Aberrant: Children of Quantum Fire - [CoQF] Raging & Thrashing with the Machine [5.0]

[Quantum Fire]

Time: One week after events in Decisions and Dilemma's

Location: The Submarine

Purpose: Christening, Launch and Maiden Voyage

Made by Genesis (Alex) and Undine (Marina) the huge underwater dock that had formed under the submarine creation of Alexandra herself with the help of Fractal (Warren) to gather the materials from another star system, the Submarine had been outfitted with amenities over the last few days on Traveler's insistence. When you folks pressed him on the matter, he sighed, went ahead and explained his reasons.

"Your actions in the world are beginning to have folks look for you, better that we are not here in the next week or so when this place is overflown with satellites and even a few high altitude nova's. We could face them and perhaps fight them, but that would escalate matters quicker then I think everyone is ready for, I think it would be better if all of you have reached Apothesis before you should take such a step, fortunately, the matter can be completely avoided for the time being. Better for us to shut down the complex and not even be here for that week, this place won't even be discovered and we can come back after and will be untouched. Though we'll have to stay off the surface of the isle for another month before they shift to looking at other parts of the earth, or thinking we have an off planet base."

When a claivoyant precog gives one that clear of a explanation, it's usually smart to listen, at least a little bit.

[SalmonMax]

"It's all fine," Alex assured their adoptive 'father' confidently. "First of all, I'm way ahead of them on the satellite thing. We'll see them coming before they're in position. I give us at least half an hour to an hour's warning. If they fly over with a nova, that's more problematic but unless they're specifically powered to avoid radar we should still see them coming in time. Not to mention I fixed the base's heat output like...two years ago. There's pipes that spread the heat from the reactor and air conditioners out over the whole island. They won't see any thermal spikes or plumes that look artificial."

She shrugged. "That said, the sub's ready to go, and with just us on board it can carry enough supplies to stay submerged constantly for around five months. All she needs is a name."

[Courier]

Warren smiled and said, "Something descriptive but confusing." He said with mock grandiosity, "'Olympus'. Let anyone who hears that look for us on mountaintops."

Warren motioned through the Sub wall at the island and said, "I have this desire to pick a different island on the other side of the planet and have Alex set up a cardboard base. Something to attract enough attention for them to send in a team of Mother hunters into a mousetrap. Probably better to just do nothing I guess. Wait. Grow stronger."

[Toby Lupin]

Darrik shook his head. "There's the responsibilities of Maia, Marina and Cora- DeVries-wise. And I'll have to funnel them back and forth while masking my appearance and powers... not much trouble on that score. Do these searchers know WHO exactly they're looking for? Faces and the like?"

[Maia]

Maia looked at them and chuckled as she entered into the dock. "My ears are burning."

She smiled warmly and beheld the ship. "Very Impressive Alex. As for a name, why not the obvious, "Atlantis."

[Karren Gaunt]

'I slept through breakfast again, didn't I? Anything going on today?' Coraline asked vaguely over the link, still clearing cobwebs from her brain and half-muzzy snipets of philosophy eastern and western statiking up the link on her end as she levered herself vertical in the darkness of her room on the other side of the island.

What a week. Between the nerve-wracking modeling shoots in the outside world, the more pleasant but still challenging instruction and self-study that Uncle Shen was putting her through when they got back, and helping to load up the submarine in response to needing to evacuate the island... That last one made her glad she was doing the second, calm her roiling nerves against the childhood irrationality that if they left the island they'd never come back.

The young metamorph turned on a lightswitch and smiled at the white-haired hispanic girl who met her gaze from the mirror, waiting for a response to her questions as she pulled herself together for the trek to the shower.

[SalmonMax]

"Darrik, they shouldn't. Though our teen models are putting themselves at risk. Someone need to attend their shoots. At no point should any of them be without another one of us present."

The DeVries deal was still a sore point wit Alex, but she didn't press farther. Done was done. All she could do now was try to limit the damage.

"Okay, so one for Olympus...kind of an ironic name given that we'll be diving deep in the ocean, but irony is good. We have one for Atlantis, good for obvious reasons. I'm thinking Odyssey myself, but I'll go with whatever gets the majority choice."

[Courier]

Originally Posted By: Darrik

Darrik shook his head. "...Do these searchers know WHO exactly they're looking for? Faces and the like?"

Warren snorted and replied, "Ha! These searchers don't even know that they're working for Project Pro. They'll think they're working for the tech police, or doing surveys, or something like that. Whatever they know about us specifically is known only to their upper level types. Minions are only told what they need to know, which is normally 'nothing'."

"Is this a good time to talk about Anna's files? Which by the way read like a lot of her info came from Sophia."

[Sunstar]

"If we're going for a sub name, how about the Blue Noah or the Yggdrasil?" Marina said looking at the sub. She then looks at Warren. "If by talk you mean put faces to names so we can gut them in their sleep."

[Toby Lupin]

"That's a little wasteful, if you ask me." Darrik pointed out. "Plenty of the names here are high-level positions and people. Use the OpNet accounts and the information we can obtain from there first- of which we can likely steal a great deal. Then we should make use of the actionable data as appropriate. Something for Alex and me to work on."

*Cora, we're going to leave soon. Best hurry up to the sub.*

[Karren Gaunt]

'That's today? Arghh, I'll be right there..,' Coraline replied to Darrik in a fluster of emotion as her brain finally finished getting into gear, giving him the equivilent of someone leaving the phone off the hook while bustling in the background before the link tapered off again.

Pack a few last items in her bag. Make sure everything was turned off and unplugged. Blitz into the bathroom to splash some water on her face and do basic grooming now that she didn't have time for a shower...

[Butch_Cole]

Butch looked up and down the hallways. None of the others were around as they were all probably at the sub. He felt a momentary twinge of sadness as he wondered whether they would actually be able to return. Most of his life had been spent on the run, a couple of weeks here, a few months there, at most a year in one place. Honestly, the last few years here on the island was the longest Butch could remember being in one place. But now, things were changing and they had to retreat to the submarine for what Traveler said would be a week or so. From there, who knew where they'd end up.

He adjusted the duffel bag he carried over one shoulder. In it were some last minute things from his room that he wanted to keep with him where ever he went. In his other hand was a bag full of some food.

Butch knocked on Cora's door. The young metamorph had begun to appear more and more frazzled over the past week with the increased responsibilities required of her with the new modeling contract with DeVries. There was something else going on, too. After the modeling was done, Cora would retreat to either study on her own or work with Uncle Shen, but Butch wasn't one to pry. Still, he had a feeling she wouldn't exactly be ready when it was time to go.

"Morning, Cora," Butch said through the door. He held a bag up to the door, not exactly sure why since he didn't think Cora could see through walls. The motion felt right though. "I grabbed some quick eats figuring you'd be in a rush. So, I have a couple apples, a yogurt smoothie, or an egg sandwich. Whatever you don't eat I will."

[LydaLynn]

As Epiphany woke up, she noted the sun and sighed. Since this was the last time she'd get the chance to sleep in one of the hot springs for at least a week, she'd taken the opportunity. Of course, she slept in. It wasn't too big of a worry for her, given that she had packed the night before.

Getting up Pip shakes a bit to dry off and resets her eufiber from bathing suit to normal clothes, trusting her heat generation and the wind of her flight to dry her before she made it to the elevator. Being stuck in a submarine together for the next week might well try the family in new and interesting ways. Even if some were able to come and go easily, taking the rest with them, cabin fever wasn't a completely unlikely possibility.

As she waited for the elevator to arrive, "Have we come up with a ship name yet? I was thinking Avalon, the promise of a better future." With the ding of opening doors, Pip stepped in and rode the car into the base. She'd stop by her room for her bags before making it to the sub.

[Karren Gaunt]

Originally Posted By: Butch_Cole

"Morning, Cora," Butch said through the door. He held a bag up to the door, not exactly sure why since he didn't think Cora could see through walls. The motion felt right though. "I grabbed some quick eats figuring you'd be in a rush. So, I have a couple apples, a yogurt smoothie, or an egg sandwich. Whatever you don't eat I will."

The door opened and Butch was greeted by a Coraline with a serious case of bedhead, her own dufflebag in one hand, eufiber morphed into a simple sundress and a distracted expression on her gorgeous features that shifted rapidly towards warm, sisterly apreciation for the offering of food on a hectic morning.

"Thank you, Butch," her chorus hummed after she shifted her things to one shoulder and closed the door behind her, one last lingering look saying farewell to the space she had been able to call her own these last seven years, "I overslept trying to cram in studying and my nightly four hours of rest. Fortunately the bathroom is between us and the elevator, so I can stop in there and fix myself up a little before I... no, we, go to meet the others by the sub. Maybe?"

An apple was deftly claimed as an intial sacrifice to the metabolic furnace, eagerly consumed as she asked apoligy for this one, face saving delay. The young metamorph's gaze was wistful, skimming their surroundings as if she wasn't sure that this would ever be home again. Irrational fear or not, she'd had to leave too many of them behind.

[Quantum Fire]

Zia and Eric were nervous and unsteady as they entered the room with the submarine in it, and Zia especially seemed a bit uneasy. "We're moving again?" Zia went over to Pip to reach out the grasp the telepath's hand. "Your coming, right?" In the last week, she'd found Zia seeking out her company more and more, the young empath seemed to find her presence especially comforting..

At the same time, Shen was answering some of the questions put to him. "I have the utmost confidence in you, Alex, with the changes you've made, the chances are only 20% of them finding us, depending on shifting factors, but moving to the sub makes it almost 0% which is why I am suggesting it. There are other ways to shift matters, but this is the least dangerous or risky. And no, Darrik, they don't know who they are looking for at all, they simply know they are looking for something."

[LydaLynn]

Epiphany wraps her fingers around Zia's hand. Her bag slung over the opposite shoulder, Pip watched the others in silence. The young empath was a comforting presence by her side. The others could fuss about, Pip wasn't concerned, what would be would be. She had developed an inner peace she still didn't understand. She still had flashbacks and nightmares, but they didn't bother her as much.

[SalmonMax]

"Oh, I agree," Alex said to Shen. "I was just saying that if we go, there's not much chance of them finding the place...and we'll have some advance warning before they look here. But yeah, if you foresee a concerted search going on that includes this island, we should definitely go. That's what the sub's for, after all, and it's ready to go."

[Quantum Fire]

"From the sound of things, Atlantis, Avalon, Olympus, Odyssey, Blue Noah, & Yggdrasil, seem to be names everyone suggested, may I suggest just Sanctuary myself?" Serenity said as she came into view of the others, carrying a large box in her hands.

[Butch_Cole]

"Alright, Cora," Butch said. "If you think we have time, we'll stop in at the bathrooms real quick. I'd suggest hurrying though. Uncle Shen seemed a bit insistent on leaving today and sooner rather than later."

Butch followed Cora to the bathroom and waited patiently outside for her. He sent a quick message over the link to the others:

Cora and I will be there in a few minutes, so don't go setting sail without us. What's the scoop on names? Everyone come up with their own idea for how to christen Alex's masterpiece, I'm assuming?

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline smiled around a mouthful of apple, nodding her head in acknowledgement of the need for haste.

"Save me a second apple. You can have the rest. I just need a little blood sugar to get me going," she commented between bites to Butch as she led the way to the bathrooms before taking another bite and adding over the link, 'And if we're voting for names, I vote for whatever Maia voted on when she votes.'

The young metamorph darted inside for hasty last minute grooming and various cleaning she could manage on the fly.

Click to reveal..

Edited for presentation. Butch, feel free to cover their entrance to the dock next post you do presuming we get a buffer or three by then.

[Maia]

Maia moved over to Serenity and smiled. "That's a good choice as well, aunt Serenity."

She nodded. "Want me to take that for you?"

[Quantum Fire]

As Serenity allowed Maia to take the box from her, she walked over to Epiphany and Zia, to join the three of them waiting just a little to the side of the room.

Meanwhile, Traveler smiled slightly and spoke up. "As Alex built the sub, and Warren provided the materials, perhaps they should name it, but I did bring the bottle for the christening" He lifted the bottle in his hand.

"Still, as soon as we have a name for our temporary home, I think we should be off."

[Courier]

Warren said, "Alex and Warren? Lots of the former and little of the latter. The man holding the spotlight doesn't share credits with the artist in it."

Giving credit where he felt it due, Warren nodded towards Alex and said, "Alex's work, thus Alex's sub; Let my only contribution in the naming be asking her to pick another. Odyssey is too clever sister, there's too much information packed in there. Pick a name you wouldn't mind Project Pro learning and we'll get going."

[Butch_Cole]

Butch waited patiently outside the bathroom. He smelled the egg sandwich he had made earlier in the bag he was holding. There was cheese and bacon and grease and it all became a bit much for the young nova to handle. He reached into the bag and began to eat the egg sandwich. It did not last very long.

He swallowed the last bit of bacon just as Cora came out of the bathroom. Handing her the other apple, Butch said, "We better hurry up. I'll bet they're all itching to cram themselves onto that sub. Y'know, I was feeling like the walls were closing in around us a bit here. And now we're jamming into a smaller space." He laughed, briefly, then continued, "Feel like placing bets on who loses their shit first?"

He began walking down the hall with Cora alongside.

[Karren Gaunt]

"Me. You have no idea how hard it is to sit down and focus on doing and thinking nothing when you can hear everything and move nearly fast enough to feel like you can do something about it," Cora bantered up at her sibling with the apple in hand as she punched the button in the elevator when they arrived, "And that's just one of the foundation skills Uncle Shen is putting me through before we really get started on teaching me what I need to learn from him. Don't get me wrong, It's... fun, especially the physical parts, but combined with the modeling, I'm actually feeling like *I* don't have enough time in the day to get everything I need to do. Me of all of us."

She looked down and started in on her apple as the elevator descended towards the docks.

[Butch_Cole]

"You?" Butch smiled at Cora. "Ain't that something. I'd have had you at slightly longer odds. My money would have been on Alex to lose it first. Or just turn into the sub or something so she wouldn't have to deal with having to be around us all the time. Though I guess we'd be in her then and that'd just be plain ol' odd. I don't know how she does it sometimes though, y'know? A mind that moves like hers? It must be tough."

He gently punched the young metamorph in the arm. "So, tell me more. How are things going with Uncle Shen? Between your training and the modeling, I haven't seen much of you."

[SalmonMax]

"Oh, we want a meaningless name, hm?" Alex says, running a hand through her hair. "And I thought I was the paranoid one here. Alright, how about some alphanumerics?"

"NV-13c? Is that too soulless? Whack-A-Mole? Too silly. So a word that has nothing to do with it's form, function or purpose."

"How about Primus? Faux latin. Sounds like it means 'first' or something but really it's just nonsense."

[Karren Gaunt]

"I know. I'm sorry. I swore I'd never miss breakfast with the family and I did that twice this week counting today, but..," Coraline replied between bites before cutting her chorus off mid excuse, "No. You know what you can do for me and I'll tell you all about the... unique experience that is martial arts training under Uncle Shen? Keep me balanced. Remind me to keep up the little things I do to keep human, here, in my head, breakfast, art, sleep, showers. I don't want to wake up one day and find out I apothesized just because I forgot to take care of myself. It has to mean more than that."

The elevator dinged again as it reached the dock level, Cora laughing a little in self-realization, "That would remove the whole point of putting myself through this to learn Tai Chi Chuan and then Qi Meng, wouldn't it?"

[Butch_Cole]

"You've got yourself a deal," Butch said. "I'll keep you balanced, Cora. Pick a time during the day and we'll decompress. Whenever. I'll watch you hammer and chisel rock into art or listen to you talk about harnessing your chi or the sound of one hand clapping. Maybe we'll just gossip about the others. Like did you see the looks passing between Pip and Warren the other night? Anyway, save that for later. We're here."

The elevator came to a halt, and the door opened. The sub loomed ahead of them. The others were waiting for them, ready to board their new, hopefully temporary, home.

"Hey, y'all," Butch said loud enough for the others to hear. He motioned towards Cora with his thumb. "Lookee who I found. That everyone then? We ready to bust the champagne on this bad boy?"

[SalmonMax]

"Girl," Alex corrected. "Ships are female. Hi Cora. Butch. Meet Primus."

She waved her hand towards the gleaming, silvery sub.

[Courier]

Warren gave the 'thumbs up' signal to 'Primus' indicating his approval and vote for the new name.

[Quantum Fire]

"Primus it is then.." Shen smashed the bottle on the side of the sub with a smooth easy throw that shattered the bottle on the side of the submarine. "Perhaps you should name your first star ship Odyssey. Now, If the captain and creator of her submarine would care to show her crew aboard and around, I'm sure we'd all love to see it."

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline had peaked in on the sub between rounds of training the previous week somewhat spoiling the surprise, but it *was* very, very large and to even her satisfaction, opague to the kind of biological sonar the young metamorph could produce. She'd ask if she could play outrunner later, a remora to Alex's shark.

For now though, she was content to enjoy the tour with her family, adjusting her duffle bag on one shoulder and offering Butch a grateful smile in a pause between conversations.

[Butch_Cole]

"So, this bad girl is Primus? As always, thanks for the correction." Butch said, winking.

He adjusted the duffel bag on his shoulder, then looked back once over his shoulder. Waiting on the pier were the inhabitants of Traveler's island sanctuary. Butch looked at each of them a moment, then added:

"Well, let's check out our home away from home. Lead on, Alex."

[LydaLynn]

Epiphany continued to stand, listening and watching, silent. She had nothing to say and didn't mind enjoying the energy of the others. She would take in their new base and share in their excitement, but she had no need to speak or race about in thought or motion. Somehow she had found a balance again. It wasn't like her earlier balance, one of distance. Now she felt a part of the family, but a part that didn't need to be heard to be one with the group.

[Maia]

Maia smiled holding the box, not really caring what the sub was called. Everyone seemed happy, and for her that's what really mattered.

[SalmonMax]

"This way." As Alex walked towards the sub, a long gangplank assembled itself out of thin air, staying just ahead of her confident stride. It led from the edge of the concrete 'dock' across and up to the top of the giant coning tower set at about the first 1/3 mark of the sub's total length. There was a railing along the circumference of the top of the tower, and two imperfections in the otherwise smooth surface. A shallow convex circle, and a short closed off tube that extended upwards about a foot and a half and was wide enough to put one's hand in...if it were not closed.

Alex tapped her foot on the surface, and the dome rose up about an inch with a hiss of equalizing pressure, and then opened on a hinge that had previously been flush with the hull. Inside was a tube wide enough for a large man with a ladder running down the side. It went down about three meters, then ended. There was a door set in the side at the bottom.

"This is the main airlock," Alex explained. "Normally controlled from the inside, but there's a hidden manual release here." She nudged a spot near the hinge on the hull that depressed under her foot and slid open to reveal a lever and a small crank wheel. "When the manual release opens, an alarm rings inside."

She climbed down the ladder and opened the door at the bottom, calling up, "There's pressure sensors inside and out. As long as the pressure inside is the same as outside, the door will open. So when we're surfaced we don't have do the tedious thing with only having the inner or outer door open at once. Underwater though, you'll have enter in pairs, let the water drain, then open the door. Of course, for you guys who like to swim, there is another way in and out. We'll get to that."

The airlock led to a relatively open room with a row of benches and storage lockers. The floors and walls were polished and white, making the place look like a hospital.

"The whole interior is pretty much white," Alex said, sweeping an arm around. "Mostly because it's a very easy color to spot cracks, mold, chemicals, and so on against. The material is akin to Teflon, a very nonreactive polymer sheathe. It's tough, hypo-allergenic, and makes clean-up a breeze. Almost nothing sticks to it. The floors have silicon nodules...sand basically...worked into them to give traction even if wet."

She led the way to an alcove in the wall where another ladder stretched up and down. "Moving between decks is primarily done via ladders. There IS a lift system amidships that's meant to ferry heavy goods up and down, but I didn't want us to get too attached to elevators for moving around. Elevators and elevator shafts represent a whole host of structural and procedural weaknesses that I, frankly, didn't want to have to deal with. We're all able-bodied folks here. Now from here, going up leads to the bridge and electronics. I call where we are the 'prep deck' since it's largely meant for secure storage of whatever effects you want, plus stuff we'll be needing on a regular basis before heading out. Survival kits, rations, tools, et cetera. Down from here will lead to the observation lounge which takes up the majority of the third pressure hull, and includes the kitchen and dining area. Lets go there first, since the bridge is, honestly, a bit boring."

The lounge was spacious and comfortable, with large transparencies in the walls that looked out into the ocean, and couches that hugged the hull and snaked out into the room to make little semicircles. There was a wet bar with stools. There were flat panel television screens set on walls near the couches, or at little tables all over. The tables, Alex said, could be used to log onto the sub's central network and get information about various systems or just access databases or games or any number of other content. At times when the sub had wireless internet access...not often, she admitted...it would also be available through the terminals. The lounge itself was the dining area, she explained, but the kitchen was a good chunk of the back third of the pressure hull, and had three ovens, two industrial sized sinks, plenty of counter space, and special little graspers overhead that would securely hold utensils, but that a quick-handed person could easily take them from and replace. There were also a pair of refrigerators and a walk-in freezer. The freezer was actually quite large, as was the dry-storage pantry, since Alex was expecting most of the required food to be preserved over the long term. Water was stored in tanks under the floor, though Alex said that she'd included desalinizers that would process seawater to be drinkable. The process was agonizingly slow though, so she still expected to have to top off the tanks every so often.

As she guided everyone through the corridors, it became clear in the minds of the others that this didn't FEEL like a ship. The corridors could easily fit two abreast...they weren't claustrophobic at all. There was no exposed superstructure or piping. The walls and ceilings were smooth and flat. It was more like exploring a building than a submarine.

"Removing the missile batteries from the original design freed up a LOT of space," Alex was saying at that point. "So I used most of it to open up the habitable area of the hulls. Now, there's kind of a trick to knowing where you are in this. There's five decks, but there's two main pressure hulls, A and B...or Alpha and Beta. So if you're on the third deck of hull A, then you're at A-three, or Alpha three. Each hull has its own reactor, it's own life support and its own engines. This means in the event of a total loss of one pressure hull, the sub itself can still function at a reduced level with the other. The third hull, the one the lounge is in, has backup power and life support as well."

Every twenty yards or so, the corridors were marred by an oval that poked out from the walls and ceilings. These, Alex said, were the pressure doors. In the event of a hull breach, barriers would slam shut, isolating the breach so it couldn't fill the whole hull. The doors could be opened, or closed, at the bridge as well...or manually overridden.

Crew quarters were split between hulls and decks, and mostly gathered amidships. The rooms were about the size of motel rooms, each with one bed, one bathroom, and a small desk/counter with a ship computer terminal. There were drawers that clipped shut built into the walls, and a decent-sized closet for hanging things up. Alex was quick to explain that she'd used a generic template to build the rooms, but that she could easily work with each of them to make specific changes if they wanted. Even the floorplans, within reason, could be flexible.

Each pressure hull also had a small bay near the back that could be opened to the sea, and a smaller sub that hung in braces from the ceiling overhead. The submarine bays had no manual override, she warned, and were not intended for use as airlocks...though they were a lot easier to get in and out of, if you didn't mind getting wet in the process, and the bay doors were open. The two minisubs were oddly designed...sleek and conical, looking almost more like spaceships than devices that moved through water. Alex explained that they were capable of creating envelopes of gas around themselves and using chemical afterburners to travel at incredible speeds through the water. They were also armed with what Alex called "tiny torpedo launchers and could serve as "fighter craft" for the larger submarine. Their sensors and controls were designed to interface with the Primus', extending the length of her range when needed. Unfortunately, the demands of a supercavitating hull were at odds with the demands of super-deep diving...and the Primus was capable of achieving depths that would be unsafe to launch the minisubs at.

She prattled on at length over the computer system and the electronics, and how they were actually considerably ahead of 'state of the art' as far as the world was concerned, and how the Primus would hopelessly overmatch any other sub out there with its precision systems and unusual sensors and supercavitating torpedoes and countermeasures and...it all started to run together after awhile.

The tour went on to the reactors, which were shiny and pristine looking. They were nuclear fission, she explained, but didn't use raw uranium as a fuel like the reactors most people were familiar with. Rather they used a heavy metal salt as both fissible material and reactor medium, which simplified the cycle immensely and made it both safer and more efficient...by orders of magnitude. The energy output of either reactor was enough to keep critical systems working, she said. With both, they had power to spare...enough for upgrades in the future. She'd intentionally overbuilt the reactors, in fact, since they would be difficult components to replace if they needed more power later. There were also banks of high-density batteries for backup power in the third pressure hull, and the engines could be switched over to a small diesel reserve in an emergency.

After swinging past the torpedo magazine and firing chambers...all automated...Alex ended the tour at the bridge, which looked like something out of Star Trek. The captain's chair in the center of a large round room, with seats at control panels all around. There was even a big screen in the front. She said it was for tactical displays and readouts, as well as computer-enhanced sensor data which could produce graphic renders of sonar reflections, or use the blue-green optimized LADAR to create images of nearby objects as well. But it was hard to believe that she'd included something like that without at least a semi-conscious nod to the TV show. Each chair, she went on to say, was actually a workstation and could access the control functions for just about any crew station. There was no "navigator" or "tactical" position. You picked where you wanted to sit, and loaded up the control software for the position you wanted to control.

[Quantum Fire]

Both of the children stayed close to Epiphany as they entered the sub, but they were clearly amazed as Alex began to show the place off. "It's like a huge moving hotel or something." They clearly liked what they were seeing, it was amazing example of a masterpiece of construction from the work of a single nova. It was a view that was shared by several others as well, a amazing piece of work.

"Impressive Alex, this is a masterpiece, we may not even notice we're in a submarine." Shen said even as Serenity nodded in agreement to his words.

[SalmonMax]

Alex puffed a bit, clearly pleased by the praise. She'd worked very hard on what they were now within, chasing it beyond her limits into the quantum fire of Apotheosis itself. It was nice to have it recognized.

"Once it's out in the ocean, you'll feel movement," she assured them. "It's designed to cruise under most submarine's crush depth though...I introduced very precise crystal formation into the metal of the outer hull. We can go deep. Down there, under steady propulsion, it should be a very smooth ride. Not many currents that far down."

She sighed happily and reached out to trail her fingers along the whitewashed wall. "What I learned making her will make the starship even better than I planned at first. All I need now's the stardrive."

"Oh, that reminds me. There is a workshop area on the ship too. It's still a bit of a mess, so I left it off the tour, but there's signs. Also, pretty soon my quantum detector will be ready for deployment, so...I'll need to attune you guys so the system recognizes you." She made a 'tch' noise with her tongue against the inside of her cheek.

"Still got so many things to do."

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline wished she she brought more art supplies now. Sterile, functional white as the vessel's interior was, it screamed for a touch of *something*.

"You'll do it, Alex. Just try to take a little time for yourself this time around. We want you to be happy as well as productive," the young metamorph added softly, trying to recall where she had seen the room's design before, some Opnet thing or the other she had walked in on her siblings watching, "How fast does it go? Too fast for Marina and I to play remora to your shark on it's first dive?"