Star Trek: The Next Generation - 116 - The Light Fantastic

by Jeffrey Lang

  “We’re ready,” Barclay said.

  “Energizing.”

  Barclay gulped uncertainly and muttered a quiet benediction. He was confident their scans were accurate and knew the transporter wouldn’t beam them into a perilous situation. The problem was he hadn’t thought to flick on his work light before the transporter grabbed him, and he didn’t like the idea of beaming into a dark space.

  Fortunately, the blue emergency lighting hadn’t failed in the core. Indeed, the room had seen far less damage than most of the others they had explored. A pair of unfamiliar ensigns fanned out to explore the perimeters of the room as Barclay and Lee swept debris from a pair of chairs and sat down at the main console.

  A few minutes’ examination told the tale. “Not too bad,” Lee said, pointing at a diagnostic. “We lost power to sections six through fifteen, but the data hasn’t degraded much. We should be able to reassemble most of it by rebuilding the indexes.”

  “What’s this?” Barclay asked, pointing at one of the blinking indicators. An ensign found the room’s main power coupling, and the interior lights shifted from blue to a brighter, more comforting tone.

  “Damage indicator. Memory stack.” Lee studied the array. “Something dense. Taking a lot of flops.” He traced the diagnostic path back through subsystems until he found the origin point. “Holodeck program.” His eyebrows shot up. “Big one. Look at that. Didn’t know we let them get that big. One of the cores has been destroyed, though. How is it still running?”

  Barclay studied the display and suddenly felt a spear of icy dread slip between his ribs. “Oh, dear.”

  “What?”

  “Can you run maintenance to that stack?”

  “Well . . . sure,” Lee said. “But if I push something here, then I’m losing something somewhere else. It’s just a holodeck program.”

  “No, it’s not,” Barclay said, his voice rising. He saw one of the ensigns look his way and lowered his tone. “I mean, yes, it is. But it’s not just any holodeck program. I know that program. The captain . . .” He was almost whispering now. “He wouldn’t want it damaged.”

  “It’s already damaged,” Lee said. “Badly.”

  “He wouldn’t want it more damaged. He made a promise.”

  Lee shook his head. “You’re going to explain this later, aren’t you?” He tapped a control and the damage indicator light ceased blinking. Somewhere in the core, somewhere far away, some other bit of memory faded and died.

  Barclay dabbed at his forehead with his sleeve. It had suddenly grown very stuffy in the room. “I imagine I will,” he said.

  The Present—The Daystrom Institute

  “And I assume he did,” La Forge said, the statement accompanied by a sigh of resignation and an acidic belch. Albert’s industrial-strength coffee had waged an honorable holding action against exhaustion, but the conclusion of the battle had never been in doubt. La Forge had lost track of how many hours he had been awake, but he felt the dull ache behind his eyes that meant his cognitive functions were on the verge of being iffy. While in transit to consult with Albert Lee, he realized he had managed to forget about this aspect of being Data’s friend and companion: he never slept. Back on the Enterprise, this condition had never seemed like a difficulty: there had always been someone else for his friend to engage with or another project to explore. Now, today, in their current situation, La Forge was feeling his resources erode.

  It didn’t help that Albert, despite being at least half a century older than La Forge, was so damned full of vim. It must be the coffee, La Forge thought. He’s probably replaced most of his bodily fluids with it.

  “He did,” Albert grunted. “Eventually. Reg was a terrible liar, but he was very good at delaying.” La Forge doubled his pace, having fallen behind. The old man was short and stocky, but he walked with urgent energy with the tufts of white hair on the sides of his head bouncing with every step. It must be the coffee . . .

  “So, he revealed the contents of the memory core,” Data said. The android effortlessly kept pace with the old man, walking with his hands clasped behind his back and leaning forward awkwardly so they could speak without raising their voices. La Forge was initially concerned about drawing attention, but no sooner had they stepped through the campus gates than he remembered what the place was like: No one drew anyone’s attention at the Daystrom because everyone who worked there was utterly and completely focused on whatever they were doing and couldn’t give two hoots about anyone else.

  “Again, eventually. When he realized what had happened, he tried to contact the captain and find out what he wanted done with it. Apparently, it had always slightly bothered Reg that Picard . . .”

  “Captain Picard,” Data corrected.

  “Yes, sorry,” Albert said. “Captain Picard hadn’t worked a little more assiduously to address Moriarty’s situation.”

  “The captain had other priorities to address,” La Forge inserted. “You know . . . the Borg, the Cardassian conflict, the universe coming to an end. Other things. And Moriarty was fine. He had an entire universe to explore and all the resources he needed.”

  Albert came to a halt. Data stopped beside him, still leaning forward. La Forge shot past the pair and had to do a quick pirouette in order to remain part of the conversation. “Was he?” Albert asked. “Fine? Really? I’d like to reframe that assertion if I may. Moriarty was in his own universe and was vulnerable to every evil in it. Plus, all that time he was also exposed to the Borg and Klingons and the universe coming to an end, with the difference that he would have never known what was happening.” He jabbed a stumpy finger up at La Forge. “Nothing that happened to him was real. His universe could have come to an end at any moment and he would have been just as blind and deaf to what was happening as a prisoner stuffed in a closet with a bag over his head.”

  La Forge felt a slow burn of anger mingled with exhaustion creeping up the back of his neck. In the years that they had worked together back on the Enterprise, he had managed to avoid being the target of one of Albert’s tantrums. Being the chief had helped, since it meant La Forge had always been able to keep the talented but tempestuous engineer somewhere else, doggedly working on a problem. Unfortunately, in their current circumstances, there was nowhere for La Forge to go, nor any way to make Albert quit barking. He also knew the older man had a point: They had left Moriarty on a shelf, trivialized, if not completely forgotten. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. Not completely. But you were able to transfer the unit here. You stabilized the power and were able to determine that Moriarty and his companion . . .” La Forge drew a blank on the woman’s name. He could see her face in his mind’s eye, but her name was gone.

  “Regina Bartholomew,” Albert said. “Countess Regina Bartholomew.”

  “Right. Yes, her. And you could determine their condition.”

  “We could tell they were still intact, but nothing more. We didn’t have the kind of diagnostics we needed to determine exactly what had happened. All of that data was lost when the Enterprise crashed . . .” Albert shook his head. “All we knew for certain was something cataclysmic had occurred. But there was no way to know how it affected Moriarty or the Countess or even if they were aware of the change. The only way to be sure would have been reaching into their world, retrieving them, and asking them, but what would have been the point of that? If they knew something was wrong, they knew it; if not, why bring it up?”

  “It was a most peculiar ethical dilemma,” Data said.

  “I don’t think ethics was ever a component in the discussion,” Albert growled. “More’s the pity.”

  “You’re not being fair,” La Forge said. “Captain Picard made sure the memory unit was brought here, the safest place anyone could imagine, and the only place where there were resources to study the problem.”

  “He should have made sure the unit was brought here before his ship was blown out of the sky.”

  The low burn of anger suddenly flared hot and bright. “Too
far,” La Forge hissed. “That’s too far. A lot of other things should have happened differently to a lot of people that day. You remember it; you were there. Some lost everything. Some died. I’m sorry for what happened to Moriarty, but if you’re arguing that we should be treating him just like everyone else, then can’t you have a damned moment of sympathy for all those other people?”

  Albert jerked his head back as if he had been struck. His eyes went wide and his gaze softened as if he was remembering something he hadn’t thought about for a long time. His head dipped forward and the dip turned into a slow nod. “All right,” he said. “You have a point. Sometimes I get wrapped up in these things and forget . . . I forget who all is involved. My wife . . . she used to tell me I was always missing the forest for the trees until I crashed into a low-hanging branch.”

  The trio stood in silence for a long minute while Albert stared at something on the ground. Finally, not able to think of anything else to say, La Forge muttered, “I didn’t know you were married, Albert.”

  “It was a long time ago, kid,” Albert said softly. Then, he lifted his head and absently studied the sky, which was growing darker as clouds gathered overhead. “When you’re as old as I am, everything is a long time ago.” He pointed at the clouds. “We better get inside. Going to rain soon.”

  * * *

  To La Forge’s surprise, the security guard barely blinked when Albert breezed through the entrance waving his credentials. La Forge and Data followed suit, affecting casual ease. Once they were past, Data murmured, “I asked Shakti to arrange for our credentials to be authorized.”

  “You mean you forged a pass.” Data shrugged and waved his hand in the universally understood “a little of this, a little of that” gesture. “Shakti is sophisticated enough to crack Starfleet security systems?”

  “This particular building does not house highly sensitive material,” Data explained. “Otherwise, it would not have been so simple a matter. As it is, we should not linger.”

  “So, in other words, yes, she can.”

  “My father believed in being prepared for all contingencies.” He nodded to a passing researcher as if it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be there.

  “And you, Data? What about you?”

  “I believe my daughter has been abducted by an artificial intelligence whose sanity may be in question. I am prepared to take advantage of any resources I have available to guarantee her safety.”

  “And the fact that you just said that doesn’t in any way alarm you?” La Forge asked.

  Albert, who had raced ahead at his usual breakneck speed, was waiting in a turbolift car, beckoning for them to hurry. Data bowed slightly and indicated La Forge should precede him. “Not at this particular moment, my oldest and best of friends. Though I rely on you to reintroduce the topic when Lal is secured.”

  “Oh, you better believe I will,” La Forge said. The dull ache behind his eyes was beginning to throb. He would need to sleep soon. Or have another cup of Albert’s coffee. The thought made his stomach churn.

  “Don’t you two ever stop yammering?” Albert said as he punched a security code into the turbo-lift control panel.

  “No,” Data said placidly as the doors slid shut. “Never.”

  Two months ago—Orion Prime

  “I was only asking if there is a time when you and Alice are together where one of you is not talking,” Data said. “It was a sincere request for information and was not meant to elicit an angry rebuttal.”

  The trio was walking down one of the wide boulevards that crisscrossed the outer suburbs of the main city, a middle-class neighborhood where the clerks, supervisors, skilled laborers, and health-care workers resided. Alice had told Data that she and Lal had made it part of their routine over the past few months to take long, rambling walks, the kind that took hours and devoured kilometers. According to Alice, this neighborhood, dubbed the Commons by the locals, was one of Lal’s favorites. Data saw the appeal: The houses and apartment buildings were idiosyncratic in form, but tidy and neat. Clearly, the people who lived here loved their homes and took pride in their appearance. Data particularly enjoyed the displays of domestic botanical cultivation—the ornamental shrubs, carefully weeded plots of vegetables, and flowering plants—that decorated every yard.

  “Fine,” Lal said. “I accept your apology.” She had reconfigured her hair yet again, coloring it a bright purple and pulling it back into a messy ponytail. Currently, she was affecting what Data assumed was a sloppy, late-teenage form of camouflage: oversized shoes, accompanied by short pants, shiny black leggings, and what appeared to be a baggy hooded jacket, but was, in fact, a garment comprised of thin ribbons of fiber held together by complex magnetic and static electric fields. The garments were originally created for the Orion military to serve as easily modifiable outerwear—the ribbons were infinitely configurable—but they proved unreliable in extremely arid conditions. Fortunately for the Orion military, fashion designers quickly took to the “fabric” and youth culture in particular seemed to enjoy them.

  The only negative factor was that the garments required an extremely powerful but compact power supply to generate and maintain the complex static field. The batteries were extraordinarily expensive, a feature Data could not help but mention every time he saw Lal wear the jacket. “Well, we have a lot of money, don’t we?” Lal would inevitably ask.

  “That is not the point,” Data would reply.

  “Then what is the point?” Lal would counter, but she never stayed nearby long enough to listen to the answer.

  Data found all of this perfectly baffling, which, he suspected, was the main point of most of Lal’s behavior.

  Alice just laughed. A great deal. Frequently. Though Data had to admit he had not always been particularly good at judging emotional states, he had determined that Alice might be the most cheerful entity he had ever met. He found it difficult to accommodate sometime. Now that he had an emotional state, Data was beginning to wonder if he was becoming a bit of a grouch. “Thank you,” Data said.

  “You’re welcome,” Lal said flatly.

  Alice just laughed and laughed.

  It was getting on toward sunset, and, as was the tradition in the suburban neighborhoods, most of the residents had already enjoyed their evening meal and now were lounging on porches or sitting around the small biers called ninchalla toasting bits of sweet bread or slowly roasting fruit in foil for their after-dinner treats. Neighbors visited neighbors. Spirits and fermented beverages were served and voices burbled, some low and serious, others high and sweet. Everyone noticed the trio walking past, but no one objected to their presence. Strolling was a commonplace activity in the Commons and the place was too large for everyone to know everyone. Data found he was enjoying the placid anonymity. If only his daughter weren’t being so difficult.

  “And as much as I am enjoying this outing,” Data continued, attempting to find the correct tone, “I am still not entirely certain what the purpose is.”

  “The purpose, Father, was to get you out of your office.”

  “I often leave my office.”

  “To go to the casino.”

  “I often leave the casino.”

  “To go to our apartment.”

  “I often leave our apartment.”

  “But only to go to your office or the casino!”

  “That is not entirely true,” Data said. “Sometimes, I go down to the kitchens.”

  “That doesn’t count as part of the casino?” Alice asked, patting her pockets. She had taken to smoking the local brand of small cigars, a habit Data found loathsome, though he knew he could not prevent her from doing it while outside the residence. He was only grateful that Lal also seemed to find the smell and taste of the inhalant unappealing, though she said she thought Alice looked “pretty cool” when she was smoking.

  “Not according to the unions,” Data muttered.

  “It’s such a beautiful city, Father,” Lal groaned. “And yo
u’ve seen so little of it. You’re always so busy.”

  “I have a great deal to attend to.”

  “But you have an army of employees,” Lal cried. “And you don’t see them sitting around waiting for something to do! But they can’t, can they? Because you take care of everything!”

  “My father left me his empire,” Data said. “I must tend it well.” He almost said, It’s all I have left of him . . . but for a reason he could not name, he could not say these words aloud.

  “Can’t you let someone help you,” Lal asked, “just a little?” She was waving her hands around in an extremely vivacious manner. Data enjoyed this aspect of his daughter’s persona. She was . . . passionate. She felt emotions deeply. Data sometimes worried that though he now possessed emotions, he did not feel as if the emotions ever possessed him. Lal never appeared to have this problem.

  Folk of the Commons were paying more attention now. Lal’s impassioned pleas and Alice’s manner—Alice had a manner that all men attended and many women despised—were drawing stares. Data worried it was time to tone down the discourse. “Of course I can,” he said. “I have been thinking that Mister Oboloth shows great potential . . .”

  “He’s stealing from you,” Lal said.

  “Quite a lot,” Alice confirmed. “He has a mistress who likes expensive toys and has a mild narcotics problem.”

  “Ah,” Data said. “Well . . .” They walked for several meters in relative silence while he absorbed this news. “Is there anyone else you would like to . . . No, never mind. Perhaps it is best you do not. Should I ask Human Resources to meet with Mister Oboloth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Definitely,” Alice said. “And his administrative assistant.”

  “Is she also embezzling?”

  “No. She’s in love with him. She’s not so much a criminal as someone who has poor taste. There has to be something they can do for her, poor girl.”

  “I shall take that under advisement,” Data said. “Can you explain how you know these things when I do not?”

  “You’re the boss, Boss. I just serve drinks.”