1x1 with Taikunfoo

[Kipori]

(Haha yes he is getting big faster then I think any of us were prepared for. He has taken to doing somersaults for whatever reason when we sit on the ground. He gets his head up against your chest then kicks his back legs up and flops over. It's very funny but also startling when he does it at a full run haha. I actually got them all to sleep calmly on my bed with me the last few nights. Though I think I made a grave error allowing Monza on my bed because now he thinks he can come up whenever he wants and since he had figured out how to open my door, I wake up to him jumping on my bed more often then not hahaha.
So far I am healthy and haven't had any scares. We have the option to wear a mask at work yes. I usually opt not to, which might be dumb but I'd rather leave the limited supply we have for the workers who are more at risk then me. If we ever have a larger supply of masks I will likely take to wearing one but for now with things being limited, I'd feel bad doing it.
I hope your dad and brother remained healthy and didn't end up sick or anything. Oh no, that really sucks about work. Hopefully things have started picking up or will be picking up soon for you so you can get back to work. And hopefully you will still be able to do a bit of work on your garden, even if its only a little bit of work later in the summer.
Glad to hear that some people around your area are seeming to take it seriously, though its unsurprising some aren't. A few near me had parties the first few days after school ended but the cops put an end to it quickly enough and no more happened after that, well until last night but my area is lifting some of the distancing restrictions so hopefully they were still following the rules in place (Think we can have gathers of up to 6 people now but I could be wrong hahaha, I am not keeping up with the news as much as I should admittedly.
The transition to online classes went alright, some profs had a few more issues then others. Exams online were a bit hit and miss since I had one prof that put the same question four times in his exam and another that had so many spelling errors it felt like I was trying to decode an ancient language during an exam haha The store is good, we closed a fair few of the departments or closed them in some capacity. Our deli counter isn't serving customers anymore, and our fashion, butcher and seafood department are all pretty much closed down. We also have a cap on the number of people so there is never more then like 200 people at a time which makes it easier to avoid getting near anyone.)

Miles Walker
Seeing as he had gotten no objections to his plan, Miles turned his attention back to his work. Engines really the thing he was an expert on, not stuff like this but that wasn't to say he didn't have any experience opening doors and locks like these. In fact, he probably had more experience breaking codes like this then he should but he wasn't about to say that out loud in front of his Captain who was not only his boss but also military. Nothing he had done was technically illegal, he had checked, but it definite hadn't been morally correct. Regardless, it wasn't something he should share with the group if he wanted to keep his job for the time being. Likely the Captain would question him later about how he knew about system overrides but he figured he could side step any questions, or at least he hoped he could.
Shaking his head, he tuned the conversation between the Captain and Eric out, focusing his entire mind on the puzzle before him.
Getting into the system was worryingly simple, requiring a few standard override codes that were always consistent on systems like this one. The Captain and system admin had the ability to change them but few ever did, a flaw in the design that allowed him to easily get into the inner workers of the system. His eyes went a bit wide at the system that was suddenly laid out before him, lines of code that seemed out of place or changed in ways he couldn't quite understand. Nothing looked corrupted but definitely different then similar system he had worked through. He didn't see anything that was dangerous to them so he shrugged it off as a quirk of whoever had been the administrator of the system and pushed the thought away and focused on getting to the reset. It took a few screens and a few other override codes, which also had not been changed from the default, and he had the system rebooting to factory settings.
A few moments for the system to get itself running again and a quick check to ensure the corrupt code wasn't causing any problems had Miles standing and glancing at the others. The Captain was farther down the hall looking at something which Miles couldn't see from his spot by the console. The Doctor hadn't moved much, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, but the unease on his face was telling that Miles had missed something. He opened his mouth to ask but the panel beeped at him and he glanced at it, seeing the button flashing ready to go at a moments notice.
"Alright, we're in." He called over the radio, a hint of pride in his voice for getting it to work despite the clear issues the system was having at the moment. There was a high chance trying to get into other areas of the system would be stalled do to the corrupted files and strange strings of code but he wasn't to worried. This was their main goal and with a button press they could enter the bridge. "Did I miss something?" He asked distractedly as he hit the button to open the door, wanting to get what they came for so they could leave.

Zed Kassman
As the engineer got to work on the panel and the Captain wandered farther down the hall, Zed made himself comfortable against the wall. He was half listening to the conversation between the pilot and the Captain but was confused about the importance of a plant. Clearly it worried them both for some reason, he could hear it in their tones as they spoke to each other and that had him feeling uneasy. He would be the first to admit that being on this ship was not his definition of a good time and he would gladly turn around and leave if the Captain said they should but he didn't see what the fuss over a living plant was about. There was oxygen and gravity in this area of the ship so it stood to reason that a plant would have survived right? Shaking his head, Zed glanced towards the Engineer as the younger man stood, a grin on his face and in his words as he claimed the panel was fixed or working or whatever had been wrong stalling their progress.
He seemed to have picked up on the unease if the slow disappearance of his smile was anything to go by, followed by a question while he turned back to the panel. Zed made a small noise wondering if it was smart to just open the door without giving them a chance to prepare for anything that might be on the other side but shook the silly thought off. There would be no one on the other side, there was no one alive on this ship anymore. He was being stupid in thinking they needed to prepare for such things.

[taikunfoo]

(Oh my goodness that's hilarious! I've been struggling with letting my dog up on the couch- I've been trying to enforce an 'ask permission' by coming up to the couch and putting his head or a paw on it before waiting for me to say 'up' or to pat the sofa, but he's taken it as ask permission when I'm around or if I'm not in the room he can be on the couch. Questionable progress haha. I'm glad to hear that you're doing well and things are going decent at work. My state has just started to open up as well so we'll see how it goes. That sounds rough with the finals, especially with that one professor. At least it's over now!

On a side note I'm very sorry about the delay on my end, I was working on my responses and my computer decided to restart, so I had to re-write them. Thanks for your patience!)

Captain Tubon
Tripp situated himself behind Mr. Walker and beside Dr. Kassman, carefully looking around the area to see where any inhabitants might approach. He wasn't sure if anyone was actually left alive on the ship, but the bootprint and plant that was still alive hinted that someone had been caring for the plant and perhaps had knocked it over in a hurry when they heard the airlock cycle. The fact that they hadn't approached was telling- something was obviously wrong. If more than one person had survived it might be a better situation for their mental health/capacity to function in a group, but if only one person had survived then it was likely that they were insane. Being trapped on a ship alone for years with the rest of your companions killed while you struggled to get home.. Tripp didn't want to think about what that would do to him, or the man that they were dealing with. At least he assumed it was a man. He waited a moment for Mr. Walker to finish speaking and moved forwards in anticipation of walking onto the bridge, but he came to a stop short of the door when it didn't open. He didn't comment on the failure of the engineer to open the door, but it gave him some reassurance that if someone was trying to break onto his bridge he'd have a few minutes to deal with it. Returning his focus back to the plant and the bootprint, he spoke up.
"Mr. Henson, could you please find the records of the three tallest people registered to this ship?" He asked, wanting to get to the bottom of this. "I'm concerned that someone is still alive and running around here that hasn't approached us yet. They would have heard the airlock cycle, and yet instead of approaching us they fled." He said, before realizing that Dr. Kassman might be able to help extrapolate the height of the owner of the boot. He was a doctor after all, surely he'd seen a lot of feet during his work?
"Dr. Kassman, would you be able to help give me an estimate of the height of the person using the bootprint in the dirt over here?" He asked, hoping that between the doctor and the pilot searching through the records. Tripp made sure to look around again, keying through his settings for his suit to access the cameras on his suit and his helmet, setting up an alert if they detected movement outside of Dr. Kassman's and Mr. Walker's actions. The hallway that they were in was curved, which unfortunately meant that it was possible for someone to approach from both sides. Realizing that it would be handy for his crew to use the alert as well, he used the touchpad on his arm to send the settings for the alert to the others. "I'm sending you a program that will alert you if there's movement outside of the areas that we're interacting with. Our suits have cameras situated on them at different angles, so it will prevent anyone from sneaking up on us without us noticing." He said, trying to sound calm and confident while his heart was speeding up. Still, he kept his breathing under control, and moved over to inspect the bootprint with the doctor. He'd learned enough over the past few years that subordinates picked up on and reacted to whoever was leading them. If he was panicky, they'd be guaranteed to be panicky as well, while if he was calm and collected, they'd feel somewhat reassured. It wasn't a surefire way to keep them calm, but it definitely helped.

Eric Henson
Eric wasn't surprised by the Captain's next request, and set aside his search through the ship's logs for the turnaround or event point, pulling up the crew files. He quickly set up a search, sorting the crew manifest by height. There were a number of possibilities given the time that had passed, especially since children had been sent along on the ship with surrogate parents to improve genetic diversity. While the children would be in their late twenties or early thirties now, Eric thankfully had access to their most recent physicals which showed their height, rather than the height (or rather, length and weight of the infant), as well as the parentage of the children on board the ship so he could give a reasonable guess to the height of the children since their last physical. He keyed in the search to sort for the tallest adults, and flagged any of their children if they were under the age of 22. He had to wait a few moments while the program searched through the 112 crewmembers, Eric spent the next few minutes looking through the results, trying to extrapolate the tallest height of three highlighted children from the tallest crew.

[Kipori]

(The dogs are nothing if not good entertainment. Right now there is a turf war going on between my dog and the puppy over my bed and who gets to lay on it which is amusing to watch as they just stare each other down for twenty minutes. It's like some strange game of king of the hill or something haha.
Baby steps it seems haha. Hopefully he is starting to understand better now? Or is he still taking it as permission only needed when you're around?
Are things going alright with your state opening back up? Thus far we haven't had a lot of issues here but since the weather has been bad no one wants to go out anyways so we will have to see as the weather warms up how it goes.
Of course, hopefully it wasn't an underlying problem and just a random glitch. sorry this one took me an extra few days to get up.
I’m also going to assume I should leave Miles to tinkering with the bridge door for at least another post set? To give time for the others to solve the mystery of the boot prints or at least come to some conclusion about it before the door gets opened. I’m also making a total random guess with the heights since I have no real clue how height and shoe size can correlate but I think its a fairly educated guess)

Miles Walker
The moment the door didn’t open like it was supposed to, Miles had to bite down on a series of curse words and frustrated sounds that likely would have been very unprofessional if he had allowed himself to say them.
“Well that didn’t work.” He grumbled, pointing out the obvious as he glared at the control panel as it had personally offended him by not working how he thought it should. “Give me a minute.”
He crouched down again, annoyed with himself and the system that clearly was either to broken by this point from corrupt codes to function or had some underlying security he had missed. Either was equally possible though he hoped it was more a situation of overly corrupt code and not him overlooking something that he otherwise should have noticed. Looking for underlying security seemed like the best place to start since there would be nothing he could do about overly corrupted code short of finding a way to brute force the door open, something they probably didn’t have time for.
At least the Captain hadn’t voiced any frustrations he himself had on the matter and for that Miles was grateful. When the door didn’t open he half expected some snarky comment from the Doctor and something meant to be encouraging but actually felt belittling from the Captain but instead he was met with mostly radio chatter about boot prints and heights of passengers from them. This was fine by him though he had a small bit of worry that the Captain might have words for him later about being cocky and not checking his work to ensure it worked.
He was part way through scrubbing the code for any clues about underlying safety features when the Captain spoke up about sending them a program meant to alert them to anyone approaching. Moments after he started speaking said notification appeared before his face and with little hesitation he booted it up. The Doctor had been pretty adiment that there would be no one still alive on the ship but whatever the Captain had stumbled upon or felt that he had stumbled upon clearly had him spooked enough to warrent using such a program.
Miles wasn’t sure if that should make him feel safer, knowing that the Captain was thinking ahead and trying to get ahead of any possible dangers, or extremely worried that they were not totally alone in this hunk of junk as he had initially convinced himself.
“This just goes from bad to worse by the minute.” He muttered under his breath, deciding that getting to lost in his head over the matter was pointless and despite the Captain having sent them the program to run, he seemed calm enough. Miles figured it was likely nothing to worry about until the Captain or Doctor showed signs of panic and until then he should focus his full attention on the panel and getting the darn door open because as it stood, it was never going to open again.

Zed Kassman
Hearing that there was a possiblity of a person running around the ship who had decided not to contact them seemed rather outlandish to Zed. Why would someone stranded on a broken up ship not investigate the arrival of new people in hopes of being rescued from a situation that otherwise would lead to their deaths. However, Zed was also aware, though his limited understanding of plants, that there was no chance that they had survived this long without care from someone or something this entire time. Whether that meant the person caring for them was still alive or not was another story entirely, one he hesitated to point out.
“There is no exact science to estimating height from foot size.” He pointed out but never the less he moved to inspect the foot prints more closely. They were larger, to big to be anyone younger then twenty, maybe even twenty-five if he had to guess. Likely male as they tended to have larger feet as a general rule.
He was still thinking it over as the Captain sent out the program for them to boot up, rolling his eyes at the idea but doing it anyways. If the person, or person’s, made an appearance, likely having forwarning would do little for them on a ship they barely knew the layout to. Zed may only be a doctor but he knew they were at a disadvantage on this ship against anyone who had lived on it most if not thier entire lives.
“If I had to guess, and understand it’s a very rough guess but it appears that whoever is the owner of the shoes is over six foot though someone who is maybe 5’10 or 5’11 could have a similar size but I would guess over 6 feet is more likely. You’re probably looking at someone male, or multiple males since the prints are all identical its impossible to know that for sure. I’d also guess it’s no one younger then late teens at the minimum given the size of the print and the strides but there are cases were younger teens can grow more rapidly then others. As I said, not an exact science.”
Zed felt uneasy giving his report, not liking the vagueness of the evidence he had to work with and extrapolate from. To many variables made it difficult to be certain he was anywhere close to the mark or if there was even a mark to be reached given that the person, or people, that made the prints could no longer be alive at this point for any number of reasons.

[taikunfoo]

(Oh my goodness that's great- who 'wins' the most often? Do they have their turf war all sorted out now? Thankfully my dog is getting better, he'll still hop up occasionally if he doesn't think I'm going to be in the room for a while or if he's scared, but he's going in the right direction thankfully. I just want to discourage from walking into someone else's house and hopping up on the couch, or running into the living room and hopping up on the couch with wet paws (unfortunately he has a bad habit of peeing on his forelegs). My state is technically opening back up although I haven't gone out much. Folks are still mostly wearing masks when out and about which is good, although I'm still having issues with joggers and bikers not keeping their distance, or other folks taking for granted that I'm going to be the one to move out of their way, despite having no area to move over for where they have a spot, yet they keep walking. Thankfully no one in my immediate family has gotten sick, although one of my cousins got, but thankfully he's doing okay. Are you and your family still doing well? Are you back to work yet, or still recovering? Have things been easier on you after that infection? We had ~4 days of occasional rain and overcast skies last week so I got to go on a lot of walks with my dog since less people were out, but overall we've had nice, but hot weather. A lot of folks were traveling around for the 4th of July which is unfortunate-I wonder what the cases are going to look like in a couple of weeks. My favorite was the couple in the grocery store stocking up on chips and snacks for a 4th part with the husband already coughing, so I'm sure that'll be happening all over.
I think that's good for waiting another set before having Miles open the door. If I remember correctly, they had to try to get the information off the bridge, but couldn't. So while Miles is able to open the door, they can't access any of the computer terminals on the bridge (I'm assuming due to damage, or perhaps bad code/errors?), and they have to try and make their way to engineering in order to retrieve the backups. On the way out they see the alien video camera but Tripp doesn't think much of it (only Miles is into it) because of the time crunch Sometime during this they start figuring out that hey wait a second something isn't adding up (perhaps when they get into engineering), and then Eric sounds the alarm as he sees the wormhole and calls them back to the ship? Is that still okay or did you want to hash out any more details?)

Captain Tubon
Tripp listened carefully to Dr. Kassman's estimations, nodding his head. He definitely wasn't an expert, but knowing what he did of the shared bunking situation and mixing up many, many boots over the course of his service, the doctor's estimations did seem about right.
"Thank you for your estimation Doctor." Tripp acknowledged, peering at the bootprint as if he could figure out more information simply by looking at it. The bootprint was simply a bootprint in the dirt, undisturbed, as fresh as it would be tomorrow or three years until now, or whenever the gravity plating malfunctioned on this deck. There wasn't any wind or weather to wear it away, and if the ship hadn't drifted back into the system, it would likely have remained undisturbed for however many decades it would take for folks to go out and track down the fabled missing colony ship. He glanced over his shoulder to see Mr. Walker still hunched over the electronics at the door, and elected to not bother him with questions about how the progress was going. Despite the time crunch and wanting to get onto the bridge, in the week that he'd known the man he'd figured out enough to take a more hands-off approach with him, to avoid extra stresses. A gentle reminder here and there was necessary but for the most part he was a hard worker and a good engineer to have around. Despite only knowing his crew for a short period of time, the work they'd done together to keep the engine going had brought them closer together and he'd gotten to know them, and their faults, much faster than he had working with previous crews. Not having much to do, he slowly worked his way back towards Mr. Walker, waiting on Mr. Henson to give him the crew report.

Eric Henson
As the program finished, Eric poked through the results, getting a summary and distribution of heights for the crew before talking.
"Alrighty, this crew, like the other colony ships, weren't tall at all. There was emphasis on selecting for shorter people with I guess 'recessive' tall genes, like one tall parent and one short parent producing a short child, because they would take up less space and resources on a ship, yet still contain a variety of genetics that could in theory later produce tall children in a generation or two. The tallest person on the ship is a young woman, Eva Mattias, at 5'8, followed by Carmen Thulia and Armen Catlia at 5'7. There is the possibility of one of the teenage boys to be as tall as 5'11, but we haven't gotten an update recently and in a few months it's unlikely for him to grow that much in such a short time period." He said, sorting through the demographic information a bit more. "If it's any help, this ship had a emphasis towards those of South American descent, with nearly all of the adults coming from different places all over the continent. The children with surrogate parents were a little more diverse, with the majority from Tibetan, Inuit, and Serbian backgrounds." Eric wondered how someone had managed to come up with these combinations of races and ethnicities-why these specific ones? Obviously there was some genetic something going on as the goal was to be as diverse as possible while maintaining the health of the population. The colonists were subject to rigorous genetic screenings before being considered for the program-anyone with known genetic diseases, even if recessive, simply wasn't allowed to board a ship. The idea was to send Earth's healthiest and brightest off into the stars, and hopefully to minimize the risk of inbreeding and genetic conditions that arose with a limited gene pool. Surrogate parents took on children who weren't theirs who were too young to remember Earth, as well as unrelated frozen embryos to bring the genetic diversity up and to reduce inbreeding in later generations. Even with all of the advances in spaceflight, the colony ships were still heralded as humanity's greatest accomplishment- our ability to reach beyond their solar system to other stars. Admittedly they hadn't quite gotten there yet, there was still another 5 or 6 years to go on the first ship that had been sent out, and there had been that one ship that had violently mutinied a few years ago, leaving it drifting in space around the 3/4 mark of their journey. Eric briefly wondered what had happened to that ship and whether it was still operational before returning his focus to the comns and the task at hand- he had his crew to worry about right now, the other ship could wait until later when they were all back on board.

[Kipori]

(Generally my small dog, Rudi, wins out, poor puppy is scared to enter my room now if Rudi is within line of sight. Seems Rudi has won the war but I still manage to get both of them up on my bed with some coaxing and some strategic blanket placements haha. Of course that did not stop the puppy from bursting into my room most mornings, Rudi or no, to jump on my bed and wake me up long before I wanted to be awake. My roommates just got a little tabby kitten which has been an adventure for someone who only ever had dogs.
Ah yeah sounds about the same as what is happening around here. People have been sort of dumb when it comes to the entire thing so it remains to be seen if we will stay as open as we are or go back into lockdown mode.
My family is all doing well. My brother did want to go travelling now that he is out of school for the summer but that was quickly shut down thankfully, he wasn’t happy but realized it be best if he stayed close to home for now. He may have been bribed with ice cream as often as he likes to accomplish this.
Alright, I will have him tinker around with the door for this post, just to keep him busy while the others figure things out. That sounds about right yeah, I think we decided it would be a mix of damage and code corruption but I sort of like the idea of it being more damage based? Especially since that would feed the growing suspicion that there is someone or something on the ship with them if the damage looks more intentional rather then accidental? Miles will be very into the alien video. He is going to end up trying to talk their ears off about the freaky mechanical spider demon we created to serve as the aliens. But yeah, that all sounds good to me I’m excited to get to the meeting with aliens and the absolute insanity this is going to turn into once they are through the wormhole because while we talked about getting them through, I don’t think we every discussed much about what happened after haha. Though it has taken us nearly three years to get to this point. Next post into the bridge we go, then things really kick up, lets go)

Miles Walker
Despite having a fairly good understanding of code and coding in general, Miles was at the end of the day an engineer and that was beginning to become very clear to him. Sure, he grew up with his hands just as deep in coding as they were in his Father's tool box but one interest had won out in the end and it wasn't coding.
It frustrated him that the code he was looking at didn't react how he had wanted it to. It all looked the same as the code he tampered and played around with in the past, minus the corruptions all over the place of course, but it seems that an overhaul must have occurred between now and then. That, or this code had been specifically made for this ship, editing what already existed to appear the same but have differing mechanics. If that was the case, Miles was all but dead in the water in terms of getting the door open. His normal tricks wouldn't work on a newer system like that and the reset hadn't worked right either.
Sighing, he reached up as if to pinch his nose only to hit his visor instead, forgetting about it for a moment which only served to make him huff at himself before turning his mind back to the puzzle before him. He needed to figure it out, or at least think of a way to trick the system into letting him in.
Blinking at the thought, he shrugged and elected to give it a try. Clearly the other options hadn't worked so tricking the computer into thinking he was someone with clearance wanting in might just be the ticket in. While it was possible, it was not easy to impersonate someone, especially if the system required more then a code scan. Luckily, he had seen no signs of bio scan capabilities on the terminal so that was a point in his favour. In all likelihood, it was a key card based system of operation and that he could get around with a few codes and a bit of digging to find a code that would be accepted.
First thing first, he needed an access code and seeing as he may as well, he instantly began to dig around for the Captain's code, or even the second in commands code would work. Miles knew he didn't have the time to try and figure out who else would be allowed into the bridge so going right to the top made the most sense. It meant a few extra protection layers to get through, had to keep such important codes safe after all, but it was doable. Now it was only a matter of if he could do it quick and not fail again.
He really hoped he could.

Zed Kassman
Inclining his head in response to the Captain's acknowledgement, Zed let him continue his investigation of the boot prints. He didn't think they would be able to get much more out of them, at least nothing that warranted such painstaking investigating but it kept the Captain busy while Mr. Walker worked and in truth that was probably for the best. The Engineer did not react well to being pressed for information so not having a Captain breathing down his neck, especially after his first attempt failed, would only ease his stress. Though by the tension in the Engineer's shoulders and wordless mutterings, it didn't seem to be helping much.
Seems he may need to make a note about getting the man into some sort of class to learn to manage his stress better, this could not be healthy.
Hearing the Pilots com crackle to life once again had Zed paying attention again. Nodding along to what was being said. The make up of the passengers was a bit strange, but must have been tailored to whatever planet it was they were being sent to. Zed had no idea how, but he had enough rudimentary understanding about how the programs were run to know that. Maybe he should start keeping up with the news better now that he was part of a rescue crew. Might be a good idea to begin that once they return. Zed disliked the idea but he hated being unaware more.
"So it seems that the boot marks were not made by someone from the ship then? Or they had a supply shortage and someone had to wear boots much to big for them." Zed hummed, a frown on his face as he thought it over. A shortage of supplies such as boots shouldn't have been possible, as populations on voyager ships were tightly controlled, that much he did know, to make sure there was never an over taxing of resources and there should have been spares prepared. It had been out here for years at this point so it was possible but the idea that the boots belonged to some unknown entity sent a shiver up Zed's spine and his eyes drifted to the markers on his visor with a tinge of anxiety. This job was becoming less and less routine the longer they were out here.

[taikunfoo]

(Oh no! Hopefully Rudi settles down a bit when he gets older, that has got to be a rude awakening. Thankfully my pup is quiet until I start rolling around in bed/starting to wake up, at which point he'll start whining. Over the past week he did decide to stand on the frame that my mattress is resting on so that was interesting to wake up to paws on the arm and to the face haha. I'm glad that your brother is sticking around-my brother is out at an internship right now a few hundred miles away and he'll be going to school after the summer wraps up, but thankfully he's planning on graduating early and not dealing with the mess that the campus is going to be. I must admit that the idea of traveling around is very tempting, but it's not worth it. Plus my pup has been having some GI issues that we've been trying to figure out at the v-e-t for the past few months that have made him more likely to get carsick, so that's a deterrent as well. I definitely agree that folks aren't being careful, just this morning I had a jogger come up behind me and pass within a foot of me with no mask, which was really frustrating since it was a quiet street with no cars and she couldn't be bothered to leave the sidewalk. I don't know what to do in those situations to prevent people from getting close to my dog and I when we're out, and it's so frustrating with everything that's going on and I can't even keep myself safe while out on a walk. I think I've definitely been stressed out lately which hasn't been great, partially feeling stuck in a small (local) area as most of our walks take place around our house, plus as it's a suburban area there's people everywhere.
I almost want them to assume that it's a weird contraption that was made by people in the aliens' attempt to get them to not notice their surveillance device, but Miles definitely knows something is weird with it. Were you thinking of having the surveillance device be mobile and following them? I can't believe it's been almost three years now! Did you want to talk more about the aliens (since we're almost there) and try to plan out more about them/their motivations/what happens after they choose not to fire on them? Also enjoy Tripp's paranoia over the situation, hopefully the whole aliens exist and did this will make him feel better once he wakes up after the wormhole haha)

Captain Tubon
Tripp continued to wander around the area, sticking close to his companions but still being drawn to the bootprint in the overturned soil. Something about this situation wasn't adding up, and he felt his unease growing. He decided to go over the situation step-by-step in his mind, in order to see if he could glean any information from backtracking and reviewing the information he knew. First: The distress call. They had picked it up from Jupiter Station and they'd been sent to investigate, taking them a week to reach the ship, which appeared to be drifting in space. As of right now they hadn't identified a point in time at which they'd sustained damage and set their return course to the Sol system. Perhaps they hadn't wanted to look bad in their reports or alert them that they'd been returning? Still, it seemed like an unusual and unlikely decision. While normally these ships weren't permitted back into the Sol system due to a number of unknowns when it came to interstellar travel and possible contamination, there were an available list of procedures and reasoning to follow if something bad did happen that would allow them to return. Admittedly from his review of those policies and procedures they were more provided as a ray of hope in the event that something went wrong rather than an actual plan to let the ships back into the solar system. Not knowing what those ships would bring back into the solar system, it was entirely likely that they would be destroyed by military ships and the whole event kept under wraps. Speaking of policies and procedures, Tripp knew that the first step of those was to declare an emergency and to convey all available information as soon as possible back to the Sol system. In this ship's case, it would have taken months for this initial message to be received, and another few months to get their response, so it was feasible that they turned around as soon as they sent the message. Still, it wouldn't have taken them less than the six months the round trip for communication to wind back up basically inside the solar system given the decades it took them to get out there. No, there had to be something wrong with the logs, perhaps the damage and turn around point was classified? Given the nature of the damage to the ship and the fact that it was drifting and not currently under its' own power Tripp was surprised that they hadn't sent a tug ship instead of them. Speaking of which, why were they, an admittedly fast medical response ship, sent out as a first contact to a colony ship? A possible answer came to the front of his mind: perhaps the military didn't know what was going on, and they were being used as a test of sorts in order to see if it was safe to interact with the ship and it's crew, if still alive. As a small ship with a crew of four operating in deep space, if anything went wrong, or, coincidentally if they found out too much about whatever was going on here, it would be easy to pass off their 'unfortunate deaths' due to an uncharted rogue asteroid. Whether their actual deaths came from the Phyxis or the military keeping a secret, Tripp didn't know, and he felt a wave of paranoia sweep through him. Why hadn't Jupiter Station detected the Phyxis and her distress signal until now, when she should have been approaching the solar system for months? Tripp recognized the stress in his body and realized he'd stopped breathing with the realizations. He straightened up, forcing himself to take a few deep, even breaths before moving into action. Whatever was going on, it was entirely possible that there was a military vessel on it's way if not already here, observing them and their communications. Which meant that they could hear what they said to each other, and likely had access to their video feeds as well. If this crew had been military, they would have had a way to communicate during situations like these in order to get across concepts, words, dangers, but this crew was civilian, and had been together for a solid week. Tripp racked his brain, trying to think of a way to find out more information without looking like he had come to these conclusions. After a few tense minutes of worried thinking while staring down at the bootprint with a pained expression, he looked up and spoke.
"Mr. Henson, while it looks like there is power still present on some of the decks, I don't know if we'll be able to get the engines engaged and the ship moving back towards Jupiter Station in time for us to vacate it for our trip back. Could you please get the Jupiter Station's logs for this incident and check to see if a tug ship has been dispatched yet? We should be able to set a beacon on the ship before we leave as well in case the Phyxis drifts further from it's position after we depart." He said, tone carefully neutral. By getting access to the station's logs, hopefully he would be able to discover exactly when they'd picked up the Phyxis' signal, what ships had been assigned to this mission, and perhaps even if they had been doctored in any way.

Eric Henson
After mulling it over for a little while, Eric concluded that there was definitely a boot shortage, especially with all of those folks running around. He set up a program to search for the point where the ship would have had to turn around, and used it to identify a possible range of dates that he should take a closer look at through the logs that would have allowed them to make the return trip. Perhaps there was something more subtle going on, not that he understood why it was proving so hard to figure out when the darn ship had turned around. He felt another chill run down his spine as his searched opened personal logs, logs of folks who were likely dead, and closed his eyes briefly, hoping that they wouldn't be upset with him for prying while trying to figure out what happened to them. He continued searching through the Phyxis' records until he got the request from Captain Henson to look through Jupiter Station's logs of the incident, which he pulled up.
"Let's see here..." He said, scrolling down through the information until he found the ships listed in the incident. "We have the Phyxis, our Corvus, there's the tug ship Merriweather that looks like it's about two and a half weeks out, and a couple of military vessels that look like they're going to oversee the recovery and secure the ship that are closer to three weeks out." He said, glancing through the rest of the report.

[Kipori]

(Since he is only 4 this year, the hope is that he will settle down some more, same with the puppy as he gets older. Though I think we were spoiled with very laid back labs before these two so we will see how that goes. That's honestly very cute but probably very odd to wake up to the first few times haha. Him not having access to a car at the moment is definitely helping with keeping my brother in one place but who knows what will happen after that. I am glad he graduated and won't have to deal with the mess that is the school system right now. I know I'm not looking forward to the craziness that will be uni classes. I'm not much interested in travelling at the moment, I get anxious in new places so tend to like to stick to areas I know and not venture out to far, but there is definitely an appeal to going out and about, especially when one has been stuck quarantined for months on end.
Oh no, sorry to hear about your pup. Did you manage to figure it all out or still working on that?
Ugh yeah, seems like work is planning to make masks mandatory for all staff and customers which is awesome but I am not looking forward to the people who take it as a personal attack...The amount of times people have gotten in my face about masks and the fact that I willingly wear one is getting stupid. Being stressed out totally makes sense though, sounds like that would be really rough to deal with on a day to day basis like that. I am lucky to not have to worry about that to much since most of the houses around me are empty at the moment (lots of them rent out to students, mainly international students but sometimes domestic, for the duration of the school year and the tenants rarely stay for the summer) Less people to come into contact which is good.
Hm I do like that idea. It might give Miles's observational skills a bit to much credit haha but I he for sure could notice something being off about the whole thing. A gut feeling that something is wrong about it perhaps? It would make sense for it to be mobile, that way there isn't the need for multiple to be set up, and less chance of them noticing with only the one unit tracking them. We probably should discuss it more yeah so we aren't totally pulling things out of thin air when we get to that point. After all, we might have taken forever to get to this point but we had a rough plan in place for it haha. Plus, I don't think we discussed much in the way of who and what the aliens are all about. dm's might be faster for that sort of thing though. Oh dear, yes he has gotten quite paranoid hasn't he? Well luckily he won't be conscious for much longer haha)

Miles Walker
With a few more prompts and following a few rabbit holes worth of code, Miles started to actually feel like he was making progress again. Sure, he had at least three false starts in that time but he was finally on the trail of the codes he was looking for and once he actually started honing in on them it became stupidly easy to find the string of code he was looking for. Of course, that was when the slightly more difficult lines of code came in since he had to convince the panel that he was swiping a key he didn't have without actually doing that. One would think it be easy as imputing the code but a few fail safes he had already fallen victim to stopped that possibility. Creating a bypass off the top of his head would be stupid so he fell back on some old bypass codes his friends had taught him, ones meant to be easy to modify and tailor to the code you wanted to bypass. It was simple if you knew what you were doing and could read the code right and Miles was lucky enough to have a decent understanding of the base system. Sure, the crew had clearly changed some things up to make it harder but he could at the very least use this as a spring board.
Minutes were ticking by and he knew that time was getting more pressing so he didn't let his mind wander to much, ignoring most of the things happening around him as he worked. There was no way to confirm his bypasses would work, or if they would trigger some unknown response but he didn't have time to check them all over with a fine tooth comb to ensure they would work. He just had to hope for the best, not his favorite thing but it would have to do. After another five minutes and to many lines of code to count, he let out a long breath. There was little more he could do past this. If the door didn't open now they were going to have to figure something else out because he was out of ideas now. Standing, he could feel the smile on his lips even though he didn't feel the confidence he was trying to portray. He didn't want to fail again, he knew that much.
"Best hope this works." He would have laughed but it might have come out more like a sob so he didn't, instead inputting the pilfered ID code and executing his bypasses. There was a second where nothing happened, and Miles felt his stomach begin to sink only to shoot back up at the sound of clicking gears and moving parts in the walls. His forced smile turned into a real grin as the door started to slide. There was a stuttered moment, likely the frame was damaged, but it slide open nearly fully, the bridge expanding out past it. If there wasn't more work to do, Miles might have sagged to the floor in relief but instead he planted his feet in order to stay upright. He made a mental promise to actually review his coding books so this never happened again.
"Doors open." He said unnecessarily, just because he could and was to relieved to think about what he was saying before the words were out of his mouth.

Zed Kassman
With the Captain seemingly totally lost in his own thoughts, regarding the boot prints or something else Zed didn't know, Zed was left to his own thoughts. He was mostly useless at this current moment, not being able to help Mr. Walker with the door, thought if the pleased hums coming from the man's coms were anything to go by he was making progress again, nor being able to offer much more insight into the boot prints origins or reasons for being there. For the time being, he was not of much use to anyone really, which was annoying. He didn't like being useless after all but he was a doctor, not an engineer or a forensic scientist. While he had expressed some interest in the field in his youth, he had never persued it much past reading a few journals in his spare time, not nearly enough to offer the Captain anything note worthy.
Speaking of the Captain, the man had began to wander, Zed would almost be inclined to call it pacing, around the area. He was still clearly thinking, quite a lot in fact, but Zed thought little of that. The pacing was understandable due to the unexpected delay, if not a bit concerning in regards to causing the Engineer to get stressed out again, but for the moment Zed let it continue. Maybe he was less useless in this moment the he thought as he glanced between the Engineer and Captain. Both were liable to get stressed out easily it seemed so he should be more careful in monitoring them as to step in should he need to. He wasn't well versed in calming someone down but he could at least disrupt the train of thought and hope that was enough to calm them. Huffing, he crossed his arms, wondering when such things had become his job only to realize it was essentially half of what he had signed up for. Recovery and ensuring the rest of the crew remained mentally sound. Wonderful.
Eyes flicking to the Captain again when he suddenly stopped moving quite suddenly. It only lasted a second, the frozen state disappearing as the man started speaking. His words didn't shake, nor portray any amount of distress but the sudden freeze was telling. Narrowing his eyes slightly, Zed didn't have much of a chance to say anything, either to ask the Captain what he was thinking asking for those logs, or why he had suddenly shifted gears entirely away from the boot prints that had held his sole attention for the past twenty or so minutes, because the Engineer made another triumphant sound which drew his attention.
Just as before the man looked pleased with himself as he spoke, stalling sort of cursing out the door probably, before hitting the switch. Second time seemed to be the ticket since the door hissed and began to open with only a minor second long stall before opening fully.

[taikunfoo]

(Man time is really flying by but I'm glad that we took a break to plan out the aliens a bit more. How are things going with your brother? He still staying in? Do you have a list of things you want to do or anything in particular that you're going to do when the pandemic is over? We thought we had my pup's stomach issues figured out but unfortunately I don't think that's the case- he was doing good but he threw up a couple of times two weeks apart and yesterday just started up the nauseous behavior again after a walk so now I'm a bit upset that he's still feeling bad and we're starting to grasp at straws as to what it could be. Hopefully work is settling down a little bet and they're not as argumentative now.)

Captain Tubon

At Mr. Walker's announcement, Tripp immediately took two large strides towards the bridge before checking himself, forcing himself to take shorter, more measured steps. His mind was still racing, jumping from idea to idea, but he used the remaining few paces he had until he reached the bridge to refocus himself. He had to worry about what was going on here and now, and he could worry about what happens later after they got back on board the Corvus. He took a deep breath, reading himself, and then looked down at Mr. Walker.
"Good work." He said, nodding to him before striding onto the bridge. The first thing he noticed was a distinct lack of anyone on the bridge- there weren't any corpses splayed out on the floor. Even though the area outside the bridge had gravity, he still looked upwards to make sure there weren't any bodies floating around. The dim emergency lighting wasn't helping much, and Tripp relied on the lights from his helmet and shoulder to check the bridge. After making sure he wasn't going to bump into any corpses, he strode over to the nearest command console that seemed semi-active. The screen was admittedly flickering so he didn't have much hope that they'd be able to make use of it, but it was the only screen here that was still lit up. Tripp felt a little uncomfortable as he passed a number of the old, bulky workstations were simply dead- their screens didn't light up as he drew near them, and he even pressed a few buttons as he walked by just in case they weren't motion activated. He stopped in front of the workstation, feeling a sense of unease, and placed his gloved hand on the screen, wondering if it would recognize his touch. The screen flickered, struggling between a warning message and request for authorization before finally switching over to the authorization screen. Tripp used the emergency override command key that he had been provided with, typing in the string of letters, numbers, and characters, but came to a stop with the tenth character. The ? button was already depressed, seemingly sticking, and his finger hovered over the key for a moment before pressing it. The key stubbornly remained in place, so Tripp pressed it again, this time with more force. When the key didn't budge Tripp sighed, half raising a hand to rub his forehead before realizing he wouldn't accomplish anything but bumping his hand against his helmet.
"Mr. Walker, could you come assist me with this workstation? I'm trying to enter an authorization code to access the ship's computer but one of the keys is stuck." He said, feeling slightly sheepish. He stepped back to look towards the entrance to the bridge, waving the engineer over. "Let me know if you see another workstation that we might be able to use- I didn't see any that were active and this one's screen is flickering." He added, kneeling down to take a look at the side of the workstation, figuring that the next thing that Mr. Walker would want to do would be to take the cover off so he could access the touchpad. As he worked his fingers along the seam trying to find a place where he could start unscrewing the cover, his mind started to wander again. Why was the bridge in this bad shape when the hallway outside seemed decent? Perhaps the power supply or some other critical functions had been damaged when whatever had happened to the ship happened. He tried to dedicate his focus to finding where the screws were- he'd gone over the specifications of the old workstations from an interface perspective but hadn't expected to be taking one of them apart and felt a little out of his depth. Thankfully Mr. Walker seemed at home with the older technology given his ability to at least open the door to the bridge so a workstation hopefully wouldn't be much harder.

Eric Henson
The pilot kept looking over the report, scanning through it to see if there were any useful specifics that would benefit them. Perhaps they'd be able to meet up with the Merriweather or one of the military ships that could fix their engine so they wouldn't have to be met with a tug ship back at Jupiter station.
"I don't know if the Merriweather or the military vessels have the capacity to fix our engine, but we might be able to meet up with them or at least catch some parts if they have spares." He said, trailing off for a moment as he ran some calculations. "We'll be passing by the Meriweather in 8 days, the first military vessel, the Reliant, in 12 days, and the Djoser will pass us in 17 days. Hopefully one of those ships will be able to give us a hand." He said, glancing up sharply as the computer pinged as it finished searching through the ship's logs. "Also do we have full access to the ship's logs for the Phyxis? I've been through these three times already and I still haven't been able to identify the turn-around point. You'd think that whatever caused this damage would be well documented, but in the logs everyone is having a decent time and the craziest thing that I've been able to find was someone setting up a moonshine still and everyone getting plastered to the point where the first officer was singing to the crew in a state of undress. They managed to set up a holiday that occurred every year to commemorate the occasion." He said with a touch of amusement in his voice, then quickly the amusement faded as he realized that these people were likely all dead. Who would remember them, their silly holiday? He felt a wave of sadness and gritted his teeth, blinking his eyes a few times to clear them and stubbornly refocused on the incident report that listed the ships dispatched to the Phyxis.

[Kipori]

(It's pretty hit or miss if he stays home or not, but restrictions are tightening here again as cases start to climb again. Bit of a pain since I just moved and was looking forward to seeing some old friends again but it is what it is. Haha, not so much a list but I would like to be able to go out with my friends to restaurants or cafes and not have to worry about someone getting sick or worse. What about you, any things you're looking forward to doing again? Oh no, have things gotten a bit better since then or is he still not 100% yet? Hopefully, you managed to figure out the problem! Work has settled down, though since I moved that meant moving jobs as well, but I was able to transfer to the location in my area from my old one so that has made things easier. Was not looking forward to job hunting at this moment but thankfully I won't. The new place feels a lot more chill and casual despite being a busier store which is a nice change.)

Miles Walker
The praise from the Captain, despite not being particularly earned, felt nice and Miles smiled behind his helmet at the man. He was honestly just happy that the darn thing actually opened this time and he didn't have to embarrass himself for a second time. Once was more than enough for a day in his opinion.
Letting the Captain enter the bridge first felt like a proper formality to follow so Miles waited by the side of the door semi-awkwardly for the Captain to reach said door and pass him into the bridge beyond. When Miles turned into the room himself, he was surprised by the amount of damage and mess that met his gaze. He had been fully prepared for the bridge to be in mint condition, or mirror the rest of the ship which was damaged but not extremely so. The bridge however was nothing like the rest of the ship. If he had to hazard a guess it was the worst damaged part that they had come across thus far which was not a comforting thought. Ship bridges were designs to be strong and able to withstand a lot of damage for obvious reasons so to see one in such a state meant something serious had happened. Not that they didn't already know that but it further proved that whatever they were dealing with was way more serious than what they had been briefed on. Miles wanted to be annoyed about that but couldn't find it in himself to blame the Captain as he had before, mostly because the man had seemingly been equally stunned by the damage. It was only the Doctor who seemed unfazed but that man didn't know anything about machinery from what Miles could tell so he didn't hold it against him either.
"No fixing most of this." He commented, glancing around as the Captain passed some of the workstations, none of which seemed to respond to him. "Never seen damage like this, nothing even close."
His attention was drawn away from the mess by the Captain calling him over to repair the only workstation that seemed to show any signs of real life. A few were flickering weakly but Miles had his doubts about their ability to give anything more than that. Stepping around what appeared to be the remains of a navigation station, Miles found himself in front of the panel that the Captain had been struggling with. He could instantly see what the man had been talking about in terms of the key being stuck in place. Not an uncommon problem and pretty much expected. They were just lucky it wasn't worse.
"Well of all the things you've asked me to do this shouldn't be too hard." The joke felt flat given that he had said it about the door and that had been a mess so after clearing his throat he crouched and ran his fingers along the sides of the workstation to find the hidden screws.
The designers had clearly wanted to maintain a sleek design, meaning the screws were hidden behind small caps that blended in with the rest of the panel, creating the appearance of a single piece of metal when in fact it was made up of multiple panels and parts. Finding the screws themselves wasn't difficult, most of these units were the same even across various ship types which worked in his favour and he was able to get them out of the way in minutes. However, the panel he needed to remove had been slightly warped by whatever had damaged the rest of the Bridge so it took a few hard tugs and a few muttered curses to get the panel out of way and give him access to the touchpad underneath. Miles was honestly shocked that more damage hadn't been done to the internals of this unit when he glanced at the other units around them.
"This sort of thing was a common problem with this class of touchpad, they fixed it in later ships but many from this generation have the same problem. Funnily enough, they designed these pads with the intention of keeping this very thing from happening." Miles didn't mean to start talking as he worked to get the button loose again but once he started he started to ramble in a low mutter, not wanting to really disturb anyone but also feeling the need to talk about what he was doing. "They didn't realize the design flaw until these ships had already left which did not go well for anyone who was working on the original designs but thankfully it was a problem that any competent engineer can fix. Just a bit of a pain when you're busy trying to keep an engine functioning and people alive."
After a few more seconds of fighting with the stuck key, Miles felt it click back into its housing properly and let out a puff of air. An experimental press had the '?' had the character popping up as it should have on the screen and Miles pushed himself up. "There, just be careful not to press any key to hard and you shouldn't have any issues with them getting stuck again."
None of the other keys seemed to be stuck so as long as the station maintained power like it was, Miles didn't see the Captain having any other issues. He was hesitant to say so out loud though, no point in pressing his luck.

Zedd Kassman
With the door now open, it seemed that their mission could once again proceed. Zed was pleased that he wouldn't need to stand around any longer but still had a distinctly uneasy feeling regarding the bridge. Even if nothing had jumped out or attacked them when the door opened, he still didn't feel entirely comfortable with the idea of entering the room. The Captain and Engineer seemed to have no such concerns since they went in one after the other and with no real reason to not follow, Zed was forced to trail behind them.
The Bridge looked nothing like the one on their ship but Zed was sure that was less to do with the different layout and more to do with the absolute chaos that surrounded them. Even from just inside the door, Zed could see that something had happened in this room that hadn't in other areas of the ship though he had no idea what that could have been. Other than the emergency lights, there was little to no light in the room. Only a few barely flickering panels provided any additional light and they cast more shadows than actual light. Even so, his eyes scanned the room for any signs of life, unsurprisingly finding none. Like everywhere else, the Bridge appeared devoid of life.
He was really starting to wonder if there was anyone on this ship besides the body they had found earlier. So far it seemed there wasn't which only posed more questions. Shacking that line of thought away, he focused his attention on the Captain and Engineer who seemed to be trying to fix a broken but still flickering panel. Zed hadn't been paying attention to what was wrong but if the man could get a door, open Zed was sure he could fix it. With nothing else to focus on, Zed decided to focus instead on the Captain's instruction to see if any other stations worked. While he had no clue what any of the stations were for, Zed was fairly confident he could figure out if any of them were working or not. Leaving the Captain and Engineer to their work, he started to wander the Bridge, careful to watch his step and keep the pair in the corner of his vision at all times, just in case. The last thing they needed was someone getting electrocuted from a faulty panel.

[taikunfoo]

(I'm definitely with you on hanging out with friends- there's some folks a few states over that I'd love to visit and help out with their farm. I miss being able to see folks, but I'm also tempted to go on some kind of vacation or something. Just more of a hoping to be able to relax and not be worried about catching the virus than anything else. I'm glad that you don't have to job hunt now! How are you settling in at your new location? Folks taking to your sense of humor well? Unfortunately my pup is still having issues- he just got back from the vet yesterday for some samples of his GI tract so he was NOT happy (and drugged) when I picked him up so that was a little amusing to see, but hopefully we'll find something this time, as I'm not sure what else we can do testing wise to find what's wrong with him).

Captain Tubon
Tripp stepped aside to let Mr. Walker work, moving from workstation to workstation to see if any of them were still functional. He was still struggling to piece the whole situation together- none of this made any sense. He knew that they had access to all of the ship's logs- he'd verified that himself and had even read through a few of them and checked dates to make sure there were none missing. Still-how had the ship managed to wind up here?
"Mr. Henson, could you double check the coordinates associated with the ship's logs? It's possible that the ship didn't want to broadcast that they were turning around, and falsified their location." He said, slowly returning to where Mr. Walker was working on pulling apart the workstation. Tripp half-listened to the engineer as he chattered about the system, but his focus returned once he said that he was completed with the repair. Tripp strode back over to the touchpad and keyed in the rest of the command sequence, taking care to press the buttons gently so he didn't have to call Mr. Walker back again. His index finger hovered over the enter key for a moment, before he pressed it. He waited a few moments, wondering if it had worked, as the screen remained stuck on the authorization prompt. He pressed the enter key once more, and then again, more firmly this time, but the screen remained stubbornly stuck, not accepting his input password, which he was certain was correct. Frustrated, he tried tapping the screen with his gloved hand, but it didn't recognize him. Tripp tapped the backspace button, entering in the passcode again and was careful to not have the '?' key stick. He let out a slow, focused breath as he tried to not let his frustration get the better of him- he wanted to kick the workstation but he doubted that would help their situation. He counted backwards from five, making sure his voice was even before speaking.
"Mr. Walker, I'm having additional trouble with the workstation. I've entered the correct passcode, but the station seems to be stuck on the authorization screen. I've tried using the touchscreen and the enter key, as well as re-typing the passcode, but it's not granting me access." He said, stepping away from the console to give Mr. Walker space to do whatever he needed to do to get the necessary information pulled up on the screen. If they couldn't get the data and ship's logs from the bridge, they'd have to go to the backups in engineering which he had been hoping to avoid- they would have to move quickly to get there, download the logs, and then get back to the shuttle in order to make their rendezvous with the Corvus. While they did technically have enough supplies to last them until Mr. Henson could make another pass to pick them up, he didn't want to be spending an extended period of time on or around the ship, and judging by his crew's initial reaction they wouldn't want to either. Knowing that the rest of the workstations were likely unusable now, he pulled up a map of the ship on his display and compared it to a few images of the external damage to the ship. As easy as it would be for him to hop out onto the hull and get to engineering from the outside of the ship, it was clear that his zero-g skills far surpassed those of his crew. Taking them outside of the ship would slow them down and risk them drifting off- it would be a lot easier for them to bounce off of walls with minimal risk, even if it did take them a little longer to get there. He pared down the results of his search for routes to get to the main computer in engineering, steering them away from areas where they'd be likely to encounter large areas of open space or significant gaps in the hull of the ship. When he was satisfied, he sent the rough map to Mr. Henson to review- the pilot had better data on the ship and the exterior than he had access to right now, and he'd be able to put together a better route while they were working here. "Mr. Henson, could you please review these routes and find us the fastest way to engineering in case we need to go there to get the ship's data? Please minimize any exposure to gaps large enough in the hull for us to fit through." He said, hoping that was enough instruction to get him started.

Eric Henson
Eric started to sort through the location logs at the Captain's request, carefully comparing the sensor logs, ship's logs, and some of the other data that would adjust the course and speed of the ship. While it took a little while, he was able to set up a model to input the measurements taken by the ship and compared it to the locations that were transmitted with the ship's logs- while it could feasibly be possible to fudge the location of the ship, it would be a lot harder to change all of the data that the ship was automatically sending back as a part of the transmission about course corrections and changes to the ship's speed. As the computer processed the entries and occasionally prompted him to look at a entry that wasn't read appropriately by the program, Eric settled back in his chair, curiously watching the sped-up version of the Phyxis's trip through the solar system. There were quite a few entries to go through at the beginning as they were leaving their solar system, but it was important to follow these to the letter- even a small overlooked change here could cause a significant deviation from their course, even close to a light-year if they weren't careful and the computer malfunctioned. He got sidetracked as a notification popped up in the corner of his screen- one of the maps of the Phyxis with a few possible routes highlighted. He quickly got to work, ignoring the model program of the Phyxis for now, and set up a new program to go through the sensor readings and imagery of the ship, identifying holes in the outer hull greater than four to six feet. There was a little bit of wiggle room, as it was feasible for someone to drift through feet-first instead of their whole body at once, but he figured that would be a good measure of their width as well as some buffer room if they weren't paying attention. He watched as the sensors mapped the contours of the ship, gradually creating a three-dimensional image of the ship's hull visible to him from the Corvus' current position, and as it finished, it began to measure the different holes in the hull, highlighting those that were larger than six feet in red, holes four to six feet in yellow, and holes smaller than four feet green.