This is an EVE ONLINE related post – sorry if it doesn’t make any sense to you.
*****
The lab was running at full speed with dozens of technicians scurrying around, computers whirring silently and assorted unidentified but very impressive looking machines doing whatever it is that they’re meant to be doing and doing it well. Perian stood just inside one of the sliding glass doors and looked around all the activity with a sense of well being and satisfaction.
If he was going to be completely honest with himself he understood a fraction of what was going on here but he did know enough to realise that things were running smoothly. Feeling quite content with life, he wandered over to his personal terminal and started pulling up the details of labs schedule for the next few weeks. As soon as he pulled up the rota he realised that there was something wrong but before he could figure out what it was a shrill voice cut through the background noise of the lab and scrapped across his nerves like a rusty nail across a blackboard.
“Uncle Perian,” the irritating voice called out. “Uncle Perian, just the man I wanted to see!”
Forcing a smile onto his face, Perian slowly spun the chair around and looked up at the scrawny figure in the pristine white lab coat.
“Beaker,” he said, calling his nephew by the nickname that had been with him for as long as he could remember. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here today. I thought you’d be over at the drone factory.”
“I was, but I saw that you’d docked here and though I’d come across and catch up with you. So, I’ve done my share of the deal, it’s time for you to come through with yours. When do I get to go and fly the Daredevil?”
“Come on now, Beaker,” Perian replied with a tired smile. “The deal was that you get the Daredevil when the labs are up and running, which I agree they are. But also only when you’d clocked enough hours in the Haulers. And you’re not even close to that yet.”
For a moment Beaker looked like nothing more and nothing less than a petulant child and Perian was sure that there was going to be a temper tantrum, but thankfully, the frown lifted from the youth’s forehead as he saw what his uncle was looking at on the terminal.
“I was going to tell you about that.” Beaker said, all disappointment forgotten, for the moment at least. “Auto’s really screwed up this time, hasn’t he?”
Spinning the chair around again so he could see the monitor, Perian wanted to agree with his nephew but he certainly wasn’t going to say so out loud.
“Computer,” he said in the flat tone of voice that he’d found worked best with getting the programmed system to follow commands. “Get me Automatic J on a vid link. Low priority.”
In less than a minute the holographic projector whirred into life and Perian found himself looking at Auto.
“Yah, what is it?” Auto asked in his slightly Slavic accent.
“I’ve got the lab schedule up in front of me,” Perian said. “It looks like you’ve booked some network time to work on that Particle Accelerator Blueprint you picked up. From what it says here you’ve got the mainframe and a team of three techies for the next four days.”
“And?”
“And,” answered Perian, trying very hard not to let his frustration show. “And I’m not sure why you need this? The accelerator blueprint is a pretty basic one, why are you spending so much time on it?”
“But you said that if we ever get any blueprint programs we should let the lab guys see them straight away!” Auto was making no attempt to hide his growing confusion and anger. “And this is what I’m doing. I give the blueprint to them and they make it better. Just like you said.”
Perian took a slow breath and knew that he’d have to explain how blueprints work to Auto, again. This had to be the fifth time, at least.
“When we get a blueprint from one of the big producers,” he said in his calmest voice,” it’s pretty shoddy work. All they care about is getting the basic information into the program and then selling as many of them as we can. So we need to work on these blueprints when we get them, making sure that all the rough edges are off, making sure that they’re fine tuned to work in our manufacturing plants and making certain that there are no mistakes, deliberate or accidental, in them. This is a time consuming process and, like you said, we have to give it over the lab workers to get it right.”
“Which is just what I’ve done,” interrupted Auto.
“Yes, however, I’ve also said that there are limits to what ever the best technicians can do with blueprint. You’ve set up the computers and the crew to spend four days trying to improve this blueprint. Four days. It would take less than twelve hours to get this accelerator blueprint to the best we could possibly get it. But because you’ve told the computers to work on it for four days, that’s what they’re going to do. So they’re going to be offline to the rest of us for that time. Three and a half days wasted.”
“And how am I meant to know this?” yelled Auto. “I’m not a geek, I work for a living!”
“I’ve told you over and over again,” Perian yelled back, his attempts to control his temper forgotten about now. “You look to see what resources the blueprint uses and then you simply calculate what percentage of Davior’s Hypothesis is going to work in their case. All you have to do is use the revolving equations that Matheson Woo laid down when he expanded the principles of Newton’s Third Law to cover the pressures of Worm Hole . . . . ”
Perian took a deep breath and rubbed at his temples while he tried to calm down.
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “You’ve got a point. It’s not always easy to tell what to do for best with the blueprints. So, how about this. I set up a program in the mainframe’s open access systems. That program will give you a guesstimate, a rough idea of how long you should give to any blueprint. It won’t be 100% accurate, but at least it will give you a good idea of how much of our labs’ resources to dedicate to this. All I ask is that you consult the program before you start working on any Blueprint. You do that for me and I’ll stop nagging you about this.”
“Fine, fine, whatever you say,” snapped Auto. And just before he broke the connection he could be heard to mutter, “Bloody key hitting geek!”
Perian leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He couldn’t help but wonder where it had all gone wrong for him. He had started his career working freelance for the Federation Navy, doing all the jobs that they were either unable or unwilling to openly admit to. How did he end up spending most of his time in the labs or factories of TEMOE?
“So,” he heard Beaker say from behind him. “About that Daredevil.”
