Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Computer Science Lab 2- Post Party

Posted by Lieutenant Luke Wyatt (Chief of Security) in Computer Science Lab 2- Post Party

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Computer Science Lab 2- Post Party

(snip)

Faye allowed her chest to fill fully before she expelled it equally as fully. “Yeah… you were pretty much a jerk,” she said with the barest hint of a smirk. The music shifted into The Killers All These Things That I’ve Done.

It was surpsing how easy it was to hear her agree that he had been a jerk, he knew then but then he could also be mad at her for acting the way she did but now he knew why, and he didn’t have that kind of reason he was just being presumptuous. He felt embarrassed by his actions. He didn’t really know what to say, he could apologies again but risk sounds patronising or worst faking it.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she tried to still her mind but no, not happening. That was okay. When she opened them her gaze was distant. “The symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder regarding Faye Calloway involve frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, unstable and intense relationships, unstable self-image, impulsivity that is potentially damaging, recurrent self-harm behaviour including actions or thoughts, affective instability due to a noticeable reactivity of mood, chronic feelings of emptiness, and inappropriate anger or inability to control it. This is coupled with a concurrent diagnosis of major depressive disorder.” She recited it as if she were reading it off her own record- which wasn’t a stretch.

He went to speak, he wondered how many people got to hear what she was saying, and not the uncut stuff the actual rough of why she was how she was. And honestly Luke found himself minding less and less about the times they argued over the small things because what didn’t make sense before made perfect sense now. It wouldn’t be easy for him to be able to keep up and understand everything she thought but by just knowing how she thought opened his eyes. He only stopped thinking when she continued.

“I was diagnosed ten years ago. That report was from several years ago, before I was asked to do an assignment for Intelligence. A lot has changed, and I’m a lot better than I was, but I still deal with all of that. Just depends on the day how difficult it is or not. I mean, sometimes I can watch myself doing stuff and reacting to people and I’m baffled because I know it’s not great, but I can’t intervene and do something about it. And everything gets worse when I’m stressed out. Like, for example, having to keep my assignment a secret because of orders and having everything blow up in my face. Once time quite literally.” She shook her head. “The point is that I truly don’t go out of my way to be difficult or piss people. Well, most of the time. But this is who I am and I’m used to being an… acquired taste. I’m more or less fine with that these days. It weeds out the people aren’t worth my time and effort.”

~Faye Calloway

With the music still playing in the background he listened to the music then to his mind.”It sounds truly exhausting”  he spoke finally, “I don’t really know what to say if I’m honest” Luke exhaled slowly still going over the information. “I’m glad you found you could tell me, I can’t imagine it easy laying it out like that. For better or worst I’m glad you did. I feel like I need to shTe something with you but I feel like you know me better than I do myself right now.”

• Luke Wyatt

“Exhausting is the right word,” she said softly before swivelling back to her screen.

For a moment Faye just watched her screen before she nodded slowly. “I was never, ever, keeping things from you out of spite. Yes, it was proven that my secondary orders were false, but my primary ones are the reason I am here, the reason I have been working so hard on this ship. And it’s time you understood. But know that while I expect this to change very soon, technically I do not have clearance to bring you into the fold. Intelligence was adamant about no one knowing until they decided you all could.” Her hands began to moving again, as she began to pull up the files she needed, and swiped something over to the screen on her left. All three were now going. “I’ve already disobeyed that direct order so oh well. And Starfleet is pretty happy with me at the moment so I expect they will overlook any slips in this area.”

“Ok, I wont tell anyone” Luke said looking at her, honesty in his stare. “Now, shall we?” He gave her a small reassuring smile to go on.

She looked back at him. “As you know, I’ve been doing upgrades to the security of the Manhattan’s data infrastructure. It dovetails into making sure that we always maintain secure and stable communications with the Alpha Quadrant, so I liaise with Starbase Event Horizon for this. My goal is to make sure that nothing nefarious slips in our systems. But my work is experimental. I’m basically overlaying a secondary security net over our established systems, using prototype parts. It’s complicated to integrate and not something you can design from a distance. You have to build it on site and code the programming to match. This is what I’ve been doing,” she said, swiping a file to the screen in front of him.

Luke was beginning to understand the complexities of not just her state of mind but what the work she was doing as well. It was far greater than he could have ever imagined and in a way, he just wished she had told him sooner but understood why she didn’t. In his own way knowing the information would have stopped from doing the things he had done, and ultimately the secrecy int he situation led to where they were now. He would have been keen to point that at but now, he was happy just be trusted.

There were highlighted dots scattered across every deck of the ship. Dozens of them. Most of which were in the jefferies tubes. “Each of those is a capture node. All information coming in to the ship cycles around the computer systems wherever we need it. The nodes provide a secondary type of firewall that has the ability to swiftly contain anything it flags as being suspicious. Then, my job is to quickly assess the actual threat and contains and destroy it as needed. And the reason this is necessary is that a Starfleet vessel, the USS Odyssey was on a deep space mission here in the Delta Quadrant. Long story short, we don’t know exactly how, but it appears that a semi-sentient computer virus attacked and took over their systems, ultimately killing the entire crew. Because of your PTSD, I won’t show you the images I showed the Captain, Chief Darach and Commander Wynter when I was forced to debrief them and bring them into the loop before I was given permission to, but suffice to say that it was not pretty.” She gestured to all her screens. “All of this has taken over a thousand hours of work to complete. I’ve been working twelve to sixteen hour days since I got here. I only had help at the very end because people finally knew what I was doing. But because of my secondary orders, and the terrible position I had been put in, the Captain decided that for the time being we were keeping it between us, though Commander Creed also knows. As does my mother, obviously. The rest of the crew has no idea. I figured when the time came to reveal everything, I would debrief the senior staff and it would remain on a need-to-know basis.”

~Faye Calloway

Luke appreciated not being shown the images, he was used to the most grotesque death scenes, but if he had the opting of unseeing them he would in a heartbeat. “I understand the situation you was in, and the one I forced you into. I couldn’t have known, I didn’t know maybe if I had I would have acted differently and those by no means me saying you should have told me sooner. I see why you didn’t I wouldn’t have told me either. I’m just glad you have now.” Luke poured over the information about the trials she was running, the work she was doing, the odyssey and began to process it. “Its sounds like you could use a break” He paused then added, “Or an AI system that could do it all for you. If there was a way of using the sentient computer virus to filter the possible attacks and destroy the data attacks you wouldn’t have to do so many hours. The work you do is unprecedented if I can help in any way.”

He was amazed by the design, he couldn’t have done it better himself, surprisingly he understood at least the concept and partly how it worked. “So where do we go from here? Im curious to know what you’re thinking, feeling even?”

• Luke Wyatt