Belated Apologies, Part IV
Posted on Sun Jun 21st, 2026 @ 2:19pm by Ensign Tenzi Sh'reyva & Josef Forstinger & Aislinn Finnegan
2,832 words; about a 14 minute read
Mission:
Peril at the Unification Accords
Location: Maple Leaf Coffee and Pastries, Deck 10
Timeline: MD012, 1130 Hours
Continued From: Belated Apologies, Part III
"Well, I'm thinking about the Raktajino as the drink-but not so sure about what to eat." He gave the server a polite smile, looking back over the menu for just a second as if scanning over it. To be honest, he hadn't had a PROPER breakfast in a while; most of the time it was instant coffee of dubious quality and whatever lunch was leftover from the day before. And that was on the quiet days.
"Well," Aislinn began as she looked over to the cabinet full of food, "let me start by saying that getting a raktajino is a bold first choice if you've never had one before." She gave Tenzi a knowing smile and added, "But I don't think you can really go wrong with a good old-fashioned black coffee and a bagel with the works: cream cheese topped with smoked salmon, capers, thin-sliced red onion, and a squeeze of fresh dill, or if you're in the mood for something more breakfast-y, then crispy bacon, fried or scrambled eggs, and melted cheddar between two toasted halves. Or something sweet like a blueberry muffin; your choice."
"Hmm," he let out a noise as he weighed his options and again scanned over the menu. Honestly, having eaten mostly slop out of a can for breakfast the past few years, he found it surprisingly hard to pick when he had actual PALATABLE food as a choice. Fish? Who the hell ate fish for breakfast? He wasn't some American stockbroker. The scrambled eggs, though? Hm. Now that was more his thing. Though... "If possible, two sunny-side-ups with two pieces of toast, some bacon, and a café mélange." The last option was a more Viennese coffee option-something he was used to-but surely they must have something like that in the future.
"Guess I'm having an American breakfast," he shrugged, not out of any sort of displeasure, but a simple jest. God, if his Mom saw that order, he could have an earful about how that wasn't a proper breakfast.
Aislinn took the order down and repeated it back to him: "Two sunny side ups, two pieces of toast, some bacon on the side with a café mélange. It'll take maybe ten minutes, so feel free to take a seat." She wasn't entirely sure what a café mélange was, but if anything, she could find out soon enough. Turning to Tenzi, "How about you, what would you like?"
Tenzi didn’t even need to look at the menu.
“Andorian spice bread. Toasted. With extra butter.”
The answer had come so quickly it suggested she had ordered the same thing dozens of times before.
“And a large iced kava root tea with shezperin spice on top.”
Well, all of what Tenzi just ordered sounded extremely exotic, at least from Josef’s perspective. Then again, a full American breakfast was still somewhat exotic, so he wasn't in the proper place to judge.
“Now you make me feel silly, you shot that order out like it's routine,” he poked a bit at Tenzi, trying to encourage a bit of conversation. “Then again, I still got my McDonald's order down after all this time. At least yours sounds healthier than a cheeseburger and nuggets.”
“McDonalds?” Tenzi appeared dubious.
Josef raised a brow at Tenzi’s statement. But then quickly remembered that he was 400 years in the future, and conversing with an alien.
“An American fast food chain of burgers. Me and the boys replicator back in the day--if the replicator cost a few bucks and served greasy unhealthy burgers, fries and nuggets that probably took as much of your lifespan as they cost in cash. My Mom never was happy when she knew I ate there.” He explained, shrugging.
Aislinn smiled politely, though her expression suggested she was more focused on getting their orders down than offering any thought on the banter.
“Alright, I’ll have those prepared for you.”
She gathered the order and disappeared toward the service counter.
The moment the waitress was out of earshot, Tenzi turned back to Josef with her antennae tilted forward and eyes narrowed.
“Nuggets. Explain.”
"Nuggets?" he repeated, seeming a bit baffled that he also had to explain nuggets--but again, the woman across from him was blue, so what did he expect?
"Well, chicken nuggets in that case. They took a bunch chicken parts that they don't normally sell, put 'em through a meat grinder, shaped them into flat little shapes--" he drew said shapes in the air with his finger while talking, "--breaded them, tossed them in a deep-fryer and sold them, or well, put 'em under a heat lamp until someone bought 'em. Swear to God, whatever they put into that stuff was magic. Karl once found a cheeseburger he forgot in his car's console over the summer and that thing had no mold on it whatsoever, looked more like a mummy than anything. He almost ate it, almost."
Tenzi's face has morphed into a grimace of disgust, softened by doubt. She took a deep breath and stared neutrally back at Josef.
"I don't know what to say other than... gross!"
She shook her head, looking past him. "I've eaten expired ration packs before and the only thing bad about them were how they lacked flavour."
"Okay, Miss College Graduate, you know your human peers in my day quite appreciated the McDonalds Brothers commitment to cheap, extremely greasy and unhealthy fast food! And it was extremely cheap too." He gave a her little tap with his foot under the table. "Hah, wish the expired rations I had were lacking flavor. Most of them, well, had extra protein." He gives her an exaggerated smile, clearly now trying to egg her a little.
Suddenly, their drinks arrived. Josef's café mélange arrived in a wide, bucket-like ceramic mug in powder-blue. Not that far from matching Tenzi's skin colour. The froth on the top looked thicker and whiter than most cappuccinos she'd seen over the years, though she silently wished she had ordered one. After all, it was a Viennese coffee--as he'd put it.
Her iced kava root tea appeared in a tall, transparent cylinder. The liquid appearing as dark as pond water with a thin layer of sliced shezperin spice floating on the top and stuck to the rim. Tenzi could smell the bitter, ginger-like aroma as it was set down in front of her.
"Enjoy your café mélange," she said sweetly to Josef.
Ah, a taste of home. A rather large one by the looks of the mug. It seemed to put a genuine--if small--smirk on the mans lips. Hooking two fingers into the mug's handle, raising it slightly. "And you enjoy your, uh, Root Juice." He had already forgotten the plant's name.
"Prost." He did another slight raise of his mug, before bringing it to his lips and taking a few sips and then setting it then down with a sigh.
"Finally, that instant powder stuff was getting on my nerves AND bowels."
Tenzi wrapped both hands around the tall glass and took a long sip through the straw. The kava root tea carried its usual bite--bitter at first, then warm, the somehow a little colder afterward. It was an Andorian contradiction. Like snow that burned.
She lowered the glass and stared at Josef over the rim.
"Your Earth century was insane."
"Heh, yeah. I'd agree with you, everyone on board seems to think the same." He nodded, taking another sip. Suddenly, his face wore a slight frown though. A hint of uncharacteristic vulnerability. "But it was home."
He didn't like to admit it, but it wasn't his century that he missed, not entirely. It was his family, his friends... his life.
"I've learned enough about Earth's history from attending the Academy, and from Vashti." She took another sip from her kava root tea. "You all poisoned yourselves recreationally--and when you weren't doing that, you were going to war against each other over trivial matters."
Her antennae twitched slightly.
"And before you start defending it, I know exactly what you're going to say."
"I'd hardly--" he caught himself though at the twitch of the Andorian's antennae. Exhaling once, but smirking. "Really? Well, what was I going to say Miss Telepath?"
Tenzi's eyes narrowed slightly, but there was some humour tucked inside of it.
"You were going to say," she began, "that it wasn't all bad. That there were good people. That it's not fair to reduce one hundred years on Earth to its worst habits."
"Heh, Bingo. Well, almost, but wouldn't you have at least somewhat agreed? Everyone paints it like some horror story. I would have only added one part to it-" he pauses for a second, as if not sure to actually speak about it, or perhaps, dreading to acknowledge it.
"Its where my family and friends are. Or, were," he added, which perhaps was meant to be another humorous jab--but, it was somber.
Tenzi nodded grimly, almost regretting teasing him about his temporal origins.
"I'll say one thing about humans," she said, licking a bit of the shezperin from her lips, "they are super-resilient. After your wars that decimated the planet, you certainly bounced back like no one else. That level of optimism and let's-rise-from-the-ashes is pretty much what makes humans humans. To me, at least."
She took another sip of her kava root tea, her antennae flicking wildly as another thought entered her head.
"Loved to have been able to see it. My last few years up until now have been constant war. To be suddenly ripped out at the end of it and placed into a place like this, makes me feel weird." He ruminated on it a bit, his eyes shooting up to look at her antennae, right, an Alien. A hot blue alien--still had no clue what any of these movements meant.
"Do you play poker, Sergeant?"
"Poker? I mean, I did just 2 weeks ago, give or take a couple centuries. Unless its changed."
Tenzi giggled, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Yeah, well I have no idea if the game has evolved at all in three centuries," she said with a grin. "Maybe you can tell me if I've been playing some evolved version."
Her antennae angled toward him as though they wanted answers before she did.
"The way we play it--that's Vashti, Rixi, myself and some of the other engineers--is we sit around a table pretending not to care what cards we're all holding."
She ticked off a powder-blue finger.
"First, people lie."
Then another finger.
"Then they gamble."
She pulled back a third.
"Then they lie about the gambling."
She winked at Josef and her grin deepened, casting small creases beneath her eyes.
"And then the person with the most unreadable face takes everyone else's money." She picked up her tea and took a tiny sip. "Is that the game you remember?"
"I mean, yeah--pretty much. But wait, Vashti and Rixi, I'm not getting invited to some girls night as the diversity token, am I?" he joked, taking another sip of his coffee, rather larger than the Andorian's more refined tiny one.
"But, wait, what do you guys bet then, I thought this was a--" he stopped for a second, having forgotten the proper term. "Money-less society... I guess that's what you call it."
Tenzi nodded along slowly with the ex-soldier's words. She took a breath to prepare herself for what would likely sound entirely antithetical to what Josef had learned since reawakening.
"You have to remember we don't live in a money-less society. There are several societies throughout the quadrant and some still value currency. Like the Ferengi," she explained, picking up her tea cup. "There's this liquid currency called latinum that can't be replicated or reproduced, so it quite literally became the standard in trade."
She raised a hand to stop Josef from interrupting--all while balancing the kava root tea in the other.
"Yeah, it sounds... weird." Tenzi took a tentative sip of her tea and made a tiny sound of approval. "A lot of planets in the Federation have no true currency because accumulating wealth isn't the goal. Even on my homeworld, nobody needs anything. Sure, sometimes there's arguing over who gets the nice villa overlooking Mount Uesobis, but that stuff usually gets ironed-out, you know?"
Tenzi studied his face, wondering just how much of this was making sense to him.
"Listen, Josef. There's going to be a shitload of things that won't make sense. Hang with it."
Judging by Josef's face, and how he was now picking up his coffee to take a large gulp from it--not a whole lot, or at least it was attempting to get processed by his brain. "Sounds weird? More like is weird," he stated, having furrowed his brow a little at Tenzi having raised her hand but not much more.
"I was hoping to at least cash into my banks percentages after all these years. Should've known it was all a big scam." Another joke, moreso to seemingly calm himself after putting down the cup yet again. "But that being said, then what do you gals and--I do assume some pals wager?"
Tenzi laughed into her tea.
"The fact that your first thought was your bank account surviving four centuries tells me everything I need to know about twentieth century humans."
Her antennae dipped toward him in amusement.
"God forbid a man's financially stable these days, huh? But painting it as us all being power-hungry, money-grubbing egomaniacs is a little unfair; it was mostly the elites. And well, most unpleasant people. I was mostly the sucker for paying 8 shillings for a can of coke."
She cocked her head to side, entirely unsure if eight shillings was a lot of money for a whatever a can of coke was.
"Getting back to your question about our poker nights--no, Sergeant. We don't sit around wagering starships and family fortunes." She gave him a wry look. "A few slips of latinum, usually. Sometimes a strip if someone's feeling reckless."
"Ah, guess that's your version of strip poker then. Beats betting a bunch of cigarettes, I guess." He shrugged, seeming to reminisce for just a second after another jab. "Though unless its beer, I guess I have yet to obtain any liquid currency."
Tenzi picked up her tea again, this time with both hands, her elbows firmly planted on the table. She could feel the warmth through the transparent mug as she brought it to her lips.
Aislinn glided over with a tray of food carefully balanced on one hand like it was a natural extension of herself, a skill she'd gained from a decent amount of practice, and put it on the table in front of them. "Two eggs sunny side up, two pieces of toast and some bacon on the side for you, Josef," the plate landed in front of him, "and for you, Andorian spiced bread, toasted with extra butter." Tenzi's plate was placed in front of her before the tray disappeared back into Aislinn's hand.
"I hope everything is good, and cutlery is over to the side there." Aislinn pointed to the cutlery holder that also held the small amount of condiments including salt and pepper. "If you need anything else, feel free to call out. Enjoy!" With the same warm smile as before, Aislinn nodded and disappeared back to her position behind the front counter.
"What a sweet waitress," Tenzi commented, as she eyed her spiced bread.
"Ah, nice," he replied as the platter of food landed in front of him. He reached over to grab a fork from the cutlery holder. Seemingly all the utensils he needed--or thought he needed--for consuming the rather large plate of food. About to rather unceremoniously dig in--four years of wartime not having been the best for 'table manners'.
"What?" he seemed to be brought out of his focus on the food with Tenzi's comment, a second of silence followed as his brain tried to process and recall what was just said. "Oh, her, yeah. She seems really nice."
Tenzi smiled at Josef as she slathered some of the butter onto her spice bread.
"Enjoy your meal, Sergeant Yesteryear."
Josef Forstinger
Civillian
USS Astrea
Ensign Tenzi Sh'reyva
Engineering Officer
USS Astrea
(NPC of JB Dorsainvil)
Aislinn Finnegan
Cafe Worker
USS Astrea
(NPC of Eirly Andersen)
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