You Mixed-Up Siciliano

Mambo Italiano

A girl went back to Napoli

because she missed the scenery.
The native dances and the charming songs.
But wait a minute, something's wrong

-- Rosemary Clooney (Mambo Italiano)

=/\=

"What? What? Wait!" Admiral Carmen Calavicci was too shocked to emit more than a single syllable at a time. One of her new hires, a Temporal Agent named Sheilagh Bernstein, had just resigned.

"You heard me. I've had enough," Sheilagh said.

"But this – we, you, you've put so much time in already! Surely you'll get used to it," Carmen tried to reason with the older woman.

"You have, yes," Sheilagh conceded. "But for me, it's more than enough. Way, way too much."

"Perhaps we should have been more careful with how we trained you," Carmen allowed. "It should have been something more, more pleasant. Please, let us know how we can fix this. What can we do better?"

"Nothing. Just, just get these implanted devices out of my head, and my hands, and my feet. I'll go back to hacking into ancient computers."

"Sheilagh, be reasonable." There was a door chime. Carmen, perhaps a bit too annoyedly, asked, "Who is it?"

"Me," Richard Daniels said as he opened the door. Rick was the Senior Temporal Agent for the Human Unit of the Temporal Integrity Commission. "Ah, you're here," he said to Sheilagh.

"But I'm not staying. I'm quitting; I just gave notice."

"Oh," he said. Thinking fast, he added, "That's a pity. I was hoping we could go on another jaunt to the past. Something a lot less nasty."

"Nothing's going to change my mind. I don't want to go on another mission."

"Here, we'll do this," Carmen suggested, "Perhaps go on a little vacation. There are all sorts of delightful places and times that you could visit, with no shootings and no squishy moral dilemmas."

"I don't wanna ...."

"Richard here can go with you. We'll replicate some money if you go to an era that has it. And Crystal can get you some fabulous clothes. Go, have fun, and recharge your batteries a bit. I, I can't grant you vacation time after every single mission, but at least you can try, and have some fun, and enjoy some of the more positive aspects of all of this marvelous technology."

"I ...."

"You could," Carmen said, "watch Julius Caesar being performed live for the first time, at the old Globe Theatre. Or maybe see old Julius himself. So long as it wasn't on the Ides of March, that should be all right, yes?"

"We could go to New Orleans in 2002, take in some jazz and eat crawfish etoufée until we burst," Rick offered. "Or we could go to San Francisco in 2151 and witness some of the events surrounding the launch of the old NX-01."

"You're not playing fair," Sheilagh complained.

"No, we're not," Carmen admitted. "But I want you to know – in case you're unsure or I haven't said it enough or said it clearly enough – we need you. And I want you to understand that I will fight to keep you. And I fight a bit dirty, when I have to."

"I see," Sheilagh said, "Let me, uh, let me go home and think about it. Can I, uh, can I tell you tomorrow?"

"Sure," Carmen said. Sheilagh left, and Carmen turned to Rick and said, "You know I have little patience for such shenanigans. We need her."