After completing her exam with a reasonable expectation of passing (thank you, Data!) Leo went off in search of Boothby. There were acres of grounds to cover, but she seemed to remember he'd been working on the tulip beds earlier in the week, setting the bulbs now that would bloom next spring. That day he'd begun to tell her tales of the days in "ancient" Europe when tulips were held more valuable than gold and led to more intrigues, murders, and sordid adventures than that once-rare metal; he'd been delighted to learn she'd read several books on the subject on her own. It's one of the things that forged a quick friendship between them, a love for history. The other was a disdain for discarding the past in favor of the future. "New for new's sake is ego-feeding foolishness," he'd grumped one day, and she had to agree. Leo could sense one of Boothby's great sources of pleasure was when he was able to help her sustain her "old ways". It was a phrase they used frequently, always with a sardonic edge. In fact he'd adopted the nickname "Ollie" for her, a play on the initials O.L., for Old Lady, as he'd observed when he first discovered the "distance" she'd traveled: "That makes you the oldest lady on campus."

She'd become very fond of the curmudgeonly groundskeeper – she'd never refer to him as a mere "gardener" – and when she wasn't studying or feebly attempting to socialize with cadets for whom she was more entertainment than companion she sought his company as he worked. He'd offered her a trowel one day and said, "You might as well make yourself useful if you're going to distract me," but she'd told him then "I have such a black thumb that plants keel over if I get within ten feet of them."

"Nonsense. You simply haven't been instructed properly." And he'd stuck the trowel in her hand and shown her how to set the marigolds along the edge of the vegetable beds to keep the insects away.

"But there aren't any predatory insects here, isn't that one of those 'improvements' I keep hearing about?"

"That's no reason to stop doing it," he insisted.

"Boothby, isn't that just 'old for old's sake'?"

He'd regarded her with a narrow eye, and retorted with the hint of a smile, "I'll bet you got into all sorts of trouble back in the 21st century. Are you sure you didn't have to get out?" She made a face. "Besides," he added with a wave of his hand, "see how lovely the colors are." He was right, the rich golds contrasted with the rows of dark earth and plants, and made a beautiful border against the surrounding turf. Truthfully, Boothby's handiwork provided the only real color, and the only truly naturally growing things, among dozens of acres of scientifically-perfect green lawns and botanically replicated maples and oaks, even the largest of them no more than a dozen years old because they were replaced regularly. After hours spent in architecturally-perfected artificial environments, smooth glass and steel buildings with self-renewing breathable atmospheres, Leo would run to the nearest patch of "Boothby-World" she could find, which is how they met in the first place. The friendship between Boothby (a figure of almost mythical stature among Academy cadets and even faculty and staff) and the Oldest Lady on Campus was of course a source of much discussion and conjecture. Some talk even held that Leo was one of Boothby's ancestors, something like a great-great-great-great grandmother. Leo brushed off the questions and ignored the rumors, for the simple pleasure of driving the gossips crazy. That, at least, was a long-held pastime she could still enjoy in her new life.

Now, her head swimming with fatigue but reconciled with warp mathematics, Leo tracked Boothby down in Tulip Bed #7.

"Hey, Green Man, I'm still alive." She'd named him after the pagan god of planting and spring. He sat back in the dirt between his basket of bulbs and his caddy of tools.

"So, what do you think?"

"I think I did okay, I know for certain I had to have passed. I wouldn't have if karma hadn't dropped that android in my lap yesterday in the library."

"An android helped you study?" Boothby couldn't think of a one on campus that could help with warp mathematics. They were strictly administrative and general staff, programmed for their particular functions.

Leo dropped down beside Boothby and began handing him bulbs to plant. "Yeah, I'd never actually met one before, not to talk to really. He's a Starfleet officer here for the First Contact Diplomacy seminar."

"Well what's his name? Or did you just plug him into your computer and copy his notes?" He dug and set bulbs as he talked, not looking up, just holding a hand out for the next bulb.

"Ha, ha. He only has one name, Data. He's second officer on the Enterprise, can you believe it? The Enterprise blank through D has been in my texts since I got here, and its second officer had me converting word problems to warp calculations in two hours! Who'da thunk?"

Boothby was sitting back again, wiping the dirt from his hands and looking very interested. "Well it's not as if you were brain damaged on the way here… Commander Data of the Enterprise D, eh?" His smile of recognition piqued Leo's curiosity.

"You know him? How? He didn't come through the Academy did he?"

"Of course he did. You don't think they just built him and stuck him on the Federation flagship without some orientation, do you? Of course it was mostly interpersonal dynamics they were interested in developing, but the Academy is the perfect place for that." He paused for a moment, then asked her incredulously, "You don't know who he is, do you?"

"I do now, we spent all night talking."

"I mean, you've never heard of him? The only android serving in Starfleet, more commendations than uniform space to display them?"

She didn't like feeling like a dork. "Gimme a break, will you, I've only been here a couple months! Everything I know about the Enterprise came from texts on basic Federation history, first contact with the Klingons, all that. I've barely learned the names of the captains, I didn't exactly have time to memorize a hundred years' worth of crew rosters."

"Well next time you're in the library access some tactical history from the past decade. You'll find a great deal of interesting details about your accidental tutor."

"Well I can just ask him tonight."

"You'll see him again tonight?"

"Yeah he wants to find out how I did on the exam. Evaluation stats should be out by 3 o'clock." They passed, dug, and planted in silence for a while, then Leo said, "Boothby, can I tell you something?"

He smiled warmly as he dug and planted. "When have you not?"

"Well about Data, I told you we spent all night talking. And I mean all night, until 0530, after we finished with the tutoring I invited him back to my place," she saw Boothby's eyebrows raise comically, "Don't start! It's just that I hadn't really had anybody to talk with, besides you of course, in the longest time." Boothby was aware of her tendency to keep to herself even "before". "I mean, people talk to me here, they quiz me up down and sideways because I'm not only new I'm, you know, new, and it's not that they're all boring or mean – they've helped me out plenty actually – there's just been nobody I really felt I could connect with beyond superficial stuff. But in the first ten minutes after Data showed up, he just walked up to me cold and offered to help, I just felt easy, comfortable, like here was someone more, well not like me exactly, but potentially in synch, or something." Boothby didn't respond, just reached out for another bulb she'd been holding onto as she talked. "Fine, I guess I'm just getting a little sleep-dep crazy or something." After planting the bulb she'd finally handed over, Boothby sat back on his heels and looked her in the eye.

"He spoke to who you are, you mean. It's all he's able to do, Leo. It's a sort of gift all androids have as a birthright, the ability to respond to things and people exactly as they appear to be. The only expectations they have come from empirical experience. What you show is what they get."

"That's pretty much what he told me. But it wasn't like talking to an interactive machine, Boothby, he wanted to know me. Me, as in who I am, like you said, not just where I've been or how I got here or what I'm gonna do, but how those things make me who I am. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, I was just so desperate for intelligent, natural company I'm slapping all sorts of extra meaning on it. He helped me out and we got acquainted, a little anyway." She saw the look on Boothby's face, a sort of knowing smile. "You know him, I mean personally, don't you?"

"When Data was here at the Academy he came to me from time to time pretty much like you do, looking for some respite from confusion. And he's as far from an 'interactive machine' as this oak here is from that maple over there," he pointed from the engineered oak to the one and only natural tree on campus, still on the small side, planted as a sapling by Boothby himself.

"What on earth could there be here to confuse him?"

"Same things that confuse you. People. How to fit in. Whether or how to try to fit in, or just accept as a given you'll always be an outsider and take it from there."

Aha. "So what did you tell him?" Leo tried not to sound too eager.

Boothby humphed. "What have I told you?"

"Not a whole hell of a lot, if you wanna know."

"There you go."

The bulb basket was empty now. "It's not fair to mess with me when I haven't slept for almost thirty hours."

Boothby put his tools back in the caddy and wiped his hands on his pants before rising and pulling Leo to her feet. "Ollie, if all it took for you to get by was for you to memorize instructions, you wouldn't be out here planting tulips. All people like you and Data need is someone to think out loud at, who won't screw you up with a lot of stupid questions and advice that if it was any good at all would only work for them."

"But you've given me advice, you have to have given Data advice, and we can't be the only two who've dug in the dirt with the Academy Guru," she stuck the last bit in as a not-so-subtle dig.

"Everything I've ever told you, or him, or the others – and there have only been a few I'd waste my time on – comes down to three words… think it over."

"Think what over?" They were walking along the path back to the student commons. Boothby rolled his eyes in exaggerated patience and patted Leo on the shoulder.

"You do need to sleep. I meant that the best I – and by the way don't ever call me a 'guru' again or you've planted your last tulip on this campus – can do for you is to listen, maybe point out where I think you might me headed wrong, and have you think it over. Okay, this is where we part company." Leo was about to get confused again until she realized that he was headed off to the groundskeeping shed. Before he did he inquired, "Tell me something, Leo, did Data suggest that you continue your acquaintance?"

"He did, actually. How did you know?"

That knowing smile returned. "Just a hunch. Do yourself a favor and take him up on it. As friends go, you could do a whole lot worse. Now get some sleep before you wander another several centuries out of your way."

Well if that was the only real advice he had to offer, it sounded pretty good right now. Leo dragged back to her quarters and fell face down on the bed, asleep before impact.