Freshly promoted Lieutenant (JG) Choi Ji-hu needed a confidence booster. The challenge of writing a character with general anxiety and low self-esteem is answering the question: what would get them to take up a position of command or authority? In Ji-hu’s case, he had the mantle of provisional office head of the Engineering Systems Programming Office (ESPO) thrust upon him by veteran Constitution engineer Lieutenant Dag Sindri.
I envisioned the ESPO as a team of eccentric, forgotten misfits, computer nerds–think The IT Crowd–relegated to the bowels of the Constitution, wedged between an Engineering support office and the Main Impulse engine. I dreamed up Operation Overclocking as a means of having them wreak havoc on the ship, which includes, but is not limited to, titling Jalana Rajel “Captain Cactus,” frightening an Emergency Medical Hologram, giving two shipboard holographic beings unimagined raw power and increasing computational efficiency aboard the Constitution by an astounding 0.015%.
Read it now: “Operation Overclocking: Computational Retrofitting To Galaxy-Class Vessel”
