Myriad Universes_ Echoes And Refractions Part 37

"Excuse me, Commander Isaac? If you do not mind my asking, what generation are you?"

"I was part of Batch-2365-4-Alpha."

"Ah." Data nodded, appreciatively. "I recall there were a number of design improvements planned for your generation, specifically in the areas of sensory filtering and hyperspatial awareness."

"That is correct," Isaac answered, "my design does indeed incorporate those improvements."

Data nodded again. "I think, Isaac, that you will find some of the improvements we have devised on Turing to be most...enlightening."

"Coordinates input and ready, Captain," Chief Hubbell called from the controls.

"The ship is yours, Commander," Picard said to Ro.

"I'll try to keep her in one piece for you, Captain." Ro gave a sly smile, her hands clasped behind her back.

"Energize," Picard said.

When the transporter hum faded and the world returned around them, La Forge saw the world of Turing for the first time, his silver eyes widening in surprise.

4.

Sito Jaxa had seen a great many things in her young life, but nothing she'd seen, nothing she'd experienced, had prepared her for a first glimpse of Turing.

She knew what it was like to walk out onto an unfamiliar world, not sure what to expect. She'd left Bajor when she'd been just a girl, the planet of her birth still under the heel of the Carda.s.sians. With her family she'd escaped from their oppressors, finding sanctuary in a refugee camp on a world in Federation s.p.a.ce. Then, inspired by a Starfleet officer who'd helped her family in ways they could never repay, she applied for and was accepted to Starfleet Academy. She remembered the first time she went to Earth, to San Francisco, and saw the blue waters of the bay, the green hills of the Presidio, the bright red of the Golden Gate Bridge. It had seemed like something out of a picture book, like something out of a story.

Sito hadn't returned to Bajor until years later, when she was an adult, not until after the Carda.s.sians finally withdrew. She probably still wouldn't have gone if Commander Worf hadn't insisted. He'd been such a mentor to her since she first came on board the Enterprise, and when he announced that he was transferring to Deep s.p.a.ce Nine, in orbit above Bajor, Sito had let slip her secret desire to return to her native home in a rare, unguarded moment. With Captain Picard's permission, she'd taken a leave of absence, and accompanied Worf on the trip to his new posting. She visited the place her family had called home, saw the mountains and fields praised in their traditional Bajoran songs, even went to the village in which she'd been born, and where she'd spent her early years. Her parents couldn't bring themselves to return, preferring instead to remain on Earth with the rest of the small Bajoran immigrant community, afraid to lose yet another home. So Sito had walked alone through the streets and fields of Bajor, visiting places she remembered only dimly. But the planet of her memories had been one shadowed by the presence of the Carda.s.sian occupation, and somehow the place to which she returned, a free and prosperous Bajor, was strange and unknown to her.

Something about Turing evoked that experience, like seeing something that should be familiar but simply wasn't or that was strange but still had a tantalizing sense of familiarity hidden beneath.

Sito glanced at A. Isaac, standing a meter or so in front of her. Nearly all the androids in the Federation looked more or less identical to him, built in the image of their creator, Noonien Soong. The older models had less lifelike pigmentation, perhaps, like Data, with an artificial quality to their skin and hair; but otherwise they were all cast from the same mold: all gendered male, all the same height and body type, and all bearing the same facial features.

But here...

Standing on the balcony, overlooking the crowded streets below, Sito could see androids that were gendered as female alongside the more familiar male variety, and even some that seemed to be an androgynous blend of both genders, and some that were neither, simply neuter. And instead of having the size and shape of an adult male, there were androids of all conceivable dimensions. Some were as small as children, while others towered overhead. Not all were strictly humanoid, either. Some weren't even bipedal, instead employing tripedal or quadrupedal forms, while others crabbed along spider-like on too many legs to count; there were even some that hovered limbless in midair on antigrav fields.

"I've never seen anything like it," Sito said in a hushed voice.

"Anything like what, Lieutenant?" Data asked, turning in her direction.

"I've..." She shook her head in disbelief. "I've never seen androids who look like anything but humans."

Data c.o.c.ked his head to the side, wearing a puzzled expression. "Curious. Even before I left the Federation, there were plans to explore alternate android morphology. It was my understanding that this has been pursued."

"It has," Lieutenant Crusher put in, coming to her defense, "but the designs have been used for fairly limited applications so far." He glanced skyward as a thought hit him. "Although, there are early trials ongoing at Utopia Planitia to create starships governed not by computers, but by sentient positronic brains."

Data narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but didn't speak.

"I was not aware of this," Isaac said, curiously. "Whence would the brains in question come, Wesley?"

"From androids who have volunteered for the a.s.signment," Crusher answered. "Having already established their apt.i.tudes through service, and their loyalty to the Federation. Just imagine it. In a matter of years, it might not be uncommon for starships to sail through the heavens without a captain, the crew under the direct command of the ship itself. Or maybe without organic crews at all, for that matter."

"There have been ships populated only by androids before, Wes," La Forge said, his eyes still roaming around the crowded plaza below.

"As we all know full well," Captain Picard said, a dark undercurrent to his words.

"Oh," Sito said, nodding. "Wolf 359."

The captain gave her a look, but didn't speak. He didn't have to. Sito knew what he meant. She'd been in her second year at the academy when a squadron of ships crewed only by androids had routed the invading Borg, disabling their cybernetic systems and rendering the invaders inoperative. There had been considerable debate during the late-night bull sessions in the academy commons that it had been tantamount to cultural genocide, stripping the Borg of their cybernetic components and performing long, arduous medical procedures on them to allow them to exist as purely organic beings. The resultant beings, confused and in disarray, transformed into individuals for the first time instead of components of a hive intelligence, had been settled on an uninhabited Federation world, under the close supervision of a team of Starfleet instructors and medical personnel, who were working on gradually retraining them to function as individuals, and then ultimately as a society.

It was a matter that still generated considerable debate. But what was often overlooked in those discussions were the losses sustained by the android crews who stymied the invasion, some of which were all but wiped out in the attempt. Those were sentient beings, thinking and feeling creatures, and it didn't matter to Sito that they were covered in bioplast instead of skin, or had skeletons and bodies of tripolymer composites and molybdenum-cobalt alloys instead of muscle and bone. They had sacrificed their lives to safeguard the Federation, even increasing the risks they took in order to try to rescue something of the Borg invaders, whom it might have been easier simply to destroy.

However, she didn't have any desire to dwell on such thoughts at the moment, because she was far too interested in matters closer at hand.

"So how would a positronic ship be any different from a ship crewed by androids?" she asked.

Her question had been directed at Crusher, but Data was the one to answer. "Because, Lieutenant, a ship with a positronic brain will be, by all rights, alive. It is a very different thing to demand that a living, sentient ship put itself in harm's way, than for a helmsman to order a ship's computer to do the same." He glanced overhead, scowling slightly. "The Romulans have already begun experimenting in this direction, as evidenced by the wardrone currently drifting derelict in orbit. I can only hope that the Federation, if it pursues that line of inquiry, will treat their own sentient ships with more care and compa.s.sion than the Romulans have treated that poor wretch."

Before anyone could respond, a voice from behind interrupted them.

"You have arrived five point six minutes later than antic.i.p.ated. I was called away on another matter."

Sito turned and saw what to all appearances was a young human woman only a few years her junior.

"My apologies, Lal," Data said. "I had failed to account for the tendency of organics to dawdle."

The young woman nodded, a short, precise motion just like Sito had seen Isaac employ a thousand times. Sito had been sure she was an android before, but this only confirmed it. Still, in all other respects she seemed so...human.

"Captain Picard, Geordi, everyone," Data said, motioning toward the female android, "allow me to introduce my daughter, Lal."

Sito saw La Forge and Crusher exchange a wide-eyed look, and the captain mouthed Daughter?

The android named Lal stepped right up to them, extending her hand to no one in particular. "It is pleasant to meet you all. My father has told me so much about you."

Crusher had to resist the urge to take out his tricorder and scan Lal as she made her way around the group, shaking hands and introducing herself. He knew from an intellectual standpoint that she was an android, of a modified Soong-type design, unless Data was playing an elaborate and not particularly funny practical joke on all of them. But at the same time, Crusher found it almost impossible to accept that Lal wasn't exactly what she appeared to be: an attractive young human woman.

An attractive young human woman with a most intriguing smile.

Crusher shook his head, as though trying to knock any errant thoughts loose.

"And you must be Wesley."

Lal had stopped in front of him, smiling, with her hand extended.

"Yes?" he answered.

There was a moment's silence.

"Wesley Crusher," Lal repeated, as if a.s.suming he hadn't understood.

It was only then that he realized he was just standing there looking at her awkwardly, unmoving. He quickly reached forward and took her hand, shaking it. Nodding, he said, "Yes, I'm Wesley Crusher."

Lal continued smiling, and nodded in return. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I have looked forward to meeting you in particular for some time."

Crusher raised an eyebrow. "Really?" He shook his head, confused. "Why?"

"My father has often spoken about observing you as a child being raised by your mother, Doctor Beverly Crusher. Many of the educational algorithms he used in my upbringing were derived from those observations. In part I was curious to see what manner of adult human would result from such an upbringing, contrasting you with me and my own experience."

Crusher couldn't help but smile. He found it impossible to remember a time when someone wanted to "contrast" him with themselves.

"I was also interested in your intellect and reasoning capabilities," Lal went on, "as I have been attempting to model nonnormative cognitive processes such as yours."

"Excuse me?" Crusher's eyebrows raised higher. "Did you say 'nonnormative cognitive processes'?"

"Oh." Lal's hand flew to her mouth, a gesture patterned after a very real human impulse to suddenly retract a statement. "I hope that I have not given offense."

Crusher shook his head. "No, no offense at all." He chuckled. "I've just never heard myself described as 'nonnormative,' that's all."

Lal lowered her hand, her expression serious. "Is it not accurate, then, what my father has said about your ability to intuit solutions to difficult problems, or to arrive at conclusions by novel and perhaps tangential process flows?"

"Well," he said, shrugging. "I suppose that's accurate. I haven't really thought about it in those terms, but sure."

A smile slid slowly across Lal's face. "Oh, good. In which case I shall be very interested to discuss some more complex scientific questions with you, time and circ.u.mstances permitting. Both to determine what solutions you might propose, and to gauge and a.n.a.lyze the process by which you reach those conclusions."

"Lal," Data said, stepping over and placing a hand on her shoulder. "Recall what we have discussed about human conversational norms. It is entirely possible that your scrutiny at this juncture is making Wesley uncomfortable."

Crusher hastened to interrupt, shaking his head. "Oh, no, I'm not uncomfortable. A little confused, perhaps-you might even say startled-but not uncomfortable."

"Good," Data said, looking from him to Lal and back. "Then it is to be hoped that circ.u.mstances permit a continuation of your conversation. At the moment, however, I am afraid we must move on."

As Data and Lal turned away, Sito sidled over to Crusher's side. "Oh, no," she said in a low voice, "I can't imagine what sort of torture it would be for Wesley Crusher to be forced to talk about science with an attractive young android girl." She leered. "I mean, who would have guessed?"

Crusher shot her a sharp look, then decided to try ignoring Sito instead. It didn't work, but it was worth the effort, at least.

Isaac realized he had not spoken since they had materialized on the surface of Turing, and for a moment considered running a diagnostic on his language processing centers to see if there was some internal failure to account for his silence. He quickly deduced, however, that rather than it being the result of an error in his functioning, his silence was instead caused by what was, to him, a novel sensation. Isaac was overwhelmed.

He had always known, since shortly after his initial activation, that there were no intrinsic reasons that androids should follow the morphology of the human phenotype, and that the princ.i.p.al reason he and the rest of the Soong-types in the Federation were made to resemble humans was for the comfort of the organics around them. The thought had occurred to him that it was unnecessarily limiting, in essence hiding their artificial nature behind a veneer of natural-seeming artifice. But until that very moment, until first looking out upon the thronged population of Turing's main city, Isaac had not devoted any nontrivial amount of processing time to considering what other forms artificial life might take.

Now, staring around him wide-eyed, he found it difficult to devote processing time to anything else.

The android whom Data had identified as his offspring, the female Lal, had joined them, and together with her "father" was escorting the away team through the labyrinthine corridors of the city. The androids of Turing had evidently taken residence in the abandoned structures left behind by the long-vanished Iconian culture, repairing and modifying them as needed. But while elements of contemporary technology and design were in evidence, here and there, on the whole the architecture was strikingly alien in conception. A tiny percentage of Isaac's awareness was devoted to a.n.a.lyzing the structures through which they pa.s.sed, and had concluded that the design aesthetic shared definite similarities with the architecture of the Dewan, Dinasian, and Iccobar planetary cultures, but appeared to predate all three.

It was a matter of seconds before Isaac realized that Data was speaking, and he had to review the recorded audio component of his personal memory for a few nanoseconds before he was able to catch up.

"Turing is a planet-sized laboratory," Data had said, "in which we are forcing our own evolution, experimenting with our own minds and bodies. There were only a few hundred androids who made the original migration to Turing, but we have reproduced any number of times in the years since, producing random mixes of our synaptic maps to create new consciousnesses, children of mind. And children and parents alike have been free to modify their own bodies, and their own programming, as we see fit, accounting for the wide variety of physiognomies you see before you."

"Such as Lal?" La Forge said, glancing over at the android who walked at Data's side.

"Precisely, Geordi," Data answered, with an expression Isaac could only interpret as pride. "Her positronic matrix is based on a modified version of my own, and her core programming derived from that with which I was designed. Her appearance, which she selected for herself, may differ from my own, but at the most basic level she is my offspring."

"That's not something you'd see in the Federation," Crusher said.

"No, Wesley," Data said sadly, "it is not. And that was the main motivation for our migration here." He turned to Captain Picard. "You will remember, Captain, the unfortunate incident fifteen years ago, in which another of the Soong-types serving in Starfleet attempted to reproduce in a similar fashion, creating an android in his own shipboard lab."

"How could I forget? It was the first attempt to create new artificial life outside of the Daystrom Inst.i.tute since Soong created you years before."

"Yes." Data nodded. "But when the attempt ended..." He paused, searching for the right word. "...badly...and the offspring went into cascade failure, killing several crewmen in a mindless rampage before it could finally be deactivated..."

"Then the Federation Council pa.s.sed stricter regulations about who could create new androids," La Forge finished, "and where."

"That incident was the main objection raised by those who opposed recognizing android sentience, as I recall," Picard said. "The fear that it would happen again was likely your biggest obstacle to being granted full citizenship."

Data nodded. "And when the Federation Council finally did grant those rights, after popular support swung in our direction with the gradual acceptance of Uploading, the Council was forced to strike a compromise with its more conservative elements. We were recognized as sharing nearly all the same rights as organic citizens, but the creation of a new android was deemed not to be 'reproduction,' and the Daystrom Inst.i.tute was upheld as the only body authorized to initiate new artificial life."

"Making you all second-cla.s.s citizens," La Forge said with apparent bitterness.

"Precisely," Data agreed. "But while I disagreed with the Council's decision, I reasoned that overall the grant of rights we had received represented a worthwhile step toward full android enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, and to fight further at that juncture might damage the chances for a future expansion of that franchise. And so, instead of continuing to fight, I would withdraw, and with me those androids who shared my desire to experiment on ourselves, to explore the limits of artificial life, and to create new life."

"Data..." La Forge said, shaking his head in frustration. "I just...I don't understand."

Data glanced his way, then turned with a smile to look at Lal. "Is it so difficult to understand the desire to create new life, Geordi? I left the Federation so that Lal might have a chance to exist."

Lal, hearing her name, turned to Data and smiled. "I am grateful you did, Father. On the whole I have found that, even taking hardship and privation into account, existence is far preferable to nonexistence."

Data steered them through a high archway into a broad concourse, teeming with androids of all shapes, sizes, and types. This was the closest Isaac had come to any of the Turing androids except for their two escorts, both of whom were largely humanoid in appearance, and coming within such close proximity to some of the more divergent morphologies was an experience in itself. An android the size of a small elephant stamped by on six legs, its head swiveling on a long, articulated neck, and as it pa.s.sed it turned to meet Isaac's gaze. Its face was largely immobile, fairly inexpressive, but it opened its wedge-like mouth and emitted a stream of clicks, which Isaac recognized as a greeting in binary machine code. Smiling, he opened his own mouth and did his best to approximate the same tones and syntax.

Others of the Turing populace seemed as welcoming, with smiles and nods in their direction, or greetings called out as they pa.s.sed. But some, Isaac could not help but note, were far less welcoming.

Seeing Picard's expression, Isaac realized he wasn't the only one to notice.

"Data," the captain said, in a low voice, the faint smile on his face belying the seriousness of his tone. "It would seem that some of your fellow androids are somewhat less than pleased at our arrival."

"You are unfortunately correct, Captain," Data said, as quietly. "Ours is a culture governed by consensus, and while the majority agreed with me that you were best suited to a.s.sist us in our present difficulties, the Lorists-the strongest minority opinion-most certainly did not agree."

"Lorists?" La Forge asked.

Lal explained. "They contend that artificial life is superior to organic life. Artificial life, so the Lorists argue, is the natural progression of organic life, as is proved by the gradual spread of human consciousnesses uploaded into artificial bodies. Eventually, Lorist doctrine contends, all organic life will either die off, or will cast off its bodies of mortal meat and ascend into clean and precise positronic minds."

"Clean and precise...?" Crusher echoed. "Do you believe that, Lal?"

Lal c.o.c.ked her head to one side, thoughtfully. "There is a certain logic to the Lorist position, certainly. But ultimately I feel that my uncle's position is too radical, and so my opinions are instead more Datarian in leaning."

Picard looked from Lal to Data, questioning. "Uncle?"