My very first simulation, as referred to on the "about" page. It was certainly a learning experience, and I don't mean researching 24th Century medicine (that's fairly easy once you already possess a background in health and nutrition).

The mobile emitter was easily explained. Entrepreneur Henry Starling (see Voyager episode Future's End II) had made more than one (to think he made only one wouldn't have been realistic anyway). They were found long ago at the former site of Chronowerx and eventually passed along to Starfleet Intelligence, who in time figured out what they were for.

The DQEF was to be a three-vessel fleet. I turned down a chance to be the Flagship CMO in favor of the underdog ship, the USS Plato. I know my way around an Intrepid ship better than any other class. I recruited three acquaintances from the Jupiter Station club, and that served to round out the crew; clearly over a third of the Plato's players were us (all three later joined me to launch Simulated ST Voyager). Among them was fan fiction writer Dr. Jekyl, who became my head nurse and foil. Ours was the first of the three to be fully staffed and ready to go.

We had such high hopes for our storyline. The Nurse would have had a fit over his spending time on the holodeck with the EMH (conducting social lessons. What were you thinking?). Eventually, some sort of crisis would have pit the two together, in which she'd have revealed her knowledge of his being a hologram and both would come to terms with their situation and emerge for the better. I suppose that would have happened by now if we had our way.

Not having been in a sim before, I had no idea how painfully clichéd it was. One ship had holograms of TV characters (I didn't want to tell them that the holo-Scotty probably wouldn't have survived half of engineering's common leaks), one had Lt. Commander Data and another a new Dax Trill, even though it was 2377. It took them weeks just to get to the point where I could arrive. I had a plan to utilize my time on the starbase to tour a waste transfer barge and speak with a reconfigured EMH. Then, it literally took months for the damned thing to leave starbase. We just HAD to appease the teen contingient by adding an Akira class ship at the last minute (it's right behind the Prometheus Class in quickening the little 'uns' pulses). It was just so poorly managed, it's a miracle it lasted as long as it had.

The beginning of the end came when when the player who recruited me expressed an odd jealousy over the Ferengi attack sequence. There was a sort of threat that he wanted in on the action Kaj and I had improvised. He was in a meeting at the Starbase during that time, but apparently expected us to drag it out for him to join in the fun. No thanks, especially with the increased hostility. Hostility and fun aren't a compatible combination. It was bad enough everyone got to establish backstory while I waited to write my first entry. When he started acting up again on my second visit to the runabout Gershwin (mind you he was on another ship and I barely communicated with him) - and the management added insult to injury by promoting the other ships' Doctors - Jekyl and I staged Mark Zimmerman the 1st's untimely demise. The USS Plato soon after fell like a house of cards, when not only my JS friends left, but most of the other crewmen as well. The CO went into the army and left the sim altogether. Someone about to leave wrote that the ship got eaten by some giant bird.

The recruitment club received a profile from a prospective stellar cartographer. The bio had her as Janeway and Chakotay's lovechild twenty years after Voyager's arrival in the Alpha Quadrant (note the series had not ended yet). After all that work figuring out a canon method to bring Mark over... I'm happy to say I wasn't alone in mentioning in replies that we were contiguous with events on Voyager. She settled for being Kathryn's niece, but still twenty years ahead of us. Well, we tried.

It became apparent that I was going to see her more than most officers. When she first fainted, I was at a department head meeting and had to leave in the middle to treat her. When it occurred the second time in as many simdays while I was treating seriously injured patients during a crisis, I passed her over to my EMH for rapid dispatching. Upon comparing notes with medical officers from other sims, it became clear that this player was a repeat offender, leaving a trail of extensive medical records in many a simulated Sickbay on Yahoo's RPG club circuit. Seems my EMH was more lenient than others I had spoken with. Had I continued with the DQEF, one more faint and she would have been relieved of duty. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen her do a lick of navigation the whole time I participated.

Mark Zimmerman's fate is explained near the end of the USS Black Star tale (See Dr. Mark Zimmerman II), when the Plato's surviving Engineer tells the Doctor what became of his duplicate. It is then we learn that he thinks of this first Mark Zimmerman as a brother, rather than a holographic clone.

The player for Dekket Kaj - another who also left the DQEF (I think it died off altogether) - went on to portray Gunnery Sergeant Arquin Tan on the Black Star.

1. Arrival in the Alpha Quadrant
   A Ferengi Melee, a shopping spree, and Lewis Z.

2. A Hectic Pace
   With no time to breathe, it's good they assigned a hologram.

3. The Evasion Tango
   The Nurse gets suspicious about her superior officer.

4. From Crisis to Critical
   Sickbay becomes a hotbed of triage.