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Fresh Eyes - Meeting the Staff Attn. Science

Posted Jan. 26, 2019, 4:51 p.m. by Ensign Kavox Monsant (Science Officer) (Mike Bourdaa)

Posted by Lieutenant Riali Deandres (Chief Science Officer) in Fresh Eyes - Meeting the Staff Attn. Science

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Peyton Grant (Science Officer) in Fresh Eyes - Meeting the Staff Attn. Science

Posted by Ensign Kavox Monsant (Science Officer) in Fresh Eyes - Meeting the Staff Attn. Science
Posted by… suppressed (16) by the Post Ghost! 👻
With all said and all done, Deandres finally had the opportunity to pursue what she had been excited for since she arrived on the Manhattan, what felt like days before, when it had only been a matter of hours. Geez.. I never realized how much those check-ins really take out of you.. It was weird, for her, checking in to the CO rather than an expedition leader or science DH, but she figured it was all a part of the new experiences she would find aboard the Manhattan. Luckily, Riali had always been a woman who preferred her surprises.

With a slight hop in her step, she left the turbolift for deck six, where she knew the general science Labs were housed, her office included. Knowing the general Labs were larger and less specific than the opposing decks, she hoped to find a greater majority of the science officers on this deck, at least enough to get a feel of the science department aboard the ship. Clasping her hands behind her back, as they would otherwise be swinging childishly at her sides, Riali rounded the corner, stepping into one of the general Labs, her gaze lighting up the moment she step foot within.

Ships like the Manhattan always had a way of making Riali feel small, but the labs had a much different effect. They gave her energy, opportunity, almost like a battery station for the living soul. For a few minutes, she chose not to talk to anyone, figuring they were all engrossed in their studies or the duties assigned to them by the ranking officer, at the given time. Although, she figured it wouldn’t take long for people to notice how put of place she was, in a room full of scientists who at least knew each other by name.

As she passed some of the NEs, she checked up on what they were working on, slowly getting a feel for where they were at and what they were doing. Hands remaining tightly clasped at the mid of her back, she perused the area, a faint smile ghosting her vitiligo features. One need not look further than her eyes to see how excited she was to be here. And yet, while she seemed quirky and energetic in these moments, there was more to Riali than just her youthful, curious soul.

Lt. Deandres
The Excited CSO

Monsant had settled into his station, reviewing some stellar cartography readouts and correlating them with a theory about phase shifts to the wormhole. It was fairly dry and heavily mathematical, which was making the Bajoran officer’s eyes start to water. He glanced upward, just to get his eyes off the screen, and noticed a woman standing around. He snorted a bit; his first instinct was to hit on her, and his second was to tell her to get to work - things were piling up without a real chief around, and while he had tried a bit to get things moving, he was still a bit green for some of the other Ensigns to listen to him.

“Alright, what’s…” he started to say while her back was to him. As he got a better look, two things were immediately clear - her unusual skin, and the two rank pips on her collar. One was more important than the other in the short term, and he verbally shifted gears abruptly. “..can I do for you, sir? Ensign Kavox Monsant,” he added, by way of introduction.

-Ens Kavox Monsant

A soft chuckle escaped her, at the sound of his sudden change in his train of thought. Studying the Ensign, she smiled. “Hello Ensign Kavox,” She knew Bajoran names held the family name first, but she spoke slowly.. in case he was different. Pulling the PaDD from her hands to rest beneath the crook of her arm, she extended a hand to the young man, “I am Lieutenant Riali Deandres, I’ll be your new Chief– until someone more qualified comes along,” There was a slight twinge of playfulness in her voice, but despite the genial nature of her voice, bicoloured eyes already foretold the strict nature of the seemingly young scientist.

Monsant’s demeanor relaxed slightly as he returned the handshake. “Ah, so you’re the new boss! Nobody warned us that you would be so…” He paused a bit, his grin spreading a little as his eyes wandered ever so slightly before he concluded with, “punctual.”

Riali laughed, shaking her head. “Punctual is always better than late. Especially with the eggshells we walk on, as scientists.” She hadn’t known the Ensign for long, but she already found his personality to be uplifting. And here she was, slightly concerned she would walk into a room of robots. Thank goodness she had been wrong.

“Yeah, eggshells,” he said, rubbing a hand behind his head a bit awkwardly. There certainly was a tendency to attract certain personality types… and even those who were well adjusted otherwise had some buttons. Some more obvious than others. “You learn where to step, hopefully not annoying the hens in the process,” he eventually said.

“Tell me.. Ensign,” Her gaze momentarily drifted to the other officers, a pair of them catching her attention, when they appeared to be amused by some discovery. Whether it was personal or professional, she couldn’t say. Intuition begged the former. “What is your study?”

His mood shifted slightly, from relaxed to a bit more professional tone. “Well, just now, I was running a correlation study between the local gravitimetric fields as they change through galactic rotation against the Delta Quadrant wormhole’s phase and amplitude, and comparing it to other related phenomena, particularly the stable Bajoran-Gamma Quadrant wormhole and the semi-stable Edasich wormhole, to see if I could find any commonalities. My studies in general are in both astrophysics and exobiology. If I might ask about your primary specialties?”

-Ens Kavox

“Have you found anything, thusfar? The Barzan- Delta Quadrant wormhole is quite the anomaly to catch, with its hyperactivity and gravitational flux. I’m curious to know if you’ve been able to find a mechanism of tracking it.” She paused, considering his initial studies. “Competent studies to endeavour,” She admitted. When asked, she seemed to hesitate. Over her years, she had challenged herself to several different studies, never truly having a ‘main focus,’ but she did have a far more prominent one. “Biology, actually. Particularly biochemistry and exobiology, but my main degree is standard Biology.”

“Do you prefer Astrophysics or Exobiology?” She inquired, curiously.

Lt. Deandres
CSO

“A few possible leads, but a lot of these are paths that have been trodden before without much success. Even if I definitively rule one of them out, that could be my doctoral thesis easily. I’m a long way from any experiments that go beyond using scanners though, right now it’s just sifting through a lot of scanner data and trying to find some correlations that might, just might, go beyond coincidence.”

“Good luck,” Riali offered, knowing there was little else you could give to a scientist beyond the answers they were searching for or the equations to get there, neither of which she had on hand. “Many of the greatest discoveries began with following leads that were previously debunked. Who knows, maybe one of them just wasn’t explored enough.”

He frowned just a moment at the question, in thought. “I suppose it’s a bit like asking whether I prefer music or computer code. There’s certainly a satisfaction to astrophysics… just physics in general, really, that there is A Right Answer, even if it’s hard to find. If you do X, Y will happen Z percent of the time. It can be reduced to a formula, whether it’s as elegant as E=mc2 or as complex as Siivak’s or Schroedinger’s equations. You being a biologist yourself, you know how unlike Biology that can be - you do the same thing a trillion times with no change, and then the trillion and first time, suddenly life emerges from the primordial. You find cat-like creatures occupying a certain position in the ecosystem on a thousand planets, and then you come to this ship and you find one whose position is to make the warp systems work properly and tease you about your smell.” He shrugged a little. “Biology is less predictable, more complex, sometimes infuriating, and sometimes there just isn’t A Right Answer. More like music.” He smirked just a little. “That said, biologists get to go on away missions more often than astrophysicists, especially if they also have some security skills.”

-Ens Kavox Monsant

Riali had to agree with that part. Biologists were often called to away teams long before an Astrophysicist was chosen. Then again, not many away teams consisted of gallivanting the stars in search of answers in the formula they were trying to uncover. “Biology is a diverse concept, you will never find yourself bored by what you see. Every creature, regardless of their species, is remarkably different from the next, even if they share ninety nine percent of their DNA with the next member of their species. It is a game of guess and check, an infuriating race on turtleback to find the answers to questions we probably weren’t even asking yet. Astrophysics is a bit more predictable, as you were saying. I can understand the struggle in choosing between them, when they are both incredible areas of study. Although, as biased as it is, biology keeps you on your toes,” she smirked. She didn’t even dare ask about that cat.

Lt. Deandres
CSO

“That it does, that it does. It’s just… it’s a science, but it’s the most artistic of the sciences, I think. So much variation, so much potential for very subtle differences to either make no difference, or make all of the difference. Which is why I compared it to music. Change the key, change the tempo, even change the instrument, and you might have something very different yet recognizable, even without changing the notes themselves.” He waved vaguely. “Ya know, I think my metaphor ran off the tracks somewhere though… anyway, “

“I’ve never heard it described as an art before,” Deandres thought about it, envisioning his explanation. “You know, you have a valid point there. It’s almost like a melody, the way you put it.” She smiled at him, thinking of the science in a slightly different light, for the moment being. “Oh, that’s all right. I think the point was well taken,” She winked.

Peyton stepped into the Science bay to start her shift. She went to her work station and began pulling up the experiments that she was working on and began corralating data. She didn’t notice the new person in the labs and went about her business.

Grant (Sci)

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the Lieutenant, debating whether or not she wanted to say something. Figuring she had things to do, Riali made it a point to speak with her after she finished with the good Ensign.

Lt. Deandres
CSO

“Ah,” Monsant said, lowering his voice. “That’s Lieutenant Grant. She’s a little… well, I suspect she’ll be glad she isn’t in charge anymore.” He shrugged ever so slightly. “Not that I know her that well myself, but.. well, eggshells.”

-Kavox Monsant (Sci)

“I can hear you.” She said from where she was sitting but didn’t get up and continued working on her project. She still didn’t see the new CSO in the science lab.

“Yes.. eggshells.” Riali didn’t need him to say anything more to understand what he had meant. After all, working under someone almost one eighth your age was enough to understand exactly what he had been saying. “Tell me.. is there anything in specific science has been working on?”

Lt. Deandres

“Well, the botanists are all atwitter about a hybrid plant Ensign Kane was working on, named Audrey. It is debatably sentient.” He gave the slightest of shrugs. “I made a quick review of the cultural database, and was… unsurprised at what I found on the topic.” He waved vaguely towards the botany section. “Aside from that, well, this is actually my first tour on the Manhattan myself, so I’m not privy to all the scuttlebutt yet.”

-Ens Kavox Monsant.

“A sentient plant.. I should hope this plant is kept in a containment field, yes?” Deandres rose her eyebrows at the thought of a plant with any level of sentience. It struck curiosity in the biologist within her, but also caution in the physicist. “Then I suppose we shall be learning the.. scuttlebutt.. together.” She smiled at the humorous term.

Lt. Deandres
CSO

“When I say sentient, I think perhaps I exaggerate,” Monsant clarified a bit. “I mean perhaps on the level of a small mammal or lizard, and even that is debatable. It raises some ethical concerns about its treatment, but I hardly think it is about to start consuming misogynistic dentists on a regular basis.” He smiled a little. “As far as scuttlebutt goes, I’m afraid my uncle was in starfleet many years ago, for a long time, and he has corrupted me with some out-of-date terminology. It means the rumors, especially among the enlisted crew, which sometimes is more official than the official channels can be.”

-Kavox Monsant

“In all my years, I have never heard such a unique term.” Riali chuckled, shaking her head, but she did not elaborate further. “Regardless of its level of sentience, I can see why I might raise some concerns.”

“Only until we figure out what is causing her wheezing and sneezing” Alison said as she walked by and toward her station. She pulled up the data that they had gathered and looked it over again. She wasnt sure what they had missed, but she wished they would figure it out soon. Audrey didn’t like being behind the force field, and alison didnt like her being there either.

Ensign Kane, sci

“Sneezing?” Deandres glanced at Kavox, before making her way over to Kane, her curiosity and concern both somehow piqued. “Most animals sneeze or wheeze because of a virus. If this plant is of any sentience, perhaps it is possible some of those same bacteria or virus might be impacting it.” She put out there, “But I’m assuming that is the first that came to mind.”

Lt. Deandres
CSO

OOC: Posting this in.
IC:
“We did, but nothing showed on the scans we took” she said as she pulled up the fike she had on Audrey. “We started cross referenceing the land scape of Zoltera Prime where I found the flytrap. Would you like to meet Audrey?” She asked the new chief.

Kane, sci

“Fascinating,” Deandres muttered, curious as to what biological reaction could be causing Audrey’s sneezing. “I would love to, Ensign.” She smiled.

“My first thought was actually ‘what respiratory system’ actually,” Monsant muttered

-Kavox Monsant

Deandres only caught part of that, quirking an eyebrow in his direction.

Peyton listened as they talked about Audrey. She pulled up what information she had on Audrey.

Grant (sci)

“While we’re talking science, are there any other projects you all have been working on?” She inquired, addressing the three scienists.

Lt. Deandres
CSO

“I think I caught you up on the general contours of mine already. I’m actually pretty interested if they have anything going on beyond Audrey myself, to be honest.”

-Kavox Monsant


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