[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Plane

I'm guessing the same applies to hacking the pods to simulate there being a fire when there isn't? Or maybe that's a lesser criminal charge since it involves software alteration rather than hardware alteration?

False fire alarms are a great way to get into trouble anytime between Ancient Nineveh and Turn of the Century New York. People don't like fake arson (and yes, Century New York and ancient Nineveh are the examples that come to her. But they're never really big criminal charges unless they're coupled with something else.

Olive will probably try and figure out how feasible it is to hack (if she understands electronics it all) to emulate a fire, or else figure out if there's anything flammable in the room.

The bed is only moderately flammable, as are her clothes. The rest of the room is surprisingly resistant to burning. She can order food that burns, as well as clothing. She'll need a solid spark to get things going, but breaking electronics can often supply that. Her mind dwells for a while about this ship being the opposite of human history: so many easy sparks to light fires but so little that actually burns.

Olive doesn't know how to hack. That's a job for .... She can't think of her name, but she got a face associated with who-ever's job it is to do the hacking. She's a large dark Hispanic woman who' older than Olive but would be positively young aboard the Darwin...

She is finding evidence that neighbors that get along (usually youth) sometimes take the right panels out and get a small passage between the them.

As for the shaft, I guess whether or not she has the tools to widen it in an emergency, and how long that might take.

If she doesn't have a lighter / chainsaw or similar, she'll ask hero about what various things (guessing no Trek-lite replicators) she might be able to order to her room, by making general inquiries about skill-training / craft hobbies.

Opening up the shaft is usually done with the equivalent of screw-driver and wrenches, not power saws. When she investigates, she finds they do have "replicators" of sorts in the form of robust 3d-printing technology. She'll have a tricky time getting approval to print stuff for her use though: her status is that of a disabled stow-away under threat of attack.

Power-saws will work for using any of the "illicit" entries, but they will be noisy. As an estimate, it will take from 20 seconds to 5 minutes to open a passage up, given a solid plan of what exactly to cut and move. A similar time applies to unbolting things, though that will make a lot less noise.

She can dig deeper on these topics, but she's aware they're probably tracking her search history. How careful about concealing her interest does she want to be?