Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [83]
Data was confused. “Are you saying, then, that you do not remember all the lives you have lived before, that you do not recall being Brahms or Leonardo or Alexander … ?”
Vaslovik waved his hand dismissively, turning away from Data to study the Rayna android. “You misunderstand me. No, I remember having been all these men and their experiences are part of my own, but the details … Do you remember what you did on the Thursday closest to this date two years ago?” But, before Data could answer, he held up his index finger and said, “No, wait. Never mind. For a moment, I forgot who I was addressing. Of course you remember. In any case, I do not forget the important things.” He reached up and lightly touched the case near Rayna’s face. “I remember her. I remember what she was meant to be and also what she truly was. I remember my folly.”
Data watched in respectful silence as Vaslovik quietly grieved for his lost creation.
As he had told Vaslovik, Data’s familiarity with the Flint encounter—and many of the artifacts in this “shrine”—was not accidental. Data had spent much time at the Academy studying the history of artificial intelligence. In a way, he supposed it was analogous to investigating one’s genealogy. On the surface, the reports filed on the Flint encounter seemed thorough, but conspicuously lacking in context. He understood now that it must have been a personal conflict over Rayna that pushed her system beyond its limits. The term “cascade failure” was not invented then—but Commander Spock had described the etiology perfectly in his logs.
Data wondered about what Flint had expected from Rayna. Were they to have been father and daughter? Husband and wife? Master and apprentice? Pygmalion and Galatea? All of these at the same time and more? Data had to admit to himself that he could not fully understand all these subtleties; emotion was, after all, still a relatively new thing to him and the jumble he perceived through the veil of Vaslovik’s conflicted desires was too complex for him to untangle. But there were more concrete issues at hand he could deal with, facts to be sorted, time lines to be filled in. He asked, “And when did Flint become Vaslovik?”
Vaslovik turned to regard Data again. He had, Data saw, been lost in thought, lost in the past, but the question seemed to pique his interest, and so he roused himself. Lowering his hand from the display case, he touched his chest, and smiled. “In a sense,” he said, “McCoy was right when he pronounced Flint ‘mortal.’ Flint began to die the moment Kirk and his companions recognized … my condition. Over the centuries, I have grown very proficient at this process, ending one life and beginning another.”
“So, the Vaslovik identity had already been prepared?”
“Yes, as a precaution. Kirk was not the first to discover my immortality, though he was the first in many, many lifetimes. I did not have as much time to lay the groundwork as I might have liked … as you apparently discovered. But it wasn’t simply a matter of becoming Vaslovik. I had to decide who he was going to be. One of the unique benefits of my existence, Mr. Data, is that every one hundred years or so, I have the opportunity to choose who I wish to become. And here is the peculiar thing: though I would like to be able to say that the choices I have made have been based on logic or compassion or profound insight into the human condition, the simple truth is that most of the choices were made to atone for mistakes made in the previous lifetime.”
“Atone?” Data asked.
“Yes,” Vaslovik said, shaking his head wearily. “Atone. Immortality does not, I’m afraid, impart saintliness; quite the opposite, in fact.” He looked up at Rayna and Data saw that his eyes were moist. “I wronged her, my Rayna. I thought I wanted to give her life, told myself that, believed it, but the truth is that I wanted only