Credit Card Scholarship

Credit Card Scholarship is the tenth episode of the fifth RIS Bouteina season.

Tagline

Rihanna is on a field trip (or an away mission) and realizes that some scholarships on an ISC applicant-controlled planet seem to be awarded solely on the basis of how many credit cards the applicants possessed.

Summary

Act One

When entering the border zone of the Interstellar Concordium, they kept receiving garbled hails about credit cards. Taev Radaik suggests that an away mission be launched to go to the heart of the matter, with Ilyana leading it and taking with her a couple of Romulan teenagers. They find a poster encouraging students to apply for a credit card-based scholarship on campus. Intrigued, they read the small print and they realize that the scholarship is lavish enough to give its winners a "free ride" through university, overhearing students that intend to apply for it after taking a prospectus of the scholarship.

Act Two

These students find themselves lucky to be under a territory under ISC jurisdiction because the Hydran Kingdom has outlawed credit cards. They scramble to get more of them, while Ilyana goes to the library to find a book pertaining to the use of credit cards. However, all but one book about credit cards have been checked out, because of an essay contest on the theme "I spend, therefore I am". They vacate the medicine library to look for the book in question and the bridge officers are made aware of what the away team found back on the surface pertaining to what was on the hails: graduate students making them.

Act Three

With the Triple-E Senates beamed down to form up with the away team, Ilyana is relieved of command then beamed up, with Vaebn Mairex and Taev Radaik taking command of the mission. Otto Mann discusses the matter of credit cards with the others, including Aehmig, Rihanna's brother, just as these previously encountered students are filling out credit card applications, four of them each, in an effort to get the required number of credit cards for the scholarship, even when their research grants were enough to fund their use. Brianna meets failed scholarship competitors and she advises them to cut their cards apart.

Act Four

Back on the ship, the riov participated in a hastily-modified holodeck program pertaining to credit card debts, alongside the ship's purser and the Subytt redshirt. They find themselves in a situation to come to the aid of one who was indebted because of credit cards, with Stella taking on the persona of the indebted person. However, on the planet's surface, the away team finally accessed the science laboratory containing the radio in question and they told the Romulans why they wanted these credit card scholarships. Brianna Reiss then lists what they could purchase for $500 before telling them that their device worked.

Act Five

While still on Vordum II, the away team hailed the bridge, requesting the ship's communications officer to hail the lab as a test run of the device on the ground. They shut down their communicators while the scientists are off to purchase another viewscreen compatible with their computer equipment, with the best screen in their price range being a 42-inch plasma screen. Rihanna returns from the library and tells the away team that credit cards are almost religious in nature for the locals, who reveal, in their first two-way, short-range communication, that their local name is the Mohagh.

Production notes

My source of inspiration was a passage in a book called Spoiled Rotten who stated that, rather than winning a scholarship reserved to the students that had 6 credit cards or more, the students of an university who held six credit cards won dictionaries instead. I felt that a scholarship was more deserving than a mere dictionary for people who held six credit cards or more. Also, the scholarship system was very similar to the system of entry scholarships at the University of Montreal except that R-scores are replaced with the number of credit cards.

External link

• Credit Card Scholarship on the RIS Bouteina boards