Star Trek: Starbase 777

[D] Austin was in his quarters, simply kicking back and reading a book. His dad had just sent him a goodie bag from back home including both a large selection of food the he had requested and the book he was reading "The Hunt for Red October." He knew he had signed up for the secret Santa so he gave a small smile when he found out who he was meant to be giving a gift to. He still didn't quite know how he was meant to feel about Dagis after the whole trial thing, though secretly he never truely minded section 31. Something about the philosophy of a noble lie in a society felt like a necessity for safety to him. *Anyway he set to building a gift basket out of a portion of what had been sent to him. He found that it was an apt representation of his home. One may be able to figure out who he was by such a pretense of everything being from the Seattle region but he figured it would make for a nice gift. The basket included a few different varieties of chocolate, mostly coffee flavored. Ofcourse he included some of the local coffee brands. Finally he included a replicator program for a multi course meal that he had prepared. It started with a appetizer of shellfish, followed by Dungeness crab (served with a classic butter sauce) and finally it finished with a cupcake for desert. He was hopeful that dagis enjoyed shellfish but she didn't have to use the program if she didn't want to. He looked over at his book shelf and decided to toss in a couple just to top things off. "The Oddyssey", "Romeo and Juliet" and "Les Miserables"

Austin walked out of the room carrying the lofty gift basket.

A present arrived for Austin: The gift was roughly the size of a football but rectangular in shape, and was wrapped with some off white paper covered in loads of festive illustrations, from Christmas trees to baubles to hot chocolates. Upon the top of the wrapped box was a green festive bow that matched the Christmas trees, and a matching hand-written tag that read "Happy Holidays! I did some snooping and thought you might like this!" There was also a hand-drawn snowman wearing a little top hat on the tag. Once unwrapped it would reveal a fairly plain box with a label on it that read "Authentic Metal Starfleet Ship Models. Made on Earth by hand." and within the box was a carefully packed, hand made and painted California-class starship, complete with the name and registry of the first ship Austin served on. It came with a wooden display stand with a matching name plaque, a way to hang it up if he wanted, and it even had working lights and sounds.

Austin cradled up in bed and opened up his PADD. He decided he'd continue once again to write messages to his dad as often as he could. He always found talking with his dad to be incredibly therapeutic, it was almost inveritably like talking to an older wiser version of himself. Even if his dad had never served in Starfleet and had never even gone as far to venture out to the station he really was just a younger version of his father. He truely loved his dad. He began his message.

04:39

PADD MESSAGE From: Lt. Commander Austin Whidbey To: Sheriff Wally Whidbey Hey dad, I finally made it back to the station. Still however strong memories of all the reasons I left in the first place prevail. I know that I have unfinished buisness with this place. I just need to keep pushing myself to do what's right, this place hasn't ever been true to what I expect but I suppose it is only destiny for me to have been tied to down here. There is more work then ever to accomplish here, I expect my continued service here to better me as a person and with any luck I can use said experience to better the world around me. I hope the crabbing season has been treating you well. Its a shame I can't be there with you (even if I'd kill for one last look over the harbor) stay safe dad, love Austin