Posted by Cadet Tandra Mika (Doctor) in Side Sim: Cadets’ Holodeck Meetup (Pre-Sim)

Posted by Cadet Aili McMorran (Scientist) in Side Sim: Cadets’ Holodeck Meetup (Pre-Sim)

Posted by Cadet Tandra Mika (Doctor) in Side Sim: Cadets’ Holodeck Meetup (Pre-Sim)
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

OOC: This is a continuation of something that started in Aili’s physical pre-sim. I’ll likely start up the ‘next day’ sim once we’ve finished this one, where all would be welcome to join! :)
Tandra arrived at the holodeck. Apparently, Cadet McMorran - Mika couldn’t remember her first name. She was awful with names - had taken her advise to heart, and had invited several of the Cadets to hang out in the holodeck. She’d gone casual, wearing athletic pants, a plain t-shirt, and walking shoes. Still, she found herself nervous. Not only had she not really associated with anyone besides Dinah Gartenburg and the Lieutenant, but she had to admit she did find… Aili, that was her name, pretty cute. But Mika tended to assume by default that the people she liked, wouldn’t be interested. So generally, she automatically perished the thoughts.

But the way Aili stuttered when she’d left the sickbay made Tandra unsure of her default thought. Hope is a heck of a drug, Mika. Besides, would a ship romance be a good idea? Her inner voice said, but she silenced it, took a deep breath, and entered the holodeck. Immediately, she was met with a scene of a grassy hill, overlooking a lake. Born in midwestern America, she had rarely seen such a… green scape, and it was very pretty to her.

Mika saw Aili, sitting next to a stone, and no one else. She figured she was early, and so she just called out to Aili. “Hey! Guess I’m the first to arrive, huh?” She said, with a smile, as she headed over and sat down by the same stone.

~ Cadet Tandra Mika, Doctor

As soon as she heard the holodeck doors swing open, Aili froze in place, her leg ceasing its previous nervous bouncing. “What have you done?”, she hissed internally, slowly blinking in an attempt to clear her head before she propelled herself to her feet. Turning to face the arriving Cadet, she acknowledged her presence: “Hi! Haha yes looks like it! It’s… Tandra, right? I’m hoping that I remembered at least a few of the names as I sent out the invitations.” Gesturing to a spot of slightly sloped ground beside herself, Aili mimed the act of pulling out a chair and nodded downwards, inviting Mika to sit with her.

(Cadet McMorran - Science)

Mika took the invitation and sat down. “Yeah, it’s Tandra. It’s funny, once you’ve been in the academy for a while, it’s almost weird to hear your first name, isn’t it? By the way, you’re Aili, right?” She commented. She caught that Aili was nervous, but being the… rather dense, one that Mika tended to be, she chaulked Aili’s nervousness up to being shy about meeting everyone. As she asked her question, she looked at Aili, but as soon as she made eye contact with the other Cadet, she suddenly found herself almost embarrassed, or shy, maybe, and she looked out at the scenery. “It’s um, a pretty lake, isn’t it? You picked a really nice place.”

~ Cadet Tandra Mika, Doctor

Aili didn’t need to be proficient at reading others (and she certainly wasn’t) to tell that Tandra was similarly nervous. Not daring to speculate as to why, she simply decided to display confidence as best she could. “Ah yes, well, this doesn’t do the real thing justice”, Aili replied along with a sigh that somehow conveyed contentment and discontentment all at once. “And that’s ‘loch’ to you!”, she continued, rolling the ‘l’ and hardening the ‘ch’ as best she could for comic effect, “Loch Lomond, to be precise. Folk sometimes make it out to be more special that it really is but on an evening like this, at a spot like this, it is pretty stunning.”

Tandra smiled and laughed, “Alright, the loch is very pretty then,” she said. Her pronunciation of the word ‘loch’ was quite American.

Aili let out a laugh and looked down at her knees. “I’ve spent far too much time alone out in places like this. Even if the landscape isn’t real, I suppose it’s nice to have some company”, she said with a tempered smile, her eyes looking up at Tandra. “Enough about me though, where’re you from?”

(Cadet McMorran - Science)

“It feels real. I’ve never seen anything like these holodecks, they’re amazing,” Tandra said, then, “Midwestern America, Colorado. Certainly not as pretty a place as here. It’s mostly either grassland or desert, and very mountainous. It snows a lot in the winter, but then it gets warm in the summer,” she told him. She honestly hadn’t thought about home in some time, and now, thinking about it, she wondered if it was because she wanted to forget bad memories, or just plain old forgetfulness. Either way, she figured she should send a letter home when next she got the chance.
~ Cadet Tandra Mika, Doctor

“No it sounds wonderful. Everywhere’s beautiful in its own way”, Aili pushed back. “I’m glad this sort of place has survived, well, us these last centuries… Well, I don’t know where the rest of them are but I’m sure someone will appear sooner or later”. She kept a straight face but that sentence ignited a short internal alarm. You can’t lie like this! Well, she was in too deep to stop now, so she decided to try to take both of their minds off of her deception. “Hey, you see that peak over there?”. Aili pointed across a dip in the hillside to where the land sloped back upwards, coming to its zenith with a smaller, steeper rocky mound.

(Cadet McMorran - Science)