In Flight Entertainment

Posted on Sun Dec 27th, 2020 @ 10:43am by Lieutenant Anna S. Thesia M.D.

Mission: Healing of Minds
Location: Lounge

Anna figured their trip to Bajor was going to be boring. Flying a starship through core Federation territory was a routine affair, and unless something unfortunate happened, which she wasn't willing to hope for, they'd be pressed for something to do.

Thus, Anna sent out a notice to the crew that she was going to entertain them with a little story of a trip to Bajor a few years ago, before the war, as a freshly baked doctor.

She'd made sure to send invitations to everyone, hoping her story was entertaining enough to have people enjoy the narrative.

“So this one time about ten years ago, I went on a trip to Bajor”, Anna started narrating from the stage in the lounge. “Bajor was a different world then, before the war, you understand. I was looking at possibly working there and wanted to test the waters. But even getting there was a bit of a challenge, the troubles began when I was looking for my transport to take me there.

So, I hitched a ride on the starship Herod, she leaves me at Deep Space Nine and I board a Bajoran transport on the station. Before going aboard, I get a call from my colleague Helen, she’d just become a doctor like me, telling me about this great spot on the Promenade to get jumja sticks and if I wanted to go get one with her. I tell her I was going to Bajor and couldn’t.

Five minutes down the line I show my ID to the Bajoran deputy handling boarding and get another call. Helen asks me, ‘When are you leaving for Bajor?’ and I say ‘Right now’ and close the connection. Getting on the ship was easy, though the flight wasn’t exactly relaxing.

Docking clamps released, one of the passengers stands by the door, looking out the window. When the flight attendants ask him to take a seat during the trip, he doesn’t react. They ask again and then he tries to key open the airlock. That, as I’m sure you can imagine, causes a bit of a panic as some of the passengers wrestle the guy to the floor. The ship turns around, docks at the station again and we are all asked to disembark. Guy says he ‘just wanted to visit the prophets’. Nuts.

So, long story short, there is damage to the furniture in the cabin and we are sent to another ship. Two hours later, I sit in the other ship, going to Bajor for real this time. Takes seven hours before we land. This time the ship can’t dock so they have to go down near a town down in Rakantha province. It is five in the bloody morning, which is even earlier by Bajoran standards because they’ve got twenty-six hours to their day.

First thing I hear when I walk out the airlock and onto the terminal is my communicator coming to life, and a Ferengi’s voice offering rooms with both room service and appreciative local entertainers who’d be happy to spend the night. Great. Good thing I had already booked ahead. I close the connection and walk down the ramp. So I go to get my things. At baggage claim, looking for my suitcase, it isn’t there. One comes through, looking great, with gold inlays and elaborate patterns. I suppose my suitcase is now too shy to come out.

Anyway, I ask around. Service personnel asks me ‘Are you sure you looked everywhere?’ So I say, ‘Yes, I marked my case with a huge picture of a duck on both sides. You can’t miss it.’ - ‘What’s a duck?’ - “Earth creature? Feathers, webbed feet, goes quack?’ The guy looks at me, turns his head to the side a little and only half his face smiles. I’ve been many places, travelled to many worlds, and it’s always the same expression that says, ‘Oh look, an idiot.’ He checks his console and after about ten minutes, it turns out my suitcase is still on the first transport.

Great. Time for taking inventory. I have my credit chip, which is good. I have my communicator but service was dodgy as I couldn’t tap into the official channels back then, I am wearing a tight pair of jeans, knee-high boots and a thin, white blouse. For two weeks, that’s fairly basic gear. My communicator beeps. Helen wants to know when I will leave because she heard the transport was delayed and they sent my suitcase back to the cabin we’d rented on the station. I tell her I’m already here and that I’ll have to make do, and she better open it and take out the thermos with hot chocolate before it goes bad.

Outside, in the hall, Artis Kimala is waiting. She’s my guide, about thirty years old and holding up a sign that has something resembling my name scribbled on it. Though, to be fair, if I was asked to write in Bajoran script, I’m sure the result wouldn’t pass muster either. She is wearing one of those modular trousers that have so many zips you could take it apart and put it back together in lots of different ways and for a variety of lengths. Picture it, everything’s possible from a Vedek’s robe to hot pants. Unbelievable. She could even just wear the leg bits, though that required the use of some double-sided tape and it made funny noises walking.

I walk up to her and ask, ‘Heya, who are you?’ - ‘Anna S. Thesia.’ - ‘No, that can’t be right.’ - ‘No, I mean, I’m waiting for Anna S. Thesia.’ - ‘I can see that, but who are you?’ - ‘Who wants to know?’ - ‘Anna S. Thesia.’ I show her my ID because by this point I’m under the distinct impression she wouldn’t otherwise believe me, and she introduces herself and is suddenly all smiles. She asks about my baggage and I have to inform her that it had travelled separately, and since we are planning to do a tour across half of Bajor there is no use waiting for the next flight, so I would have to deal with that when I get back.

Kimala invites me for some raktajino, at half past five in the morning, at the spaceport. Horrible taste, straight from the replicator, but it wakes me up even more than regular coffee. My communicator beeps again. Whether, a Ferengi’s voice asked, I had considered switching to Ferengi frequencies offered all over Bajor because they had more bandwidth for data connections. I disconnect immediately. It’s surreal, and I feel a bit out of place. But still, it was a great trip. I can’t tell you everything but these are my personal highlights.

Day one. Kimala explains to me that here on Bajor, there are no shops that sell human clothes. The idea of getting a fresh shirt that I have this pressing need for had to be shelved, unless I wanted to buy Bajoran clothes, but then I’d look like a Vulcan in Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts. I agree with her, just the problem was my clothes would start to get smelly after a while. Kimala pretends not to notice but she keeps the windows down on the little cross-country vehicle she’s got. Funny little thing. Hovers over the ground just enough to get a good view of the place, but not high enough to really call it flying. But no matter how many potholes in the road, it’s always a smooth ride, so there’s that to be thankful for. Every now and then we stop, so I can enjoy the landscape and she can air out her hovercar.

My communicator beeps. Helen asks if I wanted to go get to the antiques market in Hathon for when she goes to Bajor in five days. I just groan and hang up. Helen doesn’t understand I’m on holiday and don’t want to be bothered for a few weeks.

Day two, we spend the night at a lodge. Which is like a hut. Beautiful, great view. The water, though, is taken straight from the nearby river and has the colour of explosive diarrhoea. I’m not taking a shower with that, no telling what kinds of infections I might get from it. I try to wash up with about half a litre of mineral water. It kind of works half-way. And by half-way I mean, it doesn’t. Dinner is hasperat, very spicy. My digestive system thus proclaims, ‘Get on board, join now, the next ride goes in reverse.’” And Anna’s voice changed to that of an entertainer trying to advertise a ride in an amusement park over a PA system.

“Day three. Still no shower, but at least what passes for mosquitoes on Bajor is leaving me alone now. Kimala wears a clamp over her nose.

Day six. Another lodge. My communicator beeps. Helen says the antiques market was great and that this Ferengi communications deal she’d made was amazing. Nothing else, I disconnect again. But there’s clean water at the lodge. Finally I can shower. But there’s also water running from my shower into the room, and that’s not good. I call the front desk, they send a handyman out there to fix it. He works for twenty minutes and he says everything’s fine now. So I start washing my blouse. I take a small bottle of something I find in the shower and rinse it out well, then put it over a chair to dry, and sit down to read.

An hour later the handyman comes back, a tad embarrassed because I haven’t got a shirt on, but he heads into the bathroom and, after a minute, politely asks why the bottle of silicone he’d left there was now empty. I get up and check on my shirt. I tap it, it slides off the chair with a squeak, bounces back once or twice and comes to a rest.

Day nine. I have a few important questions for Kimala, for example why I’ve still not seen any damn hara cats yet. Kimala explains to me that’s unfortunate, but she would have had to have one brought here because they don’t live in Rakantha province, or anywhere within a seven thousand kilometre radius. I’m a bit embarrassed and we don’t talk for a bit.

Then my communicator beeps again. The Ferengi asks if I knew someone by the name Helen. I reply, in a loud and clear voice, ‘Ducks go quack and I devour, them mostly when they’re sweet and sour’, and I disconnect. At least, after that, nobody else calls me.

Day eleven. We travel a very long and straight road leading to the neighbouring province. I see mud-brick houses with thatched roofs, I see piles of rubbish by the side of the road and fields with soil so poor that hardly anything grows in it. In short, and I suppose it’s too short, but I see poverty.

Then I see something else, and I ask Kimala to stop. In the dust of this immensely long road there is a row of tiny sinoraptors, a local bird species, made of wood. Next to them there’s this Bajoran, mid-sixties, carving wood. I want one of those birds, I realise. I haven’t got a suitcase but I want it regardless. Besides, I find it impossible to believe that this guy really sits in the dirt, by the side of the road, and carves wooden birds. I’m perfectly certain someone replicates them for him somewhere and carries them to his hut in the cover of night. I’m too Risian in my thinking here, I guess. That’s how we make horga’hns, after all.

So, I ask him if I may watch. He gets up, turns to me with a smile on his face and bows to me. I also smile but I don’t bow because it always makes my blouse squeak. He really does carve a bird out of the wood. He does it very carefully but also very, very slowly. After about four hours it becomes clear it’s going to be a bird, and I say, full of awe, ‘That must be immensely hard to do.’ - ‘Not really, the bird is in there, you just have to take away the surplus wood.’ I figure, sure. Perfect explanation. I’ll tell one of my nurses some day. ‘Just hold this hypospray, I’ll push the patient against it.’ Nonsense. What kind of an instruction is that?

But just when I was about to get grumpy with him, I realise that this guy simply makes birds, every day, and very beautiful birds. You know, they’re not ducks, but then he’s probably never seen a duck so those sinoraptors are the most beautiful animal he knows. Anyway, and then he sells them. By the side of the road. Well, to be honest, in the dirt, to passing tourists. And it’s perfectly unspectacular. He doesn’t ask for praise; he doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Hm. I don’t want to live like that. I don’t have to, thanks to my medical degree. But working like that, focusing only on this one goal, carving this one bird, that is what I want. I buy one of those birds, and I’m happy.

Final day, we arrive at Bajor’s biggest cascade, a huge waterfall. I have seen the Victoria falls on Earth but wow, this was a lot of water. I’m a bit scared I might fall in but Kimala says I wouldn’t drown, all I’d have to do was blow into my blouse during free fall. Haha. Funny. Well, at least it doesn’t go see-through in the mist. On the way to the spaceport we see a flock of sinoraptors flying overhead. Then it’s onto the ship and back to Deep Space Nine.

Immediately after getting back to the station I replicate a shirt. I change, and I try to push my blouse into the replicator to have it recycled. Impossible, it’s too stiff. Someone would have to saw it into pieces.

About two days later, I’m sitting on the Promenade, smiling. Most people just walk past me but those who stop have questions. ‘What exactly is it you’re selling here?’ - ‘Carved ducks. Made by hand, an artistic portrayal in 3D of one of the best-liked Earth animal.’ Most people reply, ‘That’s just a block of wood.’ - ‘The duck is in there.’ - ‘How did it get in there?’ - ‘That doesn’t matter, damn it.’ See, that’s typical military thinking. Uninteresting, irrelevant. All that matters is, the duck is in there, and you’ll just need to take away the excess wood. Oh well, most people don’t buy anything. Maybe they’re just too lazy to take the extra wood away.

But all I really want to make is just fifteen credits. I want to take that money, send it across space, to Bajor, to the planet of sinoraptors and friendly people, because in the heart of Rakantha province, there lives this man, and I still owe him a bottle of silicone.”

With that, Anna stepped down and and got a drink. Her throat was dry from all the talking.