A Little Harmless Fun

Posted on Mon Dec 23rd, 2019 @ 11:04pm by Chief Petty Officer Benjamin Thor & Captain Abigail Laurens

Mission: Astraea Jollification
Location: Engineering

Xiara was meant to be running routine scans of the engineering systems and micro calibrating the bio neurals on deck four, a task she had found particularly repetitive and boring. Instead, she had been working on something else, something that was definitely a lot more entertaining and enjoyable, and she was pretty sure she was about ready, she just needed someone to help.

The question was who?

Ensign Cable?

No, he was definitely FAR too straight laced. He'd run straight to the Chief Engineer, if not the XO herself.

Her gaze fell on Chief Petty Officer Benjamin Thor, a smile quirking at the corners of her mouth. She'd not had a lot to do with him, they'd shared polite chatter once or twice, but he was definitely a probability. At least on the surface he'd seemed pretty laid back.

Walking across engineering, she stepped up next to him, brushed a shock of blonde curls back from her face and offered a grin. "Hi Friend!"

Ben felt a slight shiver down his back, he put the PaDD he was looking at down and turned round to the source of the voice. "Hi, ummmm" Ben looked closely at the uniform for a moment not quite recognising the officer instantly, "Ensign. Whats up?" he added somewhat recovering his composure.

"So..." Xiara grinned broadly, showing off perfect white teeth. "I have this little project I'm working on, you know, just for some fun, and I kinda need someone to help me finish it off. How do you feel about having a little fun?"

"Interesting, well side projects especially around this time of year are encouraged" Ben said, "what can I do to help?"

"I'm having a little trouble with the final stage of it. I'm toying with holographic technology but I want to expand it to incorporate internal transporters, i'm just having trouble tying it together effectively," Xiara said easily, deciding that the best way to handle this was going to be baby steps. No one wins at cards if they reveal their hand straight away.

Ben thinks for a moment, "Holograms and transporters, hmmmm how are you trying to tie it together? Transporting something in sync with a hologram doing something?" Ben asked a little bemused at the issue.

Xiara nodded. "I can show you if you want? I have the program up on my console," she said, motioning toward the console she had been working on previously.

Ben followed Xiara to her console and started looking through the program with her.

"So, it's set to run on a timer," Xiara explained. "It interfaces with the ships chronometer so it will self activate at a pre-programmed time. When it activates, the program starts running. About five minutes into the program, the program needs to interface with the transporters to transport an object from one location to another, WHILE, the program is writing. Basically, the program is a rendition of Santa Claus coming down a fireplace to deliver presents, but the present that I want it to deliver needs to be real, not holographic."

"ahhh a Christmas thing" Ben muttered to himself under his breath, "Are these presents going to be kept or placed on a transporter at this specific time, kept in the transporter buffer or are you thinking more along the lines of replicating them but outside the replicator using the transporters?" Ben asked in a bit of a hurry.

"I suppose it could be done either way. The gift has already been created. It's a small gift basket, so I suppose it could easily be stored inside the pattern buffers," Xiara replied. "Would that make it easier to access and complete the transport?"

"Well... it would make it harder for someone to just move it at the last moment unless someone was keeping an eye on it." Ben thought for a moment, "I think the main issue is that programatically accessing the transporters is generally off limits to make sure that some unauthorised access or virus doesn't result in the crew being beamed into space. We could probably get one of the shuttles transporters to do it though, if we trigger a subroutine via communications channel."

"Oh, I never thought of that!" Xiara exclaimed. "I mean, I guess the other option could be to program the gift idea into the replicator, but then there's still the same issue of how to get it from the replicator to the tree I guess." She sighed. "What would you suggest? Do you think the shuttle is the best choice?"

"I think the shuttle is the best option, without using a holodeck or suite replicating outside of the replicator is a little harder to program. The shuttle because of its weaker transporter is a little easier to work with."

"Okay, so how do I program this to interact with the shuttle?" Xiara asked. "Sorry, I probably sound really dumb. I didn't get to do much in the way of holo programming at the Academy."

"Not done much holo programming myself, limited need back on the farms." Ben started, "What we need to do is add a couple of lines of code a few seconds before the present needs to be materialising send a communication to one of the shuttles instructing it to run a custom subroutine which we need to program into it so something like this." Ben tapped away a little writing a couple of lines of code picking the target of the communication to be one of the Type 9 shuttles and setting the subroutine to be 'Hotel-Oscar-Hotel-Oscar-Hotel-Oscar'.

"Admittedly we now need to program this into the shuttles computer, might even have to bribe Will? to look the other way as for why a shuttle would be active during this." Ben said slightly questioningly.

"Bribery, now that's a language I understand," Xiara said with a grin. "Will, is that Lieutenant Gunnison? The Operations guy?"

"Yeah... don't s'pose you don't know him well enough on how to keep him quiet on the goings on do you?" Ben asked

"I can always offer to share the program with him? I mean, he has a kid doesn't he? Maybe his kid would like to see Santa?" Xiara shrugged. "Worth a try at least."

"Sounds like it is worth a shot" Ben said, admittedly wondering what Santa looked like a little himself.