Posted by Lieutenant Mikel Petrov (Chief Engineer) in Engineering

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

SNIP

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

Acadia sat there waiting for the first step to finish. Glancing around the room she noticed no one paying particular attention to her, other than the occasional ‘new girl’ glances and a couple sly smiles from the men. “Simple tasks for simple minds…” she murmured to herself. That’s when it hit her. Petrov knew she was there to be more than a simple engineer. So why did he claim this was a ‘orientation’ when it was a simple purge and reset? “Cause it’s not simple....”

She went back over the specs and frowned. Shaking her head, she knew something had to be amiss. “Well, let’s see just what he’s done.” She set the scan for magnatronic quantum scan to one particle scan. Each particulate would be scanned as it moved back towards the ionizing chamber. But instead of taking the computer’s word it was good, she would cycle them twice on this level. They would effectively have to pass the test two times to be accepted. She was certain, now, that something odd was here that she had to find. So now she went over every step, every spec, every reading. Nothing was acceptable merely because it was ‘within limits’. She would read the logs and take a little longer than usual because something told her ‘within tolerance’ wouldn’t be good enough for this Chief.

Acadia
Eng/AI Spec
(your choice if I find it… but she’s looking now for ‘something’ to be wrong)

The first pass produced a stable result. The second pass showed a so slight variation but the scan did not detect the actual electron. Just a .001 variance in stability for the overall scan results. The only way now was to “blast” the particles with a electron magnetometer destabilizer. No one ever did this because it caused an inefficiency loss and some good particles would be lost lowering the yield. However it was absolutely the only way to fix the problem without allowing a destabilized electron through.

Petrov was amazed she had caught the MQ Scan and impressed. No one had. He was certain she would miss the fix by not wanting to sacrifice the efficiency.

OOC: Hey Im open to whatever outcome you truly believe your character can produce. Its on you.

Petrov CE