It’s a lazy day on Deep Space Nine.
The computer is humming softly. The Replimat is quiet, not because there are less people, but because everyone’s murmuring instead of talking out loud, and Quark’s Bar is operating at a loss. There’s hardly anything to do but the routine chores of the station. The wormhole won’t open again until tomorrow.
The halls smell mildly of icoberries, a sweet fruity scent left over from the shipment two days ago when everyone was drinking icoberry juice and licking the sweet glaze off the icoberry tortes. Smells linger in Deep Space Nine, with no wind or rain to clear them out, so the station will smell like this for a while. The turbolifts don’t creak anymore, just judder and rumble gently; the Chief of Engineering finally got around to fixing the cable couplings yesterday.
A big Human fell asleep in a window seat in the control gondola of lower pylon 3, and her boyfriend, a Bajoran trader, is dozing half-awake on her shoulder. The Human’s pet toad is burrowing through the substrate of its tank beside them. The maintenance on the computer cell in the wall across from them will take about half an hour, maybe more, depending on whether the field generator backup needs calibration.












