Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [25]
Haftel stopped and looked at her. “I don’t believe I have any choice. Do you disagree, Counselor?”
Troi pursed her lips, frowning. “No,” she said. “I don’t. I’m just concerned about what this will mean to Data.”
“Counselor,” Haftel said sternly, “we’re all concerned about Mr. Data. And yes, there are still things about this incident that need explaining, things that may involve him directly. That’s why I summoned the Enterprise here. But he just as much as admitted he was experiencing a major malfunction—”
“Respectfully, Admiral, he did not,” Troi said.
“Counselor, what are you saying?” Picard asked quietly.
“I’m saying we may be overlooking something important here, Captain,” Troi said. “Think about it, sir: You just told Data that he’s made an error. Has this ever happened before?”
Picard frowned, then said ruefully, “In fact, Counselor, it has, but in the end, it always turned out that he was correct.” He shrugged. “But this was before the emotion chip was installed, before his … what would you call it? His breakdown.”
“I’ve been monitoring Data’s emotions all day,” Troi said, “and I can say for certain that though he has been functioning under a great deal of stress, he’s been managing it quite well. The only time he gave off an emotional response that truly concerned me is when he realized that you didn’t believe him.”
“Which means … what, exactly?” Haftel asked uncertainly.
“Data is trying to come to terms with some very complex concepts—among them mortality and isolation,” Troi explained. “These are concepts that even organic beings have trouble understanding. But I believe that something else is happening simultaneously, something we’ve all been helping him to work toward for years, but perhaps never expected to see happen so suddenly. We just heard him tell us he came to a conclusion without any evidence to back it up, something the best Starfleet officers do routinely. Yes, in Data’s case, it could mean a malfunction. Or …”
“Or?” Haftel demanded, clearly not liking where he thought the conversation was leading.
“Or he’s finally developing thought processes that extend beyond the scope of pure fact,” Troi finished, and she could see that the captain had already grasped her meaning.
“Intuition,” Picard breathed. “Data has developed intuition.”
Chapter Nine
WITH PRACTICED EASE, Geordi La Forge found the key spot near the base of Data’s skull, pressed it with the tip of his thumb, then pulled off the top of his head. Looking across the lab to where Rhea McAdams stood, Geordi saw her turn her face away. He smiled, remembering the first time he had done this, how he’d worried that he would cause Data pain or, worse, “break” something. How long ago was that now? Ten years? Eleven? He had learned a few things since then, including, first, this process was no more intrusive to Data than getting a haircut was to Geordi; and, second, Noonien Soong built things so well that it was almost impossible to “break” them.
That didn’t mean that there weren’t parts of Data that couldn’t be broken. He worried that the scene that just took place in the captain’s ready room might have done what neither the Borg queen or Lore or Fajo the collector had been able to do: twist something around in Data so hard that it snapped. The emotion chip, the damned emotion chip: there were times when Geordi truly regretted helping his friend install it.
True, Soong had created the chip specifically to help Data’s personal evolution, and Data had wanted emotions, but wasn’t that at least partially because he had been programmed to want them? Now that he was thinking about it, he realized how strange a thing it was that Soong had designed Data to want to become something else rather than create him to be content as he was. What had he been thinking? Data and Geordi had sat up many a late night discussing the details of Data’s structure and performance, but never the motivations of his creator. Maybe I avoided thinking about it, Geordi admitted to himself, out of a kind of embarrassment. I don