Techie Blag - "Once you have their money, you never give it back"

This is a cautionary tale about the perils of commerce.

As you know, Deep Space Nine is a large space station, which is divided into several bays, which are joined by gangways which is dubbed "The Promenade". Each bay serves a specific function, the first one houses the Command Center where Captain Sisko and his crew manage the station. Some are used for living quarters, some are for cargo holds. One of these bays is where the shopkeepers can rent stalls, and where Garak has his tailor shop. This fifth or "E" bay is also home to less savory characters that deal in shady goods.

There was once a Romulan Senator by the name of Vreenak who, during a visit to the station, decided to do a little bit of shopping. However, instead of dealing with Starfleet-approved vendors, decided to do business with those shady vendors.

Displayed on a rickety table were various data rods of unknown origins. The vendor, a scraggly little Ferengi with a half-torn ear (lost to an angry customer, no doubt) assured him that the data rods were of excellent quality. Senator Vreenak chose a nice 32 GigaQuad rod with a very nice rigellian leather packaging.

When the Senator returned to his quarters, he turned to his PADD and transferred the falsified data Captain Sisko had provided to him. He was to return to the Romulan Homeworld and expose the blatant deception that the Federation was trying to use to drive a wedge between the Romulan Empire and the Dominion.

Unfortunately for the Senator, the data rod he had purchased was a counterfeit, which had only about 4 GigaQuads of effective storage. The falsified data had been seriously corrupted. By the time the Romulan Empire got to the data, the files were so badly damaged that the data was not recognized as fake.

The Romulan - Dominion alliance was dissolved and a few days later, the Romulan Empire joined the Federation against the Dominion.

So to everyone visiting Deep Space Nine: Do not buy cheap data rods from "E" Bay, for they are counterfeit. Sadly my brother did not heed this advice and he's stuck with a worthless "16GB" USB stick.