What a Neat Little Toy

Posted on Tue Jan 31st, 2017 @ 12:40am by Lieutenant Commander Eneas Clio

Mission: Refit Rondo
Location: USS Hera, Bridge

After her meeting with Enalia, Clio stopped on the bridge to take a closer look at the dedicated intelligence console the Hera was now equipped with. Sliding into the seat, she touched the console to bring it online and was immediately greeted with a soft vibration as the screen came on. Instantly, Clio's eyes lit up. She'd never had a tactile-response console before, but already she was falling in love with it. Experimenting a bit, she brought up different files and sensor feeds, noting how each one gave a slightly different response. Some files produced a raised pattern along their edges, which intrigued her. While she wasn't especially educated on these consoles, she could see how it could be useful, especially for her type of work. Curious about how it functioned, she tapped into the console settings and looked around. To her surprise - and delight - it was easily customizable, to the point that she'd be able to assign specific touch and vibration patterns to each element. Grinning like a child with a new toy, she experimented with the settings, eventually settling on just a handful of patterns for now. She could add more later, but she needed to at least notate classification levels and what information could be critical to the mission at hand.

After a few moments more of exploration of the panel's settings, Clio happened to glance away from the panel and was surprised to see the information displayed on it suddenly vanish. Even looking at it from the corner of her eye, nothing appeared. "Whoa..." No one was around to hear her, but an audible response seemed necessary. As she turned back to look at the console, the information again became visible. She'd heard of these consoles, of course, but she'd never seen one actually installed on a starship. They had limited viewing angles, essentially making it impossible for anyone else to see what was on her screen. And it was about damned time that Starfleet started using them!

Wondering just how tight the viewing angle was, she got up from the console and walked around to the side of it. She'd gone only a very short distance - not even fully to the side - before the data vanished from view. "Fifteen, maybe twenty degrees," she mumbled to herself, clearly impressed even if no one was around to discuss what she'd discovered. Returning briefly to her seat, she searched the screen for the 'lock' or 'log off' feature each console generally had, finding it suspiciously missing until she thought to run her fingers along the screen's edge, finding a single raised symbol there that - when pressed - caused the console to go completely blank, as if it were turned off. "Pretty cool," Clio concluded, getting up from the chair and heading for the turbolift. She had offices to explore next.