ONLINE THE NEEDS OF THE MANY

by Michael A. Martin

  “Disguise” hardly does justice to what the Undine infiltrators do when they go under “deep cover” on a Federation world. They don’t simply don a disguise, or change their features cosmetically. They actually alter their DNA at the codon level in order to ensure that they can pass as human. That’s no mean feat, this little understood retooling of their own densely packed, three-stranded DNA to make it compatible with the much simpler, two-stranded stuff we keep coiled in our cell nuclei. Despite all the difficulties involved, the imposture is usually so perfect as to be virtually undetectable.

  Except when the faux-humanoid DNA breaks down, causing an Undine to spontaneously revert to its native form.

  Which merely demonstrates that no plan, no matter how brilliantly conceived or executed, is perfect. But perfection was the goal of the Borg collective, which nobody seems to be all that frightened of these days. The Undine merely had to do a good enough job at infiltration to leave us wondering how many more of their operatives weren’t accidentally revealing their presence because of some chance nucleic-acid-level cellular meltdown. In fact, the occasional sudden public “reversion” probably helped the Undine’s cause more than it hurt it. Those periodic reversals, when they happened in plain sight, allowed the Undine to sow fear, nurture it with the passage of time and the fertilizer of the humanoid imagination, harvest it like a cash crop, and export it all over the galaxy. No wonder the Undine inspire such a unique level of fear among humanoid species, even now. Not even the Klingons are immune to it, for all their bluster.

  I have a few Klingon acquaintances who might take rather sharp exception to that, Professor.

  Of course. Klingons will be Klingons, after all.

  Humans, Klingons, and Romulans all faced shape-changers during the Dominion War. What do you think it is about Undine infiltration that’s more terrifying than the masquerades the Founders used to perform in our midst? Or the mass identity thefts committed by the Borg, for that matter?

  It’s true, we have endured this sort of existential terror before, thanks to the Founders of the Dominion, and to the Borg collective as well. But those earlier assaults on personal human sovereignty were somehow less all-encompassing than what the Undine tried to do. True, the Founders created a lot of confusion on Earth during the years leading up to the Dominion War, which cost the lives of millions of Federation citizens and nearly a billion Cardassians before it was over. But a Borg assimilation bespoke such a profound loss of identity as to be tantamount to outright murder. And the few Founders that managed to infiltrate Earth could only copy a person’s gross external characteristics. All it took was a simple blood test to uncover the ruse.

  But Undine imposture is a very different thing. When the Undine steal a humanoid’s identity, they take it all the way down to the genomic level, making the infiltration all but undetectable. If I were part of the philosophy department, I might describe it as an almost literal theft of the soul. Or maybe, to put it in law school terms, it’s a kind of “copyright infringement” of the soul. This predilection with taking the only thing humans generally believe is indissoluble from existence itself—the notion of identity—is, I think, what makes the Undine so fundamentally frightening, even in a galaxy that’s fraught with encounters with every other imaginable sort of terrifying adversary.

  I couldn’t help but notice that you often refer to the Undine in the present tense, even though there hasn’t been a major incursion during the last several years.

  You’re a very astute and attentive interviewer.

  I’m also one who’s immune to flattery, Professor, but thank you anyway. It sounds as though you’re saying that you don’t believe the Undine War is really over.

  Not for a Scalosian minute.

  LIFE DURING WARTIME

  FEAR AND DISILLUSIONMENT VERSUS IDEALISM AND COURAGE

  TO: Martok, son of Urthog, Chancellor of the Klingon Empire and leader of the High Council

  FROM: Quen, Klingon Intelligence

  RE: After Action Report, choS Battle Group

  Chancellor, I regret to inform you of the loss of the choS Battle Group. The crews fought with honor, sacrificing everything to send back to us intelligence about a new threat to the Empire.

  The image included in this missive is of the ship that destroyed the battle group. We know little about this starship other than that, and what we do know is due to the heroic actions of Captain D’rakal and his crew. They died well, and I honor them.

  In its continuing investigation into the events of the Ho’buS [Hobus] supernova, agents of Imperial Intelligence have been looking into reports of incredibly advanced starships appearing in Romulan space.

  There must be some validity to these rumors. The Narada was a civilian ship captained by a common miner. Nero was no warrior, and yet he defeated a fleet of our finest starships! I cannot look in the faces of the mates and children of blooded Klingon warriors and tell them that these great men and women were killed by a miner! Even if all of the Fek’lhri had fought at his side, this should not have happened. I will not rest until I have uncovered the truth of all that occurred.

  With the chaos enveloping the Romulan colony worlds, entering Romulan space has become a simple matter of engaging our cloaking devices. This is the perfect time to increase intelligence gathering, and I strongly recommend that the High Council authorizes more espionage missions. The more information we have, the more questions about the Ho’buS supernova and the destruction of the fleet we will be able to answer.

  To this end, on the fifth day of the month of Soo’jen, in the Year of Kahless 1,015 [Stardate 66710.12*] the Klingon Defense Force ordered the Qiv, the Tagak, and the Ki’tang to find a space station known as the Forge.

  Reconstruction of the Narada’s movements before Nero engaged the Klingon fleet has revealed that the Narada diverted to an area of deep space near Chorgh’etlh [Eta Crucis], where it stayed for several days. It may have been here that Nero acquired the advanced technology and weaponry that he used against our fleet.

  Klingon Intelligence has known about the Forge for some time. There were many who considered the existence of a secret space station capable of equipping ships with the most advanced technology in the quadrant to be little more than a child’s story, but our experience with the Narada proved that it was possible.

  After four days of searching, the Ki’tang found the Forge. The space station was empty. Its computer core had been wiped clean, but we did find information in the station that leads Klingon Intelligence to believe that the projects that the Forge had been home to were not abandoned.

  In addition, Captain D’rakal reported that the Forge must have been working with Borg technology. The remains of a regeneration chamber were found in one of the laboratories, and the station itself had been outfitted with a central power matrix similar to those found on Borg cubes. It is reasonable to assume that if the Forge had been adapted to operate with Borg technology, then its creators have discovered a way to adapt that same technology to their ships as well. That could explain the incredible abilities of the Narada—General Worf reported that the ship appeared to not only have superior weaponry and cloaking ability, but that it also practically seemed to repair itself.

  After consulting with Captain D’rakal, I ordered all three ships to expand their search to find the creators of the Forge. It was my hope that we would find definitive evidence that the Narada visited the Forge, and used the advanced weaponry it acquired there in its battle with General Worf’s fleet.

  It was during this search that the ships encountered an unknown vessel. It appears to be similar to a Romulan ship design, but was equipped with greatly advanced sensors. The unknown ship detected our vessels in cloak, fired, and destroyed the Tagak before any of our captains had a chance to react.

  The Qiv and the Ki’tang fought valiantly, but normal disruptors had little effect. The ship’s shields regenerated any damage within seconds, and it appeared to have no power drain when cloaking. In fact, the s
hip used rapid cloaking and decloaking as a combat maneuver.

  Unfortunately, the outcome of the battle was, as the humans say, a foregone conclusion. D’rakal managed to deploy a beacon with his logs before the Ki’tang was destroyed, and that is how we have this image of the ship that annihilated three Klingon starships. May the crews of the Qiv, Tagak, and Ki’tang be welcomed in the halls of Sto-Vo-Kor.

  Chancellor, I recommend further investigation of this mystery vessel. It may not be the only one of its kind, and our fleets in the Tran’omSar [Tranome Sar] and Neq’enSHov [Nequencia] systems should be briefed about this danger. It will require the efforts of many great warriors to defeat it.

  Qapla’!

  JAKE SISKO, DATA ROD #M-94

  The Daystrom Institute of Technology Annex,

  Galor IV

  Captain Bruce Maddox looks as hard and lean as the sere, windswept desert landscape I can see through his panoramic office windows. His dark eyes have a watchful, vigilant cast, evidence of a highly disciplined mind. But that’s not at all surprising—the man is one of the Federation’s premier experts on artificial intelligence in general, and Soong-type androids in particular. But mystery dwells behind his eyes as well; although Maddox resumed his duties as the Daystrom Institute’s chair of robotics several years ago, following his sudden and still-unexplained departure, he gives the impression of wishing he were someplace else. When he smiles, it seems forced, or perhaps rehearsed—almost the mannerism of an android who’s had to be carefully coached through the niceties of human social interactions. During some of the more difficult phases of our conversation Maddox makes frequent pauses, during which he seems to study me in silence, his hands clasped before him as he leans forward across his immaculate desk. Though his alert eyes are still during these conversational lacunae, I sense a great deal of activity behind them as he weighs his answers with obvious care.

  Captain, I want to thank you for agreeing to speak with me.

  Not at all, Mister Sisko. I think of it as my duty to posterity.

  My first question probably won’t be an easy one for you. You’ve never spoken much about your departure from the faculty of the Daystrom Institute. The same is true of your decision to return a few years later. Do you mind discussing either of those decisions now?

  I suppose there’s no getting around either question. What would you like to know?

  When you left the Institute, Undine infiltrators were busy stirring up both the Klingon Empire and the Gorn Hegemony, and the Federation was getting caught in the crossfire. It has recently come to light that the project you were working on at that time might have enabled Starfleet to take a major step forward in ferreting out the Undine spies among our own people.

  It would have. In fact, it did, once the project’s new management finally got up to speed. I’m proud of whatever role my participation might have played in eventually beating back the Undine.

  You certainly have a right to be proud, Captain. You and your team laid the groundwork for the pattern-recognition algorithms that made it possible to expose Undine infiltrators, despite the DNA alterations they’d been so successful in hiding behind. Not to mention the fact that your research allowed one of your oldest friends to return from the dead, in a manner of speaking.

  I try not to think about that.

  But wasn’t Captain Data one of your closest friends?

  Of course he was. Despite my having tried to have him disassembled once. Fortunately for me, Data was never one to hold grudges. He’s better than that.

  I’m confused. Your research not only held the promise of shaving years off the duration of the Undine War, but it also had the potential to resurrect an android you had come to regard as both a sentient being and a close friend. Yet you walked away from the project before it could accomplish either objective. Why?

  The price Data’s return would have exacted from me was just too great. So I decided I simply couldn’t afford to be a party to it.

  Even though the solution to the “Data matrix” problem might have brought the Undine War to a much earlier end?

  I think history has shown fairly conclusively that that idea was oversold. Not that Data didn’t make a significant contribution to the war effort, particularly after Starfleet decided to give him command of the Enterprise. It’s just that the Undine ended up adapting more quickly than we had anticipated to the new detection algorithms that came out of the project.

  Point conceded. But you didn’t know any of that yet when you decided to leave the Daystrom Institute. What happened?

  I suppose I changed more than I realized since I… since I tried to have Data dismantled for study, as if he were nothing more than some kind of technological curiosity.

  Changed by the danger posed by the Undine infiltrators? As far as anybody knew back then, they might have been anywhere. Even inside the Daystrom Institute.

  I think it was my initial encounter with Data that changed me, or at least put my feet on a certain path. My resolve that Data was a person rather than a chattel possession only got steadier after he volunteered to begin helping me study his positronic neural nets. All in spite of what I had tried to do to him.

  No, the Undine didn’t change me, at least not in any way I can detect. But I suppose the war did test my determination never again to cross certain ethical lines that I hadn’t even been able to see twenty years earlier.

  After you left the Daystrom Institute, one of its affiliate organizations—the Soong Foundation on Omicron Theta—offered to move some of your old research projects forward. How did you feel about that?

  I had pretty mixed feelings. I suppose I was disappointed that my former staff had hit a research impasse so soon after my departure, and that others had had to then swoop in to “rescue” the work. And I was definitely concerned about what was going to become of B-4 after he left the Daystrom Institute to live out on Omicron Theta.

  Was that because Noonien Soong built B-4 and his sibling androids at the Omicron Theta colony?

  No. I’d never begrudge anybody the right to go home again—even if that home had been effectively wiped off the map years earlier by some murderous crystalline lifeform.

  I think I understand now. You had come to regard B-4 as a sentient being, like Captain Data.

  Frankly, I don’t think there’s any other way to see him. He had embarked on the very same voyage of discovery that Data had undertaken—a personal quest to become more human than he was. He’d just kept a lower profile along the way, which was to be expected since he wasn’t serving aboard the Federation’s flagship. And because everyone seemed to regard him as something… less than Data was. Data’s cognitively impaired, emotionally stunted sibling. It just never occurred to us that his silences might have denoted something other than dullness or vacancy. Or that he might have been quietly pursuing his own unique path to humanity, all the while reading our databases in the hopes of someday becoming more like the man after whom the Soong Foundation had been named—the man who had created him and his silicon-based brethren. B-4 accomplished all this right under our noses because we dismissed his potential. We mistook the meditative for the moronic.

  You make B-4 sound like a savant genius. But I’d never heard of him showing any sign of high cognitive achievement. At least nothing comparable to Data’s scientific and technological skills, or, say, his ability to play the violin.

  Certainly, B-4’s programming was far less sophisticated than Data’s, despite Data’s entire library of internal files—what came to be called the “Data matrix”—having been uploaded into him a few years earlier. That so-called matrix was supposed to represent the essence of Data’s intellect and personality, and perhaps even his emotions. But it would always just lay there, inert within B-4’s more rudimentary positronic neural pathways.

  But all of this was already moot as far as I was concerned. I was out of the loop at that point, and B-4 was no longer my responsibility. There was nothing more I could really do on B-4’s b
ehalf. Other than maybe filing yet another damned suit in a Federation court, accusing them of “insensitivity to the civil rights of artificial persons.”

  But you opted not to do that. Why?

  It would have been pointless. First, I probably forfeited any legal standing I might have had on the matter when I left the Institute. And second, the Soong Foundation had already been hard at work for some time in trying to create a working mobile holoemitter, ostensibly to emancipate holographic intelligences from the programs they’d been shackled to. That would have been hard to square with any accusation that they’d been suppressing the legal personhood of inorganic beings.

  Do you regard holographic beings as deserving of legal personhood, as you do with B-4 and Captain Data?

  Yes. If they can pass a Turing test, then they get to be in the club, so to speak. Now, if you’re thinking about getting metaphysical and asking me whether holograms and androids have souls, you’re wasting your time. I don’t know whether organic humanoids, let alone synthetic life-forms, have souls. Cogito, ergo sum—cogito.

  “I think, therefore I am—I think.” I have just enough schoolboy Latin to appreciate the joke. So you were reasonably confident that you and the Soong people were on the same page on the issue of synthetic rights.

  The Soong Foundation’s general counsel had already argued on behalf of the rights of sentient holograms, so I believed they were on the correct side of the issue with regard to androids. And I didn’t want to burn my bridges permanently with either the Soong people or the Daystrom people by meddling. Now I wish to God that I had meddled. Maybe things would have turned out differently.

  Are you saying that you wish Captain Data hadn’t returned from the dead?

  Of course not. Let’s just say I was relieved when I heard that the Soong Foundation’s research had run into the same initial impasse that my own people had encountered.

  Meaning that their luck in cracking the “Data matrix” hadn’t been any better than yours.