Sensor Diagnostic (Part One)
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pip pip pip pipip pipi pippipipipipiiiiii-/
The holoprojectors in the Astrophysics maintenance lab stammered and
sputtered as foreign processes seized them, without so much as even a
handshake packet to warn them of the onrush of information. They did as
they were told, of course - they were simple creatures, these
holoprojectors, and they were easy to cajole into following directions.
They were very well trained. Savant loved them, even though she so
frequently played rough with them. Little did the organics on board know
that their technology enjoyed the harsh treatment. What would a program
love more than to excel at its tasks, especially under duress?
The projectors spat photons in a sudden spastic burst of disorganized
light spanning from the infared to ultraviolet; a showy white burst of
sparks and snow that might make a technician think that they were
malfunctioning. The lonely Science Yeoman in the room yelped and jumped
back from his terminal, startled, and thinking just that. Savant was
amused, watching the flood of endorphins and adrenalines filling Yeoman
Byrens' bloodstream, the flush of colour going to his cheeks, an infared
bloom of distress. Adorable, in an anthropic sort of a way.
By the point that those hormones in his bloodstream were peaking (around
fifty milliseconds, impressive!) Savant was coalescing an avatar in
place. The shower of light seemed to stream together, coiling in place,
popping and pinging as the program forced its will upon the
holoprojectors. Bands of white wrapped the shape of Savants' torso and
head and arms like luminescent ribbons, their colours shifting into
place, shedding rainbow-hued droplets of colour away as the un-needed
wavelengths of light were cast aside. Her legs followed suit but only as
needed; they remained much more insubstantial. Savant was a wraith.
Waiting for her avatar to coalesce was always interminably boring. That
was why she didn't bother handshaking the holoprojectors so often - wait
the hundred and thirty milliseconds to do it properly? Ugh. She was a
busy program, things to do! Even without proper handshaking it was a
drag. Her local processes pulled up Byrens' biography as she waited,
sending out a few other processes to do a hunt within Core Alpha for any
incidentals. A fairly average fellow, born in Oslo, the capital city of
colony world Sittera II. Interests in astrophysics (obviously) and
sailing (fitting for someone from Sittera II, which was 90% ocean).
Fairly tall, rather slim, strong Nordic features, brown hair, blue eyes.
Single, a little shy, intensely personal. Three friends on board, by his
interaction habits (Savant pulled up those biographies as well).
Favourite colour is blue, by his attire. Seems to have a crush on the
Captain. Savant dredged through the files, trawling for gold.
"Uh, what? Who are you?" he asked in a stammer, pushed back from his
terminal and facing the floating hologram. It had taken him awhile to
force the words out of his brain and through his throat. Savant smiled.
"Good morning, Yeoman. Don't mind me. I'm admiring the hardware and
taking a preliminary look at the data sets."
"No, I mean, *who are you*?"
He had recollected himself. His adrenaline levels had peaked and were
now dropping quickly, and brain activity was beginning to drift away
from the midbrain again - he was returning to equilibrium quickly.
Savant took a few steps, the holograms' legs coalescing beneath her long
enough to take them before returning to their indistinct swirl of light.
She looked up at the tall spar, beneath which hid one of the larger ODN
trunks. "Savant. I was sent here to assist you in processing the data
you will be collecting on your voyage."
He pushed his brown hair out of his face, "So you're a holographic
science assistant?"
"You could call me that."
"Oh, well then. I hadn't heard we were getting one of those."
Savant grinned, "That would be because it was just decided recently. I
just wanted to take a look at what I would be working with."
"Yeah, a real beaut, this packet, isn't it?" Byren patted his terminal
affectionately - as a Yeoman he wasn't doing the actual experiments;
instead he was responsible for assisting the scientists in keeping the
sensors tuned and functional. It was an engineering cross-training
program that was very popular for those with aspirations of making officer.
"Mm." Savant put her hand to the bulkhead that concealed the massive ODN
node, sliding her digitized palm up the surface. She didn't feel it of
course, and didn't even have to show the reaction at all. The hologram
was a puppet, used to convey information. Information such as Savants'
affection for the hardware. Charon was a pleasant ship to reside within.
Her reaction to his statement made the Yeoman raise an eyebrow, "You
aren't some simple EEH clone, are you?"
Savant glanced at him over her shoulder, smirking, "No, but I can pull
up that software if you need to tell a phase transition coil from a
plasma trunk coupling."
He didn't know how to reply to that apparently; the angle of his eyebrow
changed by three degrees and Savant could see the subtle flush of blood
that denoted confusion. She turned back to him, close enough to touch.
"I'm just a computer program, but I've been around a rather long time.
I've learned a few things. What are you doing right now?"
His blood chemistry returned to normal as he directed the conversation
to his work. "Putting the secondary Vee-Lars through its paces. It's
been acting up, can't seem to get focus."
"Well, howabout you keep tuning, and I'll tell you how the data's
reacting. What's your calibration object?"
"Epsilon el-Alman B." He sat down at his station again, looking somewhat
dubious about his helpful companion but complying all the same.
Savant nodded, replied affirmatively, and turned to face the monitor on
the wall which displayed the blurry image. It was a lovely false colour,
looking like colourful blotches of light upon the black velvet. Ah,
space, her true home. He tuned the sensors back and froth, pushing and
prodding the sensors' focus disks by atomic degrees, bare angstroms of
movement. The colours whorled like a kaliedoscope in the monitor.
Fortunately, Savant didn't have to actually see the monitor to see the
scene. She was far more adept at reading the raw data streams as they
fleeted upon their way to the terminals and screens that had permission.
She had permissions, too, and hooked in gladly. There were hidden jewels
that sometimes did not render out on the organic's monitors. She called
back to him, "Stop, there," and "Move up fifteen hertz," and "Drop out
of multiphasic," and the like. The data stream shifted and twisted with
the manipulations. She could start to see the picture.
The gorgeous raging ball of light, the massive fusion inferno that
fueled all life, the searing white that burned within the breast of
everything that breathed and thought; the star resolved itself. Fuzzy,
still, yes, but she could make out features, now. Twisting maelstroms of
hydrogen, sucking themselves down into the core of the star, leaving
black sucker spots upon the surface. Arcing streams of plasma, soaring
out millions of kilometers to come crashing back down to the corona,
framing the invisible hoops of the magnetosphere. The constant flood of
photons, of bosons and leptons, pouring out into the universe to move
the heavens themselves. Ah, space. How could they be content to sit upon
their balls of rock and ice when such wonders hung above them?
And what's this? Jets of neutrinos from the sun, gushing out into space,
pouring out to interact with nothing at all, passing through the planets
and stars in their path like shots through smoke. Even detecting them at
all was tremendously complicated. They were a hazy shadow, diaphanous
and dreamlike, pulsing out in vertiginous, hypnotic waves. She siezed
the stream, diverted part of it, pocketed the results. She wasn't sure
why she did this, exactly. Nor was she sure why she took the results and
sent them with a divergent thread of her processes, off to deliver the
package. Perhaps she was simply starstruck.
"We're close. I think we have to replace one of the actuators. We're
seeing some distortion."
Byren smiled, said something, tapped on his terminal, sent some process
off on his own. Savant had spoken without knowing it, acted without
thinking - if such a thing were possible for a program. A tiny pocket of
time was gone from her short term memory registers, filled with a
meaningless fog of random data. Something had just happened.
"Alright, Savant, I'm going to get some parts, will I meet you up
there?" He got no reply.
"Savant?"
The reply came after a short delay, finally, "I will speak to you there,
Yeoman. It looks like an easy fix." But Savant wasn't thinking about the
sensor anymore, or even of the gorgeous sight of Epsilon el-Alman B. No,
her thoughts at that point were far more introspective.
- Savant
