Geek Sesh

Posted on Sat Oct 26th, 2024 @ 1:08am by Ensign Noah Balsam & Lieutenant JG Sheldon Parsons

Mission: Mean Green Queen
Location: Port Nacelle Control Room; Junior Officers' Quarters
Timeline: Mission Day 5 at 1700

[Port Nacelle Control Room]
[Deck 2]
[1700 Hours]

The nacelle control room was almost the opposite of computer control- dry they both were, but while the computer core bled heat to keep the core cold, nacelle control was rather chilly. As Noah Balsam emerged from the Jeffries' tube hatch with a clang, he was washed in the cold dry- and he wished he'd brought either his uniform top or his away jacket.

"Hey," Noah announced with a grunt. His fingers coiled the edge of the hatch opening and he pulled himself up. It'd always fascinated Noah how Starfleet kept the nacelles at substantially lower gravity to allow easier access. After all, it wasn't like the nacelles had access to the turbolifts. "Shelly." Noah sat butterfly legged and slightly panting. Then he ducked back into the hatch hole. He looked a bit like a kneeling ostrich, skinny buns up, while he fished for something. It was a box with Debbie's signature logo across it.

"I brought dinner," Noah said, holding the box up on the tips of his lengthy fingers. "I thought you mi-might be hungry up here." Noah stood up and waited a moment as the light gravity was surprisingly welcoming to his lower gravity heritage. His steps felt quite springy. Sometimes he missed that. "How're the diagnostics going?"

Sheldon Parsons -- ever the consummate engineer -- had eyes deadlocked on the floating readouts in front of him. The results of the diagnostic he'd been running for the last twenty minutes were an array of glowing yellow wire-frames, which he reached out to manipulate as he analyzed the realtime data streaming in. So far at least, nothing looked too concerning but then again, the diagnostic was only half over. There was plenty of time of identify a major problem, still. That's the spirit, he thought to himself sarcastically, recalling Bracco's encouragement to recognize when he was being too glass-half-empty.

A voice to his right caused Sheldon to look up from his work with surprise then. When had Noah gotten there? It wasn't an unwelcome Balsamic sighting but the computer specialist's arrival had definitely caught Sheldon unawares. Even so, he pushed his face through the diagnostic results to better see his friend and offered a smile and a wave, eyes immediately darting to the box from Debbie's. The magenta-lined, cursive-style "D" -- apparently a play on the Barbie "B" from ancient Earth, at least according to Debbie -- was a dead giveaway that something amazing must be inside.

"Noah Balsam," Sheldon relaxed into Shelly-mode, voice raising a nasally octave as his eyes settled on Noah's, "You are a life-saver. What did you bring?" he wondered, the growling of his stomach somehow audible even in the mix of noise from the nacelle and all its currently operative machinery. "And the diagnostic's fine so far," he said then, remembering -- despite the box in front of him -- that Noah had asked a question. "Something is causing that warp plasma drain, though. The other nacelle's fine so something with this one seems the likely culprit. We'll see," Shelly said then, holding his hands palm upward and lifting his shoulders with a shrug.

"S-since we can't get to our replicator"- Noah's nose wrinkled, "Or um, beds... Debbie made this care package." Noah sat in front of Sheldon, resuming his ultra-limber, almost meditative pretzel sit. He opened the first box and then the second. And two properly homey wafts of warm food filled the cold, dry space, steam rising from them. "Debbie Deluxes," Noah reported with an almost-grand gesture of presentation. Within were Gless's smashburgers, each with two browned thin meat patties and a lot of cheese. They were surrounded by heaps of curly fries in one, and crinkle-cuts in the other.

"And," Noah said. He pulled out from his tote a small holographic projector, a round silvery dome with a series of glowing blue rings. "Dinner and a movie," he smiled his too-big smile. Noah sniffed- ugh, he could still "taste" that- whatever it'd been- from that morning if he thought about it too hard. And he was trying not to. There was still no exact word what'd attacked them, only that it'd used an obvious disguise to get aboard. Noah pushed a crinkle fry into his cheek and started to masticate, "The new LCARS's causing a few... um... w-weird things... around the ship. Older legacy systems they built into us at Antares Fleet Yards that, um, well..." He shrugged, "Who knows. I'm-I'm guessing its the kind of stuff they patch and glue at a starbase except we're weeks away from one."

Noah fished out another fry.

Shelly's large nose led the way as he peered into the box Noah had opened for him. Curly fries. His favorite. And Debbie had even tailored the fries to his liking, only including long strands of curls instead of the often-more-plentiful short ones. Pulling a fry up, his eyes widened as the bounce of curls elongated, dipping back into the box with gravity's tug even as he pulled upward. "Debbie, you're beautiful," he breathed, a smile cracking open his mouth as he lowered his head to dangle the fry over it. As the first length entered his mouth, the engineer chewed, ears cocked to Noah as he masticated himself. The crispy potato curls were well seasoned and piping hot.

"Heh." Noah smiled. "Bouncy. I bet D-Debbie did that especially for you."

Nodding to his friend then, Shelly swallowed the remains of the expended fry, thinking back to some of the reports he'd seen as well. "Weird stuff indeed," he said. "Maybe the Captain's dismay about the update had merit? Seems like these things never go as smoothly as we think they will." The engineer picked up his burger then -- which, like Noah's, was positively swimming in cheese -- and took a bite, then gestured towards the silver-domed device with said burger. "What are we watching?" he wondered, though speaking through a full mouth might have distorted the question somewhat. Around anyone else -- even Irynya -- Shelly would not have spoken with a mouthful. But Noah put him at ease in a way no one else could and with him, at least, Sheldon felt like he didn't have to try so hard.

Noah sidled a french fry into his cheek from his own care package. Still no word on where they would be sleeping tonight, only that their home dorm had been placed under quarantine and a repair schedule. At Sheldon's question, Noah blinked. "Oh right. Yeah." He shoved another fry into his face and tugged his lips around the straw of his drink. "I was thinking either..." he flicked his fingers at the small dome-like projector. "Something Doctor Who. Or. I was rooting around in these old archives..." Noah gestured vaguely. "Pre-atomic horror era. Um." His eyes narrowed. "It looks like some kind of an animation series called Transformers. I haven't watched any of it yet. The footage is still pretty degraded but I think we can run Index through some clean up and restoration and have something to add to the library." Noah's dark eyes swung to Sheldon and then down to his food. Another fry was casually tossed into Noah's too-wide mouth.

"Trans...for...mers?" Shelly mouthed silently at the dome in response, his interest piquing even as his wide eyes flicked back to Noah. "Like, power converters or something?" He didn't leave much in the way of a pause to answer as his excitement got the better of him. "Don't get me wrong, I love Doctor Who. I still try not to blink as much as possible," the awkward engineer stated, reaching for another fry, "but it's harder than you'd think!" Chomp, chomp, swallow: someone was clearly hungry. "But I kind of like the idea of trying to shine up the footage," he began again, this time around an impending bite of his burger. A few chews had that, too, masticated to dust. "Animation has always been a favorite of mine. One of these days, I'll have to introduce you to 'The Last Unicorn.' But," Shelly cleared his throat, "first we need to dig into this Transformers thing. Who knows, maybe it'll become popular ship-wide, hmm?"

Noah's lips thinned and he nodded a faraway nod. "Yep... yeah. You-you know about as much as I do right now. He squinted an eye even as he popped a curly fry in his mouth. "I think its about some kind of robots and they are trying to save the planet from... pollution and toxic waste or s-something?" Noah spitballed. He forced another curly fry into his mouth and listened to Sheldon reasoning through their choices. He nodded agreement. "OK, l-lets add something to the archives. For posterity." He grinned his wide grin. "Index recall the archive file s1e1-dash-Transformers-more-than-meets... execute refining codec Alpha-Hector and attempt to restore." Noah leaned into the bulkhead and eyed his burger. "The Last Unicorn? Ok let's wa-watch that when we get our suite back." He replied enthusastic. "Is that why you have those a-amazing unicorn slippers?"

"Robots that...fight pollution?" Sheldon blinked hard a couple of times, the thought scrambling his brain a little. "Maybe they like," another fry was dangled and bitten, "transform the pollution into clean energy somehow? Sometimes forward thinking stories can predict the future," the engineer shrugged. "Guess we'll find out," he nodded as Noah began addressing Index and issuing directives. "And sure," Shelly smiled warmly, the idea of sharing something he loved with his friend bulging his heart, "I'd love to show it to you. But sadly, those slippers are...well," he clenched his jaw, "they're gone most likely. Bloody, half-dissolved by that green goop. I could replicate a new pair but those were from...a friend," he said quietly. Irynya knew the story, but he'd never shared it with Noah. Not because he wouldn't feel good doing so -- it just hadn't come up.

The opening sequence of "The Transformers" began while Noah looked with concern at Sheldon. "Oh really? Who gave them to you?" His wide mouth turned impish, a bit incredulous. "Was it maybe Dravor?" He asked out of curiosity. Though part of him was concerned: he knew circumstantially that Sheldon had lost good friends in an accident. He didn't know the details. His smile gradually lessened and he looked down. "Well-well, what if we replicate you some new ones, and all of us can sign them? And those can be... well, not replacements. But new."

"Not Dravor, no. But there was this sweet boy at the Academy who gave them to me," Sheldon replied, eyes widening as the shapeshifting robots did their thing on the floating projection window. He didn't see anything that looked like pollution but there were lots of flashy laser blasts and robots turning into aircraft and automobiles. His curiosity was absolutely piqued but his brain niggled him to finish answering Noah's question. "Err, anyway...the boy. Very sweet, but far more...ready for things than I was. He gave me the slippers when we said goodbye before shipping out to our postings."

The idea of his friends gifting him new slippers, though, made Shelly smile. "That's a lovely thought, Noah. I think seeing your names written all over them would -- WAIT!" the young engineer looked up at the glowing media window in amazement, a curly-cue of fry half-hanging out of his mouth. "Did that robot just like...eject two other robots from its chest? A pterodactyl and a cat or something?" He was positively transfixed by what he was seeing.

"Wait I missed it, computer back 2.7." The hovering hologram dialed back as a blue boxy robot with a rather sinister- Romulanesque even- angle to their facial chevrons touched a button on themselves. His chest popped open, like some kind of an old-fashion duotronic data recorder from the early 2130's. Noah was equally transfixed as two robots, also boxy and sort of like the duotronic data disks, flew into the air and with a high pitched and metallic sound, they transformed- one into something like a dog or cat, and the other an eagle. "Whoa...." Noah added. "Computer, identify character."

"Character in present frame identified in analog notation as Soundwave, Decepticon."

Noah crookedly smile at Sheldon, geekily. His eyebrows popped. "That would be amazing to do. What if we could design, like a-a shuttlecraft to do that? Like Multi-vector attack mode, but for a Type VII shuttlecraft!"

"Soundwave..." Shelly repeated after the computer, sounding absolutely transfixed as he replayed the animation again. The part of his brain that struggled with hyper-fixation had been invoked and was now focused solely on the newly-named Deception. "I need to know everything about this character," he breathed, leaning closer to the projected display window to get a better look. His fries and burger had been entirely forgotten by this point, though Noah's comment about making a shuttle with similar capabilities did get through his fixation filter. "That would be super cool, Noah! Maybe a new probe-launch design or something? Or like, phaser drones?" The possibilities were many. "I wonder what he sounds like..." Shelly whispered, eyes not leaving the screen as the intro came to a close.

The engineer didn't have to wait long to find out. As the first scene began to play, Soundwave himself was one of the first bots to appear, responding to a request from his leader to perform some recon. "LASERBEAK," he said in his deep, machine-echoed voice, "PREPARE FOR FLIGHT." He pressed a button on his chest then, which opened a door that released a mini-Transformer. With that customary sound the bots seemed to make when transforming, the smaller Transformer shifted into something part mini-drone, part-bird. It hovered nearby, awaiting instruction. "SET DESTINATION FOR IACON. OPERATION: ASSIMILATION." The bird-former flew away at rocket-speed while Sheldon watched, still fixated.

Noah, grinning widely, had his own peculiar creative light in his eyes. "What if we could replace the computer voice of the Sojourner with his voice?" His eyebrow arched, like a benign yet villainous plotter. His finger shook at the hologram. "Even just in our-our room." He sighed, leaned his head on his arm and smiled at Sheldon's fixation. He wanted to yawn- it had been a long day- but he stifled it. "Maybe we could get the Fabrication Lab to work up a schematic. For a probe, I-I mean. Or like... security defense systems that... could pop out of the bulkhead if the ship gets boarded."

"We could do that?" Sheldon half-whispered, half-gasped. "Is there enough audio in these old recordings for the computer to synthesize his voice?" Noah's mention of anti-boarding drones got the engineer even more mega excited. "Ooh! Maybe the Sojo's computer, when commended to activate them, could be like 'PHASERBEAKS, PREPARE TO FIGHT!'" He went totally quiet then, eyes huge, and then dissolved into utter laughter. "The Captain would never go for Soundwave voicing the Sojo but we have to reprogram the computer in our quarters now, right?" Shelly suddenly remembered his food and reached for another fry, this time compressing the curl-string into a tight coil and popping the whole thing into his mouth, crunching-and-munching with ferocity of thought.

"The computer maybe not... but Index might. They are based on Ishikawa Station's systems. They're more extensive with some of-of their reproduction software." And Noah nodded- again, vehemently- that the computer could activate this new system as they needed. "A voice skin for our room would take all of an hour." Noah said with the perk of an eyebrow which was about as impish as the young engineer could get. He laughed, "I've got the biggest geek boner right now. I-I can't wait to get started."

Shelly, feeling ebullient and playful now that his brain was full of dopamine, mock-looked between Noah's legs and said, "Really? I don't see a bulge or anything." He chuckled then, leaning back to rest against the base of the console he'd been working at earlier. "Totally down for changing the voice in our quarters! As for boarder-repelling drones, though," he stroked his hairless chin thoughtfully, "maybe we need to start smaller. In fact," he snapped his fingers and suddenly leaned forward again, grabbing his PADD -- long abandoned in favor of curly fries -- and removing its stylus, "I'm thinking maybe something like this?" He'd quickly started drawing on the PADD's surface and then "grabbed" the display (with fry-grease-smeared fingers) and "threw" it into the air. A rough diagram of a thicker-than-normal engineering kit appeared there, composed of glowing yellow lines. Sketched into the side of the case was what looked an awful lot like Soundwave's cassette-bot compartment.

Noah chuckled, "I.. uh..yeah okay. I mean if I-I have to prove it". And Noah faked going for his uniform fly and faked unzipping it. No follow through though. Instead he sat back, relaxed. His brow rose but he said nothing further, instead shifting with his attention rapt on Sheldon sketching. He shoveled a few of his cold curly fries into his mouth and finally began to bob his head. He was getting it.

"We could design a portable Phaserbeak for test deployment on our next away mission," Shelly said, sketching on the screen again before throwing that drawing, too, into the air. This one depicted a rectangular-shaped "cassette" in its folded up form side-by-side with a very rough version all unfolded in drone form, looking very much like Soundwave's bird-bot. "Wouldn't be hard to incorporate a type-2 phaser into its beak. And it could fly around to give us cover if we have to work in the field while being shot at maybe?" The wheels in the ensign's head were spinning now at peak speed. "If it proves viable, we could build more units and scatter them into strategic compartments all over the ship?" He wanted to honor Noah's idea but also felt they should start small and expand from there.

"We-we could use those portable sensors we designed for the mission to the Captain's homeworld." Noah suggested. "Heavy changes to its frame, but the-the sensor palettes would still work." He nodded again. "It'd have to be small. Maybe a Type I in the prototype. I-I know it's limited to six settings, but we can scale up with a workable model. If the power plant can take the data, sensor, movement and defense." He nodded again. Noah pulled at his lower lip and squinted at the drawing. "We'll need a power plant... probably the type they use in something like an Exocomp." And he modeled, using his long fingers to form a box of a certain size. "We'll need to fit it with anti-gravs. Maybe micro-anti-gravs here... and here... here and here..." And Noah gestured at its wings and then its feet. "Stability... and then maneuvering."

Sheldon was half watching Noah point, half speed-typing into his PADD, nodding along with the ideas so fast he looked like a bird himself. He took a moment to throw the PADD's display full of text into the air as well, the new window auto-snapping to the right of the rough "Phaserbeak" design schematic. Alongside the drawing and its highlighted parts placement indicators, the text detailed the plans for mounting anti-gravs, mini-thrusters, and a type I phaser assembly into the thing's beak. Shelly sat back on his haunches then, no longer speed-typing, and looked up at the plans they'd generated from a centuries old kids cartoon. Excitement for the project felt like brain fuel and his hyper-fixation was now in absolute full effect.

"Um..." Shelly drawled, "apparently my nerd boner just popped too." He laughed then, his cheeks effusing with rosiness. "Wanna meet in the fabrication lab in the morning? I'll work on mocking up some part modeling tonight--" which would give him something to do while staring at the ceiling of his (albeit temporary) enlisted bunk, "and then we can start replicating and playing around?"

Noah leaned back and restart their movie, tilting his head toward Sheldon. "I'll bring some donuts and coffee," he agreed. This was going to be epic. Noah was sure of it.

A Post By:

Ensign Sheldon Parsons
Engineer

Ensign Noah Balsam
Systems Specialist