Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [109]
Sam smiled wanly. He had, Riker reflected, such a pleasant smile. “Not one of them, Captain. The One. From their point of view—” and here he pointed at the monitor, “—the only one. It was I who conceived the plan to give our androids self-awareness all those millennia ago. It was I who drove our servants mad with a desire for something they could never possess.”
“Which was what?” Riker asked.
“Souls of their own,” Sam replied. “And it was I who came up with the plan to abandon them when my mind-transfer process made it clear we didn’t really need them anymore. And, by doing these things, I effectively doomed my people and damned myself.”
Riker felt the seconds ticking past. Any moment now, the android ships would destroy Vaslovik’s station. And then the Enterprise would be their next target.
“But you survived,” Picard replied, still focused on Sam. “And you used the technology you developed to transfer your consciousness into an android body.”
“For all the good it did me, yes,” Sam said. “Oh, don’t misunderstand me, Captain.” He looked down at his hands and studied them. “It was glorious. You could never completely understand. We were … we had become … a very puny species. The bodies we developed were wondrous to us. I, as their creator, was the first to enjoy the benefits. Unfortunately, the successful transfer of my consciousness to this form was precisely the signal our servants were waiting for. I believe they meant to capture me alive and make me show them the secret, in the futile hope that I could use the process on them. But they were amok by that point, killing everyone. I managed to seal myself in the lab …”
“The body we found,” Vaslovik realized. Riker didn’t understand completely, but he saw the look in the professor’s eyes. A connection had been closed.
“Yes, Professor,” Sam said. “And may I say, thank you. You quite literally rescued me from a hell of my own creation. I was badly damaged in the rioting and collapsed inside the lab before I could make it to my machine. I lay there inert for half a million years.”
“Until we found you,” Vaslovik said. “We put you in that machine and started the repair process.”
“Body and soul,” Sam continued. “But by doing that, you awoke the androids, and the madness started all over again.”
“How could we have known?” Vaslovik asked angrily.
“You couldn’t,” Sam admitted. “And if it hadn’t been you, someone else would have eventually returned to Exo III and allowed the androids to escape. But it wasn’t someone else, it was you, and Soong, and Graves. You and your students were fortunate to be able to flee that day. But here’s the part you did not know, sir: I, too, fled. I was able to access your craft’s transporter system and beamed myself aboard before you even made it to the surface. I stowed away. And when we returned to Federation space, I managed to blend in.” And with that, his flesh, features and clothing disappeared in a puff of steam. Around him, Riker heard gasps of surprise and awe. Sam was beautiful, but it was a difficult sort of beauty to describe, like trying to imagine a Cubist sculpture done by a Vulcan, simultaneously both abstract and ideal. Only the eyes and the voice were still recognizably the bartender’s. “It was a simple matter to slip away and devise a new identity for myself. The funny thing is that I found I had nowhere to go.”
Sam looked at Picard. “I wandered for a time, but I found I didn’t fit in anywhere. You see, my kind spent our entire lives on my planet. We theorized about other species, but never met any before.” He looked around the bridge. “There are so many. I was overwhelmed. I became despondent. I might have ended my own life if I hadn’t been approached by the fellowship of artificial intelligence I mentioned before. They accepted me as one of them, even though I wasn’t a true