by Scarab Dynasty

It was dark here. Completely, totally black. Blacker than it became back when he used to have to take off the VISOR at night. Blacker than the gaps in his memory after the Romulan brainwashing. Blacker than a few seconds spent on the inside of a temporal wormhole.

‘Why did you associate with me?’

A start. Geordi whirled round to face the voice, hardly daring to believe it real.

‘What the—’

‘Humans, by their very nature, are usually drawn towards members of their own social grouping. It is their nature, as it is the nature of many species,’ an aura stepped out of the darkness, and finally, Geordi could make out the shape of his addresser. The breath caught in his throat. ‘I wondered, then, why it was that we became associated with one another.’

‘…Data?’

‘That is my name,’ it was the same, to the point, familiar tone with which the android had first greeted Geordi when they met on board the Enterprise-D fifteen years earlier. There was no hint of sarcasm or regret. Data had never really mastered the former and was probably tired of the latter.

‘What kind of a question is that?’ Geordi frowned in genuine confusion.

‘I would presume a logical one.’

‘No, a logical question would be “where I am?” and “what the hell is going on right now?” Data. That’s not a logical question.’ Silence. A shuffling footstep. ‘What, are you serious?’

No answer.

‘You’re serious. I… you’re my friend, right? Wasn’t that reason enough?’

‘I was your friend,’ Data corrected.

‘No. Are.’ Geordi reinforced, angrily. Why was he angry? The blackness around him didn’t provide any answers. The only thing in sight was a distinctive, aura-like outline. White-gold against black. A quick glance to either side told Geordi they were alone. Or maybe just that he was alone. ‘It’s always going to be Are, Data. Don’t tell me you don’t understand that, I know you do.’

‘I do not,’ Data said, with emotionless clarity. ‘That assumption would require a presence which I can no longer provide. I was destroyed.’

Geordi sat down. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was sitting on, but it held his weight well enough. ‘Yeah,’ he managed to whisper. ‘They keep saying that.’

Data’s head gave a characteristic tilt, and only now did Geordi think to question how he could actually see the android standing there, when all around was nothing but darkness. ‘How can you doubt it? You observed it happening from the main deck of the Enterprise.’

‘I don’t mean it like that. I mean that… They won’t say it. They say… they say you were lost in the line of duty or destroyed. They won’t say that you died. I say it. The captain says it. Deanna…’ he trailed off, silent under a familiar and painful yellow gaze. ‘Why won’t they say you died?’

‘I cannot provide an answer to that theory. Though it does suggest that there was some level of futility in the Captains attempts to defend my sentience in court.’ He frowned slightly. ‘I hope this has not been the cause of any undue stress for him, given the circumstances.’ Geordi sighed, and shook his head.

When he looked up, something had changed. It wasn’t the aura he saw now. It was… skin. Pale yellow in colour, the same as the third wavelength on the gamma radiation spectrum, with maybe a touch of the delta wave particles catching the non-existent light. The eyes were bright, though, and didn’t quite fit in with any colour that his artificial eyes could simulate.

In another time and place, this internal comparison might have made Geordi laugh. It might even have made Data laugh. They had bad senses of humour like that.

‘You have seen me this way before, have you not?’ Data asked. It took Geordi several seconds to find his tongue, and a few seconds longer to come up with an answer.

‘Yeah. Once. I mean, not for long I…’ he frowned.

‘You were looking at Tasha, most specifically,’ Data said. ‘You said…’ he paused for some reason Geordi couldn’t work out. ‘You said that she was beautiful. I understand that now. ’

‘I didn’t see you that clearly then, did I?’ Geordi swallowed, wondering why he felt the need to apologise for that. ‘I wasn’t looking. I… figure it was a couple of seconds.’

‘For an android, that is nearly an eternity,’ Data said, calmly.

‘But it wasn’t long enough,’ Geordi said, without pausing to wonder where that came from. They hardly felt like his own words at all.

‘It is long enough for the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise. You comprehend machines. Perhaps better than you know people.’ He glanced at Geordi sideway; you could feel his gaze even after you turned away from him, not that Geordi quite dared to fully avert his gaze. If he did, he was afraid Data would vanish again. ‘You know the Enterprise. That is where you are now. Deck Twenty Four. Engineering. At least that is where you are located in real time. We are beyond that now. Functioning in an android perspective.’

Geordi’s mouth opened and closed. ‘Then is this what it was like for you, inside how you perceive things, I mean?’ Why not? They said that human thoughts didn’t really look like anything in particular unless magnified to a ridiculous level. Why should an android’s programming be anything human eyes could see?

‘I doubt what we are seeing is the same thing.’ Data paused for a second and Geordi made another attempt to convince himself that this wasn’t real. He didn’t want to believe it though. He didn’t want to think that way, so the attempt failed. ‘Do you recall the first time onboard the Enterprise-E. You attempted to access Deck Thirty Six to enter engineering.’

‘And the E didn’t have that many decks,’ Geordi forced a laugh. Why forced, though? ‘I remember. But if we’re working on an android level of consciousness right now…’

‘I did not say “we”.’

Geordi took a deep breath. Of course. That wouldn’t be consistent. ‘If I’m working on an android level, now, then it’s too damn dark for me to tell. Data, please, explain what’s going on here.’

‘I am not certain that I can. I cannot precisely comprehend the ways in which you perceived me in life. How should I recognize it in death?’

Well, at least he was calling it death.

This was worrying, though. In the past, nothing had ever really troubled Geordi as much as a claim from Data that he didn’t understand what was happening, not in this situation. Because Data understood –at least on the most basic, material level– anything and everything which happened to them. When Data didn’t understand, it meant that that they were getting into something over their heads and had no chance of even a glimpse into the inevitable. The lack of such a logical, direct interface with reality had been as obvious as the lack of a Counsellor who could sense someone’s deception, after the death of the Scimitar.

Geordi realised with a start what he’d just thought, and what he had heard said by so many people since the Scimitar had exploded in deep space. Official forms all stated “destruction” and “disablement”, of course, but Geordi had heard the word “death” and “demise”, uttered on board by people who hadn’t ever really known Data and now never would.

The death of an insentient Starship. The destruction of the future first officer of The Enterprise. Yeah. Something was really messed up with the logic there.

‘I. I’m not sure. I just wish I could see where we are, that’s all. It’s too dark to see anything here.’

‘Yet you see me,’ Data said.

‘Maybe because your electromagnetic resonance is creating energy waves that the VISOR can only interpret as light.’

Data’s frown increased, and Geordi realised that he’d never seen him frown like that before. ‘But you are not wearing a VISOR.’

Oh.

Oh. Yeah. He wasn’t. He hadn’t for a long time. His eyes were implanted, now. No less complex than the VISOR, but infinitely more convenient. Data’s aura had never vanished, though. If anything, it had brightened since he received the visual implants.

‘I don’t understand…’

‘Do you remember the Exocomps?’ Data interrupted. Geordi shivered a little. He remembered. He remembered the way Data had looked at him, as if he’d missed something totally obvious. And he had. The words he’d spoken were coming back to him now, penetrating the darkness all around them, like an echo from their past.

“Nothing but basic elements. No carbon, sandy texture. But the flashes are almost... musical. I see colour variations and rhythms, like a melody.”

“Yes,” Geordi whispered.

“They were more than merely a melody and series of programmed rhythms. Yet you doubted their sentience. You doubted their life. Because they were inorganic.”

“Data, you don’t think…” he paused. “I said something… unwarranted. I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

“I do not question whether or not you thought me alive, Geordi, but… it is hard to accept is it not?”

Geordi swallowed, shuffled in his seat. ‘I guess it is. Hardly any human had had experience with life that was anything other than flesh and blood. Maybe that’s why people had a hard time of accepting a man who wasn’t. To us… organics was life.’

‘The Borg?’ Data asked.

‘I… don’t know about them, Data, where are you headed with this?’ Geordi tried his hardest not to let anxiety make him impatient. He couldn’t help it.

‘I wondered which was it that you accepted in me. The machine who happened to be a man or the man who happened to be a machine?’

‘I... don’t know.’ Geordi’s head dropped. Maybe it was the tiredness of the last three months catching up with him. Maybe it was just the weight of the total absence of anything he could possibly say.

‘It is very important to me,’ Data said, ‘to know the answer to this, Geordi.’

‘Why?’ Geordi asked, frowning. ‘You’ve always been more than just a machine Data. Always.’

‘Forgive me. It’s just that I have wondered,’ Data hesitated. Which wasn’t like him, but then, this was all in Geordi’s subconscious, right? If he could hesitate, Data could hesitate. He’d been inside of Data’s head literally so many times in the past, and even though you never got used to it, you learned to understand it. ‘I have wondered what it was you saw in me. I have wondered whether I was another of your complex machines. Whether or not you cared for me was never in question, but you also cared for the warp engines we installed in the Enterprise D ten years ago. And you told me once, that you fell in love with an insentient hologram.’ Geordi nodded. Heck, he probably wasn’t the only person who had done so. ‘Am I so different?’

Geordi opened his mouth, but again, he couldn’t think what to say without having to be completely honest, with himself and his subconscious.

‘I… no. That’s crazy.’ Gold eyes gazed at him firmly for another second. ‘I miss you,’ Geordi said, forcing the words out with as much meaning as he could muster. ‘You can believe that much, right?’ Geordi reached out and his hand grasped… nothing at first. ‘You’re not just a bunch of memory chips and circuit boards.’

‘I know,’ Data said, quietly. And this time he really seemed to believe it. ‘Nor are you just another biological organism. But nonetheless—’

‘—the point still stands,’ Geordi finished Data’s thought, sadly.

‘If I were not a machine,’ Data asked. ‘If I had been human, would we still have been… friends?’

‘Data, if you had been human you might not even have been on board the Enterprise,’ Geordi said softly. ‘I can’t give you an answer for a scenario that never happened.’

‘Can you not speculate? Extrapolate from a hypothetical database?’

Geordi couldn’t think of the answer. When he spoke, it was a voice of resignation tinged with pain. Funny, that, he’d never heard pain in his own voice before. He’d never imagined it would sound like this.

‘Data…’

Data nodded, and all of a sudden the aura was back, and his face had returned to the dim series of electromagnetic waves and temperature gauges that Geordi saw him as through artificial eyes.

‘I am the personification of everything you had ever understood,’ Data said, slowly, mulling over each word. ‘And I was constructed from the materials of which you have a unique understanding. That is the reason there was ever a connection between us. I was alive. But I was also a machine. My brothers, also.’ He looked at Geordi firmly. ‘I believe that he likes you.’

‘B4?’ Geordi bit back something that was half laugh, half choke.

‘Yes. I believe you understand him. And perhaps, he shall come to understand you also.’ The silence dragged out through what must’ve been several eternities for an android. And probably a couple for a human, too. ‘You must return to the Enterprise.’ Data stood up. This was odd, because Geordi didn’t remember him sitting down. He only vaguely remembered sitting down himself, and everything was still as black and daunting and damned well confusing as it ever was. He tried to put everything together in a way that made sense. It had been hard to do that, since the Scimitar. Since the day Data died.

‘Data?’ Geordi swallowed. ‘You… you do understand me, right? You understand what I meant before?’

‘Yes Geordi,’ Data said. And the tone wasn’t so much one of pain or regret; so much as it was… acceptance and inevitability. ‘I believe I do understand.’

And then the space where Data had been standing darkened, too. With not even the after glow of an aura, fading away into the black.