Commander Lia Rouiancet: Iterations
Tony Colella
Even after the relative success with unphasing Barney Nilsen, their first attempt to scale up -- with two Dow crewmembers instead of just one -- had not been the success Lia had hoped for. She tried to reassure herself with a reminder that they -- she -- had assumed that the Dow crew had all been lost. But that wasn't much comfort now, when their attempt to assist had resulted in a life lost.
Rouiancet: Ideas? I would prefer not to repeat that.
Una: The signal was not sufficiently stable... I apologize. We need better signal amplification maybe…
Una looked to Yinn and Toz, and the latter shook her head. It wasn't a question of improving the lock on the physical signs of the Dow crew, then, but rather one of their systems and processes.
Yinn: Response
Kovacs: =^= Response
Una: At least I identified the problem: a sudden high-pitched phase oscillation. What do you think we can do to prevent it?
Toz: The phase variance was out of synch. I’m say engineering needs to completely go over the transporter system.
Even though the comm channel remained open, Lia's hand still moved up toward her badge before she spoke to Ensign Kovacs.
Rouiancet: =^= Ensign Kovacs, I'd like you and your team to do exactly that. Let's not repeat this process until then. =^=
The problem was, she was quite, quite sure that Kovacs and the rest of the engineering team had been as confident as they could reasonably be before the transport cycle had kicked in. It was good that they'd been able to identify with all speed what the problem had been, but the fact none of them had spotted it before suggested to Lia that it might not have been there before. And if the problem wasn't obvious until it happened, then there was no guarantee that they'd be more successful as they went.
Even so, Lia was determined to be as thorough as possible and anticipate every possible ill.
Yinn: Response
Kovacs: =^= Response
Una: Hopefully, it's a rare event, but can we prevent it? Clean the buffers!?
Toz: I can’t imagine the buffers being the issue. If I remember my little bit of training, electronic circuits connect a high-impedance source to a low-impedance load without significant attenuation or distortion of the signal. Thus, the output voltage of a buffer replicates the input voltage without loading the source.
Toz spoke like someone who had become very familiar with those systems, and Lia nodded even as she glanced over at Toz. She couldn't remember anything in Toz's background regarding engineering or operations, but maybe her interest was more of a hobby. Or an intellectual curiosity? She made a mental note to ask later, when this was all over.
Rouiancet: There's no harm in being even more thorough than necessary. Cleaning the buffers may not resolve this issue, but there may be something else...?
Not that she claimed there was, but -- well, zero additional casualties was her goal.
Yinn: Response
Kovacs: =^= Response
Toz: (softly) I'm never being transported again.
Lia thought for a moment that she hadn't heard correctly, but that would certainly be one way to explain why Toz knew so much about the transporter systems. Lia put a comforting hand on Toz's arm.
Rouiancet: You won't have to. No one will, until we get this done. (beat) But now that we're back in phase, we certainly need not transport.
For now, at least.
Yinn/Una: Responses
Kovacs: =^= Response
Toz: (nodding) We'll get the sickbay ready to receive lots of patients and somehow we should ignore the invisible voices.
Rouiancet: (encouragingly) Exactly. One step at a time. (beat) Let's get to it.
Yinn/Una: Responses
Kovacs: =^= Response
OOC I'm envisioning a fade-to-black for the scene with the implication that they refined the process and were (mostly) successful. I'm planning to have Lia talk more about it in her final log and I encourage you all to have your characters post logs as well!
Tags! and END SCENE for Rouiancet!
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