by David Mack
No, this has to be a mistake. This can’t be true. It’s a malfunction.
I open an encrypted channel to my ship. “Shakti, search all news from Atrea IV, anything related to Juliana Tainer. Do it quickly.”
She reacts to my panic by striking a calming note. “Hang on, I’m checking.” Seconds pass in silence as all my processors spin and loop on one morbid thought, on the possibility that Juliana really is gone. I don’t want to think about it, but it floods every cell of my consciousness. Then Shakti speaks, and I’m grateful to have her voice break my spell of mourning. “I’m sorry, I found no recent news about Juliana Tainer.”
“No, of course not. It’s too soon. . . . My God. I might be the first person who knows she’s dead.” Suddenly, my imagination takes a cruel turn: What if she’s been the victim of foul play? What if someone conducts an autopsy and discovers what she is? I can’t rest until I know what’s happened. “Shakti, prep Archeus. I need to get to Atrea IV as soon as possible.”
• • •
Less than seventy-two hours later, I’m on the surface of Atrea IV, in the heart of Mainzeros, one of its more picturesque highland cities. Shakti scoured the local news when we made orbit, and found prominent public notices regarding Juliana’s demise. Apparently, she and her husband are figures of local notoriety. They lived in a suburb not far from here, one with lots of stone-paved streets and quaint buildings marked by an archaic flavor. Even here in a so-called city, there’s little technology in open view; the Atreans like to pretend they still live in simpler times.
Hacking into the civilian health-care system’s database proves simpler than I’d expected. Within minutes of reaching the surface, I confirm that Juliana’s body has been brought to the morgue in the Kessatol Medical Center in Mainzeros. Fortunately, because the initial on-site exam of her body indicated no signs of wrongful death, she hasn’t been scheduled for autopsy. I just hope I can get to her before they do anything drastic; the Atreans have little regard for their dead, and eschew such funerary practices as burial or viewings of the corpse. As a general rule, they cremate their dead as soon as it’s practical to do so, and conduct their memorials at home.
Even though my current disguise isn’t an Atrean, I draw scant attention as I walk among the locals and ride beside them on maglev streetcars. As a full member of the Federation, Atrea IV sees its fair share of offworld visitors and alien permanent residents. For this trip, I’ve divorced myself as profoundly as I can from my casino-magnate persona. The greenish cast of my complexion, the elegant curves of my upswept ear tips, my steep brows, and my atrociously bowl-cut sable hair mark me unmistakably as a Vulcan. I’ve kept my attire simple, just a black jacket and trousers with a dark gray shirt and black shoes. I don’t want to attract attention or be memorable. My aim is to be forgettable.
It’s midday when I reach the medical center. My positronic brain translates its Atrean signage automatically, and I navigate the sprawling complex’s labyrinth of corridors with ease. Along the way, I pass several members of the hospital staff, who appear to hail from a wide variety of Federation species. This world has become more cosmopolitan in recent years than I’d realized. Good; that will be useful.
Soon, I spy an empty staff lounge with some freestanding lockers. I slip inside and walk to the lockers. Examining the security keypads with my visual receptors adjusted to microscopic settings, I see patterns of genetic material on the keys that suggest their security codes are only four digits long, and based on the visible technology, their locks require no biometric data. Normally, a ten-digit keypad using a four-digit code means any given lock might be using any of ten thousand possible combinations. But if you know which four digits to use and only their order is left to be determined, there are only twenty-four possible combinations.
Putting my android body’s dexterity, visual acuity, and reflexes to good use, I start entering each of the twenty-four likely combinations for the closest locker. In 4.6 seconds, on my eleventh attempt, the locker door opens. I am in luck; inside I find a doctor’s blue lab coat, standard garb in Atrean hospitals. I put it on and grab a data padd from the locker’s top shelf. Now I can be even less conspicuous, just another staff member in a large medical center. I slip out of the lounge and walk at a leisurely pace to the nearest lift, which I take to the morgue sublevel. As I’d hoped, when the lift stops at an intermediate floor to admit an Atrean nurse, she acknowledges my presence with a polite smile and an averted gaze. Playing my part as a Vulcan, I respond with the most minor dip of my chin and no change in my expression. She pays me no heed and continues to ignore me as I step out into the sublevel and continue on my way.
Like most such facilities, the morgue in the Kessatol Medical Center is populated by only the most minimal staff. There seems to be little need for forensic medical investigation on this planet; that, coupled with the Atreans’ preference for post-mortem cremation, means most of this facility is likely unused at any given time. The drawback to this is that an unfamiliar person will be far more noticeable in the morgue than in other areas of the hospital. I need to be more careful from this point forward.
I observe the activity in the morgue from a safe distance down the corridor. Two people, an older Atrean man and a young female Trill who I think might be a medical student, seem to be the only ones working here at the moment. I listen in on their conversation and deduce that they are on their way to run tests in their adjacent laboratory.
They head to the lab through a connecting door, which closes behind them. I hurry inside the morgue and find an unsecured computer terminal. Its access is limited to morgue records, but that’s all I need at the moment. I find Juliana’s record and transfer a copy to my stolen padd. Then I note which stasis drawer her body is in, and I move off through a different door into a large space of gleaming metal, cold tile floors, and pale blue light that can drain the color from any face. The air is sharp with antiseptic. Counters along two walls are lined with analysis machines of various kinds, computers, and safe disposal boxes for medical waste. Lined up in the middle of the room are several autopsy tables. They’re simple things: metal platforms with raised edges, vented grid plates suspended in frames above shallow basins that feed deep drains, faucets at the head to provide hot and cold running water, and flexible hoses to direct water or compressed air as desired. Next to each table is a tray loaded with medieval-looking surgical instruments. Above each table is a movable bank of lights. This room looks as if it hasn’t been used for an actual autopsy in months, but I still get a shiver from being here.
Eager to be gone, I move at a brisk step beside the room’s far wall, which is a grid of recessed stasis pods. I find the one the computer says contains Juliana. The metal hatch folds down and opens at my slightest touch, and the slab on which her body rests slides out for examination. I lift the pale gray sheet from her face and draw it back. Then I freeze. She has aged, of course—I designed her to—but she’s just as radiant as she was when I knew her, so long ago. Grief wells up within me, and I fight to choke back my emotions. There is too much to do. I can’t let my anguish sidetrack me, not now.
I find the edge of the flap beneath her hair, over her temporal lobe. I press it in and give it a firm nudge until it flips open. Then I set down the padd and take some precision tools from my pants pockets. A few quick tests confirm the worst: this is no mistake, no malfunction.
She’s dead. My lovely Juliana is gone.
Her biofeedback circuit is still active, masking her true nature from scans; that much at least has gone right, but I’m paralyzed with confusion. How can she be dead already? In this day and age, when humans routinely live two or even three decades past their centenaries, why would Juliana’s android body decide to shut down when she was only in her seventies? Her chart offers no explanation; all it says next to CAUSE OF DEATH is “natural causes.” Utter garbage.
I run a few tests of her biofeedback logs, determined to find a better answer. It’s slow going now that her positr
onic matrix has completely succumbed to cascade failure. I have to work around dead pathways in my search for the truth.
Then I hear footsteps heading in my direction: more than one person. They are still a couple of rooms away; yet again I’m grateful for the sensitivity of my aural receptors.
I press shut the flap on Juliana’s head and return her body to the stasis pod with a gentle nudge. The hatch automatically lifts closed with a barely audible hum. I pick up my stolen padd from the floor and take stock of my options. I can’t leave the way I came in, since that’s where the steps are coming from. There’s an open doorway on the other side of the room, so I steal toward it, taking care to step lightly. I slip inside, and duck around a corner, using my night-vision filter to assess my surroundings. It’s a small antechamber, a washroom for the staff. There’s a long trough sink, some sanitizing-field emitters, bins for soiled work garments, and what I presume are toilet stalls. Hiding next to the doorway with my back against the wall, I can observe the examination room thanks to a mirror opposite me, facing the open doorway.
The Atrean coroner enters first, trailed by his female Trill student.
Following them into the room is Data, in his Starfleet uniform.
I cease respirating and halt my synthetic heartbeat. Every system in my body goes silent. For all intents, I’m practically a statue. Data’s hearing is nearly as sensitive as mine; I can’t take a chance on him detecting my presence, so I begin shifting the color of my complexion to a darker hue, to minimize the possibility of his catching my reflection inside the darkened room.
Fortunately for me, all his attention seems to be on the doctors as they lead him to Juliana’s pod. They open it for him, and his face seems to age years in a moment as he looks down at her. He reaches out as if to touch her cheek, then stops just shy of contact.
“How did she die?”
The coroner checks his padd. “The test I just ran indicates it was a severe stroke. I was just getting ready to update her file.”
Data looks bewildered. His voice goes flat; I think he’s in shock. “I was not aware she was at risk for such an event.”
“Normally, she wouldn’t be. But I think it was triggered by some natural compounds found in Atrean produce interacting unpredictably with a quirk of her human biology. Some of the medications she was taking for hypertension might also have played a part.”
Damn my perfectionism! I made her biomimetic circuit too well. I knew it would have been too suspicious to give her the appearance of flawless health as she grew older, so I designed her biofeedback system to adapt dynamically to her diet and environment. It never even occurred to me that I might condemn her to an early grave because of some freak confluence of factors.
The coroner seems ill at ease standing beside Data. I think it might be because Atreans are unaccustomed to someone standing so enraptured over the body of a dead loved one. As if trying to cue Data, he says with practiced sincerity, “I’m sorry for your loss.” When Data doesn’t move or respond, the coroner and his student exchange flustered looks. Then the coroner asks, “Do you need anything else, Commander?”
“A few minutes.” Data fixes the coroner with a frank stare. “May I have a few minutes alone with my mother?” His tone makes it clear he’s giving an order, not asking permission.
The coroner nods and ushers his student out ahead of him. “We’ll be outside.”
As soon as the pair leave, Data surveys the room, his face a mask of suspicion. He looks up and around, perhaps searching for surveillance devices but finding none. He reaches down and strokes Juliana’s hair, and his eyes shine with the promise of tears.
Then he gently presses the side of her head. What is he doing? Does he know about Juliana? My God, he must. He opens the flap over her temporal lobe, just as I did. He draws a tricorder from a holster on his belt and scans Juliana’s defunct positronic brain. He frowns, then shuts off the tricorder, holsters it, and closes the flap on his mother’s head.
I know from his logs that he met her a few years ago, but I had no idea he’d discovered her true nature. He and his friends on the Enterprise must have redacted the information from their records to protect her privacy. For that matter, they must have concealed the truth from Juliana, or else she’d have gone into cascade failure years ago. I wonder if Data found the message chip I left embedded inside her brain. Wouldn’t that be something?
My runaway train of thought is derailed as Data calls out, “Doctor!” The coroner rushes in, and Data adds, “My mother’s husband, Pran Tainer, has released her remains to me. You will find the necessary authorizations on file with your administrative office.”
“Yes, Commander. We’ve been informed. They finished the tai-lun yesterday.”
Data takes another look at Juliana, then he walks away and rejoins the doctor, who follows him out as he says, “Have her body prepared for transport and loaded onto my shuttlecraft. It is currently parked on the hospital’s secondary rooftop landing platform.”
The door closes behind them, leaving me once again alone with Juliana.
Had I known Data was planning to claim her body, I wouldn’t have risked coming here. My plan had been to liberate her body from this place by beaming it up with me to Archeus. Now I can’t even consider doing that. I know Data too well; he’s a relentless investigator once his curiosity is engaged. And though I have plans for his future, I’m not yet ready to reveal myself to him. No, it’s time to go.
I ditch the doctor’s jacket in a laundry bin and abandon the padd in one of the toilet stalls. Then I key my subdural transceiver. “Shakti, do you read me?”
“Yes, Noonien. Are you ready to beam up with your cargo?”
“It’ll just be me. Get the ship ready to fly. We have to go.”
“Understood. Stand by. Energizing . . .”
For a moment I consider trying to follow Data’s shuttlecraft in Archeus, but what would be the point? Data might be arranging some kind of memorial for Juliana aboard the Enterprise, but it’s not as if he plans on burying her in space afterward. No, he’ll almost certainly inter her remains in his mausoleum of my failures, beside the three miscarriages, his daughter, and the lobotomized husk of Lore. Still, it could be worse. At least she’ll be with family.
I bid a silent farewell to Juliana as the transporter beam enfolds me.
Fais de beaux rêves, ma chérie.
• • •
What should have been a short jaunt home has turned into a nearly three-week-long debacle. I’d plotted what I thought was a safe and relatively direct course back to Orion, only to find that a recent offensive by Dominion forces and their Cardassian allies has turned the sectors between myself and the Orion homeworld into a bitterly contested war zone.
To get home without the risk of becoming collateral damage, I’ve been forced to detour “south,” nearly a hundred light-years beneath the central regions of the galactic plane, in a loping elliptical path that I and other civilian traffic have been assured will keep us clear of the fighting. Having learned over the years what Starfleet’s promises are worth, I fully expect to be waylaid by a Jem’Hadar warship at any moment.
If there’s any benefit to this roundabout path, it’s not so much that it’s safer as that it’s given me a forced vacation from my life. It occurs to me that much of my time in recent months has been spent running the resort and planning for a future with Juliana—a future that’s no longer possible. All that’s left of it is the collapsed wave function of my unfulfilled hopes.
Even though it no longer matters, I still can’t help but wonder how I would ever have rekindled our old love. Now that she’s gone, it feels easier to admit to myself that she had long since moved on. When I’d first left Atrea IV after saying my farewell, I put Archeus on autopilot and tried to silence the chaos in my neural net by letting myself sleep. As soon as my conscious functions went off line, I dreamed of open water, a dark expanse of ocean under a hostile sky ribboned with lightning. I was swimming out to
sea and had passed beyond the point where I could hope to touch the bottom. Above me was fire and thunder; beneath me, an insatiable abyss. Flashing forks from the heavens stabbed at the rolling waves, and I knew that it would be only a matter of time until one of those thunderbolts found me. All at once, swimming felt futile. There was no land in sight, no thought of rescue. It would be so much easier to stop struggling and let my weight drag me down into the darkness. Yet . . . I kept on swimming.
Some dreams are simpler to interpret than others. The subconscious is not always subtle.
After I awoke, I let my thoughts turn toward nostalgia. Before long, my reminiscing turned maudlin, and I found myself reliving my memories of the lost and departed: my old colleagues, not least of them that arrogant but charming windbag, Ira Graves; all my failed sons—the three who never gained sentience, and the one whose mind became twisted by envy and ambition into something violent and ugly; and now, unkindest cut of all, my Juliana.
I’ve let myself wallow in my brooding long enough. I’ve relived years of memories in a matter of days, poring over every engram and reconstructing the details from my journals and holographic recordings to build a better mental archive of my life. It’s time to think of something other than the dead. I still have one living son; he should be my focus now.
The optimist in me wants to believe I still have two sons, that B-4 might still be out there somewhere, but the cynic in me knows that’s unlikely. It was early 2335 when I left him on Draken IV and went back to Omicron Theta to assemble Lore and Data, using the techniques I’d perfected on B-4. Master of procrastination that I am, it took me more than twenty-one years to return to Draken IV. I arrived one freezing-cold night to find my old rented lab ransacked, and all its valuable equipment stolen . . . along with B-4. If only I’d fitted him with a homing beacon and recall circuit, maybe I could have tracked him down. But what was done was done, and I resigned myself to the fact that my son was gone, probably disassembled in some government-backed laboratory, far away in some forsaken corner of the galaxy.
