Myriad Universes 02_ Echoes and Refractions - Keith R. A. DeCandido [188]
Sito raised her hand. When Picard acknowledged her with a nod, she instead directed her question at Lal. “Do all of the gateways have to be the same dimensions? That is, would it be possible to create a much smaller one? Say only a centimeter or two across?”
La Forge nodded, comprehension dawning. “Hey, right! Just large enough to look through, and large enough to pass sound-waves back and forth.”
Picard mulled it over. “Like peering through a keyhole.”
“Exactly,” Sito said.
Lal considered it, and conferred briefly with the hairless android at the controls. “There is nothing in the design of the network to prevent such a thing.”
Picard nodded, his jaw set. “Make it so.”
“Excuse me, Lal?” Crusher motioned to the young android, standing a few meters away.
She turned to look in his direction, her head cocked to one side. “Yes, Wesley?”
“I was hoping you might be able to answer a few questions for me.” He gestured to the control console of the gateway network, where the hairless android was in the process of establishing new gateways to Sito’s specifications. La Forge was at his side, watching the proceedings with interest. “I don’t want to interrupt your friend, but wasn’t sure how familiar you were with the gateway controls.”
“Oh, I am quite familiar with them, Wesley,” she said, walking over to stand beside him. “Like all Turing residents I spend a part of every year manning the controls. In fact…” She lowered her gaze, momentarily lost in thought. “...I am scheduled to take over in sixty-four days, eleven hours, nineteen minutes.” She paused, considering. “Of course, the duty schedule has been interrupted by present difficulties, and Questor”she indicated the hairless android“is remaining at the post beyond his appointed time. So it is possible that the schedule will be adjusted, though whether it will be slid back or the interrupted shifts will simply be abandoned is…”
Crusher held up his hands, in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, I trust you.”
Lal cocked her head in the other direction, giving him a quizzical look. “Oh, I see. I had misapprehended the level of detail inherent in your inquiry, and consequently provided information surpassing that required for your needs.”
Crusher chuckled. “Something like that.”
“My apologies, Wesley,” she said, chastened. “My experience communicating with organics is limited to the last few hours, and much of my conversation since my activation some years ago has been at high transfer rates via subspace communication.” She paused, a faint smile tugging the corners of her mouth. “However, my uncle often says that he has been forced to develop a perceptual filter that he employs when exchanging information with me, which winnows my transmissions of what he considers nonessential information.”
“Really?”
“Well, he refers to it most often as 'boring, mind-numbing trivia,’ but yes, that is the essence of it.”
Crusher couldn’t help but laugh. “I think my mother would have paid real money for something like that when I was growing up. She always told me that I sometimes bored her silly bending her ear with things she didn’t have the slightest interest in.”
Lal looked confused. “You rendered your parent weak or deficient in intellect, lacking in judgment or common sense, all by changing the outward shape of her ear?”
Crusher shook his head. “Oh, no, it’s just a human expression. It means that I talked to her about…”
“Wesley,” Lal said, holding up a hand to interrupt him. “I am fully programmed with idiomatic expressions in over six million forms of communication, including all current and historical Earth languages, dialects, and variants.” She paused, and then added, “I was attempting to make a joke.”
“Oh.” Crusher began to smile. “Actually, that’s pretty funny.”
Lal smiled in return. “Good.” She was thoughtful a