by David Mack
“Perfectly.”
“Good.” I send her my equipment list, and then I call up Data’s schematics and begin isolating core systems from one another, so that I can review each independently. Dissecting my earlier work, I’m dismayed by many of my choices; it’s a wonder Data remained functional for as long as he did. Even when I was designing the basic emotion chip to correct what I’d considered to be the single greatest omission from his original design, there were thousands of other systems I would have loved to upgrade, if only there had been time. Now, lurking in the shadow of death is the possibility of a new beginning, an opportunity for atonement.
I’m going to save B-4 by building a new body for Data—a better one, the one he should have had. My son will live again.
OCTOBER
2380
20
“A landmark legal decision was handed down today by the Federation Judiciary Council,” says the pretty female Kriosian talking head on the Federation News Service vid channel. “In the matter of Patek v. Maddox, the council voted unanimously to recognize the android B-4 as a sentient being and a Federation citizen, with full protection under the law.”
The mention of my son’s name is the first thing to distract me from my project since his case first went before the judiciary council nearly six weeks earlier. I turn from my workbench to watch the rest of the report, riveted at the great step forward the Federation has just taken.
“Starfleet officer and respondent Captain Bruce Maddox spoke with members of the press immediately after the decision was announced.” The screen switches to an image of Maddox, who looks older and wearier, and maybe even a shade wiser, than when I saw him last. He speaks with his chin held high. “Today’s decision in the Federation’s highest court was a victory for all sentient life. Our government reaffirmed its commitment to seek out and respect such life in all its forms, to honor the principle of ‘I think, therefore I exist.’ It has been my privilege to defend B-4’s right to self-determination, and to protect him from those who would take advantage of him—whether for personal gain or in the name of science. I won’t presume to know what Doctor Noonien Soong might have wanted for his creation, but I can’t imagine he gave life to these beings just so that others could take it away. And I am very pleased today to find that the Judiciary Council shares this view.”
The image changes to something else as FNS moves on to its next breaking story. I turn my attention back to my work, but I’m distracted as I reflect on this exciting new development. Maddox, of all people, has become a crusader for AI sentient rights. I guess people really can change. Perhaps that means there’s hope yet for me, as well.
My work on Data’s new body is proceeding beautifully. While awaiting the delivery of raw materials and new equipment for my lab, I spent the first six weeks of this project designing an upgraded body that would rival even my own current form. I put to use every bit of knowledge I’ve gained in the forty-odd years since I designed Data, in disciplines ranging from positronic circuitry to materials science to advances in AI programming. His new body will weigh thirty-four percent less but be four times as durable. All his cosmetic details will appear fully human, and, like my own, will be completely under his control. He will be a far more sophisticated chameleon than I am. I even fixed the quirk in his language database that made him eschew the use of contractions. It’s taken longer than I expected, but I think it’s been worth it.
There’s still a lot to do, of course. I’m building him new eyes, and I’m planning full-spectrum enhancements to all his sensory inputs. He’ll be able to see things other beings can’t even imagine, hear on frequencies no organic being has ever sensed. His hair and skin will be able to withstand temperatures as cold as liquid nitrogen and as hot as molten lead. He’ll be able to bend decimeter-thick duranium rods as if they were saltwater taffy. And don’t get me started on his reflexes and motor skills; let it suffice to say he’ll be capable of wonders undreamed of.
And his mind? I’ve only just begun fabricating the core processors, but this is going to be the finest work I’ve ever done. It might not rival Vaslovik’s celebrated holotronic technology, but it will be the fastest, most dynamic, and most stable positronic brain I’ve ever designed. I admit, I stole a few ideas from Vaslovik and his team on Galor IV. Using a holographic matrix to stabilize the neural net during the initial programming phase is something I can do without altering its core design, and I think they were right: it will prevent cascade anomalies. This might not be how they applied the principle, but I’m certain my interpretation of their idea will be just as effective, even if it’s not a permanent feature of the matrix.
There are still some serious obstacles ahead, unfortunately, and they all relate to B-4. As much as I want to give this gift to Data, I don’t want to do it at B-4’s expense. I’ve hurt my boys too many times. Never again. I won’t sacrifice one for the other; I won’t accept the loss of B-4 any more than I’d accept Data’s death. The problem is that extracting Data’s memory engrams—which also contain complex nested patterns for Lore’s and Lal’s memories, which Data downloaded into himself after their deaths—could destabilize B-4’s primitive neural network. He wasn’t designed to serve as a conduit for such complex information any more than he was meant to implement it. It would be like trying to copy the massive AI-driven software of a modern Starfleet starship into the memory banks of a ship from the start of the previous century. It not only wouldn’t work, it would risk inducing a fatal crash in the less-advanced system.
My only chance for salvaging Data’s memory engrams without destroying B-4 in the process is to first upgrade B-4’s firmware and operating software, so that his neural net can more efficiently manage the use of its positronic circuits and memory storage. I’ve been studying his schematics and software code for the past eleven months, and I believe I’m close to finishing a patch application that will solve these issues and radically improve B-4’s cognitive functions.
Unfortunately, keeping his brain from melting during the transfer is the least of my logistical hurdles. First, I need to think of a clandestine way to reach B-4 and gain access to him for a period of sufficient duration to complete this procedure. That’ll be harder than it sounds. While I don’t expect him to put up much of a struggle, Starfleet’s not about to let me walk in the front door of its Annex at the Daystrom Institute on Galor IV and tinker with my elder son.
Funny thing about surviving a war against a power like the Dominion: it has the effect of making formerly open and trusting societies such as the Federation into security states. They employ biometric security at all their important facilities these days, a paranoid reaction to the threat of infiltration by Gamma Quadrant shape-shifters. That’s going to make my task harder.
Another issue is that there’s no way for me to engineer this process from a distance. I’ll need to put Data’s new body beside B-4’s, connect them with a hard line through a computer loaded with the necessary applications to govern the memory transfer, and watch over them until it’s done. It should take only a matter of minutes, assuming I preload all the core operating systems into Data’s new body, but how am I supposed to put my boys in the same room?
It’s not like when I summoned Data—and, accidentally, Lore—to me on Terlina III by triggering their recall circuits. B-4 doesn’t have a recall circuit—not that I’d trust him to find his way across interstellar space to answer such a signal. I could break into the Annex just long enough to make contact with B-4 and then lead him out; after all, he is self-mobile. Then I remember that he’s also painfully slow-witted, and extremely likely to draw attention to us. It’d be easier to make a clean escape while dragging an anchor at the end of a chain.
The alternative is to bring Data’s new body to B-4 at the Annex. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Now remember that I need to carry a man-sized body inside a transporter-shielded military facility without being detected or intercepted. Sure, I could try to sneak in and deactivate the transporter scra
mbler, but doing so will likely set off a whole new slew of alarms. By the time I neutralize the scrambler and beam Data into the Annex, I’d very likely be surrounded by an armed company of Starfleet security personnel. Hardly what I’d call a discreet approach.
Fortunately, there’s still time to sort this out. If all goes well, Data’s new body and brain will be tested and ready by April. Which means I have exactly that long to concoct a plan.
2381
21
I’m so deep into the delicate process of balancing the signal inputs from the new body’s visual receptors that for several seconds I tune out the angry buzzing from the wall panel by the door. This is precision work, with no margin for error; if I get this wrong in the slightest degree, Data will be cursed to see double for the duration of his second life.
That accursed signal threatens to break my focus. An interruption is the last thing I need right now. “Shakti! Turn off that alert!”
It goes silent, and I take a deep breath. My focus restored, I finalize the atomic bonds on the left eye’s primary retinal integrator, then set down my tools. Only once I’m a few steps away from the table do I permit myself the satisfaction of an angry sigh. Even from across the room, my own eyes are sharp enough to see that something has tripped the proximity alert by entering the Yutani system on a heading for my moon.
“What now?” I grumble to myself. “More deluded prospectors? Another well-meaning but utterly useless would-be colony manager? Or maybe Tyros reconsidered his—” My grousing is silenced by the image forming on the screen. The long-range sensors have assembled a confirmed profile for the approaching vessel. It’s a Borg cube. “No!”
I check my redoubt’s shields and cloaking system: all functioning perfectly. Not even the Borg should be able to penetrate my veil of secrecy. They can’t know I’m here, can they? What could they possibly want? For a moment I’m afraid Tyros’s AI fellowship has struck some dark bargain with these monsters, offering up my location and my secrets in return for . . . what?
Better not to find out. “Shakti, is Archeus ready to fly?”
“Yes, Noonien.”
I run back to the worktable. “Any second now, I expect the Borg to hail us. Keep them talking long enough for me to bring Data’s new body to the ship.” I roll up my toolkit, secure it closed with a press of Velcro to fiber, and sling it by its strap over my shoulder. “As soon as I’m aboard, we’re out of here.” I’m sliding my hands under Data’s nearly complete new body when a searing flash of green light overloads my visual receptors. A hash of static gives way to darkness, but my ears still work—and what I hear is a thunder more terrible than any I’ve ever imagined. The ground rumbles under my feet, and my lab rings with the delicate music of glass and metal objects trembling wildly against one another. “Shakti! What’d you say to them?”
“They never hailed us! They just opened fire!” As the thunder grows deafening, I can barely hear her say, “Don’t move! I have to beam you—”
Everything erupts into fire and madness. Hand-sized chunks of shattered transparent steel slam against me, driven by a wind of fire. I feel as if I’ve been swatted by the hand of a god, and as I’m sucked into the raging maelstrom, Data’s body is torn from my grasping fingers, my reflexes and my strength unequal to the ferocity of the shock front buffeting me.
The sickening sensation of being hurled like a leaf on the wind gives way to numbness and silence . . . and as consciousness slips from me for the most fleeting instant, my damnably fast android brain has time to wonder if this is the moment of my death.
Then I feel the tug of gravity and the kiss of cool air. My sensory network struggles to reset itself, having been pushed past its limits by the fury of the storm. Then my logic catches up to my sensations, and I realize it was no tempest that carried me away. It was a blast wave. Tactile sensations are the first to return; I feel the cold metal of a starship deck under my bare palms, and the curved edge of a transporter pad.
My hearing returns to normal after a few seconds of tinnitus. I hear the throbbing rhythm of impulse engines, the hum of EPS conduits channeling power throughout my ship. Olfactory sensors detect sickening odors of charred metal, fabric, and polymers, and I realize to my dismay that I’m their source. Even as my visual receptors reinitialize and cycle through their frequencies before a final check of monochrome levels and then the default setting of visible spectrum with minimal false-spectrum overlays, I fear to look at myself. I dread what a self-examination will reveal, but if my hands are any indicator, the rest of me is likely a wreck. Large swaths of my synthetic skin have been melted away, revealing electromyomers and servos and circuitry.
With effort, I stand. My balance is unsteady because one of my feet is barely attached. As I lurch forward toward the open doorway, the pathetic whining and grinding of my battered form echoes in Archeus’s close confines. I steady myself with one fire-flensed hand against a bulkhead and limp forward to the cockpit. My reward is a grim but breathtaking spectacle.
Yutani IIIa is ablaze. My once-verdant moon is a black and red ball of molten rock. Its atmosphere has been blasted away, its deep but narrow sea cooked off in a hellstorm. Nothing living remains on its surface.
I ask in a brittle, mechanical-sounding voice, “Where are the Borg?”
“The cube has already left orbit and is departing the system at Warp 9.997.”
Hanging onto the back of the pilot’s chair to prevent myself from collapsing to the deck, I ease myself into it and pull up Shakti’s sensor logs on the master console. I replay the details of the attack. The Borg didn’t target my lab directly. In fact, they unloaded their barrage on the closest part of the surface to their original approach vector, then reversed course as soon as the planet was cooked to a radioactive cinder. “This makes no sense.”
Shakti sounds as shaken as I feel. “What makes no sense?”
“They weren’t here for me.” I’d heard the recent reports of Borg attacks on planets in this sector and its neighbors, but I thought those incidents were just part of a next-level escalation in their long-simmering conflict with the Federation. But what I’m seeing now on long-range sensors is something else entirely. There are more than seven thousand Borg cubes deploying in a radial pattern across Federation, Klingon, and Romulan space. This is no attack, not merely an invasion. According to panicked reports flooding the comm networks, the Borg are laying waste every populated world in their path, regardless of their affiliation or relationship with the Federation. The Borg are even destroying unpopulated Class-M worlds and moons, such as mine, without warning or mercy. This is beyond total warfare, beyond genocide. It’s omnicide.
I steal one more look back at the glowing ember of Yutani IIIa, and I know better than to ask Shakti about Data’s body. It’s gone forever, consumed by that holocaust. Archeus’s cloak is operational and engaged, which is probably the only reason that cube didn’t come back to finish us off. I lay in a course for the only safe destination I can think of, far from the Federation.
As my ship comes about on its new heading, the placid vista of space fills the cockpit windshield, and against that dark curtain of stars I catch my nightmarish reflection. Most of my flesh has been blasted away, leaving only a few scorched patches clinging to my face and torso. My clothes and my tools are gone, and my internal systems have survived but sustained serious damage. I have most of what I need aboard Archeus to restore myself, but it will take a great deal of time, especially without the resources of a full lab at my disposal.
Fortunately, I have time to spare. My destination is months away. I accelerate Archeus to warp speed, bound for a world with no name . . . because I have nowhere else to go.
22
Four months of high-warp silent running . . . for this.
I stand in the middle of Vaslovik’s and Juliana’s villa, their home overlooking their new Eden of a world . . . and I am surrounded by ashes. Only a few blackened timbers remain upright, orphaned amid the collapsed charcoal deb
ris of the house. The bitter stench of the fire lingers, though everything is long since cold. This place was abandoned and left to burn months ago, or perhaps even earlier. My only solace is that there are no bodies here.
I had come hoping to beg Juliana’s forgiveness and Vaslovik’s help. If anyone possessed the knowledge and resources to help me save my sons now that the Borg have robbed me of hope and fortune, it would be them. Pride be damned; I would gladly have prostrated myself, confessed my sins, and pleaded without shame for absolution and aid.
But the lovers are nowhere to be found.
I’ve spent days picking through every handful of carbonized dust, desperate to unearth some clue to where they might have gone. Any cryptic note would suffice, would give me a direction in which to turn my restless flight. It’s no use, though. They’ve left me nothing to follow, no evidence to analyze, no riddles to parse. Just the gutted ruin of a house hundreds of light-years from anything resembling civilization.
As for me, I’m a wreck, in more ways than one. I’ve made the best repairs I can to my systems, but without a proper lab, some of my more advanced capabilities will be impossible to restore, including my chameleon-like alterations of my hair and skin, and my ability to copy retinal patterns. For the foreseeable future, I will have to be content with myself as I am.
I turn in a slow circle, taking in the animal cries of the rainforest behind the burnt lot where the villa once stood, and the rush of wind over the valley below. The sun is setting in the distance, and I recall watching Vaslovik and Juliana admire its purpling majesty. At a loss for a new destination, I sit down, cross-legged, and face the sunset.
