Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Suprize enginering lession ( Captens redy room)
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Posted by Civilian Cerenity (Luna’s daughter) in Suprize enginering lession ( Captens redy room)

Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Suprize enginering lession ( Captens redy room)

The captain roared with laughter. “If I had a strip of latinum for every time I’d been zapped when fixing something, I’d be almost a third as rich as Mr Lazol! Occupational hazard, I’m afraid, Miss Cerenity,” he concluded with a shrug.

” Dont tell mommy that she won’t let me do this anymore” cerenity said giggling at her mother’s overprotective tendency.

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Cobb agreed, chuckling. “I have a reputation as a competent engineer to uphold here.”

Turning his attention back to the components, he next lifted a chip, about the size of the child’s fingernail. “Now this is one of the two most important components in a tricorder,” he explained, laying the item gently into the palm of her hand. “This tiny chip here is how a tricorder interfaces with our central databanks and compares the raw data that it gathers against established outputs.”

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

Cerenity nodded looking at the chip then at the mother boor then back at the chip already looking throw the scimatics that she had and memorized. ” I think it gose here at lest if I red the tecmanuls and scimatics right” she sid carefully placing the chip. ” captain what is star fleet academy like I want to learn why officers act the way they do” she said getting off topic the way she dose.
Cerenity

“Very good,” he commended the young girl’s placing of the chip. “Then this…” and now he lifted a slightly larger component and dropped it into her hand, “is the main sensor. Now where do you imagine this might go, eh?”

” here” she said quietly and a little to confident.

“Very good,” Zachariah commended his young student, before reaching in and turning the component over to the other side. “But try it this way up, eh?”

As he waited for Cerenity to fit the sensor, Zachariah sat back and turned his attention to her question. “The Academy? It is…well, it’s just like any other school.” A thought occurred to him in that moment, as he recalled Cerenity’s place of birth as the Viking, “have you ever been to a school, Cerenity? Or have you always been schooled on starships?”

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

” no I’ve never leave the Viking befor I came here” she said.
Cerenity

“I see,” Cobb replied. “Well, until I was fourteen years of age, I never left my small town. Which was a lot like being trapped on a starship. Except we didn’t have holodecks,” he added with a wink.

“My mother died in that year, my father already away on his next mission. And like you, Cerenity, I had no brothers or sisters to accompany me. So I made my way from Nantucket…”
He paused to once more rummage through a drawer, returning eventually with a large map of his home country, which he spread out on the table before them.
“Here,” he pointed with a finger, “is Nantucket. I travelled all the way from here…” his finger tracing a route across the map “…to here. San Francisco. The home of Starfleet Academy. What was it like? Oh, Miss Cerenity, it was glorious! Never before had I seen so many eager to learn. And not just souls like myself but from all corners of the quadrant. United, every one, in a common goal - to become Starfleet officers and to uphold the values of the Federation.”

Cerenity was mezzmorized as she watched him trace the map and show her where he was from. ” I’m sorry you lost your mom I bet you miss her” she said.

The pliers in his hand grew suddenly heavy, he slumping back into his chair as they landed with a thump on the desk. Memory came upon him like a leaden shroud - the burden of guilt and resentment for a childhood expedited without his consent.
“I miss the woman that she was, when I was very young.” He saw no cause to sugarcoat the truth. Already it was clear to him that Cerenity possessed a wisdom far beyond her physical years. Just as had been forced upon him, for his own survival.
“It is a natural behaviour of all sentient beings, the desire to plan, to dream, to look always upon the future while barely noticing today. And I know that your childhood has been…” - a shrug as he plucked words out of the air, jostled them on his tongue for an appropriate phrase - “…unconventional. But never pass up an opportunity to play, to discover, to have fun.”

” isn’t that what we are doing now” she said confused.

The waning spark now returned, Zachariah sat forward again to stare at the tricorder anew.
“How do you like the other children on the ship? Gen and…Jeane, right? Do you find opportunity to play and laugh with them?”

” there my friends of course we play together Jeane follows me everywhere just about” cerenity said happly.

Of the drinking and the socialising he remained silent for now. That would be a tale for another time. When the child was a few years older.

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

” I wish I could go to school but there’s no way mom is letting me out of there sight until I’m 18 at least” cerenity said quietly. Then looked at the piece of the trycorder.” I think this pice goze here” she said connecting one of the pices to the wrong place.
Cerenity

“Ah, almost. But not quite.”

Reaching for blank paper and a thick marker pen, the captain began to mirror the circuitry of the tricorder in a crude line-drawing.
“Here,” he drew a round circle with a smiling face in the centre. “This is Mr Electron. And Mr Electron is almost as lazy as me! So when we trace the circuit from one component to the next, we will always take the shortest and easiest path. Or, as we say in engineering, Miss Cerenity, the path of least resistance.”

He handed the marker pen to the young girl and invited her to draw her own electron family along her predicted path…

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

Cerenity looked at the marker then the paper then. ” but your not lazy” she said as she drew a shorter path and the elections. ” your smart, you only have so much energy to use at any given time so sometimes the path of least resistance is the better path. Though there art times when you need to fly against a Jetstream” she said happly.
Cerenity