Title: Mass at Midnight
Note: Merry Christmas and happy holidays!


He first poured holy water into the replicated stoup, and then carried in the other unsimulables: altar and linens; candles and crucifix; chalice and paten; hosts and wine.

The program was based on Fr. Proietti's childhood parish — a stark, small space with low ceiling and unpadded pews. Today he fitted it with gold-shot white hangings and programmed the invisible pipe organ with carols.

The congregation would arrive soon. Plenty of curious Bajorans, no doubt; a few human civilians; fewer Starfleet folk.

Seventy thousand light years and two and a half millennia distant from Christ's birth, the priest bowed in prayer.