Star Trek: TNG: Q's Day Out

Chapter One

A/N: I apologise if my look on the eighties isn't exactly right; I was born in the late nineties, so that's my excuse :P. Enjoy :)

The 80's. A period of political turmoil and uncertainty, but with a few things thrown in which managed to perk up everybody's day. Those two things were quite similar, and yet, were also somehow polar opposites. The first was quite obvious, being music. And, the second one was a little different, yet still sticking to the media and entertainment film. That was movies, or films, as they are called in England.

The music was not all one genre. It was many different ones. And, they were all being churned out over and over again on some sort of hideous and annoying repetitive loop on every single radio station there could ever possibly be. There was reggae, glam rock, electronica and the emerging genre which went by the short and snappy name of 'rap'. You name it, most great music originated from these mere ten years which lay sandwiched in between the glamorous decade of the 70's and the pop-ridden, boy band infested years which haunted the 90's.

The films were quite a different story. You had the opportunity to see thrillers and horror stories such as The Shining and Nightmare on Elm Street. However, you could also pay a visit to your local picture house and catch a showing of Back to the Future or the ever popular classic E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Science fiction was the genre of film which actually defined the decade. With computer generation still merely a wish a way, life size models and animation were indeed still ruling the movie world by now.

However, not all aspects of this decade were quite so wonderful. There were gangs and drugs and, like most massively populated cities, a lot of disagreements, which also meant quite a few murders too. And, London was certainly no clear exception to this basically cemented rule.

One woman hated this decade. She was called Roxana Philippe. Roxana was stuck in a dead end university course which she was certain that she was failing. The course was very boring and she really had no idea why she had chosen to take it on. She had been fascinated by space ever since she was a little girl, growing up in Nottingham. However, now, she began to feel as though her passion for it was beginning to grow cold and brittle. The course which she was studying was so that she could hopefully gain one of the things she had wanted most in her life, and, that was a degree in astrophysics.

Roxana cursed herself for ever even deciding to enrol in this godforsaken course. It was too hard and the highest grade she had ever managed to achieve in a project or research assignment was a disappointing, yet not exactly awful B grade. She prayed and crossed her fingers every time the professor gave them back their papers, however, not once had she seen the letter A written on her paper.

Roxana did, however, more or less know why she wasn't getting the grades which she wanted so very much. And that was because of the fact that she wasn't revising nearly as much as she should be doing. She would spend her time writing short science fiction stories, and not actually locked up in her bedroom, studying, which was the view retained by her very religious and stoic catholic parents. She was only young, being barely twenty-two, and so, she had no real care for religious matters. She only liked writing and reading and the occasional Duran Duran song.

She had been out in town, shopping, with her friends. It was a cold winter's evening, sometime in the middle of November and she gathered that the vast majority of the people who were shopping, also, had Christmas shopping on their minds. Roxana, however, did not. She did all of her Christmas shopping around January time, so that she could be prepared as well as take full advantage of the wonderful January sales.

Feeling exhausted, Roxana hopped on the nearest bus and tried to sleep. The bus ride was very jolty and the road was certainly not as flat as it should have been. Every time the bus stopped or speed up or simply turned just a tiny little bit, it would shudder and she would be awoken. Realising that there was probably no real point for her to be sleeping on this bumpy and uncomfortable ride, she opened her eyes wearily and, being ever so careful not to mess up her eye make-up, she rubbed them.

The bus came to a sudden halt and the large, powerful engine started to choke and splutter loudly. She looked out behind her and, through the window, she could see, to her utter dismay, black, cloudy and thick smoke pouring out of the back of the old vehicle. Moments later, the driver stepped out of his cabin and said to the many passengers of his, "Sorry, fellas, but it looks like the old gal's broken down."

One passenger, an old man, maybe fifty or sixty, asked him, "Is a repair truck not coming?"

The driver pushed his thickly rimmed glasses further up his large, bony nose and said, "There will, yes. But, that won't be for hours yet."

The passengers seemed to emit a simultaneous, loud and annoyed sounding groan. And, one of them was Roxana. She slumped back in her chair and looked at her watch. It was late. Very late. She studied the two hands of the clock face moving with that impertinent little ticking noise and realised that it was coming up to eleven o'clock at night. Every day, her parents would call her at around nine o'clock in the evening just to check that she was all right and that everything was quite well at her new apartment. However, as she had told them that she was going out shopping late, her mother and father had said that they would, instead, call her at ten or maybe even half past tem this time. It was way past that time now and Roxana gathered that they would quite probably and quite understandably be getting worried about her.

She knew that she couldn't realistically stay on this stricken source of public transport for hours more, so she stood up and said to the driver patiently, "Can you open the door? I'm going to leave."

He looked at her and said, disapprovingly, "Be careful, a pretty little thing like you, God knows what could happen."

She gave him a sarcastic and rather annoyed smile before walking off the bus.

The journey was long and tiring, but she had finally made it back to her little, cosy apartment. On the way, she had gone to a payphone and called her parents, but they hadn't answered, so she realised quickly that they were probably asleep, so she left it at that and then carried on walking home.

She turned the key in the dirty lock and then walked up the few flights of steep stairs before flicking on the light switch in the main living area of her apartment. She washed, changed and then got into bed and slept dreamily.