Twenty-two years later…

Seventeen-year-old Amelia Reed swiped the sweat off her forehead and sighed. "Shoko? Are you up here again?" She didn't understand what her younger sister found so fascinating, spending all those hours up in the attic when she could be at the beach. It was summer vacation, after all! "Shoko?"

Shoko's hand waved from over the top of a storage container. "Mia! Come look at this!" When Mia didn't come over, she added, "I found Dad's autobiography!"

Curiosity piqued, Amelia threaded her way between the stacks of containers. Shoko was sitting cross-legged on the floor, an open container beside her marked Enterprise in their mother's flowing handwriting. She'd positioned a small fan to point at her and appeared to have been there for quite some time. "Listen to this," she said eagerly. "Dad just graduated from Starfleet Academy and now he's on his first assignment. 'We were sent with Admiral Buchanan as his security guards while he was on Vulcan. Of course, nobody actually admitted that we were his bodyguards. Rather, we were his 'staff' or his 'retinue' in official documents. There was no question, however, as to our real purpose. Some difficulty arose when Buchanan was to make his speech before the High Command. It turned out that only ceremonial weapons were allowed in the High Command's central meeting place.'"

Amelia laughed. "I bet Dad didn't like that."

"It gets better. 'Lieutenant Oswald assigned each of us a different ceremonial weapon, attempting to find an ancient Vulcan weapon that would still be serviceable. Because of my interest in archery, I was assigned the chal'kot, a Vulcan longbow. At least the Vulcans had the courtesy not to comment that the shortest member of our team was given the tallest weapon. My teammates were not so kind.'" Shoko grinned. "Don't you wish we had a picture of Dad with a Vulcan longbow?"

"Absolutely!" Even though Amelia was two years older than Shoko, she sometimes felt younger because Shoko was so serious. It was nice to enjoy this find together. "I'm glad you made me listen to this. What happens next?"

"Let's see, Dad has a longbow. 'Fortunately we didn't need our weapons.'"

Another voice floated up the stairs. "Mom said that we'd better come down, because she's run out of kids to bring Shoko downstairs." Eventually Tim's face poked around the corner.

"Uncle Trip and Aunt T'Pol will be here any minute!" exclaimed Amelia, recalling the reason she was sent to fetch her sister.

Tim, at eleven the youngest of the Reed siblings, looked at his sisters curiously. "What were you girls doing up here, anyway?"

"Reading Dad's autobiography," supplied Shoko.

He shook his head. "Weird."

Once everyone had their food, Amelia had a great topic for conversation. "Guess what Shoko found today!"

"What?" asked Hoshi.

Shoko looked triumphant. "Dad's autobiography!"

"I'd forgotten about those," grinned Trip. "I had ta write one too."

This sounded wonderful to Shoko. "Can we read yours?"

"I don't even know where it is."

T'Pol looked up from the task of cutting her eggplant parmesan. "It is probably in the basement in one of the containers marked Trip's Enterprise Paraphernalia." She turned to her honorary nieces and nephew. "Neither your father or Trip were particularly enthusiastic about writing their autobiographies when they started."

Despite himself, Tim was getting interested. "How'd you end up doing it, then?"

"It was during one of their longer stays in Sickbay," explained Hoshi. "Doctor Phlox made them do it so they wouldn't drive each other crazy."

"Which they proceeded to do anyway," added T'Pol.

Trip started chuckling to himself, earning questioning looks from the others. "I just remembered another interestin' thing from that stay in Sickbay."

"Dare I ask?" Malcolm had a strong feeling that this was going to be the kind of thing that his children would find entirely too amusing at his expense. It was one of the things he'd learned to live with out of paternal love, but that didn't mean he enjoyed it.

"Does 'The Ballad of the Stiff-Necked Paranoid Armory Officer' sound familiar?"

Malcolm found that all three of his children were giving him wide-eyed stares. "Can we hear the words?" asked Tim hopefully.

Hoshi and Trip burst out laughing, while T'Pol looked on with an amused expression. Malcolm scowled.

"There was somethin' about tryin' ta use too much power…" began Trip once he stopped laughing.

Malcolm gave him a threatening glare. "Oh no you don't. Not under my roof!"

Trip, who had written the masterpiece down and sung it several times since he came up with it, began to actually sing. "He wants ta arm us ta the teeth, but Cap'n Archer keeps him on a short leash."

Hoshi and T'Pol were giving each other looks of disbelief. Amelia, Shoko, and Tim were gleefully taking the scene in.

Malcolm went on the offensive. Looking at his children, he said carefully, "I should tell you about the time your uncle Trip was pregnant."

The End.

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