A Matter of Communication

Posted on Sun Oct 26th, 2025 @ 12:40pm by Lieutenant Jennifer Matthews & Lieutenant JG Calanthe 'Cal' Diaz & Ensign Alexandra 'Lexi' O'Connery

Mission: Royal Mail
Location: Atlantis
Timeline: 450
2760 words - 5.5 OF Standard Post Measure

Jenni had been standing over the warp core, performing her morning diagnostic check over the intermix ratio, reaction timings, and crystal integrity. Over the last few weeks, she had noticed a degradation of the positron stream. Although such a degradation was slight, it was expected due to the introduction of non-human parts and fuel. Adapting the warp five engine to these changing variables was proving a challenge, especially when one had to let some things play out in a wait and see mode.

Even though this was her primary focus, Jenni was thankful when a crewman came along with the morning diagnostic reports. Each day, this distraction was equal parts welcome and annoying. Jenni knew that if she remained standing at the core's operating station, she would do so for hours. But each day, the diagnostic reports were showing more and more the wear and tear on Atlantis' systems. The ship may have been built for long-range travel and operation, but she was also designed for regular resupply. The longer that became unavailable, the more challenging it was to maintain hardware.

Jenni thanked this crewman and stepped down from the operating station. She began to sort through the list, marking known issues aside for tracking purposes. Most of the list, in fact, was filled with known issues. There was, however, a new one. Jenni took the list to her station and called up the maintenance logs to verify this new report. There was nothing to see on the logs that indicated any work had been done, or any flags for review. Frowning, she wondered if this was a bad diagnostic or a sign of a new malfunction. There was an easy way to find out, so Jenni reached over and thumbed the intercom button. "Matthews to Diaz. Are you seeing anything unusual with the comms array this morning?"

"Define 'unusual'."

The glibness of the Chief of Comm's response wasn't as much of a surprise as the inherent tension that sat behind it. Calanthe was a hard worker but it was a general preference to favour good humour and optimism when it presented itself, which tended to suggest a deviation sideways had already found the bottom of the barrel. At her station, Diaz frowned at the information in front of her, which still held the bulk of her concentration as she framed the portion of her reply that actually deigned to provide any information.

"We brought the updated translation protocols back online and now my relays are trying to sing to each other in Relian."

It, of course, was simply representative of another slice of alien initiative grafted onto systems that weren't exactly customed-designed to handle them. When fuel had been an issue and the need to conserve energy had whittled things down to the bare-bones of necessary consumption, the upgrade provided to them back on Relia had been deactivated. There was a way, they were pretty sure anyway, of reducing its processing load but it was a lot of new languages and the identification and translation protocols that sat behind them; important for plotting their way peacefully through unchartered territory, but frankly a pain in the proverbial on a day-to-day basis. Still, they had a passenger who'd been rendered incomprehensible by the deactivation, Cal had been somewhat hopeful that switching it back on would be simple.

She was, of course, a comedian.

"Bit early to tell if this is garbled code again or if some of the internal relays have kindly uncallibrated themselves again. The array itself seems..."

Calanthe screwed her nose up at her viewscreen.

"Ships don't go through menopause, right?"

"Oh god," Jenni replied back over the comm with a hearty chuckle. "Can you imagine if that were possible? The hot flashes alone..."

The engineer's voice trailed off as her mind simulated what a failure of the environmental systems would look like throughout the ship. One moment, everyone was walking around with the top halves of their uniforms unzipped and tied around their waists with bare bodies or undershirts all soaked and glistening with sweat. And then there was the inverse, frost and condensation forming on deckplates and bulkheads as temperatures were close to zero with crewmates slowly moving with blankets wrapped around their bodies for warmth.

Jenni shook her head and her mind returned to reality. "It's possible some of the other recent modifications wound up touching the Relian programming without us realizing. It's hard to keep a strong firewall between systems these days."

"Well, I can tell you one thing for sure." Cal, in the process of stretching for a padd, sounded a little strained. "Turning it off and back on again didn't work."

An elongated groan declared her over-extension, followed by the rushed release of a squashed breath as her posture resolved the issue and she transferred the data she'd been working on to her terminal ready for transmission.

"Which puts me out of ideas, I'm not even halfway close to fully understanding how these protocols work, let alone whether they're interfacing with our systems properly. I feel like everything was fine after the initial installation but the entire operational manual is in Relian, so..." The Lieutenant screwed up her face. "I'm open to suggestions. We kind of need to be able to trust it if it's in charge of making sure the locals don't think we're here to plunder their villages and steal their children."

Jenni didn't immediately reply. She glanced at the diagnostic reports she was holding, and then at the monitor at her desk. Both devices were less than helpful, displaying various numbers and gauge readings for other systems. The engineer had hoped that this brief pause would have generated an idea, but nothing came to her.

Finally, she replied, "I'm going to come up to the bridge. It'll be easier to figure out a solution together."

"I can do you one better," Calanthe replied, glancing at the chronometer to verify her guesswork. "I'm overdue for lunch, and once that's done, I have some relays to give a stern talking to. Meet you in the mess?"

Jenni smiled, having not realized the hour of the day either. "I'll meet you there in five minutes," she confirmed. "Matthews out." Jenni tapped the companel again to close the channel. She had a couple things to hand off to other engineers before departing for the mess hall.

---

Lexi was sure that her usual lunch buddy was standing her up and she had gotten up specially to meet her instead making sure she got enough sleep for second watch. She stood to finally get some food when the door opened and Calanthe walked in. Lexi offered a wave and indicated she was going to get food straight away.

Converging on the same location, Calanthe drew up beside and expressed her recent bout of frustration as a puttered sigh while she frowned at the day's offerings. "Jen's on her way, we've got the gibberish gremlins back and Leroux's pretty adamant that we're going to need the translation upgrades for this special job." She punctuated the term with invisible air-quotes and then leaned sideways in exaggerated apology to rest her head on Lexi's shoulder. "I'd share my chocolate milk to make up for crashing lunch with work-talk but I don't see any on the menu." Every once in a while, the oddest cravings for food they'd probably never see again flared up.

Lexi smiled at the woman and rolled her eyes. “You’ll have to share some of that nacho cheese dip the next time it’s on the menu.” The younger woman said smiling and patted her head. “Work talk is till talk but let’s get breakfast slash lunch.” She said not sure if she was tired or just hungry.

The door to the mess hall opened, and it was Jenni's turn to enter. It wasn't hard to spot Lexi or Cal in the mostly vacant room. It seemed that aside from the three women that there were only four other occupants, all of whom the engineer noted were on the overnight shift enjoying a little off-duty time. "Did someone say cheese?" Jenni asked, finding herself fondly remembering the last time she had nachos.

"One of us evoked the essence of cheese, yes," Calanthe confirmed, her nose wrinkling at the day's salad options. The menu had certainly expanded over the last couple of months but since that typically involved the cultivation of plants that were not of Earth-origin, it had become a bit of a shot-at-the-dartboard as to whether something was going to land pleasantly or not. "And I've done nothing to deserve cruel and unusual punishment so it must be you." The playful waving of a fork in Jen's face culminated in it being bopped gently against Lexi's forehead. "Someone has to have a fondue set in this god-foresaken part of the universe." Cheese, as has long been established, is pretty high up on the list of things Cal craves consistently but can never find any kind of satisfactory replacement for.

“Apologises that was me.” Lexi said with a small grin. She tried not to bring up the things they could no longer have but cheese was one of the things the protein re sequencer could not get right. The blondes eyes went cross eyed as her friend bopped her but she shrugged. “No one has come up with it but I bet if you asked the engineers they’d make you one especially as McManus made a still for booze.” She said fond on her fellow engineer.

"Booze is child's play," Jenni admitted with a chuckle, glancing over at the menu. "For cheese one needs dairy and dairy byproducts. We're gonna have to find ourselves a cow, which seems to be more and more less likely every day." Chuckling again, she slid open a cabinet cover to look at the not-so-appetizing sandwiches inside. "But fondue... fondue we can come up with. Warmer. pump, and the right bushings, we could set up some amazing chocolate fondue." With that, she selected what appeared to be some form of a cobb salad.

"I'm going to throttle both of you in a minute." Lack of cheese was one thing but fostering chocolate hope was borderline cruel. With her tray in one hand and the hand holding her cultery cupped against an ear to mimick a refusal to listen, Calanthe dodged away with a lackluster serving of pure disappointment and escaped to the table Lexi had already claimed.

"So, is it just me," she asked as the pair eventually joined her, "or is it starting to feel like the universe has a very definite plan to ensure we never get on top of anything? I woke up to quarters that were finally halfway to being warm enough this morning and I thought, finally; we had a plan, we stuck to the plan, the plan worked... And then I sat down at my work station and everything went to shit."

Lexi nodded as she sat down properly. She would never have started the conversation herself but she did think that the universe was very unkind at the moment in trying to keep them down on their luck. “I … yes.” The ensign reluctantly agreed.

"I thought that was clear when we wound up so far away from Earth," Jenni remarked, being the last to sit down. She had selected one of the sandwiches that appeared to be the best facsimile of roast beef, and a soup that she wasn't sure if it was paste or potato-based. Unsure of what to actually select, Jenni picked up one half of the sandwich and eyed it suspiciously.

The niggle of frustration that manifested as a flicker of a frown on Cal's forehead was more the result of succumbing to a gnawing sense of pessimism than the actual problem she'd woken up to. It was too early to put it in the too-hard basket, after all, and that wasn't exactly an option anyway given they were about to have need of additional translation protocols, whatever that meant. Normally, the comm. specialist preferred a tenacious approach but, god, if that wasn't just getting harder to default to these days.

"That was the part where you were supposed to say you've already come up with a clever solution for my communication network's identity crisis." A fork was once again utilised in combat, this time as a more vague swirl gave the impression she was trying to put a hex on the end of Jen's nose. "You're the smart one, remember?"

Jenni couldn't help but chuckle. Such was always the pressure on her and the engineering team to always come up with clever solutions to whatever problems came their way. "How else am I supposed to maintain my credibility as a miracle worker?" Jenni replied with a coy smile, picking up her spoon and waving it a bit like she would a magic wand before pointing it at Cal.

The engineer stabbed at the paste-like substance in the bowl, but kept the spoon suspended above the bowl with a portion ready to eat. "We need a firewall. Rather than try and integrate it into the communications system, we need to treat it like we would foreign software. Keep it separate and build a bridge between the two. It'll slow processing time a tad, but at least it'll work and you won't have to quickly learn Relian."

Lexi shrugged a little. “That is a better suggestion than what I have. I am sure William would like me not to speak Relian in my sleep.” Lexi had been taking a crash course in learning the language but it did come with the downside of she found it affecting her dreams and what she said in her sleep.

"Well it's either that, or maybe we all just start learning Relian and putting Standard behind us," Jenni said with a playful smile. Only part of her was serious. After all, if they really were going to be stuck out here forever with no hope of returning, one might as well start picking up the local quirks.

"Relian's not the issue here," Calanthe pointed out around mouthfuls. "The database they modified for us is meant to handle communications with just about anyone we encounter, at least in this region. And according to the Captain, we're likely to need that soon." Holding up a hand, she stemmed the flow of questions before it started. "Don't ask me, we've not been officially briefed yet."

Jenni shrugged off the thought. After all, even though she'd been the senior Engineer for a short time, Jenni still tended to stick close to Engineering or her own quarters most days. Spontaneous lunches like these were happening more often, and if the frequency kept increasing on this exponential curve, then perhaps she too would be more aware of what was to come on this vessel. "Right, the issue is a database that is overwriting our own technology because we incorporated it directly. Removing it, and indirectly reconnecting it through firewalls and APIs will allow us a chance to properly interface with it until we can integrate it the way we absolutely need it too."

"I have no idea about either issue," Lexi commented softly, picking at her food a little as the communication console beeped close by. The Ensign stood to her feet and went to it automatically. She listened to whoever was on the other end and nodded. "I will let them know." She finally said disconnecting the call. "Well, I would not worry about the brief you are both getting it in an hour." She explained.

The engineer's eyes darted from the table, looking past the ensign at the communications panel. Even as a senior officer, she found it odd that events would unfold as if magically and unknowingly summoned into existence by wishful thinking. "Well, I suppose there's never any rest for the weary. But at least we'll have a chance to finish lunch."

"And plenty of time to prepare a wizz-bang Jen Matthews' special so that I don't have to tell the Captain she's going to need to play charades with any aliens she wants to hob-knob with."

Calanthe's eyebrows bobbed with familiar mischief. Technically, it was a cross-collaboration that would involve her dredging her own qualifications out of the cupboard to pitch in, but what was the point of having clever friends if you didn't plead with them to make your life less miserable once in a while?