Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [84]
But then, without warning, his face snapped shut and the fire in his soul was banked. Vaslovik looked Data in the eye and said, “And that is, of course, how I came to meet Ira Graves and Noonien Soong.” He turned away from the Rayna android and exited the hall, Data following close behind.
“Then you knew my creator?” Data asked.
“Knew him, nurtured him, fought with him … understood him.” Vaslovik shook his head and smiled in wonderment. “He was an extraordinary individual, Data, and I can’t tell you how happy I was to have known him. He was somewhat eccentric …” And with this he laughed. “But who am I to call the kettle black?” Vaslovik sobered suddenly, then said, “He came the closest of us all, you know?”
“The closest to what?”
“To becoming like God, of course. To taking the dust of the Earth and breathing life into it.” He turned suddenly, grabbed Data by the shoulders and looked into his eyes. “To creating a new way for the universe to know itself. You are a rarity in the history of artificial intelligence, Data. Unlike the lost souls I have interred here, you were created, not for Soong’s sake, but for your own. Your only purpose is to know life, to explore it according to your own will.”
Data sensed that he was supposed to say something, but he didn’t know what, so he remained silent. In the moment of quiet, once again he faintly heard the piano music. Vaslovik released his shoulders then and they continued on their way.
“Soong and Graves shared my concerns about the ethical treatment of AI. It was this fact that made me select them to assist me on my missions to recover the artifacts you saw back there.”
Data cocked his head, confused by the choice of words. “Artifacts?”
“The previous attempts at artificial intelligence. We recovered their remains. Well, most of them. There have been others since I last saw either of my old students. Our goal has been to keep them out of the wrong hands, the hacks and the opportunists. Of course, this was all after the trip to Exo III, which, ironically, may have been what set the events of recent days into motion.” He stopped. “None of this means anything to you, does it?”
Data shook his head slowly.
Vaslovik frowned, then seemed to ponder his options. Finally, he said, “But you have the emotion chip, don’t you? The one Soong was working on near his end?”
“Yes,” Data said, surprised. “You stayed in communication with Dr. Soong throughout his life? He never spoke of you. But then, there is much about which my father never spoke to me. Do you mean to suggest that the truth behind what has been going on has been in my emotion chip, all along?”
“Isn’t it?”
Data explained, “When I recovered the chip from my brother, Lore, he claimed that it contained memories. But in the years since, I have never been able to substantiate that claim.”
Vaslovik let out a sharp laugh. “Now that sounds like Soong. A bit of a paranoid, if you must know, even by my standards. He would have encrypted it, buried it deep, only made it accessible under very particular circumstances.”
Now every inch the researcher, Vaslovik turned on his heel and continued up the hall. “The program might have tightened up the encryption, thinking that Lore’s handling might have been an attempt to break the code. Well, follow me and we’ll see what we can do.”
“Do?” Data echoed.
“About unlocking some of those memory files. I can think of one or two that might be relevant considering our current situation.”
“And what is our current situation,