Guest Quarters — Metric Misstep and the Hidden Chip
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Riker escorts Setal into the guest quarters and demonstrates the food slot, maintaining a formal yet wary demeanor.
Setal struggles to order water using unfamiliar Celsius metrics, highlighting his disorientation in Federation technology.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Tortured and anxious beneath a thin veneer of composure—shame, regret, and fear intermingle with deliberate secrecy.
Left alone in the quarter, Setal requests water, bungles the ship's temperature units, demonstrates visible frustration and self-reproach, sits on the bed, removes a boot, opens a wristband to reveal a tiny compartment and a thin blue chip, then snaps the band closed and conceals it again.
- • To appear cooperative enough not to provoke immediate hostility.
- • To conceal and protect the blue chip from detection.
- • To test the environment and the crew's reactions.
- • To buy time while mentally preparing for next actions or consequences.
- • The Federation environment is culturally and technically different and may compromise his plans.
- • He is under close observation and must hide key items carefully.
- • Exposure of the chip would ruin his objectives and possibly endanger him.
Controlled and alert — polite deference masking concern about security implications and the need to maintain order.
Riker escorts Setal into the guest quarters, demonstrates the food slot, instructs him on using the com panel for contact, warns of further questioning, then exits while maintaining a professional, watchful distance.
- • Secure the defector in a safe, contained environment.
- • Provide minimal hospitality while preserving operational control.
- • Establish a channel of communication (com panel) and signal future interrogation.
- • Minimize provocation while observing the subject for suspicious behavior.
- • Starfleet protocols require humane treatment but also vigilance with defectors.
- • Defectors may conceal threats; containment and observation are prudent.
- • Maintaining calm, professional demeanor will reduce escalation and preserve command authority.
Neutral, purely functional (no affect).
The shipboard computer responds to Setal's request: queries for a temperature, informs him the system uses Celsius, then executes the provisioning command and materializes a glass of water into the food slot.
- • To clarify user input to ensure correct provisioning.
- • To enforce system constraints (metric calibration).
- • To fulfill the crew member's request accurately and efficiently.
- • System operations require standardized inputs (Celsius).
- • Users will adapt to system constraints or be prompted for clarification.
- • Provisioning should proceed once parameters are sufficient.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Setal pulls off a single boot before opening the wristband, a mundane act that signals transition from public performance to private, clandestine action and creates a domestic rhythm that conceals the reveal.
A utilitarian glass of water is materialized by the computer in response to Setal's request; the glass punctuates domestic routine, grounds Setal's distress in mundane action and momentarily humanizes the scene.
The spare bed provides a place for Setal to sit and brood; it stages his isolation and internal conflict, anchoring the physical space where he reveals the wristband and conceals the chip.
The guest-quarter doors are the threshold through which Setal is brought in and then left behind; they physically separate him from the rest of the ship and establish the controlled privacy in which his secret gesture takes place.
The observation-style window serves as a visual focus for Setal's brooding; he looks out through it, using the starfield beyond as a place for private reflection and moral reckoning before and after the wristband reveal.
The guest-quarters com panel is verbally referenced by Riker as Setal's direct line to contact him; it functions as the formal mechanism for remote communication and reassurance while Setal is isolated and under observation.
Setal removes his personal wristband, flips open a concealed hinge to reveal a small compartment and exposes a thin blue chip. The wristband functions as a concealment device, a private repository for a potentially dangerous object and the scene's physical clue.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
A compact guest quarters aboard the Enterprise functions as a temporary holding cell for Setal: clinically private yet domestic, it allows humane treatment while enabling discrete observation. The room's design collapses hospitality and containment into one space where personal rituals can conceal dangerous truths.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Setal's hidden blue chip foreshadows his later suicide with a concealed Felodesine chip."
"Setal's hidden blue chip foreshadows his later suicide with a concealed Felodesine chip."
Key Dialogue
"RIKER: This is the food station... you can reach me through the com panel. Later, there are a few more questions we'd like to ask you..."
"SETAL: Computer, water."
"COMPUTER: Temperature? SETAL: Twelve onkians. COMPUTER: This system is calibrated to the Celsius metric system. SETAL: Any temperature at all. On the cold side of your system, whatever that is."