Painting a Picture

Posted on Sun Aug 4th, 2019 @ 12:22am by Captain Luka Mahone
Edited on on Sat Feb 1st, 2020 @ 11:59am

765 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Canary
Location: Science Facility 1
Timeline: MD 03

Simril had an office in Science Facility 1. Originally a Kane Colony building, it was about 200 years old and had weathered the test of time – it had been refitted in the past few months and now had a smattering of modern systems running through it. He had adorned the room with a few of his prize possessions – a digital copy of his doctorate, a digital display of the first copy of the Public Journal of Starfleet Seismology, a safe display box containing a stabilised lump of core rock retrieved during the great 2384 tectonic shift on Omicron Pictoris Prime. It was also liberally decorated with a variety of Starfleet-authorised houseplants and in the corner was an easel with a blank canvas.

The first day in the job and Simril was already rushed off his feet. On his desk was a small pile of PADDs. He had been asked to provide a second opinion on the credentials of a geologist that the civilian science staff were planning to recruit as a matter of urgency. He hadn’t even met the damn civilian head of science! Mumbling to himself, he remarked as he glanced over the file “How about you meet me before you ask me to spend a couple of hours doing your work for you?” He shook his head before going onto another report. It was a general Starfleet-mandated checklist for incoming chief science officers stationed to colonies. It asked Simril to carry out several jobs “as soon as time allowed”, including preparing a seismological analysis and parsing nearby subspace telescope data to check for anomalies. Starfleet would have to wait for their reports, however, as something urgent had come to his desk.

Just before his arrival, a joint Starfleet-civilian science team carrying out planetary scans and analysis had appeared to locate a decrepit shuttlecraft buried in the planet’s surface. The shuttle’s origin was unknown, but it had been there for some time. Civilian scientists had agreed to let Starfleet run the operation on recovery and investigation of the craft, even thought it was technically out of Starfleet’s agreed jurisdiction. Simril had been asked to sit down with the colony’s Starfleet chief archaeologist, and the civilian head of science, to discuss the finding and to receive an initial report.

Simril sighed and stood up. He had not wanted to come here to solve other people’s problems. He walked over to the science station in his office, linked in to the colony’s main computer systems.

“Computer, run programme Simril Echo Tango 457.”

“This is not an authorised programme. Please provide a command code to proceed.”

“Authorisation Simril Bravo 4 Delta.”

“Installing programme.” There was a brief delay. “Programme installed.” The station’s display showed a rapid display of numbers before coming to a rest.

“Computer, run analysis of Xaeprea’s seismological data, provide a forecasting of seismological activity in the next month.”

“Beginning analysis. Estimated completion, 40 minutes.”

Simril had developed complex programmatic tools to aid his analysis efforts over the years. He had taken a pride in his forecasting models that were often very accurate. Of course, he would want to get out there and start getting some data for himself. He had yet to find out what kind of industrial micro-drills and scanners were on site, never mind whether it was feasible to get them out beyond the colony to conduct some field data-collection.

“Computer, send messages to Lieutenant Commander Bray and Setek asking to arrange a meeting.”

Simril stopped for a moment to look at the blank canvas. He walked to the back of the room and opened a small metallic box. He retrieved a paint palette and a few tubes of oil paint and began to squeeze them out. He grabbed a handful of brushes and walked over to the blank canvas. Humming to himself, he began to mix some of the colours into a light grey. He put a few strokes down. He began painting his memory of the view of Haumea Colony from the shuttle travelling down to the planet.

“Computer, set the following reminders: to prepare a lecture on the seismological analysis of Xaeprae, to assign officers to catalog local binary pairs, to parse subspace telescope data, to correlate plate tectonics as a side effect of gravimetric distortions in the sector, and to perform deep archaeometrical analysis of the recovered shuttlecraft.”

Simril did a gentle jig, paintbrush in hand, as he sang a little song to himself. It was time for Haumea Colony to meet Dr Winford Simril.

Post Originally Authored by Dr. Winford Simril
Posted post-removal

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