chapter 2

Mary was the daughter of a well-off property developer, who had over 100 properties in his portfolio. He liked to keep it around that figure, but depending on the market, he might have a few more or a few less.
She'd gone to private school, flunked university, then took a year out to travel while she 'weighed up her options'.
The trouble was, she didn't have to work. Her dad had given her one of his properties as a birthday present, so she did not have to pay any rent or mortgage. He paid her bills and gave her a generous monthly allowance. She had no incentive to work.
Her dad wanted to give the company to her some day. He had worked hard and wanted to retire early. He wanted to retire knowing that his company was safe. He stopped her allowance and made her work in the office. She had to at least get a feel for the place and know how things worked before she took over.
Mary knew her dad would give her the company. It wasn't worth studying hard for 3 years to get a degree just so that she could do the same job as she would without a degree. She had not got fire in her belly or the passion her father had for property.
She would go into the office late, have a long lunch and go home early. She'd get through the bare minimum of work she had to.

The trouble was, Mary's mind was often elsewhere. Like most girls of her age, she liked boys. She enjoyed fashion and make up. She liked music. She liked to head off with the girls into town on a Friday night and get very drunk. She'd come home in her stocking feet with her killer heels in her hand, with her make up smeared, her hair messed up... when she came home at all!
Saturdays were for her to sleep in and recover from her hangover... then she'd get a phone call and she'd doll herself to do the same again on Saturday night.
Sundays hangovers were always the worst!

At home, she liked anything sci-fi. HG Wells was her favourite author, it she liked a bit of HP lovecraft and such as well.
She liked to binge watch her favourite classic sci-fi series and films, especially on a sunday afternoon when she was still feeling a bit fragile.

Whenever there was a sci-fi convention within two hundred miles, she would make the effort to go, driving there in the mini that her dad had bought her.

Sci-fi conventions led to cosplay, or getting dressed up as her favourite characters.
She loved to do it, but she loved to do it well. However, she did not like to cause too much attention to herself, so she would choose obscure characters that no one wanted to bother with.
For instance, she would play the mousey short haired woman in an orange skirt and mustard jumper from 'the land of the giants'. Mary knew her name was Betty Hamilton. She wasn't the glamorous pretty one, who liked to scream. She was the Velma character from scooby doo. The not so pretty intelligent one who stayed in the background and got things done.
Not getting as much attention meant she could see more of the convention and be more adventurous in other ways.

It was at one of there conventions that she came across a games table just finishing setting up with a futuristic style board game. She didn't catch the name of it, but there was not a queue of people waiting to join the game, so she asked and sat down.
She sat next to a skinny chap in his shop polo shirt and baggy jeans. He had a shock of bright ginger hair and dark rimmed glasses. As he dealt out cards and finished the set up, she noticed he had the typical pale skin of a ginger, with lots of freckles, but he was confident and knew what he was doing. She thought she heard someone call him Jim.

Mary's inexperience in the game showed and her character was killed off in the first hour. She stood and watched for a while. Jim's character got killed off a few minutes though no fault of his own. "It was bad luck" he explained later." there's always one or two cards that can catch you out!"

Jim didn't have to supervise the game. There was someone else, who was faring better, in the game. Mary asked if he wanted to have a look around with her.
Jim was not very sure. He'd not had many girlfriends. He'd certainly not been out with a Trekkie before!
"Just call me Ensign," she told him. "I'm the insignificant engineer in red, who get killed off in the first five minutes of the episode."