Fried Bacon & (computer) chips

Posted on Sat Aug 13th, 2016 @ 4:00am by T'qin Elliot & Lieutenant JG Liam Harrison

Mission: Brave New World
Location: Diplomatic center

T'qin scowled, as she gently hushed the screeching infant. "HOW DID YOU SCREW UP THE SOUND SYSTEM IN HERE?" She yelled, in Vulcan, at her tellarite assistant, once the child calmed down.

"Well. You see-" Vol began.

"No, you know what? Stow it. You can explain to the computer technician why the sound system is fried, and I can't access the ship's database from half the diplomatic terminals." T'qin said, sharply. "They should be here shortly."

Liam was crawling through the maintenance shaft fixing the station's primary computer conduits. Dirty, tired, and hungry, Liam would give anything to just have a break for a little bit. At that exact moment, as if his prayers were answered, a call came in to fix the computers in the diplomatic suites. He smiled and bolted out of the shaft out onto the main part of the deck.

As expected, the trek to find the diplomatic offices was a challenge for Liam. He'd definitely need time to get used to the large Starbase's layout. After looking through corridor after corridor, he finally surrendered to the computer's help. Within minutes, he was able to find the correct location.

Liam arrived at the doors of the office to see, to his surprise, a regular door. He half expected to see something fancy like a glass or wooden door, but nope. Shrugging it off, he stepped through the doors and looked around. "Someone need a Computer Systems Specialist?" he asked with a smile.

T'qin paused, to look over the (significantly younger) man, then nodded. "I don't often get such fast results. I'm impressed, Lieutenant. Yes. My idiot assistant blew out the sound system, and now, for some reason half the terminals won't load anything, and the other half are only reading out in Andorian."

She's praising me for being quick? Liam thought to himself, letting out a wider smile. "Blew out the sound system? How? That's a pretty difficult thing to do..." he asked, although he didn't really need to know. "If it's what I think it is, the solution I have in mind should fix them both at once."

"Well." Vol said. "The good Ambassador just doesn't have any taste in music. She calls Bacon! 'Mindless rabble'. Anyway. They just put out their newest album and-"

"Skip to the part where you broke regulations." T'qin noted, idly tapping her foot, while rocking the now much-less-screamy child.

"Ah." Vol nodded. "But as any fan of Tellarite death metal knows, you only listen to it at glass shattering decibels, or it just isn't the same, but the systems wouldn't go that loud, so I did a bit of-"

"He broke it." T'qin summarized.

Liam laughed at their interaction. "Yeah, well...anyway, I'm going to need to see your access panel? Do you know where it is?" he asked as he looked around trying to eyeball where Starfleet would place the closed access point to the room's systems.

"I have no idea." Vol replied, shrugging. "Neither would she. It's our first day on base."

"Walk in a straight line, directly that way from the main console. Once you hit the wall, precisely 19.24 meters to your right. 3 feet off the floor. " T'qin corrected.

"How-" Vol began.

"I'm planning to redecorate. I've committed the precise floor plan to memory." T'qin replied, tapping her ears.

"Oh. Right." Vol nodded.

Liam smirked again as he followed the Ambassador's directions to the access panel. He inserted a tool into the lock, which unsealed the panel allowing Liam to remove it. As soon as he did, he saw a fried panel with power not reaching some of the areas. "This is bad..." Liam said as he turned back to the Ambassador. He scratched his head and stood up. He turned to the Ambassador and tapped his com badge, "Harrison to Power Distribution. Cut off power to Deck 24, Section 6, Room 011, access panel 01." In moments, the power going to that panel shut off and the computer consoles went dark.

"I am aware it is bad." T'qin nodded, after taking a moment to find internal peace. "My console in my office was playing Andorian folk music on repeat."

Vol scoffed. "And you call my music bad?"

"I did not request it. Your music spawned my music. You are dismissed. Get out before you break something else, Vol." T'qin replied sharply.

Liam smirked once more before leaning back down to the access panel and opening up his tool kit. He took out his decoupler to make sure that the connection was truly severed and then he began to work on the power systems with his hyperspanner. After about ten minutes of reconfiguring the room's power systems and replacing a few small components, he was able to fix some of the problem. "Harrison to Power Distribution, you can turn the power back on now."

Suddenly, power to the access panel was restored . Liam placed the decoupler and hyperspanner back in his toolkit and then stood up. "Ambassador, your sound system has been fixed. However, I'll need to see which terminals are experiencing glitches," he told the woman.

"All of them." T'qin said, with a gesture around the diplomatic center. "Either they wouldn't log on to the network at all, or they only did it in Andorian." She reiterated. "That's a language I don't read, I'm afraid."

"All of 'em, huh?" Liam asked as he nodded and turned around. "Must be something with the ODN," he stated, mostly to himself. "If you'll excuse me, Ambassador," he said as he backed out of the room and went over to the computer terminal that was the man was playing their music from. He popped open a panel and took a look at the Optical Data Network. "Yeah, some of these cables are fried." He stood up and walked back over to the Ambassador. "Do you happen to have a replicator around here?" he asked.

"Yes." T'qin nodded. "There's one in my office, one in the diplomatic conference center, and one in the briefing room. The one in my office is closest."

"Thank you," Liam said as he walked over to the replicator. He inputted a special passcode that allowed him to replicate engineering materials and a new optical data network cord materialized. Liam picked it up and brought it over to the computer with the open panel. He grabbed his ODN recoupler and began to switch out the cables. After about ten minutes of realigning the cable and getting things to work properly, Liam turned to the assistant. "Try it now," he told the man.

Vol looked at T'qin, uncertainly. "Uh. I don't know if that's-"

"He means, try and do normal duties on the terminal. If I catch a single music file on your work station again, I'm going to be so, so very angry." T'qin clarified.

The Tellarite pulled up a few relevant files, then nodded. "Looks like that did it. Will that fix the rest of them?"

"That should fix everything else," Liam told the two as he sealed up the panel and placed his tool back in his toolkit. He stood up from the floor and looked at the Ambassador. "If any more problems occur, please let me know and I'll come down to replace the entire network of cables in the room. Hopefully it won't come to that, but..." he said to the woman.

"But terrible things happen." T'qin nodded. "It should be fine. Probably."

"Well, let's hope so!" Liam said with a smile on his face. Then he remembered he had to go back and crawl through those maintenance tubes because his new boss had some kind of grudge. This was a nice distraction, but it was time for him to go back and slave over those repairs. "It was a pleasure to meet you, ma'am," he replied with a nod before turning out of the room and heading back to where he came.

"I'm fairly certain it was all mine, Lieutenant. Thank you for your efforts." T'qin nodded. She gave him the proper Vulcan salute. "Peace and long life."

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Lieutenant Junior Grade Liam Harrison
Computer systems specialist

Lieutenant Junior Grade Vol Kalk
Diplomatic assistant

T'qin Elliot
Chief Diplomatic Officer