Star Trek: Production, a behind the scenes view of the process that has brought Star Trek: Exodus from the pages of a fan fiction archive on the internet to the small screen. This story is written by Hideout Writer, with the permission of RobertCanary, the creator of Star Trek: Exodus. Star Trek is owned by Paramount Studios, and any recognizable names belong to whoever they belong to. This writer is simply fooling around on the keyboard, making no profit from this venture.

Everything depicted here is fictional, and bears little to no account on real life. With that in mind, please enjoy this story.

The answer to his somewhat ambiguous ad came in the form of a police officer, who was in plainclothes.

"You must be Beth." Alex said, coming out to meet her.

"You are under arrest for attempting to procure the services of a prostitute." came the reply.

"Whoa, what?" Alex asked, shaking his head as if to clear it. "What are you on about? I'm trying to start a TV show, and I wanted to bring some out-takes to Paramount, so they'd be less likely to shut me down."

"A TV show where you screw with cute girls?" Beth asked. "You can explain it at the station."

"Before you take me in, may I retrieve something, and lock up the house?" Alex asked.

"Fine." Beth replied. "But I'm coming with."

"Suit yourself." Alex replied. He picked up the file case, and rifled through it, checking to be sure everything was there.

The officer watched as he calmly locked the file case, and then the front door. "Lead the way." Alex said blandly.

Beth handcuffed him, and shoved him into the car, where he relaxed as best as he could.

=/\=

After he was processed, he was placed in a room that had two chairs and a metal table. A few moments later, a young man came in. "So, looking for a prostitute, huh?" he said, sitting across from Alex.

Alex smiled slightly. "No." he answered levelly. "As I told 'Beth', assuming that is her name, I'm trying to start up a TV show. I was going to audition her for the part of 'Amaranth'."

"Really?" came the reply. "Have you got anything that proves that?"

"Hmm, proof can be somewhat subjective, but I do have several pieces in relation to it." Alex replied. "Obviously, if you decide to lock me up for trying to buy sex, then you're going to lock me up. I can at least be open about things." he placed the file case on the table, so that the bronzed name plate was facing up.

"Project: Exodus." the cop read. "And what's that? Some sort of religious reference?"

Alex opened the case, and pulled out the two signed legal documents, as well as the profile for Amaranth. "See for yourself." he said. "I still need to put together a profile for Zeb Macahan, among others, but before I got too heavily invested, I wanted to do a couple outtakes to show to Paramount so that I could get a green light to use the Star Trek intellectual property and make profit by it."

The interrogating cop took a look at the various papers, then opened the file. After several minutes, he looked at Alex, and put everything back in the file case. "I'll need to get someone who understands legalese, but this looks to be in order. Wait here."

"I'm not going anywhere." Alex replied, smiling slightly.

After a few minutes, a lawyer came in, and Alex handed him the legal documents.

"Well, it's all legal, though it raises some interesting questions. How do you intend to make this work?" the lawyer asked.

"Magic." Alex replied.

The lawyer blinked, then turned to the cop who had come in the room with him. "Well, it's official: he's off the deep end, but since you can't prove that he was looking for a prostitute, you can't stick anything to him. Let him go, tail him for a bit, if you need to, but there's nothing here."

"None of this shows up on my record, right?" Alex asked. "I had a clean record, up until now, and I'd rather not have that messed up because I didn't word the advertisement right."

"No, it only goes on your record if you are actually convicted of a crime." the cop replied.

"Good enough for me." Alex replied brightly. "Don't worry, I've got no hard feelings. Uh…do I just show myself out?"

"You were brought here in the back of a cruiser. Unless you want to walk home, we can call a cab for you." the cop said. "We try not to make things too difficult for innocent people."

"I can walk." Alex replied dismissively.

"Suit yourself." the cop said, walking out.

The lawyer held out a hand, which Alex shook, then said "Good luck out there. Try to make your ads a bit better next time?"

"I will certainly bear that in mind." Alex replied, smiling. "Have a nice day." With that, he teleported away, leaving the lawyer to stand there in shock.

=/\=

When his feet were solidly out of the ether once more, Alex went to his computer, and checked for a response to his ad. Someone had responded, a petite young lady who had just finished college, and needed work. She had a degree in drama, so Alex decided to pursue the lead.

He briefly pulled out the file describing Amaranth, and spoke a few words. While their exact meanings and even pronunciation would have escaped the average person, it was obvious that they were words of binding and changing.

The file shimmered slightly, seeming to throw off the strange waves in the air that could be observed if the angle and temperature are right. Suddenly, it brightened for a moment, the light and shimmering faded away. All that was left of the file was a bracelet, made of delicately woven silver, with emeralds twinkling in various places on the bracelet. Alex smiled in approval at what he had wrought, and put the bracelet into the file case before departing again in his usual manner.

=/\=

A/N: Alright people. Third chapter. This should suffice to get this thing off the ground and started…one can only hope that it doesn't stall out. Now, without further ado, if you have any questions, comments, or critiques, or have a number of scientific breakthroughs you've just made in your basement, leave a review, I'll be glad to hear from you!

Answers to Readers:

RobertCanary: Did you deliberately…no, of course that was on purpose. Obviously, Paramount will green-light the project. What would be the point in creating a story only to have it self-terminate so quickly? Beyond that…we'll see…later.

Milton Perry: Off-the-wall is my specialty. They tried to thrash it out of me with dull book reports and orations back in school, but I'm still kicking! Paramount will be a very interesting game to play, and I look forward to it. As for what's after this…stay tuned.