Working out the Kinks

Posted on Wed Jun 30th, 2021 @ 9:15am by Lieutenant Commander Bonnie "Bon-Bon" Durnell & Lieutenant JG Avarak

Mission: Gamma Quadrant
Location: USS Sunfire
Timeline: Current-ish

Using the science lab to build and construct the yet-to-be-named device, Avarak and Bonnie worked mostly silently with one another. The only communication was 'pass the spanner', and that needs to be connected there. They were professional and dedicated to the craft of making this thing work.

After the second hour of tinkering, Avarak had stopped keeping track of the time. He inserted the interphasic coil spanner into a recess of the Heisenberg Compensator and recoiled in pain.

Reacting Bonnie quickly turned, "You, okay? What happened?" Her concern trumped her own work as she understood some of the dangers if the device they were now building. It wasn't a child's toy.

He looked at Bonnie and deadpanned. “I am in…incredible pain.”

Feeling already as though her bad luck was sprouting it's ugly head she began having a mild panic attack. Her hands began shaking, "Um, what can I do? Are you stuck? Can I," She started to move around to get a better view of his hand. "Ooh, that doesn't look good." She immediately regretted not having a warning label on her forehead.

He looked down at his right hand and saw what looked like a low-grade electrical burn. “There is a medkit in the console on the wall there,” he nodded his head at the console on the other end of the room.

Bonnie took the nod as a suggestion to get the medkit from the wall. She crossed the room quickly, pulled the panel door down and hastily grabbed the medkit. As she closed the panel cover, she struck the medkit, causing it to fumble and spin out of her hands onto the floor. After it had slid to a stop, she collected herself, gave an apologetic look at Avarak, then walked calmly over and picked it up again.

This was not going the way he expected; every time they thought they’d figured out the issue, a new one developed. It was one thing deriving equations for a theoretical paper, it was another thing entirely to conduct experiments to prove its veracity. Bonnie had retrieved the MedKit and took the dermal regenerator contained within; its soft humming healing his skin. He looked up to see the concern on his shipmate’s face. “Do not fear, I will have the doctor attend to the burn-in due course. But I sense we are close.”

She held her tongue. When it came to projects like this, the closer she got to finishing them, the more she felt could go wrong. For Bonnie, this was like tossing marbles into a jar, the jar representing her bubble of anxiety and the marbles, her penchant for bad luck. She never intended for things to go wrong around her, they just sort of did. Admitting aloud they were close, was a handful of marbles all at once. Plink, plink, plink.

As the pain in his hand subsided, Avarak took a step back, both physically and metaphorically. “Perhaps we are going about this the wrong way.”

She looked at him, perplexed, they were so close now. "We're close. I can feel it. We're just missing something." She found herself staring at their work trying to will the solution into her mind.

“I had initially thought,” Avarak continued, “that reconfiguring the Heisenberg Compensator would be a simple matter, however, now I’m beginning to think that we need something entirely different.”

There was silence for a moment before Bonnie blurted out, "What we need is a Flux Capacitor moment."

Avarak looked at her quizzically. “And what precisely is a Flux Capacitor moment?”

She blinked, "Oh it was an old Earth Motion Picture where a Doctor fell and bumped his head on his toilet and came up with a fictional idea for a time travel device he called a Flux Capacitor." She smiled. "Silly, I know, but an epiphany is an epiphany after all."

“Intriguing.” Avarak continued, pausing for a second before he continued. “We don’t have a toilet in this lab but we could bump our heads over this table.”

She eyed the table in a moment of skeptical thought, "I'm not sure I like that Idea, now I think about it." She then rolled her eyes, "Though it wouldn't be the first time."

“That was a joke.” Avarak replied. “I observed that many humans endear themselves to each other using humour. That particular avenue might take some extra work for me; we Vulcans aren’t a particularly jubilant race.”

"Oh," she chuckled awkwardly, "A Vulcan attempting humor is, um, unexpected I suppose." She dropped the dermal regenerator onto the table. "How's your hand?" She was trying to take her mind off what she still felt was her mistake and the fact they were struggling to make the Quantum communication relay machine work.

Avarak looked down at his hand, flexed and then unflexed. “It appears to now be fully functional.” He stepped over to his desk and took a sip of tea. After swallowing, he realized that they had been at this for a significant amount of time: the tea had grown cold.

“I believe we may be experiencing what you humans call…” he paused, looking for the right words “tunnel vision. I find in situations such as these, the logical solution is to take a step back, place all of our knowns and unknowns on the board and work forward from there.”

She sighed and placed one hand to her neck, where her blazer had already been unzipped slightly for comfort reasons. "You're right. It has been a long day. So, what do you propose? Wiping the chalkboard clean, or something else more drastic? I mean we haven't yet tried hitting with a hammer. Always works for my uncle."

“As cathartic as hitting the Heisenberg Compensator with a hammer might be, I fear that this endeavor of ours might require a more delicate touch.” Responded Avarak. He glanced down at his PADD and noticed the time. “I have found that rest and a good meal are where some of my best breakthroughs have been made. The time is currently 1837 and I have not yet dined, would you care for a meal in the mess hall?”

Eating in the mess, not quite her style. She half rolled her eyes. "That's right, Vulcans do eat. You know I had a Vulcan flatmate for four years back at the academy who we swore never ate. She also never gained or lost a pound. Bit jealous of that one." She thought it over as she looked Avarak up and down, weighing her options. "Yeah, alright. You can tell me all about what brings you to the Sunfire." She smiled and took his arm. "Lead on good sir."

Avarak looked down as Bonnie grabbed his arm and he raised an eyebrow. It was a curious gesture and one that he added to the list of human behaviors that he had yet to logically deconstruct.

TBC