New Dawn (Wandering Engineer) (19 page)

"So what's it for?" he
asked casually.

The Admiral snorted.
"Confinement. It's a restraint device for people who are a risk of injury
to themselves." He got up and checked the status. The ultrasonic machine
was up and running normally. "All clear," he said and nodded.

The doctor had a wicked gleam in
his eye. "So how does it work?" They both watched as Mindy danced
around, trying to buckle the straps.

"You wouldn't would you
doc?" the Admiral asked, chuckling softly.

"Oh, just watch me,"
the doc answered.

"Well, she has it on
backwards. The zipper goes in the back. And the arms fold over the chest, the
buckles lock together behind her back. The other straps go around the arms,
and...” He cleared his throat, "Between her legs to lock the jacket
on."

The doctor smiled grimly.
"Thanks. Are you going to work on biobed four?"

 The engineer shook his head.
"Still waiting on parts. I should be going." He walked out, looking
over his shoulder as the doctor got up and walked over to Mindy. The guard by
the door snorted. "Oh Mindy, let me show you how to put that on," the
doctor said with a mischievous tone. He put his hand on her shoulder and turned
her about.

She grinned innocently.
"Okay doc! Bye mister Admiral! See you later!" She fairly jumped up
and down. The Admiral chuckled as the guard led him out.

"Another virus has been
uploaded into the net," Sprite reported as he checked the stats. He
grunted. Sprite had turned the ship's AI's firewall and antivirus software back
on, but someone kept bypassing them to upload crap.

"Great. How bad?" he
asked.

Sprite sent him the log.
"Not bad, just a phishing Trojan. Easily handled. I took the liberty of
inoculating the mainframe and isolating the source for later."

He nodded. He looked up to the
guard. "There was another virus infection in the mainframe. I got it,” he
explained. He felt Sprite's version of disapproval but ignored it. "We
will need to check all external memory devices and isolate viruses," he
said. She looked confused.

"A virus is bad, it can do
damage to the ship if you don't have your defenses up," he explained. Her
face cleared as she nodded. "I turned the antivirus software back on, but
someone keeps bypassing it to load...” Sprite fed him the name on his HUD,
"Macho men from Ares colony." He shrugged. She blushed. "I'm
guessing an off duty person's book or entertainment cube," he said dryly.
Her cheeks colored a bit more.

"So, what is antivirus and a
fire....wall?" Jennie asked as he flicked through the subroutines. The
admiral nodded. "Computers use a lot of terminology...that means words
from different things. In this case antivirus software is a computer's version
of an immune system. It protects the computer and its data from computer
viruses," he explained. She looked even more confused so he smiled.

"A computer virus is a nasty
program, designed to breach security and do malicious harm to the computer
network or the user," he said. Her face cleared.

The guard looked up, then pulled
out a tablet and began typing fast. He glanced at her and shrugged. "How
do you spell computer?" she asked him. He gave Jennie an amused look.
"C.O.M.P.U.T.E.R," he said, spelling it out for her.

She nodded; typing it in then
looked up. "What about Network?" she asked.

He grimaced and obliged.
"Anyway, a firewall is a piece of software designed to prevent
unauthorized access to a computer network." Jennie and the guard looked
confused. "Like that," he said pointing. He pointed to the hatch.
Jennie nodded.

"Can you spell Un um...That
word?" The guard asked confused.

Jennie snorted. He sighed
exasperated. "Let me see that." Reluctantly she handed over the
tablet. He typed in the word, and then flicked through the menu.

"What are you doing?"
She asked suddenly alarmed.

"There," he said
finishing. He handed it back to her.

She glanced at it and saw
"What are you doing?" on the screen. "What?" She looked up
confused. Then back down to see the word on the screen.

"I turned on the speech to
text recorder. It'll convert speech into a text file for later editing,"
the admiral explained.

Jennie's eyebrows arched upward
in surprise. "Neat. I thought they were just for stories and games,"
Jen said. He shook his head and grunted.

"Electronic tablets are much
much more then toys,” he said. He nodded to the display. "Shall we?"

He flicked through the menu,
pointing out and explaining each icon, its purpose, and sub menu. "You
see, a computer is in many ways the electronic version of a living thing."
He typed a bit more. "We have the immune system, antivirus and firewall
programs like I explained before... right here." He pointed. "This
displays their status."

“Then we have the network, and
its maintenance," he said. He pointed that out, bringing up the stats.
Jennie nodded excited.

A tiny hand darted in and touched
a control. "What does this do?" a small girl asked. He looked at the
hand, and then followed it to the young woman.

"That is the life support
controls for this section," he said. He clicked the icon, and a status
screen came up. "You see here are the temperature data, fan speeds, and
atmospheric levels." He frowned. "It seems we still have work to do,
some of the fans and sensors are off line." He looked over to the girl who
blushed. "You see, sometimes the life support systems can sniff out a
problem before the diagnostics in engineering can."

She looked confused.
"How?"

He pointed to the screen.
"Well you see if there was a temperature variance we could track it to
localize it, to find its cause. It might be a short, or a breach," he
explained.

She shivered. "We lost Tasha
to a breech," she said shivering.

He nodded. "Alarms sound if
that is imminent, but only if the sensors are working," he said. She
nodded. 

“I heard that the replicator can
make plants?” Kess asked, eating a leaf of lettuce.

“Where did you hear that?” Molly
asked.

“Oh here and there. So is it
true?”

Molly shook her head. “No,
according to the Admiral, and the records he found for us, no, they only change
things around, they don't make it.”

 Kess looked confused. “Come again?”
Molly sighed.

“Okay, what the replicator does
is take matter, like metal, and re-arrange it into the shape you want, say this
fork.” She held the fork up. “Now it can't make the individual atoms, it can
only take what we supply and move them around to get the right shape,” she
explained.

Kess nodded. “But what about the
food replicators? And the sickbay ones?” She sat back triumphant. Molly smiled.

“Well, the food replicators take
a substrate, the stuff in that tank and use it to make the food and plastic
items.” She pointed to the sandwich spread. “It takes let’s say, algae, and
re-arranges them into the thing you want. It resembles the original. Taste,
texture... But it isn't perfect.” She took a bite. “But it is nutritious.”

Kess smiled. “So I guess I won’t
be out of a job huh?” she asked.

Molly looked up alarmed. “What
ever gave you that idea?” she demanded. She shook her head vehemently. “No! We
need fresh food! We need the raw materials to feed into the replicators, and
also to feed the animals. I couldn't live without your fruit salad!”

Kess smiled. “So it doesn't make
life?” she asked. Molly shook her head.

“Nope, it just takes cells and
re-arranges things,” Jennie butted in, setting her tray down. “This seat
taken?” she asked. She turned the chair, and then straddled it. “The Admiral
said that when something organic needs to be made, we take a cutting, like you
do in the greenhouse, then clone it and grow it into the shape the doc wants.”

Kess cocked her head. Her eyes
had a distant look in them. “I think I understand. Thanks ladies.” She nodded
politely and left.

“Something I said?” Jen asked,
spearing an olive.

"I hesitate to ask..."
Irons said. He turned to Molly.

"Ask away," she said
flippantly.

He shrugged deciding to dive in.
"Okay, I was wondering how you deal with um...feminine needs. And
contraceptives."

She blushed furiously. "Um,
that is kind of a personal subject," she said clearly uncomfortable. She
squirmed a bit.

"Admiral, from her reaction
there has been a social regression of body taboos." Sprite observed,
sounding amused.

"Okay, I'm guessing you use
old school methods," he said. She squirmed looking away. "So, how
about those Nicks?" She looked over to him suddenly confused. "Sorry,"
he said. He felt a small wash of regret. "Old joke. Anyway, let’s get this
emitter aligned."

"What's this about a
website?" the morale officer asked. The Admiral nodded to Tsunade the
moral officer as she came over and leaned against a bulkhead. A work crew was
wrestling with a plasma conduit nearby. He was letting them do it so they would
gain confidence in performing the task themselves.

"I set up a place in the
computer network with my lectures on repairs and notes on other things for the
crew to look at," he explained.

She looked confused. "Okay,
I didn't know you could do that," she said slowly. He nodded. "Why
are you sharing this?" she asked.

He grimaced. "It will make
repairs go faster."

He waved to the girls working on
the electrical lighting down the corridor. "Already they've figured out
the basics of lighting, and some of the basics of computer tech."

"Yeah the very basics,"
Sprite commented dryly.

He grunted. "With more time
to learn and explore, they should pick things up faster, and move on to more
and more complex jobs," he said, sounding hopeful.

The moral officer nodded.
"So can you show me how to make one of these, what did you call it? Web
signs?"

He chuckled. "Websites.
There's a tutorial on the web; I can show you how to access that. It'll walk
you through the steps on how to make the site. I'm going to set up an e-mail
system, but not right now," he said. He waved to the girls wrestling a
plasma conduit section. One of the gravity collars slipped. "I gotta go,
bye," he said hastily.

He rushed over and caught the
weight before it slipped. "Okay, um, I'll just get back to you when you’re
not so busy..." the moral officer said. He grunted as she walked away.

"Okay, we have here a fan;
do you know why we need it?" Irons asked. He turned to Molly who shook her
head.

"Cooling?" she asked.
He nodded. "But I thought it had heat pumps?" she asked. He nodded
again.

"Every electronic device has
heat pumps, and heat sinks, but they are only sixty percent efficient. We still
need ways to dissipate excess heat in a controlled method."

 He tapped the fan. It was stuck.
"Most likely this one burned out. Since it was out it couldn't dissipate
heat. Heat shortens the life of a component or can cause it to fail," he
explained.

Jennie nodded in agreement.
"So is that what happened here to that CPU?" she asked as she  tapped
on the heat sink with her index finger.

"Yes. The net threw a lot of
stuff onto this machine, when its fan died it couldn't handle the stress over
time and failed." He pulled the CPU and heat sink module, and handed it to
Molly. "It's junk now, but you can salvage the heat sink. The fan and CPU
can be used as teaching aides or salvage." He plugged in a new CPU, and
then spread caulk on the top.

"What's that?" Jennie asked
wrinkling her nose.

"Thermal grease, it
dissipates the heat, transmitting it to the heat sink and up to the fan,"
he explained as he smeared it. She nodded. He strapped on the new heat sink fan
unit. "Okay, let’s see... Memory is seated; heat sinks are okay, thermal
exchange..." He checked. "Okay, looks good," he said with a nod
to her. He checked the wires. "Each of these ODN cables can become
unseated, or melt if they're exposed to too much heat." He checked each
one. "All look okay. Power supply is on...” He flipped a switch.
"Booting," he said. “So far so good,” he said. They smiled. A small
LCD attached to the board ran through the post.

"Okay, we have a life
again.” He waited until it booted to the second stage, then stopped.
"Okay, hardware is ready," he said. He inserted his link into the
network and then uploaded the software overlay to the blank server. "Okay,
loading... all right, drivers are installing now." Fascinated the two
girls crowded each other to see the LCD.

"Okay, server is up and
running. The net is now a little bigger, and one step closer to being
repaired," he said. He let them have a look then pushed the tray back into
the server tower.

"Neat. That’s all there is
to it?" a girl asked.

He shook his head. "No,
that's if everything goes right. If the cards were bad or not inserted right,
or a cable was bad or loose, then we would have had to diagnose things."
He shrugged.

"Oh! There's some code on
this drive! Sprite sounded enthused. "I can use this! Nice! It must have
been knocked out when the ship went down but before the purge...hmmm... Yes,
operating code okay...”

He ignored her monologue and
turned to the students. “Okay, the next tray... this time, Molly you try
diagnosing it."

She gulped. "Okay..."

Molly looked up as the speaker
crackled, and then a klaxon blared. "Attention, everyone, we have a lot of
turbulence ahead, brace." Molly set the toolbox down by her feet and
grabbed the strut. The engineer grabbed a nearby strut with his free hand. The
ship shuddered for a moment, and then bucked. "Wow! Must be some strong
grav sheer!" Jennie called from behind them.