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“The same project,” he corrected, “only better.” He put the limb in the case, and then went back to remove the head, whose face still wore a slightly startled expression. “Next time, we’ll hold off introducing emotions to the programming until we’re sure the positronic matrix is solid and the behavioral programming is completely in place.”

She nodded, thoughtfully. Coming to stand beside him, she took the detached head from him, cradling it in her arms like an infant. “What do you think we’ll call the next one? Lore, Mark 2?”

He shook his head. “Data,” he corrected. “We’ll call him Data. And this one I’m sure will work.”

She looked at the head in her arms, its features so much like those of her husband, but here twisted into a mask of cold cruelty. “I want to believe you’re right, Noonien. I have to believe. But let’s suppose you are, and that this next android…this Data…functions within normal parameters.” She looked up and met his gaze. “What then?”

“Then?” The man smiled, draping an arm around her shoulders. “We’ll unveil my creation to the worlds, and the sky itself will be the limit.”

1

2378 (Old Calendar)

Jean-Luc Picard hissed in pain as Doctor Dalen Quaice prodded his shoulder with the tip of a finger. As the doctor hummed thoughtfully to himself, Picard managed a weary smile.

“This is all your fault, Doctor,” Picard said. “You were the one who insisted I exercise, after all. If it were up to me I’d have been reading a good book with a cup of Earl Grey.”

Quaice grunted like a disapproving old man, a sound at odds with his youthful appearance. “I prescribed exercise, Jean-Luc, not torture.” He shook his head, reaching for his medical tricorder. “I have never understood the appeal of anbo-jytsu. After a lifetime spent treating the resulting injuries, I’m half-convinced the Federation should ban it altogether as cruel and unusual.”

Tactical officer Ro Laren looked on, still wearing her workout fatigues. “It’s the best all-around exercise I’ve found, Doctor. And it has broader applications as a martial art than something less strenuous.”

“That’s as may be, Commander,” Quaice said, running the tricorder over Picard’s shoulder and arm. “But exercise won’t do him a lick of good if he breaks all his bones in the process.”

Picard and his tactical officer had been sparring on the holodecks, employing anbo-jytsu techniques that Picard had learned from his former first officer, before Will Riker left to take command of the Excalibur. As usual, Ro had gotten the better of her captain, though Picard was proud at least to have put up a spirited defense this time.

“Remember, Jean-Luc,” Quaice said, “you’re not as young as you used to be.”

Before Picard could answer, Ro let out a short, scoffing laugh. “My father always told me you’re only as old as you feel,” she said, her arms crossed.

Quaice smiled, and rapped his chest with his knuckles. “Well, I feel like a hundred kilos of tripolymer composites, molybdenum-cobalt alloys, and bioplast sheeting, so how old does that make me?”

“Old enough to know not to get into arguments with a Bajoran, one hopes,” Picard said. As Quaice rummaged on the counter for a hypo, the captain asked, “So what is your diagnosis, Doctor?”

“A few pulled ligaments is all.” He pressed the hypo against the captain’s shoulder. As the mist spread into his shoulder, Picard could feel the pain and tension fading. “You should be more careful with the roughhousing, Jean-Luc.”

Picard shook his head, bemused. The doctor appeared young enough to be his own son, and yet here he was lecturing Picard like a stern grandfather scolding an errant child. Still, the doctor wasn’t as old as he used to be.

Ro opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the beep of of Picard’s combadge. “Bridge to Picard.”

“Picard here.”

“Captain, it’s Sito,” said Enterprise’s ops manager, Sito Jaxa. “Subspace transmission for you.”

“From Starfleet Command?” The current mission of the U.S.S. EnterpriseD was to patrol the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone. An unexpected communique might well be bad news, considering