Scientific Notation

[Tachyon 0]

“Scientific Notation”

Stardate 0511.26

Lieutenant Zack Chen and Lieutenant (jg) Tandaris Admiran

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Chen looked up from the PADDs, his face a tight mask of disbelief. Just to be sure, he closed both eyes, switched the PADDs around, and opened his eyes again. The numbers remained unchanged. With a slow sigh, he decided to face the facts. The figures he had used to calculate the regeneration of the dilithium crystals had been wrong. Way off, in fact.

 

Not exactly wrong, per se. The figures themselves were correct, they were just in Cardassian scientific notation. Cardassian scientific notation was a form of measurement so bizarrely complex that even the Cardassians had long since given up using it. For some reason, the Morningstar’s overworked, under-maintenanced computer had decided to start supplying all of its calculations to Chen in the form of Cardassian scientific notation.

 

Chen looked around engineering, which was relatively quiet as the Morningstar headed back to Camelot Station at high warp. He spotted Lieutenant Admiran working on something at a console at the other end of the room. Chen got up and approached the Trill, PADDs in hand.

 

“Hey, Admiran,” said Chen, “do you have a moment?”

 

Tandaris looked up from his work. “Wha? Oh, yes, sir, I do. I’m just realigning the phaser arrays. They need recalibration after all of the repairs. Why, do you need something?” He was, in fact, quite busy. With the repairs still taking place during the long voyage back to Camelot, the phaser arrays were the least of Tandaris’ worries. But he liked Chen, and the science chief looked like he had a perplexing problem on his mind.

 

Chen held out a PADD, which Tandaris accepted. “These numbers . . . they’re all in Cardassian scientific notation.”

 

“So?” Tandaris failed to see the problem.

 

“Well, the computer gave them to me. I want them in Federation standard.”

 

Tandaris grasped the issue now. He tapped at his console, bringing up the computer’s mathematical database, and ran a few simple calculations. “Wow,” he raised his eyebrows, surprised. “That’s ah . . . wow. It’s apparently been doing this since we landed—a malfunction in its configuration settings, no doubt. I can fix it in a few minutes.”

 

“That’d be great,” said Chen. He didn’t bother mentioning that this small mistake could have cost them their lives had even one of the equations produced a number in Federation Standard.

 

Tandaris made some more adjustments to the computer. As the repairs continued, it was becoming more and more responsive, but small errors such as these continued to crop up repeatedly. He decided that along with the power allocation subroutines, he would have to take a look at the computer’s self-maintenance programs and see if he could improve those. It was quickly becoming evident that Morningstar had been fitted with a computer that was not as advanced as some of its other systems, which left the prototype a bit unbalanced. And Tandaris was fast learning that the Gamma Quadrant was a place where you didn’t want to be unbalanced for long.

 

“There you go, Lieutenant,” said Tandaris. “The computer should behave, for now.”

 

Chen took his PADDs back and nodded. “Thanks. I was slightly concerned when the result of the mass-energy conversions came back at 1333 electron volts. When I typed that into the computer, it gave me quite a scare.”

 

“I thought the numbers were consistent when dilithium crystals were not a factor, but now that you told me they were in Cardassian scientific notation, I can see where the problem originated,” said Tandaris.

 

Chen and Admiran conversed for the next few minutes on the inadequacies of mass-energy equations when real-time models were not available.

 

“Once I knew something was wrong and those figures we calculated were too high, the whole procedure ended. Good thing Mr. Defarge opened the magnetic aperture wide enough for the rest of the stuff to in. Or else, we might have had more than a slight overload.” Chen choked on a few particles himself before checking his PADD.

 

“Argh.” Chen choked again. “That’s where this variance came from! Well, you’ll happy to know, it is 236.7 eV per electron in a 95% efficient warp core.” Chen looked satisfied since he didn’t have to rewrite the entire physics on antimatter combustion.

 

Then Chen excused himself to go get something to eat before turning in for the night. Tandaris still planned to work for another few hours yet—he really wanted to get that phaser array calibrated while he had all the frequencies carefully arranged in his mind.

 

“Hey . . .” Tandaris said to himself, a thought forming in the back of his mind. “But if . . . oh, no. . . .”

 

All of those painstakingly generated frequencies had been calculated before Chen had brought the computer error to his attention. Which meant that, unfortunately for Tandaris, he would have to begin the recalibration all over again.