Personal Log; Gregorian 2343: "So, I figured out how to change the date to something approaching sensible on my Pad's OS… that's a thing."

"So, that's it, huh?" Drawled Boothby feeling… well, disappointed might be a little too harsh, but let-down was accurate enough given how excited Sharra was about this simple plant.

"What do you mean 'that's it'?" Sharra countered, not even angrily just genuinely bewildered that Boothby wasn't as excited about the plant as the Andorian.

"Well, I mean it's just a bush isn't it?" Boothby said more to himself than to the Cadet who had befriended him almost as soon as he'd entered the Academy. Sharra was a nice kid, they'd shared a few drinks and Sharra would trade old earth music that he'd 're-mastered' in exchange for war-stories from Boothby's glory days, but sometimes he was too…mercurial, for lack of a better word.

"No, this Boothby, this is Mary Jane."

Now would be one of those times, given that he'd been fussing over this one plant that he was growing in a pot in his room for over a month now and had named it like one would a pet, the psychological implications of this Boothby didn't even want to contemplate.

Hell, he'd even asked Boothby for supplies and advice concerning the botany, yet he never actually specified which plant he was trying to grow saying that it would be an amazing surprise. But to Boothby it just looked like an ordinary bush, granted the 'five-fingered' leaves were a tad odd, and he'd never seen the like of such a plant before, but overall it just looked like an ordinary tropical plant, albeit one he had never encountered although looking at it more closely… "Is this some kind of mutated wild tobacco?"

Sharra roped an arm around his shoulders, "No, nothing quite so simple you see, this innocuous little 'bush' as you call it," Sharra chuckled when he said 'bush', "was as of two-months ago completely extinct."

"Why?" Certainly, a lot of plants had gone extinct throughout the earth's history, but this particular one didn't look like anything prehistoric; the size was all wrong and it was subsisting on the amount of oxygen that the atmosphere currently held. Making this conundrum a mystery for the amateur botanist.

"An Augment warlord had a genetically modified variant created to wipe the entire genus out," Sharra said with a slight frown.

"But, why?" Once again, the same question, as the answer to the last one had created more mysteries than answers.

"Who knows?" Sharra shrugged breezily, "Might've been for fun or he could've just been inspired by good old Dick Nix."

Boothby didn't get the last reference, then again, he never did, and it never affected the flow of the conversation and he was just fine with that.

"So, where did this one come from?"

"Oh!" Sharra seemed to instantly brighten at the direction the conversation was taking, "I had to find some fossilized seeds to see if I could get an 'organic' variant to grow with uncorrupted genetic material, and you wouldn't believe the hassle to find them, I had to go trekking through the DMZ in Korea!"

"DMZ?" Boothby asked.

"42nd Parallel along the Korean peninsula, there's a big stretch of Biodiversity there due to some… unfortunate historical causes, but hey, it worked out in the end."

"Uh, huh." Boothby decided not to press the issue further and instead return to the topic at hand.

"So, what's so special about it that you decided to bring it back from the dead, so to speak?"

Instead of answering his question verbally Sharra picked up a small wooden box that was lying next to the potted plant and proudly showed off its contents to Boothby.

"Is the Tea from this plant really worth all of the hassle?" The Groundskeeper asked completely seriously and Sharra guffawed.

Boothby scowled slightly, despite being a few decades older than the kid he was making him feel like a child that had just said something remarkably stupid.

Later when Sharra and he were smoking their 'joints' watching old 'cartoons' in the Holosuite Boothby would understand just how true that statement was.

Personal Log; Gregorian 2343: "Mayuri was right, anyone in their right mind would despise perfection, there's no more room for imagination, ability or improvement, probably why so many Qs leave the continuum."

"Alright, let's take it from the top," As soon as Sharra said that the sound of two Cellos playing his 'bastardized' version of Beethoven's 5th symphony completely engulfed the entire room and for a moment Data could imagine he was a human musician during the nineteenth century, standing on a crude wooden stage as a crowd of people in extremely uncomfortable-looking suits politely looked on.

The moment only lasted for just that, however, a moment, then it stopped abruptly when his Andorian friend (a concept the full scope of which the Android still struggled to understand), put down his bow which clearly showed signs of the damage that their very aggressive style of playing caused and let out a frustrated sigh while rubbing the space under his antenna.

"Have you made a mistake?" Data asked, he knew full well that his counterparts' fluctuations, which could be classified as mistakes were within normal parameters, still, it seemed the right thing to ask.

"No," Sharra said tiredly, "I'm just sick of that 'Uncanny Valley' feeling."

Data frowned thoughtfully, the concept of the 'Uncanny Valley' as Sharra had explained it was something he disliked. It was after all a sense all organics had to be unnerved by something artificial and as Sharra described it was a 'gut-feeling' that one couldn't get rid of or trick when it surfaced, making it a potentially unassailable obstacle in his quest to become more human.

"Is my demeanor provoking it?" Data asked curiously, trying to ascertain the root cause of this feeling. Other musicians have told him he lacked 'soul' when he played and what Sharra and he had discussed seemed like it was the root cause of this.

"No, it's not your demeanor…" Sharra's brow furrowed in thought, but unlike the other times they had discussed it, the assertion was rapidly followed by a look of dawning comprehension.

"It's too perfect!" Sharra said almost reverently and Data merely raised an eyebrow silently prodding him to elaborate and elaborate he did.

"Data, the reason why your music sounds off is that every time you play, it sounds exactly the same as the last time."

"Is this not the goal that all musicians strive for?" Data asked curiously.

"Yes and no," Sharra answered simply a quick twitch of the lips the only thing that betrayed his amusement at knowing the fact that Data struggled with such ambiguous wording and would doubtless need even further elaboration.

"All musicians strive towards it, but do they ever achieve it?" Sharra finished.

"No." Data answered matter-of-factly as the realization of what his friend meant finally dawned on him completely, "You are suggesting I deliberately make mistakes to infuse my performance with 'soul'." It wasn't a question.

"Not how I'd put it, but yes." Sharra answered, "Now, shall we try it again?"

Data nodded and once he had finished playing while making minute yet very deliberate 'mistakes' that would be unnoticeable to the organic ear, he felt it was his best performance yet, but for reasons that he could not fully explain.

Personal Log; Gregorian 2344: "Sweat today will save you blood tomorrow; a bruise today will save you a limb tomorrow and fear today will save your life tomorrow."

Michael very deliberately crept towards the lockers on the other end of the corridor without making a sound.

A more difficult task than one might imagine seeing as the surface he was standing on was metallic and he was hefting both a crowbar and messenger bag in the same hand. He couldn't complain too much though, he needed both to survive, after all, even then it didn't stop him from cursing the Andorian Asshole who'd set him for this kind of training.

Internally cursing, of course, he didn't want to attract it towards him and very deep down he was grateful that Sharra had taken the time to teach a greenhorn Cadet what he knew about combat and tactics, even if his teaching methods would probably shorten Michael's lifespan by a solid decade.

He could practically feel every part of his body slowly dying of stress with every step he took towards his hiding place and his heart, which was already doing a nice impression of a drumbeat nearly leaped out of his chest as one of the Androids drawled its catchphrase of: "Affordable quality."

He looked around in much the same vein as a thief who was caught red-handed, albeit a thief in medieval times whose punishment would be the gallows. He didn't dare breathe, but he did allow himself an internal sigh of relief when he realized that the android's voice came from a different room. The relief wouldn't last long, however, as he heard it slobbering from one of the Jeffries Tubes above him.

He threw caution to the wind and ran as fast as he could towards the second locker in the row, but he slammed the door of the first one shut as well.

The slobbering became louder and the ceiling was torn open to reveal it. Michael Eddington had never believed in the old earth religious tales of a hell where one would be eternally tortured by Satan's coterie of demons, but at this very moment, Michael just knew he was looking at the lovechild of Beelzebub and a Velociraptor, a lovechild that had it out for him.

The jet-black Alien creature crept through the hall, practically exuding the charisma of a dangerous carnivore who was in its element, a dangerous carnivore who had absolutely no natural predators. Every aspect of the creature was absurd, from its olfactory sense that trumped every predator on Qo'nos to its 'gut-feelings' that resembled that of a human.

Both of these he'd have thought impossible to program into a Holosuite character, but after playing this scenario multiple times and never winning, he knew he'd have to do some serious research on AI and if Sharra was to be believed that was where the biggest threat in Tactical would lie in a few years.

The Alien as the other characters in the Holosuite referred to it crept towards the lockers. Michael didn't breathe, his skin began to turn purple and he tried to will himself to stop sweating, in his effort he grit his teeth so hard he thought he heard one snap. But it was fruitful, the alien quickly scanned both lockers before moving on.

A sigh of relief escaped him and in the very same second, before he could even contemplate what he'd done wrong the alien tore through the locker and a sharp claw extended millimeters away from his throat.

Michael did not scream like a bitch, Sharra and Cal who walked in as soon as the simulation reset itself begged to differ.

The phrase: "Look at his fucking face!" may have been uttered through tears of laughter by both men several times before they reconciled and went to the Dogpatch Saloon and all ordered very stiff drinks.