You Snooze = You Lose

Tryce slept, unaware of an odorless haze.  Flowing out of a vent in murky, shifting tones of yellow, green, orange, it lingered over him, moving around him without touching him, then continued on, into another vent, disappearing as silently as it came.  Moments later, his eyes snapped open.  Tryce had a sixth sense, and it was telling him someone was coming – for him.  He barely sat up when the door slid open to a pair of fellow security personnel, shaking their heads in their expressions.

"Ensign Tryce," another ensign addressed him.  "Why do you continue to do this?"  She had magenta eyes, under painted eyebrows shaped like hooks, and a silver body ornament, a ring piercing her lip.  Since Starfleet regulations normally forbade jewelry, it must have been some sort of cultural emblem, rather tribal in its tone.  Starfleet often made exceptions for cultural or religious allowances.  She crossed her arms.

Her companion, a yellowish multi-limbed alien whose species Tryce never saw before, touched a gray device plugged into his ear.  He – if he was a 'he'; in the vastly multiethnic Federation, one just never knew for sure – had no mouth or nose; rather, a smooth-skinned face below two black slits for eyes.

"Sleeping on the job again."  As he spoke, a hairy orifice moved on his forehead, between his eyes – his mouth apparently.  His voice carried octaves higher than a male's, almost feminine, belied by a subtle, snake-like hiss.  Perhaps he was a she – or genderless.  He continued, "Unauthorized entry into a civilian's quarters," lifting one of four arms.  On the wrist was strapped a sleek rectangular device, gray in color, lined with an array of touch-sensors: The arm-PADD, the new, all-purpose, combo scanner-recorder-communicator introduced in 2385.  A tiny light flickered on the apparatus, recording the setting, then went out.

"You're in the quarters of Mr. W'x," the magenta-eyed female informed Tryce, "who wants you to leave."

Tryce didn't know there was no such thing as deserted quarters.  Decks, bulkheads, entire sections of the ship's interior could be reconfigured with the new NHG [nanoholographic] systems programming.