6617/Stranger Tides: The Disturbance

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Stranger Tides: The Disturbance
Date of Scene: 22 February 2019
Location: Unknown
Synopsis: Summary needed
Cast of Characters: Fathom, June Connor
Tinyplot: Stranger Tides


Fathom has posed:
The data has been painstakingly collected. Lots of time spent zigzagging across the Pacific. Sometimes dropping buoys with sensor strings that sometimes descend hundreds of feet below the water. Other times towing miles long arrays of sensors in long sweeps.

And then there is the processing. Loading all the data. Cleansing it. Building models from it. Evaluating them. But finally after days and weeks of effort, they start to get some results back.

Aspen walks into the main work room on the boat. Her tan has even deepened slightly from all of the time at sea. She hasn't been a stranger to the labor though, herself and Bruce having done a lot of the deployment of equipment while Katherine and June handle the computers.

"Hey June, any luck yet with that latest model?" Aspen asks as she goes over to the galley to grab herself a bottle of cold water. The woman drinks about twice as much water as anyone else. Talk about staying hydrated. "That last model seemed to be showing some really unusual things in this area we're sailing towards. I am hoping the latest addition to the data might narrow it down even further."

June Connor has posed:
    June stares boredly at the screen. "Yeah," she says in a mildly lethargic tone. This whole normal working person thing isn't as exciting as she hoped it'd be. It's like...work. She leans back in her chair, her swimsuit on, mainly so it won't be considered indecent that her short-sleeved blue shirt is fully unbuttoned, and her blue jean shorts. She likes to feel relaxed.

    She raises a foot to move the mouse cursor, not the most hygenic process, and slides it over to click on the rendering. "97%," she answers. "Be up in like thirty seconds."

Fathom has posed:
Aspen takes a long drink of her ever-present bottle of water. "You've done really good work," Aspen says as she moves over to lean against a counter where she'll be able to see the monitor. The cursing hasn't been an issue, for Aspen at least. She has been pretty easy going to get along with compared to most people, and by now it would not be surprising if June rarely gave any thought to what she says in front of Aspen.

"The models that Katherine had... even gave some indications something is happening deeper down," Aspen comments. "You can tell by the shape of the anomalous area. Deeper is wider. Also, a more energetic cause is wider. But there are some differences that can help sort the two. I wonder if we might be looking at some kind of undersea volcano or something really kicking out some heat. It seems like there's just so much water movement in this area at depth. Though sometimes it's there, other times not," Aspen opines.

June Connor has posed:
    "So," June gives a frown, "There's like a volcano making the currents weird?" she asks, tilting back precariously on the chair. "I mean, can't do much about a volcano," she says. "Just kinda one of those things. Not that I really get what we would have tried to do for anything that's a powerful enough force to screw up the ocean currents." She rubs her face to try to bring herself back to full alertness. Nothing brings on fatigue quite like boredom.

Fathom has posed:
"Well, we don't have to be able to fix it. But understanding the currents can end up being worth a lot of money to the shipping company," Aspen says. "If a ship is heading to Japan and the current shifts against it, it's going to take longer, which could break contractual obligations and cost money. It's going to have to run its engines harder to avoid losing time, which costs more fuel. A ship coming the other direction, if it knows the current runs the direction it wants to go stronger here than elsewhere, they can save fuel and time by sailing through this area," Aspen says.

99%. "So even if all we do is understand more of what is going on, let them predict things better? That can be a huge cost savings to them." Aspen walks over to the computer and rubs her hand on it in a caress. "And, we academics can have all this wonderful data that includes animal sounds, temperature patterns that can be use for weather models... all sorts of usefulness can come out of this."

June Connor has posed:
    "Sounds fascinating," June says, though the tone doesn't seem to reflect the sentiment. "Way above my brainpower," she says. "I never even would have thought of those kinds of things," she admits. "Didn't really do well in economics class." Actually, she didn't even stay in school long enough to get to that class.

    "So I guess this trip will make you pretty good money, huh?' she says. "Like, you should be rolling in it after a job like this." Probably not the most PC thing to ask her boss, but then again, there's not much PC about her.

Fathom has posed:
Aspen gives a soft laugh and says, "Oh no. Science is not the right field to go into to get rich. Unless you're going to start up your own company or something." Aspen moves over to one of the ship's bulkheads, running her hand over it. "Most of what I make from the job will go into the Paradise Found," she says, her tone making clear the ship is a labor of love for Aspen.

"Had to replace a fuel pump and rebuild the transmission on the secondary engine before we could even start the job. That was paid for by Ms. Cranston's firm, so, it has been very lucrative in that regard. I don't know where I was going to get the money otherwise. But, no, this'll cover my mortgage for a few more months and keep some food on the table. Not really set you up for life kind of money though," Aspen says. She moves back over to check the monitor. "You going to do anything special with your part? Trip to Vegas?" Aspen asks with a smile.

June Connor has posed:
    "No shit?" June says, "You mean these companies are gonna save millions of dollars on what you learn, and research funded for all sorts of super smart people stuff, and they gonna give you tablescraps? That's bullshit." She huffs, looking righteously indignant at the injustice of it all. "Cranston Shipping makes what, 10 bil a year or somethin'?" she has no idea, really.

    "I dunno, kinda my first desk job," she says. "I guess doin' contract work I should probably save it and stuff. I suck at budgeting though, so I'll probably blow it on stupid shit. Been thinkin' I should sit down with some banker or somethin', but then I get cancer just thinking about how boring it would be."

Fathom has posed:
Aspen gives a warm chuckle. "Well, it's not chicken feed. I mean, for this sort of work, it's actually on the very high end of the scale. Plus, the work itself is costing them a lot, fuel and upkeep on the boat, equipment. But, I wouldn't have taken this as a career if I didn't love finding out new things about the ocean. That's really where the big payoff- oh wow," Aspen says, words cut off as the model finally pops up on the monitor and she sees the first images from it.

"Ok, not what I was expecting," Aspen says. "First, wow, I wasn't hoping for this much resolution. It looks there's fairly narrow area. Just a couple of miles across," Aspen says, pointing to where bright violet colors are showing higher intensities on one of the graph plots. "And... not near the seabed as I was thinking. Ok, I'm a little thrown for a loop. This is much nearer the surface than I thought. Still a couple hundred feet down. I'm at a loss now what is going on," Aspen says, looking puzzled.

June Connor has posed:
    June frowns. "Dammit," she says with annoyance. "I musta screwed something up. I mean, if it's a few miles across, then there's no way it's not at the ocean floor. I mean, what would be that big? I'll check the rendering, I plrobably misplaced a decimal or something dumb like that." She brings up the modeling system on the other side, figuring it must be human error.

Fathom has posed:
"Oh, I meant, somewhere in this area seems to be a focus of the disturbance. Could be it's the whole area somehow. Or if it was something like a volcano it is just in that area." Aspen goes over to the charting table. Thanks to the research project, instead of just being a backlit surface, it's an actual LED display.

Aspen pulls up topography of the sea floor. "For a volcano to have built that high though... satellites would have picked it up. I mean, it would stand out like a pimple on a boy set to attend prom with his dream girl," Aspen says thoughtfully. "So, probably not volcano." Aspen goes back over to see what June has been able to do to clean up the results. "So not even a couple of miles across, more like a square mile or two," Aspen says, patting June's back for improving it. "Well, we should get there in a couple of hours. If there's a volcano the size of Mount McKinley... which I just can't believe there is. So... we have a mystery, June."

June Connor has posed:
    June continues to run the system, but can't find anything wrong with the modeling. It's accurate, whatever that means. It's frustrating, she cusses the computer, and finally surrenders that the numbers must be what they are. She takes a breath about the time they should be arriving, stepping out onto the deck of the ship to smell the fresh sea air, leaning on the railing on the bow.

Fathom has posed:
The patch of sea doesn't look any different than any other. It's a nice, sunny day out. After this long at sea, the slow roll of the boat on the water is probably nothing to June. If anything when she goes ashore she might feel it unusual for the few few hours to a day that the land is so still.

The back half of the boat is mostly open deck, with various boons and cranes and such. A large diving bell for manual observation in deeper water is secured along one side. Aspen almost left it at the dock, not expecting to have use for it, but it wasn't taking up needed space, so there it is.

Aspen comes down from the wheel house. "There's something on the sonar. But it's not an undersea mountain. More like a whale or a submarine or something like that. I'm also getting some weird behavior from the instrumentation. The electronic compass keeps changing bearings, and even the mechanical one doesn't seem to want to stay calm either."

June Connor has posed:
    "A whale?" June says skeptically. "So it's not like 2 miles long or whatever," she confirms. She doesn't know much about sea life, but she's pretty sure there's never been an animal alive that was that large." She looks out at the water, as if it would give her some indication. Looks like water.
    "So...there's a whale or a submarine that's screwing up our navigation system," she comments. "You know, this is starting to sound like a some kind of James Cameron movie."

Fathom has posed:
"Right, not two miles big. Just... from the map of the current disturbances, they seem to be tied to somewhere in that big area. But we couldn't narrow it to exactly where," Aspen says. She turns on a monitor and taps in a command, and the sonar image comes up. "Or, how big. It's... it could be a submarine. I don't think it's a whale. And it hasn't moved yet that I can tell," Aspen says.

She looks over to June and gives a soft chuckle. "Yes, or maybe... I hope it's not like, Atlantean or something," Aspen says, biting her lip. "Um... Aquaman, a few days back, was in the water near us. When I went for a swim while you were calibrating the sensors. He swam by with some dolphins. Though when I mentioned what we were studying, he only mentioned hearing of weird currents. This was, oh, what, we were maybe a hundred miles away though. So I doubt it has anything to do with him."