The Abyss looks into You

[Gir Quee]

Azira briefly glanced at her food, "It's hard to say, really. He's become more and more isolated these days."

"He received a message that originated from Duros in the middle of the work day a few months ago," said Salmakk, "he seemed rather depressed, so I thought that perhaps some family member or someone he was close to died, and he just needed time to grieve."

"But he hasn't changed?" said Gir, "I mean, his mood hasn't changed since then?"

"I'm not too familiar with duros grieving customs, though I have heard they tend to take some time..." started Salmakk, "so I have not followed up on him yet. I didn't want to make him feel uncomfortable."

Gir slowly nodded. That's good and all, but if he needs help, how would we know that? Out of the members of the circle, Gai was perhaps the hardest one to naturally understand and begin to know personally. If his zany behavior didn't put one off, the lack of meaningful communication aside from professional work. Yet despite his apparent craziness, he remained a valuable contributor to the company. Gir had always wondered if there was something more to the duros that they were missing. Some say that madness is a sign that a person has reached the pinnacle of their intelligence...Or is his behavior just an act to hide something from everyone else? Gir was very tempted to think it was former, but he remembered several exceptional moments where Gai seemed utterly normal one day, and then his usual eccentric self the next day, as if a switch had been flipped on and off.

"Will we be seeing Gai later on this afternoon?" asked Gir.

Salmakk shrugged, "If you would like."

 

[Gir Quee]

The talk around the table turned more mundane, with the trio briefly discussing the upcoming city council elections for Ibtasim City as they finished their meal. Regardless of the outcome of the race, the new council member was not likely to affect the city's relationship with the company's yards. The current incumbent had helped the company establish its yards, while the challenger was known as a prominent hawk. While that alone didn't necessarily mean that he would favor the yards, it didn't seem likely that he would want to shoo away the only major defense contractor within the city. As Gir cleared his plate of the last crumbs, Azira departed to double-check an idea that she had with the ship's communication's systems. Salmakk cast his eyes upon Gir.

"Do you want to see Gai first? Or near the end of the day?"

"Let's do it now," decided Gir.

The two departed the mess hall to wander back into the ship's corridors. While they had only spent perhaps an hour in the mess hall, Gir could already see progress as they walked through certain sections of the ship. More alabaster white paneling covered the ship's messy internals and many more minor subcomponents appeared to be completely installed, whether they were simple door control panels or overhead lights. But Salmakk soon lead him more towards the bow of the ship, where construction progress remained primordial. It seemed strange to Gir to move from an almost completed area to section where the vast majority of the ship's heavy iridium-mirrsteel frame remained exposed. As they advanced up the sketelal section of what eventually would be a corridor deep within the ship, Gir could noticed a sudden rise in dense power conduits and cables snaking around them. In minutes, the two brothers found themselves standing at a massive cylindrical object that was covered in dozens of tiny mechanic droids along with a few organic supervisors. Yet Gai did not appear to immediately be around the proton beam cannon.

Salmakk cleared his throat as he approached one of the foremen, "Is Gai around?"

 

[Gir Quee]

"Ah, he's somewhere in there," said the quarren, thrusting a finger at the massive barrel of the proton beam cannon.

Gir raised an eyebrow even as Salmakk let out an abbreviated sigh. Despite his outward show of incredulity, Gir found that revelation reassuring. Well, at least the gonzo part of Gai is still present, even if it is a mere mask... The foreman's gaze moved from beyond Salmakk to the man behind him. Realizing who Gir was, the quarren loudly banged his salmon-tinged hand against one of the weapon's panels. A pair of muted "thwack" sounds resounded from within the weapon about five meters away from where the foreman had banged his hand. Well, at least he's not too deep into the weapon yet. A handful of awkward moments passed before the long-faced engineer stumbled out of the hatch. Gai's red eyes rested on Salmakk for a second before they turned to Gir, who slowly approached his old friend.

"I haven't seen you in a while," said Gir, "how goes your work?"

The duros's head slowly turned to look at the weapon. It was at that moment that Gir realized that all of Gai's movements were noticeably than they had used to be. Perhaps sensing Gir's attention to that, the duros let a broad grin quickly tug across his face.

"It goes," said Gai, "but not quick enough to be at the 'boom' stage, which clearly is the best stage."

Gir nodded as he moved closer to look at the weapon, "Have you ever made particle acceleration weapon before this project?"

"Once," said the duros, grabbing a black towel to wipe away the sweat from his forehead, "a cobbled thing that fried after its first shot. More of a thing that existed because I had a few extra scraps laying round, and I needed my 'boom' fix."

"Tell me what you've got here then."

 

[Gir Quee]

Gai slowly set the towel down on one of the weapon's panels. But as he did so, one of the maintenance droids quickly snagged it off the surface before it scurried away from the group. Yet Gai was oblivious to the droid's antics, as he began to talk about his project.

"Salmakk told me that he needed an impressive weapon that energy efficient, and that it had to use the least amount of storage space as possible because of the expected long voyages that this will be taking. He also slipped it to me that this shouldn't have many moving parts in order to keep maintenance requirements down. That didn't give me a lot of options to choose from," said the duros, "but I think that my team rose up to come up with a satisfactory 'boom' weapon that meets those requirements."

"A particle weapon doesn't have a lot of moving parts, I imagine."

Gai nodded, "Most of it is electronics and magnetics...I mean that's all it needs to hurl a stream of particles at a target. The weapon requires a pretty consistent energy charge, but it doesn't have periods of high demand like with turbolasers and other like weapons."

"And that makes it energy efficient?"

"Well...no," said Gai, "not by itself. There is a lot of energy put into a turbolaser with multiple cyrogenic systems needed to cool it down after firing. but with a proton beam cannon, the energy usage isn't as concentrated, which means that it never reaches near the high temperature spikes found in turbolasers. That combined with the natural slow refiring rate of the weapon means that this uses far less power to cool than a conventional turbolaser weapon, which in turn means that less power is used."

"It seems like a little improvement to me."

Salmakk shook his head, "This is an example of the cascading effects of incremental improvements, but this time, think scale."

Gai nodded, "The energy saved is really noticeable on the order of scale that we are working with. Even if the energy saved from this is only capable of powering a handful of extra turbolasers and defensive guns."

"It all adds up. But I'm assuming there's a reason why we haven't seen more of these weapons across the galaxy..."

 

[Gir Quee]

Gai started a discourse about particle weaponry peppered with occasional interjections by Salmakk. Some of it Gir already knew, but Gai delved so deeply into the subject that Gir could see that even Salmakk was learning new things, particularly about the use of electromagnetic fields to redirect the particle beam. Some of the talk between the two of them was far past Gir's knowledge to fully comprehend, yet he took some pleasure in seeing Gai being so animated. It was nothing unusual to see someone become lively about a topic that interested them, yet the amount of contrast between how Azira and Salmakk had described him compared to as he seemed to be currently was encouraging. Then it hit him. Perhaps he is slowly recuperating through his work... From a purely business perspective, that sort of drive was good for employee productivity in the short-term. But as a friend of the duros, Gir couldn't help put be a little worried about that development. being too vested in a product could cause a host of other problems in a person's life. Gir suddenly felt his face grow flush. Then again, look who's talking...really, am I any different from him? Perhaps in motivation, but not in the end result. He struggled to return his focus back to the conversation, where Salmakk and Gai had waded deep into a discussion about the use of adding an electron beam to the proton beam to neutralize the charge, and thus extend the beam's range. It was one of those ideas that appeared to be easy to conceptualize, but difficult to put into practice. Salmakk glanced over at Gir.

"I think that we have lost Gir."

Gir ruefully shook his head, "I think you should both continue. I'm not quite as fast on the pickup as either of you, but I'm getting much of it."

Gai regarded Gir with a measure of unusual silence for a few seconds, "I should probably get back into the barrel to start working on the field aligners. I have a time table to meet, but thank you both for stopping by."

"You should join us for dinner," offered Salmakk, "I have even managed to convince Gir to go."

Gai considered the offer for several seconds, "I will give you a call on my comlink when the shift is done. I will need to see how I am feeling."

"I understand."

Salmakk continued to lead Gir throughout the vessel for the rest to show him various improvements or to discuss potential design modifications for the rest of the day. But as they did so, Gir found his attention being pulled more and more away from the exact design specifications to the people who were making the Union a reality. From a more detached perspective, Gir found the ship itself less and less interesting while his interest in the people and their passion behind it more compelling to his attention. But are we creating a monstrous ship or monsters in our work crew? Gir didn't know the answer to that question, but perhaps he would have a better idea as the Ocean Tide neared completion.