Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Acadia LeBlanc (Engineer) in Engineering

Posted by Gamemaster Alfredo Linguini (GameMaster) in Engineering

Posted by Lieutenant Mikel Petrov (Chief Engineer) in Engineering

Mikel was back in Engineering minding his own business. Let someone else solve the toy problem. He was fine with that.

Petrov CE

Acadia had gotten up early and realized that on this ship, she didn’t have to wait to be called in. Glancing up from the console she had been at the night before, she saw the Chief walk in. “Morning, Chief. Slept well, I hope. Want to do my official check in now?” She grinned at him and nodded to the console she was at, “Or just have me start work and come to you occasionally when I need a pass code?” She cocked her hip as her hands rested on them and she nodded to the door. “I’ll even grab some real coffee from the mess first if you want.” She wasn’t condescending or anything, merely confident enough not to be sniveling before her new supervisor.

Lt JG Acadia LeBlanc
Eng/AI Spec

Mikel stopped when he saw the new engineer and listened to her little morning greeting. He had a PaDD in his hand that had a complicated reverse flush procedure on the number 6 plasma convertor that required deionizing the particles before the flush and reionizing them as they were reintroduced back into the convertor. The trick was that some particles would lose polarization and the program had to be programmed just right to catch those. If not they would create a cascade in the convertor and basically cause the plasma to be inert for use.

He tossed the PaDD to her.

“Coffee first and then work on this on your own. Your orientation begins now.” He said as he headed to the office. He did not let her see but a smile crossed his lips.

Petrov CE

Petrov sat down and waited for the inevitable failure of the converter..oh and his coffee.

Petrov CE

In the corner of his eye, Petrov could see Lt. Ford Prefect. He had a towel hanging off his shoulder, and Petrov could see the man wipe the sweat off his forehead infrequently. Prefect was studying the fused IE drive, and trying to determine the cause of its fusion.

GM

Acadia smiled as she took the PaDD. “Coffee it is… Chief.” She laughed and headed for the mess.

Coming back ten minutes later, she set the small tray on his desk. A carafe of fresh coffee and a mug. There was milk and sugar, since she knew neither of which he desired, and there was also a covered plate. On it was a breakfast meal. Bacon, eggs, fried potatoes and cinnamon baked apples covered the medium sized plate. She set it silently on his desk and headed out to work on the assignment she was given.

Acadia went to the prescribed console and read back thru the logs of the last 3 purges to see what had happened, good, bad and indifferent. She noticed the setting for checking on the polarization saturation. Satisfied she was ready, she switched to the program and began.

She would first make sure the system was within tolerance and that a quick dry run meant the program hadn’t acquired any bugs or program glitches. She ran the program to deionize the particles. Then she would check to be sure there were none that were off or unstable and that the entire batch would be able to reionize without a problem. As she waited for the results, she hummed softly. Because each step took some time, she spent the time in between with the AI trying to get to ‘know it’ and see what made it the help to the ship that it was. A small laugh curled up her lips. “Pity you aren’t sentient enough to understand my needs and simply do them, with far more accuracy than the humble peckings of a mere mortal.” She laughed and waited for the results to come back on whether all the particles were suitable to for reionization.

Acadia
Eng/AI Spec

Her calculations were almost perfect and everything looked ready to introduce again into Converter 6. However this was not the first time Petrov had given this “test” to engineers. If she thought merely looking at the old flushes that were successful was sufficient she would get a surprise. Mikel always created a purposeful error in the calculation and then “cheated” the program to make it appear as if it would be successful.

Not a one of his engineers passed yet. They had a chance, each on of them, and it was at this step they failed. Every particle of plasma was correctly ionized except one. Even that one looked ok at first pass but it had an unstable electron in it. One electron in a sea of electrons in a sea of particles. However if it passed into the converter it would, in less than 15 minutes cause the cascade failure. The only way to catch it was a magnatronic quantum scan as each particle passed toward the converter. It was not standard practice and was not in the program. She would have to think of it on the fly. The science and engineering was there and real. Would she think of it. It was, in effect, Mike Petrov’s Kubiashi Maru.

Petrov CE