Posted by Ensign Hugh MacClure (Engineering) in Engineering

Posted by Captain Rende Asam (Commanding Officer) in Engineering

Posted by Ensign Hugh MacClure (Engineering) in Engineering
OCC: I moved this out here

IC:
Hugh looked up from where he was working to see the Medical person walk in but he did not have time for that, this systematic tripping of relays was really getting on his nerves.

MacClure, Engineer

Every time MacClure reset a section, another two seemed to drop offline in sequence — but not randomly. They tripped in pattern.

Hugh looked at the board and tried to discern what was happening and tried starting from scratch resetting each circuit breaker in order again to try and discern the pattern that was presenting itself.

MacClure, Engineer

After cross-referencing his tricorder data with the ship’s grid schematics, a chilling pattern emerged: each relay was failing in perfect synchronization with the power fluctuations from the deflector array. Worse, the timing wasn’t reactive — it was anticipatory. The circuits were shutting down fractions of a second before the overloads would have occurred, as though the system knew what was coming.

Cpt. Asam, CO

Hugh thought to himself and was about to call the Chief over but saw that he was busy with the Medo. What was going on here, Was the ship thinking for itself and saving itself or was there something else at hand? He needed to figure out why the overloads were happening.

Hugh tapped some controls to put the console into diagnostic mode to try and figure this out and waited for the results.

MacClure, Engineer

The computer began the diagnostic and automatically began to reset the couplers. The diagnostic showed the couplers were out of alignment.

On the tenth reset, the pattern finally broke. The next relay stayed green. Then another. Then three more. Power flow began to stabilize along the secondary grid, the hum of the deck plates returning in uneven waves.

Progress: 72% of the affected relays are now stable. Impulse control relays are still cycling intermittently but holding within operational threshold. The remaining couplers would need manual reset and adjustment.

As the diagnostic finished the computer chirped alerting MacClure to an anomaly in the readings — a background signal in the data he hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t an error code. It was modulation. Low-frequency, rhythmic. Embedded in the power lines themselves.

Almost like someone whispering through the current.

Every third pulse, the waveform shifted just slightly, forming a recurring three-tone pattern. The ship’s computer translated it automatically into alphanumeric characters on the diagnostic display — faint, glitching text barely readable:

“LISTEN.”

Then the signal vanished, power levels returned to nominal, and the relays held steady — for now.

Cpt. Asam, CO