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“Come on, Isaac. It would be like me getting to meet Einstein or Cochrane. For all your life, you’ve heard about Data, the first of your kind. It would be impossible for you not to feel at least a little intimidated about meeting him.”

Isaac’s eyes flicked down and to the right, a reflective gesture. “I suppose it is possible.”

“You shouldn’t worry, though,” Crusher said, stepping forward and putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a fine officer, and a terrific scientist…even if you do tend to cheat at poker.” Isaac opened his mouth to object, but Crusher plowed ahead with a smile. “Data may be something like a grandfather to you, or a much older sibling at least, but that just means he’ll be all the more proud of you. Trust me. After all, I knew him. He’s going to love you.”

“Who’s going to love whom?”

Crusher and Isaac turned to see Doctor Quaice entering main engineering, an easy smile on his face.

“Isaac’s worried about making a good impression on Data,” Crusher answered.

“I am not worried about…” Isaac began, then broke off. He nodded, reluctantly. “I am, perhaps, somewhat concerned. Data is, as Wesley has pointed out, something like a grandfather to me.”

“Well, there you are, then.” Quaice came over to stand beside them. “What grandparent doesn’t love their grandchildren? Of course, one of my grandsons-daughter’s oldest boy, she named him Patrick after my late wife-can’t seem to get used to the fact that his own grandfather looks the same age as him, these days, so I suppose that unconditional love isn’t always a two-way street.” He mused, somewhat pensive for a moment, then turned his attention to Crusher. “Well, have you time for my regular checkup, or should I come back later?”

Crusher couldn’t help but notice the somewhat sour expression on Quaice’s face when asking the question. He understood completely. Having spent a lifetime in the practice of healing others, the doctor now found himself lacking the expertise to mend his own artificial body. Standing with Isaac and Quaice, the two people to whom he felt closest among the crew, Crusher was reminded as always how looks could be deceiving. At first glance, the three of them looked near enough in age, based on physical appearance alone, that they could have all graduated from the academy together. And yet Quaice had been born when Jim Kirk was still in command of the earlier Enterprise, Crusher himself had been born while the Federation-Cardassian border conflicts still raged, and Isaac had been born little more than nine years before.

“Certainly, Doctor,” Crusher said, motioning toward the diagnostic bay at the rear of main engineering.

“Please, Wesley, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times, call me Dalen.”

Crusher shook his head, sheepishly. If Data was a grandfather to Isaac, Crusher wasn’t sure what that made Quaice to him, but his earliest memories were of his mother taking him to visit her mentor and friend. Quaice had already been an old man then, positively ancient in the eyes of the young Wesley Crusher, with his bristling white mustache and snow-white hair, eyes bright in a face lined with wrinkles. Crusher hadn’t seen him for years after that, not until he joined the crew of the Enterprise, after Crusher’s mother went off to Starfleet Medical; by then, Quaice had traded in his old body for a new one, a body that lacked not only the snow-white hair and mustache and wrinkles, but also the ills and infirmities to which human bodies were prone. Despite the youthfulness of this new body, his eyes were just as bright, his smiles easy and frequent, and Crusher could still see echoes of the old man his mother had loved like a father.

“No, Doctor Quaice,” Crusher answered, trying not to sound like a child again, “I don’t think I could ever do that.”

Sito Jaxa sat in Ten Forward, drinking a cup of iced raktajino and watching the stars blur by through the viewports. She was technically off-duty, but as ops manager she had the discretion to pull rank on the ensign who relieved her, and take back her post when they