Connie had been right about Deep Space Nine. There was so much to do on the station in the short amount of time that he would be staying that he completely lost track of time when Connie came looking for him that evening. Kail was chatting with a woman who sold crafts and jewelry from a kiosk on the promenade when Connie found him and managed to finally drag him away.

"Where are we going?" Kail asked her as she placed herself between him and anything that might distract him from her quest.

"I rented a holosuite," she answered as she led him up the stairs to the third level of Quark's bar where the holosuites were located. "I've got a program that I think we'll both enjoy very much."

As they approached the door to holosuite two, Connie took an isolinear chip from her pocket and inserted it into the slot in the holosuite's main external terminal. The door opened a few moments later and Kail was presented with a scene not too unlike what might have been found on Bajor, but it was vary apparent that the scene was from Earth. As soon as Connie pulled him inside, the door slid shut and disappeared and a blast of cool, salty air washed over him. Bright flashing lights and loud noises also greeted his other senses from other directions.

The scene was somewhat familiar, and although he'd never been to a beach before, he remembered studying about them a little during his education. All the beaches on Bajor had been polluted or destroyed by the Cardassian occupation, making it impossible to see such a beautiful scene as the beach he was currently standing on. Dusk was slowly falling over the scene and most of the daytime beach dwellers had left, leaving the still-warm sand, the crashing waves, and the salty, cool breezes relatively unpopulated.

Nearby behind him was a wooden boardwalk that ended in concrete near a rocky pier with small wooden docks extruding here and there. Around the concrete part of the boardwalk were paved streets on which people walked along, marveling at the delicious smells coming from lines of food vendors and at the flashing lights emanating from the stores, as well as from the strange-looking contraptions which contained screaming, happy people that were cheering with fun and delight.

"So, what would you like to do first?" Connie asked, smiling in anticipated excitement.

"What are those machines doing to make those people scream like that?" Kail asked. "Aren't they scared?"

"Those are rides, Kail," Connie explained. "These people are having the time of their lives scaring themselves silly, but it's all very safe. No one gets hurt, except for the occasional sour stomach from riding too many times."

"I see."

"So, what would you like to do first?" she repeated.

Kail looked at her in amazement, looked around at the rides, then looked back at her with a look that said, 'You expect me to get on one of those?' She burst out laughing at his confounded look.

"Why don't we go on that one?" she said, pointing up.

When Kail looked up to see a roller-coaster track and a car roar by on it, he went wide-eyed in astonishment, and before he knew it, Connie was taking him by the hand and pulling him towards the entrance.

"Uh, Connie, I don't know if I want to try this."

"Don't worry, you'll love it," she reassured him. "I know I do!"

"That's what I was afraid of," he said as she pulled him into the seat next to her and helped him pull down and fasten the safety restraints. In a matter of moments before he could change his mind, the car began moving backwards up the inclined starting ramp. It was pulled up very high in the sky by a winch and stopped. Kail looked out around him and enjoyed the almost-dark sky, the wide and never-ending expanse of beach stretching out to either side, as well as the salty breeze that surrounded him. The scene was very peaceful and beautiful but that suddenly changed as the car was released and plummeted downward at incredible speeds on the track.

A rush of panic threatened to overtake him when suddenly the track curved upward into a loop, making him feel somewhat light-headed. The panic disappeared as the loop turned into an inverted corkscrew, followed by an inverted loop, then by another, even bigger loop before the car began to climb another incline like the first.

"Is that it?" he asked her, his voice cracking with excitement.

"Nope!" she yelled back just as the car was released for the second time to travel the same path backwards.

This time, Kail was so excited and felt so thrilled that he actually screamed with everyone else in the inverted corkscrew and the loops. He was quite disappointed when the car stopped at the entranceway at the end of the ride. He had enjoyed the experience far more than he had expected to, but they had to vacate the ride for the next group of passengers.

"Would you like to do it again?" Kail asked excitedly.

"I don't think my head or my stomach could take it again so soon!" She laughed. "Why don't we do something a little more tame first, then come back to do it again later?"

"Okay," he said. "What do you suggest?"

The two visited the fun house and then the haunted house, which didn't seem all that haunted to Kail, and ended up at a particular ride that spun a group of cars around in circles over inclined surfaces. The centrifugal force nearly squashed them against the side of the car, and Connie against Kail, but they managed to get off without becoming too dizzy.

They got on a couple of more rides that threw them side-to-side or up and down, and passed over a ride called the 'Tilt-a-Whirl' where the operator was hosing down one of the cars with water. They stopped to ride 'The Zipper' where the cars were able to spin each on their own hinges as well as along a rotating, oval-shaped body connected by a chain. A lot of screams seemed to come from that particular ride as well.

The last ride they went on was a Ferris wheel. It was not a particularly exciting ride, but the wheel went so high in the air that the view of the beach and the boardwalk below was breath-taking. Connie sat next to him, and Kail put his arm around her affectionately. She snuggled up and leaned next to him, laying her head on his shoulder.

"I want to thank you for showing me this program," Kail said. "This place is very wonderful."

"Yes, it is," she agreed. "My father is a holo-programmer. He made this program for me on my seventeenth birthday. This is supposed to be a typical beach and boardwalk of the late twentieth or early twenty-first century Earth. They don't make 'em like they used to anymore."

"I guess not," Kail agreed.

They sat together in the Ferris wheel car for several minutes, enjoying each other's company, when all the sudden, the entire holosuite shook violently. No one else in the program seemed to notice, so it was definitely not part of the program. They clung to each other as a second wave of shaking almost knocked them out of their seats in the car, and no sooner had it stopped when the power to the holosuite was cut, leaving them in mid-air about a meter above the floor as the scene around them disappeared.

They fell to the floor hard, but there was no damage, save for a sore bottom. Kail stood and helped Connie up.

"I wonder what happened?" Connie said.

"I don't know, but I'd better go see if I can help chief O'Brien," Kail told her. "It didn't feel like it was that far away."

"Right," Connie agreed. "I'll go with you."