The Balance Point Café

The Balance Point Café was opened at the first balance point discovered in a remote sector of the galaxy; it has been open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year since its airlocks were first pressurised

The café is retro-styled in the mould of a 20^th century Earth-American diner and a 26^th century Ioni-Charan (circa 21^st century Earth) street café, with a menu to match both styles and eras.

The café boasts the only 100% robotic waitress service, with impeccable service manner delivered from a selection of styles, one of which is chosen based on customer compatibility. This system is not without its flaws, and a number of the waitresses have had to be sold off to more local establishments due to bugs appearing in the serving software. On more than one occasion a waitress has been serving a number of tables using multiple serving protocols, only for a glitch to develop in the software. For example, one waitress threw a bowl of bolognaise at a female Ionian and screamed “There’s your meal you great hairy pig!” in Gregoran. The table of Gregorans next door were subsequently disappointed when the waitress performed a brief ceremony, as is Ionian custom, with a gentle whistle in her accent.

Balance Point

A balance point is a position in space where the gravitational fields of any number of bodies cancel each other out entirely. Due to the staggering number of objects in the galaxy, the time and resources required to locate such a phenomenon, and the difficulty in actually measuring the minute variations in gravitational fields so far from their parent bodies, there are very few known balance points.

The first balance point was found by an exploration team from the Alexan Science Foundation during the early days of the Galactic Trade Union (GTU), and it is in a relatively unremarkable sector of the α-quadrant, hundreds of light-years from any populated system. Regardless of the relative remoteness, a café was established within months of the discovery having been declared to the scientific community. The Balance Point Café has been open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year since the airlocks first pressurised.