Posted on Monday 11 July 2016 @ 19:47 by Lieutenant JG Velin Ikiri & Captain John "Apollo" Barstow, M.D.

Mission: Old, New Ship
1220 words - 2.4 OF Standard Post Measure

ON:

Velin walked out onto the bridge and looked around briefly before turning and walking to the captains ready room. He was carrying several padds with reports and diagnostics results on them he found that most people found it easier to have all of the information on one padd while some like having multiple padds to review the data. Therefore not knowing the captains preferences in the matter he had done both. He waited for an answer as he pressed the chime."

John was laying on his sofa with his arm over his eyes when he heard the chime. He took a breath and swung his legs off the edge of the sofa and leaned forward on his knees, looking at the door, "enter."

Velin walked in and said, "Captain, i have a report for you from engineering the drill was less than what i would call effective but it did reveal one possible vulnerability. One which with your permission i would like to address."

Apollo nodded and motioned to a chair, "what kind of vulnerability?" he asked and sat up a bit straiter.

He sat down and said, "When the simulation forced the computer core to start outputting random data it caused a complete system freeze as was anticipated, However the other computer cores should have recognized the problem and initiated lock down and transfer protocols immediately. Failing that engineering should have been able to initiate the lock down. Now i am aware that this is partially due to the nature of the drill. However i have taken to ruing several simulations where the computer core redundancy system fails to occur and the infection of the system occurs much more quickly. In fact if for whatever reason we loose one computer core this way we may loose the others very quickly. Therefore i have come up with a few ideas to help prevent any sort of cascade failure like this in the future."

"I see," the CO replied with a nod, "it's a good thing the Commander ran that drill then," Apollo replied thoughtfully, "what did you have in mind to repair it?"

He nodded, "I have a number of ideas." He was worried how this would be revived so he decided to go with the standard options first, "One idea is to use a small tertiary core or a hard segmented part of one of the secondaries to run an independent isolation program that will enforce quarantine when necessary. The problem is that this secondary operation may become infected by the same problem that is running through the infected core, this is the problem with any other ideas that i have posited. What i would like to recommend is that we write a Borg algorithm to isolate the core behind a borg encryption field that would stop it from interacting with any other system on the ship, it would also prevent secondary problems." He waited wondering how the captain would react. From previous experience with the man he had higher hopes but was still uncertain. He laid out the padds for him, "I was uncertain in which way you preferred your reports so i made them on multiple padds and one all on one padd."

John nodded slowly and picked up the PADD with all the information in a single place and sat back. His brow furrowed slightly as he scrolled through the information and rubbed his chin. Barstow looked up finally and let the PADD rest on his thigh, "Lieutenant, you know better than anyone that any Borg tech or programming can have unforeseen deleterious effects....what kind of safe guards will you have to make sure the programming doesn't attract unwanted visitors or spread through the system? By definition anything Borg is the antithesis of staying isolated," he said, not outright dismissing the idea, he did want to hear the engineering chief out.

He expected this resistance and had come prepared for it, "With all due respect sir, your confusing borg nanoprobes with Borg programing, and while yes it is possible for both to get out of hand the latter is far easier to control and utilize than the former. Borg programing can and has been effectively used in the past for many various systems. I am not suggesting we alter any mainline system with it just create it as a tertiary backup. But it is a backup that will lock down the computer core. I have already written the appropriate coding and ran it within a simulated environment. It was successful in isolating the malfunctioning core in 5.76 seconds."

John sat forward, "Lieutenant, trust me when I say I was not confusing nano-probes and a computer program. If I was this would have been a strict no," he replied with a friendly expression, "as long as you can assure you can keep it contained I'll sign off on it. I trust you, I just don't trust the tech very much."

He nodded, "My apologies sir, in my previous postings my commanders paranoia on the subject was rivaled only by their un-education. I will make sure not to file you under the same category. In all honesty sir you continue to surprise me sir." He was happy to finally have a captain that was willing to give him a little leeway. "With proper controls and safeguards it is safe, i can also force the program to delete itself if i need to. Is there anything else you wished to discuss with me while im here?"

Barstow smiled, "it's alright, Lieutenant. While I was a Marine I saw a lot more than most ship commanders have, taught me to keep an open mind because you never know what will save your life," he replied before nodding, "there is one other thing. We have a few families aboard as part of the two hundred or so civilians and an over abundance of briefing rooms, however, we have no educational facilities. I'd like to fix that. Do you think you can get your crews to do a little remodeling on deck eight, change that group of meeting rooms into an educational area?"

Velin blinked and pulled up the schematics for that deck up in his head, "Well it has all the access to power and the ODN network it needs in fact well have to make sure none of the children can pull from the central LCARS database without teacher approval. However all of the neccisary items for the basic setup are in the computer. I'll need to consult with whoever is in charge of the school system on-board to talk about how they want everything set up but so long as they dont have too extreem of requirements i think we can accomplish this in 3 weeks."

John nodded, "excellent. Lieutenant Tan's wife is going to be heading the school, though I'm not sure if she's on board yet, check with him," the Commander replied, "that's pretty much it. I'm sorry you have gotten so much work already."

Velin nodded and stood, I'll start removing the furniture and the like and preparing the rooms. Have her contact me at the earliest possibility." With that he turned and headed for the door.

OFF:

Commander John "Apollo" Barstow
Commanding Officer
USS Merlin

Lieutenant JG Velin Ikiri
Chief Engineer
USS Merlin