Posted by Ensign Kaia (Engineering Officer) in Side Sim, Questions in the Arboretum

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Side Sim, Questions in the Arboretum

Posted by Ensign Kaia (Engineering Officer) in Side Sim, Questions in the Arboretum
Posted by… suppressed (7) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Calloway was quiet as she laid out the plugs for Kaia to plant, spacing them it appropriate intervals. “You haven’t been a bad friend. In fact, I always assumed it me who was the terrible friend, but as I’ve been sacked in the face with a lot lately nothing everything is cut and dry, one way or another. Sometimes it just… is. So you won’t get any blame or judgement form me. What matters is that you’re here now.”

Sitting back on her heels for a moment, Faye considered the Raka. “I’ve never been good at trusting people, Kaia. If they tried to get close, I would do just about anything I could to sabotage the situation, make it so that they proved my point. There are a lot of reasons for it all, but I think I’ve just gotten to a point where it’s too exhausting. It clearly wasn’t working out in my best interests and it wasn’t doing anyone else any good either, so I’ve decided I’m trying things differently. But expect it to be a bit… messy at times.”

~Faye Calloway

Kaia listened. “Well… No time like the present to start trusting, right?” she asked, planting the plugs as instructed. “What kind of plants are these?” she asked, lifting one of them for a moment before sliding it into the hole dug into the dirt for it.

Kaia, Eng.

“Lobularia,” Faye said. “Also known as alyssum. They create these mounds of tiny flowers that will spill of the edges. I always thought it was very pretty and pollinators like them. Not that we have pollinators in here, but.. yeah,” she said with a light laugh.

“We should get some. Earth bees and butterflies are good. Galdor boz and timpuks are also pretty great.”

“If we weren’t on a starship, I’d fully agree. But we’ve designed this garden to now rely on pollinators. Too hard on the environmental systems and the ship’s residents,” Faye said with a smile.

“So, while I’ve been occupied with others things, what’s new with you?” Calloway asked.

~Faye Calloway

“I’ve mostly just been working on my prosthetic project,” Kaia replied. “It’s coming along slowly, even with the help I’ve been getting.”

Kaia, Eng.

She cocked her head and realized she was slightly out of the loop. “I think I’ve missed something. Tell me about your project,” she said, though it was more of a request than a demand. If there was one thing she really loved, it was troubleshooting a problem. Practical ones, naturally.

~Faye Calloway

“Oh, of course!” Kaia grinned, looking at Faye, then looking at the plants she was putting into the ground. “I’ve been working on developing prosthetics that can function even in electrically charged environments. Current prosthetics technology can be difficult to deal with when dealing with electric environments. As an Engineer, it’s an important issue.”

Kaia, Eng.

Faye took this in with a quizzically expression and a momentary far-away look made it likely she was making a growing tree of variable and solutions. “Definitely. Any progress so far? What sort of variables are you looking at?”

~Faye Calloway

“I’ve been focusing mainly on mechanical solutions. Ways to introduce manual dexterity with pulley action. It’s slow going. Abbey has suggested some ideas related to artificially growing a new arm for the amputee, but I’d like ideas that can be replicated by someone who doesn’t have that kind of resources. Something that might be able to be manufactured for those without a lot of resources, or on a faraway colony. Stuff we can make for kids.” She thought about her own childhood, how it had been trying to do the stuff other kids got to do, but with only one hand. She’d never felt as though others looked at her differently, but there had been times in sports and play that she’d felt left out. On top of her desire to work more easily in the presence of electrical currents without her arm going haywire, she wanted to provide these newly designed arms to kids like herself back home.

Kaia, Eng.

Faye nodded. “So no biosynth limbs then got it. And having grown up on a colony with little resources I know exactly what that is like. You make do with that you can. What about an organic polymer that could serve as insulation for electrical charges? You wouldn’t even need to cover the entire thing, I don’t think,” she said, tilting her head upwards as her mind was working through the variables. “There are at least sixteen different materials that might work, seven of which given the freighter trade routes could be had by some far out colony.”

~Faye Calloway, Data Specialist

“That might work,” Kaia said thoughtfully, sitting back on her haunches for a moment. “I was trying to go for things that could be manufactured onsite, without waiting for freighters and such. I’ve mostly been working with wooden prototypes, trying to create gripping action through elbow movement and such.”

Kaia, Eng.

Calloway frowned. “That would be fine for temporary limbs, but long term? You can tell me if I’m being insensitive or whatever, but wouldn’t the goal to be to give those who need a limb the same advantages that others will have? It makes no sense- and this is just my opinion, so take it as you will- that with all our medical advancements and biosynthetic limbs and incredible computerized mechanical limbs out there, to give those people less. And it’s a bit unfair. So why not even the playing field a bit? What about assembling kits that can then be used to create the limb for a person? They could be a part of a hospital set-up on the colonies. And field hospital kits. It could contain all the basic materials and then it can be crafted for a particular user. If they get low on kits, they could requisition more before they run out?” Faye shrugged. It was just an idea and she didn’t care either way if Kaia went with it.

~Faye Calloway