He couldn’t sleep. He never could his first couple of nights in a strange place. His counselor at the Academy suggested it’s some latent trauma from being evacuated to DS9 from Bajor during the Dominion War. Well…maybe. Maybe not. But it still didn’t change the effect. He went to his dresser and grabbed some comfortable clothes before deciding to get some work done.

Arriving at the holodeck, he pressed a button on the console.

==/\== Computer. Display exploded view of a typical pulsar. Decrease intervals of pulses to thirty seconds. ==/\==

It took no time at all. He was lucky to be on a ship with an extensive scientific library.

==/\== Program complete. You may enter when ready. ==/\==

The doors opened and he found himself looking at a holographic representation of what drew him to Starfleet in the first place. It never ceased to make him smile.

“See those, Luj? We come from those,” his mother’s echoed in his mind. He wish he remembered more about her. But no sense in dwelling on it. He moved closer, eyes scanning each section of the pulsar with a focus his friends would recognize as his “intense concentration” face. After a moment, he took out a PaDD and began typing some basic observations.

==/\== Computer. Access Starfleet cultural record, subsection music. ==/\==

==/\== Ready. ==/\==

==/\== Play album “Rocket to Russia” by band designated Ramones at maximum allowable volume. ==/\==

All of a sudden, the Holodeck was filled with the sounds of heavy guitars, loud bass, and crashing drums and cymbals. “There’s no stoppin’ the cretins from hoppin’!” Others might be distracted by the loud music, but it actually helped Luj focus. “1 2 3 4, cretins wanna hop some more!” He was subconsciously nodding his head in time with the music as he did a spectral analysis of the star’s composition. “4 5 6 7, all good cretins go to heaven!” His foot tapped along while he measured the different types of simulated radiation emanating from the pulsar. Yeah. He was gonna have fun here.

Ensign Caser Luj