Comms Break: La Forge Brings a 'Souvenir'
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
La Forge contacts Riker, announcing their return with a significant discovery.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Calm professional neutrality; mildly alert as the lounge's tone tightens.
Working quietly in the background of Ten-Forward, the bartender maintains the room's ambient normalcy; the comm interruption makes the bar fall slightly still, altering the atmosphere around their usual service.
- • To preserve Ten-Forward's social equilibrium.
- • To avoid intruding on the officers' conversation unless required.
- • Ten-Forward should remain a safe, neutral social space.
- • Maintaining a subdued environment helps containment of emotional moments.
Curious and deliberately neutral; professionally detached but genuinely puzzled by human inconsistency in mourning.
Crosses to Riker, asks precise, clinical questions about familiarity and the emotional impact of death, listens for logical consistency, and tries to translate human mourning into analyzable terms until interrupted by Geordi's comm.
- • To gather data about how familiarity affects grief.
- • To form a rational model of human emotional response.
- • To elicit specific information that clarifies Riker's relationship to the deceased.
- • Human emotions can be interrogated and understood through structured questioning.
- • Clarifying facts (who knew whom and how well) will illuminate the reasons behind unequal grief.
Somber and contemplative on the surface; holds a restrained grief that becomes didactic when he articulates a pragmatic truth about human attachment.
Seated at the Ten-Forward table, Riker receives Data's clinical questioning, offers measured recollections about Lieutenant Aster, invokes Tasha Yar's death as a comparative example, and responds to Geordi's incoming com — shifting from private reflection to command-facing attention.
- • To process and contain his grief without becoming unmoored.
- • To articulate a truthful, perhaps hardened, perspective on the nature of loss.
- • To protect the emotional tone of the moment until external demands intrude.
- • Personal closeness amplifies grief and that's a natural human organising principle.
- • Honest acknowledgment of grief's inequality is necessary to understand human behavior and history.
Controlled and businesslike; displays mild urgency underlaid with the confidence of a field operator delivering results.
Present only as a comm voice; La Forge reports back to Riker with an upbeat-yet-businesslike tone that they have recovered a 'souvenir,' shifting the scene's axis from private philosophy to operational reality.
- • To report findings promptly to command.
- • To deliver a physical item that may be evidence or clue.
- • To prompt decisive action by informing Riker quickly.
- • Physical evidence or artifacts are crucial to solving shipboard anomalies.
- • It's important to inform command immediately rather than delay with analysis.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The waist-high Ten-Forward meeting table physically anchors the exchange: Riker sits at it with a drink, Data crosses to its edge and engages him. It frames intimacy and containment, making the conversation feel private until the comm slices through the room's focus.
Referenced verbally as 'a souvenir' La Forge claims to have 'brought back.' Though not yet seen, the token functions as a narrative pivot — a physical clue that will move the story from abstract discussion of grief to concrete investigation and possible danger.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Bridge is an off-stage but active presence: the origin point for Geordi's comm voice and the procedural world that can intrude on Ten-Forward's private moment. It represents operational reality and the chain of command that now redirects attention from elegy to evidence retrieval.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
No narrative connections mapped yet
This event is currently isolated in the narrative graph
Key Dialogue
"RIKER: Maybe if we felt the loss of any life as keenly as we felt the death of those close to us, our history would've been a lot less bloody."
"GEORDI'S COM VOICE: La Forge to Riker..."
"GEORDI'S COM VOICE: Yessir, and we've brought back a souvenier..."