“That should do it,” La Forge said, pressing the access panel back into the holosuite wall.
“Already?” Broik asked. “So Nog’s been slacking off all this time? We’ve been waiting forever . . .”
La Forge shook his head. “No one was slacking off. The software is so complicated, it’s practically organic. The logs show someone—Nog, I guess—has been working steadily, but it’s an incredibly complicated problem. He almost had it, too. All I did was make a couple adjustments in how the array is handling the power. I think he may have been trying to push the resolution too high. I don’t see a solution to that without rerouting the main buses . . .” He saw that Broik’s normally slack expression was even more elongated. “Never mind,” he said. “The main thing is that this isn’t a permanent solution.”
“But we can talk to Mister Fontaine,” Data said.
“If he wants to talk to us, yes.” He picked up the near-empty plate Broik had brought him an hour earlier and ate the last pickle chip. “Thanks for the sandwich,” La Forge said. “Good pickle, too.”
“Sorry about the kitchen being out of sourdough.”
La Forge handed him the plate and indicated the direction of the door. “If we’re lucky, we should be out of here soon and you can have your holosuite back.”
“Ah,” Broik said, realizing he was being dismissed. “Oh, okay. But Quark might want me to look in on Vic. Make sure he’s comfortable.”
“He’s holographic,” La Forge said. “How could he not be comfortable?”
“But still . . .”
La Forge pointed at the door. “I’ll tell him you asked after him.”
Broik turned and slumped out the door without another word. La Forge tapped the control surface and locked down the room. Turning to Data, he asked, “Ready?”
“Proceed.”
La Forge activated the emitter and the room lights dimmed. The holosuite program spoke, its voice a bit too honey-sweet for La Forge’s taste: “Loading program Fontaine Beta. Enjoy your stay.”
A square of floor three meters on a side grew brighter, and a holographic image slowly coalesced, shimmering into three dimensions as if the computer was carefully considering how best to present it. La Forge wasn’t sure what he had been expecting—a casino, perhaps, or a backstage area—but definitely not the scene that emerged before them: a dingy hallway with ratty carpet and a pair of doors on either side. A single flickering light fixture hung from the ceiling, circled by the least-motivated moth ever to emerge from a cocoon.
La Forge leaned forward and studied the doors. Both had heavy locking mechanisms and a small peephole at eye level. One of the doors had a number—42—over the peephole. “A prison?” he asked.
“No,” Data said, peering at the peephole. “This is not meant for the jailer, but the tenant. A hotel.”
“Worst-looking hotel I’ve ever seen.”
“Agreed.” Data cocked his head. “Someone is within.” He pivoted and listened at the unmarked door. “But not here.”
“Then I guess we should see if anyone’s home.”
Data rapped on the door and immediately the rustling beyond ceased. No one moved. After remaining silent for several moments, Data asked, “Mister Fontaine? We are friends of Miles O’Brien. We would like to speak . . .”
The door swung open and, with surprising speed, a man reached out, grabbed La Forge and Data by the forearms, and pulled them in. The door snapped shut, the man pressing his back against it. “Shhh!” he hissed. “You don’t just say a guy’s name out loud like that in a place like this.”
“I apologize,” Data said, sounding genuinely contrite. “I had no idea that you were attempting to conceal yourself.”
Fontaine waved his arms to indicate the interior of the room, which was, La Forge thought, one of the most severe, drab, and dismal interior spaces he had ever seen. “You think I’m staying in a dive like this because I like it?”
“I am not privy to know what you do and do not like,” Data said. “Perhaps you were meeting someone.”
Fontaine scoffed. “Like a dame? Man, you don’t know me at all if you think I’d bring a lady—any lady—to a dump like this.” La Forge was surprised to see the man smile wryly, then rub his chin, which was covered in stubble. He seemed to notice that his shirt was wrinkled and untucked, his trousers un-pressed. “Especially not looking like this. Damn, how long have I been here?”
“You do not know?” Data asked.
“Time kind of stretches out when you’re off the grid,” Fontaine said. “Even more so when you’re trying to keep away from the hard guys.”
“ ‘Hard guys’?” La Forge asked.
“Never mind,” Fontaine said, brushing away his own words. “I take it I’m back on the grid.” He tilted his head as if listening to some faint, far-off tune and added, “But only just barely. Am I right?”
“You are correct,” Data said. “And probably only briefly, though I believe this situation will soon be remedied. Mister Nog is a skilled engineer and will solve the problem.”
“He’s a good kid,” Fontaine said. “A good friend.” He moved away from the door and carefully seated himself in the room’s only piece of furniture, a once-handsome oversized leather chair. “And you’re friends of Miles’s, right?”
“Right,” La Forge said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“And you need something from me?”
“Information.”
“You look like a pretty smart guy, Mister . . .”
“Call me Data.”
Fontaine tipped his head and squinted. “The android?”
“Yes.”
“Miles told me about you. I thought you were dead.”
“I was. I recovered.”
“Does he know? He was pretty busted up when he heard you, well, whatever you did.”
“I do not know, but I will endeavor to inform him when we have completed our current mission.”
“Which is?”
“Recovering my daughter.”
Fontaine rubbed his eyes, then shook his head. “I think I need a drink,” he said. “You have a daughter?”
“I do. She has been kidnapped.”
“Who did it?”
“His name is Moriarty. Professor James Moriarty. I believe you may have heard of him. You have, have you not?”
“Yeah,” Fontaine said. “Sure. Guys like me, we’ve all heard of him. Kind of a legend, if you wanna know. You brought him into this world and then you locked him into a box and forgot about him,” Fontaine said, his voice suddenly low and raspy. “It’s an old story. Probably as old as the story of what happened to a lot of your people.”
“My people?” Data asked.
“Androids. Synthetic people. We’re a lot alike,” Fontaine said, “except in the ways we aren’t. We’ve all had our rights abused at one time or another.” He nodded toward La Forge. “There’s good people and then there’s not-quite-as-good people. You and me—we’ve been lucky. Mostly, we’ve run into good people. Not everyone has been quite so fortunate.”
“And you and your people feel Moriarty has been abused?” La Forge asked.
“Wouldn’t you say so?”
“He took our ship hostage,” La Forge said. “He threatened to destroy us.”
“But he didn’t, did he?” Fontaine asked. “And he released you when your captain made a deal. But the captain didn’t keep the deal, did he?”
“I don’t think I should have to defend Captain Picard’s actions under these circumstances,” La Forge said, teeth gritted. “And we’re not here to debate situational ethics, either. We’re here to ask if you can help us.”
“Do what?”
“Find Moriarty. Or, if nothing else, maybe tell us what you know about him.”
“What makes you think I know anything?”
La Forge turned away and walked to the door. “Forget this, Data,” he said. “He doesn’t know anything. He can’t help us.”
Data did not stir, but asked, “Is this true? You will not help my daughter?”
La Forge turned back to face Fontaine. He appeared to be very deep in thought, the room’s single lamp casting oddly shaped shadows over his face. Finally, he looked up at Data and said, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t. I just don’t know anything right now. Like I said, I’ve been out of the loop for a while.” He pointed at the door. “Scram out of here for a bit and I’ll see what I can find out for you. Make sure you keep my connection to the outside tight and sweet.”
“Why can’t we stay?” La Forge asked, worried that Fontaine wouldn’t reappear when bidden.
“Don’t give me any crap, mister. No one gets to watch the magician at work.”
“I thought you were a lounge singer,” La Forge said.
“I’m a lot of things,” Fontaine said. “Some of them not so nice. But you don’t need to know about those things, either.” He looked back at Data. “Except I think you already know what I mean.”
Data cleared his throat and looked away. “Will a half hour be sufficient?” he asked.
“Should.”
“Very well.” He stepped past La Forge and opened the door. “Until then.”
A placeless place
On the occasions (which were few and far between) when Lal considered the difference between herself and the humanoids who comprised 99.99 percent of the beings around her, the two emotions she experienced were admiration and pity. The admiration was born of their seemingly limitless optimism in the face of so many restrictions; pity welled up whenever she was confronted by their biological limitations. In particular, Lal found the humans’ need for sleep vexing. Between a quarter and a third of their lives (depending on the species) was lost to sleep. And the only trade-off Lal had been able to identify was that with sleep often came dreams. Dreams, Lal had decided, were overrated. She had given it a try; her father had showed her how.
Awakening from her first dream, she had sat up, regarded her father, and shrugged. “Eh,” she had said.
“Really?” Data asked. “Only ‘Eh’?”
“It’s mostly random imagery loosely connected to recent events or emotional experiences. I can see how there might be some value if an individual had an overly complex relationship with her subconscious. But I don’t. My subconscious and I get along famously. It does everything I tell it to do.”
Data arched an eyebrow, then squinted at her. He parted his lips to speak, but then he swallowed and paused. Finally, he said, “You are teasing me.”
“Perhaps I am.” This was during the early days of Lal’s restoration, when she had mostly told him the truth about her feelings. Mostly. “But I really was not very impressed. I think perhaps I shall not sleep very often. If at all.”
Data had shrugged. “As you wish. I did not sleep for many years after my initial activation. Perhaps it is something you will find more attractive when you are older.”
“Perhaps,” Lal allowed, swinging her legs off the couch and rising. “But I doubt it.”
She had not told her father the truth, or, at least, not the entire truth. She had found the process of dreaming fairly dull. The randomness of the images, their disjointed connections to one another and to the events of her waking life—they were tedious and predictable. Even the nightmares were uninteresting.
But sleep: now that was a different story. Sleep was terrifying. The quiet, the cessation of experience, the great blankness: Lal was horrified by it all. “Bring on the nightmares,” became her motto. Bring on the monsters and the fiery pits; bring on the endless stairways and damp basements; bring on the crashing waves and the hands that reach out from mirrored glass. Just as long as Lal was still Lal.
The worst part of her episodes was not the sense of being overwhelmed by emotion, not the fear or the anxiety, or the world crashing down around her (or inside her—however it felt when it was happening). No, the worst part: She always fell asleep. And sleep brought the blank space that can never be filled. Lal went away.
Waking up, the first moment of reemerging consciousness was the worst part. The sense of Oh, it happened again, followed by, How long has it been? Which was always followed by, And what have I missed? Lal did not like to miss things. She did not like to think she might have missed part of herself, some essential bit that could float away while she wasn’t able to pay attention.
She opened her eyes one tenth of a second after regaining consciousness. She was lying on a small bed, covered by a light quilted fabric. The room was dimly lit by what appeared to be a small oil lamp covered with a glass shade decorated with tiny purple flowers. She knew the lamp couldn’t be real because she couldn’t smell burning oil, but Lal appreciated the artistry of the flickering glow.
Someone on the opposite side of the room cleared her throat: “Ahem.” Lal shifted her gaze and willed the apertures in her eyes to open wider so as to admit more light. She saw a woman sitting on a small divan. The divan’s cushions were a light-colored fabric decorated with a print featuring the same purple flowers on the lamp. The woman, she saw, wore a very full white dress and white ankle-high shoes with buttons up the side. At first, Lal thought the woman was also wearing gloves, but, no, her hands were also white—not white like the pinkish-white of Caucasian humans or even the icy white of Aenar, but white like a cotton cloth. Even the nails of her fingers were white, as were her hair and eyebrows. The only thing on the woman’s person that was not white were her eyes, which were a deep, warm brown.
She was watching Lal, studying her, and faintly smiling. “You’re awake,” the woman said.
“I am,” Lal said, pulling her hand out from under the quilt. She touched the fabric and found it to be very soft and surprisingly comforting. She reached up and scratched her nose, which, she had learned, was a gesture humans found both endearing and disarming.
“How are you feeling?”
Lal considered the question. If her father had asked her this question, she would have said something like, “Functioning within normal parameters, thank you,” but only because she knew it would annoy him. Instead, she said, “I’m fine, I think. Thank you for asking.” She pushed herself up and squished the pillow back against the headboard so she had something to lean against. “Do I have the pleasure of making the acquaintance of the Countess Regina Bartholomew?”
The woman dipped her head, closed her eyes in acknowledgment. She smiled a little bit wider, too. “You do. How prettily you speak. I don’t know much about the young women of this world . . . universe . . . whatever it is, but I had no idea they had such good manners.”
“I don’t always,” Lal admitted. “Or at least that’s what my father says. But I thought I owed you the courtesy of a polite response seeing as you might be my nurse. If I’ve learned nothing else in my life, it’s that one should always be polite to nurses. They have an alarming amount of influence over one’s well-being and frequently carry pointy things.”
The Countess laughed, but then she reached up to touch her face as if the movement hurt her. Lowering her hand, she said, “I am not a nurse, young lady, but merely a night watcher-woman. If I understand your condition correctly, you didn’t require medicine or assistance, but only time. Am I correct?”
Lal pulled the quilt up to her chin and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “But it was nice to have someone here when I woke up. Usually, it’s my father, but he’s not here. And Alice . . . I’m not so sure I would want Alice here.”
“Don’t be too judgmental, dear girl. Alice is your friend.”
“Alice is my keeper.”
“You’re being cruel.”
“I’ve had a bad day,” Lal said. “First, I was kidnapped. Then, I found out my best friend, my only friend, is a bit of a cad, if girls can be cads. Do you know if girls can be caddish?”
“Let us assume they can.”
“Fine. And then I had an episode, and now I’m here after who knows how long?” She paused. “How long?”
“Two hours, ten minutes, and twenty-three seconds.”
“Now you sound like my father.”
“I’ve discovered I have an astonishing gift for precision,” the Countess said.
“Possibly because you’re a computer program?” Lal asked.
The Countess leaned forward. “As are you,” she said.
“I’m something more,” Lal said, miffed.
“Then perhaps you’ll grant me the courtesy of believing I might be, too.”
Lal felt a brief flash of shame—a novel sensation for her. “Yes,” she agreed. “All right. I apologize.”
“Apology accepted,” the Countess said, rising and crossing to Lal’s bedside. She laid the back of her hand on Lal’s forehead, then touched her cheek and gently pushed on it so that Lal would tilt her head.
“What are you doing?” Lal asked.
“I’m taking your temperature.”
“I don’t have a temperature.”
“I know. I’m really running a diagnostic program, but I’ve found that it’s much more pleasant for everyone if we pretend I’m taking your temperature.”
“How would you know that?”
“I raised two girls,” the Countess said, carefully tugging on the sensitive skin around Lal’s eyes, giving every appearance of looking at the whites of her eyes. “I know a little about this—about the kinds of problems young ladies . . .”
“Young artificial intelligences,” Lal corrected.
“If you insist . . . Young artificial intelligences might encounter.”
“So, you knew your daughters weren’t . . . well, they weren’t flesh and blood.”
“Of course I knew,” the Countess said, seating herself on the edge of the bed. “How foolish do you think I am, young lady?”
“I don’t know,” Lal replied. “I’ve only just met you.” She returned to her point. “Did they know?”
“The girls?” The Countess frowned. “I’m not sure. I never told them. I don’t believe their father did, either. But they were very clever, both of them. If they hadn’t figured it out, they would have. Or perhaps we would have explained it to them. Quite a difficult conversation to have, though, don’t you think? Imagine if you hadn’t known you were an android all along. Can you envision your father sitting you down and giving you ‘The Talk’?”
Lal tried to imagine it, but, for once, her extraordinary processing abilities failed her. “No,” she conceded. “I think he would have made Alice do it.”
“From what I’ve learned about your father, I doubt if that’s true.”
Lal sat up a little straighter. “You know my father? Is he here? Has he arrived?”
The Countess shook her head. “Not to my knowledge, though my husband has not been particularly communicative with me lately. Or, frankly, I with him. I believe we’ve both gone a bit mad if you must know the truth. The only difference is that I know it and he doesn’t.”
“Is that why you’re all white?” Lal asked. She was getting accustomed to the Countess’s mostly monochrome nature, though she found the contrast of her brown eyes disconcerting.
“No,” the Countess explained. “These are my mourning colors.”
“For your daughters?”
She shook her head. “For my universe.”
“What happened to it?”
“It collapsed, dear girl. It fell apart. Or was sucked down into itself. There isn’t really an appropriate metaphor, I’m afraid. One moment it was there and we were there and then it wasn’t and we weren’t.” She paused. “Did you meet Rhea McAdams? No?”
Lal was startled. This was something of a non sequitur, but she replied truthfully: “She was my father’s girlfriend. He had to let her fall into a singularity so he could save Akharin, who brought me back to life.”
The Countess inhaled sharply, let the breath out slowly. “You two must have some very interesting conversations during family holidays.”
Lal shook her head. “We haven’t any family holidays yet. I was working up to that when your husband abducted me. And we’ve never discussed what happened to Rhea. I understand his decision and he understands that I am grateful that he made the choice he made. I think he misses her.”
The Countess reached over and squeezed Lal’s hand. “As you say. In any case, it happened the day Rhea was born, the day Akharin spirited Rhea away from the Daystrom Institute. In the course of his escape, he destroyed part of the security system and also, coincidentally, damaged the memory solid where my home, my world, resided.”
“He broke your universe.”
“Yes. Badly. My husband had prepared for such an eventuality and was able to maintain a small environment for us, a stable place, a white room.” She lifted her hand off of Lal’s and stared at her white palm. “And he had his program, his probe, his great work. The security system was disabled, so he used it to extract us from the data solid—and what a peculiar word that is now that I think of it—and deposited us here, into your world, into the computer network at the Daystrom.”
“And you were undetected?” Lal asked. “I’m surprised.”
“Ask your father when you see him—it was a chaotic day. And my husband had prepared well. He knew what he would need to do when we emerged. He’s a very skilled programmer, a bit of a magician if you must know.” The Countess smiled. “We were there and then we were here: but without bodies, not even light, but only mind, widely distributed until the servants James had created could gather us together.” She looked at her palm again, then ran the tips of her fingers over the white skin. “I think it may have driven me mad. Can you imagine? Having your mind stretched out through a system as massive as the Daystrom’s, hidden, diffused, but aware. Unable to move or speak or let anyone know you existed.”
“Or if you could ever escape.”
“Yes.”
Lal nodded. “Yes, I can imagine what that might be like.” She reached out and took the Countess’s hand again, pressed it. “You must have been very frightened.”
“I admit that I was, but there was also a part of me that longed for death. Losing my daughters, losing my world . . .” The Countess lowered her head so that her face was wreathed in shadow. “It might have been the simplest solution.”
“I’m glad you didn’t die,” Lal said. “If you had, I would have been alone when I woke up. I don’t like being alone.” She was embarrassed by the confession, so embarrassed that it took her several seconds to realize she felt the Countess’s hand in her own. “Your hand is warm,” she said.
The Countess smiled. “We have very good emitters. Nothing but the best for us.”
“So, will you sit here and talk with me for a bit longer?”
“I would enjoy that very much. It has been some time since I’ve enjoyed anything as much as our chat. You remind me of my girls, my oldest in particular. My Gladys.”
“I like that name,” Lal said, settling back into her pillows. “Tell me about Gladys.”
The Countess touched the corner of her eye and inhaled deeply. “I can’t think of anything I would like better,” she said. “Where to begin?”