With the help of our Dominion Allies, the station is swiftly returning to normal. The lights are on, the flights are on time, and good Cardassian values are in evidence all around.

"Promenade."

Nothing happened.

"Promenade."

Nothing.

"Listen." I spoke directly into the interface panel. "You are the interface for Turbolift Three. I am a passenger. I want you to take me to the Promenade."

"Albanian, Alderbaran, Anatolian-"

"Do you speak Cardassian?"

"Breen, Brithonian, Bywywynnn-"

"Can't you speak Cardassian?"

"Cappadocian, Catalan-"

"You're a Cardassian computer! Why the hell can't you speak Cardassian?" The Federation engineers. Of course. First they screwed up my breakfast, now this. "All right, I get it. You only recognize Federation languages. Sprechen Sie deutsch?"

"Deutsch wird hier gesprochen. Bitte-"

"Scheisse! I don't know how to say Promenade in deutsch. How do other Cardassians communicate with you, rude gestures?"

The turbolift was moving. I wondered where I had told it to take me.

There was a certain ham-fisted logic to the Federation speech recognition program. The turbolift let me out directly across from the waste treatment facility.

I'd better get out while I could. Surely I could find a living person with an organic brain, who would understand where I wanted to go.

"Zum Teufel!" I yelled at the interface, then leaped out of the lift just in time. The doors whisked shut. I didn't know what alarmed me more, that the computer believed it knew the way to hell, or that it might be right.

Sighing, I tapped on the door of the waste treatment facility.

"Who is it?" The voice seemed to come from some distance inside the room.

"Cardassian Information Service representative. I'd like to speak with a station engineer."

The door opened on yet another Ferengi. This one had a spanner in his left hand and a magnifying loupe over his right eye. It was not a good look.

"Your turbolift." I pointed. "It doesn't understand Cardassian."

"Uh, did you try Ferengi?"

"No, I did not try Ferengi, for the perfectly logical reason that I don't speak Ferengi!"

"Well, how did you get here, then?"

"The program recognized the one word I can say in an obscure foreign tongue called German, and ran with it."

"Oh, yeah." He nodded. "It speaks that."

"My point, though, Mr..."

"Rom."

"Rom, is that it's going to be very difficult to get around the station if the turbolifts don't understand a word I say."

"Well, that's true." Another nod, then a long pause. "How long have you been here?"

"Twelve hours. The last two have seemed disproportionately long."

"How have you gotten around until now?"

Good question. I remembered the answer, vaguely. "My friend Nadine talked to it. She speaks some Federation language."

Rom clutched the spanner, hissing. "Nadine? As in, 'Oh, Nadine, YES!'?" The quote was in a breathless falsetto shriek.

"Whoa," I said, taken aback. "Did I sound like that?"

"More than once. I didn't get a wink of sleep, my wife is on a mission to find out who Nadine is, and she will find out, because that's the way she is, and they will make comparisons you and I would rather they didn't. As for my impressionable son, it's a good thing he's at Starfleet Academy. He was probably too far away to hear."

Affecting a hurt tone wasn't difficult. "I wish you wouldn't talk about Nadine that way. She's a vivacious and affectionate person, and you're not being very nice to her."

Rom's face fell. "Oh. Sorry."

"Well, that's better."

"What I-what you need is sound-proofing," the engineer said. "That'll give you all the privacy you want."

With an utter lack of expression, I agreed, "That sounds perfect. While you're there installing it, would you take a look at the replicator?"

So I had gotten two of the four items on my list. Now for number three. "About the turbolift-"

Rom scratched his head with the spanner. "Maybe if I take out Anatolian and Cappadocian, that will free up enough memory to put Cardassian back."

And four. "In the meantime, do you mind telling it to take me to the Promenade?"