Kali-fal

Posted on Tue Aug 6th, 2024 @ 1:40am by Ensign Noah Balsam & Lieutenant Irynya & Debbie Gless

Mission: Mean Green Queen
Location: Debbie's Diner
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 1305

[Debbie's Diner]
[1300 Hours]
[Day 1]

Bacon cheeseburgers.

Bacon smash-cheeseburgers with curly fries and ranch, Noah hoped.

Bacon smash-cheeseburgers with curly fries and ranch.... and the answers to a niggling mystery born about six hours ago in the main shuttlebay. Irnya had come across a diagnostic anomaly in the Opportunity's replicators. Upon investigating it appeared that someone had used an old school device- a dynamic syscode converter- to hand-plug in some kind of illegal subroutine into the replicator and bypass the normal security checks. It'd zeroed out the intrusion in the logs. Now, detached from the system, Noah was walking to Debbie's Diner clear at the aft and bottom of the ship. And he was examining the interface coils on either side of the tubular length.

Then he accidentally shoulder-checked someone- and his skinniness very much lost. He spun and staggered "Sorry," he eagerly said. The white hair and subtle rise of two antennae which gawped back in his direction told him he'd intruded on an Andorian in yellow. But he didn't recognize them which on a ship of well less than a hundred was strange.

"Huh..." he intoned at that oddity, watching the lean body walk away down the mostly-straight beam of the corridor. But the draw of a nice late lunch and some answers pulled him to Debbie's twin doors. They opened well before he made his presence known and a pair of Yeomans swayed quickly through, muttering to themselves something about the upcoming LCARS update. It didn't sound over-flattering. Noah wondered if he was the only one excited about a major systems refresh and all its bells and whistles.

His feet had fortunately taken him through the doors on muscle memory and he stopped inside.

The whisper of the doors closing behind Noah was lost in the positive flood of sounds that came rushing at him like an unavoidable wave. As the young man stood there looking around, the scene at Debbie's was as hopping as ever. It seemed that in this little slice of ancient Americana, the hits on the jukebox and the steady stream of servers delivering tasty treats and libations never stopped -- not even for Kazon warlords, a smuggler's space station, or the other mystery in the shuttle bay: Subrek's mysteriously souped up shuttlecraft that was waiting to have its mysteries plumbed. At Debbie's, though, all that was left at the door in favor of bopping beats, thick shakes, giant onion rings, and yes, even the ooey-gooey cheeseburgers that Noah had come in search of.

A song about fruit that was somehow "tutti" blared throughout the space as a volunteer server -- recognize despite her outlandish rainbow outfit as Ensign Mulhern -- zoomed past Noah on roller skates. The wheeled shoes had been entirely bedecked with Barbie-pink sequins that seemed to glitter in time with the music as she moved. On the tray Sheila carried was a collection of ice cream sundaes which left the smell of bananas, hot fudge, cherries, and vanilla in her wake, the fellow engineer tossing Noah a smile as she passed.

From the table nearest the door a head of long dark hair looked up, and the tan face and hazel eyes of Irynya shifted from slight boredom to enthusiasm at the arrival of her stick bug roommate.

"Noah!" she called, standing quickly and waving rather unnecessarily to catch his attention. She'd chosen the table deliberately and had declined any food options choosing to wait for the Enceladan before settling on a booth or a meal. Though her shift had ended several hours ago she hadn't eaten much and her stomach had complained immediately upon entering the retro-styled eatery with its mingling of delicious smells and welcoming ambiance.

Hearing his voice, Noah's lankiness pressed forward toward it's origin. She'd found a booth and Noah beelined to it. "Hi. I'm starved," he admitted. "This new update is keeping us insanely busy. There are so many legacy systems that need patches and assists b-before we can even update the system. It's," his eyes widened and brows popped, "H-huge. Maybe not as big as when they rolled out LCARS-1 from the older systems. But... big."

Noah sidled into a seat next to Irynya. "How-how are things on the Bridge?"

The Risian shrugged in answer, a motion that seemed to directly contradict her pleased expression. "Bridge-like," she said. "The joys of being a pilot at warp."

"NOAH! IRY!" a shout came from across the diner, much reduced in volume in the sound cloud of music, clanking silverware, and the pop-hiss of opening soda cans.

The source of the yell, of course, was the diner's proprietor. Ever a matron to her patrons, Debbie enjoyed dressing the part of her holographic eatery and was, today, swathed in a cozy white sweater with a blue-and-red Letterman's A affixed, a pink poodle skirt that fell below her knees, ruby-red shoes, and a wig of purple hair that was swept back into a ponytail that hung down her back. Large, hoopy earrings had been exchanged for little pink hearts that run up and down the edges of her ears. Though she was not on roller skates like her servers, she somehow magically crossed the distance to Iry and Noah's table as if she were, almost seeming to float-fly their way.

"Haven't seen you two since we hit Hukatuse! How the hell are you?!" Debbie asked, hands going to her hips as she regarded the pair expectantly, jaws chomping at the gum in her mouth before blowing -- and popping -- a rather large bubble.

Noah rose to his full lanky height and swayed one of his gentle limbs around the girth of the matron. His fingers on her opposite arm rubbed up and down in what was probably a soothing motion born from what he himself found soothing. And he laid his head briefly on Debbie's shoulder, "Hi," he greeted in the most casual and friendly of ways. His beamed and too-wide smile showed the edges of his teeth as he finally unlashed his limb from her.

"Uh, just... just fine I think? For me anyway." Noah said, not wanting to speak for his Risian comrade.

Irynya was quick to take over Noah's spot, wrapping her arms around the other woman and squeezing warmly. "I'm alright, Deb," she said. "Though we had some... interesting... adventures on Hukatuse," she commented, cutting a sidelong look at Noah as she pulled away.

"How's business?" Noah asked. His nose crinkled at his freckled bridge, "Tha-that's still the right thing to say right? I-I mean I know its not a business e-exactly... but... how's..." He faded in thought for a second. "I can't think of a better word?"

"How about just how's everything here at Debbie's?" Iry offered. "And with you, of course. Somehow a couple of days feels like an age."

The returned embrace was warm and soft, just like the matron herself. "Oh, things are fine," Deb popped another bubble, her gaudily-bejeweled bracelets sliding to her wrists as the hugs were given and arms lowered. "People were pretty nervous being docked there, though," she said to Noah and Iry. "Heard no end of comments about the Sojo being put up on cement blocks and stripped for parts after I got back to the ship. I guess we did make a pretty tempting prize.." she trailed off.

"But I hear you got one of your own! Congrats on your shrewd shuttle negotiations," Debbie beamed at Noah. "Cutting killer deals is enough to work up an appetite, I'm sure. What're we hungry for today, hmm?" Out came her PADD as a stylus was pulled from behind an ear. "Specials are Frito pie, chili cheese dogs, and baked mac and cheese today." The matron was yet unaware that Noah and Iry's visit wasn't just a social one.

Noah's mouth made an o-shape of approval. "Some classics... uh." The cheeseburger-laden desires that had drifted Noah in this direction were derailed- at least momentarily. The former two would've been delicious, but Noah had to make it through the second half of his shift. Mac and cheese was a bowl of starchy comfort but in Noah's mind that belonged to a nice lazy afternoon of reading. With brows perked, Noah swung back to his first desire. "Bacon smash burger and some c-curly fries?" Noah asked almost apologetically. "And um. When you-you have a moment, we uh... need your help with something."

Noah looked at Irynya and back. "Something kind of mysteriously engineering."

Iry caught Noah's look and held it a moment before turning her attention to Deb who was eyeing both of them curiously while simultaneously holding her stylus at the ready to take down whatever it was that Irynya might want. "Umm... I'll have what Noah's having," she remarked, recalling that this was something she had liked when she'd had it. "And a peanut butter shake please." She smiled broadly at the thought of the creamy nutty goodness before drawing in a deep breath. "We can eat after we show you our... umm... project... too..." she added. "I mean, if now is better than later for solving mysteries."

"Two bacon smash burgers" Debbie said, writing the words onto her PADD with her stylus, "with curly fries. You want honey barbecue sauce to dip those in?" she asked, looking up from the tablet at Noah and Iry. "'Course you do, why am I even asking. You'll like it, promise," the matron assured before scribbling at the PADD again. "One peanut...butter..." she seemed to be taking her time, "shake with extra whipped cream and nuts. Got it," Deb nodded, not even commenting on her addition to Iry's order. "And a project, huh? Lemme just get this in and then you can fill me in."

Putting the stylus behind her ear, Debbie grinned. "Gonna show you a neat trick you probably already know, but what the hell." With her right hand, the matron brushed her fingers on the screen of her PADD as if gathering and picking something up from its surface. Glowing holographic lines and motes -- the scribbles she'd made containing Noah and Iry's orders -- came away from the display, which Deb quickly wadded into her hand before beaming at the pair of Second Stringers. "Watch this, babies," she smirked proudly as she turned and threw the light ball towards the computer on the ordering counter.

Noah, intrigued, shifted to the edge of his seat and twisted in the direction that seemed to indicate her target was her Chef. Or maybe the computer terminal?

The glowing wad had been meant to reach the computer and disappear inside, depositing the order for Mel to work on in the back kitchenette. Unfortunately, Debbie's arc and throw strength hadn't been great and the tangle of canary-colored lines landed on the floor a few feet shy. With a belly laugh that shook her only-slightly-droopy-jowls, the matron just shrugged at her lack of skill with a new feature and bellowed to a passing server: "Get that, wouldja?!" With a deft skate-by, the server in question scooped up the wad and tossed it at the computer, where it vanished.

"Guess I shoulda done it the old fashion way," Debbie laughed, returning her gaze to Noah and Iry. "Maybe holo-tech is for the youngin's like you, hmm? Anyway," she suddenly seemed very interested, "what's this about a project? Hopefully it's not holography related," she grumbled, stowing away her PADD.

Noah's face was a rictus of a grimace at what he'd seen. He blinked and slowly turned into into a smile. "I'm guessing Velocity wasn't ever your-your sport, Deb? I shouldn't talk." His nose wrinkled self-consciously, "I can't throw." Noah said gently folding his arms for the moment. "Actually I can probably fix that. If the system tra-tracks the wad it should be able to use its predictives to get it to the term-" Noah confessed and then realized he was babbling about technology. "Uh, I'll look at it later. It was cool."

Noah paused and drew out the pause far more than he'd intended. "So, uh. We had an Old Skool hack job on the shuttlecraft's replicator system..." Noah began. "At-at first I thought it was an isolinear interphase to bypass the, um, authorization codes. To try and access replicating illegal replicator plans. But it was a little more 22nd century than that." He produced the object.

"A Dynamic syscode converter." Noah announced as he produced a vaguely tubular length with interfaces on either end and some access port in the center. "It looks like it has the replicator matrix it meant to create built in. Mi-mind if we use your replicator to see what they were trying to make?"

Well, that hadn't quite worked the way Deb had planned in her head it seemed. Rather than dwell on it, though, Debbie said, "You're very sweet, baby," and hid her heavy embarrassment by reaching out to pinch one of Noah's cheeks, grateful that he hadn't laughed at her misfire and even volunteered to help her avoid it happening again. "If that'd been a softball, though...it'd have made it there, I assure you," the matron clucked confidently, holding up an authoritative finger. She'd been about to launch into a story about being a second string pitcher for the Academy's women's softball team when Noah whipped out his tech shaft.

As the young ensign explained the context around the device, the Lancelot's former Chief Engineer regarded the object with curiosity. "Honey, that ain't just old skool," Debbie whistled lowly, a bit of astonishment clouding her face, "it's also redneck as all Hell. I haven't seen something like that in a very long time. This was in a shuttlecraft?" Deb asked dubiously, reaching out to gently take the tube in her hand and slowly examine it. "Fittings should connect, don't see why we can't see what they were trying to cook up down there. Good thinking to use my replicator, though," she noted. "It's not as...restricted," Deb said, alluding to some special programming she'd done to the diner's back-of-house replicator versus those available elsewhere on the Sojo.

With a Come along, Pond wave -- Debbie'd been educating herself on one of Noah's favorite pastimes -- the outlandishly-clad woman turned and made her way behind the diner's counter. "Scuse us, baby," she said apologetically to Crewman Kl'klekkan, who was volunteering to work the shake machine today. The device's ice-crushing and whirring noises drowned out her words but the Xindi Insectoid understood well enough, pulling in his body to make room for Deb, Noah, and Iry to slip past him into the back kitchenette. Mel -- Deb's short order cook -- looked up from an array of sizzling burger patties on the grill but a snap and a point from Debbie refocused him on his business at hand.

Handing the device back to Noah, Debbie gestured him to her replicator. It was built into the back corner of the kitchenette, its controls coated in entirely too many greasy fingerprints. But with Mel, herself, and her staff of volunteers constantly using the thing, what else would one expect? The panel would get wiped down more thoroughly at night when they cleaned but for now, Debbie grabbed a hand towel from somewhere and spit onto the control panel. As the liquid began to drip down the surface, she used the towel to rub it around, removing some of the grease at least. "S'all yours," she said, gesturing Noah and Iry to plug the thing in and see what happened.

The noise of Debbie's kitchen -- admittedly predominantly from the shake machine, but also from the sizzling of cooking meat coming from Mo's station and the general hubbub of voices from the diner beyond -- flowed over Iry like a blanket. It was an odd feeling to be both comfortable, in some ways Debbie's was a second sort of home, and out of her element at the same time. She'd found the problem, yes, but it was Noah who understood what to do with the thing. She was simply along for the ride and to make sure she could accurately report back to the Captain and XO. And Timmoz... whenever he was well enough again to be reported to. A pang of unease tugged at her chest making her wince. He still wasn't awake... wasn't even in a position for visitors... and she had been shoving that worry to the back of her mind.

"How can I help?" she asked, looking between the two engineers.

In Iry's dark and concerned reverie, Noah had moved for the replicator and loosed the bottom access panel. He settled it near the toe of his boot, leaning it against the bulkhead. He'd thanked Debbie with a grimacy smile for invading her private sanctum which was... not optimal in its sanitation apparently. Noah presented out the strange rod he and iry had plucked from the shuttle. "Hold this..." he began. And then he started to shift through his supplies. He produced a micro-replicator wand. "Kay, Iry,.. uh... please hold that." He indicated at the shaft. He turned his wand around and it extruded a clear pronged device which hummed to life with a small arc of purple light.

Noah bent in and located a data relay which he ran the prong around the circumference of. Then he popped it free. "Kay, Iry. I need you to hold that interface," and he pointed at one end of the shaft he'd handed her, "Against this," and he pulled the data cord out to show her what looked like a complex design of optics, interfaces and nodes.

If there was anything the Risian could unquestionably do it was hold things and so with deft fingers she followed Noah's instructions, crouching down next to him as she did. When presented with the data cord she took it in her free hand and eyed the various connection points before her eyes tracked back over to the rod, searching for a match. After a very brief pause she settled on one and indicated it with the thumb of the hand in which she held the cord. "This one?" she asked.

"Yeah perfect," Noah uttered. "S-steady as a rock." He smiled at Irynya and then Debbie, "Probably need that for being a good pilot huh?" Noah engaged as he spoke, using the mini-replicator on the end of his wand to first draft and then materialize a coupling. It took less than a minute before Noah pulled out. He brought his tool to his chest and then looked at the access screen of Debbie's replicator. "OK lets putting in a safety proxy." He raised his brows and grinned goofily, "N-not that I think whatever they wanted to make is dangerous just... y-y'know, abundance of caution. Deb? Want to put it to your security code, or mine?"

"And they say pulling out doesn't work," Debbie chuckled, eyeing the device Noah had withdrawn from the opening after working his magic with it inside. It was a crass joke, like most of her jokes were, but where the diner matron was concerned, this behavior was nothing new. "Let's use mine," she said then, curiosity coloring her tone as she eyed her replicator like it was suddenly a bomb. "That way if it blows up, it's on me, not you, baby," Debbie said sweetly, moving forward to quickly key in her security code.

The thin, golden bracelets around her wrist jangled musically as the tap-tap-tapping of her code ran its course. "Alright, there," Debbie nodded to the replicator, indicating it was ready for use. "It's all you from here, kids. Let's see what this crazy thing is gonna do, hmm?" Her hands went to her hips then and a particularly large membrane of bubble gum ballooned from her mouth before deflating with a loud pop.

"Computer, recall program renamed Debbie-1 in new peripheral 01 and replicate." Noah said. He was slow to rise, coming to eye-level with the replicator as energy and molecules began to swim a spiral. Noah had seen replication under extreme magnification once in his materials synthesis survey class Sophomore year. It was balletic and beautiful. A gluon here. Neutrinos there. The building blocks of protons then neutrons weaving almost like a tapestry of a schematic.

As he stood up and Picard maneuvered his shirt, a bulb-shaped glass with a snifter-length stem and base had appeared with a vibrantly electric blue, crystal clear liquid. Noah's eyebrow rose. He wasn't sure what he was looking at. It began to grow pearlescent near the top where it was oxidizing. "Mouthwash?" Noah asked. Why would someone want mouthwash in a snifter? Maybe it was bio-mimetic gel- which was insanely illegal. Again same question: why in a snifter glass?

Hesitantly, Noah picked it up and looked at his friends. Then he wafted his nose over the glass' bulb. "PHEW!!" He protested almost immediately. His nostrils flared as he gasped and haphazardly set it back on the replicator deck. Some of its cold liquid splashed on his fingers from the jostle, "What the Hell is that stuff?!" He coughed and covered his mouth with his sleeve. "D-definitely not mouthwash."

Where Noah was uncertain of what he was looking at, Irynya was forming a fairly confident guess. She glanced at Debbie, eyebrows raised. "Romulan ale?" she stated, adding the upturn of a question more to invite the matron to confirm her suspicion than top detract from her own assertion. Gingerly she picked up the bottle and held it under her nose, taking in the sharp, sinus-clearing scent of the liquid. Her nose burned slightly at the inhale and she sniffed again as she pulled the bottle away and offered it to Debbie. With her free hand she ran her wrist across her nose and blinked. The smell was right at least.

It certainly looked like kali-fal too, and for a moment she wondered if the culprit of the replication was the ship's XO. But that seemed unlikely. She felt fairly certain that the King's Shilling had kali-fal, or at least an approximation of it, in some small amount and it would have surprised her if Debbie didn't as well. Both proprietors seemed to have a surprising supply of alcohols that the average individual wouldn't be able to replicate due to Starfleet-imposed restrictions. In fact, she thought she remembered Commander t'Nai drinking the stuff at Noah's promotion. She'd had something a violent blue color that night, hadn't she?

Debbie took a whiff and nodded, entirely unaffected by the strength of the smell. "Romulan ale, alright. Not quite right, though. Replicated stuff never is, of course," the matron shrugged. She had her own stock of the stuff for a select few who would truly enjoy it. But Debbie was no stranger to a little replicator moonshine brewing action and knew that sometimes, even an approximation was better than nothing.

The replicator interface, though done with the production of the recipe in question, did not return to it's standby mode. Even as the bottle of vibrant blue liquid was being inspected the interface went curiously blank and then, the slow appearance of letters as if someone was typing the message in real time.

Welcome to the Game it declared and then hung there, a blinking box at the end indicating the possibility of more information.

The appearance and change of text caught Irynya's eye and she frowned, turning to look at the screen just in time to read it before it disappeared.

"Umm... Noah?" Irynya said, voice quieter than normal as if she were afraid of spooking something... or someone. "Is the replicator supposed to do that?"

The interface had already begun to produce new text in the same hand typed fashion, one letter at a time with a blinking box. Only this time the box dropped to the next line and stayed as if waiting for input.

Enter Player 1 the text read and this time it stayed.

Noah tilted his head to look at the words, as if the words themselves had grown antennae. "Ok... tha-that's strange. It's a game reference. I think." He looked at Irynya and Debbie. "Um." He coughed and looked at that foul, pearlescing liquid. "That's Romulan Ale?" He asked. His fingers went into motion- not to enter his name but he'd dropped into the programming shell. He was throwing basic root commands at the entry and the strange program, trying to assure it wasn't about to hit them with a shipwide virus.

"Yeah," Irynya answered lamely in confirmation, even as Debbie offered her own further confirmation as well. The Risian looked back to the screen with its blinking box. It puzzled her. Assuming someone on the ship had completed this same step on the shuttle... theoretically at least... someone else had received this prompt. There had been no other evidence of problems on the shuttle during her diagnostic, so no reason to believe it was malicious--at least not from a technology standpoint that she could think of. She watched Noah, waiting for him to complete whatever checks he was making.

Finally, she blurted out. "It said Welcome to the Game before that," she said, thinking out loud, "Maybe we just need to give it... I don't know... a player and it'll complete whatever it's doing."

Noah furrowed his somewhat unkempt brows. "Hmm." His mouth formed another line while he processed this. He decided the chances of a trojan horses or a basilisk were pretty small. And so Noah poised his fingers and typed in his name: "N-O-A-H." He turned and tapped the entry.

Enter Player 2? The computer returned. Noah again turned and looked at Debbie and Irynya. "Ah-anyone want to play a game?" He grimaced, "Hopefully nobody gets murdered."

The Risian looked from Debbie to Noah and then to the screen before giving a shrug. "I'm in," she said. "Can't have you getting murdered by yourself." Though she said it with amusement there was an undercurrent of uncertainty to it as well. The Game had, after all, been attached to replicating a substance that was typically prohibited by the replicator protocols. But then... it was just alcohol... not a weapon or a threat or anything other than some off duty fun that might result in a sickbay visit for the headache the next day.

She took a step up to the interface and confirmed the desire for a second player then typed in her own name, trying not to think too hard about the layer of grease transferring itself from the replicator to her fingers.

"Deb have you e-ever seen anything like this before?" Noah asked of the matron-engineer.

Debbie had watched the prompts appear and, along with Iry and Noah, had been incredibly curious as to what was happening. But as players were asked for and entered, the gleam of a thought shone in her eyes. At Noah's question, Deb leaned back against the counter behind her and nodded. "When you live in placid paradise, life gets...a little boring. And rule breakers are going to rule break to break up the monotony," she smirked, crossing her bracelet-bangled arms over one another to rest on her chest. "I've seen this kind of thing before, yes," she nodded to Noah, "and it usually starts with something edgy to peak interest and then it spools out from there. I wonder what the Free Space for this version is?" Debbie wondered to herself.

When her question was met with blank stares, her hands moved to her hips. "Don't tell me you've never heard of Starfleet Bingo," Debbie said, clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

Noah looked blankly at Irynya and then back at Debbie. "Nnno?" He replied with that long word choice that was the same way a freshman might tentatively answer a question that they were either unsure of the answer, or unsure if this was in itself a test. "Have you Iry?" Noah asked. His eyes flicked to the clatter of Debbie's many bangles. She had the truth of it- that sometimes this idyllic post-scarcity world was a challenge for finding novelty. That was why they were all hurtling themselves through space to find newer things. But those journeys in themselves took time. Still... what would ship bingo even mean?

Iry shook her head in a quick small side to side indication that she did not, in fact, know anything about the game. "No," she said, but her curiosity was piqued. "So... we just signed up to a play a game? One that involves... Romulan Ale?" she asked and though she felt like she should be concerned instead she was gleeful.

"If I'm right, yeah!" Debbie beamed back at the pair. "We played on the USS Might once. Long time ago, do not," she exclaimed, pointing an 'I mean business' finger at Iry and Noah, "read my service jacket, it'll only make me seem old. Anyway," she launched back into the story, "it was a lot of fun. Some questionable items on that bingo list if you ask me," Debbie smirked, eyes glistening with reminisce-juice, "but at least I wasn't the one who had to steal the Captain's cribbage board. Pretty sure Harlow's still scrubbing those plasma manifolds. Course," the woman's tone grew lower and huskier, "didn't have much of a choice in the matter, did he? You do not want to fail your bingos," she winked mischievously.

"Deb! The shake machine's being a butt again," came an irritated voice from the front of house. "Can you come fix it? Please? The damn thing almost took my hand off!"

"I'm coming!" Debbie called back over her shoulder before pinning the pair with a stern look. "Now listen to me. Ship bingo's a helluva good time. Have fun but do not," she seemed ever the mother hen, "let it go too far, huh? That's an order, babies," she clucked then, reaching out to gently touch the side of Noah's face while she nodded at Iry with a double-chin jiggle. "I gotta help Cyndy out there. You two enjoy," she smiled before ducking back out into the front. Moments later, her big, brassy voice could be heard over the din of music saying, "How did that get in the shake machine?!"

That was a whirlwind of information and Noah blinked as Debbie's affectionately pat her sort-of-adopted-child's face. Noah was going to need to process this. A lot. As Debbie walked to help her staff, Noah blinked. He looked at Irynya. "Duh-does the Captain even have a cribbage board?"

Irynya, too, was going to need to process, but was doing so a bit faster than her engineer friend. "Uh... I suppose we'll find out?" She said, and then, unable to restrain herself, she grinned.

=/\= A mystery solved by =/\=

Lieutenant Junior Grade Irynya
Acting Chief Flight Controller

Ensign Noah Balsam
Systems Specialist

Debbie Gless
Proprietor Extraordinaire