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Engineering is, as usual, open, and Allen is putting the very finishing touches on a robotic arm. When he's satisfied the limb is prepped to function on its own, he sits down with a datapad to do some reading. It might not look very exciting to the casual observer, but there's never a dull moment in Engineering if you like reading (and doing) a lot of math.

(ooc: Technically this post is for Paco, but is open to characters investigating Engineering as well.)

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"Oooooh, robot arm. For Paco?" Wyn asks, spinning her meatchair around and resting her elbows on Allen's desk. She's trying not to play with the new shiny thing... without asking first, anyway.

"Yeah, it's all done. You can put it through its paces if you want. Careful of the arm cannon."

Hey, she helped work on it! Of course she can play with it.

"I'm thinking of having the department whip up some more basic ones, just to have some basic prostheses in store in case of accidents."

"Sounds like a good idea." Wyn says absently, picking up the arm. "I'd rather we didn't need them, but-- hey, it ended up lighter than I expected it to be."

"Awesome, isn't it? New compound. Nicked it outta some of Jack's notes. Kid's uppity but he knows his metallurgy, you'd be surprised."

"Hey Allen!"

Paco had been in and out of Engineering more and more recently. Getting the arm fitted and peering over Allen's shoulder so he could see how it worked and so on. Now was "in" time.

"So, obviously I got your message." He grinned widely. "We ready to rock this thing?"

"I and the Medi-bot are good and prepared if you are."

"Heck yes," Paco said. "You've already promised that it's not going to try and rewrite my brain and conquer the ship, and I'm looking forward to having two arms again."

"I could make an arm that would do that, but it would be REALLY awkward and I don't think I'd be welcome at Karaoke night anymore if I did. Let's get going."

Allen picks the arm up and slings it over his shoulder. What? It's made to take some wear and tear. "I probably should be giving you some pre-surgery prep-speech but I'm a mechanic, not a surgeon, and machines don't usually need a lot of reassurance so you'll have to forgive me on that one."

"I'll pass on that bit of mad science," Paco said. Been there, done that, never wanted to do it again kthxbai.

He had to walk fast to keep up with Allen's long-legged strides, but not so fast that he had to break into a trot.

"Thanks for sparing me the attempt, then," he said. "That kind of pep-talk tends to wind up just scaring the crap out of the person it's intended to reassure."

Paco was actually more nervous than he wanted to let on. Not about going from human to cyborg, he was pretty okay with that; but...well, this was surgery. Things could go wrong in surgery, especially when it involved doing something fiddly with his brain so the awesome laser arm wasn't just a hunk of metal hanging off his stump. He'd talked with Jaime and Brenda about it, and they'd promised to be there when he woke up, but...

Well, he'd be a moron not to be a bit nervy.

"Are you sure? I could reprogram you into somebody who can blow things up with dog urine. You'll note that this will lead to fewer abuses of ability than might otherwise occur given that there is only one dog on this ship."

Speaking of Jaime and Brenda -

"Did you want anybody else around to pep-talk you pre or post-op?"

"Or you could teach me to blow things up with dog urine, which would be way more fun."

It wasn't that Paco didn't like science, it was just he found the bits of it where things exploded or imploded or burst into flames more interesting than reading about how it would explode or implode or burst into flames if the teacher had actually let them perform the experiment.

"I talked with Brenda and Jaime already, and they're gonna be there when I wake up," he said with a shrug. "I got it covered. I'm good."

He hoped.

"Urine tutorial it is."

The Emergency Medical Hologram is already waiting for them when they get to the Med Bay. "Now I already met with the holo-doc just to be sure I could trust somebody else's kid's life with it, and that seems like your best bet for a safe surgery at this juncture, so Paco, meet your surgeon."

"I'm totally holding you to that when this is over," Paco says. See, now he has no choice but to make it through the surgery, Allen's going to teach him to blow stuff up with dog pee.

He forces a grin in the direction of the holo-doc and waves. "Hi."

Just as promised (http://community.livejournal.com/trans_channel/113244.html), Kim pokes her head through the door and immediately grins. So many shiny things! Sure, most of it is inorgo, but she can work with that, too, and maybe splice the two together - if the arm is any indication.

"Hi!" she says cheerfully to the guy reading the datapad, "Are you Billy or Allen? I'm Kim, we spoke on the omnicomms, and what's the arm for?"

She may not have mentioned her habit of changing the topic halfway through the sentence.

"Kid named Paco lost his arm last mission, so we built him a new one." Allen grins and leans back in his chair, because he is soooooo cool like that. "The second one. 'Sup Kim?"

"Lost his arm?" Kim frowns thoughtfully. "Huh. Are missions that dangerous? And nice to meetcha, then, Allen," she adds with a grin. "Neural link-up, I'm guessing? Looks pretty good. You built in new features, huh?"

Can she poke at it? Pleeeease? Just a bit?

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