This is Excellent News!

Posted on 27 Jun 2020 @ 8:57pm by Lieutenant Madalene Sabine & Lieutenant Alexandra Dering & Petty Officer 1st Class Pasgen 186

1,377 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Ab Intra
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: MD 01 - 1150 hours

=/= Begin Log =/=

Madalene left the labs her mind flailing for ideas but that was becoming harder and harder. It wasn't helping that in her mind she was 0 and will 4 or was it 3.

Shaking her head as she stepped off the lift. {Get those thoughts out of your head Maddy. You need to get your head in the game! So, you can help the away team.} She thought as she walked into engineering, "I am looking for lieutenant Dering?" She asked a passing engineer.

The man who had been rather in a hurry paused. "In her office, ma'am." he said quickly, pointing, and hurried on.

In the office, Lexi was having issues of her own. She had been trying to go over the reports regarding the communications systems that would keep the ship in communication with the away team, but her focus kept drifting. She growled at herself and tried again to read the report.

"Lieutenant, do you have a moment. I am sure you are busy with coming up with an idea to help with the potential communication problems that we might start facing. But, I believe I have an idea I just need help to implement it without potentially wasting a probe." Madalene said trying to keep a positive spin in her voice.

Lexi caught herself before actually growling at the interruption. Looking up from the PADD that she had been uselessly trying to focus on, she cast her gaze to the intruder. Recognizing her immediately as Madalene Sabine, she sat back in her chair, waving for the other woman to enter and be seated if she wished before rubbing her own face with her hands. She then stood and paced to her replicator. "Sorry, Lieutenant Sabine. Would you like a coffee or something while I'm getting myself one." Maybe it'll help me focus?

"Yes, coffee would be wonderful." Madalene said walking in and taking a seat setting a couple of PaDDs on the desk. "...and my apologies for interrupting you."

Lexi grunted in response. "Don't worry about it, Lieutenant," she verbally shrugged it off. "Coffee, black. Two," she told the replicator, turning slightly as it hummed. "I'm actually glad for the distraction." The machine stopped humming, and she took the coffee mugs from it, bringing one over and handing it to Madalene before returning to her chair and taking a sip of her own. "What did you have in mind?" she asked, referring to the other woman's claim to have an idea. She wasn't normally rude enough not to ask if someone wanted anything in their coffee, but her mind was distracted, seeming to work on something shew couldn't see -- and the more she tried, the deeper it buried itself in her mind, so she had stopped trying, hoping it would make a mistake and let her see it.

"Well," Madalene said sliding a PaDD over, "the initial idea was to use a probe to help depolarize or polarize the storm with the frequency of our communicators. But after speaking with our chief science officer she believes that the chances of that happening is slim as it'll be quite tough sync with the storms frequency."

"Also spoke with the captain and she's not too keen with risking a probe so if we can get a higher percentage of this working and with something that is not a probe we could get this idea off the ground or we could explore any ideas that you might have." Madalene said all very quickly finishing off with a several small sips of coffee.

Lexi felt as thought she was thinking through mud. Normally, she would have processed all pf that in a flash and begun ideaing. But for some reason, today, she as taking longer to do either. She decided to buy herself a few seconds by sipping her coffee. "Well, the idea has merit in and of itself," she began. "The problem arises with the very unpredictable nature of storms and the effect they generally have on technology." She sat back.

"Okay," Madalene said. She also had thought about that as well. "So, this might sound crazy but if we can determine what kind of storm it is we might be able to predict some of the storms activities?" Madalene suggested.

Lexi's first reaction -- thankfully, she managed to keep it solely internal -- was to think that was crazy on the face of it. Her second reaction was to chastise herself for that. The Federation had the technology to control the weather on their own worlds, and one couldn't control something without knowing how it functioned. Therefore, it stood to reason that...

Her mind glitched, and she hesitated. What had she been thinking? She frowned and shook her head. That something that had been clawing at the fringes of her mind all day commenced a more insistent attempt, and she had to shake her head to clear it. It only partially worked.

"What kind of storm it is?" she parroted, partially to make sure she was still on the same page with the woman across her desk from her. "Right. But wouldn't that still require a drone to get close to the storm and analyze it?"

"Electrical but I believe it is turning into an Ion storm." Madalene said as another idea started to formulate into her mind. It came from a old-Earth show. It was gonna be out there but it could still work if electrical/Ion storms acted like just normal storms.

Lexi frowned again -- she seemed to do a lot of that these days. "We'd still need to be sure, and that would require a drone." Something in the other woman's eyes caught her attention, and she added, "Unless you have another idea?"

"Well, the defector dish. Could it be possible to fire a high-intensity beam. Heat wise to help disperse the storm. I saw it happen on a old-Earth show and it seems very much out of the box. This idea does only use up power not a physical thing that we might need later."

Lexi hesitated, her mind working that over. It felt like she was thinking through sludge, her mind not working as fast as it normally did. Again, she had that sensation of fighting something, but she couldn't figure out what. Pushing it aside -- that was getting harder each time -- she nodded. "We could do that. That might disperse the cloud cover creating the storm, but it would only last as long as we held the beam on, most likely. And we can't do that indefinitely."

Just as Madalene was gonna respond her communicator went off. "Pardon me," Madalene said tapping her badge, "yes, this is lieutenant Sabine."

"Ahh yes, Lieutenant, this is Petty Officer Pasgen. Thanks to Ensign Cydwenn's inspiring presence," there was a sudden fondness in Pasgen's tone, "we may have a way to enhance our communications system."

"That is excellent news!" Madalene said, "I am here with lieutenant Dering and we are discussing a few ideas," Maddy said as she thought of next moves, "hrm...let's do this meet us in conference room 3 and we'll discuss our ideas. Get them onto a PaDD and presentable for the captain. Let's five minutes?"

"Five minutes would be excellent, sir!" Pasgen replied a bit excitedly, and then thought about how s/he would need to get the technician back to watch over the console in hir place oh-so discreetly.

"Perfect! Meet you two there in five," Madalene said looking over to the chief engineer as she closed the com link, "ready?"

Lexi found that, as Madalene addressed her, she had to pull herself back to the present from... where had it been? What had she been thinking? It was getting harder to sort her thoughts. "Hm? Oh, yes." She had no real idea of what Madalene was referring to, but she could fake it as well as the next person. She stood. "After you."

They left her office, and she followed the other woman silently. What was happening to her? Why was it so hard to think? Maybe she should go to Sickbay and get checked. Something inside of her rebelled strongly at that idea, and she discarded it... for now.

=/= End Log =/=

 

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