir. I am from the good state of North Carolina, but I suppose it’s hard to expect a Boomer to be all that familiar with Terra’s geography. Lucky for you, this coffee you engineered smells too good to let that ruin my day.” Issac closed his eyes, taking an exaggerated sniff of the fresh mug. “Yep, I think you’ve earned some forgiveness.”

Issac took a sip of the dark, fragrant liquid. Immediately obvious was the fact that this was NOT standard replicator coffee. He took another sip. Damn, but this is good coffee… Matter of fact, if I hadn’t gotten it myself, I’d have put money down on this being fresh brewed. Damn!

Issac set the mug down, willing his face to stay neutral. He paused, and looked at the older man. “Well, Issac’s Brew may be a success. That’s damn fine coffee right there, make no mistake! I’d-a been hard pressed to… No, that ain’t quite right. I don’t think I could have guessed that came out of a replicator. Least, not with the one cup of it.” Issac leaned back in the seat, still with an impressed look on his face.

He nodded to himself, before looking around conspiratorially and leaning forwards again. “And maybe you already know this trick, but I’ll let you in on my secret, if you can call it that. Thing is, at least to me, all replicated coffee tastes the same; iffin’ ya order the same thing of course. Medium roast, black coffee’s my order. Every cup I’ve ever had out of a replicator tastes the same, and so I can tell immediately. If ya can throw some random variation in that program of yours, I bet you’d be real popular with the coffee-drinkers on the crew.”

Ensign Issac Forgrave, Security

“That my boy is called culinary drift” Stores Sid with a grin “ Most replicator recipes use a simple algorithm, if at all to acount for this. To do it right you have to acount for difrences in the ingredients, proportionately and individual cooking methods. It isnt perfect and one still has to keep the program to a reasonable size, but with some work it”s possible. “ stores leans forward conspiratorially “ and now that I have the basics, I can modify it to suit difrent tasts, say for Turkish coffee or expresso.” After a pause for dramatic effect, “ I have a slew of recipes I can upload, being that there isnt much else to do on cargo runs than tweet the replicators”

Clinton “Stores” Reed, Supercargo

“Interesting; I’ve only ever done basic work with replicators in the past. Mainly used it for raw materials; metals mostly. Easy enough to dial in specific alloys and what not - used it back on earth when I was working, doing antique repair; making odds and ends. With that sorta thing, don’t really want any variation!”

Issac turned to the XO “What are your thoughts, ma’am? You mentioned you had a large supply of tea; do you find the real stuff that much better than replicated?”

Ensign Issac Forgrave, Security

For the most part, Amelia had sat down and quietly listened to the conversation. That was probably what she missed the most when it came to her current job placement, and the one thing that kept making her coming back to Main Engineering whenever she had the chance.

“The real stuff is much better than the replicated one. That’s not even a question. I just restock my supply whenever I happen to hop back home. When I don’t have the chance, I’ll just have it shipped here.” Manning smiled.

“I assume you’re trying to improve the coffee recipes on the replicator? If you want my opinion, tailoring replicator recipes is a lot of work and it doesn’t really pay off… Personally, I’d rather not mess with it. Not to mention, it will taste the same every time, regardless of how good they may be. Sure it’s great when you just don’t have the time, but…” Amelia shook her head. “For one, randomness is not really random. A pattern is a pattern is a pattern. You can in theory add some randomness to your order by creating a list of slightly different patterns that the computer could cycle through whenever you ordered your coffee, effectively surprising you every time. But depending on how big of a list you have of those, your surprise is going to stop being one quite fast…” Manning paused for a moment to catch her breath. “But let’s say that, for the sake of argument, this would solve your randomness problem. Whatever pattern you’re storing is highly compressed, effectively storing one molecule of a particular element and repeating it several times to fill whatever foodstuff you ordered, which will always lead to single-bit inaccuracies on the final product.”

Manning shrugged, looking at Stores. “I would say your best shot is to actually brew the coffee you want and upload it through the transporter buffer, since it is finer grained than the replicators, if you will, but… same storage compression issues. And the replicator will still assemble it at a molecular level rather than at an atomic one. Not to mention, you’d have to convince the Transporter Chief to work with you.” She shot the man a smile. “That may be the most difficult part. But… if you do find a good alternative, let me know. Maybe I’ll ask you tweak the ship’s tea recipe next!”

Cmdr. Manning, XO

“For the most part you’re right m’am but as we are acual dealing with several chemical molecules and they can very in individual concentration one can write in some algorithms for variation. As to the transporter buffer, its easy enugh to go in to the logs and see the coffee crew members have brought on board and replicat it and then go on to brew it on the Holodeck. I could even do so with your tea if you want. You will miss out on the ritual of letting the tea leaves steep but when things are going pear shaped and you need a quick cuppa it would help.’’ Leaning back, Stores srugged “ as for more complicated dishes I have them on good old data rods so as not to gumm up the replicators with huge files” looking around and leaning in conperitoraly” I know it is a compleat wast of time, but a man has to have hobbies”

Amelia smiled. “Oh, I never said it was a complete waste of time.” There was a soft glimmer in her eyes. Almost as if this was a kind of conversation she didn’t have for a long time. “I just prefer to have other kind of hobbies, but… who am I to stop you from trying to perfect the food served by the replicators?” Her joy was genuine. Not to mention, if something went wrong, she was not the Dresden’s Chief Engineer. All she had to do was sign at the bottom of the occurrence report. She didn’t actually have to write it.

Taking a sip of coffee, Stores shrugs yea I have met your transporter Cheif. He is competent but not at all impresive “As to our transporter Cheif, I’ll mind my manners and keep my opinions to myself”

Clinton “Stores” Reed, Supercargo

“Now, now, Mr. Stores. What did Lieutenant Rendon do to you?” Manning said with a chuckle. The question was more rhetorical than anything else. From everything she had heard and seen, the young man was professional and good at his job. The only things of note she had picked up here and there were due to inexperience on his part, but nothing time wouldn’t fix.

“He isn’t a bad guy, M’am’ stores shook his head knowing that he said out loud what he was thinking, again” It’s just he is inexperienced and there for buy the book when a problem arises. Thre is just so much of what we do on a ship that gets passed down from the old hands and never makes it into unclassified manuals. Even fleet engineers and dry dock engineers go about things differently , m’am. So we clash a bit over what his book tells him and what my experiance tells me.

“Well, for what it’s worth, in my head even just a little variation on the replicator may go a long ways. Say even just three variations on a basic coffee or tea uh, whatever output. Just enough to keep ya guessin’ as far as what exactly yer gonna get. At least for myself, my complaint generally ain’t that the replicated coffee’s bad or nothing, it’s just that every cup’s identical. I suppose that’s a tough line to walk for some; you wanna know what you’re gettin’ into with your order, but with just enough variation to uh, avoid monotony.” Issac paused, thinking about the hypothetical problem.

“Not that I’m proposing that as a firm solution or nothing; I expect there’s teams of scientists and whatnot somewhere researching food, replicators, and morale; and all their various and sundry relations. As for myself, truth be told I usually ask the replicator for coffee grounds in the mornin’. I’ll brew it myself of course, but frankly I don’t typically have the time for roasting and grinding. The little differences in the brewing, and I think the bit of extra complexity that come out of it, somehow taste better than coffee straight outta the replicator.” Issac shrugged at this last statement.

“One way or another though, you’ve earned my vote if ya want to take on the role of Chef, Stores!” Issac laughed. “I’ll certainly admit to being curious in regard to those other recipes you mentioned.”

Ensign Issac Forgrave, Security

‘‘Any time, I will hook you up with a list’’ Stores leans back with a smile’’I have files for all sorts of bits and baubles as well’’

Clinton ‘Stores’ Reed, Supercargo

“I think I may take ya up on that offer, Stores. Just uh, maybe make sure you don’t send me anything that I’d have to look at in a… official capacity. Issac glanced over at Commander Manning. “I can’t speak for the XO of course, but I think we’d all like to avoid that.”

Amelia smiled and nodded in acknowledgement. To be fair, she didn’t mind at all to look at something more in depth. She missed it actually. But she also had a lot of things in her plate that would require most of her time to juggle without needing to add anything more.

He grinned at Stores. “I only know enough about replicators to do some basic stuff with them; I’ll admit to bein’ curious about what can be done by someone skilled at programming them.”

Ensign Issac Forgrave, Security

“Well now I think you’r setting at the right table” Stores chuckles. “ The skuttlebutt would have it that the X was an engineare before putting on the Red and as for me, I misspent my youth learning to hack replicators and half the other systems on a ship” leaning in as to conspire with his companions. “ truth is the latest models, such as we have on Dresden are capabable of replicating nearly anything. They are only limited buy energy, computing power and security protocols. Looking meaningfully at the XO.” I know that’s oversimplified, their are some materials that are very difficult to replicate but to save on energy and buffer space we bring on replicator goop. But to support my case let me point out that the replicator in your room and the replicator in the sickbay share almost all the same parts, and the one in sickbay can make transplantable organs and tissues. For the most part you young guys wont have artificil parts like I do. Secondly I can list a hand full of things that they have been used for that they are not supposed to be used for, weapons, poisons , manufacturing and transporting survalence devices and even transporting peaple.” Looking around furtively “ We don’t even have plumbing in most staterooms or washing machines anymore, as replicators recycle materials back to goop.”

Clinton “Stores” Reed, Supercargo.

“That’s pretty much it, yes.” Amelia said with a nod. “Now… not all limitations have to do with security protocols. I don’t think I would be able to replicate a poison even if I wanted, mostly because of the biofilters in the replicator itself. Others have to do with how perfect you want something to be… the industrial replicators in our cargo bays are not as high resolution as the ones used here, as generally speaking, general hardware doesn’t need to be as ‘perfect’ as food, if you will, and that way they can be more energy efficient.”

Amelia paused before continuing. It had been a long time since she had an actual Engineering conversation. “I will have to argue, though, that the difference between the replicators in sickbay and the replicators in our personal quarters, or even here, is a little more than just some programing or security codes. Genetronic replicators are DNA-based, which is what allows them to replicate fully functional organs. You could never get that on a general replicator. And well… while yes… transport has been done using replicators… it is very dangerous and definitely non-advisable. Transporters work at the atomic level rather than the molecular level, hence my suggestion as a possible way to improve food replication. More importantly than that though, replicators don’t have Heisenberg compensators, and you absolutely need those when transporting people, or no one can predict where your particles will be placed. And we certainly don’t want that.” Manning smiled softly. Turning to Forgrave she added in an apologetic tone. “I’m sorry if I am being a bore. I used to be an Engineer in a past life. So I can get carried away.”

“well yes and no X,’ Stores said with a twinkle in his eyes, obviously enjoying the company and conversation‘‘Since the Khitomer Acords thats not exactly true, as passable gagh, at least blood worms can be replicated with standard replicators, its just not easy’’ pausing for dramatic effect,’’ standard replicators can be set for quantum state resolutions, but we generaly modify them to make them more effecently at it when we have Kilingons aboard.” Rolling his eyes, “security protocols, bio filters, nutritional sub routines etcetera all add up to complicate the problems not to mention the limitations of the processors installed, but their are a few workarounds and backdoors we can exploit“

.

“Now, Mr. Stores… you mentioned growing up hacking replicators and other starship systems…” Her expression was a little more serious. “Is there something I should be aware of? I wouldn’t want to see you stripped of your access codes before you can improve the quality of my tea.” The smirk on her lips was playful, but even though the sarcasm in her voice was apparent, it would tell the two officers at the table that she was only half joking.

Cmdr. Manning, XO

“I assure you, M’am that thats mostly in my past” Stores winks at Issac,” Now a days I reserve such shenanigans for emergencies!” ** surly I didn’t trip any alarms re equipping myself after my stay with station security?!** “ I must say, tho my mis spent youth has saved my ass more than once”

Clinton “Stores”Reed, Supercargo