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I was very much surprised to find that everything was pretty normal when I visited the scientists vessel and met Lo-ret-ta. Surprised and a little embarassed because it was clear that I had sucumed to a load of Zarkin crap! I had been entertaining visions of lunitics bouncing off the walls with crazy expressions on their faces. Damn! I must have forgotten my medication that day.

After Lo-ret-ta introduced me to the crew, her and I went to her quarters for some privacy and some conversation. I began with, "I think I owe you all and perhaps even myself an apology, for jumping to conclusions without any information. This whole thing with the R&R desease has everyone a little on edge." and she said, "I know, and it's all so silly! You and I both know that there are many intelligent species in the Universe who have cultural characteristics that include the concept of musical tones. The truth is that this Rock and Roll is just the Human version of music."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, I just sat there with my mouth open as though I was suddenly paralyzed. Finally when I was able to speak I said, "So, what about the desease?" and she said, "There is no desease, that was made up by those back home who for some reason don't want us to return." Again I went into momentary paralysis before saying "You mean this is all a load of Zarkin crap?" To which she nodded in the affirmative. And then she began to tell me the incredible story of how this all came about in the first place.

It is well known that long periods of isolation in space has consequences. Lo-ret-ta is the crew's psychologist as well as an archeologist, and while she was studying the humans cultural environment, she began to focus on this rock and roll music. Specifically how it made her feel good. So she had the idea to try a little experiment on the crew in order to address the issue of space bordom. She began to slowly introduce this music to them over time. At first they indicated that they hated it and she took a lot of flack from them.

She even changed her name to Get Back Lo-ret-ta and went about the ship dancing and singing. Nothing! But then, curious things began to happen. She would catch other members of the crew doing the same and singing some rock and roll song when they thought no one was watching or could hear them. Lo-ret-ta just smiled and knew that it had worked, at least to a certain degree. When the artificial intelligence started to call itself Jumpin Jack Flash Lo-ret-ta thought the music thing was working. But then, when the navigator changed his name to Billy Bob Bubba she couldn't figure out what was going on and almost became alarmed until she realized that it was the influence of the human culture as a whole that was responsible.

The important thing to Lo-ret-ta and the rest of the crew, is that all this improved their quality of life aboard Ghost (the ship who is a living form of life whose natural habitat is space itself, and who cannot get too close to large bodies of mass like planets without being harmed.) At this point, Lo-ret-ta admitted that they had brought their problems on themselves by not being descrete when sending their reports back home. They had begun to allow those cultural influences to express themselves in those reports and this is what their enemies saw fit to use as their excuse to isolate them here in this system.

And of course, those very forces back home whose interests were best served by keeping this particular crew somewhere besides back home, decided to justify their decision to isolate them by spreading the rumor that the scientists had contracted a highly contagious desease.

While I was sitting there in Lo-ret-ta's room listening to all this, the thought crossed my mind that this would have been hilariously funny had it not gotten so out of hand until now it actually represented a clear threat to the entire Universe. Incredible!