<div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/7/72/Dr._Julia_Stanton.jpg)</div><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Character name:</strong></td><td> Dr. Julia Stanton</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Location:</strong> </td><td> Chief Engineer's Office</td></tr><tr><td><strong>With:</strong> </td><td> Abigail Carter, Lena Holtzmann, and Juliet Franklin</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Doing:</strong> </td><td> Meeting her staff</td></tr></tbody></table><br/><hr/><br/>Julia was about to start talking when the door was knocked upon and a new face poked in.  Julia smiled to her late arrival and beckoned her inside, "Don't worry, we've all been a little busy."<br/><br/>Adjusting her chair a bit, Julia glanced at her three workers.  An all female staff?  She either was the luckiest woman on Mars or damned close to it.  She waited for Lena to get settled before saying, "Alright, first of all, I'm glad you girls were busy right off the bat.  I like it when people take initiative.  I'm not going to hover over your shoulders, constantly getting in your way, none of that.  I'm not really picky as long as you do your job right and let me know of any issues larger than an isolated incident.  Case in point would be... say, if one of the air conditioning units had to be rebuilt from the ground up.  If it's going to take more than an hour to fix, give me a call.  If it's a major problem, like 'oh god oh god we're going to die', I don't care if I'm sound asleep."<br/><br/>Her terminal beeped, indicating a message, but she would look at it in a minute.  "Now, in case you don't remember or never bothered to care, I'm Dr. Julia Stanton, but you can call me Julia or Chief or whatever you feel comfortable with.  I can't say I designed most of this base but I'm one of those kinds of people that designs stuff that isn't easy for you to fix, so if you run into problems with stuff, you can just blame me I guess."  She gave them a smile and then said, "I want you all to know that I'm proud of all of you for making it this far, to be selected to come here to Mars.  You've done an outstanding job, and I hope to see wonderful things from all of you.  Until otherwise stated, you won't need to be back here until alpha shift tomorrow.  In fact..." she checked her map, "I think we can meet in the cafeteria.  A briefing and job assignments over breakfast won't be too bad."<br/><br/>She sat back and crossed one leg over the other and thought, trying to remember if there's anything else she forgot.  "Oh, and if you don't find anything to do or just get really really bored, go ahead and start taking inventory.  I'm sure we've got all the parts shipped to us from Earth but you never know what gets lost in the mail," she said giggling, then shooed them away, "Go play girls.  Enjoy the rest of your day.  I'll call you if I need you back here."<br/><br/>While they left, Julia pulled up her message.<br/><br/><em>Dr. Stanton, this is professor Gadi, head of the scientific department. Unfortunately some of the equipment that was supposed to arrive with the shuttle drop was stolen, including two lasers. Though the equipment is harmless, it's possible that someone may have taken the lasers without realizing that, and may short circuit the electric systems of the base by accident. This would obviously shut down life support systems, killing all of us. If you could, please keep a lookout for any abnormal power usage on base and if you find any, report it to Chief of Security Hicks, or Commanding Officer Cotter. Also, please keep this private, there's no reason for people outside of the council to be informed on the current situation. Thank you."</em><br/><br/>Julia hmmed, typing a reply,<em>Professor Gadi.  I'll keep an eye on the grid, but don't worry too much about a short killing us all.  Every room is on a more or less independent breaker that'll trip if power shorts or overloads.  Each individual breaker ties into a sub-station that has it's own breakers, and there are fuses to keep things from going to Hell.  But yes, I'll keep an eye out and I told my girls to start taking inventory of the stores so we know what made it and what didn't.  Maybe we'll find them fairly soon.  Dr. Stanton.</em>