Personal Log - 65022.9: Part 2

Posted on 29 Sep 2017 @ 3:33pm by Commander Aren Ban

757 words; about a 4 minute read

Previously
Aren nodded. "Very well. I will see you at my office this evening at
1800." He said.

"Thank you, sir"
Continued

=== Ban's Office - 1800 ===

Aren sat at his desk, as we waited for the Cadet to arrive. He wished that he had been able to give her attention earlier in the day, but there had been a staggered briefing that had happened earlier in the day that was required for all new instructors. Really it had been rather pointless but such was the nature of things. To keep himself busy before his 1800 appointment arrived, Aren had started working on quiz for the class in the morning.

His bell rang promptly at 1800, and when the door opened the young cadet was there, still in the plain gray uniform the students wore for everyday duties on campus. "Cadet Neaera Aurae, sir. Is this still a good time?"

Aren had stood and answered the hatch. He nodded to the cadet. "Of course." He said as he motioned for he to take a seat. The room was small and spartan, with a small desk and terminal occupying the center, which had two chairs in front. Just behind the desk was a small book shelf containing a mixture of actual printed works and PADDs, mostly technical manuals and reference materials. "You spoke earlier that you were having some trouble with sensor interface?" He asked, hoping that we was remembering correctly.

"Yes. I just can't figure out how to get the multi strand interface to physically wire in to the Isolinear circuits. I know the theory, but everytime I try and do the maths, I either end up with a loose end, or not enough connection points." Neaera let out a frustrated huff. "And then when I redo it, I end up getting a different configuration entirely."

Aren rubbed absently at his chin, before nodding. He leaned over to his terminal and typed in a few commands bringing up on of Commander Ch'sarat's schematics where the solution required physically connect the multi strand interface to an isolinear circuit. "Please work through this problem, step-by-step, and out loud. I want to hear and see your thought process as you work on it. I will be here to help you if you get stuck." He said wanting to see where she was making here mistake.

She stared at the assorted optic wires. "The thigh bone is connected to the knee bone..." she muttered under her breath, before starting to flick through the bundles of wires on screen to check what she had. "High resolution imaging bundle to the to core processing connectors; Electromagnetics feed connects at two to one ratio, Signal booster for long range scans to every third connection, subspace radio array splices to primary audio pickup," she hesitated, cycling through the bundles of fibres highlighted on the screen. She could never remember which one was the primary vs secondary. Audio pick up was one of those overlooked functions, considered so prehistorically simple that no one should need to have it labelled. but all those wires, some no thicker than a thick hair, looked the same when all in one big bunch stashed behind a bulkhead panel. The tip of her tongue poked up as she flicked back and forth between two choices for the pick up, and then decided on one, almost at random.

"Mass/Gravity sensor connects to astrometrics feed," she shuffled through the remaining wires, picked the one she thought was correct. Then quantum particles, Leptons, bosuns, quarks, gravitons, tachyons, chronitons," she plugged each into a thick bunch at the back of the receiving bundle, "and thorons and nadions and...not again..." She sighed. She'd run out of wires.

Aren watched what she was doing, jotting down a couple of observations as she worked. When she had run into a dead end, Aren knew what she had done wrong. "You did very well, but I know where you went wrong. It was when you are connecting the signal booster for long range scans. You are connecting it to ever to third connection, which is correct, but," Aren moved some of the connections to point to the small pin connector, "you can create a sort of "make up" connection here, to compensate for the fact that we used a 20 wire instead of a 24 wire connector for the main power interface. Where you started to connect the mass/gravity sensor, there is enough connectors and power here." Aren pointed to where she connected the astrometrics feed.

To be Continued

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