HOLODECK PROBLEMS Introduction Lieutenant Thomas Eugene Paris was up to no good one Tuesday night. He had asked Captain Janeway if he could send his own personal message to his friend, Dr. Julian Bashir, on Deep Space Nine as a joke. He wanted to send a holodeck program, pretending that the characters in the program attacked Voyager. His purpose for sending the program was to have the Deep Space Nine crew see if they could find a way to solve Voyager's problem. Our dear friend Tom had received permission to send his message the next time that the Pathfinder probe opened a link with Voyager. CHAPTER 1 FAIR HAVEN "We have an incoming message from the Pathfinder probe." Announced Major Kira. Kira fingers flew over her console to see if the message was for anyone in particular. "It says here it's for Dr. Bashir." She finished. "Why is Julian receiving a message from Voyager?" Captain Sisko asked, confused. He looked around his bridge crew for answers. Apparently, nobody bothered to listen to his question. Everybody was quietly tapping away at his or her consoles. Lieutenant Jadzia Dax was telling Major Kira a story about how Sisko once fell in a pond when she used to occupy the body of Curzon Dax. "That guy is so clumsy!" Kira laughed, uncontrollably. As she caught Sisko watching them with a scowl on his face, she replied, "It's easy enough to believe, Benjamin. Watching you try to climb into a Jeffries tube, HA! That's a joke! It takes you about forty seconds just to figure out how to get your knee onto the tube's platform!" Jadzia and Kira continued to giggle hysterically to one another, totally oblivious to the rest of the bridge crew. "Humph." Sisko snorted. "Then I suppose I'll just have to find out for myself." Sisko tapped his left shoulder, expecting to find his com-badge in its normal location. "What the?" He exclaimed when he found it wasn't there. Chief O'Brien began laughing hysterically from behind him. Sisko turned angrily around. "Chief? You have it don't you?" Chief O'Brien started laughing even harder, and remarked, "You are so oblivious to everything! I just snatched that of your food tray in the mess hall after you took it off to clean your shirt! Remember, you spilled Romulan Ale all over your it?" Chief O'Brien continued giggling to himself. Sisko gave O'Brien a 'fork it over now, pal' look. O'Brien took the pin from the inside if his sleeve and tossed it to Sisko. As Sisko angrily attached his com-badge to his shirt, he remarked, "My crew is turning against me; First Jadzia and Kira. Now my best engineer!" Then Sisko slammed back into his chair and let out a loud and smelly fart. "Oh, Benjamin, I haven't smelled one of those since when you came out of that pond dripping wet. You were so mad, you started passing gas like it was going out of style!" Jadzia remarked putting her thumb on her forehead to say, 'not me, I didn't fart. I can control my bodily functions unlike someone else I know!' The rest of the bridge crew followed suit by putting their thumbs on their foreheads as well. Sisko punched his com-badge and said, "Sisko to Bashir. Please respond." Instead of hearing the Doctor's voice acknowledging his call, he heard the computers voice saying, "Communication link requested, denied. Voice can not be identified as Captain Benjamin Sisko." Sisko turned to his chief engineer. "What's this supposed to mean, Miles O'Brien? Do I have to ask your wife Keiko, or do I have to go as far as your daughter Molly? I want to know what's going on!" "That one you can blame on Odo, sir. It was his brilliant idea to deny you access to your own com-badge. Pretty clever for a shapeshifter, hey?" O'Brien answered with an air of humor. Sisko snorted again and used his own console to contact sickbay. "Dr. Bashir, the is Captain Sisko. I have a message for you up here from Voyager. Could you please tell me why you are receiving a message from them?" "Ah, why it must be from Tom!" Bashir answered. "Oh yeah, you probably don't know him, Benjamin. You don't know many important people anyway. I wouldn't call you a social butterfly. Anyway, if you could send it down here, I'll see I get you aquatinted with some important people. As you must know, I am quite popular among many important…" Sisko cut him off before he could finish his speech. Benjamin then snorted again and sent the message to sickbay. Doctors. They think they are the only people who have a sense of class. Someday, I have to dump a nice cold bucket of water over Julian's head. Maybe he'll wake up out of dreamland. Sisko thought to himself. * * * Doctor Bashir read Tom's message about his problem with invaders, and activated the holodeck program immediately. When he turned it on, he found himself in an Old Irish town by the name of "Fair Haven". "Excuse me, lad. " A small fat old guy said to Doctor Bashir. "Have you seen Tom Paris around anywhere? He promised he lend me a few shillings." "Ahh, I can't say I have…um, no actually…I haven't" "Oh well. I can't say I have met you before. Are you new around here?" "I suppose you could say that, yes" "Well then, my name is Shamus. What's yours?" "Oh… let me think a minute…I seem to have forgot… give me a second…" "Lad? Are you okay? Can't you remember your own bloody name?" "Ah, yes! I remember now! My name is Julian Bashir. I am a doctor." "I think you're the one needs a doctor. Come with me. I'll bring you to Sullivan's for a drink. That will make you feel better. Come on." "Oh really, I'll be okay. I just didn't get much sleep last night. That's all." "I didn't get much sleep last night either, and am I acting weird? Come on, tell me." "Ah, let's see, maybe towing a stranger along with you who just happened to appear on the street can be classified as weird behavior!" "Don't worry, I don't have cooties. Let's go." Shamus concluded, towing Doctor Bashir along with him. * * * Odo and Jadzia Dax were eating dinner at the crew mess hall when Doctor Bashir stumbled in the doorway. He took two steps, tripped over his own feet, and smashed into a Vulcan carrying a jar of raspberry juice, spilling it all over himself and the Vulcan. He tried to stand up again, but slipped on the juice the floor. He pulled himself up again and tried to regain his bearings. As he caught sight of Odo and Jadzia, he started running as fast as he could toward them. "Odo! Jadzia! I need your help! There's a small fat guy chasing me!" Odo and Jadzia gave each other an annoyed glance. "So that's where he was hiding all day. The holodeck." Odo concluded, annoyed. Jadzia turned to face Dr. Bashir. "Ah, Julian, you're not in the holodeck anymore. That small fat guy can't chase you through the station. There aren't any holo-emitters in the corridors." "No, Jadzia! You don't understand!" Bashir responded, smashing into the table, spilling some gooey stuff all over Odo. "Thank you for your courtesy, Doctor." Odo said looking up at the ceiling, thoroughly annoyed. "What holodeck program were you running, Julian?" Jadzia asked, running out of patience. "One my friend Tom Paris sent me from Voyager." Doctor Bashir said, looking around nervously. "It's horrible! The crew of Voyager is being attacked by these horrible fat aliens who think they are Irish and control the world, and…" "Whoa! Slow it down pal! I don't know what to do if you get a heart attack! You're the Doctor." Jadzia replied. "I know exactly what to do." Odo replied, wiping the goo of his uniform. "We'll just have to have O'Brien fix him up." "No! You can't do that!" Bashir replied in a panic, eyes wild, as he reared away from Odo, taking cover behind Jadzia. Dax rolled her eyes. "Nobody is going to do anything to you, Julian, as long as you stop freaking out!" Odo leaned back in his chair, giving Dax a look as if to say, "Oh, I certainly will do something to him. Just watch me turn into a phaser rifle, discreetly pull the trigger, and: WHAMO! POOF! No more freak. All done nice and neatly with no mess to pick up afterwards." Dr. Bashir peeked over Dax's shoulder, keeping a sharp eye on Odo. "If Miles O'Brien ever tries to play doctor, the world will never be the same." Julian thought quietly to himself. "Doctor," Dax began, "How about you show us this fat friend of yours in the holodeck. Then we can figure out how to help Voyager get rid of these Irish people." Doctor Bashir nodded in agreement to Dax's suggestion, and rose from behind her chair, still watching Odo carefully. "Come with us, Odo. These short and fat Irish guys sure seem interesting. We may need a security officers influence if the wrong things begin to happen." Jadzia suggested. Then she stood up, giving Doctor Bashir a strange look. Odo followed her, also giving Bashir a look that seemed to say, "I feel sorry for the world that you exist." Under his breath, Doctor Bashir said, "Let's hear it for the luck of the Irish." Then he followed his two comrades. * * * "Doctor! Where did you go? We were all looking for you!" Shamus said, enthusiastically. "Mr. Sullivan's cat is sick and we were hoping you help him out." "Ah… actually…I was hoping you could meet two of my friends." Bashir said, trying to save himself from exile with a holographic cat. "I would love to meet your friends! Are these them behind you?" Shamus gestured at Dax and Odo. "Yes. They are." Bashir said, turning to the two officers standing behind him. "This is Odo and this is Jadzia Dax. Odo and Dax, this is Shamus." "We have heard quite a bit about you, sir, nice to meet you." Jadzia said. "Yes. Quite a bit about you." Odo said, glancing at Bashir, annoyed. "Well," Shamus said, excitedly. Then he glanced toward a tan building at the corner of the crowded street. "I can take you to Sullivan's place. You will meet practically the whole world in their…" * * * "Here's how we solve Voyager's problem with those fat Irish guys." Jadzia Dax was telling Odo and Julian. "Since the whole group of them meet at Sullivan's bar all the time, we simply just have to put something in their drinks that will make them want to leave Voyager for good." "Crude, but quite efficient, I might add." Odo remarked, giving Dax a look of approval. "Well," Dr. Bashir started, "I suppose Tom and the rest of the Voyager crew will be quite happy with us. Now all I have to do is tell Tom of our plan…" * * * "Julian! You can't be serious!" Tom Paris said to the Doctor on the monthly Pathfinder link with Voyager. "I sent that as a prank… err…a joke! You and your friends went to all this trouble to solve this…ah, you're unbelievable!" "That was a prank!" Bashir exclaimed, "Tom, you said in the note that it was an urgent matter! I had nightmares about you out there with those freaks! How could you do this to me?" "Sorry, pal. I thought you would figure out it was a joke. I mean, I didn't think you guys on Deep Space Nine were so dense not pick up a stupid joke…" Doctor Bashir terminated his link with Voyager right then and their. "So dense?! " Odo, who was sitting next to Bashir, said, "Well then, my diagnosis is confirmed. You really are a waste of space around here." Bashir looked Odo straight in the eye. "I hope you don't mind if I leave the room, almighty brilliant one." And with that, he left Odo by himself in the room to bury himself in his own ego.