Boogeymen - Mel Gilden [41]
“Nothing yet, sir. But I have a few more things to check.”
Picard nodded. He was eager to find out what the problem was. A few days or even weeks without the holodeck would probably not have a significant effect on his crew, but as Counselor Troi was certain to remind him, the ability to use the holodeck was important to their mental health. And La Forge knew what he was doing.
The computer stopped twittering, and Data frowned.
“Data?” La Forge said.
Data worked the cable clear at either end and replaced his scalp. He rubbed his forehead with one hand while he stumbled to a chair and nearly fell into it.
“Data?” they all said as they converged on him.
“I feel most unusual,” Data said.
“Unusual, how?” Picard said.
Data’s mouth moved without making a sound. He seemed to be gathering his thoughts. Picard knew that Data occasionally had to access information from a nether part of his positronic brain, but he never had to organize his thoughts, at least not the way natural life forms did. Data’s thoughts arrived organized.
Wesley said, “If I looked like that, Mom would have me down in sickbay. And I’d probably go.”
“Data?” Picard said.
“Most unusual,” Data said again. “My head and limbs are throbbing in a most unpleasant way. I feel very weak and tired.”
“Are you sick, Data?” La Forge said.
“Sick? Accessing.” Data made the usual jerky reading motions with his head. He stopped suddenly, a pained look on his face and a hand to his temple. He said, “Sick. Ill. Ailing. Disabled. Not up to snuff. I have no way of knowing if this describes my condition, never having felt this way before. But it is a logical working hypothesis. I do seem to be not up to snuff.” He smiled, evidently felt pain, and touched his temple again. “Captain, may I be excused?”
“If you were any other crew member, I’d send you to sickbay. What do you suggest, Mr. La Forge?”
“It does seem to be an engineering problem. And though I’m not a doctor, I doubt if what he has is contagious to other members of the crew. Come on down to Engineering, Data.”
“Very well. This is most interesting. Ow.”
“Ensign Crusher, would you see that Mr. Data arrives in Engineering safely.”
“Aye, sir.”
They got Data to his feet, and he and Wesley shuffled out together.
When the door had closed, Picard said, “It seems likely that Data was infected by the main computer.”
“It seems that way.”
“Is this related somehow to our holodeck problem?”
“You better hope not, sir. If we have Boogeymen in our mainframe, we are in big trouble.”
“Exactly how big?”
“I don’t know at the moment. But Data being sick could be a break for us.”
“How so?”
“It gives us two views of the problem rather than just one. The parallax could give us a clue or two.”
“I want some answers, Mr. La Forge. Or at the very least, better questions. One hour in the conference lounge.”
“Aye, sir,” said La Forge as he quickly left the room.
Picard looked around. In the entire Federation only three or four cases of mental illness were reported every year. Not one case of computer mental illness had been reported in many years. If the mainframe of the Enterprise was the statistical anomaly, Picard was not confident that La Forge’s ideas about parallax would save them.
Down in Engineering Wesley deposited Data in a chair, then sat across from him and watched. It was odd to see Data, who never got tired and normally had the posture of a machine, with his elbows on the table, slumping. He touched his forehead and winced occasionally. Yet Data’s skin color was the same as it always was and he didn’t sweat. Wesley guessed that he probably didn’t have a temperature. He had an operating temperature, but that wasn’t the same thing.
Wesley said, “How do you feel?”
Data looked puzzled for a moment and then said, “Generally, with my hands, but I have sensors all over my body. Did I say something funny, Wesley?”
Wesley shook his head and said, “Sometimes I think that pretending you don’t know what humor is is the funniest