Synthesis - James Swallow [96]
“Yes. Because I earned trust, because I gave it. You can’t just demand it. It’s a fragile thing.”
The hologram nodded again. “I have absorbed everything in the ship’s library on the subject, but it is dry. There’s no substance to facts without reality.” She looked at him. “So much to understand. It would be so much simpler if your kind were more like the Sentries. If there were no room for error or misinterpretation.” The avatar walked away, and she began to fade.
Torvig’s eyebrows sank. “My kind?” he repeated.
“Organics,” said the avatar, her voice a ghostly echo that vanished with the sight of her.
The ensign stared at the spot where the hologram had been, uncertain about the meaning behind the conversation he had just had.
“She’s starting to question.”
Torvig turned to see Doctor Ra-Havreii emerge from the shadow of one of the antimatter regulators. He blinked. He hadn’t been aware that the chief engineer was present.
Ra-Havreii gestured at the regulator. “They give off a broad EM field. I doubt that either of you knew I was listening.”
“How much did you hear?”
“Every word, lad, every word.” The Efrosian reached up to his chin and toyed with the wisps of white beard. “She’s questioning, and with that come acts of defiance. Then insolence and eventually rebellion. It’s the way of every child. She’s more human than she realizes.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Torvig said hopefully, but Ra-Havreii’s grim expression suggested that the reverse was true.
• • •
“Interrogative: Why am I being brought to this location?” The spiderlike mechanoid walked with a steady, rocking gait in front of Dennisar, turning the front section of its thorax around to stare directly at the security guard as it moved.
“Captain’s orders,” rumbled the Orion, one hand never straying from the compact phaser rifle dangling from his shoulder strap. He pointed with his free hand toward the doors of the stellar cartography lab. “In there.”
“Interrogative: Am I to be held in lockdown once more?”
Dennisar grimaced at Crewman Krotine, who was keeping in step with him, her slim fingers also close to her own weapon. “Why do you have to keep doing that?” he asked the machine.
“Query is nonspecific. Please elucidate,” said the AI.
“Why do you say the word ‘interrogative’ before you ask a question? Don’t you think we can tell the difference between a statement and an inquiry?”
White-Blue halted, and it seemed to be thinking. “It is how we are programmed. It is… part of us.”
“But aren’t you an intelligent machine?” said Krotine. “Can’t you exceed your programming?”
The doors to the lab opened. “There are some aspects of self that cannot be altered,” admitted White-Blue, with a note of what sounded like weariness. “Interrogative: The same is true for organic beings, correct?”
“Depends on the being,” Dennisar replied, following the machine into the chamber. Krotine threw the chief petty officer a nod and took up station outside, the doors closing at her back.
• • •
White-Blue advanced down the long open gangway to the circular platform in the middle of the stellar cartography chamber, the blocky head turning this way and that as its multiple lenses whirred and whiskery sensor dendrites flicked at the air. “Most impressive,” it said, studying the massive starscape ranged out around it. “Laser-energy refractive matrices in contrafocal suspension. The illusion of spatial dimension is highly complex.”
“Our technology allows us to create virtual simulations of images, even ones with density and apparent mass.” Troi gave a neutral smile.
At her side, Captain Riker and Lieutenant Commander Pazlar had considerably less welcoming expressions. “Thank you, Chief,” Riker told the Orion, and with a sharp jut of the chin, Dennisar stepped back and stood at attention, blocking off any path of retreat should the AI droneframe attempt to leave.
“I would like to know more about these systems. But you did not bring me here to demonstrate your technological prowess,” White-Blue noted.
Riker glanced