606: Dinner with the Family

by Rada Dengar
81024.2345
Hours After Waiting for the Doctor

-=Rada Dengar’s Quarters; USS Serendipity=-


“Computer, confirm integrity of aforementioned pattern,” Rada demanded again as he paced his quarters nervously.

^Pattern integrity is confirmed.^

He could almost hear the computer add the word ‘again’ to the end of its sentence; he was certain that it was sick of him asking by now.

It was just that he had spent so long programming the exact pattern for the recipe he intended to serve tonight into the replicator that he didn’t know what he’d do if it were simply to degrade away. Things didn’t normally just disappear from the computer’s memory but they could.

There could be a secret Romulan plot to place a virus on board Federation starships which subtly went through and altered the patterns in the replicators so that nothing tasted right, the Engineers would say the replicators were fine because the hardware hadn’t been touched and the Doctors would assure everyone that their tastebuds were just fine so every night people would sit down to a meal which they hated the flavour of, believing that it must all be in their heads.

Rather than looking forward to a good meal at night they’d find that eating was one of those things they despised. They’d treat it like a medical check up, they’d know it was good for them but put it off as long as they could.

The ship would be full of hungry and miserable people and tempers would begin to fray.

Then, to add insult to injury they’d start decaffeinating the coffee patterns. The Captain would be completely incapacitated.

Then one day they’d send a message inviting a Federation ship to Romulus for peace talks but the ship would be so tense that someone would have to make a mistake and press the wrong button sending a photon torpedo flying at a ship which had no doubt been emptied ahead of time and then filled with explosives for dramatic effect.

After witnessing the magnificent explosion, the Romulans would claim this was an act of war on behalf of the Federation and they’d start capturing star systems. The war would of course end quite soon but since the Federation would be blamed for starting it and the Romulans could use this perception to claim several ‘disputed’ territories. Imperialistic expansion without facing any of the blame, it was so obvious that Rada knew they’d think of it eventually.

It wouldn’t even need to be an actual attack. Natural radiation, albeit in extremely high levels could interfere with the computer’s memory banks. Normally you’d expect that type of thing to be caught by the sensors.

The problem is that radiation might not be picked up if the sensors aren’t working properly; which might not be picked up if the Chief Science Officer wasn’t working properly. Which, he wouldn't be if his Symbiont weren’t working properly... which it wouldn’t be if there were a lot of radiation effecting it.

It made such perfect sense as both joined Trills on board had been smiling an unusual amount recently and if ignorance is bliss then logically there is nothing to make a person happier than losing the centuries on knowledge of a Trill Symbiont.

Yes, that was the only sensible reason Rada could think of that they’d be so happy, that neither of them felt like they had a tiny living being inside of them at the moment.

What had Rada so worried was that tonight was the first time that Wren and Tam were coming to his quarters to eat dinner and he was sure he’d find a way to mess it up.

Several times Rada had spent the day looking after Tam and been invited to join them for dinner afterwards. It had been lovely; they’d spoken about their days and Rada had once even received a very informative report from Tam about what he’d learnt in school about how a Starship worked. It seemed that Tam was much more adept at dinner table conversation than Rada had been when he was his age, as Wren had to remind him several times to stop speaking and to eat something.

Rada found the entire experience to be wonderful, quite different to how he grew up, and then he had in a brief moment of insanity volunteered to have them over for dinner here.

What if he messed up the choice of meal? He considered finding out their favourite foods and making those. Part of the reason he was so frightened that his fully operational replicator would breaking down was that he’d compiled a list of several hundred ways in which a fully operational replicator could break down in an attempt to find out what Tam’s favourite food was.

He knew Wren’s favourite food or at least what it was several years ago, but Tam wasn’t even alive several years ago. His plan had been to secretly sabotage the replicator so they’d get him to repair it and during the process he’d extract the logs of recent use to find out exactly what they liked.

The problem was that sabotaging a part of the ship might look a lot like he was trying to sabotage a part of the ship. That’s treason. Worst of all since he’s Angosian that could very well be construed as an act of war on behalf of his people.

The Federation would be made so paranoid about the fact that they had Angosian spies, especially since Angosians were not actually enemies of the Federation, that they wouldn’t listen to reason and war would ensue.

The Angosians would either fight or face annihilation at the hands of Starfleet. Rada would either go down in history at the man who doomed his own species to death or as the man who took a group of highly peaceful people and turned them a united group of renowned warriors.

That’s not how he wanted to be remembered and remembered he would be. Kahless did something similar with already warlike Klingons and they called him ‘the unforgettable’. If Rada managed to do it with Angosians then the impact would be that increased a hundred fold. That’s like the difference between lighting some very hot wood on fire and starting a fire with nothing but a bucket water.

The name of Dengar and its association with incredible amounts of destruction would last until the end of time and probably several weeks past it.

All things considered that might not be what’s in the best interests of the boy calling himself Tam Dengar.

Then he had to consider the simple fact that if he did serve their favourite foods then it might be a very big mistake. Tam had spent almost his entire life on Earth and undoubtedly that’s where he discovered his favourite food.

If Rada were to serve it then Tam would have to start thinking of Earth. If Rada had made it correctly then Tam would taste it and think of just how great it was when he first discovered that taste, how great it was on Earth and how great it would be to go back there.

If Rada made it incorrectly then Tam would taste it, think how much better it tasted on Earth, how much better it was on Earth and how much better it would be to be back there. Tam would blame Rada for the fact that they weren’t on Earth right now and start hating him for it. Making a child their favourite food seemed a very quick way to stop them liking you.

But what if he chose food they didn’t like? That would be even worse, which was he ended up just asking Wren what they’d like. Looking back he probably should have done that at the start.

He reminded himself to calm down once again as he used an old fashioned, Romulan computer virus immune, spirit level to check that the table wasn’t even slightly on a lean.

He hid it out of sight in the nearest closet before returning to remeasure the distance between the knives and forks. Before he could complete the task the door chime rang. He exhaled to calm himself and he walked away from the table, giving it one last glance to be sure.

He put his least ‘practiced looking’ welcoming smile on his face and after twice rehearsing his ‘welcome in’ gesture, he opened the door.

Wren stepped in with Tam in tow. She looked beautiful.

She kissed Rada hello before he even had a chance to make the welcome gesture. It was something he was still not used to and the sheepish smile it caused him to have gave that away. Still it was something very welcome.

“Welcome,” he said.

Tam decided on the manlier greeting of a handshake. Seeing the confidence with which he extended his small hand upward in Rada’s direction made Wren and Rada exchange a secret smile. Tam shook Rada’s hand firmly as Rada added, “and welcome to you too young man.”

“I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble,” Wren said, as she noted that Rada had clearly been tidying the place up for them. He’d tried to hide it by placing some PADDs casually around his coffee table, but they were all at perfect right angles.

“No,” said Rada “no trouble at all.”

Lt. SG Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012