"Who has authority over the lighting?"

"Please rephrase your question."

"If someone invented better lighting, whose decision would it be to start using it or not?"

"The Station commander, Jemima Rawls."

"How can I meet this person?"

"You can request an appointment through Lieutenant Zirs."

"How can I meet Lieutenant Zirs?"

She really hopes it isn't through a person she'd have to meet by talking to another person who she'd have to meet by...

"Lieutenant Zirs has an office on deck one."

Then she'll get directions and visit the office. Can she just go in?

She can! Lieutenant Zirs is an alien; he's blue and there's some sort of seam-like ridge down the middle of his face. He's chatting with someone, another human, but apparently not too urgently to look up at her when she comes in. "Hello! How can I help you?"

She can tell he's blue but not enough detail to be sure it's not just a fashion statement.

"I can do this," she says, conjuring a light and appearing to hold it in her hand. "I might be able to improve on the lighting the station already has but I don't know for sure. I can also change the colors of things or hide things."

"- Oh, that's interesting! Where are you from?" says Lieutenant Zirs.

"I am from a planet that might not be known to you and might not be in this universe. I would like very much to go back there but the pilot of the ship I came here in hadn't heard of it and didn't have any language samples from it."

"...huh. Was it a Federation ship?"

"I think so."

"Starfleet?"

"She was going places to look at distant stars and learn things about them. Alone until I showed up. I don't know what Starfleet is."

"If she was alone it wouldn't be Starfleet, probably. What's the advantage of your lights over conventional ones?"

"I'm not entirely sure how your lighting works, but I don't need to burn anything and my lights probably don't break under the same circumstances as yours. I can make lights that let plants grow. At least the plants I'm familiar with, I don't know about alien plants."

"...conventional lights don't burn things or break frequently, and they can grow plants."

"They don't burn things? That's not how I understand conventional lights to work where I'm from."

"They run on electricity, which I suppose could be generated with an incinerator but... isn't."

"What generates it?"

"...there's an antimatter reactor. The computer can tell you this kind of thing."

"...I think I have advantages over an antimatter reactor, in that I don't need antimatter. I don't need to burn anything. I need food but I need food regardless and it's not clear that I would need any more to make lights than to avoid making them."