Trekkies United: Going Boldly

Matrix regarded her with confusion and a slight bit of awkwardness as she ate, wondering why she still wouldn't meet his eye. Surely she wasn't still embarrassed about the incident yesterday...? Well, he was, a little, so maybe it wasn't so odd after all. "...Is... is everything alright?" he finally asked tentatively, looking up to her with a frown.

"hmm?" he chose to speak on one of her last mouthfuls, and she looked up right after taking a huge bite, blushing worse. she managed to swallow with difficulty and cleared her throat with a sip of water. "uhh, yeah, everything's fine with me if it's fine with you, Mat. you know I never mean to make you uncomfortable, right?" she viewed her sudden advance as unwanted because of his confusion and embarrassment. after all, it certainly wasn't viewed as a gesture of friendship by anyone from either of their cultures, at least...

"Yeah, I'm fine," Matrix mumbled, perhaps a little too quickly. "I'm still not quite sure what to make of it, but... yeah." He cleared his throat awkwardly, averting his gaze. "I know you don't. It's alright. I'm fine." He still wasn't quite aware of what she was feeling towards him, and certainly hadn't realized his own feelings for her, but he was beginning to realize something was going on. He just wasn't sure what.

"are you sure? you don't really sound very fine, if I'm honest," she admitted, still frowning a bit. "I want to make you happy. it seems like all this research and testing is starting to stress you out a bit. I'm not really sure if you've noticed, I know you enjoy research a lot, but it's probably about time you took a break, and maybe I should too." she frowned, not sure what to suggest. they'd both been so busy working ahead of their peers in order to justify not being on the station anymore...she'd barely had time to learn, let alone practice, her tin whistle...

Matrix frowned a little at that, thinking. "Well... Maybe we should practice our music," he suggested, perking up a little. "All this work is getting tiring, and we haven't had much time to do anything other than research lately, you're right. You've barely even touched your tin whistle. Maybe I can help you?"

"maybe...I really haven't been setting aside any time to learn the fingerings..." she admitted. "I suppose, even though I can already read music, I'll have to start with tabs to learn to play simple melodies..." she looked a bit embarrassed at the oversight. surely the fingerings wouldn't be as complicated as, say, something like an ocarina, or heaven forbid a string instrument like Matrix favored.

Matrix nodded. "Yes, that would be advisable," he told her. "I can help you, if you'd like, though we wouldn't be able to play together considering I don't have a flute." He frowned a little, wondering if there was some way he could help her practice her flute using his violin. Perhaps it would be best just to leave his instrument out of it.

(I dunno, my mind is blanking at the moment. xD)

"well, to help me develop my ear for the notes, you could play them and I could repeat the right note with the whistle?" she suggested, scratching her head a little. "I'll just get a readout of all the tabs and learn the notes, then that will help with fluency and being able to find the right note by ear. that can be really important for improvising, if I ever get that good."

Matrix nodded. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," he agreed happily. "Would you like to start now? I can grab my violin and be at your quarters in three minutes."

"all right, I'll see you there!" she said, smiling excitedly and hopping up to hurry ahead of him and get things set up. it shouldn't be too hard...

for him, she had an open-door policy that he could come and go as he pleased as long as she was already in the room, so when he arrived a minute later, she didn't get up from her spot or call out to come in, as she knew he knew he had permission. she was radiating a very glowing happiness that seemed to nearly physically affect the brightness of the room and flashed him a smile as he entered

Matrix nodded happily, heading out to get his violin.

He arrived just over a minute after she, and entered the room, his eyes bright and violin in hand. Noticing her smile, he smiled back, finding a nearby chair and seating himself. "Alright, so, where would you like to start?"

"let's start with the tuning note. we need to make sure the whistle is in D." she covered all the holes and played the lowest note, knowing he would be able to tell by hearing it and match the note. once that was done, it was up the scale and back down again, one note at a time, and just the first set of 8, or octave. it would take a little bit of practice to play the higher notes, as they required more air and similar, if not the same, fingerings as lower notes. once they'd been up and down the low scale three times, she gave him permission to start playing those 8 notes at random, so she had to guess which note he was playing and match it. it would help both her memory and her ear for music, or that was the hope, at least...

"That's good," Matrix praised, playing each note after she did. Once they'd finished the scale, he nodded, playing a G note and waiting for Brianna to try and match it, his eyes shining encouragingly.

she listened to it for a moment with her head tilted, then played an A, stopped, changed fingers, and played a G. "there we go. another!" she said, mimicking a superhero movie of old (without the smashing of a coffee cup, of course).

Matrix grinned, nodding encouragement and playing a B, pulling the bow carefully across the strings.

this one she got immediately, blowing a nice pure note to match the tones of the violin. 

they kept practicing about an hour, and by then she had to admit she was getting a little distracted, if not exactly bored. learning something entirely new was hard work and the brain could grow fatigued as easily as any muscle. "I, ah, I think that's enough. I'm starting to cheat," she admitted to him.

Matrix continued for as long as she wanted to keep going, though he was growing a little bored by the time she stopped him. "Cheat?" he echoed in surprise at her admittance, his eyes lighting with amusement after a moment. "How could you possibly be cheating?"

"you think of the note's letter designation as well as its approximate hertz frequency and international designation relative to the concert C scale," she told him, smiling sheepishly. "any one of those is good enough to get the right note, and all of them together is overkill." she put her whistle down and sighed. "have you made any breakthroughs in your research lately?"

Matrix looked a bit taken aback by that, his brows twitching up and eyes wide, but, after a moment, he smiled a little once more. "Still, that's impressive," he told her. "Even if you have to use a special method to remember the notes, you're still remembering them, and that's what matters." He frowned slightly as she brought up his research, tilting his head a little to one side. "Nothing too noteworthy yet, but I do feel as if I'm getting somewhere. I'm nearly through mapping a suspect section of your genome, and I think there's a strong possibility that may reveal something of import."

"oh, really? could you show me? I've always sort of thought that dna coding is pretty similar to, well, computer coding. and after you explain your work, I can show you mine?"

(... -Mind completely blanks- xD I have no idea how to describe what he's doing.)

Matrix smiled and nodded. "Yes, of course, and I'd love to see what you've come up with." He stood, setting his violin and bow aside, and headed over to her workstation, pulling up his files. "I suppose you could say that DNA coding is similar to computer coding. DNA, after all, is made up of four base nucleotides - adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine - just as computer coding is made of a base of ones and zeros."

"well, assuming you're using binary and not hexidecimal code, of course," she commented. "and that's assuming you're using basic code and not a coding language. I suppose a coding language is similar to thinking of DNA as chunks of genes and instructions on how to use them in between, and the base pairs are like using binary code itself. at least that's what I remember from the basic biology course they required for non-majors like me." she shrugged a little as he pulled up the files in question, standing and leaning forward over his shoulder a little. "I expect you're looking at it on the coding language- I mean, the gene level, instead of the base pairs? individual base pairs really can't tell you much without looking at what order they're in, can they?"

Matrix nodded at her musings, smiling a little. "It would seem you know quite a bit," he commented. "Yes, I am looking far deeper than simple base pairs. Essentially, I've been going over the entirety of your genetic coding on the deepest level, combing through to find anything out-of-the-ordinary. Your half-Betazoid heritage makes things a little more difficult than if you were fully human, but things have gone fairly smoothly so far, all things considered."

"well that's something, at least. and if anyone could spot errors in a mixed up code like mine, it would be you." she rested her forearm on his shoulder to lean closer and remain balanced, pointing something out on his sheet. "shouldn't this number be a lot higher? sixteen hundred base pairs definitely seems to be missing a zero. I thought we had sixteen thousand or so?"

"Well, I thank you for your confidence," Matrix told her, giving her a smile as she leaned against his shoulder.  As she pointed out the number, he looked back to the screen.  "That number is just what I've gone through so far," he told her.  "You're right - humanoids generally have about sixteen thousand base pairs."

(*Shrugs*  I didn't know what to have him say about the base pairs (that's why I haven't posted xD), but I don't think he would've made an error like that, so.)