"The Consummate Professional"

[Archie Phoenix 0]

Quintessa was giving her usual demonstration of the Aether’s Caress services to the Starfleet guests, but she was beginning to get the impression that the three officers had no idea where they were nor what services were offered here. They seemed interested in Sten, Quintessa’s favorite sample subject, as she pointed out all of his lifelike features, but their faces betrayed an underlying confusion.

 

“ … a carefully shaped core of light energy allows you to see Sten as you do,” she explained. “That is wrapped in a membrane of ‘intelligent’ force energy … ”

 

Hadn’t one of the officers mentioned an energy transfer station? Yes, as Quintessa continued her lecture, she started to wonder if these three weren’t supposed to be somewhere else. But they had arrived aboard a neural tram, hadn’t they? If they wished to visit one of the energy stations, the chair certainly would have brought them to the nearest one. Technology rarely malfunctioned on Aether, and malfunctions never went unnoticed for more than a few moments, so reliable was both the control and monitoring of the energy flow.

 

“ … once we have you linked to our neural interface,” she continued, “you will be able to create a virtual mimicry, just like this, of any person you wish … ”

 

Perhaps the chair’s neural interface had reacted badly to their minds? Unlikely. They were designed long ago for Aetherian minds, but the software had since been expanded to meet the needs of Aether’s growing interstellar tourism industry. The brain wave activity of even the most disparate sentient races was similar enough that basic patterns could be easily picked up on and ‘translated,’ just as alien languages were handled by the speech modulators.

 

No, it was most likely that these three were exactly where they were supposed to be. And being the consummate professional, Quintessa was going to give herself fully to sating their scientific curiosity. As she finished showing off Sten’s features, she thought-projected a request to one of her assistants to take over the reception desk. She then looked back at the three officers.

 

“So … would you like to give it a try?”