"Eye in the Sky"

[Joe Manning 0]

"Just give it to me straight, Hawking. None of the technical mumbo-jumbo."

 

The Verbistul operative fixed Joe with his curiously red eyes and a blank humorless expression. The humans' development of the field of physics being a subject he'd only briefly studied in Starfleet Academy, it took him a moment to realize why this mercenary Captain just called him 'Hawking.' He considered how to best phrase an explanation. "... before our rendezvous with the Verbistul, during our brief pass over the away team's location, and now as the planet's rotation brings their location back into sight, we have collected scans of their -- "

 

"How exactly did we do that?" Joe asked.

 

The engineer blinked a dissatisfied blink and his expression grew even more humorless (if it was possible). "You told me you did not want a technical explanation."

 

Joe grinned. "Son, since you're new here, I'll excuse your poor grasp of the 'humor thy Captain' commandment."

 

The engineer sighed, but only inwardly. "As you know, we cannot sensor probe the surface ... both to avoid inciting the planetary defense network and to conceal the team's presence from the raiders. Thus we must rely on more conventional forms of data collection. In our case, the most reliable is to simply collect visual scans of the surface. For lack of a better way of putting it ... we are using the sensors as eyes. Only eyes capable of magnifying distant objects to thousands upon thousands of times the degree our eyes are capable of. Qob's sensors normally do this continually, watching the ship's surroundings and storing days of visual data in the computer, only with a limited resolution. Not quite as ... magnifyable.

 

"With our current lack of active sensors, we have configured the sensors to provide visual scans of a much higher resolution, capable of enough magnification to show us clear and detailed images of the away team and its surroundings. By reviewing the data we collected during our brief windows, we know of the team's two encounters with the drones as well as their current position in a planetary structure. We are watching the surrounding region as well, in order that we might respond to any overwhelming imminent threat."

 

"And ... this is affecting the computer?" The light over Joe's head flickered, almost as if it heared his voice and responded in kind.

 

"As I said ... " the engineer answered in an annoyed tone. "Days of visual data are normally stored in the ship's computer for later review. On top of that, we have recently collected hours of the more focused visual scans of the planet. Space in your ship's computer core is not what I would call freely available, and at the resolution we are collecting this data, the demand is great."

 

"I think we've got to purge our core again soon. I hate freein' up space," Joe said, reaching for his bourbon flask.

 

"As I am trying to explain," the engineer continued. "While your computer -is- approaching data overload, it has not quite reached that critical stage yet. I do not think the problems that the ship's systems are experiencing are strictly a result of space shortage. The space shortage is very likely exacerbating the problem ... that is, worsening it ... "

 

"I know what it means, son," Joe said, sipping from the flask.

 

"Right," the engineer swatted away the interruption and barreled on, "I suspect that there is a larger problem with the data structure of your computer core. The very act of moving data around to assign new nodes to incoming data is causing serious conflicts with the core's higher functions. Thus, things like control of the lights and displays on our terminals are erratic." He motioned to the terminals on the Bridge; on a few, the displays were still distorted, broken up into small boxes that shifted around the screen. "The more data we take on, the more demand is placed on the computer's storage functions, the worse these problems become."

 

"So what's causing it?" Joe asked. "I've had two engineers look into it over the past month; they couldn't find anything specific wrong. All I could get from them was quick-fixes that sounded an awful lot like what you just said -- helping the computer move data around."

 

"I do not know what is wrong," the engineer said. "Possibly, the age of the core is to blame ... but in such a case, I would expect slow data transmission to begin occurring long before this acutely erratic behavior. I would need to spend a good deal of time analyzing your computer core to pinpoint the problem. How qualified were your engineers?"

 

"Well, one was a Vulcan. The other ... the other's got a bionic arm." Joe took another sip from the flask.

 

The engineer blinked his red eyes. He shook his head, giving up on trying to understand the relevance of that observation. "Your short answer, no doubt, is that neither was as qualified as I am. Still ... if this problem has been ongoing for weeks undetected as you say, I would likely need a great deal of time to study the core. Based on my cursory diagnostic of the core, this is a deeply rooted problem you are dealing with."

 

"Bottom line," Joe said. "If this problem continues to progress ... how bad does it get?"

 

"I have no way of knowing without a thorough diagnostic, which would ultimately pinpoint the problem anyway, allowing us to prevent any such progression. If this could get bad enough to affect vital systems, every hour of imaging we collect from the planet is like another tick on a timebomb. Any other strain placed on the computer core could be similarly classified. My recommendation would be to replace the core entirely."

 

"Assuming that's not an option right now ... "

 

"We'll have to avoid backlogging the visual scans too much," the engineer responded. "Deleting anything older than an hour or so. Either that or establish a data stream uplink with Verbistul; store the data we collect in their core and access it from there as we please."

 

"Well, hell, kid," Joe grinned. "Shoulda just said that in the first place instead of hitting me with all this technobabble."

 

The engineer looked back at him, flustered.

 

"Go ahead and set it up with Maxwell," Joe continued. "And get on them diagnostics. Maybe you can find the problem. Your buddies can keep an eye on the surface team ... "

 

The engineer turned away from the command chair and strode toward the Bridge entrance, glad to be done with this exchange. Before exiting the Bridge, he turned back toward Joe. "For your information, I am 718 of your Earth years old."

 

Joe leaned around the chair in time to watch the engineer disappear through the door. He took the last sip of bourbon left in his flask, then turned it upside down. With a shake of his head, he said to himself, "Love to get ahold of whatever pill he's been takin' ... "