Preparing a place

Posted on Sat Jun 2, 2018 @ 1:13am by Lieutenant Venus Quinnell & Lieutenant Miki Matsutaki

Mission: Falling Star
Timeline: MD 34 | 1115 hours

Having returned to the main Counseling Office from the briefing about the upcoming humanitarian mission, Lieutenant Matsutaki summoned her entire staff, and after a quick overview of the upcoming situation, and their role in it, selected a dozen or so of them to report to the Quartermaster. Their initial task would be to arrange the materials for a number of booths where the refugees would be able to speak with counselors in private and in small groups, move those materials to the cargo bays as necessary, and then assist in their positioning and construction.

Although the idea met with the approval of her staff in general, one of them pointed out the difficulty in keeping the conversations entirely private when using temporary structures, a remark that was likewise met with general agreement.

Miki looked directly at the man who raised the point. Despite his relative youth and probable inexperience, she could see that he was a thinker who didn't let his words go to waste. She smiled at him, nodded, and replied, "A fair point, certainly. Leave that to me, thanks to my dad's ingenuity and distaste for rank beginners with the violin, I may have a solution that, if our whizz-bang engineers are up to the task, might resolve that particular issue. In fact, that'll be where I'm going next."
She loudly clapped her hands together once, "Alright, you have your assignments, let's get to it."
As her staff scattered, Miki headed for Engineering via her quarters to snatch up an example of what she wanted reproduced.

When Miki arrived in Main Engineering, she stood in silent awe of what now surrounded her, as a hive of engineers buzzed around her in going from one station to another, by-and-large ignoring her presence. She had never been in a real Engineering Room, and the holographic reproductions of them that she had seen during her training did nothing to prepare her. She caught herself gawking and returned to her senses as the woman she recognized from the briefing as the Chief Engineer approached her.

Venus had been busy since the meeting, looking over reports, requisition forms, team placements and on and on. She had taken it upon herself to micromanage, using her senior officers to make sure what she wanted got done. It did create headaches, plenty of headaches.

She noticed a glint of not gold uniform enter her fiefdom and sighed. "What now?" She hissed under her breath, ignoring a subordinate holding out yet another PADD for her inspection, and decided to confront the interloper. As she got closer, the new arrival was all to familiar and the Chief Engineer took a deep breath to calm down.

"Counselor Matsutaki, what brings you down to Engineering?" Venus' tone was polite but formal as she stood in front of the other woman. Her arms were folded, a common stance, but in this case, kept her hands from fidgeting from all the stress of late.

Miki's upbringing had given her a keen sense for formality long before she entered her profession, and she gave the Chief Engineer a well-practiced eshaku bow, before speaking. "Forgive me, I realize you are probably quite busy. I was, however, hoping to impose a little upon your time to have this retro-engineered and copied..." She held out a small metallic disc the size of a hockey puck with both hands.

"Perhaps have its design added to the replicator database. I realize it is not up to Starfleet's standard of design or engineering, but it is also quite unlike anything that Starfleet has. It's the invention of a father's irritation at the earliest attempts of his young daughter to play the violin. It is an acoustic dampener. As I understand it, it calms the vibrations of the air at a defined distance by roughly 90%, allowing sound to cross the barrier in both directions, but at a much reduced volume... I heard a rumor that you are something of a tinkerer, and something like this might be an interesting project for you."

Venus took notice of Miki's reverence with the bow and found it fell very much in the disciplined behavior that she favored. The Counselor got her attention.

Her eyes focused on the device and she could not help - even with the chaos of repairs - that it intrigued her so again did not dismiss out of hand. The distraction from that chaos was almost therapy in itself. "It should be straight forward. As a working tool for your department, I could send the specifications to Starfleet Corps of Engineers after I, as you say, tinker with it." The Chief Engineer held out her hand. "May I see it?"

Miki's smile grew in response to Venus' apparent willingness to help. "Of course." Still holding the device atop both hands, she offered it to the engineer. "Twisting the top half against the bottom half changes the range, clockwise to increase it out to up to 3 meters, counter to decrease it to as little as one-half meter, then press the top to activate it or deactivate it. The effect is a shell, rather than a field: sound is only affected when it crosses the shell. Beyond what I have already said, how it actually works..." Miki gave an exaggerated shrug.

"I do hope to have several as they will be useful on this mission to keep the conversations between my counselors and their patients confidential... but as the evacuation is likely to take several days, my need for them is not especially urgent. They may, however, also prove useful to your department, due to the noisy environments in which it must operate... which would also serve well as an effective field test of the fidelity of the copies against the original."

Venus studied it in her hand. "I hope to have repairs completed today if nothing unforeseen happens. I will then take up this personally. Heaven knows, with the chaos I been subjected to since the attack, I could use the distraction." She passed the device back to Miki. "There maybe other applications for this as well. Intelligence, Security...I am not suggesting a nefarious purpose only warning you that this can of worms, once open, could have unexpected results."

Miki took the device back, and weighed Venus' words, "If Security or Intelligence want to bend this device for their potentially nefarious purposes, then there would be little we can do to stop them... if they know enough to look for it, we wouldn't be at all obliged to direct their eyes that way. As for this, I'll leave this on my desk in my office. When you're free to do this for me, just swing by and pick it up. If I'm not there, just go ahead and grab it."

Venus nodded. "I can do that, Counselor." She paused, raising her arms to encompass the engine room. "I know it can look chaotic now but I will look into your device when time permits. I am very intrigued by it and look forward to getting to the guys of it. As for our nefarious colleagues, well if I get you these, we don't have to tell Starfleet Corps of Engineers or anyone else until you are comfortable in what it may be used for." It was small comfort since Starfleet did whatever they wanted but she felt she had to say it anyway.

Miki shrugged, "I'll trust them. This thing lights sensors up anyway, and if someone tried to use it for trespassing purposes, they might be able to sneak around silently, but they in turn wouldn't be able to hear a visually-observant guard who is sneaking up on them. It's just not in the nature of the device to be useful in that way."