LtCmdr Jovenan – It’s my fault, isn’t it? No? But can I still somehow twist it so that my self-pity doesn’t go into waste?
Jovenan
((Cargo bay 2, Deck 11, USS Artemis))
Jovenan: Thank you for coming, Lieutenant. ::turns, gestures at cargo holders:: Look at that!
She pointed at the travesty that had met her when she had come to receive the critical component of their most crucial recent experiment. The Science Department had encountered numerous setbacks and disasters over the years under her leadership. Several important projects had been interrupted by a number of awfully poorly timed calamities, scientists had been killed by at least two different flavours of cyborgs, their equipment had been damaged or destroyed in battles or in any of the half a dozen times the ship had been taken over, etc etc etc. However, this time was far more disturbing an issue: she didn’t know exactly what had caused it. The problem might be originating from within the department itself.
Bergmen: Ehm. Ehm. ::nods:: What’s a problem, ma’am?
She scratched her cheek. It would have been preferable if the Lieutenant had seen the complication as clearly as she did. Since he didn’t, she had to weight in how to explain it, if she should jump into the conclusion that someone, perhaps her, had made a mistake. It could have been her failure, something that made her more nervous than all those battles she had faced.
Jovenan: I, uh, I don’t know what happened at all. MPMF gel is difficult to acquire because it can’t be replicated without specialised equipment. The filaments degrade very quickly, so it can’t just be stored until we get more, either. This- this is not at all what I ordered!
Bergmen: Don’t worry, Commander. We'll look into it and find the issue, be sure. Do you have an order? ::smiled more::
He smiled. Smiled! At a time like this! Multiphasic microfilament gel was so difficult to get delivered that the study had been in plans for years, and now that they finally got it, the delivery was incorrect, and the project was ruined. Did he not understand how large a loss this was to the department? She handed the PADD to him nonetheless.
Jovenan: I ordered… I think I ordered, at least I meant to order, 5 tonnes of MPMF gel for the prismagon energy experiment I was hoping to run. An active optical data cable that is coated in the MPMF gel and moved in space can function as a kind of sweep net. However, the length of the cable needed is inversely related to the amount of the gel surrounding it. This… this is just 500 kilograms of gel! I can’t use the 100 metres of cable I’ve reserved for this, I’d need a kilometre of it!
In short, a disaster. A kilometre worth of active optical data cable was only feasible if they reserved a large section of the ship’s own data uplinks for it… but they also needed the ship for things like moving and surviving in space. She doubted the Captain would allow her to compromise that, even if Jovenan had promised that the crewmen in cleaning duty could get the gel off from their systems in just a few days after they were done. If that wasn’t an option, and getting more of the gel wasn’t either, then the project was surely doomed. The Lieutenant kept nodding and went onto investigate the containers. Was there anything more to do but to discover whom to blame?
Bergmen: Hmm…
The “hmm” didn’t betray what the Lieutenant had discovered from the order documentation. It was a very neutral “hmm”, either a sign that he had neither good nor bad news yet, or that he was better at hiding his emotions than she was. People rarely had a reason to pretend there were good news – it must be something awful, then! He scanned the data chips that the supplier or courier had attached to the crates for some operations magic.
Bergmen: Hm… That’s weird. ::looks doubtful:: Interesting.
Some more ominous words.
Bergmen: May I ask you to accompany me?
Jovenan: Um, sure. Have you found something?
It was her fault, was it? She had mistyped the amount of the gel needed, and as the lead scientists, few people in the delivery chain had reason to question her error. She had just wasted half a ton of the Federation’s rarer resources – surely that was illegal? Even in the post-money semi-post-scarcity utopia, the energy and the poorly replicatable resources dedicated for a specific purpose were not something one could just keep throwing away. As she followed the Lieutenant to the closest console and waited for him to access it, she wondered if this was going to be yet another blow to her morality or if Starfleet would see fit to finally punish her for her wrongdoings.
Bergmen: Do you see those two strings? ::points on screen:: Up to fourteen digits of sixteen, it’s the same, but those two last differ, and these letters after the hyphen that are not in your order? That’s a problem.
That was… not what she had expected. So it wasn’t her fault? Someone else had made a mistake somewhere in the line? That helped her get over the part that made her feel awful for her personal responsibility, but that didn’t remove the fact that the project was ruined. And what exactly had they received, then?
Bergmen: They haven’t five tons of this MPMF gel of yours, so someone in line decided in his greatest wisdom to substitute. Those letters after the hyphen? HCS? Highly condensed, stasis field. And those two numbers that differed? That indicates the material is meant to be used in scale, like... like the shipyards. You got your five tons hypercondensed into five hundred kilograms. ::glance to Jovenan:: I’m not a scientist, so this is a question for you as an expert, but do you have the means to…
He struggled to find the words.
Bergmen: …ehm… decondensate your gel? ::smiles apologetically:: Because this is not refundable.
Jovenan planted her palm over the lower half of her face. It was condensed, somehow? The thoughts of personal responsibility and the overtly negative thoughts were quickly buried and replaced first by puzzlement and then by an intensive attempt to figure out how to salvage the project.
Jovenan: MPMF gel is very rare. I’ve never dealt with it before. But I know that condensing it would be highly unusual, since the microfilaments are fragile and can’t be decontracted rapidly without them suffering damage… You said something about shipyards. What did you mean by that?
Bergmen: Response
Jovenan: Have you ever worked in such circumstances? Would you know what they’d do in a case like that?
Bergmen: Response
She looked at the containers. If they didn’t manage to get the gel to work in whatever form it was after they were done, it would all be gone to waste. Although she felt already much more relieved from having to bear the guilt for wasting the work and dedication of so many people, she still had to worry about the success of her study.
Jovenan: That… That could work, actually. I think. But I’m going to be needing your help. ::pause, turns to him:: I don’t think I said this yet, but thank you for figuring it out. I guess the PADDwork lingo spooked me.
Bergmen: Response
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Lieutenant Commander Jovenan
Chief Science Officer
USS Artemis-A
E239911J11