Chipping Away at the Problem

Posted on 05/02/2020 @ 5:13pm by Captain Cian D'Anvers & Lieutenant JG Jasmine Langtree
Edited on on 05/02/2020 @ 5:19pm

Mission: S1E2: The Plomeek Soup Conundrum
Location: USS Crazy Horse - Various Places
Timeline: Day 5 at 1500

Shae was one of the gamma shift engineers and that meant he slept straight through alpha shift, only emerging at the start of beta to find food with all the grace of a bear at the end of winter's hibernation. Those who knew him were well trained in the need to shove a cup of coffee into his hand if they wanted anything approaching intelligent conversation. They also knew that he was always willing to help and liked tackling the difficult problems.

He stopped at the door to Lieutenant Langtree's office and waited a beat before pressing the chime. Being an engineer, his office was largely the ship and he'd learned over the years how to tune out everything around him when he needed to focus. He wondered though, were he ever to have an office, if it would end up looking more like a storage depot than an actual place to work. Probably, he thought, as he waited for the Lieutenant to respond.

"Enter" Jasmine said.

"Hi Shae what brings you by this section of the ship"? Jasmine asked.

"I was asked," Shae said, his voice a deep rumble that tended to reinforce the bearlike qualities he'd been accused of more than once, "to review your proposed solution about replacing isolinear chips. Have to agree. It should work just fine." One oversized hand patted the small case he carried with him. "I have the replacements here if you have the time ...?"

"Well I've gone through two million lines of code so far. If we just replace the Isolinear chips and reload from the archives without knowing what caused the problem in the first place. There is nothing to prevent it from happening again. Rom and I have been working on this. Once we isolate the problems we can come up with an antivirus that will prevent this from happening again." Jasmine said.

"Spent some time," Shae said quietly in the unassuming way he had, the one that meant he was overlooked more often than not, "going through passive logs. Tracked back all of the crazy malfunctions that got fixed without ever giving them much more thought than that and once I had the time frame, I looked at new information entering the system and I found a file."

Suddenly her computer went beep beep beep. the analysis was complete.

"A file you say? What sort of file? Have you analyzed it," Jasmine asked.

Jasmine didn't mean to be rude but she looked at a passive file in the code 6 million plus lines of code and a file hidden within it or rather half a file, fractally encrypted.

On a hunch. "Was your file fractally encrypted?" Jasmine asked.

"Yes, Ma'am," Shae said. "It was introduced to our system via the Blackwell and opened by Lieutenant Lae'Or shortly after its arrival. I think it's the source of the problem."

Would you like to try an experiment? I have a chip that was taken out of the holographic computer for astrometrics. It didn't look too badly damaged. she replaced the control chip of her PADD with the one from the holographic computer and set her tricorder for continuous scan.

Then she grabbed another PADD off the shelf and set it for continuous message traffic.

"During my research into the burned out chips I found that they were manufactured at Beta Orinae. It's a class M moon orbiting the gas giant Orinassa. The penal colony is on another moon orbiting that planet. It has a manufacturing base that makes almost everything in the local sector. From replicators to industrial sized soil reclamators. They also make isolinear chips. The chip in this PADD was made at Utopia Planitia. What I want you to do is send your half of the message. Let's see what happens," Jasmine said.

Shae nodded and sent the file to the PADD with the suspicious chips and waited. It took about as long as it had for the first odd occurrences to occur on the ship, about five minutes. Shae frowned as he watched the PADD begin to malfunction. "This was no accident," he said. No problems occur until both halves are united -- file and chip. That's deliberate. The Captain will want to know about this."

"Yes Sir I will get the science and engineering department to start replacing control chips with those manufactured at Utopia Planitia immediately." Jasmine said.

"You want to inform the Captain or shall I?" Jasmine added.

Shae thought about it and recognized at once that, being lower in rank and position, it would be more her duty. Then too, he was used to doing the work and leaving the communicating to others who were better suited to the task.

"How about I'll leave the part about informing the Captain to you, Ma'am and you give me one of your scientists so that we can get the chips replaced. How would that be?"

"Actually I think this is top priority so I will be assigning most of my staff to Engineering to expedite repairs. I'd hate to find myself on a ship adrift in such hostile space." Jasmine said.

=/\= Lt Langtree to Captain D'Anvers=/\=

"D'Anvers here. Go ahead, Lieutenant."

=/\= Captain we have found the cause and a solution to our ship wide malfunctions. I will need to take the main computer offline for about an hour to replace a number of control chips then reboot the central processors. We should put main systems on manual control during the duration of the maintenance. Sir, I am loaning out my department to Engineering to help expedite repairs. =/\= Jasmine said.

Cian relayed the orders to the bridge crew and then said, "One hour. Notify the Bridge when you've completed the repairs. After that, I'll want a complete report."

=/\=Aye Captain, Langtree out=/\=

Jasmine took two people with her, then ordered the rest of the of her staff to assist Engineering in the great chip swap out.

Jasmine took two assistants with her to the primary computer core. She repaired the Primary while her assistants did the same to the secondary and tertiary systems. The Science officers worked fast but efficiently and brought the main computer down, swapped out the chips the rebooted the main processor, then ran a level 3 diagnostic. It was the diagnostic that took most of the time, but the system core checked out and there was no degradation of service in the ODN network of the LCARS database.

=/\= Langtree to Captain D'Anvers=/\=

"D'Anvers here."

=/\=Sir the Primary, Secondary and Tertiary computer cores are back online. With your permission, we will proceed to engineering to expedite further repairs. =/\=

"What's left that Engineering can't handle by themselves, Lieutenant," Cian asked.

=/\=Engineering is working on the primary systems Sir, We can work the secondary and tertiary many hands make light work Sir=/\=

"Understood. Inform me when repairs are complete," Cian said. "Excellent work."

As the computer system came back on line, quiet sighs of relief could be heard throughout the ship. There were more than a few cheers when the ship's systems came back online and outright applause, once Science and Engineering finished their work. There would be an investigation into the larger issues, but the Crazy Horse was functional and ready at last to get to work.

A Post by:

Commander Cian D'Anvers
Commanding Officer
USS Crazy Horse

and

Lt. jg Jasmine Langtree
Chief Science Officer
USS Crazy Horse