Posted by Ensign Tom Little (Science Officer) in Main Sim [Deck 8]: Chaos and Reason

Posted by Kvasir (Storyteller) in Main Sim [Deck 8]: Chaos and Reason

Posted by Civilian KT-QT (Engineering Officer) in Main Sim [Deck 8]: Chaos and Reason
Posted by… suppressed (10) by the Post Ghost! 👻

SNIP

“Will do.” Tom responded to Reyes, “Okay, I’ll be back and um… be safe out there.” He gave a mental salute then turned to O’Larria and said, “I’ll go collect some data from the walls. You’re welcome to join me, or stay here waiting for the Chief to show up. If you do that, please tell him the location I’m heading. I’ll be checking with you every 15 minutes, once I arrived… there.” He pointed a bulkhead section near their position, which was the same deck closer to Computer Core 1 level E.

Little, Sci

Kristi smiled. “I’ll come help you. We’ll get done faster. And I’m curious about the chips.” She grabbed a couple of the damaged isolinear chips and headed off with Little.

“Outstanding.” Tom nodded and picked the shoulder of another engineer, who appeared to had some unfinished business here. He repeated what he said to O’Larria, except the checking part.

As they headed down the passageway, she frowned. “I don’t get it. Why would the gel packs be good of info, but the chips were completely destroyed? You’d think that much energy would have done worse damage to the packs.” As they reached the panel he was headed to, she pulled up her PaDD. Murmuring under her breath she half growled. “What is it about these systems that they were attacked? I mean, I can understand transporters. Would keep us from moving them out ourselves across the ship. And deflectors might keep us from running shields and such with efficiency. But why replicators? Not to starve us out.”

After hearing her questions, he took a moment to see whether those were actual concerns or just another form of stress release. Regardless of which, he tried to solve her face first. “Maybe they’re on diet!” He playfully raised the pitch of the last word, hoping for a little bit of a sense of humor. “It makes sense if they’re on that mission. And to lose weight, they cannot use ‘public’ transportation. But they couldn’t stand to watch us having great meals. So they destroyed the ‘chips’ but kept leaf drinks and lower-calorie foods for thoughts.” He implied the gels and rations. But in theory, the difference was one calculates while the other ‘thinks’, like us. And packs were unable to replicate. “And now we’re here.”

She looked at Little as he started what he’d come to do. “So, we know transporters can be used to go anywhere on the ship. And replicators are everywhere. My guess might be they’re using those routes to get around. But the deflector makes no sense. You can hardly reach any area of the ship thru those routes. So what would they all have in common?” She glanced to Little to see if he has any idea.

Somehow he figured out she already answered herself, but to make sure he understood, “I wasn’t aware of deflector’s problem. But if I remember my training correctly, shield frequencies are modified during alert conditions. The ship can direct it to which part to protect the most. You and I cannot use that to move around, but them? Hard to tell. They could use that just like surfing in San Francisco”. “So, I think flow and frequency did the trick. Which is what I’m about to prove them.”

Kristi
Engineer

As they turned the corner KT appeared round it, she was leaning against the wall and her tool case was on the floor, the tools scattered around her. She saw the two approach her and stood up shakily “what’s the situation?” she asked simply a warp field to the face wasn’t exactly a great thing for a synthetic, luckily KTs systems were robust and could handle it. Even if it would take a coupe of minutes for the effects to fully pass.

KT-QT (Engineer)

He was surprised to see another crew here with a toolbox. For a second, he wasn’t sure whether that was a lifeform or a hologram, caused by shock or glitch. So he said, “are you alright? We just had a warp. Do you need medical?”

Little, Sci

=^=Reyes to O’Larria,=^= came a call across the comm system. =^=We’ve completed our preliminary scan of those isolinear chips we found. They’re from several junctions across the ship, and they all control the buffering subsystems for the transporters, replicators, and deflector control. Whatever they were trying to make Fairweather do before the system crossover, it looks like it got interrupted near the main EPS attenuators in Section Fifteen-Baker. We’re on our way to check those out now. It’s just a theory, but it looks like they were specifically targeting systems designed to manipulate energy patterns—which makes sense if they’re energy beings. Once you folks are done, let me know and I’ll file my report. Reyes out.=^=

OF COURSE!

O’Larria acknowledged the comm then smiled and turned to the two before her. “Energy manipulation. That makes so much sense. If they are trying to manipulate energy maybe they are trying to figure out how to manipulate our bodies more than they already have? Or manipulate energy enough to get their own bodies…” she shuddered and looked to KT. “Sorry, didn’t mean to spout off.” She frowned slightly. “Are you all right? That sweep gave us all a bit of a kick in the head.” She smiled sympathetically to the woman and hoped she was all right. They hadn’t worked together much, but what they had done, had always been pleasant between them.

Kristi
Engineer

KT smiled back and nodded “The sweep must have hit a certain frequency it interfered with my neural net. I’ll be ok” she said reassuringly as she bent down and quickly gathered up her tools. The prospect of being trying to control the energy in people bodies was a concerning one but before they started speculating KT wanted a full update, so she could start figuring things out.

After a few moments KT was ok and ready to work “I need an update, what have you found?” She asked simply but not unkindly.

KT-QT (Engineer)

Tom briefly explained the findings he made a few times ago. “While we,” He turned to O’Larria and continued, “Team Asam, part of it, is here to collect some data to prove my speculation. Then we’re going back and hopefully link up with the Chief… but wow!” He looked in another direction, jaw opened, and couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. “Were you here the whole time?”

Little, Sci

Kristi smiled and shook her head. She’d had moments like that… not realizing someone was behind you a while because you were so focused on work. “I think we definitely need to get back to the Chief. This is something he’s gonna wanna know. Probably the Captain and XO as well.” She started picking up the scattered tools as they continued.

Kristi
Engineer

“These bulks.” Tom turned to the team. “I thought only opened and closed heads. But see? Closed, opened, half and a half?” He wondered if the warp was responsible for this third type of malfunction. That was the reason he asked that kind of odd question to QT. Until the data is collected and analyzed, he’d not make any further comment here. It was a priority for him to collect the data fast to save its original state. “I’ll check this one.” He then turned to O’Larria and said, “could you check that one?” He implied either the closed or the opened walls. “See if you can download the logs. I’m looking for the recent one.”

It was fine for him to know the civilian in front of him was alright. But her status was different. So he only said, “If you want, maybe you can help us?” While he started to look at the half and half. He was searching for a panel embedded. It was supposed to be a screen with ports for data transfer. He then turned it on and connected it to his PADD.

Little, Sci

Eldorin was moderately close to where the youngin’s were working, and at his age it was expected that he’d take just a few extra steps. He heard Kristi’s comment about telling the chief and piped up by saying ” What’s dat you’re tellin me now? And do ya need a ‘and wit dese ahr wooehld I joehst get in yooehr way?” (The universal translator would take a split second longer, but translate his accent to a pleasant neutral “What’s that you’re telling me now? And do ya need a hand with these or would I just get in your way?”) Eldorin had finished working on the repairs down the line, nothing groundbreaking but enough to prevent massive issues in the short term.

Eldorin, CE

“We where just checking the bulkheads, ones closed ones open and two are half and half. Unless federation design is different, it seems odd as they are supposed to only open or close” KT said respectfully “I have only just arrived myself. The wave messed with my neural net, so i’ve ben delayed in assisting. I apologise” she added sincerity in her voice.

KT-QT (Engineering)

With the flurry of repair activity going on, it would take the team ninety minutes to scan and diagnose each bulkhead shipwide, twice that if they stopped to assist with further assessments and replacement. With four hours left until the Viking was due to catch up with the colony ship, it was essentially a race against time to complete their work. Neither task would prove difficult, and little would come up to interrupt their work. Once complete, they found themselves nearly back where they started but with a clearer picture… hopefully.

The bulk of the initial damage was caused by a two-fold issue. The first component was the perhaps unexpected interruption of the energy being possessing Ensign Fairweather during the crossover between main and auxiliary computers. While perhaps not desirable, Ensign Reyes’ thought of a kind of sabotage seems more and more likely now. Not-Quite-Fairweather had managed to disable several redundant safety systems designed to contain surges or breaches in the EPS grids, allowing wide-spread failures that resulted in the mess they’d been forced to deal with and repair.

The second component was the strange type of multiphasic energy carried along the EPS grids during and after the power surge. It contained a similar energy matrix as one type of alien energy beings, but only dense enough to be called residue rather than influence—a sort of fingerprint of energy, and not an effect of that same energy. While the repair teams detected no present energy signatures of that type, the data logs had snagged it before initiating the failsafe protocols.

The team would also reach the conclusion that the energy being using Ensign Fairweather for its work—whatever its intent—had likely perished in the doing, pulled apart and displaced into oblivion by the very power surge it had helped to cause.
—Jas—
[Trying to help move things along to catch everyone up to the current timeframe. If anything is confusing, or if there’s anything I can do to help with ideas any of you might have, feel free to drop me a line. Happy writing!]

Tom turned to O’Larria and said, “There’s a computer room nearby, right?”

He then asked Chief Asam, “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I think there’s something here I need to look at it further. Can we go there, Sir? I’ll explain.”

Once they arrived there, he requested them to plug their collections in the ports. There was a screen attached to each port. He manned one and tried to pull all data into one screen. He was aware that the current computer performance was still the same, so he did this manually. Which I never thought I’d do that since THE academy (4 minutes clip).

After Tom manually put all 3, well 4 bulks of data into graphs, he raised his head to QT, “What do you see from these?” They were looking at 4 graphs, composed of 0s and 1s: Up, down, a mix but contained noise, and its almost mirrored chart.

“As you all may know,” He stated. “the bulk works by the inputs of 0 and 1. If it’s 0, open, while if it’s 1 then close.” He turned to the team and continued. “The third type, and that one, however, were anomalies. I took the liberty to download the manual from the bulk, but nothing like this was there.” “Which means this wasn’t supposed to happen. Only if a mix of 0s and 1s would do things like this.”

“I’d like to compare these logs with medical data to prove the similarity here. But that would be taking too long. So… Wait.” Logs… Motes…? “I think I got something here. We were told to make personal logs whenever we could. And that is encrypted. If these represent some sort of information.” He started to organize these 4 logs by order. And run a binary filter manually.

He also pulled the whole malfunctioned bulks by the order as the same as from the panel he had a discussion. And did the same procedure again.

Little, Sci

Kristi followed and watched. “So you believe there’s a pattern or code to the opens and closeds? The question would be, how do you read it? The decks are irregular semi circles folding back on themselves in some places. The bulkheads in the Jeffries tubes are all around....”

She moved to the console and pulled up a schematic of the ship. Turning it a few times, she settled on a full on side view of the starboard side of the ship, tilted sightly down. “If you overlay the 0s and 1s in their resurrecting places, this might be the best way to start to see if there’s a message or not.”

Stepping back, she sighed and crossed her arms with a frown. “Or it could be nothing except the path they followed to get at energy or information. I just want you to be prepared for that as well. We don’t have much time. So we can’t spend for more hours on this. But we certainly need to check it out.”

She smiled in reassurance and nodded. They owed it to themselves and the ship to check the message theory. But she knew they couldn’t chase it till they forced it to whistle Klingon opera.

Kristi
Engineer