Ensign Lera Michaels - Be it ever so humble, the holodeck is no place like home

[steve...@yahoo.com]

((OOC - After Lunch at the Mellow Mushroom))

((Ventral Ring Beta Module, Smith's Superior Holosuites, Deep Space 33))

Lera and Ezra had been walking down the corridor talking about a wide range of topics both important and superfluous. Most of the time, the specific topic was less important than the fact that they were together. She enjoyed being with friends, but she also treasured time with just him..

Michaels: I reserved a suite for a full hour. My original thought was that we would play a high adventure. None of the standard ones here appealed to me. I tried building my own, but that is harder work than I had anticipated. John Carter and Dejah Thoris on Mars simply is not ready to play.

Zerva: Response

Michaels: To learn and master the techniques, I built a much simpler one that I wish to show you today. There are no actionable characters so it will be just the two of us.

Zerva: Response

Michaels: One of the appeals of Smith's Superior Holosuites is that they have change rooms and an assortment of suitable costumes available for what they describe as a "nominal fee." :: she smiled at Ezra :: I suspect the fees are nominal if you have more credits than you know what to do with them. ::beat::You will not need a costume for this one. All right. This is our suite. It will be best if you close your eyes. Are you ready?

Zerva: Response

Lera opened the gateway to the suite. She took his hand and gently led him into the room.

Zerva: Response

Michaels: There is nothing to trip over or fall off of. Just a few more steps. Computer. Close the gateway. :: she sighed.:: Now you can open your eyes.

The immediate sensation was that the room was completely black. It only took a moment for their eyes to acclimate to the darkness. The few lights from the nearby buildings seemed kilometers away. You had to look closely to notice them at all. What you could not miss, no matter how hard you tried, was the sky. The vast multitude of stars was unavoidable. It was completely unlike the night sky you saw in urban areas. There was undeniable proof of just how small you were. Though she had seen it this way many times, shivers ran through Lera's body.

Michaels: Welcome to Marathon, Texas located in the beautiful, largest but least populous county in Texas. Generally recognised as the darkest night sky in the United States outside of Alaska and Hawaii. :: beat :: Is it not beautiful?

Zerva: Response

She gestured at the broad whitish band of stars and galaxies that stretched from one horizon to the other.

Michaels: The humans refer to that broad swath as the Milky Way. Of course, it is our galaxy. I assume that Trills have a different name for it.

Zerva: Response

Michaels: There are many stories about how it got its name. My favorite was that some ancient humans thought it was a goddess's breast milk spray across the sky. It seems ludicrous today, but we have to remember that the ancient ones had no idea what a star was.

Zerva: Response

Michaels: I spent many nights when I was little in this very field gazing at the stars. We never just look at the stars any more do we? They are beautiful. :: she laughes softly: :: One of my big disappointments with reality is that the stars do not actually twinkle.

Zerva: Response.

Michaels: The Milky Way did look different where I was born. Last Hope was much closer to the edge of the galaxy. I was very little then, but I remember how the night sky changed with the seasons. Part of the year, the Milky Way was bright and wide. Part of the year, it was just a thin line. On Earth, you barely notice the change.

She took his hand in the darkness and pulled him a bit closer.

Zerva: Response

Michaels: My childhood? You do not really want to know about my childhood.

Zerva: Response

Michaels: ::her voice filled with a bittersweet sadness. :: My first memory is of our home... something my father ... my human father had put together from the wreckage of our ship. It was not much, but it kept the wind and the rain outside. There was what was left of the ship, a vast graveyard where my father buried everyone else who had been on the ship, and there was our little house. I guess house is the right word. It was home. Some of what we had was salvaged from the ship. Some of it we made or grew ourselves. Looking back, I count us as fortunate that we were able to salvage as much as did from the ship. Our early crops were unexciting.

Lera shook her head though she knew her head was little more than a dark outline to Ezra in this lighting.

Michaels: Then my sister, Katherine, was born. Things were better then. :: beat :: I think I always knew that I was different from the rest of my family, but when Katherine was born, I was fascinated by her round ears and yellow hair. About the only feature we had in common was our eye colour. That and our love of the stars. ::longish pause.:: The stars that remind me of Last Hope, where my biological parents are buried, and Marathon, Texas.

Zerva: Response

TAG/ TBC


Ensign Lera Michaels

Engineering Officer
USS Khitomer
K240106LM2