Shared Noise
Posted on Thu Jan 29th, 2026 @ 12:39am by Lieutenant Elsen Rava & Lieutenant Bayre Hirata
2,967 words; about a 15 minute read
Mission:
Episode 1: A New Sheriff in Town
Location: Observation Lounge/Bar, Mojave Station
Elsen hadn’t set out with a destination in mind, but the station had a way of nudging people where they needed to be. The observation lounge sat along one of Mojave’s outer curves, public, half-lit, and threaded with the low, constant thrum of systems working just beyond the walls. Not loud enough to intrude, just present.
She’d changed out of uniform again, something comfortable, and carried a drink she hadn’t replicated herself. It was warm, faintly bitter, and grounding in a way she appreciated. Elsen settled into a seat near the wide viewport, resting one boot against the foot rail as she let her gaze drift outward.
Beyond the glass, space stretched wide and restless. The galactic core loomed distant but unmistakable, a dense scatter of stars thick enough to blur into pale bands of light. Closer in, traffic moved in patient arcs around the station, running lights tracing slow, deliberate paths. It was busy without being frantic. Alive, but not demanding attention.
The background noise layered itself beneath her thoughts, the soft murmur of voices, the quiet clink of glass, the deeper vibration of the station itself. Elsen let it all wash over her without trying to separate it out. She didn’t need to understand it. She just needed it to be there.
She was dimly aware of someone else nearby, a presence that felt settled rather than transient, drawn to the same corner of the room. Elsen didn’t look up right away. She took another sip, eyes still on the stars, and stayed where she was.
Sometimes, she’d found, the best conversations began without intent.
Procedures. In-processing. Necessary, at least to Starfleet's way of thinking it was, but also, not productive. Bayre Hirata found a seat near the the view port and pulled out a device he'd built himself, a sort of electronic paper. The world faded away as he focused, using a stylus, he started writing, mathematical notation that would be the basis for the new algorithm. The robot had learned how to evaluate his surroundings and dependably find the limits of things, say, a table table that he was standing on, but was easily defeated by elevation changes. And now, that the procedures were done and there was little to do other than wait, he jotted down the ideas he'd developed earlier.
Someone approached the table and he looked up, a slight frown on his face, as he was drawn out of his thoughts and back into the world again. "I said," she repeated with the kind of patience you use with children, "did you want something to drink, Lieutenant?"
"Yorkshire tea," Bayre answered. "Milk, no sugar." And then as she hesitated, he remembered the twenty-eight discussions he'd had with Reno back on the Faraday and answered, "Thank you."
She smiled and walked away so apparently he'd gotten that right and sighed. The thought was gone, at least for the moment. A cup of tea would help, he thought, as he ran a hand through his shoulder-length blonde hair.
Elsen paused beside the table for a moment, long enough to catch his eye before stepping a little closer.
“Hey,” she said easily. “Sorry to interrupt.”
She offered a small, genuine smile. “We haven’t actually met properly yet. Elsen Rava. I was on the bridge when we came in.” A brief beat, then, “Science.”
Her gaze flicked briefly to the viewport, then back to him, not rushed, not awkward. Just present. “It seemed like as good a time as any to say hello, now that things have stopped moving.”
She gestured toward the empty chair, waiting for the cue before sitting. “Mind if I join you for a bit? I promise I’m off duty, and I won’t ask what you’re working on unless you bring it up.”
"Please," Bayre said as he gestured toward the seat, sending up another of the million or so thank yous he'd already said to Reno since their meeting. "Engineering ... it's a personal project. I'm expanding an algorithm on spatial awareness, how to evaluate terrain, recognize the edges of things. Tests have been successful, so I'm working on jumping."
Elsen took the seat with an appreciative nod, settling in comfortably rather than perching. At his explanation, her expression shifted in that subtle way it always did when something caught her attention properly.
“Jumping,” she repeated, not questioning it so much as considering the shape of it. “That’s ambitious.”
Her gaze flicked briefly to the device in his hands before returning to him. “Spatial awareness is one of those problems that sounds straightforward until you actually try to define it. Edges, depth, knowing when something stops being safe to occupy.” A faint smile. “Most systems don’t handle that well.”
She leaned back slightly, curiosity open and unguarded rather than analytical. “So how does it work?” she asked. “Is it mapping space as it goes, or learning where not to step based on feedback?”
"Let's say it's standing on a table. Finding the edges was easy enough," Bayre answered. "The algorithm can search for the edge, recognize that the space beyond the the table is different, and then its just a matter of making measurements. Now, jumping has more steps. Again, he can recognize the edge of the object and measure it's height. If its short enough, he can step over but jumping. That's harder. I've been mapping the movements a person makes when they jump and trying to mimic them in the robot."
Elsen listened without interrupting, head tilted slightly as she followed the explanation. Not just the words, but the way he framed the problem. When he finished, she nodded once, slow and thoughtful.
“That actually makes a lot of sense,” she said. “You’re not teaching it jumping so much as teaching it when jumping is the least bad option.” A faint smile followed. “Which is usually the hard part.”
Her gaze drifted for a moment, unfocused, as if she were picturing the process rather than the machine itself. “People don’t think about how much we adjust on the fly. Balance shifts before we even leave the ground. We’re already compensating for where we expect to land.” She looked back to him. “Getting a robot to anticipate that instead of just reacting after the fact… that’s a big leap.”
There was a hint of amusement in the word choice, unintentional but not unwelcome.
“Are you feeding it motion data directly,” she asked, curiosity still easy rather than clinical, “or letting it fail a bit and learn where its assumptions break down?”
"More like I'm building in the algorithm, steps it can use to evaluate terrain, and choose its action accordingly. All that comes before the mechanism of jumping though at the end, I want him to be able to jump rope." Bayre smiled fondly at the notion. "Think about it. We'd step over a small crack or hole but jump if its more than a comfortable step. So, it needs to evaluate the dimensions of the obstacle and make determinations based on width and depth, even height, whether its possible to go around or even take an alternate route, if there's something about it that could cause damage like energy or fire ..." He nodded to himself, going down a sort of mental checklist as he spoke. "And once all that's done, feeding him an understanding of how to make a jump and of course, making sure that from an engineering perspective, he can do it."
Elsen nodded as he spoke, following along easily, but when he finished she didn’t jump straight into another question. Instead, she smiled, a little softer now.
“That’s really clever,” she said simply. “And… yeah, I can see why you’d enjoy working on something like that.”
She took another sip of her drink, unhurried, letting the silence stretch just enough to be comfortable. “I’ve always liked listening to people talk about the things they keep coming back to,” Elsen added. “You learn more from that than from whatever they’re supposed to be good at.”
There was a small pause, the kind that let the moment settle rather than stall.
Her gaze drifted briefly toward the viewport, watching a pair of ships slide past the station before returning to him. “So,” she said lightly, “how’s Mojave treating you so far?” A faint smile followed. “It feels like the sort of place that hasn’t quite decided what it wants to be yet.”
Bayre frowned slightly, a bare wrinkle above the brow, his gaze sliding toward the viewport. He considered what she had said, his countenance in profile, framed by shoulder length blonde hair, before turning back toward her. "Why," he asked after a moment. "You're a scientist. Provable, repeatable results. Hard data. Why do you like listening to people talk? Or are you involved in one of the soft sciences?"
Elsen smiled again, this time a little wider, and shook her head faintly.
“I’m not in the soft sciences,” she said, not sharp, just certain. “Exo-archaeology and stellar phenomena. Mostly things that break when you poke them too hard.”
She shifted in her seat, warming to it now. “I spend a lot of my time looking at ruins on planets, or trying to work out why a star system doesn’t behave the way it’s supposed to. You don’t get neat answers with either of those. You get patterns. Context. A lot of ‘why did this make sense to someone at the time?’”
She lifted her glass, gesturing slightly with it before taking a sip. “When you’re dealing with old cultures, or environments that don’t sit still, people are part of the data whether you like it or not. The choices they made, the shortcuts, the things they avoided.” A small, almost fond smile. “If you ignore that, you miss half the picture.”
Her tone stayed easy, but there was real feeling under it now. “So yeah, I listen. Not instead of measurements. Alongside them. It’s usually how I work out which questions are actually worth asking.”
She glanced back at him. “And if that makes it sound messy… it is. But it works.”
"Not messy," Bayre answered, considering the parameters, "though more complex certainly. An archeologist has to make assumptions based on existing data but then, when new data is uncovered, sometimes has to change those assumptions." His gaze softened, as though he were looking elsewhere, as he continued. "For example, the mummy referred to as Otzi the Iceman, believed to have lived between 3350 and 3100 BC on Earth, was discovered in 1991. Buried with a copper axe and other tools, Otzi's discovery indicated an advanced knowledge of metal and trade that reshaped European beliefs on prehistoric innovation."
He nodded to himself. "There's a correlation there to working with alien technology. I can make assumptions about how a system operates but my perception shifts as I learn more about the people. Are they bipedal? How tall are they? Do they have the same sort of hands that most humanoids do? The kind of climate they thrive in ... it all has an effect."
Elsen’s smile lingered as he spoke, softening into something more intent. He wasn’t posturing. He was thinking out loud, and she recognised that instinct immediately.
“Exactly,” she said, a quiet note of satisfaction in her voice. “That moment where the story has to change because the evidence does.” She gave a small nod. “That’s usually the best part.”
She shifted slightly in her chair, more comfortable now, more herself. “You start out with a working idea because you have to start somewhere. But if you get too attached to it, you miss the point entirely. The interesting bit is when something turns up that forces you to rethink the whole shape of it.”
Her gaze drifted briefly, unfocused, as if she were picturing layers of soil rather than circuitry. “With alien sites, it’s the same problem. You can map the technology, measure it, catalogue it… but if you don’t stop and ask who built it and why, you end up misunderstanding what it was actually for.” A faint smile. “Or worse, assuming it was meant to work the way we would have built it.”
Elsen’s attention came back to him fully then, the technical thread loosening its grip as the conversation found a more human footing.
She tilted her head slightly, studying him with open curiosity rather than analysis. “You don’t sound like someone who started out building things just because they were there to be built,” she said lightly. “That kind of thinking usually comes from somewhere.”
A brief pause, just enough to make the question feel considered rather than abrupt.
“So where are you from?” Elsen asked. “I mean before Starfleet got hold of you.” A faint smile followed, easy and unassuming.
"Myrridon originally," Bayre answered. "Have you heard of it? Not a world that encourages archaeology." He shrugged slightly. "I moved to Earth when I was thirteen so that I could establish myself as part of the Federation before entering the Academy."
Elsen blinked at the name, then let out a quiet huff of a laugh.
“Myrridon?” she repeated. “No, that one’s new to me.” She tipped her head slightly, easy and open about it. “Which usually means it’s either very quiet, very private, or very good at staying off the usual lists.”
She shifted in her seat, settling in rather than leaning back into formality. “What makes it unfriendly to archaeology?” Elsen asked, more conversational now. “Is it a ‘nothing old left to dig up’ problem, or a ‘people would rather you didn’t start asking questions’ sort of place?”
Her smile softened. “Either way, moving to Earth at thirteen sounds like a story in itself.”
"Very little survived the fall of the monarchy," Bayre said. "The wars left the world in ruins, rubble primarily; anything of value was sold off in the aftermath. As for moving to Earth, it was the only way forward that I could see. I had no desire to spend my life working for the families." He shut down the PADD as he thought about the planet of his birth. "Myrridon is not a Federation world nor do they want to be. It's a world that caters to a very specific clientele. If you know, you know. Word gets around or so it seemed anyway."
Elsen nodded as he finished, her expression softening.
“That can’t have been easy,” she said gently. Not heavy, not pitying. Just honest. “Leaving that young, even when it’s the right choice.”
She smiled faintly. “I liked Earth. I was there for the Academy, and it surprised me how quickly it started to feel normal. There’s room there to figure yourself out without too many people watching how you do it.” A brief pause. “I hope you found some of that.”
Her gaze stayed on him, open and unhurried. “And if nothing else,” Elsen added lightly, “it sounds like you ended up somewhere you actually wanted to be. That counts for more than people admit.”
"Better than where I was certainly but, after a while, once I'd gotten used to how the Federation did things, I found that I liked the forests," Bayre said, smiling without realizing he had done so, as images popped up in his mind. "And all the space. That was something I'd never known was possible."
Elsen smiled when she noticed the way his expression had shifted, the thought clearly taking him somewhere else for a moment.
“I get that,” she said easily. “Earth does that to people. The forests especially.” She gave a small nod.
She took another sip of her drink, relaxed now, settled into the conversation rather than steering it. “Trill’s beautiful, but it’s busy in its own way. History everywhere, people everywhere. Earth felt slower to me. Like you could disappear into it for a while if you wanted.”
"Possibly," Bayre said. "I've never tested out that theory. "I know what you mean about not being able to disappear though. Where I'm from, everyone wants not to be noticed but few seldom achieve that."
Elsen gave a quiet, understanding nod at that, the corner of her mouth lifting just slightly.
“Yeah,” she said. “That sounds familiar in a different way.” A brief pause, then a softer smile. “Sometimes not being noticed takes more effort than being seen.”
She took a sip of her drink, letting the moment breathe. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you found somewhere with a bit more room in it. Space has a way of reminding you that
"Space is unforgiving and will happily kill you in any number of ways," Bayre said. "For an engineer, its a challenge. Balancing the systems that make space comfortable for those who choose the life. But I do not forget how dangerous it can be."
Elsen smiled at that, a quiet, knowing thing rather than a rebuttal.
“Fair,” she said. “It does like to keep us honest.”
She finished her drink and set the glass aside, glancing once more out through the viewport before shifting her weight, readying to stand. “I should probably let you get back to wrestling with gravity and bad ideas,” she added lightly. “But I’m glad we ran into each other.”
A small nod followed, easy and genuine. “See you around the station, Lieutenant.”
Bayre smiled back, a shy thing, awkward and new and finished with, "See you, Lieutenant."
Lieutenant Bayre Hirata
Chief Engineer
Starbase Mojave/USS Achilles
Lieutenant Elsen Rava
Chief Science Officer
Starbase Mojave/USS Achilles
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