Have you Tried Turning it Off and Back on Again?

Posted on Tue 24th Sep, 2019 @ 7:50am by Lieutenant JG Artyom Mikhailov & Lieutenant Commander Kiara Lena

1,520 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Conference Room
Timeline: MD4 13:00 Hours

During his last duty station aboard the USS Redoubtable, Artyom had spent most of his on-duty time within either main engineering or the main computer core monitoring and remediating everything from system performance issues to network congestion. More often than not, he was around familiar faces in an environment that he could call his own. Aboard Starbase 109, Artyom felt more like an guest… whether that be invited or otherwise. A single day could take him across thirty-or-so decks and dozens of offices, living quarters, or specialized spaces. He'd evaluate everything from a malfunctioning PaDD to problems with the local gravity field generators to even occasional matters involving a malfunctioning sonic shower.

That meant a lot of walking. What made it so easy for him to contrast his experiences aboard the Redoubtable with that of this Starbase was also in just how many families there were. Oftentimes, while he'd be working on one issue he'd also be multitasking by explaining to a random child exactly what it was he was doing.

"What's that?" The latest young child who looked no older than four asked as Artyom pried a malfunctioning relay module from the replicator within one set of corridors. The mother, a civilian, had already asked "Joshua" to leave the man alone, but Artyom insisted it was ok. '

Artyom pulled himself out of the small space he'd been laying in to show Joshua the module. "This is what helps the computer to make your meals." He pointed to a small corner of the module where it had obviously been singed by some recent power surge. "This is where it's broken. Do you see how it looks burnt?"

The boy nodded. "Was there a fire?" He asked smartly, if not a bit worriedly.

Artyom chuckled. "Not quite. But everything on this station uses electricity and sometimes too much electricity comes into things like this, which breaks them." He set the damaged module down inside his bag and pulled out a fresh one, easily connecting it to its predecessor's mount before re-enabling power. The replicator spooled up and moments later, their last ordered more materialized automatically inside the buffer.

It looked like a glass of chocolate milk. Joshua eagerly rushed to it before running off giggling at the thought of drinking his beverage. The mother smiled as he rushed by. "Thank you, Lieutenant. We're still working on potty training and he usually gets something with chocolate as a reward when he does."

That seemed ingenious. Artyom had been working with Matthew as well, but with only occasional successes. Matthew seemed more content to simply relieve himself in his diaper than to have to take time out of a busy day at school or home to use the bathroom. "That is smart. It works?"

The mother laughed. "With a four-year old? Anything chocolate is a win."

***

Artyom had taken a few more minutes to pack his things before saying good bye to the mother whose name he realized he'd never gotten. It occurred to him for a moment that he could pull the order from his PaDD, but then he remembered just how many things were left before he could safely call an end to his workday. So instead, he examined the next ticket.

It was from diplomacy. For whatever reason, the lights in the main conference room were not responding properly to commands. When they asked for normal lighting, they got a disco ball, complete with music. When they requested cocktail lighting, they got an awkward red tint to the lights, and when they asked the computer to turn the lights off, they began to smoke. The computer said everything was fine. A diagnostic came up normal. The lights were still not working properly. Could someone please help?

As Artyom scrutinized the details of the ticket, he figured that either he was being pranked, or the poor soul who originally reported the issue was. Thumbing at the activation button, he accepted the ticket and started to make his way towards the conference room. Entering a few minutes later, Artyom found a red-collared woman -- (and he wasn't basing that observation on the fabric) -- suffering what painfully sounded like early earth-disco music loud enough to reverberate off the bulkhead. Purple music was venting from the ducts in what he could only assume was supposed to complement the mood, and the lights were shifting between every color spectrum possible.

"Computer, stop music! I mean, end program!" Artyom said at first, then shouted to no effect. Realizing that he wasn't going to get a response through traditional means, he pulled his PADD out again and interfaced with the room's settings. What happened next was akin to to complete power less... which was actually the case as Artyom disengaged main power to the conference room. He looked over to whom the PADD identified as Keara Lena and took a moment to measure her; not like he would if he were about to ask for a date, but in the more customer-service orientated IT support way. Some people were easy to deal with, while others treated their IT-related issues as major offenses with the poor engineer often becoming the target of their frustration.

It was always good to have an idea of what to expect going in. But Artyom was still figuring out who was who on this station, and it wasn't like there was a report on every member of the station that he could draw from. With that in mind, he decided to play this one safe.

"I apologize for that, Commander." He said with his professional-but-empathetic tone... placing extra emphasis on her rank in case she was planning to bring it into the conversation later. "You clearly have a serious problem here, but rest assured that I'll get everything taken care of for you as quickly as possible. Can you tell me approximately when this began?" God, he was hoping this wasn't one of those matters that had been sitting in the queue for more than a few hours.

"I'm not quite sure," Kiara admitted. "The regular lighting worked fine two days ago. However, we didn't use this room yesterday. We're having a meeting here tomorrow, so I wanted to make sure everything was in order. And I found...that." She waved to the lights to indicate whatthat was.

"Thank you, Commander. Give me one moment, please." Artyom nodded as he pulled up a recent change-log for the area from his PaDD, finding nothing. From there, he performed a network scan which allowed him to trace each node from the conference room to the station's main computer. Again, there was no telltale indicator that he could consider as the smoking gun. At least their meeting wasn't scheduled until tomorrow.

Every computer on the station received its configuration through a hierarchical infrastructure known as group policy, whether at the console or user level. For example, if Commodore Suzuki Hikari were to sign into Artyom's station in engineering, everything from her security permissions to personal preferences would transfer to that station as though it were hers. As Artyom wasn't seeing a rogue device on the network that would be causing this issue, his next query went towards what policies had been applied to this room or Commander Lena herself.

There were a number of policies applied across the two which took a while for him to sift through. All the while, he could fell a bit of anxiety building up behind his shoulders; he hated keeping people waiting, and while some people understood that troubleshooting things like this sometimes took time, others just expected things to work.

At just about the time that he was going to suggest that Kiara return to her duties so that she wasn't waiting on him, he found the offending policy deep within the organizational unit. "Ah, I found our problem." He said, turning his PADD around so that she could read the alphanumerics. Whether any of it would make immediate sense to her depended on her level of understanding in such matters. "Unfortunately, it appears that a policy intended to be run in the recreational center was mistakenly applied to this meeting room." He pointed out the policy, at which point an outline of its configuration became visible. Colored smoke, loud music, and alternating lighting... it was all there.

Artyom thought about deep-diving into who had added the policy to this room, but decided against doing so in front of the commander.

"Interesting. So, now that we know what is causing the problem, how long will it take for you to rectify it?" she asked politely. She knew that these things could take time, but she needed to know if she had to move tomorrow's meeting or if the room would be ready.

Artyom realized that he hadn't said anything about having already fixed the problem. "Oh, it's already taken care of." He said, restoring power to the section at which point lights came on normally and there was no indication of disco music or a smoke and light show appearing.

Kiara smiled. "Wonderful. Thank you."

 

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