Tribbles

Lyrics

Stardate 4523.3.
Deep Space Station K-7, orbiting Sherman's Planet.
A trader named Cyrano Jones steps off his ship.
He says the best things in life are very, very expensive.
He carries a small cage.
And in the cage, a soft promise.

He called it a Tribble.
Felt like a warm sigh in your palm.
It made a sound when you held it, a low coo that vibrated right into your bones.
The sound of pure contentment.
A perfect commodity.
Uhura bought the first one.
For a handful of credits.
She didn't know she was buying an economy.

It eats. It breeds.
Mr. Spock will tell you.
They are born pregnant.
Half its weight in quadrotriticale grain every twelve hours.
The asset that prints itself.
The currency that consumes the vault.
Ten becomes a hundred.
A hundred becomes a thousand.

They filled the grain bins on K-7.
They poured from the food synthesizers on the Enterprise.
Captain Kirk, standing chest-deep in a pile of purring fluff on his own bridge.
He was not pleased.
Mr. Spock, calm, with his tricorder out.
One million, seven hundred seventy-one thousand, five hundred sixty-one.
Give or take.

It eats. It breeds.
They are born pregnant.
Half its weight in quadrotriticale grain every twelve hours.
The asset that prints itself.
The currency that consumes the vault.

And then, the Klingon.
Korax, at the bar.
The purring stopped cold.
The gentle vibration became a scream of pure biological disgust.
And just like that, the plague had a purpose.
A furry, shrieking, Klingon detector.
Its market value peaked in its final moment of utility.

Scotty beamed them away.
Every last one.
An ecological problem for the Klingon home world.
Cyrano Jones was sentenced to clean up the station.
It would take him, Spock estimated, seventeen point nine years.
The market, for a moment, was quiet again.