Picard Prefers Pie! (Part 1)

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Jean-Luc Picard walked into his quarters after a long afternoon of charting spatial anomalies in the Crandar system and tossed his jacket over the back of a chair. Yawning and stretching, he grimaced as his spine rewarded the act with a string of pops and cracks. Perhaps it was time to pay Dr. Crusher a visit.~0~

"Computer, please play musical selection, ummm, 23."~1~

The room was filled with gentle relaxing music as Picard crossed over to the food replicator. He could feel the tension start to drain from his shoulders as the melodic opening of S'del of Vulcan's 12th symphony washed over him.~2~

"Computer, I'd like a piece of pie, cherry, chilled." He smiled in pleasure at the thought of a nice piece of pie, it had been much too long.~3~

The computer paused for a moment and then replied, "Unable to comply. No record of the item pie found in the database."~4~

Picard felt a cold chill run down his spine. No pie? This could not be. He tugged down at the bottom of his shirt and spoke again.~5~

"Computer, end music."~6~

The soothing music disappeared from the room as if it had never been and Picard walked over to put his command jacket back on.~7~

"Picard to Commander Laforge. Geordie do you have a moment?"~8~

The cheerful voice of Picard's Chief of Engineering promptly replied, "Of course Captain, how may I help you?"~9~

"Well, I just asked the replicator in my quarters for a slice of cherry pie and it told me that there was no record of pie found in the database."~10~

Geordie paused for a moment and then replied in a confused voice, "Pie? I'll look into it, but I have not heard of it either."~11~

That was more than Picard could take. The bewildered captain of the USS Enterprise barked out, "Yellow Alert!"~12~

As the ship went on alert and Picard headed out of his quarters to the turbo lift, a disembodied voice spoke to itself, its tone amused and mocking, "Ah, mon capitain, you are going to have quite an interesting evening!"