He was sitting in a chair in the center of a room. A control room. Almost everyone but him was sitting at some sort of futuristic console on the outer wall of the room. The room was circular. Almost everyone was wearing nearly identical clothing - as was he, the view of his forearms indicated - some kind of uniform? The consoles occupied only most of the walls; directly in front of him was a bigscreen computer monitor running a starfield screen saver.
One person wasn't sitting at a console or wearing a uniform. She was standing next to his chair, wearing long flowing robes, with jet-black hair piled high on her head. But it wasn't all this that most set her apart from everyone else in the room. She had pointed ears.
"Captain, are you quite all right?" she said. When he didn't answer, she continued, "I am T'Pol, envoy to your Earth starship from the planet Vulcan."
"Oh boy," he said.