Archer: Not a word. We had an agreement. She promised not to speak to the Vulcans without telling me.
Archer: Stay put, Commander. This is important. Start the recording. To the students of Ms Malvin's fourth grade class at the Worley Elementary School in Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland. This is Captain Archer aboard the starship Enterprise. On behalf of the entire crew, I'd like to thank you for your transmission. We all got a real kick out of your drawings and letters. You asked a lot of interesting questions. I wish we had time to answer all of them, but if we did that, we wouldn't get much exploring done. So I've selected a few, and hopefully our answers will give you a better idea of what life is like out here. Liam Brennan asks 'what do you eat?' For the most part, the same things you eat at home. Our Chef can make anything from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to turkey with all the trimmings. We have a hydroponic greenhouse onboard where we grow fruits and vegetables, and we can also replicate certain foods with our protein resequencer. Here's one from Geoff Miles. 'Is dating allowed on Enterprise?' Well, it's not discouraged, but there isn't a lot of privacy on a starship. Most of our crew share quarters with at least one other person, so it wouldn't exactly be practical. But if two crewmembers decide that they really like each other there are a lot of places they can go to look at the stars. Chloe O'Shannon wants to know, 'how do we talk to aliens?' I think I'll give that one to my Communications Officer, Ensign Hoshi Sato.
HOSHI: Well, Chloe, that's a very good question. We use a device called the universal translator. It's like an alien dictionary with hundreds of languages programmed into it and it can learn new languages very quickly but it doesn't always work, and when that happens it's up to me to try to translate. I'm sure I don't have to tell you it can be really hard sometimes. One wrong word can mean the difference between saying 'take my hand' or 'take my life'. So far I have managed to do pretty well.
ARCHER: Thanks, Hoshi. Here's one from Molly McCook. 'When you flush the toilet, where does it go?' That sounds like an engineering question, so we'll ask Commander Charles Tucker, our Chief Engineer. Trip.
TUCKER: Pause it, will you? A poop question, sir? Can't I talk about the warp reactor or the transporter?
TUCKER: The first thing you've got to understand is we recycle pretty much everything on a starship. That includes waste, and the first thing that happens to the waste is it gets processed through a machine called a bio-matter resequencer. Then it gets broken down into. Hold on. (Hoshi pauses recording) They're going to think I'm the sanitation engineer.
Trip: (recording resumed) So the waste is broken down into little molecules and then they get transformed into any number of things we can use on the ship. Cargo containers, insulation, boots, you name it.
PHLOX: (at T'Pol's station) Ah, I believe I can answer that, Captain. Hello, children. I'm Doctor Phlox, the ship's physician. I'm from a system called Denobula Triaxa and I feel very honoured to be part of this important mission. Germs. They may be tiny but they are among the most resilient organisms known to medical science. They can survive almost anywhere, on your kitchen counter, under your fingernail, in the vacuum of space. Over two hundred million space-dwelling microbes have been catalogued. One of the most virulent species lives inside grains of interstellar dust. Polycocyx astris. They can drift in a dormant state for millions of years and still cause a nasty cold. I once discovered a peculiar colony of spores on the hull of a-
Archer: Thank you, Doctor. Fascinating. I think we've taken up enough of Ms Malvin's classroom time. By the way, we've included some pictures of a comet we're studying. We think it might be the biggest one ever discovered by humans or Vulcans. That's what's so exciting about being on Enterprise. You never know what you're going to find next. We miss Earth, but hearing from you makes us all feel a little closer to home. Captain Archer, out. (recording is stopped) How'd it go?