by Peter David
Soleta neglected to take it, since she was continuing to stare at him.
With a trace of impatience, he said, “Is there a problem, young lady?”
“No problem, no. It’s just that… you seem very familiar to me. I feel like we’ve met, but I can’t—”
Seven had not gone into great detail as to who they were going to be meeting with at the Daystrom Institute. That had been at Soleta’s own insistence. She had made it clear that, at any given moment, she didn’t want to know any more than she had to. Seven had found the attitude puzzling, but understandable. The magnitude of the threat they were facing could not be underestimated.
“This is the Doctor,” Seven said by way of explanation.
Soleta looked momentarily confused. “The Doctor? I met a man called the Doctor once. Wore a long brown coat and a blue suit. Very odd person. This isn’t him.”
“I used to be the physician for the Voyager,” he informed her with a touch of pride.
Soleta snapped her fingers. “Of course. You’re an emergency medical hologram. We had one of you on the Excalibur. One time we took on heavy casualties and sickbay was overrun. Selar brought you on line to deal with the overflow. You were doing triage.”
“That was not me… exactly,” said the Doctor.
“I think you’ll find the Doctor is unique,” said Seven.
He gave her an approving glance. “That’s kind of you to say. However,” and he turned back to Soleta, “your confusion is understandable. I certainly hope my… brethren… provided you with excellent medical service.”
“Oh yes. No complaints.”
The Doctor regarded her with curiosity. “You do not speak in a manner consistent with Vulcans. Are you perhaps a Vulcan/Romulan hybrid?”
The incisive observation astounded Soleta, and it was all she could do not to respond with something as obvious as a slack jaw. “Something like that,” was all she said.
“How medically interesting.” Then he promptly appeared to lose interest as he turned to Seven. “So the last vestiges of your time as a Borg are gone.” He studied her face. “It appears to have led to some skin irritation. Perhaps you’d like an analgesic cream? I can obtain some for you from the Institute’s medical stores. They’re quite comprehensive…”
“I appreciate that, but I’ll be fine.”
“Are you happy with your new status?”
“It feels like I’m relearning how to walk.”
“Have no fear. I’m quite certain that you’ll be running before you know it… excuse me!” He abruptly turned because Soleta was poking him in the arm. “Please stop that.”
“I don’t understand,” said Soleta. She looked around. “This is an ordinary room. There’s no reason for there to be any holographic projectors in here. But you have form and substance. How is this possible? How are you existing separately from Voyager?”
“The answer to that is the reason that I’m here at the Daystrom Institute,” said the Doctor with obvious pride. “My usual employment is at the Federation Institute, but I agreed to come here for a time to aid the D.I.’s research branch, since I am—at the risk of sounding immodest—the subject of the research.”
“Why?” said Soleta.
Warming to the topic, he told her, “I am in possession of a mobile emitter.”
“A mobile emitter?” said Soleta. “I never heard of that…”
“It won’t be developed until the twenty-ninth century. It was given to me by a man who acquired it through a rather involved happenstance.”
“Well… he was apparently a very generous friend.”
“Actually,” said the Doctor, sounding remarkably casual about it, “he tortured me and nearly destroyed the universe.”
Soleta looked questioningly to Seven, who nodded in confirmation. “Okay, well… that was my next guess. So the scientists here at the Institute…”
“Are endeavoring to reverse engineer it,” the Doctor said. “If they are able to succeed, it can prove to be the sort of liberating device that holograms have been waiting for.”
“Holograms have been waiting for something?”
His brow wrinkled. “You find that notion amusing in some way?”
Soleta picked up a warning look from Seven and immediately said, “No. Not at all. The concerns of holograms are to be taken very seriously. In fact, as it so happens…” she said, by way of prompting Seven.
Seven immediately picked up on it. “Yes, that is actually the reason that we’re here. It has to do with someone who happens to be, among other things, a hologram.”
“Oh.” It was hard for Soleta to be sure, but the Doctor seemed slightly crestfallen. “I had taken this to be a social call.”
“I very much wish that it could be, but we have to discuss something extremely serious with you.”
“How extremely serious?”
“At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the fate of the Federation could possibly hang in the balance.”
“Well then,” said the Doctor, “it’d be best if you wasted no time in telling me.”
Seven and Soleta laid out the situation for him in as quick strokes as they could. The Doctor took it all in, not asking any questions, nodding almost imperceptibly from time to time when some particularly salient point was being made. It didn’t take them long to present the problem, and when they finished, the Doctor did not make any immediate reply. Finally Seven asked, “So what do you think?”
He looked from one to the other and then said crisply, “I think you have a hell of a nerve.”
The answer caught the women off guard. “I… beg your pardon?” said Seven.
“I should think you would,” the Doctor said, a brittle edge to his voice. “You actually want to enlist me in an endeavor that would lead to the death of a computer entity? Me, of all people?”
“You, of all people, because you would be the best suited to help,” said Seven.
“Why? Is there something about my general demeanor that makes you think I’m inclined to be a traitor?”
“A traitor?” Soleta was incredulous. “How would you see yourself as a traitor?”
“Clearly,” the Doctor shot back, “you haven’t read my book, Photons Be Free. A compelling novel about the rights of holographic individuals. It has been universally hailed as thought provoking, eye-opening. I’m in the midst of writing an opera based upon it, as a vehicle for myself, of course.”
“Of course,” said Seven judiciously.
Soleta added, “I’m sure it will be a splendid musical entertainment.”
He ignored Soleta. “You read it, Seven. You know I wrote that from the heart.”
“You have a heart?” said Soleta.
“Metaphorically speaking,” he clarified with that same edge in his voice. “And now you want to enlist me in finding a way to destroy one of my own? One who has the potential to do vast good…?”
“Or vast evil,” said Seven, “and the latter is the more likely.”
“And that opinion is based on what?”
“Behavior. Responses to certain situations.”
“But she hasn’t taken any overt action.”
“If by that you mean, has she blown anyone up yet, then no,” said Soleta. “But Captain Calhoun believes—and I think he makes a convincing case—that it’s only a matter of time.”
“Humans likewise have potential for good and evil. We don’t simply go around slaughtering all of them on the off chance that, in the future, they might do something we don’t like.”
“Doctor—” Seven began.
He didn’t give her the opportunity to continue. “I would have thought that you, especially, would understand.”
Seven blinked in confusion. “Why me especially?”
“Because there were those on Voyager who were concerned that you posed a threat to the ship,” he said. “That the Borg would somehow manage to exert control over you and you would wind up betraying us or somehow sabotaging the ship. If Captain Janeway had given in to s
uspicion and fear, your life would have turned out very differently. You wouldn’t be standing here with your irritated skin and be telling me to help you kill an artificial life form—”
“You’re not killing anyone,” Soleta told him.
“Miss, with all due respect, I think I know a bit more about these things than you—”
“You’re not killing anyone!”
“Saying it louder and with a different emphasis isn’t going to change the fact—”
“Fact? You want facts? These are the facts,” Soleta said. “Fact: Morgan Primus is dead. The creature that’s taken up residence in the computer system of the Excalibur is a delusional computer program. Fact: She has threatened Captain Calhoun. She has threatened top Starfleet personnel. She has the power to carry out those threats and cause damage that we cannot even begin to calculate, and we have absolutely no reason to think that she will not do so. Fact: Your novel was an overwritten, one-sided screed that ignores the simple truth that a semblance of life is not actual life.” She advanced on the Doctor and he started to back up, keeping his chin pointed at her defiantly but looking unsettled at her rising ire. “Because if you’re a semblance of life, you can be brought back to what you were before, fully repaired, without the slightest evidence that anything had ever happened to you. Good as new, top to bottom. Living beings don’t have that luxury. We carry our physical scars, and our psychic scars, and they direct us and shape us and make us what we are from one day to the next. And when we die, then that’s it. We’re gone. A woman who was once one of my best friends blew herself up, Doctor. I saw it happen, and I was helpless to stop it, and you know what? We don’t get to reboot her. We don’t have options to bring her back, hale and hardy. For all that you are, for all that you think you are, if something catastrophic happened to you, there’s always a chance that a switch could be flicked somewhere and you’ll snap right back and stand there with a look of mild curiosity and say, ‘Please state the nature of the medical emergency.’ So here’s the medical emergency, Doctor. The entity calling itself Morgan Primus may well bring millions, even billions of lives to an end. And not a single one of those lives gets to be rebooted and started over, all fresh and ready to take up right where they left off. So what you get to decide now is if you’re on the side of the living or on the side of those who like to playact at it.”
For a long moment they just stood there, the two of them, Soleta trembling with rage that she could scarcely suppress, and the Doctor simply staring at her as if she had just embarked on a lengthy rant in a foreign tongue that he was unable to comprehend.
Finally he said, “You thought my novel was overwritten?”
“Oh my God,” said Soleta, throwing up her hands.
“What does that even mean? It had too many words?” He seemed flummoxed. “I used precisely the necessary amount of words to convey the sentiments. I don’t understand what—”
“Lewis.”
The speaking of the name brought him up short. He looked startled and made no effort to recover from it. He just stood there with his surprise evident on his face.
Seven slowly reached out to him and took his hand. Then she interlaced her fingers into his. “Lewis…” she said again.
“I am not Lewis Zimmerman,” he said, recovering himself. “That is my maker, who modeled my appearance upon himself. You know that.”
“Yes, I do, although I would point out that there are many who believe their respective creator did the same thing. But mainly I was trying to get your attention… and to make a point.”
“That point being…?” he said cautiously.
“That you and I are a lot more alike than I think either of us is ready to admit. We’re both… broken humans. We have an idea of what we’re supposed to be like, of how we’re supposed to behave. But we’re both still figuring it out as we go. The fact of the matter is that you probably have more experience at making the effort to be human than I have. Me… I’m disconnected from the Borg, and now I’m trying to forge a connection with humanity. But I’m flailing around in darkness, like a blind woman, making my way by feelings alone. Feelings that I am, to put it mildly, inexperienced in using. And it can be so…”
“Overwhelming?” He squeezed her hand tightly.
“Yes. Exactly. Overwhelming. And it’s hard to know what’s right and what’s wrong, and sometimes you just have to trust people and sometimes you have to trust your own instincts, and there’s a fine line to be walked between the two.”
“What are you saying, Seven?”
“I’m saying,” she told him firmly, “that I trust what Soleta is saying. I have seen, firsthand, the deadly combination of soulless entities with overwhelming power at their disposal. I’m saying that I believe the situation that she has presented is a threat to billions of lives. We need to take action, and if you’re not going to help, then we will go on our way and do the best we can, although I’m not liking the odds. But the bottom line is that I am asking you to trust me.”
Warring emotions were evident in the Doctor’s face. He turned away from her then, releasing her hands, and stood for a time with his back to her. Neither Soleta nor Seven moved so much as a centimeter.
“Has she created backups?” he said finally.
Seven looked confused, not quite understanding the question, but Soleta got it instantly. “You mean other incarnations of herself?”
“If she presents the sort of danger that you are saying, then she has to have a pervasive personality. Pervasive or, more accurately, invasive,” he continued as if he were a professor lecturing a class. “She would have created replications of herself and installed them in various databases.”
“Yes, she has,” said Soleta. “Including into the computer of my own vessel at one time. I’m reasonably sure she is no longer there, but I have had to remain circumspect and operate on the assumption that she could return there at any time and, if seeing me as a threat, annihilate my ship with a thought.”
Seven turned and stared at Soleta with open incredulity. “And you’re just telling me this now?”
As if Seven hadn’t spoken, the Doctor went on, “You’re not simply talking about administering a virus that will cleanse her from the core of the Excalibur. You need something that will compel her to pass it on to all her various iterations and backups, no matter where they might be, and obliterate them as well. Otherwise she could easily reconstitute herself and then you will not only be right back where you started, but she will be considerably angry and present an even greater threat. So you’re basically gambling an all-or-nothing scenario. I assume you both understand this.”
“I do,” said Soleta.
“I do now,” said Seven, firing an annoyed glance at Soleta. Then she turned her attention to the Doctor. “Are you telling us these things as a matter of information? Or—”
“I will help you, yes,” said the Doctor.
Seven reached up and touched his face. “Thank you, Doctor,” she said.
A thought suddenly seemed to cross his mind, and he turned back to Soleta. “You really think it would make a splendid musical entertainment?”
“Absolutely,” she said readily.
“Well then,” the Doctor said, all business, “let’s get to work.”
Xenex
Two Days Before the Daystrom Institute
i.
“Check again.”
“Captain, I’ve already double-checked the sensor readings,” Zak Kebron assured him. Far below the Excalibur, the mostly brown and, to most observers, unappealing world of Xenex, turned slowly on its axis, the starship in geosynchronous orbit with it. “I’m not picking up anything unusual. Certainly no energy readings from any encampments.”
“Morgan.” Calhoun turned to Morgan Primus, who was seated at the ops station. “Is it possible that they could be there with some sort of scrambling equipment?”
“Rendering themselves effectively invisible?” She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it’s possible. Typ
ically it would be easier to hide from scans if one has facilities underground, as we well know,” she said with an obvious reference to recent events on AF1963. “But with suffiently advanced technology, it might be possible to craft a shield of some sort that would either confound scans or prevent them from realizing what they’re looking at.”
“And we would have no way of knowing.”
“Not from up here,” she said.
“All right, then. Kebron,” he said, making the decision instantly, “kindly inform my brother that I will be making a homecoming. Assemble a security team. If we’re beaming into the middle of something, I want to make certain we’re ready to shoot our way out.”
Burgoyne, from hir seat as second in command, suggested, “Perhaps it would be preferable to speak to your brother from up here?”
“I can’t assume I’ll be getting an honest answer from him if I’m speaking to him from orbit. If we allow for the idea that hostile forces are masking their presence, then it makes sense to suppose that they could be right there with him, and we would never know.”
“And since it’s your brother involved…” Burgy began.
“Then I have to be the one who goes down. Think of it as a matter of pride.”
Morgan observed, “I seem to remember hearing that pride is what goes before a fall.”
There was a brief silence on the bridge, a collective wait to see how Calhoun would react to what could only be seen as an insubordinate comment.
“I’ve heard that, too,” said Calhoun. “Kebron: With me. Burgy, you have the conn. Morgan: Try not to crash the ship while I’m gone.”
“Aye, sir,” said Morgan neutrally.
The moment that Calhoun and Kebron left, Tania turned to Morgan and gave her a scolding look. “That was a hell of a thing to say.”
Morgan was aware that all eyes were upon her. She smiled easily. “Just expressing concern that the captain might be unnecessarily putting himself in danger.”
“He’s a big boy,” said Burgoyne. “I think he can handle it.”
“I’m sure he can,” said Morgan, and turned one one-millionth of her attention to her duties, which was more than sufficient to do what was required.