Metamorphosis - Jean Lorrah [125]
Data tried to analyze how he had received the transmission, but he could not trace synapses, chemical 347 changes, anything. What receptors had he used, where there apparently were none?
Send me back to my home. If you are going to kill us, let me die with my own people.
No, thought Data, we do not want to kill you.
But if he could not find the solution, someone would have to kill the Konor or else imprison an entire society, to stop them from slaughtering innocent people.
How do I reach you? he wondered.
If there had been circuits, he could have reversed them. If the transmission had been a beam or wave, he could have duplicated it. But it just came at him.
Let me go!
Wait.
The Konor’s thoughts had not intruded on him before, nor had anyone else mentioned it. Data had gone close to him to test his reception. The transmission was usually limited to a small area around the Konor, but now the man was mentally “shouting,” as it were.
He “listened” for the Konor to communicate again.
He had stopped “shouting.” Data strained to “hear” … You will learn, eventually. And then something that faded away as the man became resigned once more. But in straining to “hear,” Data sensed the activity of one of his semantic interpreters.
It was not within the filament links, but fed information to them.
If it fed information one direction-He sat up.
“I believe I have found it.”
Geordi smiled, and followed as Data went to his computer and called up his own schematics.
“Herethis is the receptor that transfers what the Konor sends to my positronic brain.
Geordi, it does not 348 matter how my mind works at all. If we modify this receptor to send as well as receive, as long as I can formulate thoughts I can send them to the Konor.”
But the receptor was not a circuit, like the ones in most of Data’s body. It was a tiny plasma electrode, its charge delicately balanced by electromagnetic activity.
Geordi whistled. “Data, we can’t mess around with that. If we unbalance it, we might never be able to put it right again. I don’t even have tools to deal with that kind of connection.”
“I will risk it,” Data said. “I trust you, Geordi.”
“Absolutely not,” his friend said. “Only the man who built you knows how that thing works. And don’t tell me it’s okay because you know-with that part out you wouldn’t be able to tell me how to fix you!”
“Geordi-think of all the lives at stake. We have to try.”
“No,” Geordi said emphatically. “You might as well ask me to perform brain surgery on the captain. But …” he added, rubbing his chin as he studied the screen, “we just might be able to construct something else to connect to that plasma electrode, and use that to transmit.”
“Yes!” Data exclaimed, seeing at once how they might accomplish their goal without disturbing the delicate components associated with his positronic brain. Like that brain itself, these were devices no one had yet succeeded in duplicating.
They fed not only into his brain, but into his language banks as wellcircuitry well understood since the invention of the universal translator in the previous century.
In moments they had the worktable spread with the tools and spare parts Data kept on hand, and Geordi
started in on a tentative design. There was no way to miniaturize it to fit against Data’s positronic brain, but Geordi had no intention of coming anywhere near that delicate area with what he described as “these clumsy tools.” His Instead, they opened Data’s chest, where there was room to insert the new circuit, and ran a connection to his language synthesizer. The first several designs they tried didn’t work at all. But after much trial and error, they got a measurable flow according to the instrumentation.
Geordi said, “Now it’s got to work. There’s no reason it shouldn’t, Data. Besides, I’m flat out of ideas. If that thing was gonna work, it should’ve done so five adjustments ago.”
Data sat at the worktable, his chest open and the circuit board lying before him. All the connections had been tested a dozen