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Of all the things Jim Kirk wishes he could do right now, getting good and drunk to drown his sorrows is certainly towards the top of the list. But his doctor says no, absolutely not, and never in his life has he wanted to go against doctor's orders less than he does lately.

So the captain finds himself in the Forum, unsure even what the hell to do with himself, and he gingerly eases himself down onto one of the couches, moving with the careful patience of the recently physically injured, before he notices the date on a nearby calendar.

Father's Day. Huh. How... stupidly appropriate.

"For those who've lost a parent... how the hell do you honor their memory? Even if you haven't, do you bother doing holidays like this?"

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Jim frowns a little. "That's too bad. We've run into our fair share of hostile races, but they're outnumbered by the peaceful ones. Or at least the ones who'd rather not take any sides."

"Well, part of it is probably that Earth hasn't really gone past the moon, for the most part. I mean, some people have gone farther out into space, yeah, but it's not like there's commercial flights to Alpha Centauri or whatever. I dunno." He ruminates on the subject, and his pizza, before adding, "there was the Nova Corps, but I heard their home planet got wrecked in the Annihilation Wave, so... yeah."

Jim decides he'd rather not get the details of this Annihilation thing. Recent days have been a downer as it is. "Alpha Centauri's nice," he says instead. "But without warp drive, I get why it's not a popular tourist spot."

Edited 2017-06-21 19:59 (UTC)

Clint doesn't know much of what happened in Annihilation, anyway; it's just as well.

"Yeah, we don't have a lot of warp drive. We don't even go to the moon all that much. I mean, secret bases and ruined ancient cities, and Uatu's house, but not, like, commuter flights."

"No one's tried to make any moon colonies yet?" Intellectually, of course, Jim knows that there was a time when Earth's moon was uninhabited, but it wasn't in his lifetime. Not even close.

"It's only twenty sixteen, man. We've got a long way to go before there's moon colonies."

Jim doesn't quite shrug, but he does give Clint an apologetic kind of look. "I've run into a lot of weird history here. Never know unless you ask."

"Yeah, that's fair," Clint admits. "So, do you guys have the Kree and Skrulls in your universe, or somebody else?"

"If we do, I've never heard of them," Jim says after a moment's thought. "The Federation's biggest unfriendlies are the Klingons and the Romulans, so far."

"Huh. Don't think I've met any of those. What're they like?"

"They're both humanoid, but pretty different," Jim says, picking at the last bits of his pizza crust. "Romulans look pretty similar to humans except for the pointed ears and green blood. Culturally they're kind of like... space Romans, I guess. Klingons have these forehead ridges and they're really into the whole warrior culture, glorious death in battle kinda thing."

"Huh. And these are the guys who make trouble in your neighborhood?" Clint's finishing off the last of his last piece, as well. Hooray, pizza!

Jim's not particularly hungry anymore, but he's pretty determined to finish off the rest of what he has left rather than take the ease way out and feed it to the dog. And he nods in response to Clint's question. "We've got a... I guess you could call it an armistice, with both of them. Official Neutral Zone set up between their space and ours, but it doesn't always work out. The Romulans are at least sort of trying to make nice lately, though."

Lucky may be disappointed, but Clint's not going to fault Jim for it. He's eating what he took, not a thing wrong with that. "Sounds a little like the Cold War was back home. You see a lot of cloak and dagger action?"

"Not personally," he says, shaking his head. Yeah, there was the brief attempt to pass as K'normian arms dealers in Klingon territory, but they got caught pretty much immediately, so he's not gonna count that. "Starfleet's supposed to be more about exploring the unknown than going on military campaigns. And I'm pretty new at the job."

"That does sound like the better thing to be doing, really."

Jim nods, and manages to smile a bit. "Less than twenty percent of the galaxy's been explored so far. Someone's gotta do it."

"Twenty percent still sounds like a heckuva lot," Clint muses. "You see all sorts'a wild stuff?"

Now this, this he prefers to talk about. "A couple of things. Some pretty cool astronomical phenomena, like this one planet we found where it rains sapphires, or the nebula made primarily out of gold dust and tequila. It's not drinkable, sadly."

"Okay, you have got to put together a greatest hits tape of cool space stuff to watch. Raining sapphires, that's great!"

"It'd be nice to skip the more boring, mundane survey missions and just do the highlights in real life," Jim agrees. "Honestly, with all the scientists and researchers onboard, Starfleet really should send along some real astrophotographers. We do take pictures but they could be better, you know?"

Clint nods, then chuckles as a thought strikes him. "Hey, here's an idea: get a film crew to do a documentary: life on an exploration ship. It'll either be the best sci-fi show ever made, or it'll be the Office in space!"

"Is it really science fiction if it's real life?" Jim asks, somewhat rhetorically. And then, because he doesn't get the reference, "What office d'you mean?"

"Eh, gotta figure reality TV's always got someone putting a narrative on it, right?" Oh, hey, missed reference. Bad Clint. "Oh, uh, 'the Office' is this sitcom pretending to be a documentary about the people who work in this office. It's all, like, office shenanigans and water cooler politics and desk drama and that sort'a stuff."

"A whole show about that? And people don't find that boring?" Jim has never tried an actual office type job. Many other things, yes, but not that. Even if he'd had the right background for it, an unexciting workplace like an office never held any appeal for him.