And if nothing else works…
Posted on June 26th, 2007 by Persephone Busard

The Atlantis’s chief engineer had been working non-stop ever since the hangover from the anniversary party lifted. Luckily, due to modern science and klingon coffee, that took roughly an hour to do. At the moment, she was in the science lab, in front of a material synthesizer, reading the results of a series of tests off her PADD.

So far, the results were not as she’d hoped. Percy had been attempting to create a more powerful fuel source for the cloaking device, but it just didn’t seem to want to happen. Despite all the research she’d done on the synthesis of dilithium into trilithium, and all the careful calculations she’d made, there were still several anomalies in the results. It irritated her. The process was simple enough, and the Atlantis certainly had the right kind of equipment, and yet everything that came out of the machine was useless! She’d tried rearranging the molecular structure, changing the polarity, and just using compression to squish the stuff together. And still, nothing. After the 31st attempt returned negative results, she left out a frustrated groan.

Machines NEVER did this to her. In fact, the vast majority of the time she seemed totally in tune with them. Others called it creepy, she called it comforting, and once, a therapist had called it psychologically unhealthy. The simple fact of the matter was that Lt. Busard just worked better with machines than she often did humans. And now this one was giving her shit. It was angering.

Busard took another sip of the heinously strong coffee on the lab counter next to her, and re-examined the situation (or rather, re-re-re-re-re-re-re…etc.-examined the situation). She projected the experiment’s structure on a hologram, and rotated it slowly, taking notes.

“Maybe if I insert….no, did that already. Or may-no no, did that too. Hm…ah hah!” She grinned at a small space in the structure. “There’s the problem!”

Quickly, she inputed her changes into the synthesizer, and excitedly fiddled with a stylus as she waited to see her creation. Soon, the machine gave its signal.

Beep deedly doot!

Her eyes went wide, but it wasn’t a happy kind of wide. The computer popped up the same message it had done for the past 31 tries, that the experiment was unsuccessful. To Percy, this meant that the computer just did the equivalent of flipping her off multiple times in several ways, all of them maddening. She growled, and angrilly kicked the base of the machine she stood in front of, before jumping back and yelping at what she’d just done. Great, she’d probably just broken a highly important computer. She was totally going to get fir- what on earth or any other planet of choice? Something on the screen had changed, and it wasn’t the stability. Looking closely, her eyes went wide again. This time, it was that happy, sometimes near-maniacal kind. She jumped up once, and yelled out again.

“YES!!!”

Several technicians that had been helping her looked at her quizzically. She looked to them and grinned.

“I kicked it and it worked!”

The technician she directed that comment to looked around in that “Please god don’t let her be talking to me” way. When he found his prayers unanswered, he sighed.

“Very good ma’am. Congratulations.”