From: Katie T (kayteese_at_gmail.com)
Date: Mon Jun 18 2007 - 07:25:49 PDT
=/\= "Imagi(ni)ng Things" (Continued from Rahul's "More Uh-Oh") =/\= Location: USS PATRIOT Stardate: 2.70618.1507 Scene: Main Engineering Time Index: before Alix' post With the PATRIOT taking on as many refugees as possible, the ship was getting intolerably crowded. Only few areas were off-limits to civilians, and thankfully engineering was one of them. However, the effects of the massive operation were visible here as well. The CEO's Office and the engineering conference room had been taken over as storage space to free up more room in other areas of the ship. Bundles of varying shapes and sizes lined the spaces between consoles, and even the possibility of opening up the Jeffries tubes for additional storage was being discussed. Ginny was working with a group of engineers to balance out the power drain between different systems. Despite its many redundancies, life support was working as its limits. Food replicators were also operating far above recommended capacity, and the ship's waste recycling systems would not tolerate the added strain for long, either. The ACT Cadet was in the middle of doing calculations to increase replicator efficiency when someone handed her a padd and told her to bring it up to the bridge. Ginny frowned at being pulled away from her work, but as the newest member of the crew and still a cadet, there wasn't much she could say. =/\= Scene: Bridge Cadet LaGrande entered the bridge and found herself in the middle of a conversation between Commander Kenta and Tellah Cal, the Operations Officer. Ben was frowning, not happy with the way the situation was developing. Even before having seen the report Ginny carried, he knew that it was only a matter of time before the PATRIOT's resources would be drained. "What are the transport alternatives?" he was asking Cal. "We can't keep everyone aboard for much longer, can we set them back down somewhere?" The lieutenant shook her head. "Only the moon is close enough so you wouldn't need to change positions between transports, and right now no one can tell for sure whether EARTH or LUNA will be first to go down if worst comes to worst." Noticing Ginny, Ben Kenta motioned her to step up and took the padd from her. While he quickly skimmed through the information, Ginny took a peek at Lt. Cal's monitor. "You could set up a row of ships, each at the maximum transporter distance of the one before, and pass the transports on," the partial Caitian cadet suggested, then snapped to attention as the ExO's gaze fell on her. "At ease, Cadet," he told her. "We already extrapolated on that idea but found that the patterns wouldn't survive more than three jumps. They simply degenerate too quickly. And if you rematerialize and then dematerialize the individuals again after every other jump you'd be straining the transporters in ways that can only lead to disaster. Besides, we'd need several dozen quite powerful ships to cover the necessary distance, and we just don't have them." "What if we leave them in the buffers?" Tellah suddenly asked. "By using every bit of free memory and packing the patterns as tightly as possible, I think we could store at least several tens of thousands, probably as many as half a million people in our systems." Ben took a moment to process that idea. He thought he remembered that it had been used before, though he couldn't recall exactly when and where. It was certainly not a recommended procedure, but they didn't have much to lose. "Get on it," he said, then turned to Ginny. "Cadet LaGrande, you will help Lt. Cal. Locate redundant information and purge it to free up memory space. I'll talk to the other ships." =/\= Location: Unknown Planet Scene: Town Square Time Index: in the present now The brainwave monitoring devices had been fitted on Ensign Tam who was now moving around the town square, trying to "feel" or "see" something which resembled her earlier experience. There was a large platform in the middle of the square and she walked towards it, then climbed the ladder that led up to the raised space. It was empty. Tam found that curious because she remembered something about "unveiling an invention". She moved around, even got down on her knees to touch the boards but finally gave up. "There's nothing here," she called down to Jones and the others who had gathered around the rest of the equipment. "I'm coming back down." Niala set one foot on the ladder... and suddenly a cacophony of screams assaulted her ears. There were blurred faces and bodies trying to push past her. She stumbled and fell, but at the last moment managed to catch the side of the ladder and avoid tumbling to the ground. Down at the side of the square, the holoemitters came to life. At first the image they projected was hazy, but Ginny tweaked her controls and soon edges sharpened and the shapes became more defined. Everyone stared open-mouthed at the scene that unfolded before them. =/\= NRPG: Here's (finally!) a small offering from me. Sorry about my long silence, I had some trouble at work that meant working extra long hours and getting next to no sleep. I hope to make up for it even though my time is still more limited than I like. :( =/\= Katie T. Cadet Eugenie LaGrande ACT Candidate USS PATRIOT From HyperNews_at_youth.net
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