TBG Omake: Before the Next Generation
Jan. 14th, 2018 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoAN: This is an omake fanfic of a Quest (fanfic) called To Boldly Go, based primarily on Star Trek.
Finally, 2321.Q3 rolled around in-game, which is when Picard made his first attempt at applying for Starfleet Academy. TNG implies that applications happen once a year. Picard was successful in his second attempt, which was 2322, and became a cadet for the 2323 school-year.
Boothby is the canonical groundskeeper for Starfleet Academy who’s been there forever even Picard was at the academy.
Andrea Brand is another canon character taken from TNG.
I’m leaving it up in the air for now whether Mr. Andrew is in fact, the future Ian Andrew Troi. I’ve always felt it made more sense if he’d taken Lwaxanna Troi’s surname rather than the other way around. Ms. Zaheva and Ms. Hayes may or may not be canon characters. It would be a little too much coincidence if they all were, honestly. But I'm just leaving some room open for future stories.
Academy Extensions: Before the Next Generation
Counsellor Fujei stared grimly ahead, his face eerily lit by the flashing of the alert lighting. Before him were several large video screens showing real-time displays of the emergency underway. His eyes fluttered from screen to screen, picking out the smallest details of those involved - each aborted movement, each unguarded expression, until--
“End simulation!”
The voice of Lt. Andrea Brand resounded from both Fujei’s side and from the speakers throughout the facility, immediately drawing everyone’s attention. It was coupled by the abrupt cessation of the alert klaxons and lights, leaving behind a ringing silence to the chaos before. Relaxing from his own concentration, Fujei looked to the side as his human colleague subconsciously leaned toward the computer and continued her broadcast.
“Staff personnel, you may return to your normal duties. Candidates, this was just a psychological evaluation based on reactions to various individual problems. There is no emergency. You may be at ease; go ahead and take a break.”
As the mass of people on the screens began to stir into activity once more, the admissions officer reached over and turned off the display screens. The lights in the monitoring room automatically brightened in response.
“Come on, let’s take a seat,” Brand called out, already heading toward the small table at the back of the room.
“Of course, sir,” Fujei acknowledged as he followed her and settled into one of the chairs.
“So, what do you think, Counsellor?” Getting straight to the point, Brand gestured to encompass the five padds that lay on the table between the two officers. Five personnel profiles, sets of exam scores, and previous examiner notations that summed up the five hopefuls in their current test group trying to enter Starfleet Academy.
“From an objective standpoint, I think we can rule Mr. Schultz out,” Fujei promptly began. “He’d started panicking almost as soon as the computer stopped responding to him, well before the alarms turned on. While he never reached the point where I would have stopped his simulation for medical reasons..."
“He was far less coherent in action than his written exam scores would have indicated,” Brand finished dryly. She raised her stylus and began writing on the first candidate’s padd.
“I’d even tentatively put him as borderline autophobic,” Fujei added with a frown. “I can’t imagine how the condition hasn’t been caught before.”
“On Earth, we don’t psi-scan every kid that passes through the public education system,” Brand remarked with a shrug. “Still, if he can’t handle a low stress emergency on a safe planet, he’s not going to be able to handle space.”
The admissions officer finished writing on the padd and gently laid it aside, then shifted the remaining four padds closer to the center of the table.
“On that note, both Ms. Hayes and Ms. Zaheva initially panicked as well,” Fujei spoke up, indicating two of the padds in the center of the spread, “but they, at least, were able to overcome their instinctive reactions...to various extents.”
“Oh?” Brand raised an eyebrow in surprise. “I thought Ms. Hayes had been able to keep her wits quite well. She certainly made some good decisions in administering emergency aid to the injured crewman she was presented with.”
Fujei, the telepath of the two, winced. “She was able to keep the appearance of calm, certainly, but several of her actions were actually just the first thing that came to her mind. It was pure luck the first hypospray in the medkit was an adequate response for the condition that Ensign Gev was simulating.”
“Are you certain it was guesswork rather than reflex, Counsellor?” Brand asked, even as she started writing down notes on the padd. “Ms. Hayes does have some background in the biological sciences, after all.”
“If it was reflex, she would have checked for allergic response before actually using the hypo,” Fujei pointed out. “It might only apply to ten percent of Tellarites, but cordrazine allergies are always fatal. Not to mention, she didn’t think to check for blood loss or neural shock at all, both of which can increase the risk of cordrazine treatment.”
“I see,” Brand murmured, frowning as she made several more notations in the candidate’s file. “I will have to review that part of the recording again. What about Ms. Zaheva?”
“Her response was more straightforward, if overly hesitant,” Fujei replied promptly. “In fact, she second-guessed herself so much that she nearly chose the wrong engineering bypass to fix the environmental controls, even though she had already reached the correct conclusion first.”
“She did take the longest time of all the candidates to reach the finishing point of her simulation,” Brand noted with a nod as she jotted down more notes. “Still, she did reach an adequate result in the end, and a few of her written exam responses were quite brilliant.”
“She’s not the first cadet I’ve met who has trouble adjusting to being suddenly dumped among peers that are among the best of their planet,” Fujei mused. Said nervous candidate also reminded him of a certain Seyek cadet he had counselled through the first year at the Academy. “I’d say that she’s gotten complacent being the smartest person in her previous social circle. The shock of perceiving herself as ‘only average’ now overwhelmed her. But it’s something that she can improve on, if she can overcome her fear of being perceived as imperfect.”
“That’s something a lot of candidates, and even new cadets, experience,” Brand agreed with a smirk. “Those that stay the course will usually make it through. Those that can’t will either give up or drop out. We’ll have to see which path Ms. Zaheva will take.”
With a flourish, she finished the padd she was annotating and picked up another one. “Alright. Next, on the other end of the spectrum, we have Mr. Picard, the fastest of our candidates to reach the finish point of his simulation. He shows a lot of initiative, but I thought his execution was rather sloppy. Your thoughts, Counsellor?”
“Confidence is certainly not a flaw of his,” Fujei stated the obvious, a faint grin tugging at his lips. The brash young human had reminded of a different cadet he’d met, a rambunctious Qloathi who seemed to have a peculiar grasp of the Academy’s extracurriculars.
“Perhaps… a bit too confident?” Brand mused further, a small frown creasing her brow as she idly tapped her stylus against the padd.
“He certainly does have a habit of using bravado to cover up uncertainty,” Fujei confirmed. “Still, all of his guesses were at least educated ones, and he never took his eye from the big picture - that the entire facility may have been compromised, and not just his corner of it.” He rather liked that dynamic and bold young mind.
“Even if his educated guesses end up shorting out the reactor console he was working on?” Brand prompted with a raised eyebrow. “He was lucky he didn’t didn’t actually trigger the conditions for a simulation meltdown by choosing the riskier bypass.”
“It was a close call, but he did, in the end, avoid that outcome,” Fujei couldn’t help but point out. “A certain boldness isn’t so bad to have in a candidate. The Academy will be instilling the discipline and knowledge to balance it out, after all."
“It was an inspired workaround,” Brand agreed, “which should make up for some of the points he lost on the written exam.” With a nod, she added a few more statements to the padd and then switched it for the last one on the table. “That leaves us with Mr. Andrew. I have to say, he was the candidate that impressed me the most. The only one who actually asked the right questions, listened to the answers, and synthesized a solution.”
“He is the oldest among the candidates,” Fujei felt obliged to point out. “He’s already done university level studies on Alpha Centauri for two years. It’s natural for him to be more...mature than the other candidates.”
Brand snorted. “Believe me, Counsellor. I’ve met cadets and ensigns older than him who haven’t learned that lesson.”
Fujei pursed his lips. There wasn’t really much he could find fault with the candidate, but he still felt obliged to play the role of the Terran devil’s advocate. “Well, he did consciously choose the option that posed the greatest danger to himself--”
“--And the biggest margin of safety for everyone else,” Brand finished, her stylus flying across the padd.
With a huff, Fujei leaned back in his seat with a resigned smile. “It sounds like to me you’ve already made up your mind, sir.” He sensed the confirmation of that fact without having to hear the senior officer’s reply.
“I suppose I have.” Brand finished her writing and put down her stylus. “Of course, these will still be processed with all the other test groups that are applying this year. I suppose it is possible that there are many more superior candidates in other groups than Mr. Andrew--”
“--Not that you believe that will happen,” Fujei interjected bluntly.
“Not in my experience.” Brand grinned wryly as she stacked the padds together. “I’m sure Mr. Andrew will be a shoo-in. And maybe Mr. Picard or Ms. Zaheva will also have a chance, if one of the other test groups didn’t have any more promising candidates.”
“...Not that you believe that will happen,” Fujei reiterated confidently.
“You never know,” Brand shrugged with a smile. “Thanks for your time, Counsellor. I’m going to turn these in. We should have an answer back for our candidates by tomorrow afternoon.”
~~~~~
Akesh Momon awkwardly made his way down the campus streets, his motions encumbered by the large number of packages he was delicately balancing. As he drew near the edge of the neatly trimmed greenery that marked the boundary of the campus lawns, a familiar sound of irate scolding caught his attention.
“--your short-comings, young man, doesn’t mean you can take it out on the plants!”
“Hey Mr. Boothby!” Momon called out in the direction of the angry voice, hoping to rescue some hapless fellow cadet from the eternally grumpy groundskeeper. As he drew near enough to look around the pile in his arms, though, he was surprised to find said victim to be a human kid in civilian dress.
“Cadet Momon,” Boothby returned the greeting with an intense stare. “I do hope you’ve been keeping yourself out of trouble.”
“Uh, me? Trouble? O-of course!” Momon laughed and fidgeted nervously, unnerved as always under that stare, and forgetting for a moment the precarious load he was carrying. His movement jostled the pile of packages, causing the top-most item to fall crashing to the ground.
“Well, see that it stays that way,” Boothby remarked wryly, his sarcasm blindingly obvious. “And you!” he turned back to the civilian kid who looked like he was going to take the chance to slip away. “Why don’t you make yourself useful, kid, and I won’t write you up for defacing Starfleet property.” He then made a gesture at the fallen package, the implication clear.
“Uh, you don’t have to--” Momon protested on behalf of the kid as he jiggled his remaining packages, trying to find a way to pick up the fallen item without causing more to fall.
“Fine!” The forcefully bit out word interrupted him. The kid swept up the fallen package and turned to stride down the street in the direction Momon had been facing.
“Uh, thanks?” Bewildered, Momon hurried after him. “See you later, Mr. Boothby!” he called over his shoulder before turning to his new companion, totally oblivious to the scowl on the human’s face. “So, what’s your name?”
“Jean-Luc Picard,” came the curt answer.
“I’m Akesh Momon,” Momon introduced himself. “Don’t mind Mr. Boothby, he’s--what’s the saying? All bark and no bite.” He waited a moment for the young human to say something, and when the silence persisted, decided to keep trying to make conversation anyway. “So what are you here for? Visiting a relative?”
The human glared at him for a moment, a glare that slid off against Momon’s good humor like water off a duck. Then, huffing, Picard answered, “I was taking the entrance exams.”
“Oh! I guess that makes sense that you Earthers can have the exams on campus,” Momon exclaimed in realization. “You’re lucky, you know. I had to travel to Celos for my application, twice.”
“Twice?” Picard finally looked up with interest at that claim. “Why twice?”
“Once for the written and once for my orals,” Momon answered. “Had to take them, let’s see… months apart what with paperwork and scheduling. Though, I guess the kids nowadays back on Arqeniou have it easier, since we became a full member of the Federation.”
“I guess I’ve never thought of it that way,” Picard mused. “New affiliates to the Federation must have a harder time getting access to Starfleet Academy. It’s always been practically next door for me, here on Earth.”
Idly, he adjusted the package he was holding to get a better grip on it. The motion caused the loose baggy opening to slip down, revealing the blocky item within, gilded with arcane markings.
“Hey, what’s this? Some kind of alien artifact?”
“Hah, I wish,” Momon replied wistfully. “It’s a reproduction of an ancient Preserver obelisk. A prop for our play.”
“Play? As in... for Qloathi theatre?” Picard asked thoughtfully, his mind helpfully dredging up the xeno-sociological facts related to his companion’s species.
“Well, actually, the Theatre Club was there long before my people met Starfleet,” Momon replied, a bit defensively. “But yeah, a bunch of us are putting together a production of the Indorian creation myth. Well, a sort of modern re-imagining of the myth with the Stargazer standing in for...uh, well, it’s a little complicated to explain the whole thing in just a few sentences.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Picard replied dubiously. Then after a short pause, he couldn’t help but ask, “Starfleet Academy has a Theatre Club?” This time, he sounded more intrigued than skeptical, even as he was trying to fit his preconceptions of the institution around that fact.
Momon puffed up in pride. “Sure! It’s a great club! Several professors came to see our last production - an actual traditional Qloathi Ride, you know - and the dean told us we might have a chance at performing our current one at the commissioning ceremony of the Ambassador ships.” That announcement had sent everyone into a tizzy. And hey, if the kid wanted proof... “Do you want to join us?”
“What?” Picard stared at him, startled by the suggestion.
“Why not?” Momon asked rhetorically, warming up to the idea as he spoke. “It’s a great place to get to know other cadets, and the occasional professor. You know, without any grades being on the line.”
“I...I’m not a cadet though,” Picard admitted with a grimace, his mood souring once more. “I didn’t get accepted.”
“You don’t have to be Starfleet to join us,” Momon assured him. “Lots of people get their friends or family to come in and help out with the sets or just play bit parts. Besides, it’s still a good way to get to know to people and learn about different cultures.” He grinned enticingly. “I bet it’ll look good on your record the next time you take the entrance exam too.”
Picard mulled the idea over for a long moment.
“I suppose...” he finally decided, “I could take a look.”
Finally, 2321.Q3 rolled around in-game, which is when Picard made his first attempt at applying for Starfleet Academy. TNG implies that applications happen once a year. Picard was successful in his second attempt, which was 2322, and became a cadet for the 2323 school-year.
Boothby is the canonical groundskeeper for Starfleet Academy who’s been there forever even Picard was at the academy.
Andrea Brand is another canon character taken from TNG.
I’m leaving it up in the air for now whether Mr. Andrew is in fact, the future Ian Andrew Troi. I’ve always felt it made more sense if he’d taken Lwaxanna Troi’s surname rather than the other way around. Ms. Zaheva and Ms. Hayes may or may not be canon characters. It would be a little too much coincidence if they all were, honestly. But I'm just leaving some room open for future stories.
Counsellor Fujei stared grimly ahead, his face eerily lit by the flashing of the alert lighting. Before him were several large video screens showing real-time displays of the emergency underway. His eyes fluttered from screen to screen, picking out the smallest details of those involved - each aborted movement, each unguarded expression, until--
“End simulation!”
The voice of Lt. Andrea Brand resounded from both Fujei’s side and from the speakers throughout the facility, immediately drawing everyone’s attention. It was coupled by the abrupt cessation of the alert klaxons and lights, leaving behind a ringing silence to the chaos before. Relaxing from his own concentration, Fujei looked to the side as his human colleague subconsciously leaned toward the computer and continued her broadcast.
“Staff personnel, you may return to your normal duties. Candidates, this was just a psychological evaluation based on reactions to various individual problems. There is no emergency. You may be at ease; go ahead and take a break.”
As the mass of people on the screens began to stir into activity once more, the admissions officer reached over and turned off the display screens. The lights in the monitoring room automatically brightened in response.
“Come on, let’s take a seat,” Brand called out, already heading toward the small table at the back of the room.
“Of course, sir,” Fujei acknowledged as he followed her and settled into one of the chairs.
“So, what do you think, Counsellor?” Getting straight to the point, Brand gestured to encompass the five padds that lay on the table between the two officers. Five personnel profiles, sets of exam scores, and previous examiner notations that summed up the five hopefuls in their current test group trying to enter Starfleet Academy.
“From an objective standpoint, I think we can rule Mr. Schultz out,” Fujei promptly began. “He’d started panicking almost as soon as the computer stopped responding to him, well before the alarms turned on. While he never reached the point where I would have stopped his simulation for medical reasons..."
“He was far less coherent in action than his written exam scores would have indicated,” Brand finished dryly. She raised her stylus and began writing on the first candidate’s padd.
“I’d even tentatively put him as borderline autophobic,” Fujei added with a frown. “I can’t imagine how the condition hasn’t been caught before.”
“On Earth, we don’t psi-scan every kid that passes through the public education system,” Brand remarked with a shrug. “Still, if he can’t handle a low stress emergency on a safe planet, he’s not going to be able to handle space.”
The admissions officer finished writing on the padd and gently laid it aside, then shifted the remaining four padds closer to the center of the table.
“On that note, both Ms. Hayes and Ms. Zaheva initially panicked as well,” Fujei spoke up, indicating two of the padds in the center of the spread, “but they, at least, were able to overcome their instinctive reactions...to various extents.”
“Oh?” Brand raised an eyebrow in surprise. “I thought Ms. Hayes had been able to keep her wits quite well. She certainly made some good decisions in administering emergency aid to the injured crewman she was presented with.”
Fujei, the telepath of the two, winced. “She was able to keep the appearance of calm, certainly, but several of her actions were actually just the first thing that came to her mind. It was pure luck the first hypospray in the medkit was an adequate response for the condition that Ensign Gev was simulating.”
“Are you certain it was guesswork rather than reflex, Counsellor?” Brand asked, even as she started writing down notes on the padd. “Ms. Hayes does have some background in the biological sciences, after all.”
“If it was reflex, she would have checked for allergic response before actually using the hypo,” Fujei pointed out. “It might only apply to ten percent of Tellarites, but cordrazine allergies are always fatal. Not to mention, she didn’t think to check for blood loss or neural shock at all, both of which can increase the risk of cordrazine treatment.”
“I see,” Brand murmured, frowning as she made several more notations in the candidate’s file. “I will have to review that part of the recording again. What about Ms. Zaheva?”
“Her response was more straightforward, if overly hesitant,” Fujei replied promptly. “In fact, she second-guessed herself so much that she nearly chose the wrong engineering bypass to fix the environmental controls, even though she had already reached the correct conclusion first.”
“She did take the longest time of all the candidates to reach the finishing point of her simulation,” Brand noted with a nod as she jotted down more notes. “Still, she did reach an adequate result in the end, and a few of her written exam responses were quite brilliant.”
“She’s not the first cadet I’ve met who has trouble adjusting to being suddenly dumped among peers that are among the best of their planet,” Fujei mused. Said nervous candidate also reminded him of a certain Seyek cadet he had counselled through the first year at the Academy. “I’d say that she’s gotten complacent being the smartest person in her previous social circle. The shock of perceiving herself as ‘only average’ now overwhelmed her. But it’s something that she can improve on, if she can overcome her fear of being perceived as imperfect.”
“That’s something a lot of candidates, and even new cadets, experience,” Brand agreed with a smirk. “Those that stay the course will usually make it through. Those that can’t will either give up or drop out. We’ll have to see which path Ms. Zaheva will take.”
With a flourish, she finished the padd she was annotating and picked up another one. “Alright. Next, on the other end of the spectrum, we have Mr. Picard, the fastest of our candidates to reach the finish point of his simulation. He shows a lot of initiative, but I thought his execution was rather sloppy. Your thoughts, Counsellor?”
“Confidence is certainly not a flaw of his,” Fujei stated the obvious, a faint grin tugging at his lips. The brash young human had reminded of a different cadet he’d met, a rambunctious Qloathi who seemed to have a peculiar grasp of the Academy’s extracurriculars.
“Perhaps… a bit too confident?” Brand mused further, a small frown creasing her brow as she idly tapped her stylus against the padd.
“He certainly does have a habit of using bravado to cover up uncertainty,” Fujei confirmed. “Still, all of his guesses were at least educated ones, and he never took his eye from the big picture - that the entire facility may have been compromised, and not just his corner of it.” He rather liked that dynamic and bold young mind.
“Even if his educated guesses end up shorting out the reactor console he was working on?” Brand prompted with a raised eyebrow. “He was lucky he didn’t didn’t actually trigger the conditions for a simulation meltdown by choosing the riskier bypass.”
“It was a close call, but he did, in the end, avoid that outcome,” Fujei couldn’t help but point out. “A certain boldness isn’t so bad to have in a candidate. The Academy will be instilling the discipline and knowledge to balance it out, after all."
“It was an inspired workaround,” Brand agreed, “which should make up for some of the points he lost on the written exam.” With a nod, she added a few more statements to the padd and then switched it for the last one on the table. “That leaves us with Mr. Andrew. I have to say, he was the candidate that impressed me the most. The only one who actually asked the right questions, listened to the answers, and synthesized a solution.”
“He is the oldest among the candidates,” Fujei felt obliged to point out. “He’s already done university level studies on Alpha Centauri for two years. It’s natural for him to be more...mature than the other candidates.”
Brand snorted. “Believe me, Counsellor. I’ve met cadets and ensigns older than him who haven’t learned that lesson.”
Fujei pursed his lips. There wasn’t really much he could find fault with the candidate, but he still felt obliged to play the role of the Terran devil’s advocate. “Well, he did consciously choose the option that posed the greatest danger to himself--”
“--And the biggest margin of safety for everyone else,” Brand finished, her stylus flying across the padd.
With a huff, Fujei leaned back in his seat with a resigned smile. “It sounds like to me you’ve already made up your mind, sir.” He sensed the confirmation of that fact without having to hear the senior officer’s reply.
“I suppose I have.” Brand finished her writing and put down her stylus. “Of course, these will still be processed with all the other test groups that are applying this year. I suppose it is possible that there are many more superior candidates in other groups than Mr. Andrew--”
“--Not that you believe that will happen,” Fujei interjected bluntly.
“Not in my experience.” Brand grinned wryly as she stacked the padds together. “I’m sure Mr. Andrew will be a shoo-in. And maybe Mr. Picard or Ms. Zaheva will also have a chance, if one of the other test groups didn’t have any more promising candidates.”
“...Not that you believe that will happen,” Fujei reiterated confidently.
“You never know,” Brand shrugged with a smile. “Thanks for your time, Counsellor. I’m going to turn these in. We should have an answer back for our candidates by tomorrow afternoon.”
Akesh Momon awkwardly made his way down the campus streets, his motions encumbered by the large number of packages he was delicately balancing. As he drew near the edge of the neatly trimmed greenery that marked the boundary of the campus lawns, a familiar sound of irate scolding caught his attention.
“--your short-comings, young man, doesn’t mean you can take it out on the plants!”
“Hey Mr. Boothby!” Momon called out in the direction of the angry voice, hoping to rescue some hapless fellow cadet from the eternally grumpy groundskeeper. As he drew near enough to look around the pile in his arms, though, he was surprised to find said victim to be a human kid in civilian dress.
“Cadet Momon,” Boothby returned the greeting with an intense stare. “I do hope you’ve been keeping yourself out of trouble.”
“Uh, me? Trouble? O-of course!” Momon laughed and fidgeted nervously, unnerved as always under that stare, and forgetting for a moment the precarious load he was carrying. His movement jostled the pile of packages, causing the top-most item to fall crashing to the ground.
“Well, see that it stays that way,” Boothby remarked wryly, his sarcasm blindingly obvious. “And you!” he turned back to the civilian kid who looked like he was going to take the chance to slip away. “Why don’t you make yourself useful, kid, and I won’t write you up for defacing Starfleet property.” He then made a gesture at the fallen package, the implication clear.
“Uh, you don’t have to--” Momon protested on behalf of the kid as he jiggled his remaining packages, trying to find a way to pick up the fallen item without causing more to fall.
“Fine!” The forcefully bit out word interrupted him. The kid swept up the fallen package and turned to stride down the street in the direction Momon had been facing.
“Uh, thanks?” Bewildered, Momon hurried after him. “See you later, Mr. Boothby!” he called over his shoulder before turning to his new companion, totally oblivious to the scowl on the human’s face. “So, what’s your name?”
“Jean-Luc Picard,” came the curt answer.
“I’m Akesh Momon,” Momon introduced himself. “Don’t mind Mr. Boothby, he’s--what’s the saying? All bark and no bite.” He waited a moment for the young human to say something, and when the silence persisted, decided to keep trying to make conversation anyway. “So what are you here for? Visiting a relative?”
The human glared at him for a moment, a glare that slid off against Momon’s good humor like water off a duck. Then, huffing, Picard answered, “I was taking the entrance exams.”
“Oh! I guess that makes sense that you Earthers can have the exams on campus,” Momon exclaimed in realization. “You’re lucky, you know. I had to travel to Celos for my application, twice.”
“Twice?” Picard finally looked up with interest at that claim. “Why twice?”
“Once for the written and once for my orals,” Momon answered. “Had to take them, let’s see… months apart what with paperwork and scheduling. Though, I guess the kids nowadays back on Arqeniou have it easier, since we became a full member of the Federation.”
“I guess I’ve never thought of it that way,” Picard mused. “New affiliates to the Federation must have a harder time getting access to Starfleet Academy. It’s always been practically next door for me, here on Earth.”
Idly, he adjusted the package he was holding to get a better grip on it. The motion caused the loose baggy opening to slip down, revealing the blocky item within, gilded with arcane markings.
“Hey, what’s this? Some kind of alien artifact?”
“Hah, I wish,” Momon replied wistfully. “It’s a reproduction of an ancient Preserver obelisk. A prop for our play.”
“Play? As in... for Qloathi theatre?” Picard asked thoughtfully, his mind helpfully dredging up the xeno-sociological facts related to his companion’s species.
“Well, actually, the Theatre Club was there long before my people met Starfleet,” Momon replied, a bit defensively. “But yeah, a bunch of us are putting together a production of the Indorian creation myth. Well, a sort of modern re-imagining of the myth with the Stargazer standing in for...uh, well, it’s a little complicated to explain the whole thing in just a few sentences.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Picard replied dubiously. Then after a short pause, he couldn’t help but ask, “Starfleet Academy has a Theatre Club?” This time, he sounded more intrigued than skeptical, even as he was trying to fit his preconceptions of the institution around that fact.
Momon puffed up in pride. “Sure! It’s a great club! Several professors came to see our last production - an actual traditional Qloathi Ride, you know - and the dean told us we might have a chance at performing our current one at the commissioning ceremony of the Ambassador ships.” That announcement had sent everyone into a tizzy. And hey, if the kid wanted proof... “Do you want to join us?”
“What?” Picard stared at him, startled by the suggestion.
“Why not?” Momon asked rhetorically, warming up to the idea as he spoke. “It’s a great place to get to know other cadets, and the occasional professor. You know, without any grades being on the line.”
“I...I’m not a cadet though,” Picard admitted with a grimace, his mood souring once more. “I didn’t get accepted.”
“You don’t have to be Starfleet to join us,” Momon assured him. “Lots of people get their friends or family to come in and help out with the sets or just play bit parts. Besides, it’s still a good way to get to know to people and learn about different cultures.” He grinned enticingly. “I bet it’ll look good on your record the next time you take the entrance exam too.”
Picard mulled the idea over for a long moment.
“I suppose...” he finally decided, “I could take a look.”
