by David Mack
Some father I turned out to be; I abandoned all my sons. Data’s done well enough for himself, but poor B-4—how long has he been missing? At least eighteen years now, maybe longer. The shame of what I did over the course of my biological lifetime weighs heavily on my conscience, and now I can’t help but think I’ve failed Juliana just as gravely, by making her the victim of my perfectionism and obsessive drive to make my androids as “real” as possible. Why did real have to mean fragile? Or mortal? Wasn’t it enough to make them in my image? Did I also have to curse them with my own limitations? I didn’t see any reason to burden my own new vessel with those shortcomings, so why did I handicap my sons and the love of my life?
I shake off my self-recrimination with a flush of anger and a surge of determination. I need to think about Data now. He is the last part of me still thriving openly in the universe. It’s time I turned my resources to his benefit. I need to understand him and his life better than I do, and then ask myself what I can do to improve his existence. It’s time I was more to my son than a creator figure, distant in time and memory; it’s time I started acting like his father.
Archeus is close enough now to Federation space that I’m able to tap into one of Starfleet’s automated long-range comm relays. One of the fringe benefits of the war is that there’s so much signal traffic that my occasional snooping sessions get lost in the torrent. I’m also close enough that I can use my backdoor codes to access Data’s newest logs, and see what he’s been up to since he claimed Juliana’s body on Atrea IV. It takes several seconds to make a connection that can’t be traced back to me, a few seconds more to download the logs, and then I cover my virtual tracks and terminate the comm channel before anyone gets curious about it.
This batch of entries is more numerous than I’d expected, and of greater length and detail than usual. It must have been an eventful three weeks for Data. I open the files, have Shakti scan them to make sure they contain no harmful code, and then I download them directly into my positronic brain. Precisely 3.782 seconds later, I sit back, stunned. Eventful is an understatement. Data and his shipmates unraveled a five-hundred-thousand-year-old mystery and uncovered the secret history of artificial intelligence in the Milky Way—exposing a web of interconnectedness that includes not only myself but also my friendly rival Ira Graves, our visionary mentor, Emil Vaslovik, and our ill-fated 2304 joint expedition to the caves beneath the surface of Exo III.
You probably think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. I’ll concede that Data’s account of events strains credulity, but I’ve never known him to lie. Omit facts, yes. But never lie.
His latest adventure seems to begin with a violent attack on the Starfleet lab at the Daystrom Institute Annex on Galor IV. Captain Bruce Maddox—yes, the same cretin who tried to take Data apart in the name of “science”—was found nearly dead. A shame his attackers didn’t finish the job. But I digress. It seems his life was saved by Vaslovik, who in turn faked his own death and escaped with a prototype android he had been developing for the past two years with Maddox and his collaborators, Admiral Anthony Haftel—yes, the clod whose meddling hastened the cascade failure of Data’s precious daughter, Lal—and two holographic systems experts, Doctor Lewis Zimmerman and Lieutenant Reginald Barclay.
This prototype android sounds remarkable, even though there are no schematics or even rudimentary scans. My old mentor, the “father of neurocybernetics,” and his new minions used a holographic matrix to stabilize a nascent positronic brain, thereby protecting it from cascade anomalies and fostering more rapid formation of new cybersynaptic pathways in its neural net, greatly accelerating its development, learning capacity, and processing speed. It’s an elegant proposition, and if what Data says is true, they made it work. I can tell right away this is a stroke of pure genius, because I’m already fuming with envy and wishing I’d thought of it first.
The Enterprise crew investigated the attack, and to make a long story short, got drawn into a rather violent kerfuffle involving more sentient AIs than anyone in Starfleet has ever seen before. Data, not surprisingly, ended up in the midst of the fray and emerged somewhat worse for wear. Along the way, he writes, he and his comrades made some remarkable discoveries.
It seems my son shares my gift for mind-boggling understatement.
They uncovered incontrovertible evidence that my old mentor, Emil Vaslovik, is actually a six-thousand-year-old man, some manner of unique mutant, an immortal who remains in the prime of his adulthood. Data says Vaslovik has lived under countless aliases through the millennia. You might have heard a few of his names mentioned in passing: Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander the Great, Johannes Brahms, Solomon, Lazarus of the rock, Merlin . . . and no doubt a hundred other names lost to antiquity.
This immortal genius of innumerable names had a penchant for creating and nurturing sentient artificial intelligence, perhaps because he hoped to create a companion he wouldn’t so easily outlive. His latest work of art, this holotronic android, apparently shares his talent for assuming identities and deceiving people. Templated as a human female of mixed European and Japanese heritage, she adopted the nom de guerre Rhea McAdams and, with Vaslovik’s help, insinuated herself as the Enterprise’s new security chief within days of being activated.
A week after Data was first activated, he could barely tie his shoes.
Now this brilliant, absurdly powerful holotronic android is at large, traveling as a guest of the same fellowship of artificial intelligence whose overtures I rebuffed a few years ago. And Vaslovik? Vanished without a trace, leaving behind countless unanswered questions, a swath of destruction, and no doubt his most recent identity, shed like a reptile’s worn-out skin.
But all these details, as monumental as they might appear on their face, are incidental. They are overshadowed by a matter of far greater importance, a trend in Data’s personal logs.
My son has fallen in love. With Vaslovik’s android, Rhea McAdams.
Imagine my relief to read in Data’s own words that the attraction is mutual. She’s as smitten with him as he is with her. And now he’s pining for her, patiently awaiting her return.
My eyes tear up, and a flood of mixed emotions trembles my lower lip even as a goofy smile contorts my features. I’m overcome with joy for Data and envy for Vaslovik. For forty-one thousandths of a second, I don’t know which emotion to indulge. Then I decide, What the hell; I am legion. I surrender myself to both feelings at once. My boy is in love.
15
I’m a day’s travel away from Orion and clear of any threat from the sprawling war zone known colloquially as the Alpha Quadrant. Shakti is compiling the latest updates from the resort so I can go to work the moment we arrive, and I’m passing my time trying to imagine how to stabilize a positronic brain inside a holographic matrix. To fill the empty spaces in my thoughts, I’m listening to a recording of Igor Stravinsky’s suite from The Firebird. Archeus’s narrow confines roar with the thunderous beauty of the classic Russian ballet, which fuses the myth of a bird of fire that’s both a blessing and a curse to those who dare to possess it, and the folk legend of Koschei the Deathless, a man who cheats death only to pay dearly in the end for his hubris.
Doing things the hard way has never been my first choice, though I’ve never let difficulty dissuade me from pursuing an idea. Naturally, my first step in attempting to duplicate Vaslovik’s holotronic technology was to try to steal it remotely from the computers of the Daystrom Institute Annex on Galor IV, using a number of custom-built, self-replicating viral programs that I uploaded to their mainframe via the Federation’s comnet. To my dismay, Vaslovik had wiped the Annex’s computers of all information related to his new android. There was literally nothing left for me to steal. So, I started from tabula rasa, with just the idea itself to guide me.
One week later, that’s still all I have. That and a festering resentment of Vaslovik.
I suppose I should be grateful. I’ve spent the past few days alternately giddy for Data and stewing wit
h jealousy toward my old mentor. Mostly the latter, actually. I’ve hardly had time to be depressed about Juliana, though I continue to be haunted by endless hypothetical situations I can never test: What if I hadn’t programmed her biofeedback circuit so well? What if I had told her the truth of what she was twenty-six years ago, when I first activated her? What if I had thought to make two copies of her mind and keep one safe, in case of something like this?
Empty queries such as these are ridiculous, a cruel waste of my time, yet they consume ever-increasing blocks of my neural network. Why can’t I break free of this pattern? It always seemed so simple to tell other people to “let go” or “move on” or “get back to living,” but now that I’m the one with a huge hole in my life where Juliana used to be, I see it’s not so easy.
Shakti lowers the volume on the music to give me a routine update. “Noonien? Orion’s space-traffic control network has sent us an automated hail. They’re asking for our approach vector and final destination. Shall I reply with our flight plan?”
I’m about to approve her suggestion when an infinitesimal anomaly in my neural net arrests my every thought. It’s a flash of action in my quantum entangled-particle circuit lasting less than four picoseconds—an event so brief, it can barely be said to have happened at all. But it did happen, my synaptic activity log confirms it. A single iteration of binary code from the entangled particle, an unmistakable message: 111.
It had to have come from Juliana’s positronic matrix, but that shouldn’t be possible. Once her matrix collapsed into cascade failure, triggering her entangled-particle circuit, that should have been the end. No technique known to science can rouse a failed positronic mind. Once its pathways degrade, they and the mind they harbored are gone forever, irretrievable and irreparable. But if that’s true, what tripped her EPC? The only event I can conceive that might do so would be a spontaneous re-formation of her matrix, but that’s an impossibility. Such an event would be nothing less than a thermodynamic miracle of the highest order.
Might Data have surpassed me in his knowledge of cybernetics? Is it possible he claimed Juliana’s body because he had some plan for her? If he’s revived her, he’ll have to explain to her what she really is. I should be there for that discussion. Secrecy and safety be damned; if this was just a misfire caused by a failed repair attempt, I’ll stay in the shadows, but I have to know.
“Change of plans. Shakti, fire up the sensors. I need to get a lock on Juliana’s homing beacon without actually triggering it. The frequency is in the secured computer core.”
“I have it.” While Shakti engages the ship’s sensors, I turn off the music and monitor the master control console. Minutes later—an interval that feels like an eternity to me—she presents a star chart on the navigational console. “I detect a faint signal on the designated frequency. Bearing two-eight-four, mark one-nine. Range, four hundred sixteen-point-two light-years.”
I stare dumbfounded at the star chart. “That can’t be right. The Enterprise’s logs report its last heading in the opposite direction, and it can’t be more than ninety light-years from here.”
“I’ve checked the readings, Noonien. They’re confirmed.”
This is insane. Aside from transwarp, I can’t think of a known propulsion system that could have covered that much distance in so short a time. And if Data and the Enterprise are headed toward the Cardassian border, why am I detecting Juliana’s homing beacon in the Beta Quadrant, far beyond the bounds of explored space? Who would abduct her body? For what purpose? And who would have the expertise to even attempt the reactivation of . . .
I form a hypothesis of what’s happened, and I don’t like it at all.
“Lay in a direct course on that heading—maximum warp.”
A nagging voice deep inside my head warns me not to do this. I ignore it.
I have to know.
• • •
Sixty-one days, nine hours, and thirty-seven minutes later, I guide Archeus out of warp and pilot it into a circumbinary system—a red dwarf orbiting a small, yellow main sequence star, both encircled by six planets orbiting the two stars’ combined gravitational center. The signal from Juliana’s homing beacon is originating on the fourth planet, a small Mars-like world—I think the official designation is Class K—with a tenuous nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. Not that I have any need of air, but it suggests to me that whoever brought Juliana here does.
I approach the planet at impulse and run multiple scans of its surface. No sign of habitation or automation, no artificial signals or power sources other than Juliana’s beacon. As I expected, it’s a desolate rockball. Locking in the coordinates of the homing beacon, I begin my descent into the atmosphere. Archeus is surrounded by a blazing nimbus of air superheated by the friction of my ship’s passage, forcing me to rely for a few minutes on instruments alone for navigation. When the fiery turbulence fades, a barren wasteland of cinnamon-colored desert stretches out beneath me. The ground passing below grows thick with jagged formations of rock, which are soon replaced by vertiginous mountain ranges.
Day gives way to night as I follow the beacon’s signal into the mountains. I discover a vale surrounded by steep cliffs and forbidding peaks. The signal is emanating from there, so I make a slow circle of the area, gathering sensor data while performing my own visual reconnaissance. I think I’m supposed to be surprised to see, jutting from one mountain’s side, a Gothic castle—complete with towers, parapets, and flying buttresses—carved out of the living rock. Instead I nod, as if this makes perfect sense, and then I land Archeus in its courtyard.
“Shakti, keep everything ready for immediate liftoff.” I get out of my chair and head for the port hatch. “And don’t let any strangers inside the ship.”
“Understood. Be careful, Noonien.”
I take a hand-scanner with me on my way out the hatch. It’s been set to zero in on Juliana’s beacon, which it’s telling me is inside the castle. I take a moment to look around the courtyard. It’s empty except for me and my ship. There are several doors leading to different areas of the castle, and all of them are either wide open or ajar. Because no one has challenged my arrival or my decision to park my ship inside its walls, I decide it’s probably all right to let myself in for a look around. Following the beacon’s signal, I walk through an open door and continue down a long and outrageously high-ceilinged hallway.
There’s nothing to see except naked stone beneath a heavy layer of dust. Mine are the first footprints this corridor has seen in ages—or perhaps ever. If someone brought Juliana here, they might have beamed directly to an inner chamber, obviating the need to walk these halls.
At the end of the hall is a closed door. The scanner says Juliana’s beacon signal is coming from the room on the other side. I hesitate for the briefest moment, unsure of what I might say to her after all these years, and then realize I might be getting ahead of myself. Calming myself as best I can, I push the door open and walk inside, prepared for whatever awaits me.
Nothing does. The room is empty, a literal and figurative dead end. There are signs of activity in here, though. I note two sets of footprints on the dusty stone floor; one is significantly larger and wider than the other. The floor is rich with evidence that there has been heavy equipment in here—gouges in the stone where things were dragged, empty bolt-holes where some devices had been secured, and microscopic traces of advanced alloys.
In the center of the room is a large banquet table of polished onyx. Unlike every other surface I’ve seen so far inside this castle, the tabletop is immaculate. Free of dust, it’s so perfect that I can use it as a mirror. I suspect this is a workbench until I see the glint of high-tech debris on the floor beneath the table. I squat and reach under to grab it. As soon as my fingers close around it, I recognize it as my own handiwork. I lift it up and regard it with a tired sigh.
It’s what’s left of Juliana’s beacon and entangled-particle circuit.
Both have been excised from her body by the deft
touch of an expert. The severances are beyond surgical in their precision. The person who did this knew how to navigate the complex circuitry of a positronic brain and manipulate its elements with unerring dexterity.
Right away, I can rule out numerous suspects.
This was not Data’s doing. If he were going to awaken Juliana, he would have done it aboard the Enterprise, probably with the aid of his friend, Geordi La Forge.
Admiral Haftel, Captain Maddox, and their colleagues Barclay and Zimmerman all are exonerated by the simple fact of their sheer ineptitude, both individually and collectively.
But I don’t need the deductive reasoning of some great detective to know who’s responsible for this. I’ve known since the moment I felt the spark that heralded her resurrection.
Vaslovik has stolen my Juliana.
AUGUST
2375
16
It’s easy to forget just how vast the galaxy really is until you try to find one person who could be anywhere in it. Measuring more than a hundred thousand light-years across and containing nearly four hundred billion stars and trillions of planets, the Milky Way offers a determined recluse more than a few good places to hide.
When I first left the nameless orb where I’d found Juliana’s discarded homing beacon, I was at a loss. How could I track her? If she’s inactive, if the signal I’d received was just a surge from her EPC as it was being removed, then she’s nothing more than a mass of unremarkable elements and compounds, a mote in the endless sea of stars. On the other hand, if she has been reactivated, she can’t be navigating the uncharted waters of her second life alone. She would stay with Vaslovik and depend upon him to steer them toward safety.
