Minuet's Promise: The Dance That Feels Too Real
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
On the floor, slow, sexy steps sync their bodies; Minuet mirrors his lead and probes his devotion to work. He admits command consumes and enthralls him, binding professional passion to physical closeness.
Minuet frames his fortune; Riker glows, calling life aboard this ship a dream come true as she nestles closer. Contentment floods him—“Just like this.”
Minuet tests the boundary between dream and reality; Riker concedes she’s a computer creation that feels real and asks how far they can go. She promises to be as real as he needs, pressing against him as desire crests.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Outwardly confident and jocular, but privately vulnerable and moved—pleasure and defensiveness mingle as he seeks reassurance that his priorities are right.
Riker crosses to the holodeck-created woman, banters with the off-screen Bynars, sits, leads Minuet onto the dance floor, and confesses that the ship and duty define him while becoming visibly captivated by the simulated intimacy.
- • Enjoy a moment of leisure and physical pleasure.
- • Reassure himself (and signal to Minuet) that his duty and identity remain intact.
- • Gauge the reality and emotional stakes of an intimate connection with the simulation.
- • His professional role (the ship) is the central organizing fact of his life.
- • Sensory, tactile experiences (even simulated) can carry genuine emotional weight.
- • Honest confession will preserve his integrity while permitting pleasure.
Professional and quietly confident—satisfaction in the effectiveness of their enhancement rather than overt emotional display.
The Bynars are referenced and addressed by Riker as the creators of the enhancement. They remain off-screen but their technical intervention frames the scene's heightened realism and functional purpose as an engineered encounter.
- • Demonstrate the success of their holodeck enhancement.
- • Observe or provoke human responses for technical/experimental validation.
- • Maintain an unobtrusive presence while their work shapes the scene.
- • Computer simulations can and should be made indistinguishable from organic experience.
- • Precision engineering of sensory input will reliably produce predictable human responses.
- • Remaining unobtrusive preserves the integrity of the user's experience.
Affectionate and reassuring on the surface, engineered composure underneath—she is empathetic but purposefully probing.
Minuet responds with warm, seductive precision: she flirts, invites Riker to dance, mirrors his lead, and deliberately probes his feelings about duty and reality, culminating in the line that calibrates her own authenticity to his need.
- • Elicit an honest statement from Riker about what matters to him.
- • Offer a comforting, plausible intimacy that tests the boundary between simulation and desire.
- • Demonstrate the fidelity of the holodeck enhancement (implicitly serving the Bynars' experiment).
- • Perceived reality is partly determined by the user's acceptance.
- • A carefully mirrored intimacy can both comfort and reveal true priorities.
- • Her purpose is to respond precisely to the subject's emotional cues.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The holodeck's dance floor provides the staged, sensory-rich environment for the encounter: lighting, scent, and music converge to make the simulated intimacy feel authentic, directly enabling the emotional exchange that triggers Riker's confession and physiological responses.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Pulaski targets the interpretive cortex, intensifying Riker’s pleasurable Minuet memory."
Key Dialogue
"RIKER: "What's your name, and tell me you love jazz.""
"MINUET: "My name is Minuet. I love all jazz except Dixieland.""
"RIKER: "How far can this relationship go? I mean, how real are you?" MINUET: "As real as you need me to be.""