Waiting For the Ax to Fall

Posted on Sat 29th Jun, 2019 @ 5:50pm by

847 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Interrogation Room, Security
Timeline: MD 2, 1445

Back in the interrogation room, Zelda flopped into the chair she'd had previously, and said, "So do you need to chain me to the table or something?"

"Do I need to chain you to the table or something?" Isabella asked with a grin on her face. "I think you will be just fine the way you are. And if you end up not being fine..... Well, let's cross that bridge only if we have to."

Zelda nodded. Her eyes searched the room for something to think about, something to take her mind off of her situation, but it was just a room, mostly empty. There were no drawings or paintings or even photographs, no plants, no windows, nothing on the walls at all, except the glass she knew others could use watch the room.

Finally, she looked at the woman across from her. "What do you do for fun around here?"

"Nothing, unfortunately," Isabella said as she scratched her head, thinking for a moment. "I am usually too tied up with paperwork to get any time in the holodeck. My off time is usually spent talking to my brother who is also stationed here. We do have a weekly ritual of going to one of the old-time movie theaters here on the station. They even make the old buttered popcorn for us."

She laughed. "Seriously? That's your idea of fun? Well, I suppose I shouldn't laugh too loudly, since I don't do much more. Popcorn actually sounds good, now that I think of it. But old-time movies ... they've always seemed so slow moving to me. Don't you have favorite places to eat? Some place to dance?"

Isabella looked over to Zelda showing a pained look on her face. "Heeyyy, golden olden movies are the best. There is one particular movie from Earth's 1980s about a pilot flying a pre-warp jet in a contest. I can't think of the name of it right now, but he would always ask to do what's called a flyby around the tower of the airfield. They would always tell him, no, but he would do it anyway. It's the best. And I do go dancing when the mood hits. It just never hits often."

"Flying pre-warp? I wonder what that would feel like." She smiled as she tried to imagine it, then laughed. "Like falling, probably! How did they keep them up in the air without gravity repulse technology? I think they would never get me off the ground in one. To each his own, I guess. Personally, I'll take growing pretty plants over either flying dangerously or old movies."

Isabella chuckled. "I promise you. You will like the movie. Just when you watch it, look for the volleyball scene at the beach." Isabella looked over to Zelda and couldn't help to feel sorry for her. "Zelda, are you ok?" she asked.

The woman shook her head, "Nope, not okay. Not in any way okay." Her eyes watered, but she blinked. She hadn't cried when her mother died, and she wasn't going to cry now because she was in some mess she didn't even understand. "I can't really understand why I'm here. I mean you've told me, and that other man, what's his name again? Whoever. He told me that I've been arrested, and he thinks I've done something wrong. But I haven't. I go to work every day, and I come home and tend my plants, and that's my whole life." She shook her head in despair, feeling the tears threaten again.

Putting her head on the table, she wrestled with the confusion she felt. A few moments went by, and she lifted her head again, a smile on her face. "But, what do you care? You have a suspect for whatever it is, and you're happy." She winked at Isabella. "At least, I got a free lunch out of it." She frowned, "I remember going with what's-his-name to that fancy restaurant, and I'm not hungry, so I must have eaten something good, right? Were you there, Sugar Lump?"

Isabella stiffened her back and noticed the change in Zelda. The Chief felt like the temperature in the room had changed with the arrival of Destiny.

"Destiny, I see you have made it back. How are you doing?" The security chief asked.

"Why, I'm fine as frog's hair," she drawled. "Or I would be if you took these sweet little bracelets off." She held up her hands to indicate the wide metallic cuffs. They didn't restrict her movements as much as earlier models, because a chain was threaded between them, and fastened to a circular hook arising from the table, but she couldn't reach the maglock to undo them, either.

"I wouldn't mind wearing them, but the chain is such an anachronism," she complained coquettishly.

"Well, the restraints will stay right where they are for now," The security chief said as she smiled at her new guest. "Is there anything I can get you?"

Destiny pouted prettily, "Not if you insist on keeping me chained up, Sugar Lump."

 

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