Dear Susana is an endless fount of well-intentioned intellectual curiosity. I understand why she was originally a researcher – as an engineer, I am generally happy enough knowing how everything works, whereas she wants to know that, but also why everything works.
A few days ago, she finished her report on C-131 (a horribly long, technical, and depressing document – I could not finish it, personally), and, with her energies once again freed, she started worrying over whether there is some AI haunting the ship. Which is understandable, but since the ship seems to be working fine, I instead asked if she knew anything about the FTL device – see if I could get her beautiful mind churning away on that subject.
As a ship’s engineer, I feel that there’s something lacking when I have no so much as set eyes upon our main mode of transportation. The captain keeps it locked up in a room, and, as far as I can tell, he never checks on it either. It just works. Of course, a spaceship works too… right up until it doesn’t. And, beyond my other fears, having the FTL drive break down is a chilling thought.
Of course, if I were going to fix such a drive, I would have to understand how it works. And I can’t understand how it works without having some understanding of, say, the physics behind its operation. Which, I have realized, would be a line of reasoning that Susana would be better suited to than me.
Hopefully this will distract her from her paranoia about the ship being haunted by an AI, and, at the same time, save us in the event that something happens to the drive.
Right now Susana is off asking the captain to be let into the room. I wanted to be there, but she wanted to talk with him alone.
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