"Homemaker's Weekly says that wine and chocolate make excellent mother's day gifts," Spock told his mother the next day. This was technically true.

His mother gave him an exasperated, rather bleary-eyed glare.

"I know you meant well," she said finally, "But please never add anything to my food again."

Spock thought that he had learned a rather unfortunate lesson in that already.

His father didn't get up until the afternoon, and when he did, Spock saw that his parents weren't getting along. Normally, Amanda would dote on Sarek if he was even the slightest bit ill, accusing him of working too hard, but today, she ignored him. And she slammed the dish down in front of him when he asked for dinner.

Spock realized that he would have to intervene. This certainly wasn't conducive to mating behaviour.

*****

"I need to find a way to get my parents to go on vacation," Spock told Surlek the next day. Surlek was trying to teach T'Pring to stand by lifting her onto her feet and letting her fall on her bottom.

"Why?" he asked.

"It says right here that a vacation is a great way to rekindle romance, especially after an argument," Spock replied, indicating the PADD he was holding.

"You could make your house inhabitable," Surlek suggested, picking up T'Pring and dropping her. She started crying. Spock got up and gave her some candy so that she would be quiet.

"But then they would take me with them," Spock disagreed, "And this article makes it clear that one does not take children a romantic vacation."

"That is illogical," Surlek countered, "I would think that having children around would make people see how great they are and want to make more of them."

From across the playhouse, Spock saw that T'Pring was trying to swallow a candy wrapper and quickly ran to fish it out of her mouth.

"Besides," Surlek continued, "Your parents travel without you all the time. If that article is correct, why do you not have any siblings?"

Spock was disinclined to take anecdotal evidence over printed information, but pretended to agree. Surlek had given him an idea.

*****

Looking through his parents' travel plans, Spock found the perfect opportunity. His father was planning on attending a one day conference in Paris, which multiple sources assured him was the most romantic of destinations.

Spock decided to reschedule the transport so that his parents would be stuck there for longer than intended. He wasn't sure when to schedule the new transport, as he wasn't sure how long they would need to mate. An issue of Cosmopolitan magazine said that it took an average of 15 'thrusts', but Spock couldn't find a unit of time called a 'thrust' defined anywhere, and the article didn't include a standard deviation. In the end, he set them up for an extra two days, and hoped it would be enough.

Eventually, his parents left on this particular excursion, and Spock found Surlek on the playground.

"I bet my parents are making me a new sibling right now," Spock told him excitedly. Surlek tapped two fingers on his throat.

"How was your vacation, mother?" Spock asked as soon as his parents got home. He instantly realized that he had given himself away, he should have used the word 'trip', but his mother didn't seem to notice.

"Okay, I guess," she answered, "They messed up our transport home and we had to spend an extra two days. It was minus thirty degrees in Paris, so we went to see my parents."

Looking it up on the computer, Spock discovered that there were over twenty cities on Earth named Paris. Fascinating.

Later that evening, Spock slipped into his closet. When he was a baby, it had been a hallway that his parents could use to go check on him, but now that he was old enough to sleep on his own, they had added a door at each end and converted it into a storage area. Spock crawled to his parents' side and watched through the cracks in the door.

Sarek put on his nightshirt, and then turned to Amanda and said something. Spock didn't know all the words, but the general idea was that after having agreed to that sort of weekend, Amanda better be willing to engage in mating behaviour.

Spock's ears pricked up excitedly.

"Sarek!" Amanda exclaimed, "Are you telling me that after all I've put with from your family, you think it's a huge burden to put up with people who call each other pet names!?"

Sarek nodded.

"Well this just takes the cake ..." Amanda snarled under her breath, followed by several English swear words that Spock didn't know.

Spock saw his parents get into bed, and they appeared to be sleeping as far away from each other as possible.

He crawled out of the closet disappointed.