Ensign Talon Morda: Juke Nukem
Eston Melton
OOC: Playing catch-up here - plugging holes but sadly not advancing the scene much. Gradually making my way through nonstop nd-of-year events, thankfully, so I should be back in the swing of things by Wednesday :)
((Bridge, Deck One, USS Khitomer))
C. Dewitt: ::quietly:: Status, Ensign. Tell us what the numbers are doing.
Morda: Nothing linear, still jumpy, but the trendline is continuing downward. ::Swiveling his seat to face the conn:: Lower across the board.
C. Dewitt: So it falls asleep?
Valeris: Yeah I do. ::Shaking himself:: I mean, it would appear so, Commander.
Morda caught the commander’s glance in his direction and, despite himself, shrugged.
Morda: I still don’t like to ascribe familiar labels for feelings and behavior to something so unknown. Sleep for most of us is a low-power mode, and that seems to fit. But, sir: sleep is also a chance to recover, heal, and muster power to fight the next day.
The XO nodded in understanding and otherwise left the ensign’s observation go unremarked.
Valeris: There is really no knowing if the same resonance within the song will effect all of the filaments on the ship. But it might be worth a shot to make the corridors safer, isn’t it?
C. Dewitt: It’s worth a shot, Commander. It is the best thing we’ve come to think of in the last hour. Part of me hates to admit that a song does this.
Valeris: Ensign Morda, would the same resonance be effective against the smaller filaments that are all over the rest of the ship? Or would their thickness dictate the responsive frequency?
oO Um…? Did I wear the wrong shade of yellow today? Oo
Morda: ::Blankfaced, blinking once:: Give me a moment, sir.
He swiveled back to the console and prompted the computer for its insight. While it processed, he thought of his schooling on using resonance and various forms of wave interference to demolish walls, bridges, bulkheads, and other physical assets. Like he’d already told some of the crew: invariably, his “engineering” fluency came down to blowing things up.
Morda: Computer suggests, sir, that yes: different thicknesses, lengths, and other properties could have an impact. Another consideration: these things really are at an incredibly small scale, and the molecular interactions between the air and the filaments are a bit unpredictable at that scale. :: Pause :: In other words, our success here might not be as immediately or entirely effective elsewhere. No single solution.
Valeris: If so, we may need to turn the ship into a jukebox. Playing different songs throughout different sections. Might get annoying to us, but could be effective.
oO What the hell is a “juke”? Oo Morda instantiated another computer process for his query. “Juke” didn’t yield anything helpful, so he tried “juke box.” oO Oh. Oh, interesting. Oo His musician sister would love the premise of a giant, colorful music cabinet -- a mainstay in most Kerelian homes rather than Earth dining halls. His other sister, the engineer, would gesture toward modern miniaturization and hate the analog waste of space.
C. Dewitt: I’m not sure if you deserve a commendation, Commander, or if you filed the strangest suggestion of your career. ::beat:: Maybe both.
oO Strange is right. Oo
C. Dewitt: ::more seriously:: Alright. We’re going to do this, but one thing first, Commander. Where are we with the visualization? You started pushing the lighting changes out before all of this. Anywhere it has not taken yet?
Valeris: I’m seeing roughly 87% coverage of areas that are capable of executing the program. Areas that rarely see foot traffic are either running the program a little slower, or there just isn’t anything for the program to find there.
C. Dewitt: Got it. Then let’s do this carefully. Mr Morda, partition the filament population by central mass size, deck by deck. I want a lullaby map. Commander, you and Mr Morda match a candidate frequency profile to each tier of mass size.
Morda: Aye, Commander.
Valeris: Aye, sir
C. Dewitt: We test the theory in one more place before we do it on all decks. Pick a corridor that is well-sensored and lightly trafficked. The central mass should be of roughly the same size to have the same resonances. ::to Morda:: Ensign, copy Lieutenant Zerva on the test plan. He and Sparks already taught us this trick in small.
Morda once again did a quick tap to open an intercom line.
Morda: =/\= Morda to Zerva. Heads-up, LT: we’re going to try music to lure these things to sleep. Standby for a sonata or two. =/\=
Valeris: I’m seeing a particularly dense cluster on Deck 5. Localized around the computer core. That might work. Or we could go with a smaller sample area. There is an area on Deck 11 near the forward torpedo launchers that is showing some filament activity.
Ooph. “Experiment” and “torpedo” weren’t his favorite combination. But the computer, too, was serious equipment. But there was at least a backup computer core; there was only one forward-facing photorp tube, and they might very well need it.
Morda: Let’s do deck five, sir.
C. Dewitt: If you have a fitting spot, activate the jukebox, Commander.
Valeris: No noticeable reaction yet. Maybe we need to try a different song.
C. Dewitt: Response
Valeris: Maybe the reaction is more visual. Putting that area on the viewscreen.
C. Dewitt: Response
Morda: Let’s make sure whatever is piping through includes harmonics beyond normal humanoid range. Vorta, Kerelian, Romulan, Cetacian - their music covers a board spectrum, sometimes even beyond the range of their own native hearing.
Valeris: Now we can watch the show in action.
A nondescript area of the starship appeared on screen, thankfully bereft of crew. Lasers marked several overlapping boundaries of a no-man’s-land on an otherwise eerily deserted stretch of corridor. Where the lasers converged, there was a slight shimmer - a much smaller version of the node on the bridge.
Morda: Applying some visual overlays to put numbers to the optics.
With a few keypad taps and a literal swipe across the console, he “flung” the various motion, EM spectrum, and pressure wave visualizations he was still using to monitor the bridge intruder to the output on the main viewer.
C. Dewitt: Response
Morda: Looks like at least a moderate downtick, but still a bit chaotic.
C. Dewitt: Response
Morda: Seeing another node like one on the bridge … I wonder whether they are either the source of the filaments, or whether they emerge when enough filaments converge. Either way, now that we can map the filaments in most areas, we should be able to map back and identify any of these visible clusters.
C. Deweitt/Valeris: Response