Chapter 31 - By Design

Spock touched his head, ran his fingertips over the back of his hair for the seventh time that day, a habit of a type he'd never had before. His hair was just long enough to obscure the shaved areas on his skull. It was fortunate he'd resisted his mother's admonitions to get it cut.

Spock walked up the left side of the Annex auditorium. Jaek and Horton were already in their seats on far end of the top row. They'd directed the group hauling himself and P'Losiwst to the fountain, but Spock had not identified them, for reasons that had originally felt like an investment but now seemed slippery.

Spock felt nothing. Even medicated his disciplines could be made more than equal to this. Kirk, especially, would expect him to handle this with calm detachment.

Horton stared straight ahead as Spock sat down. Jaek looked over, raised his chin. "Doing okay, Cadet?"

"Yes, sir." Spock took a seat.

The room filled. Chanel strode in. Her eyes scanned from Spock across to the other cadets, back again. Back another time. Then she moved on, lectured on superstructure and skin and why ships were the classes they were in with an angle toward getting the students to understand that even decisions that were no longer valid had a validity borne of consistency. The room seemed doubtful, which was probably why Chanel was being more mocking than usual.

The lecture moved to procurement, specifications and the systems that supported that and the importance of understanding why they worked the way they did. Mostly so the computers didn't just take over everything.

She exhausted this topic, glanced at the clock.

"We have a bit of time today. I'd like to indulge in a little game we sometimes play in these advanced classes. It's a game called Stump the NUB. We don't have any NUBs, so a senior cadet will have to suffice." She raised her eyes to the back row. "Cadet Jaek, come down here."

She gestured for someone in the front row to bring over one of the stools from beside the wall.

"Sit down, Cadet. Name, Rank, Serial Number."

Jaek recited this with embarrassed amusement. Down under the lights on the dais he appeared paler, almost ashen.

"Why are you in this class?" Chanel said.

"I requested permission last year, but my request was denied and I was given a list of things I needed to accomplish to be allowed to participate this year. I did those, successfully, apparently, and now I am here."

"Why are you in THIS class?"

Jaek's mouth opened, hung there. "My family has a long history of ship design and construction. My mother, my great uncle, my great grandfather were all project leads on an off for large ships. Many in my family have worked on colony and private vessel design and in servicing of private and Starfleet ships. We own voting shares in several companies that operate in this industry as well as freelancing."

"So you are following in their footsteps. This topic is in your genes."

Jaek's bright gaze fixed straight ahead. "Yes, Captain."

"You've lived and breathed ship design your whole life. That's, I think, what you said in your messages to me. Those many many messages." Chanel put her hands behind her back. "Making your family proud, are you?"

Jaek did the impossible and sat even straighter. "Yes, Captain. Very."

"I see."

Chanel paced once, back and forth behind him. She gestured for another stool to be brought over, pointed at a spot four meters to the side of the first stool.

"Cadet Spock, come down here."

Spock felt a twinge in his gut before he shunted the reaction aside. He brought his controls down hard.

He made his way down the side steps and waited to be instructed to take the empty stool, bowed faintly, and seated himself with slow movements that wouldn't jar his head.

"Cadet Spock." Chanel sauntered over and stopped beside him. "Why are you in this class?"

"You ordered me to attend it, sir."

"Know anything about ship design before that?"

"No sir. If I had been prompted, I suppose I would have assumed such a branch of engineering must exist."

"I've seen Vulcan ships," Chanel said, "I can imagine design isn't something you've thought much about before now."

"Yes, sir."

A few of the faces in front of Spock shifted from brows low and discerning to relaxed and curled of lip. Spock was isolated too much from his emotions to interpret this beyond the obvious.

"I ordered you into this course about two or three weeks before the start of class. Something like that?"

"Would you like the precise date and time?"

"No. That's okay."

Spock eased off on his emotional disciplines because he needed to better understand what was happening around him. He decided she sounded amused, if not doting.

"So." She addressed the class at large. "With that bit of background, let's play Stump the NUB. Any question, remotely on topic, is fair game. I'll start. Mr. Jaek, if I have a fleet issue mobile backup coolant pump, eight meters of zero point five six teflack emergency hose, and 400 equivalent meters of standard pipe, including seven meters of boiler coil, what is the pressure at the farthest point from the pump?"

Jaek blinked. "Well. It, it better be above whatever the minimum allowed value for that system. I could look it up."

"I see. Cadet Spock?"

"6.43102 times ten to the 5th pascal assuming there are no valves and the pump is working precisely at specification."

One of the Lieutenants in the second row bit his lips.

"Correct, although my computation differed on the fifth decimal place." Chanel raised an arm to the room at large. "Who wants to go next? Don't be shy. I grade down for shy, less so for stupid." She pointed. "But please don't be stupid. Yes, Mr. Tintelin."

A small, bulky ensign halfway up leaned forward in his seat. "Who am I asking?"

"They'll both get a chance to answer. Go ahead."

"My question is on field emitters. Which we haven't covered yet and I'm hoping we do, with all respect, Captain, ships don't matter without some protection. But my question is this. If I have a 1.3 version Rohm Tesla emitter and its antenna is zero point four of a meter off the hull, what kind of coverage can I get for pinhole debris protection at half a warp?"

"Mr. Jaek?" Channel said.

"Sir? Do I always go first?"

"Cadet." Behind her back, Chanel's fingers wriggled impatiently. "if I call on Mr. Spock first, you won't need to answer."

Jaek's expression flattened.

"Do you have an answer, Cadet?"

"I could run the models. Sir."

"You don't have an answer?"

Jaek opened his mouth, closed it. Shrugged. "I don't have an answer. No one could have an answer just like that unless that was their specialization."

Chanel continued to face Jaek. "Spock, go ahead."

"I need an equation for the shape of the hull."

Chanel said, "Assume the standard rimmed parabola of the primary hull like the newer classes. Simplify it if you need to, this isn't final design. You know that shape?"

Spock nodded. "The coverage area for seven micron dust is only fourteen point eight seven meters radius if placed at the center of the hull. Not very broad."

"How much power to get coverage on a real hull?" Tintelin asked.

"Unless the ship is very small, you will need an overlapping radial array of emitters with that technology. But that will be problematic, as there will be interference nodes with with far less protection every thirty degrees."

Tintelin sat back, nodded with satisfaction as if he knew the answer already.

"But, sir," Jaek said. "Of course this is easy for him . . ."

Chanel tipped her head. Waited. "You were saying, Cadet?"

Jaek mustered himself, Spock could feel it in the way the human's body grew electrically irritated. "He's a computer, sir."

There was a lengthy pause. Chanel raised her head to the class. "How about a soft arts question? Woodzer, you're working on a multi generational ship and have far more questions than answers based on your flimsy and disorganized mid-term project report. Give us a real meaty, non computer sort of problem you need solved down here."

Woodzer scratched her broad red bald head. Her spiky hair started well behind her ears, so there was a lot to scratch. "I've been trying to apply Uplongen's Compendium of Social Architecture of Large Ships to my design, but the long term simulations are far less than satisfactory and I've been reduced to tweaking and waiting hours for the runs only to have the same poor outcomes. I've even changed my crew and passenger features, which I really don't want to do, narrowing cultural aspects, etc. It's not working out. I need an idea what's wrong. If that's an okay question."

"Jaek, this is your area," Chanel said. "So you should go first."

"It's likely in the communal areas and the size of quarters. But I'd have to see the designs, sir. Play with them for a few weeks. Architecture is an art, as my uncle always says." Jaek looked over at Spock. "It's a really soft art."

"Spock?"

Spock knitted his fingers. His head was throbbing vaguely and he could not resist repeated failed attempts to block the discomfort as though it were a peripheral injury. He steeped himself in his thoughts, grateful his mind was working well almost in defiance of the discomfort. "While doing readings in preparation for this course, I read Uplongen. I found him to be an unreliable update to Yerseph and Yurin, whose work he heavily based the compendium on. The original work was the outcome of decades of moon and Mars based studies in the twenty-one hundreds and was strictly a collection of real world observations, not rules. From my reading, Uplongen injected a great deal of personal bias into those observations in compiling his design rules. He also seems to have bastardized a Rigellian work from their early space flight studies that has the title Kilonautics in Standard translation. Perhaps the ensign would be served by reverting to the original studies and disregarding Uplongen's rules for the design."

Woodzer hesitated before picking up her padd and scribbling on it with a finger. Chanel was rubbing her chin and mouth as if to avoid smiling.

"How many books have you read to prepare for this class with your few weeks of warning, Cadet?"

"Thirty four."

"What did you read?"

"I started with a recommended list I found on an old syllabus from before you taught this course, sir."

"I don't have a reading list. Cadet. Because no one reads."

"I see, sir. I then read what those books most heavily cited. Then I coded an application that interleaved the specifications and engineering change orders for the three latest ships constructed and launched for Starfleet to see how those ideas were implemented."

"And how are they implemented?" She sounded gentle, as if they were talking about something touching.

Spock's head twinged. He forced himself to relax, to nearly float, and the pain faded. He heard his own voice, calm and confident and wondered at it. "Sporadically. But the design rules are present, sometimes historically, sometimes in recent revision even if they are not strictly abided. What I find most intriguing about this entire iterative, evolutionary process is where shortcuts are made and how they are determined to be acceptable. A specification is a specification."

Chanel nodded as if to herself. "It's true that they usually cannot all be met."

"I find that disturbing, sir."

She smiled. "Interesting. Maybe that's why Vulcan ships skip design. And therefore the need to meet the bulk of specifications."

"I had not considered that, sir. But perhaps."

Chanel paced to the side and faced the class. "So. Show of hands, all of you. Of these two cadets, which of you would prefer Cadet Spock as a NUB on your ship?"

Most hands went up. Despite Kirk's insistence that he would be valuable and his own experience with integrating into the Ranger's engineering team, Spock was surprised at the lack of hesitation.

"Or who would prefer Cadet Jaek." Hands went down. Four went up.

Beside him, Spock heard Jaek swallow hard.

"Mr. Mintimore, you didn't vote." Chanel walked over to stand before someone in the third tier. Stood waiting for an answer.

Mintimore's bushy brows appeared stubborn. "No sir."

"Why not?"

"I didn't know it would be acceptable to vote for Mr. Jaek."

Chanel waved her hand to indicate the tiers. "Others did. I asked for a simple preference. That's all." She turned and strode back to the center of the dais. "Mr. Mintimore, you can have Mr. Jaek as a partner for your final project. Cadet Jaek, you can return to your seat."

Spock remained unmoving on the stool, grateful the heels of his regulation boots hooked the footrest bar so securely. He was growing fatigued. The condition of his mind was still impacting negatively on his body.

"Cadet Spock. Regarding that first problem I described, add onto that system a coil for a standard gravity pump and a routing through four meters of underdeck chiller in computing. What size pump do I put in place?"

"There isn't one specced high enough, sir, currently in Starfleet's procurement catalog."

"How short does the routing need to be to meet spec?"

"Forty one point nine three meters. Again, assuming the pump is operating precisely at specification."

"It will be. They are always higher." The corner of her mouth rose. "Unfortunate in a way. Creates a culture of universally pushing the equipment by that expected twenty nine and a half percent." She strode away to look over the tiers of students. "Cadet, you are how old in Vulcan years?"

"I will be sixteen in three days."

"Fifteen then."

Spock became uncomfortably aware of sitting alone at the center of attention. "Yes, sir."

Before him, the faces had gone wary but curious beneath a flattened expression that he'd observed before in officers who were trying to hide their reactions from others. Again, Spock rebalanced the need to suppress his own emotions against the need to understand what he was facing.

Chanel turned halfway to Spock. "And contrary to your fellow cadet's unfortunate biases, on Vulcan you struggled in math." When he didn't respond immediately, she said, "Correct?"

"I was somewhat slower than my peers."

Chanel said, "Two years you were held back, if I recall."

Spock experienced a constriction against drawing breath. Blindsided, a human term he had never understood. He could have been hit physically.

Chanel said, "Yet you can rattle off solutions to fluid dynamics models."

Spock's new disciplines allowed him to shed emotion, not compress it, which would be hopeless right then. He did so, felt himself pass through everything hammering at him, and beyond it into a calm that couldn't read faces, nor cared about the minds behind the faces. He likely revealed his struggle, but not long, and now he didn't care that he had.

Spock sat almost serenely. At least his head didn't hurt. "Yes, sir."

The student's gazes tracked aggressively over to Chanel as she spoke, as if she had grown dangerous and required keen observation.

"And science as well, you had difficulty?"

A factual answer for a factual question. "I only needed one year of extra time in science, sir."

"Your mid-term project needed just a few nudges and it would have been a full thesis on engine resonance. Yet you struggled on Vulcan."

"My father hired tutors for me for each subject in which I had difficulty, Captain. I do not require much sleep." He still does that, Spock considered. In this way, less had changed than he'd been assuming.

Chanel paced away a few steps, looked up at the class. "Everyone catch that. I hope." She scanned the room. "Give me six months and I could put this cadet - this young adult - in any of your jobs. And he's barely average where he comes from." She turned back to Spock, tilted her head. "Why do you think you needed to work extra hard in school, Cadet?"

"My family is of the priest class, sir. We are not scholars. We have honed the skills of mind disciplines over thousands of years, not math nor large amounts of textual learning."

This wasn't the answer she was expecting, and Spock harbored the gratification that followed, savored it inside his bubble.

"Interesting. I didn't realize that." She turned on her heel back to the class. "Too many of you make the same assumption our senior cadet did just now. That individuals like Spock here didn't get their extraordinary skills the same way every else here did, by being disciplined to work their asses off.

"I keep hearing how Starfleet is stalled. How we just slowly incrementally upgrade. That we've gone too long between leaps in technology. Well. If anyone in this room doesn't understand now what we need to do to change that. . . You're the reason we're stuck. So do something about it. Start making this place more welcome to our nearest neighbor and their exceptional talents."

She stepped back to Spock, put a hand on his shoulder, which he saw coming. "Doing all right, Cadet?"

He sensed the question wasn't regarding the last ten minutes, but regarding his injury. His head throbbing faintly, more so when he thought about it, which was illogical. "Yes, Captain."

"Return to your seat."

Spock stood up. Someone in a mid-tier row said, "Captain Chanel, who gets Cadet Spock as a final project partner?"

Spock hesitated, decided he needn't wait and made his way to the back row. From his hunched position on the end Jaek watched Spock sit down, then looked away.

"I'll have to think about that. That's a good question."