Teacher, Anal, Gray

KABOOM!!!!!  The ship exploded, then the station.

Ohhh, boy.  This was not good.  Nix that.  This was B. A. D.  First, the first officer backed the ship out.  They were in an open dock, an orbital frame, meaning they could simply go... forward.  But somehow everything got turned around.  And then there were indications that this was some kind of big, fully staffed starbase (orbiting the planet Arcadia, at that, home and headquarters to the Humanists, who sure wouldn't let aliens run around, much less run departments or mate with humans).  So were they forward, or backwards?  In all the confusion, the ship ran into a wall, blew up and took out the station (or was it only a dock?  So confused!).

Reset.  Okay, the ship backed out then turned around.  The viewscreen?  Two-dimensional.  Outdated.  The holosphere offered a better, three-dimensional perspective.  Get with the times, man!

And then...

"Full stop."  Turning in the direction of Captain Grey, Dante smiled.  "Where to, sir?"

Captain Gray turned his head, glancing over his shoulder.  It seemed the first officer addressed him, since he was looking at him.  But who the hell was Captain Grey?  Another weird parallel universe duplicate, maybe?  Like on deck 4, in company of the fish?

"Oh... do you mean Gray, by chance?  Yes?"  Gray slowly nodded, getting the XO to nod along with him.  "Ah.  Well it's g-r-A-y, not g-r-E-y.  Do we use British spelling, mate?  I think not!  No Brits here.  Notice I'm sitting in the center seat, not the 'centre' seat."

"Uh, Captain..."  Fairchild spoke up from the conn, lifting a hand for attention.  "I'm British."

"Shut up, Lieutenant."  She wasn't helping.

"Yes, sir."

Gray refocused on Dante.  (Dante?  Not Winters?  Surnames instead of personal names.  Don't see Gray being called 'Dominic'; didn't see Picard being called 'Jean-Luc', or Riker called 'William'.)  "And furthermore, your posts have way too many triple-dots... dot dot dot!  Oy!... when commas would do.  Not to mention a lot of capitalisation capitalization in passive reference."  He slapped the chalkboard with a ruler.  "Pay attention, class!"

The director yelled "Cut!" and told Gray to get on with it.

Back to the scene: Gray said to Winters Dante the first officer:  "Which episode was that?"

It was common knowledge by now: Their civilization came from Star Trek, an old Earth entertainment franchise... TV shows, films, books, comics, games, lunchboxes... and more (incidentally an American invention, not British or anyone else's).  Their entire way of life was based on it.  There were even, strangely, duplicates of the actors who played the characters, who were the characters, in real life.  Gray saw every episode; every filmed production (though it had been a while).  Word for word, the first officer's docking procedure sounded suspiciously familiar.

Gray shrugged and issued Fairchild a set of coordinates.  Their course would take them roughly 7,000 light years, into the galaxy's Perseus arm, towards a set of double nebulae called Heart and Soul.  Once on their way, he got up and headed for the ready room.  How they got there was up to the XO and Fairchild, but slipstream and artificial wormholes might be in order.

En route, something caught his eye.  He stopped, turned... via complant, ordered the computer to materialize a paintbrush in his waiting hand... and walked up to Ria Stavros.  If she hated her uniform, she was really going to hate this.