The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [132]
And it was whole. It was enough.
Liberated, he surrendered himself to it.
“Oh, no.”
Geordi’s anxiety spiked through Deanna’s mind like a phaser hit. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s shutting down! No, no, no, don’t do this to me, Data! Don’t you do this, dammit!” He worked desperately at Data’s peeled-open skull, trying to get a response from the positronic net within. But its status lights had stopped blinking, and nothing he did made any difference.
Finally he slumped and lay down his tools, his defeat a heavy weight upon her. She asked, “Is he…”
“He’s in…I guess you’d call it a deep coma. There’s power, there’s a baseline of activity, but there’s no response to stimuli. And I can’t do anything to change it.”
The more accurate term would be a vegetative state, she knew. But that hardly mattered. “Is there any hope?”
He shook his head wearily. “I don’t know, Deanna. There’s something still going on in there, but just barely. If he were human, there’d be a chance he could wake up from the coma on his own. It happens, right?” She nodded. “But with him, there’s no precedent. I just don’t know.”
They sat silently for some moments. Finally she could be silent no more. “Geordi? Would you like to tell me what’s making you feel so guilty?”
He winced. “I know you’ll tell me it’s not my fault. But…I can’t get over the fact that we were fighting. We’d patched things up enough to work together, but I was still sore at him, and he knew it, and…” He ran a hand over his head. “What if I didn’t watch him closely enough? What if being mad at him meant I didn’t do enough to make sure he’d be safe?”
“I will tell you it wasn’t your fault. You wouldn’t let that happen. But I’ll also tell you it’s natural for you to wonder that at a time like this. Try to keep that in mind, to recognize that those thoughts are part of the process. If you can step back from them, you can cope with them more effectively.”
“Or you could look behind you.”
They whirled. Data lay there looking up at them, an impish smile on his face. “And while you are at it, could someone tell me why I am unable to reactivate my motor functions?”
Geordi was beaming. “Data! You’re all right!”
“Mentally, yes. But about those motor functions—”
“Of course, I’ll get right on it.”
They pulled him to a sitting position and Geordi went to work at the back of his neck. “Data, are you yourself again?” Deanna asked.
“Hm. In the sense that my cognitive processes and emotion chip are now restored to baseline mode, the answer is yes. However…the definition of ‘myself’ is still undergoing reappraisal, I think. I am still…gathering Data.” He smiled, and she raised him a laugh.
“So what happened?” Geordi asked. “How did you…reset yourself?”
He answered, but to Deanna. “I have you to thank for that, Counselor. I recalled the advice you gave me about using peace with myself as a foundation for relating peacefully with those around me. My perceptual input was chaotic, so I focused my awareness inward to my baseline cognitive parameters. I was able to use that substrate as a reference point for rebuilding my perceptual model.”
Suddenly his body shuddered into mobility again. After briefly testing his range of motion, Data rose. “I seem to recall physically assaulting the Tamarian ambassador. Is this correct?”
“I’m afraid so,” she replied.
“Then we must hurry if we are to defuse the situation.”
“Data,” Geordi said, “I’m not willing to risk retuning you to Tamarian mode again.”
“I do not believe that will be necessary, Geordi. I know what to do.”
It was an impressive performance. Even while in standard cognitive mode, Data was able to adapt himself to communicate in Tamarian terms—and his strategy showed he had little trouble thinking in their terms either. He reminded them of the myth of Palwin of the Fields, a well-intentioned but naive monarch who had affronted the gods with his hubris and been stricken