Professor S'chn T'gai Spock was a creature of habit. His days were meticulously planned out, from the very moment he finished meditation in the morning to the moment he began again in the evening. This included time set aside for unplanned incidences and for grading papers.

It was the second of these he was doing now. It had been a day with more unplanned incidents than the average, and he was 3.31 minutes behind schedule. He settled into his chair with a mug of his favorite therismasu, barely withholding a sigh of relief. Sighing, no matter how much he may have wanted to do so, would have been inappropriate of an adult Vulcan.

He pulled his PADD out of his bag, and turned his attention to the antique radio that sat cat-cornered on the back left of the tabletop.

When he was younger, Spock had spent many hours listening to kolchak music on Amanda's radio. There had been a station out of P'Jem, one of the only radio stations on Vulcan, where the monks who had undergone Kolinahr had played, and a young Spock had been illogically taken with it. He'd even attempted to learn to play the kolchak itself, before moving on to the ka'athyra.

After he'd made the decision to leave Vulcan for Starfleet, his mother had a twin of her radio commissioned for him, and it was one of his most prized possessions.

On Earth, there were a few hundred stations to choose from. Most of them were nostalgists, playing Old Earth music and what humans considered to be "classics". Spock, when he'd first arrived, had tried and summerly discarded these stations. Earth Classics, he'd discovered, were often loud and bombastic, and made focusing difficult. For a while, he'd given up on using the radio.

Then he'd met Nyota. Nyota was the closest he had to what humans would call a friend and Vulcans would call a study companion.

She was a student of his, a fact of which he was acutely aware, but she was gifted, and when she had asked for additional lessons in Vulcan, he had weighed the benefits and consequences of accepting the request, and ultimately agreed to tutor her outside of the assigned classroom time.

She was a gifted linguist, and eventually he had come to find their time together a welcome break from the monotony of the three classes of Introductory Modern Vulcan that he taught.

Nyota also ran a radio station.
Spock had, of course, been familiar with the Starfleet Academy radio station. For the most part, he had discarded the idea of listening to it- it was, like most of the radio stations these days, full of nostalgists playing music that he found outdated.

So, when she had mentioned that she had managed to convince the station's sponsor to let her do a bit on linguistics at 1900, he had tuned in reluctantly.

Nyota, however, lived up to her gifts, and Spock found that he was drawn into a fascinating dissection of the evolution of Standard, with no classical music to be found.

Now, it was part of his routine. Every Thursday night at 1900 he would turn on his radio, preset to the Academy station, and listen to whatever Nyota had to say on the subject of linguistics.

Today was a Thursday. It was 1900.

Curled up in his chair with his tea and his PADD, Spock reached over to turn the radio on.

He then double checked the station, frowning. It wasn't like him to have changed it and not remembered.

Yes, that was the academy broadcast channel.

But that was most decidedly not Nyota's voice.

Instead, two male voices chattered about advanced warp theory.

One of them, he realized after a moment, he knew. Pavel Chekov was the newest poster child for the Engineering department, racing through a double Engineering and Command track that rivaled even some of what Spock had done when he himself had been a cadet. Chekov had been at one of Spock's lectures on desert fauna, and had asked some thought provoking questions.

The other voice was unfamiliar.

It was human, male or some sort of masculine-aligned gender, with faintly accented standard, smooth and confident. The owner of the voice knew what he was talking about and was not afraid to talk about it. He was smart, that much was obvious, and Spock wondered why he'd never heard of or about him before.

This was- not ideal, but acceptable. He would have to comm Nyota later and ask if her segment had been moved to another time.

He opened his PADD and flipped to the first assignment. It was a mediocre translation of some Vulcan Learning Centre material. Acceptable.

"What do you think, Jim?" Checkov asked, over the radio. So that was the Cadet's name. Jim. Was this his first or last name? Spock turned it over in his head.

The pair were discussing the potential for future warp technology to generate the ability to time travel. If he hadn't heard their theories and math, Spock would have dismissed the topic out of hand.

It was a uniquely human tendency to pontificate on the seemingly unfeasible and generate theories, and to his unwilling surprise, Spock found that some of the ideas that Cadets Jim and Chekov discussed had merit. Fascinating.

As the evening progressed, Spock found himself drawn further and further into Cadet Chekov and the mysterious "Jim". Grading for his Introductory Vulcan class was monotonous at best and mind numbing at worst, and against his will he began to tune the two out for the sake of grammar errors and the difference between ek'nosh-talsu and ek'tukh-talsu. An Ek'nosh-talsu, he carefully reminded one of his students, was a climatologist, not a meteorologist.

He went on in such a fashion, editing and providing feedback, until once again the radio brought him up short.

"And now for a quick break from our rambling," Jim had been saying, "I'm going to play you all an old favorite song of mine. Hope you like it as much as I do."

This was the first time Spock had heard music from the Academy Radio, and he prepared to turn it off. The last thing he needed was a classical music-induced headache.

But once again Jim surpassed expectations. The voices faded out, replaced with the smooth notes of a familiar song; a quartet rendition of Falor's Journey on the ka'athyra and vluhn. This was music from Spock's homeworld, in the last place he'd expected to hear it. He carefully hid his surprise.

The radio cycled through a few more songs, some Vulcan, some Human of a sound that Spock had never heard before. Jim said that they were what remained of the Ancient Earthen Greats- Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. Spock resolved to find more of their music.

This Jim had clearly been to Vulcan, and stayed long enough to pick up their music. Fascinating. Spock had heard of few humans other than his own mother who chose to endure the harsh Vulcan heat, and there had never been a Jim among them.

He resolved to ask Nyota about him when he next saw her, and determinedly set out to finish his grading for the night.

Vulcan Translations (Provided via the VLD):

Therismasu- Tea, brewed Vulcan style

Kolchak- a Vulcan flute

Ka'athyra- a Vulcan lyre

Ek'nosh-talsu- Climatologist

Ek'tukh-talsu- Mineralogist

Vluhn- A vulcan drum