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The same articles stated that the president had the option, but was not required, to preside over meetings of the various sub-councils. Most of the time, Nan Bacco was happy enough not to exercise that option and let the chair of the sub-council run the sessions.

In retrospect, today should not have been an exception.

After a great deal of legal wrangling, it had finally been determined that the Federation Judiciary Council, which was the highest legal authority in the Federation, would have final jurisdiction over the disposition of the android B-4 within the walls of the Daystrom Institute. Since the complainant was a civilian, it was deemed outside of the purview of the Starfleet judge advocate general’s office to make law that would apply to the actions of a civilian.

That decision hadn’t been reached until the recess, so it wasn’t until the council was back in session that judiciary was hearing the case. The notion of sentience for artificial life had been a hot-button issue on several occasions, most recently a couple of years earlier during the so-called holostrike. Nan would have preferred to be watching the delayed feed of the Pioneers game right now-after falling to eight games behind the Salavar Stars in August, they had clawed their way back to a tie for first place, with the final four games of the season between the two of them to decide who would win the Northern Division-but this was too important an issue to have someone else preside over the session. Besides, leaving aside the politics, the notion of AI sentience was one that had interested her ever since the war, when she’d first met Data, the now-deceased android second officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise, during the Gorn crisis. So she wanted to see this particular case in action.

“Action” turned out to be the wrong word. The sessions had already gone on for two days, consisting solely of a civilian named Lars Patek arguing to dismantle B-4- one of Data’s prototypes, discovered during the same mission on which Data died-for study and Captain Bruce Maddox arguing against it because that would constitute murder.

Patek was gesticulating wildly as he spoke. “B-4 is the only Soong-type android left in existence. We have to study it to see if the process can be replicated.”

Maddox was much calmer as he answered. “There is a wealth of information available on all the other Soong androids, including Data, Lore, and Lal. We have the information recovered by the Enterprise from Graves World after Ira Graves’s death, as well as information received from the studies of AIs over the past two centuries.”

“All of which has proven useless!” Patek was yelling now, which only added to Nan’s headache. “Data had all that information, yet Lal was a failure. We must study B-4 directly.”

“Murder him, you mean, don’t you, Lars?”

“Must we go down this road again, Bruce?” Patek asked.

Yes, must we? Nan managed to restrain herself from asking that question out loud. They’d only covered this subject several dozen times in two days.

Patek continued. “B-4 is not sentient. It’s a prototype, an early copy.”

At that, Councillor Gnizbreg spoke. Unlike full council sessions, in sub-council sessions, any member of the council could speak any time. The speaker’s floor was for those outside the council who wished to speak, and they were the only ones who had to be recognized by the podium.

“On what are you basing the assumption that B-4 isn’t sentient?” the Tiburonian councillor asked.

This perked Nan up. Nobody’d asked this yet.

“It barely has any cognitive functions. It cannot understand any but the most basic concepts. Before he was destroyed, Data downloaded his entire memory into B-4- which also included the memories of his twin, Lore, and the android he created, Lal, and the diaries of the colonists on Omicron Theta, where he was created. With all that knowledge, B-4 has shown an inability to perform any but the most menial tasks.”

Councillor Ra’ch then asked, “Dr. Patek, are you saying that children born with lesser cognitive