Metamorphosis - Jean Lorrah [113]
He saw the Ferengi retaliate, taking some of their ships through the Neutral Zone in their haste. The Romulans challenged-and the Ferengi had no idea how to deal diplomatically with that obtuse and difficult race. The Romulans-took their presence as an act of war.
When the Romulans retaliated against the Ferengi, the Orions came in on the Ferengi side. They attacked Federation outposts-claiming they were secret Romulan strongholds-in an area patrolled by 313 Klingon Birds of Prey. The Klingons, pleased to honorably dispense with peacekeeping, blasted the Orion ships out of space. Ever since the Mingon-Federation Alliance, the Orions had been waiting for an excuse to attack the heart of Klingon Territory. They were met by Starfleet.
The Waykani increased their claims on disputed territory. War escalated, system by system. The Konor were forgotten, a minor annoyance in the face of galactic conflict.
At last, somehow, Data was able to form a coherent thought: No more! Stop! Show me how to stop it!
He was distanced from the fabric of history, although it remained within his perception.
“You asked, was the voice of the Elysian “gods” reminded him, “to know what we are. his Again he found his mind filled with incomprehensible knowledge. These were not physical beings, but creatures of pure mind. “Behold. his Data’s attention once more focused on his own life’s “thread” within the fabric. As he “watched,” it dissolved, freeing other threads.
Data realized that the link was not an inevitable line of destiny, which for all their powers the Elysian gods could not change, but his life, subject to his choices, his will. With that thread removed, the whole area of interstellar conflict … unraveled.
The other “threads” lost their pattern of aggression and misunderstanding and war. They were pure potential, to be woven into the horrors Data had just observed .
. . or into a new pattern dependent on the 314 decision of one young android programmed with insatiable curiosity. Data understood: From their perspective outside time, the Elysian gods could observe any time-choice at will. Their “gifts” were potential time-lines in which the Questor was strong, or wise, or beloved or … human. The choice was the Questor’s, and he alone was responsible for what he made of his gift.
Data understood that he, not the gods, controlled his life-choices. But that was all he understood of what they showed him. What he needed was the information as to what he could do now to mitigate that hideous vision of the future.
“But I do have the knowledge you have provided me,” he said, grasping at the hope. “Perhaps there is a clue from the human perspective that an android can utilize.”
“No, Data of Starfeet, you will not retain that memory. All you experienced is, for you, no more than a dream-a dream forgotten, once you accept your true self his “My-was Data lifted his hands. Pale synthoskin covered them. His diagnostics began a routine systems check, reporting all functions normal. He was restored, yet, “I do remember it all.”
“7t was an illusion, Data, a possibility, but not reality. was Automatically, Data accessed his knowledge of illusions-these “gods” had produced many that were beyond his ability to penetrate. But … the entire experience he had just lived through?
His love, his pain, all a dream? Then how could he feel them as forcefully now as he had in human form? As always, Data’s curiosity set his memory banks to searching for knowledge related to the topic at hand. They responded with a puzzle from one of his philosophy courses at Starfleet Academy: “Am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who dreams he is a man?” His classmates had argued endlessly over the question, while Data had found it incomprehensible.
He understood it now.
“Am I a man,” he asked the Elysian gods, “who dreams he is an android, or am I an android who dreamed he was a man?”
The gods chose