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The first thing he notices when his eyes open is the gold. Blurry, fluid, constantly in motion, it shimmers in front of him almost close enough to touch before dancing away again, resolving slowly into a vaguely humanoid shape.
The next thing he notices is that his head is not attached to his body. He blinks.
“Hello,” the golden figure in front of him says. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Jesse of the USS Tripoli. What is your designation, android?”
Starfleet. He pauses for a moment, a space of time almost infinite, watches Lieutenant Commander Jesse blink, dark lashes sweeping over pale cheekbones. A glint of dying sunlight reflects off the sleek object in his hand, a machine that beeps once per 1.64 seconds. A tricorder. An improperly calibrated tricorder.
It would be rude not to answer within the next second, he realizes suddenly.
With an effort, he opens his jaw. It has not rusted – Dr. Soong’s work is too pristine for that, but it feels as if it has, tongue melted into the roof of his mouth, teeth grainy with the dust of the lab, sensations so new and so old. The memories of a thousand lifetimes ring in his head, and he has to force his way through them to find his own.
“My name is Data.” It is almost a surprise, a word dragged from the dredges of his consciousness, something more innate to him than the mere memories he is forming now. A loud clatter in the background sounds. If he glances to the side as far as possible, he can see one of Dr. Soong’s precariously balanced towers of things on the floor. “Perhaps I could be of more assistance to your investigation if my head was attached to my body.”
Lieutenant Commander Jesse laughs brightly, nods to a green-skinned Avarian in a red shirt. His head is lifted, and, oh, what a dizzying feeling, to be moving without intent. His neck touches the rest of his body and twists, clicking into place, circuits and wire connecting seamlessly as they were created to, the edges of his skin melting into a whole.
He flexes his fingers, experimentally. They click against the metal holding container, then lift – and so do his feet, and his legs, and he stands.
Lieutenant Commander Jesse claps in delight.
Data is cultivating a small cactus in his quarters when the ship rocks alarmingly, knocking the pot off of his desk. His hand shoots out to catch it, grasping the bottom gently to avoid tearing his skin; he realizes suddenly that he is unsure if the replicators have the capacity to create more of his synthetic skin. He will have to design a program, priority Alpha.
A siren sounds over the speaker system as the emergency lights around his room flash red. The speakers crackle to life with Lieutenant Commander Jesse’s voice. Priority Alpha after this current emergency, then.
“Attention all civilians: report to designated safe areas. I repeat, report to designated safe areas until the all-clear is sounded.”
The ship shakes again, more violently than before. The lights blare red, a siren incessantly screaming in the background. Data is twelve steps out the door before he realizes he has not put the cactus down. It would be illogical, however, to return to his quarters in order to simply put the cactus back in its place, and so he continues on.
The ship is loud in a way that is new to him. Instead of the background murmur of conversation and activity, the ship is almost screaming with noise. He can hear orders being barked from nearly every corner, can hear ragged breathing and rushed goodbyes.
Currently, sitting in the Med Bay, lightly grasping his cactus, Data can hear thirty-six different conversations.
“The Captain-“
“-plants in the-“
“-the cat.”
Faintly, Data can hear the creak of the hull, a sound too quiet for almost all organic life forms to hear.
“-and if we don’t?”
“I have leftovers-“
“-call my mom-“
If he diverts some of his processors from calculating the hull strength of the Tripoli against the weapons capabilities of known enemies of the Federation, he can begin to process the simultaneous conversations.
“…are you okay?”
He blinks. A petite woman in Medical blue stands in front of him, hypospray in one hand, blinking tricorder in the other. A few strands of almost silver-blonde hair are escaping from her tightly-bound bun.
He runs through the past twenty seconds of his audio-visual memory; she had been waving a hand in front of his face- she had run a tricorder over his body- she had turned from the bio-bed across from him and introduced herself.
“Hello, Ensign K’Chane,” he says absently, “I am an android. I do not feel anxiety, and thus an anti-anxiety hypospray is unnecessary.”
“You can call me Emily, you know. You’re allowed to relax a little,” she says, a little crooked grin on her face.
“Is ‘Ensign K’Chane’ inappropriate, Emily?” He asks, and files the little bit of information away.
Emily’s brow furrows slightly. “No, but- Are you sure you’re okay? I mean, you’re kind of… spaced out, which is a common reaction to trauma, could be an initial sign of shock…”
“Are you ‘okay,’ Ensign?” He asks, running a cursory search through a database of shock and trauma symptoms. They may be able to withstand anywhere from no to twenty more hits, but it is impossible to say without knowing the number and type of attacker. Six conversations have fallen silent, but four new ones have begun. “You are also exhibiting a fair amount of symptoms associated with shock-“
“I’m fine,” she says shortly, “Thank you for asking.” Her head snaps up, and she hands the hypospray in her hand to another medical officer who brushes by.
And Data is so preoccupied with analyzing the sudden sound of a crying child that he almost does not notice the violent rocking to the side, but it is hard to ignore the tritanium beam that seems to fall from nowhere, crushing him underneath it.
Data is mostly unharmed; his bones, after all, are more reinforced than even this ship’s hull. Some of the skin on his abdomen has torn, and he can feel pressure in his ankles as some of the little structures there threaten to twist out of place. But as he turns his head to assess the damage to the ship, he realizes that he is not the only one trapped.
Emily lies next to him. Had she been standing on his other side, she likely would have been minimally injured, the beam resting mostly on his body.
She is not minimally injured.
He catches glimpses of white and red and grey, before his vision is obscured by blue, blue, blue, and the hiss and whir of machines.
Another voice says, “We need to get this beam off of her, I can’t see the damage-” and a grunt of effort, and the beam does not move.
His arms move almost of their own volition, and the beam creaks as he shifts it upwards. A few heads whip towards him, but most remain focused on Emily, and he hears a wet dragging sound, and her head appears again in his line of vision.
“I don’t want to die,” she gasps, eyes glazed. Her blood has stained her hair dark crimson, and as the ship rocks and creaks again, a limb shifts and rolls away from her body.
“I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I want to live, I want to-“ and her lips are stained red as she gasps and rattles. More blood, bright red and accusing, bubbles around her lips, drips down her throat, cutting lines through the dust that had coated it. Someone screams, a wail of total agony. Another of fear.
Her eyes are glassy, open wide. The rattling in her chest is now a gurgle, and the blood from her mouth runs faster, faster, and then the gurgling stops but the blood does not. The ship shudders again, a louder creak and a crashing, ripping sound, and everything is suddenly black.
I want to live.
His eyes snap open.
He cannot move his head from side to side. His hand comes up - a dent 4.32 inches across sits on the back of his head, and as he pokes, he feels the skin on his hand snag and tear at the ragged edges of metal, brushing past exposed circuitry and wire.
In front of him, Medical blue and Operations gold converse. Dr. Halford Kernway, ship’s CMO, and Dr. B’rexa Ungera, the Chief Engineering Officer, his mind supplies.
At least his long-term memory banks are functioning properly.
“Hello, Doctors. May I ask what happened?”
Dr. Ungera exchanges a look with Dr. Kernway, who comes to stand by his bedside.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” He asks, running a tricorder over the dent in his head.
Data pauses, considering. “I was in my quarters, attending to a cactus. And yet my internal chronometer indicates that it has been two days, four hours, and twelve seconds since that time, which would indicate substantive memory loss. Unless, of course, my internal chronometer has malfunctioned.”
Dr. Kernway places a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Unfortunately, your internal chronometer is right. There was a ship-wide red alert, so you moved to the Med bay, but a stray phaser blast knocked some struts loose, which is why we’re in your quarters instead right now. One of them knocked you down, and another knocked you out.”
“Were there any casualties?”
“Besides you?” Dr. Kernway blows out a light sigh. “We lost an ensign and… And Lieutenant Commander Jesse. Seven more are in critical condition. Plenty more with minor injuries, but we’re hoping that they’ll all pull through.”
“Speaking of,” Dr. Ungera interrupts. “We don’t know anything about the way you’re constructed, Data. We weren’t even sure you were going to wake up.” She’s fidgeting with the PADD now, clicking her nails off the side of it.
“I have some degree of automated self-repairing systems,” he responds, eyes focused on her nails as they click, click, click. Even as he speaks, he can feel the skin on the back of his head inching together, closing the gap, stretching tight over the hole in his tritanium skull. He will have to cut through it, later, during more substantive repairs.
“We should test how far his self-repairing systems reach,” Dr. Ungera mutters, contemplatively. “They’re obviously not equipped to deal with this kind of situation, but… this situation isn’t entirely normal, either.”
“B’rexa,” Dr. Kernway hisses. “We can’t do that!”
“I’m not saying we need to start cutting into him, but it’d be useful information. It’s not like he’d be in pain, or be in danger of dying, right?”
“Commander Ungera is correct, Doctor. I am incapable of feeling pain, of either the physical or mental variety, and it would be useful information to have, in the case of future situations such as this one.” Data interjects.
Dr. Kernway throws his hands in the air. “Yeah, but it’s completely unethical! You’re-” He stops short. Alive, he does not say. Human, lingers in the empty air. “Conscious,” he finally ends with, on a quieter note.
A crunch, and the ghost of warm blood on his side, and he blinks. This is the third consecutive night that images of Emily’s death have invaded his consciousness. Usually, his resting period is used to sort the memories of the day by priority and file them away. A simple process, and unlike the human one of dreaming.
It has not been so simple tonight, or the night before, or the night before. Uncalled for, his last images of that incident have replayed, crystal clear, by the slightest connections. White-blonde hair on a fellow civilian’s red shirt, and the image of blood soaking through Emily K’Chane’s white-blonde hair. The sound of a plate clattering to the floor, and the beam smashing through the ceiling.
Almost against his will, his legs swing to the side, sliding out from under the thin sheet draped over them to rest on the floor. He stands, walks silently to his desk, where the message about Ensign K’Chane and Lieutenant Commander Jesse’s memorial services lies open.
He has never attended a memorial service before. He had known Commander Jesse, in passing. In a way, Commander Jesse is responsible for his current life.
He does not know what to say. He cannot know what to feel.
Data peels back the skin on the back of his hand. Releases it. It seals, clear and unblemished, flexing smoothly over artificial bones and tendons. He picks at it with a nail, pick, pick, pick, until a minuscule edge rises from the unbroken expanse. Grasps the edge, millimeters thick, and peels it back again.
Underneath, exposed circuitry blinks at him, an array of neatly arranged wires and lights. No blood, no pain. He releases the flap of skin.
He grasps his index finger, lightly. Pulls it back, and back, and back, until with a soft pop and a crack, it hangs loosely from his hand. Unusable. He pushes it back forward, twists it slightly, until it pops back into place, then flexes it experimentally.
Perfect. Like it had never been broken.
The accounts he has read of pain do not compare to his experiences. He does not feel a spark, or a burn, or a bright-blue flash of agony. He simply feels the joint pulled out of place, the stretch of his skin as it snaps off of his body. It does not distress him.
It cannot distress him.
It is twelve minutes to dawn, and Data is in bed.
He is not sleeping; he does not require sleep. By Starfleet regulation, however, he is not allowed to stand Gamma shift for more than five continuous days, and so he is in bed. Starfleet regulation has not quite caught on to the synthetic life form in its ranks, and likely will not for another year at least.
There is something to be said for simply lying in one place, sorting through memories of the day and the past. He has even become accustomed to doing it while lying down, eyes closed, in order to mimic sleep for any curious onlookers.
In forty-two minutes he will arise for Alpha shift. In forty-two minutes the responsibility of a Lieutenant, Junior Grade will again press on his shoulders, and he will again be solely responsible for navigating their course through the stars, for whatever planet the Captain has in mind. In forty-two minutes, he will re-activate his blinking subroutine, his breathing subroutine, his eye-contact subroutine, the pauses in his speech and actions in order to mimic thought, and he will again be confronted with the unpredictability of human life.
But that is forty-two minutes from now.
Now, he is sorting through the last of his memories, dropping them lightly into the folders in his mind. Ship’s business. Personal affairs. An updated copy of his will, in the event of his death.
He lingers upon the will for a bare, illogical moment, then shuts it within a drawer.
“Computer,” Data asks. His shirt snags against a slight flaw in his chair when he shifts, so he does not. “Can an android experience nightmares?”
“Three thousand, two hundred, and ninety-five results with the words ‘android,’ ‘experience,’ and ‘nightmares’ were found. No answer to the direct question is available. Would you like to see the results?” The computer responds.
“Yes,” Data says, “At one thousand times speed.”
Information flashes across his screen, flowing into his memory cortex at almost dizzying speeds. None, however, provide the answers he needs.
After a moment, Data speaks again. “Computer,” he states, then pauses, for a fraction of a fraction of a moment.
“Computer,” he starts again. It hums to life in response. “How do humans resolve nightmares.”
“Many treatments exist for chronic nightmares,” the computer responds. “Treatments include medication and cognitive behavioral therapy, also known as CBT. Would you like to schedule an appointment with the ship’s counselor?”
“No,” Data says. Another pause, another fraction of a breath. “What do humans do if they cannot respond to medical treatment?”
“In cases of chronic nightmares that do not respond to medical treatment, people may resort to self-medication through recreational drugs or alcohol, and in extreme cases, suicide.”
“Suicide,” Data repeats almost inaudibly, a ghost of a word.
A hand drifts slowly to his side. A kill switch, Dr. Soong had called it. As a last resort, Juliana had said.
It has been weeks since he has had a moment of peace during his hours alone. Now, it has begun to encroach onto his work life, the creak of a ship during an attack sending images of tritatium beams across his back, the flash of command red in the reflection of his console sending blood leaking into his eyes.
He cannot survive like this. His neural net is not equipped for the depth of memories from this life. The positronic connections in his artificial brain are being created faster than Dr. Soong had anticipated, and Data is not prepared. He could never have been prepared.
His hand drifts upwards, coming to rest on the back of his head. He could simply reset those connections, and start with a blank neural net. Perhaps, in the next life, he could be prepared.
His fingers tighten on the back of his skull, and the skin tears, minutely. The sound echoes in his ears.
“Computer,” he starts again. “When is the next appointment Counselor Dney’ra has open?”
“Haven’t you ever wanted something you couldn’t have?” She had once asked him, searching his face for some kind of answer. “Haven’t you wanted something… more? Something bigger than yourself?”
Another small eternity before he answered, simply, “No.”
There was no logic in wanting the unwantable, he reasoned. He is an android; he cannot feel pain or joy in any amounts. To desire anything at all is, for him, illogical, unthinkable, and yet.
There is something in the back of his mind, some small subroutine wired deep in thousands and thousands of layers of code that yearns. For, perfect android though he may be, he has no purpose. He does not have even the never-ending march of time to drive him to achieve something, anything.
He is purposeless, useless, drifting from room to room and planet to planet, waiting for the universe to end.
“Data! Juliana!” Dr. Soong yelled from another room. “Come here!”
Her eyes had shone with warmth. “Come, Data,” she said, all her questions forgotten for the moment. “Let’s go see what your father’s done this time."
He cannot hear. There is no sound in space, but if he tries, he can almost imagine the clunk of his heavy magnetic boots impacting the hull of the ship as he takes one step, another.
He can almost imagine the hull thumping with the sounds of the raucous party in Ten Forward, and as he peers in, Geordi and Commander Riker grin and wave excitedly at him.
Most of the crew has seen this before; it is easier for Data to simply put on magnetic shoes to do a hull check than it is to prepare a spacesuit and a mobile tether for an organic life form. If his boots fail and he floats away, he is more than content to wait for a shuttle. The same cannot be said for an organic life form.
A few of the engineering ensigns turn, following Geordi’s eyeline, and start; one young, blonde one visibly screeches and then doubles over, shaking with laughter. A few strands of white-blonde hair escape from her tightly-bound bun. Data acknowledges them, a ghost of a smile touching his lips.
He moves on; the ship is large, and it would be ideal for him to return in time for Gamma shift, although Captain Picard will understand if he cannot.
The farther he moves from Ten Forward, the quieter his mind becomes; soon, there is nothing but him, the smooth metal underneath his feet, and the universe of infinite space and stars around him.
He allows himself the luxury of a bare moment. His eyes flicker closed, and his chest moves up and out in one of his synthetic parodies of a breath.
I want to be a part of something bigger.
I want to live.
His eyes open again, little golden pinpricks shining into an infinite expanse of nothing.
I want.