I had found a use for the alien supercomputer in my head.
More useful than giving me answers to equations anyway, any calculator could do that, just a bit slower.
I wasn't even trying when I discovered it. I had been reviewing the deuterium consumption log for the warp core, just scrolling through the raw data looking mostly for outliers that usually signified sensor issues when I realized something.
I understood it.
No, I mean, I know what the numbers all meant, I did that before too. It's just a number that's taken every hundredth of a second of how many deuterium atoms are fed into the warp core.
But I understood the trend as well as if I was staring at a graph.
I did some testing too.
Had the computer generate a thousand numbers linked to dates, between one and one hundred. It scrolled across the screen once and then I drew out the graph for it on a PADD.
Compare it to the computer generated graph.
It was accurate to the limit of my claw coordination. So apparently it also helped with memory somehow.
Which was kinda scary to be honest. The question was... was it evolving and unlocking more features or had I simply missed that it did that?
No clue which. Hard to do a trend from one datapoint, even with this thing in my head.
At least it was actually somewhat useful. Getting ideas of a numerical trend with just a glance is damn useful.
"Navari to Zephyr."
"Zephyr here."
"I'm coming off shift. Lounge?"
I hesitated, eyeing the console before I answered, "Sure. Be there in a bit."
"See you then. Dinah, out."
Eyeing the console, I then got up and stretched as much as I could without knocking someone over in the close confines of engineering.
Then I headed for the door.
The lounge was a lot more crowded with howling monkeys than I prefer, but I spotted the one I was looking for by the far wall, sitting by one of the tables with a cup of hot tea of some sort before her, reading on a PADD.
I slowly made my way over to her, careful not to squish any of the monkeys, Huginn trailing along silently behind me.
Dinah glanced up when I got close, "Hey, how's things in engineering?"
I snorted and moved to sit across from her, carefully curling my tail to keep someone from tripping over it, "Well enough I suppose. I do kinda miss when I wasn't chief engineer however."
That earned a raised eyebrow, "How come?"
"Too much administrative crap," I admitted, "Half my day is spent reading or writing reports or assigning tasks, half of what's left is reviewing logs or sensors. I barely get my claws dirty anymore."
Dinah grinned, "I know what you mean. I knew it was bad, but not how bad until Tuvok made me chief of security," she said before she snapped her fingers and pointed at me, "That reminds me! I was meaning to ask you about the dragon sim."
I tilted my head in question, "Dragon sim?"
"Yeah, it was making the rounds a couple of years ago while you were out of contact. I was meaning to ask if you know anything about it, but then forgot."
"What is it?"
Dinah picked up her teacup, "It's a security practice simulation. You're meant to escort a VIP, but instead of a VIP exiting the shuttle, it's a dragon armed with various explosives, a phaser helmet... sounds familiar?"
I couldn't help but chuckle, "I should have known," I admitted, "Wattson likely sent the recordings to Starfleet. It was an exercise I did when I served on the Yamaguchi. Lieutenant Wattson was the chief of security and he wanted to shake things up. Security wide exercise on the holodeck for a 'VIP reception' drill. Had me play OpFor with the goal of disabling the ship. How did you do?"
Dinah smirked, "Caught a plasma charge to the face."
"Yep, that'd do it," I agreed, "So apparently someone saw the recording and thought it was a good idea to make a training sim from it?"
"Yeah, and it cheats too," Dinah sighed, "Not as bad as a certain sim, but the computer always has an answer to whatever you tried."
I nodded, "Sounds fun."
"Yes. Fun is the word I was looking for," she said with a roll of her eyes, "But yeah, similar thing in security. I may spend most of my shifts on the bridge, but it's mostly admin stuff or running tactical sims on my console."
"Are we getting old? Is that it?"
Dinah grinned, "I'm getting old, you have a few thousand years left until then."
"It's not the years, it's the mileage. And we have a couple of lightyears right now."
"Ain't that the truth," she admitted and then groaned, "Damn it, I shouldn't feel like that. I'm not even thirty yet."
I chuckled at her and flexed my claws against the carpet, "I have a vague idea about that, by the way."
"What, me getting old?"
"No, about getting bored. A cross training program, getting people to rotate duties more."
"Not exactly standard practice."
"No, but we're not in a standard situation," I pointed out, "And we don't have a replacement crew coming. If we lose somebody, we can't expect for somebody from the rest of the fleet to be assigned to the ship. Someone else has to do that job."
Dinah looked grim, nodding, "...And it will be much better and smoother if they're already familiar with it."
"Correct. But it will also help keep people from getting bored."
She slowly nodded, "I think it's a good idea, it is difficult to get working. I mean, I have the same basic engineering classes as everyone else, but I'm not sure how useful I'd be in engineering."
"It has its issues," I admitted, "But learning new skills is good and it will keep people busy."
Dinah frowned a bit but nodded again, "Well, we have nothing but time," she admitted, "Gonna propose it?"
"Thinking of doing so at the next senior staff meeting. Thinking to start with something pretty easy, just switching some crewmen around to start with?"
"Start with lower level stuff," she mused, "That's a good idea, Zeph. It'll mean more work for everyone else though, keeping an eye on the new guys. Including us."
I snorted, "Burden of command?" I suggested and got a smirk in response as she sipped her tea.
"Oh, by the way," I then added as I suddenly remembered something, "I got the preliminary design for that slugthrower you were interested in. Hologram prototype is in the file Alpha-Gamma-Lima-One. I slotted it into your programs."
"Alpha Gamma Lima One?"
"Automatic Gauss Launcher, MK1," I clarified, "I had some holograms test it for ergonomics and such, but I can't exactly wield it myself, so try it out and let me know of any issues before we build a couple for real."
"Will do."
