Photons and Forcefields

Posted on Sat Jul 21st, 2018 @ 4:23pm by Ensign Felicie Rivero & Lieutenant Cor Cordale

Mission: https://wellington.pegasusfleet.site/index.php/sim/missions/id/4
Location: Main Engineering

It was nearing the end of her shift and Felicie had been watching Lieutenant Cordale for about the last third of her shift. Every time she had finally gotten up enough courage to go and talk to him directly, someone else had beaten her to it and she had skulked away again.

Now though, almost all of the alpha shift engineers had left for the day and the number of crew members left in main engineering was minimal, and the Lieutenant had been alone for a good 30 minutes without interruption. Deciding that it was time to take her chance, Felicie practiced her lines in her head as she approached.

"Lieutenant Cordale, sorry to bother you, but do you maybe have a moment?" She hesitated before quickly adding, "I can always come back later, you know, tomorrow, or next week, if you're busy!"

Cordale, to his credit, was actually just finishing up a shift report. Nothing exciting, nothing major, but it was something that had to be done. He finished at just about the time that Felicie found her feet and voice and made her way to him. He turned and offered her a smile, but was careful not to show teeth. "Oh hey, no it's not a bother. Just finished up actually, what's up?" he inquired, turning to face her rather than just twisting his neck or his torso in that weird way that he could. Thux, it seemed, were rather flexible..

"I'm working on a bit of a project in my free time when I'm not on duty, using holotechnology. I'm okay enough with the holoprogramming, but I am not really all that good with the actual emitter programming and apparently you're the go to guy for all this kind of stuff." Her words all tumbled out one after the other as Felicie spoke quickly.

He gave a chuckle as he listened, and then gave a nod, "Well, it's definitely my field. Talk me through it, what's the project?" he asked, now interested in the jist. "And I'll certainly help. Glad to help, actually. Just take a breath and take your time. I haven't bitten anyone in years."

Felicie rubbed her temple quickly, Renee's voice ringing in her mind about not giving it all away. "So a friend of mine has a big event coming up, and I've been charged with decorations. I figured that real streamers and glitter bombs are gonna be a nightmare so I wanted to create small holo-emitters that we can set up so we throw down holographic streamers, glitter, confetti, maybe even some fire works or something. I can do the actual program and I've seen some basic schematics in the computer for small hard wired holo-emitters, but I would rather make them portable so they can be easily removed afterwards?"

That got the Thuxbrain moving. He cupped his chin with his prosthetic hand, and put on a thoughtful face. "Hmmm.. yeah, doing it for real would be a nightmare. You could host the event in the holosuite and call it a day, but I'm assuming by the virtue that that's out of the question. So the trick is holo-emitters on the move. Now, the thing that makes it real... well real-ish, is the projection of force. Can't really do that outside the holosuites without alerting security, so if you're not concerned with having them actually be something you could interact with, then mobile emission is actually somewhat maybe possible. Ish." he added.

"You'd need at least five emitters to ensure the room has good coverage, and to maximize hologram strength. See, they'll be able to criss-cross their emitters, to add realism and ensure that if one emitter is blocked by, say, a person, then the other four still have good strength. If you want them discreet, mount them in a small drone. I've got a few designs from some bar napkin doodles I did in my younger academy days if they'll help. But bear in mind, they're just image emissions. There's no tangible quality to them. The units would be too big to be discreet if they also packed in a force projector, and there'd be the risk of someone accidentally getting nudged or even hurt. We're nowhere near close to a true mobile holo-emitter yet."

Little did the Thux know.

"I'm not so much worried about quality, more so just the effect of it. Someone else is working on a disco ball type thing to set the scene of the event, so criss crossing may be difficult, especially as I had kind of had the idea in my head to mount them to the ceiling so that they were out of the way and less likely to be blocked or accidentally damaged by people moving about." Felicie paused thoughtfully as she contemplated for a moment. "Mounting them in drones could definitely work. I don't suppose I could like feed a napkin into the replicator and have it know what I want?" Felicie asked with a hopeful grin.

Cordale actually gave a good chuckle at that, "Please, you think I leave dangerous designs just laying around?" he asked, then nudged a PaDD on the engineering 'pool table' a bit more out of view. "Hehe, that'd be irresponsible." then after a moment, he gave another good chuckle, "Nah, I save them in my private files. When I get some time to really work on them, or give them some spare thought time, I update the files. They used to look like big golf-balls with repulsor struts at the four major corner points. Now, they more closely resemble rings, like frisbees but hollow in the center. They still use repulsion to achieve lift, but instead of four big repulsor units I hid one more impressive array in the inner hollow of the ring and slightly angled it down. I'm rather proud of it really." he said, a little puff to his chest as he did so.

"They'll work for stationary ceiling mounts, easy. There's an array around the underside, kinda like the phaser array of most Federation ships, except the photons it shoots out won't burn you." he chuckled. "I can pull up a picture if you wanna see? If they work for you, I can run off about six or eight from the replicator on Engineering's bill."

With a slight nod of her head and a grin, she laughed."I am suitably impressed! That would be fantastic though, are you real sure you don't mind?" Given how helpful he was being, Felicie momentarily felt a little guilty about the truth of the situation... but it was all a bit of harmless fun, right?

"Hey, we're all here to help each other, right? Big ole crew, big ole family, so yeah it's no trouble at all." he paused as he clicked up an image of the design, which looked *WAY* better now then it did several dozen revisions prior. "And, thanks. Most of the time I feel like I'm behind the Eight Ball, having to sorta prove myself. Claw up from the bottom because there are plenty of other less-exotic looking officers to choose from. I always get the odd feeling like someone is eyeing my office and they're just waiting for me to get transferred. It.. kinda feels good that someone appreciates my work. So, thanks." he then took a step back so she could check the designs.

"Say the word, and I'll whip up a few for you. When you're done, just feed them to any wall replicator and it'll recycle the drone. No muss, no fuss."

"That'd be great! Let me know when you want to do them, I'll be glad to be your assistant," Felicie replied with an simperingly sweet smile, batting her eyelashes wildly exaggeratedly.

Cordale chuckled, "Well, it'll take about an hour to print them all up, so you give me about two hours before you need them. That'll be an hour to print, and then an hour to program and test." he offered, "And stop doing that thing with your eyes, it's so weird looking." he chuckled.

Felicie laughed again. "Alright, How about at the end of duty shift tomorrow? That way I've got some time to practice with the setup and programming before I actually need them? I'll buy you a drink when we're done." and to that Cordale gave a nod, "Sounds like a perfect plan."

He chuckled, "And a drink sounds great."

OFF:

Lieutenant Cor Cordale
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Wellington

Ensign Felicie Rivero
Engineering NPC
USS Wellington