Star Trek: The Next Generation - 112 - Cold Equations: The Persistence of Memory

by David Mack

  Those early days, when I spent my every waking moment helping Data adjust to consciousness and learn about himself and the universe in which he lived, were some of the happiest I’d ever known. I felt like a real father, guiding my fragile, impressionable son through the perilous first steps toward independence.

  One morning I strolled into my lab, looking forward to a new day of parenting and discovery . . . and discovered Juliana had wiped Data’s memory. I flew into a rage, called her horrible names, and hurled beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks against the walls, showering the floor with a million glittering shards.

  She fled from me, genuinely confused. “Noonien! What’s wrong with you?”

  I kicked over a portable light stand. “How could you do this? Why would you?”

  “What are you talking about?” She raised her hands and struck a defensive pose. “I left all his learned skills intact, his programming’s unchanged, and his matrix is still stable.” Modulating her voice to project calm, she asked, “Why are you so angry?”

  She was never going to understand that she’d robbed my son of his childhood. All his hard-won lessons, the confidence that came with experience over adversity—it was all gone, erased by a touch on a polymer companel. In a matter of seconds, she’d erased weeks of work.

  No, that’s all incidental. None of that really mattered. What left me quaking with rage was that she had erased me from Data’s memory. She’d robbed me of my fatherhood, obliterated what would have been the foundation of my relationship with my son.

  All I could say was, “Why?”

  “I wanted him to have a clean slate.” She lowered her hands slowly. “Now that he’s past his awkward phase, I saw no reason for him to have to go through life remembering all those embarrassing moments. After all, how much of our childhoods do we really remember? How much would we ever want to? But he can’t forget unless he makes a conscious decision to erase part of his memory—something you’ve programmed him never to do.”

  I was heartbroken, but I couldn’t fault her motives. She’d had no idea what she was really doing to me, to him, to us. From her point of view, this had been a kindness. What could I say? I rubbed the tears from my eyes and sighed. “That’s it, then.”

  Remorseful and fearful, she edged toward me, one hand outstretched. Her touch was tentative and uncertain as her fingertips brushed my arm. “I’m sorry, Noonien. If it helps, I was actually preparing a surprise for you and Data—a gift, of sorts.” I looked up at her, and she offered me a sad smile. “Come and see?”

  She led me to the master console beside the slab on which Data lay. A few taps and she called up a directory full of raw information. “These are the logs of all the other colonists here on Omicron Theta. And some of them even contributed scans of their memory engrams.”

  “They donated all this willingly?”

  Juliana blushed. “I may have made a few heartfelt appeals.” She brightened her mien and took me by my shoulders. “Think of how rich his perspective will be with that much life experience to build upon! And maybe if he has memories of lives seen through other people’s eyes, he’ll find it easier to empathize with them, and understand them.”

  Beneath, between, and behind her words, I heard what she’d meant but hadn’t said: Unlike Lore.

  “It’s a lovely idea. How long will it take to upload all this?”

  “A few days, and a few more after that to compile them into his matrix.”

  I nodded. “So, we can reactivate him on Saturday?”

  “Yes, I think he’ll be ready by then.”

  Of course, Saturday never came—the Crystalline Entity did, on Thursday. It laid waste the entire planet and scoured it clean of every last microbe.

  I tried to save Data. I wanted to, but Juliana kept shouting there was no time as she dragged me away from my lab toward our escape ship. Fueled by adrenaline, she was stronger than I was, and I lost that tug-of-war as soon as it began. Looking into her eyes, I saw abject terror, and as the first tendrils of energy from the Crystalline Entity struck her down, I felt the icy hand of fear as well. Cradling my wounded beloved in my arms, I knew there was no choice.

  I ran.

  And for the third time in a matter of months, I abandoned my children—and this time, I knew I had orphaned the best part of me on that doomed world. In the name of love, I ran and never looked back, forsaking everything and everyone I’d ever known to save Juliana—never suspecting that our love was just as doomed as the colonists and sons I left behind.

  Now I hurtle alone through the night, a pilgrim between the stars, my heart and mind set at last on the same mission: to win back the love I lost, no matter the cost or how long it takes.

  Perhaps I’m on a fool’s errand. If so, I can live with that.

  If you ask me, the universe could use a few more fools.

  JANUARY

  2370

  10

  After more than six months on this planet, I still can’t get a straight answer from any of the locals as to whether I should call it Velestus, Centaurus, Al Rijil IV, or Alpha Centauri IV. Opinion, apparently, is somewhat divided on the matter. Whatever its name really is, it’s quite a beautiful planet. Ensconced in the top-floor corner suite of an office tower I’ve purchased, I marvel at twin suns sinking into a brilliant orange-and-lavender dusk. Neither of the planet’s two small moons has risen yet, but its prismatic ring is reflected on the endless reach of the sea surrounding this verdant tropical island. That’s another thing I love about this planet: coastal real estate is dirt cheap because they have so much of it. Thousands of tiny islands make up hundreds of clusters and archipelagos on the planet’s surface. If you like beaches, this is the planet for you.

  I equivocated for some time about establishing my primary residence on a world literally in the heart of Federation space, less than five light-years from Earth. It seemed like an invitation to calamity, a foolhardy tempting of a universe I know to be capricious and without remorse. Then I came here and realized its society was as scattered as its landmass. I have surprisingly little contact with other people, and in a postautomation society powered by clean fusion and serviced by replicators, no one sees this as the least bit unusual. In a core system populated by more than three billion sentient beings, I’ve managed to find a remarkable measure of true anonymity and isolation. I couldn’t have planned it better.

  Funny thing about living alone: when I first tried it, it felt strange. It took me a while to get used to the silence, to having no one else to help me keep a conversation going. But once I acclimated myself to it, I liked it. Suddenly, interacting with more than a handful of people at a time became a nuisance, an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs. But I craved information, a steady diet of news delivered via subspace networks from every corner of creation. I became addicted to it; it reached a point within a few years where I interrupted my work every few minutes so I could look at news feeds and see if anything had happened worth knowing about. Juliana insisted I have an attention disorder, probably as a subconscious manifestation of my loneliness. What rubbish. How can I be lonely when I hate people?

  Eventually, in the interest of getting things done before I ran out of life, I broke myself of my information addiction . . . with one notable exception: Data.

  I’ve been keeping tabs on my boy for a long time now. Roughly two years after Juliana and I left Omicron Theta and took refuge on Terlina III, she left me. She did it without fuss or drama. I woke up one morning to a fresh-brewed pot of chai and a letter declaring our marriage dissolved. I vaguely recall passing that entire first day sitting at my dinner table, my mug of tea cold in my hand as I stared out the open door and hoped she would come to her senses and walk back in with a grand show of contrition. Night fell, and I was still alone, so I went back to bed.

  The next day, I was so desperate, I thought of going back to Omicron Theta for my sons. Ever a pragmatist, I did some research first. Using some backdoor codes I’d left behind in Starfleet’s com
m network while doing some contract work for them in my youth (a handy shortcut my old mentor Vaslovik taught me during that internship), I looked up the latest reports about the planet and the colony. It was irrational to think that anything could have survived the onslaught I witnessed there, but hope rarely listens to reason.

  Imagine my surprise upon reading in the logs of the captain of the U.S.S. Tripoli about the recovery of an apparently sentient android who had no memory of the calamity that had claimed the planet and all its denizens—including, they all thought, his creator.

  My boy had slept through an apocalypse, and within a day of being woken up had hitched a ride on a starship and filed an application to Starfleet Academy. I knew then that he was prone to making rash decisions, just as I am, and I’ve kept a careful watch on his life ever since. Of all the possible paths in life, why did he have to walk down that one? I wasn’t above doing occasional work for Starfleet and the Federation, but I never let them get anywhere near my cybernetics research, and with good reason. From the very start they failed to respect Data for what he truly was: a new life-form. As soon as he applied to their overhyped Academy, some young snot named Bruce Maddox opposed his admission on the grounds that he’s not a sentient being. I’m not saying Starfleet doesn’t serve a purpose or do its share of good in the galaxy, but I’m no fan of the military, especially not its more regressive elements. And don’t delude yourself; as “enlightened” as Starfleet pretends to be, it still harbors a reactionary core.

  Through the years—during Data’s first posting on the Starship Trieste, his slow climb through the ranks, and now his service on the Enterprise—I found it tedious to try to monitor him constantly, so I simplified my task by creating a specialized AI, a news daemon whose sole function was to scour all Federation news and internal Starfleet communications for any mention of Data or the ships on which he served. It helped that he soon became a pseudocelebrity in cybernetics circles; at least once a year someone tried to polish up their bona fides by publishing a paper about him. Looking back, I realize I moved slowly all those years not because I was old but because I was towing half the scientists in my field on my damned coattails.

  I also took to perusing Data’s personal logs in a digest format on a monthly basis, but I soon fell far behind on that reading—Data can at times be excruciatingly verbose.

  Yes, yes, I know. Call it a family trait and let’s move on, shall we?

  These days, I indulge a new obsession: my search for Juliana.

  It would be easier had I started tracking her as soon as she’d left Terlina III, but at the time I’d wanted to respect her privacy. Now those records are decades old. You wouldn’t think that would matter in an information-based society like the Federation, but some worlds expunge what they consider to be trivial records after as little as a few years. It depends a great deal on the local laws and customs of each world. On planets like Earth and Vulcan, whose peoples treat information archiving like a religion, mundane records can stretch back centuries—a baffling practice on its face, but perhaps useful if one has long-term plans to meddle in time travel. Other peoples, such as the live-in-the-now hedonists of Risa or the privacy-minded Neuvians, barely maintain records of any kind when they cease to be immediately useful.

  By necessity, my search began with old travel records dating back more than three decades, to the period during which Juliana left me. I first checked the files on worlds within ten light-years of Terlina III; finding no leads, I widened my search radius to fifteen light-years. Each expansion of my search range multiplied the number of possible worlds and starports and space stations that might have hosted Juliana on her travels, however briefly. Unfortunately, the more worlds whose records I needed to plumb, the longer each step of the search took.

  Eventually, the search process became too tedious and time-consuming; with apologies I foisted it off on poor Shakti aboard the Archeus. When I’m not traveling, it’s pretty much all she does. Every now and then she scares up a promising tidbit of information. A few times it’s been a red herring, but she’s had her share of successes, so I continue to let her take the lead while I tend to the unglamorous realities of running a multipronged interstellar corporation with more than eight dozen subsidiaries—but fewer than a hundred actual employees. When I have need of actual labor for anything, whether it be fabrication or moving cargo, I subcontract. It simplifies the paperwork and adds yet another layer of insulation between me and the universe at large.

  The sun has set, and the sky outside my windows darkens to a royal purple richer than the dreams of Croesus. On dozens of worlds across a vast swath of local space, my businesses thrive. Today, at least, my grand scheme remains on schedule. I’m tempted to celebrate.

  Then I hear Shakti’s voice via the secure internal comm from Archeus.

  “Noonien?”

  I rub my eyes in a pantomime of anxiety. “Yes?”

  She strikes an apologetic note, never a good sign. “I hope you’ll pardon the interruption, but I’ve found some news of interest regarding Juliana.”

  At once my attention is fully engaged. “More travel records?”

  “Several. I can document her movements from Ronara to Kenda II, and from there to Epsilon Canaris III by way of Beltane IX. However, her journeys as Juliana O’Donnell appear to have ceased following her arrival on Atrea IV in May of 2343.”

  Damn this emotionally intuitive AI with which I’ve afflicted myself; her omissions in the name of mercy are as devastating as Data’s oblivious bluntness once was. “What’re you saying, Shakti? Did something happen to Juliana on Atrea IV?”

  “I’m afraid so, Noonien. . . . She got married.”

  If I were still made of flesh, that news would stir the acid from my gut and poison my esophagus with hot, sour bile. I can be grateful that my android form spares me that indignity, but I still feel a flush of warmth from my anger; my mechanical pulse quickens, and the only check on my erupting bonfire of rage is a smothering tide of despair.

  My Juliana’s remarried. I understand why she left me, but how could she replace me? How could anyone ever take my place in her life? It just doesn’t make sense. I need to know more before I can get a handle on this. “Married to whom?”

  “An Atrean scientist,” Shakti says. “Noted geologist Doctor Pran Tainer. Their public marriage notice indicates that she worked with him as his assistant prior to their engagement.”

  And just like that I regret making my android body impervious to the effects of alcohol. I slump forward and bury my face in my palms; I need to shut out the rest of the universe for a moment so I can cope with this. It’s so unfair. I gave Juliana more than she can possibly know; I spared her from death’s sting, and I even let her leave me because I believed that one day she and I would be together again. Sure, I programmed natural aging and mortality into her body, but that was partly as a safeguard against the possibility that I might not live to see a reunion. It was always my plan to free her from that curse, break the spell of aging, and live with her forever.

  Has all this been for nothing? I was prepared to romance her, to court her from scratch and prove my love for her—but I hadn’t counted on having to woo her from the arms of a spouse. What if she truly loves this Pran Tainer? What if she loves him more than she loved me? What if he’s her soulmate? Dammit, just asking these questions makes me sick to my artificial stomach, like I’m in free fall and wearing a blindfold. My mind works at superhuman speeds, executes more operations per second than any humanoid brain in history, but I can’t reason my way out of this haze of confusion. I trace the activity in my neural pathways and see the same thoughts making wild loops, going around and around without resolution, and I feel circuits rerouting in automatic response to the threat of my matrix becoming snared in an infinite loop.

  It’s not as if there aren’t numerous other tasks into which I could submerge myself and hope to drown my grief with distraction. I could build a new basic-emotions chip for Data in a fraction of
the time it took to produce the first one. It’s like mastering a piece of music: before you know it, it’s a mystery; after you learn it, performing it again is almost like muscle memory. It’s not as if I don’t have the resources to make a new chip; it just wasn’t how I’d planned to spend my second life. Besides, as much as I’d like to do Data this service I owe him, there’s another, far greater debt pressing on my mind: his brother, Lore. Before I do anything else, I need to sort out that error in my judgment. I never should have turned my back on him, never given him the chance to leave my sight and impersonate Data. Hell, the only reason I conned him into staying on Terlina III was because I hoped he could still be reasoned with—and, failing that, contained. But I made him too much like me. Too crafty, too sly. I should have known.

  Yes, this is where my focus needs to be right now: on my boys.

  “Shakti, has there been any recent news about Data?” These days, the news daemon I built to monitor Data is an integral part of Shakti’s programming.

  My query is met by an uncommonly long silence. Perhaps I’m projecting my anxieties onto my AI assistant, but I might almost describe this brief lacuna as awkward. I look up and lift my voice. “Shakti? Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you.” After another pause she adds, “There is a new digest of logs by Lieutenant Commander Data, covering stardates 46982 through 47025.”

  In nanoseconds I translate that into calendar dates, and then my anger flares. “You’ve been sitting on those logs for over two weeks? Why didn’t you tell me when they came in?”

  “At the time, it seemed imprudent.”

  Some days, I just can’t fathom how Shakti thinks. Now, before you snicker and point out that I created her, so therefore it must be my fault, think of all the parents in the galaxy who find themselves vexed by their biological offspring. Mine is a universal problem, apparently.

  “Why did it seem imprudent?” This inquiry provokes naught but more silence, leaving me to reason this out on my own. I intuit a possible explanation, but it’s far from exculpatory for my troubled young AI. “Shakti, how long have you known about Juliana’s marriage to Tainer?”