by Diane Carey
“How are we going to know if it works?” she asked.
“The signal will carry for a radius of seven hundred meters, which will cover the entire compound. So the pulse will reach Data. Whether it will reboot his ethical program . . . we’ll only be able to tell by his behavior.”
She turned. “Won’t he realize something is happening to him?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “It’s one program among thousands, and it operates in the background of his processors.”
The whole concept sounded so simple that Picard couldn’t help wondering if he was missing something. An element in the rock . . . something.
He came to the entrance of the cell and glanced down the corridor, then set the transceiver on the floor and nudged it with his toe toward the forcefield.
The little mechanism jumped, caught the forcefield’s haze, and sucked at the glow of power.
“I just hope,” he said, “that this forcefield has enough energy to trigger the kedion pulse.”
The Enterprise
“The data banks should contain information about a process called metaphasic shielding.”
Beverly hoped she sounded as if she knew what she was talking about, but there was a lingering roughness of doubt in her throat.
“I know about that research,” Barnaby said. “Commander La Forge developed a program to implement the shielding—”
“I know. He told me about it,” she said. She hoped they would have confidence in this crazy idea if they knew it was Geordi’s. Or maybe she was really hoping to share the blame, but at least she had drummed up something for them to do about this situation.
The Borg ship was large on the screens and getting larger. All around, the bridge crew worked frantically to pull up Geordi’s research on metaphasing and feed it into the right computers.
“Activate the program,” Beverly told them. “We’ll be able to enter the sun’s corona, and the Borg ship won’t be able to follow.”
Barnaby leaned into his task, his face drawn tight. “But those shields have never been tested. There’s no way to know if they’ll hold.”
“Then we’ll test them,” she said.
“Sir,” Taitt interrupted. “Hull temperature is rising. Now at twelve-thousand degrees centigrade. Radiation level nearing ten thousand rads.”
The frenzy had left her voice. Now there was just a calm sense of doom, and with it an acceptance of the fact that they might as well do all they could, because otherwise they were finished. Better to fly into the sun than let the Borg take them and claim a victory.
The Borg weapons flashed. The ship jolted and took a harsh turn, then whined to recover itself.
“Report!” Beverly said.
“No structural damage,” Taitt reported hoarsely. “Shields at sixty-eight percent—”
“Lieutenant, activate the metaphasic program. We don’t have a choice.”
“Aye, sir,” Barnaby said grimly.
True, they’d backed themselves up to a point where they had no choice, and now the crazy idea would have to work or they were toast.
Anger roared up in Beverly’s chest. Yes, it was better to be toast than to be taken by the Borg. She’d disobeyed her standing orders and given forty-one more people a chance to live, and maybe she was about to throw it all away, but at least she’d done more than behave like a Borg and do as she was told. At least she’d have that to hold to her heart as the ship cracked open around her in the solar inferno.
“Hull temperature is critical!” Taitt said. “We can’t withstand this heat much long—”
Barnaby interrupted her. “Okay, I’ve got it. Engaging metaphasic shield.”
It was hard to breathe. The ship was sacrificing systems to fighting the heat. They could feel her trying. A few more seconds and all this would be over. . . .
“Hull temperature dropping,” Taitt began, her eyes fixed on the readings. “Down to seven thousand degrees!” She was almost whispering, but the victory in her voice carried across the bridge.
Beverly turned to the helm, holding that victory tight against her chest and glaring at the butcher on the screen, now just a blob in the haze of the sun’s corona.
“Maintain course,” she said.
“The Borg ship has broken off pursuit,” Barnaby reported.
“All stop.”
Taitt twisted around. “Sir, the Borg ship is taking up position relative to ours. They’re going to wait for us to come out.”
Beverly cast her gaze to the viewscreen and the white-light glow of the sun’s corona cooking them even as it shielded them. Finally they had found one thing they could take that the Borg couldn’t. Even to buy themselves a few extra minutes to think.
“The question is,” she tartly murmured, “how long can we stay in here?”
“The last fiber is in place. You have been a most cooperative subject.”
Who was that? Someone talking?
“Geordi? Can you hear me?”
“Data? Is that you?”
“Yes.”
There should have been fear. But there wasn’t.
Geordi lay back again on the tilted platform, its cold surface pressing his shoulder blades, his hips, and stealing all the warmth from his body.
“You know, Data, I’ve been thinking . . .”
He felt the pressure again on his head, pushing into his skull, picking at nerve endings inside his head. He heard the hum of a medical device scanning him. Any minute, his brain would shut off or be fried by what was happening to him.
Talking helped. His friend had to be in there somewhere, buried under the programming and the outside controls. Data was in there; Geordi believed that, clung to it. He had never been able to accept that Data was all machine. He wasn’t. Couldn’t be. That would be like trying to be friends with a turbolift, and Geordi couldn’t do that. Others looked at Data and saw an android, designed and constructed, but there was more. There were glows of activity that machinery couldn’t account for and that Geordi had never been able to track down with instruments. There was benevolence that no machine could manage and a fraternal consideration that a turbolift just couldn’t claim.
You’re in there, Data. I know you are. If I can just reach you, if the reboot works and I can tap it, then I’ll find you. The Data I knew before your so-called brother took you over. There was life before Lore. . . . I’ll make you remember.
“I was thinking about some of the times we’ve had together,” he said aloud. “Like that time we went sailing on Devala Lake, remember that?”
“I have a complete memory record of that day,” Data admitted.
Geordi felt himself smile. “You decided to take a swim . . . but when you jumped out of the boat, you sank straight to the bottom!”
Data’s voice beside his ear was too clinical to offer any comfort. “I did not have enough buoyancy to get back to the surface.”
Geordi laughed, couldn’t help it. He clung to the memories. Just the idea that Data wouldn’t have calculated his own buoyancy relative to water before jumping in . . . That’s right! This was one of those little things that couldn’t be explained if Data was nothing but programming. One of those little anomalies.
“So you had to walk over a kilometer along the bottom of the lake to get back to the shore,” Geordi chuckled. He still had an imagination, at least, because he could almost envision the whole thing.
“One kilometer,” Data said, “and forty-six meters.”
Warmly Geordi added, “It took two weeks to get the water out of your servos.”
He felt more pressure, in a different spot. Neural fibers being fed into his scalp. Awful . . .
“It’s strange, Data,” he said, hoping to distract himself. “You’re able to feel anger, hatred, even a kind of pleasure that comes from being cruel. But humor . . . compassion . . . they elude you. Why?”
“I am still evolving.”
The answer came a little too quickly. Geordi hesitated. “But why would you develop the nega
tive emotions first? It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe . . . it’s because Lore doesn’t want you to feel good emotions. He knows you would never go along with his plans if you could. I know you wouldn’t—”
“My brother wants only what is best for me.”
Geordi pushed up against his straps. “He’s using a carrier pulse to dole emotions out to you like a drug.” Exhausted, he slumped back again. “He only gives you the emotions that suit his needs. And he withholds the rest to keep you under his control. Look, don’t take my word for it. Run a self-diagnostic. Don’t you owe it to yourself to find out the truth?”
“I am ready to irradiate your existing brain cells.”
Data’s jarring announcement cracked the reverie, the theories, the efforts. Geordi felt his chances crack, too. Even if the captain and the counselor had managed to build the reboot mechanism and get it activated, it wasn’t working. Suddenly he was back on the examining table, being vivisected by a controlled entity.
And the horrors came rolling back.
“Data,” he said, “if you ever go back to being the way you were, you may not be able to forgive yourself for what you’re about to do to me.”
The different tack didn’t offer much hope, but Geordi took his last-ditch chance.
Silence pounded between them. Data wasn’t answering.
An hour ago Geordi might have found some hope in that silence, but now it offered him nothing. He had so little hope left. He had sweated it all out.
Finally Data’s voice made him flinch.
“I am getting some anomalous readings from your neural net. I will have to do further tests before I proceed.”
There was a shuffle of movement at his side. Geordi tilted his head and tried to hear, to sense something that would counter the dread he couldn’t shake. He wished he could reach out.
“Someone will come,” Data said, “and take you back to your cell.”
“We can use the environmental control ducts to get inside the compound. They should take us to the cell where the captain is being held.”
Worf’s voice was serious, heavy, dark, and booming beneath the low ceiling of the caverns.
Riker decided it wouldn’t be smart to make any snide comments, like how lucky they were that the compound happened to have air vents big enough to crawl through. Worf probably wasn’t in the mood for a joke.
On the other hand, neither am I.
“We’ll have to move fast after we stun the guard,” he said. “The other Borg will know right away that he’s been hurt.”
“When they realize we are here,” Hugh agreed, “your escape route may be compromised.”
“We’ll have to take that chance.”
Riker turned and peered through the cavern.
Hugh gazed back at him. His life-support tubes pulsed like heartbeats, quick and nervous, betraying his lingering doubts, but also showing how deep Riker had managed to dig under the resentment.
The reluctant leader of disenfranchised Borg looked suddenly young, like a teenager trying to decide which bundle of nerves to respond to. If he knew how to help them any more than he had so far, he was still unable to take that step.
At Riker’s silent request, Hugh’s worried eyes seemed to retreat into the pasty gray complexion.
He parted his lips. “Good luck, Commander.”
The landscape outside the compound was broad and changeable. To the left, forestlands. To the right, scrubby rocks and brush. There was the sound of birds and insect life rousing under the sunlight.
A breathable atmosphere—a rarity in the expanse of the universe. Data scanned the area and instantly analyzed it. Trees similar to Earth’s boxwoods, wild tangerine, ivy vines, wild hops, cork oak, various species of pine, some wood fern, some puffball fungi, toadstools, and patches of moss and weeds.
There was a body of water out there somewhere, but he could not pinpoint it.
The scents of growth and life flooded his olfactory sensors, triggering memories.
In the near distance, groups of Borg moved about, working at some task put to them by the One. Possibly experiments. Tests.
Data chose not to speculate. Lore would tell him what he needed to know.
He approached his counterpart, who lingered at the compound opening, where he could survey the activities out there.
“Look at them, brother. It’s all so simple.” Lore waved a hand across the landscape, taking in his world and his workers. “Enemy ships may soon ply the heavens, yet they go on as if nothing threatened them, because they know I will protect them. I tell you, brother, the burdens of leadership are greater than you can imagine.”
“I do not generally imagine,” Data told him. “I find the results inaccurate.”
Lore tightened an arm around Data’s shoulders. “I’m so glad you’re here to help me. You’re the only one I can really trust. We’re family. Nothing can compare with that bond.”
Imperceptibly, Data gave in to an urge to pull away and put a space between himself and Lore. “I recently ran a self-diagnostic,” he announced, “and I discovered that my positronic net is being affected by incoming emissions.”
Lore paused. His salesmanlike smile fell away. “Why did you run a self-diagnostic? Don’t you trust me?”
“It is my habit to run periodic checks on all my systems. You should do the same.”
He was telling the truth. It was in his programming to speak accurately and not to deceive.
Leaving out facts was not the same as lying, however.
He heard echoes of his life among humans, where these lines were not so clearly drawn—yes, he remembered everything, just as he had told the others. Memories placed before him in moving pictures, with no sensation, no satisfaction.
There had been sensation and satisfaction the first time through those myriad events, those exchanges of personality with living beings.
Why did he retain only part of the memories now? Only the static images?
Lore regarded him with a narrowed gaze. “I wasn’t going to tell you, because I thought it would be better for you to feel as if you were doing it all yourself. The pulse is designed to speed your emotional development by initiating cascade fluctuations in your net. I want to help you, little brother, any way I can. Have you made any progress with La Forge?”
Data frowned, felt his face contort with a small effort. He wanted to continue discussing his changes, these feelings he was experiencing, but now was compelled to change the subject.
He didn’t want to change it. He wanted to clarify his role in all this, and Lore’s role in his changes.
Lore’s gaze was irresistible.
“It is too early to tell if the nano-cortical fibers have performed their function,” Data replied.
“I suspect none of the humans will survive the process.” Lore sighed with artfully casual regret in his tone. “But it’s their own fault, isn’t it? They should never have come here.” He shook his head and turned once again to survey his landscape and his subjects. “What were they thinking?”
Data heard his brother speak, that voice with so many tonal changes—his own voice, but with many levels he had not yet mastered. Lore’s voice sounded like his own voice.
But human.
What were they thinking? x
“They came looking for me,” Data said, staring out over the landscape.
Lore glanced at him. “Humans are so sentimental.”
A simple answer.
Powerful apprehensions drove Data to turn his gaze now to the sky. “I betrayed them. If they die . . . I am responsible.”
Suddenly turning to face him directly, Lore studied his face in a fashion that made Data wish to back away. “Why are you talking like this? Is something wrong with your programming? Perhaps I should check your systems.”
“I do not want you to check my systems,” Data told him with abrupt clarity. “I must resolve these issues myself.”
Lore circled him warily. “I think I’ve made a mistake. I
don’t believe you can tolerate the amount of emotion you’ve been experiencing.”
Data leaned away but could not mobilize himself to leave the area.
Bringing his hands up, Lore flipped up one of his own fingernails. The circuitry underneath blinked silently.
Such circuitry was commonplace for Data and had never seemed threatening, but just as some humans were sickened by the sight of blood, today he felt revolted by what he was seeing.
“Perhaps I should cut back a little.” Lore tampered with the circuitry.
A blistering sensation ran through Data’s head, down his neck, through his shoulders, and into his limbs. A moment ago he wanted to move and did not. Now he could not. Emptiness pulled at him. The draining of lubricant . . . loss of power . . .
“How’s that?” Lore asked.
Data parted his lips and found them dry. “I . . . do not like it . . .”
“Ah.” His brother nodded. “Then you prefer having more emotions?”
“Yes . . .”
“They give you pleasure.”
“Yes, please . . . I want more.”
He was cold. Blank. The emptiness expanded, weakening his limbs, fogging his memory banks. He yearned for more . . . for anything.
“All right,” Lore said. “For now, a little more.”
Again he tampered with the circuitry in his finger.
Floods of emotion pushed at Data as though the planet’s gravity had suddenly increased. Glowering thoughts flashed in his mind without organization.
He battled to organize them, but the flood was powerful and cold. Surges of the anger he had sought and failed to find, and here it was, gushing into him at Lore’s bidding.
Anger. Envy. Savage brutality. Soreness of the mind. These boiled at him in waves. Temper twisted his inner circuits. He felt excitable and wanted to be dared. He wanted to go somewhere and make someone dare him.
“Thank you,” he rasped, and he turned away to go look for something to hate.
“Don’t mention it,” Lore called as his counterpart disappeared back into the compound. “I just hope this has helped clarify things for you.”
He waited until he could no longer hear Data’s telltale footsteps on the stone floor of the corridors. Then he beckoned to Crosis.