Memory Lane
"Calvin Hall, Computer and Cybernetics Department. This must be the place," Jane Lane said to herself a she dashed up the stairs and down the hall. Yesterday, she had noticed in the ads on the BFAC student website that nearby Raft College was looking for local students to volunteer for an experiment in a new method of data mapping the human brain. Normally, she wouldn't be interested in the activities of Daria called "The Mad Doctors of Raft", but her folks were late sending her money again and she could really use the hundred dollars the experiment paid. Daria would later meet her after English Lit class.
"Fill out the form and have a seat," said a bored-looking student secretary with stringy blonde hair, handing Jane a release form on a clipboard. "The assistant will be with you in a minute."
Jane took the clipboard, sat in a nearby chair and looked over the papers. After the usual stuff about name and address, there was a list of questions about her general health. Next was a series of questions that seemed to be psychological, asking about her background, her outlook on life, etc.
She was pondering the kind of tree she would like to be when the door next to her opened and a lab coated, dark haired man in his early 20s stepped out.
"Don't worry about filling the rest of out, miss -"
"Lane. Jane Lane."
"May I call you Jane? I'm Ed Wright." Ed took the clipboard from Jane and motioned her into the lab.
"You're the head guy around here?" Jane asked, looking around the room. It looked liked a computer nerd's fever dream, with keyboards, display panels and servers crammed into most of the available space.
"No, I'm just the graduate assistant," Ed said, quickly scanning the clipboard. "If you'll just sign here, we can begin."
Jane signed the release at the bottom of the form and handed it back. Ed took it and started fiddling with a contraption in a corner of the room. It looked like a beauty salon chair, with a clear plastic hair dryer bowl attached to it. Studded over the bowl were hundreds of fine wires that joined in bundles and disappeared into a console next to the chair.
"I'm supposed to sit in that thing?" Jane asked, suddenly remembering something about "possible brain damage" on the release form.
"Don't worry, it's harmless. It's just an electroencephalograph we borrowed from the neuroscience lab. What we're really testing is this," he said, patting the console. "it's a new medium of data storage. Deep inside here is something that we hope will revolutionize...well everything we know about information technology." Ed had a faraway look in his eye.
"Well,"Jane was dubious. Then she felt her stomach growl, and remembered how much she needed that hundred bucks. "Okay. What do I do?"
"Just sit here," The grad student said. Jane sat and he lowered the dome onto her head. She felt hundreds of prickles as probes extended from the dome through her hair and touched her scalp lightly. "Now, just relax," Ed said while he placed a blood pressure cuff on her left arm and a pulse meter on her finger.
"Now, we're going to see how your brain reacts to various stimuli," he said, picking up a remote and turning on the monitor across from Jane. Images flickered across the screen, taken from various movies and TV shows – a battle between pirate ship, a herd of ponies running through a meadow and into a mountain stream, an action hero power walking away from an explosion in slow motion, puppies carousing in a miniature football stadium, the zombie stomp scene from Michael Jackson's "Thriller," a clip from Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First," the plays of the week from The Pigskin Channel.
The images stopped. "That was...interesting," Jane said. "Was that it? Are we finished?"
"No, that was just the calibration." The grad student said, checking a readout. "I'm ready to begin the final phase now. Close your eyes and try to relax. I want you to try recall your earliest memories...think back...ready?"
"Just one thing," Jane said, her curiosity aroused. "You said that this thing is a new medium of data storage. What kind of storage? What does it use?"
Ed smiled, touching a switch. "Antimatter."
He threw it.
Suddenly, images flashed through Jane's mind in rapid succession...lying in her crib with Amanda bending over her, with Vincent flashing a strobe in her face...Trent at four years old attempting to give her a bottle then dropping her on the floor...
The images flashed faster and faster through her mind, each one being replaced by another almost before she could recognize it – learning to crawl – learning to walk – learning to ride a bike – learning to drive a car – talking her way out of her first speeding ticket – drawing - meeting Daria in the Self-esteem class -sketching–getting away with decorating the high school gym dance with scenes from Pollock's death –painting-making out with Tom-betrayal-loss-betrayal-
Everything went white.
"Thank you, Jane," Ed said, raising the headset and removing the monitoring leads.
"Whew!" Jane said. Her eyes had rolled back in her head, and it took her a moment to focus.
"Just sit for a moment and relax. Can I get you something? All I've got is Mountain Dew and Ultra, I'm afraid."
"No," Jane said, suddenly wanting to get out in a hurry. "I've got to meet someone."
All right. The secretary will give you your debit card as you leave."
"Okay. Bye." Jane dashed past him and left.
Ed went to a nearby window and watched Jane go down the steps and meet an auburn-haired girl with glasses. After a moment, they walked away.
He then went back to the console, rechecked the readouts, then pulled out a phone. He keyed a number and listened. After a moment, he said, "Doctor? Ed here. "I've just finished the test...No, no anomalies to report..." He listened intently. "All right, sir. The data matrix will be ready for your analysis when you return from your lecture, Doctor Soong."
Commander Bruce Maddox waited anxiously at the transporter alcove. After years of work on Rigel III, he was no nearer to producing a working positronic brain, even with the aid of files supplied by Commander Data, and with Data's loss at the Bassen Rift, even that avenue was closed to him now.
Dammit, if only B-4 would submit himself to study, Maddox thought wistfully. But Starfleet had ruled that Data had all of the rights of a sentient being, and as the holder of Data's memory patterns, those rights had transferred to B-4, and he – even I've come to think of Data and his "brother" as "he" - was ruled off limits.
With this new discovery, though, he thought all his problems were solved. He couldn't even wait for it to be brought back to Rigel, but immediately came to Earth and set up a lab at the Daystrom Institute's campus in Pasadena to study this find.
After a promising start, though, he endured four frustrating months making little progress. Reluctantly, he decided to bite the bullet and contact an old colleague, rival and friend. His area of research was similar to Maddox's, perhaps he could supply insights that Maddox had missed.
The Commander sent a subspace message to Jupiter Station, and apparently just the thought of showing up Maddox was all that was needed to get him to leave his laboratory there and make the journey to Earth.
#Incoming transport initiated,# the transporter computer announced.
It's about time, Maddox thought as a form materialized in the alcove through Transporter whine.
"Dr. Zimmerman," the commander said, stepping forward with an outstretched hand, "glad you could make it on such short notice."
Lewis Zimmerman, a man of medium height with a fringe of gray around the back of his head, shook Maddox's hand. "Thank you. I very rarely leave Jupiter Station, but your message was intriguing, and I couldn't resist. So where's the artifact?"
Maddox motioned. "This way." Even though it was early evening at Daystrom, the corridor was still busy as the Associate Chief of Robotics walked with Dr. Zimmerman.
"As you may know, The Greater Boston fusion power station was built over the ruins of Raft University, which was destroyed in the Third World War," Maddox explained. "The station itself was being demolished for parkland when a demolition team found a sub-basement vault which seemed to have been overlooked in the initial station construction."
"An archeological team from Daystrom was called in. In the vault we found files and data from research being done in cybernetics, information technology – the usual." They turned a corner and entered a laboratory. As they passed inside, the door slid shut behind them. "We found nothing special and were about to give up and release the site to the gravidozers when we discovered - this -" The pair stopped at a table on which lay a gray sphere which was studded with LEDs over its surface. Fiber optic bundles projected from opposite ends, like the north and south poles on a globe."
Maddox picked the sphere and slowly turned it. "The notes we found with this object indicate that it was the final in a series of attempts to harness positrons for data storage. In theory, positronic pathways could store information on a molecular level. I have done scans on this datacore and what little I have been able to glean from it is tantalizing." He handed the sphere to Zimmerman, who examined it closely. "The scans indicate that it indeed holds data, in the densest matrix array I have ever seen. There are literally hundreds of kiloquads of data stored in it. This kind of storage in this small a space was impossible to achieve at the time, and has only been achieved by one person today."
Zimmerman knew who. "Noonian Soong?"
"Exactly. After further study, I then realized that these pathways resembled human memory engrams. It then all fell together. When I learned the identity of this project's principal researcher, I was certain."
"So who was it?" Zimmerman asked.
"Dr. Manish Soong."
"That's not a coincidence, is it?"
"Correct. We checked the historical database. He was indeed the ancestor of Noonian Soong, the creator of Commander Data and his 'brothers', Lore and B-4. I then compared the Commander's files with this matrix and I see too many similarities for it to be coincidence. I believe that Noonian Soong didn't have to start from scratch; that he had inherited information from his ancestor in unlocking the secrets of positronics."
"And one of those secrets," Maddox said, gesturing to the sphere Zimmerman held, is that you hold in your hands a complete copy of a human brain."
Interlude
USS Voyager, Sol System
"Captain's log, 57322.7, Chakotay commanding. Normally, our mission would be the job of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, but they are still out in Cardassian space cleaning up the aftermath of the battles of the Dominion War, salvaging the Starships lost and damaged in the fighting."
Captain Chakotay paused to take a sip of coffee, a habit he had picked up from his former commander. He thought for a moment of the friends and shipmates from both the Maquis and Starfleet that he lost in that conflict. Bringing himself back to the present, he set the mug down on the arm of his Captain's Chair and continued.
"I find our assignment ironic, though, considering that our experience has made us the preeminent experts on the Borg in Starfleet, and it was our return home to the Alpha Quadrant that was the cause of the field of wreckage that we currently find ourselves in."
Chakotay ended the log entry, sat back in his chair on the bridge of the starship Voyager and studied the scene on the main viewer. He was still awaiting the report from his First Officer Tom Paris and Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres, who had taken the Delta Flyer to survey the wreckage of the Borg sphere which Voyager had blown apart in their successful bid to return to Earth after being lost in the Gamma Quadrant for seven years. After the Battle of Sector 001, Starfleet had rightly considered the Borg an ongoing threat, and had sent Chakotay and his crew to examine the sphere wreckage to add to their knowledge of their adversary and formulate a possible defense. Seven of Nine had taken the first search shift earlier, but had to return to Voyager to regenerate, and wouldn't be able to return to duty for several more hours.
A beep broke his reverie. "Incoming transmission from the away team," the Communications Officer said.
"Put it on."
"Paris here," a voice said, echoing slightly in his spacesuit. "B'Elanna and I have docked at another big chunk of wreckage. We've gone inside and B'Elanna's running scans on what seems to be some kind of fabrication chamber."
"any intelligence so far?" Chakotay asked.
"A couple of promising leads," A female voice replied. "I can't wait to finish here so we can take that leave on Earth that you promised Tom and me while Voyager gets her refit," B'Elanna said. "Admiral Paris is a good grandfather, but Miral doesn't see enough of her parents for my taste."
"Duty first, as always," Chakotay replied. "I know you, though. You'll be back at Utopia Planitia soon enough with Miral in tow harassing the shipyard technicians. You engineers are all alike," he chuckled.
"Hmph," was all Torres said. Then, "Tom."
"What, dear?"
"Look at this."
"Oh, my. Is that...?"
"I think so." Silence. Then, "Captain?"
"You're all right, B'Elanna?"
"Yes, Captain." More silence. "But I think the Doctor better have a look at this."
Bits and pieces...fragments...memories...thoughts...this has to be a dream...Jane felt scattered, like she was broken into pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and flung into the air...as the pieces slowly landed on the ground and fell into place, her thoughts became more and more coherent. Finally, she opened her eyes.
She was standing in a darkened room. In the dim light she could see that she was dressed in the clothes she usually wore in high school – black shirt, red jacket, shorts, tights and boots. She looked around. The walls were black and were crisscrossed with yellow stripes at two foot intervals.
What the hell is going on here, she thought. The last thing I remember is sitting down while that weirdo put the kooky hair dryer on my head and I wind up – what is this place?
"Don't be frightened, Miss," A voice suddenly filled the air, as Jane looked around to find the source...she could see nothing. "– Or is it 'Miz' – I'm not really up on 21st Century honorifics – Lane, I believe; as soon as I finish stabilizing your holopattern, We'll be in to answer your questions. In the meantime, allow me to give you surroundings you may be more familiar with."
The black walls and yellow stripes disappeared, the lights in the room brightened, a bed and a window materialized, and a stool, easel and a half finished painting appeared in a corner of the room – completing the transformation into her bedroom at Casa Lane.
Jane was dumbfounded. The room looked exactly the way it was when she was in high school.
"I hope this meets with your satisfaction, this room seemed to feature prominently in your memories. Bruce, we can enter now."
Suddenly, a metal arch with a double door appeared along one of the walls, replacing the window. The doors slid apart with a rumble and a whine, and two men entered the room.
The first was in his early 40's, a thin faced man with dark hair, wearing a black military cut jumpsuit that was gray in the upper chest and shoulders. On the left side he wore a gold badge which was rectangular and overlaid with a silver chevron.
The other man was older and taller and was balding, with a fringe of graying black hair. He wore a rumpled lab coat over the same uniform as the other.
Jane warily eyed the two as the bald one pulled a rectangular box out of his coat pocket. It hummed and blinked as he waved in the air in front of her. "Tricorder confirms that holoimaging is nominal and force fields are stable. We may proceed."
Jane may have been confused, but she had had enough. "That's it. Who the hell are you guys and what's that thing you're pointing at me?" she said. "What the hell is this place?"
The man replaced the box and addressed Jane. "My dear, allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, Director of Holographic Imaging and Programming at Jupiter Station. If I may say so, I am the foremost expert in holography in the Federation."
He gestured to his colleague, who continued the address. "And I am Commander Bruce Maddox, the Associate Chair of Robotics at the Daystrom Technological Institute, in whose Pasadena annex, despite what you see around you, we currently are."
"I'm not going to sugarcoat this. We've got a lot to cover, and I think it's better that you get all of this information at once." Maddox turned and spoke to the air. "Computer?"
There was a short electronic #Chirp# in reply.
"Return holodeck to base state."
Jane jumped as the room returned to the black and yellow pattern.
"That's better. Dr. Zimmerman likes to impress with his handiwork, to the point of showing off."
"You're just still miffed that you didn't catch on that Haley was a hologram," Zimmerman smirked. "She's still waiting for that tour of Mimas that you promised her."
Maddox gave Zimmerman a scowl and turned back to Jane.
"Ahem. Well...you are in what you would consider the future. Approximately 366 years have passed since you were last aware. A...scientist had your brain patterns and memories recorded in an experiment and stored them in a computer module. He died in an accident before he could do anything with them, and the knowledge to access the module died with him."
"The module was stored away and was only rediscovered recently. My colleague and I were finally able to access your mnemonic data, and link it to our computer systems, and here you are."
Jane didn't believe a word of it. As far as she knew, she was still sitting in that chair in that lab in Calvin Hall having some kind of hallucination. "Yeah, right. So you guys are telling me I'm some kind of computerized Rip Van Winkle? Let me out of here, you creeps." She started past them towards the arch.
Zimmerman spoke up. "Wait. I'll show you." He spoke to the air. "Computer."
#Chirp#
"Discontinue the integrity force fields composing subject Lane." Unnoticed by Jane, her body flickered.
#Integrity field has been discontinued,# the computer said, in a pleasant contralto voice.
"Good." He gestured to Jane. "You want proof?" He stepped forward and presented his chin. "Hit me."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Not at all. Hit me. See what happens."
Jane shrugged. "It's your funeral." She stood for a moment, then lunged forward to grab him by the shoulders and knee him in the groin. Her hands and knee passed through Zimmerman and, overbalanced, she tipped over and fell flat on her back.
Commander Maddox doubled over with laughter at Dr. Zimmerman's blanching at the sudden savageness of the attack. "Computer," Zimmerman managed to choke out, "resume structural integrity of subject Lane."
Her body again flickered, and Zimmerman regained enough composure to help Jane to her feet.
"I think I'm ready to listen to you now," Jane said wryly, brushing her clothes. "Go ahead. I'm all ears."
"Follow me," Zimmerman said. The pair led Jane through the arch and into the room beyond. "We had technicians fit this room with holoemitters this morning to give more access to you than just the holodeck.
Maddox went over to a wall panel, pressed some buttons and a door slid back. "What is uniquely you is here," he said.
Jane looked inside. "That's me?" There was a globe with fiber optics that disappeared into the walls of the chamber.
Maddox continued. "These leads join with ODN conduits that go to the data processor that operate the holoemitters here and in the holodeck. The emitters, along with force fields project your three dimensional image and enable you to touch and handle physical objects."
Silence. Then,"So, what is all this?" Jane asked.
"What?" Zimmerman answered, puzzled. "You mean this computer? This laboratory? I thought we explained all that."
"No, I mean all this, she said, waving her hands in frustration. "This...world. I mean, you've got holographic whozits and talking computers and I'm sure that you've got death rays and flying cars-"
"We do."
"That's what I mean. What kind of a world is this?"
"Oh, I see," Maddox said. "You mean what developments in the past 366 years lead to the world you see around you?" He gestured again to the arch. "Come back into the holodeck. I have a way to show you."
Once back inside, Maddox held up an elongated plastic wafer.
"I have here an abridged history of Earth and the Federation since your memory transfer up to the present date. Feeding you information in this manner entails some risk, since your human engrams are designed to take in data at a much slower rate. Are you willing to take the risk?"
Jane nodded.
Maddox walked to the arch and inserted the isolinear chip into a slot. "Computer. Run program History Alpha." As an afterthought, he added: "Display download as an audiovisual record on the holodeck."
The lights dimmed and the three stood in the middle of the deck while images came into being and dissolved around them. Jane not only saw these images, she could feel them being imprinted in her mind, as if she were there when they happened.
-They stood and watched as terrorists and warlords started World War III, burning cities with nuclear fire, as governments found themselves helpless to stop the carnage. Then, they saw:
-A devastated world, with humanity picking up the pieces and beginning again.
-Zephram Cochrane's discovery of warp drive, and his conversion of a weapon of war into a craft capable of faster than light travel.
-His epic flight, which would lead to First Contact with an extraterrestrial species, the alien race who would over time become Humanity's greatest allies and best friends.
-The confirmation that we truly were not alone, which would lead to the human race uniting for the first time in history, which would lead to war, disease and want being eliminated in a few generations.
-The human race spreading out like seeds blown from a dandelion into the infinite night and taking its place among the stars.
-Making contact with dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of extraterrestrial species.
-False threats told to the species called the Xindi that caused them to attack the Earth.
-The Xindi superweapon scarring the Earth and killing seven million people.
-The successful effort of the first Starship Enterprise to make peace with the Xindi.
-The efforts of her captain, who went on to help found the United Federation Of Planets.
-The invention of the Matter Transporter and its adjunct technology the Replicator which eliminated distance and poverty.
-The establishment of Starfleet, the exploration and defensive arm of the Federation.
-The establishment of The Prime Directive; the commitment that these explorers would not make the mistakes of explorers of the past, that the natives they encounter would not come to harm.
-Various disputes between humans and other species, which sometimes degenerated into open warfare.
-Contact with races like the Klingons, the Romulans, and other adversaries, some who became fast friends.
-The ongoing threat of the Borg, which would make individuality a thing of the past.
-The Founders, who were shown mercy even after threatening to annihilate the human race.
-The intrepid efforts of starship captains like Archer, Kirk, Garrett, Picard, Sisko and Janeway to keep the peace, and to go boldly where none had gone before.
The presentation ended, and the holodeck returned to normal. It took a few moments for Jane to recover from the images and sounds that flooded her mind.
"Whoa," she finally said. Then, "You guys seem to like the name Enterprise."
"It appears so," Maddox replied. "Commander Data served aboard two of them. That's part of why I'd like to see his legacy continue."
Jane was deep in thought. "So," she finally asked, "what do you want from me?"
"I believe," Maddox said, "that with the unearthing and successful recovery of your datacore, that we are well on the way to successfully recreating Soong's positronic brain. I'll make you a deal. Agree to let us continue to study the core, and your memory patterns. When we succeed, we'll build you an android body and positronic brain for you to transfer to.
"How long will that take?"
Maddox thought. "Three years, at the most."
"That long, eh?" Jane paused. "And until then, I'll be stuck here as a hologram?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"So. Three years as a lab rat. But in the end I'll be free to go...as a robot."
"Android. Well, technically a gynoid, but most people don't seem to make the distinction in terminology."
"If I want to get out of here it seems I don't have much choice...but that leads me to another question. I'll be a human brain in an android body. Will I have to plug in at night? Will I have to go around wearing an 'A' on my forehead? What rights do I have?"
"You'll have a Sarium Krellide power cell. Very long lasting, As for your rights, well, if you study the Starfleet legal files, Maddox vs Data, (I was on the losing side of that case,) you will see that the Federation has established that Artificial Intelligences past a certain level of sophistication are considered to be sentient beings and are accepted as citizens of the Federation."
Zimmerman cut in. "Believe me, we didn't want the bad press of appearing to keep you against your will, so we went ahead and took the liberty of filing your petition for Federation citizenship."
"Pretty confident that I'd say yes, aren't you?" Jane knew though that, all things considered, the offer was pretty good. She held out her hand to Maddox. "It's a deal."
Life in the lab wasn't that bad. For the next few weeks, Jane stayed in the holodeck, changing its appearance as the whim hit her. She caught up on current events as best she could, reading history files on the lab's data terminal. Maddox had cautioned her against trying to input data directly, but she found that she could read extremely rapidly, and she had perfect recall of anything she read.
Jane learned to mentally control her appearance. She spent one afternoon morphing her clothes into various costumes: superhero, Cleopatra, leopard skinned bikini jungle queen, can-can dancer, cat suited secret agent. Experimenting with different hairstyles one day, she tried the tiger stripes that she had goaded Daria into attempting to give her.
She stared at the results in a mirror. It was perfect.
She picked up a hairbrush and flung it at the mirror. It shattered in a million pieces.
"Computer, end program."
The mirror frame and the glass shards on the floor vanished, and her hair returned to normal.
She had strayed too close to a subject she was making an effort to stay away from – her past self.
She refused to recreate any scenes from her past, or her family and friends. She felt that once she did that, she would have to accept that they were truly dead, that she was alone, and that she was forever and literally a Ghost in the Machine.
Maddox and Zimmerman continued to run tests on her, and she would report reactions to various stimuli they applied to her datacore. The feedback from the forcefields gave her a sense of touch, and she could smell and taste after a fashion when a mass spectrograph was linked to her central processor.
Calibrating it wasn't easy, though. Jane still shuddered at the memory of the time Zimmerman produced French croissants for her to eat – she had no idea that her holographic program included puking.
It was also discovered that after about thirty hours of runtime, there was a subtle degradation in her program that was traced to her human engrams; after some tests, Zimmerman came up with a dream subroutine that took care of the problem, though it required her to "sleep" for the regeneration to take effect.
The bedroom she crafted for said sleep was a typical 24th century bedroom, with the exception of the easel in the corner. She insisted on replicated paints and canvas – she wanted something to be constant no matter what the room turned into.
One day, Jane was sitting in a chair turned backwards sketching Zimmerman and Maddox preparing for another round of tests on Jane's memory core. She was just finishing drawing the pair as Frankenstein and Igor, with her as the Monster, when Zimmerman's combadge chirped. "USS Voyager to Doctor Zimmerman. Request permission for three to beam down to your location."
"Voyager?" Doctor Zimmerman said, remembering which ship had the only active Mark I Emergency Medical Hologram still on starship duty and not cleaning plasma conduits on waste transfer barges. "Oh, no, not him."
"Who?" both Maddox and Jane asked, simultaneously.
"Voyager's EMH. Their crew has some sort of sentimental attachment to their Mark I and won't let it be replaced with one of the newer Mark III or Mark IVs, or even a human doctor."
"Oh, yeah, I remember," Jane said. She had been reading up on Zimmerman's career and knew that he had been working on a series of Medical Holograms for starships. She knew that even though the Mark Is had generally been considered a failure, Voyager's EMH had been instrumental in saving Zimmerman's life. "I thought that you would be proud that one of your sons made good."
Zimmerman glared at Jane and then spoke up. "Voyager, permission granted."
The air in the room shimmered, and three figures – Admiral Kathryn Janeway, the Doctor, and Seven of Nine, coalesced.
Commander Maddox stepped forward. "Welcome to Daystrom Institute, Admiral," he said, shaking her hand. "To what do owe this visit?"
"We do have a transporter alcove, you know," Zimmerman said.
"Rank hath its privileges," the Admiral replied. "The visit is the Doctor's," she said, gesturing at the EMH, "I'm just along for the ride. I was on an inspection tour certifying the repairs to Voyager, when -"
"Captain Chakotay referred it to 'visiting the old homestead,' I believe," interrupted Seven.
"Anything to stretch my legs and leave Starfleet Command for a while," Janeway replied. "Anyway, when the Doctor told me you about our emissary from the 21st century – I assume that's you, Miss Lane?"
"Uhh, just Jane, Ma'am."
"If you don't mind, Admiral," the Doctor said, miffed that someone else was monopolizing the conversation, "I'm perfectly capable of giving my own explanations. Dr. Zimmerman, we tried to contact you at Jupiter Station, and Haley told us about your Earthside project - by the way, she's been worried that you haven't been taking care of yourself; even though your treatment for sub-cellular degradation was successful, your condition should be monitored closely." The Doctor pulled out a medical tricorder and passed it over Zimmerman. "Hmm...neurotransmitter levels a little high...fatigue hormones are-"
Zimmerman slapped at the Doctor's hand. "Get that thing away from me; I'm perfectly fine! Haley worries too much!"
"Well, you programmed her," the Doctor said. "Me, too. The fault is yours, if anyone's."
"That's beside the point. I hope you're not here just to make a house call."
"Ah, yes. I'm sure you'll find this interesting," The Doctor said, relaunching into his explanation. "Voyager was headed back to the Solar System from an extended mission for repairs and refit, when she was diverted to the debris field left by the Borg sphere that pursued her into the transwarp conduit that took her back to Earth. Our job was to collect information on Borg technology and gather intelligence on their future plans." The Doctor opened a pouch he was carrying and took out an object. It was a gray, oblong, and metallic, and looked like a Dorito with the corners cut off.
Doctor Zimmerman scanned it with his own tricorder. "Poly deutonic alloy..." He closed the tricorder and looked up at a similar object on the Doctor's arm. "That's a mobile emitter."
"Yes," the Doctor replied. When my mobile emitter was contaminated with Seven of Nine's nanoprobes and a human DNA sample, it created a Borg drone who named himself One."
The Doctor paused, recollecting his and Seven of Nine's efforts to integrate One into the Voyager crew.
Seven of Nine continued the narrative. "We did not know that One possessed a Borg transceiver, and accidentally used it to summon a Borg vessel. One beamed aboard knowing that he could destroy it, and sacrificed himself to do so. The emitter was recovered, but unknown to us, the Borg was at least partially successful in obtaining its technology."
"This mobile emitter," The Doctor said, "Is the result of the reverse engineering of that 29th century technology. Our 24th century Federation could not do it, but the Borg were able to. Knowing how dangerous One was, the Borg decided to isolate their experiments in this tech to one ship. It was pure coincidence that it was the same ship the Borg Queen sent to pursue Voyager when she used the Borg transwarp conduits to return to the Alpha quadrant."
"So what does all this have to do with me?" Jane asked.
"Well, my dear," the Doctor said, "We were trying to contact Zimmerman to inform him of this discovery, when Haley told me about the recovery of your memory core and the efforts of Dr. Maddox and Zimmerman to reintegrate you as a hologram. Having some experience with independence myself, I knew that you would never be happy tied down to a set of holoprojectors in a lab. This mobile emitter," he said, pointing to his arm, contains my complete holographic program and allows me to manifest myself independently from a stationary emitter. I can thus go anywhere a corporeal being can go."
Jane saw what this meant. "I could be free to go anywhere?"
"Not quite," the Doctor said. "The Borg could not duplicate the 29th century storage ability, just the projection and forcefield capability."
Zimmerman was ahead of him. "But a subspace transceiver could be installed in it and linked to Jane's processor!" he said excitedly. It would give Jane's image the same freedom of movement limited only by its range."
"Limited?" said Jane. "Range? How far?"
Zimmerman tapped the figures on a PADD. "Taking into account its size and power supply...oh, about 100 light years."
"That's all? Great!" Jane said. "So, Doc, can you fix that doohickey for me?"
This was a dilemma for Zimmerman. On the one hand, giving the emitter to Jane meant that he wouldn't have it to study, and an autonomous Jane meant that his part in this project was largely over.
On the other hand, over the past few months, he had come to think of Jane as something like a daughter, and knew that she longed for freedom even more than the Doctor did.
Finally, he said to the Doctor, "Give it to me. It should just take a couple of hours."
Zimmerman placed the holoemitter on Jane's shoulder. As it clicked into place, he said, "Computer, transfer all of Jane's holographic functions to the mobile emitter. Give her complete control of her image."
#Transfer Complete#
"I don't feel any different," Jane said.
"Try leaving the lab."
She headed for the lab entrance, which obediently slid aside for her. She walked, then ran down the corridors, corridors that she had committed to memory, finally free of the two rooms she had been confined to since her mind was restored.
She burst out onto a patio, "Free! I'm finally free!" she yelled, throwing up her hands and spinning, startling workers and researchers who were enjoying lunch.
The group from the lab followed, observing the spectacle. "So, Jane," The Doctor asked once she calmed down, "Is there any place you would like to go? We can beam any place on Earth in a few moments."
"Admiral on the bridge!" the watch officer shouted as Janeway, Seven of Nine, The Doctor, Zimmerman, and Jane exited the turbolift onto Voyager's bridge.
"Admiral," Chakotay said, rising from his command chair, "I trust your away mission was satisfactory?"
"Very much so," Janeway replied, "And as you can see, we have aboard a very special guest that I agreed could accompany us on our shakedown cruise. May I introduce Jane Lane?" Jane shyly stepped forward.
"Charmed to meet you," Chakotay said, delicately shaking her hand. "I've heard much about you, and I'll try to answer any question you have about a starship."
"Well, the first question I have is about that funky tattoo you have on your face," Jane said. "Is that Maori?"
"No," Chakotay laughed, "Native American. I did it to honor my father's memory. I'll tell you more about it after we get underway. Turning to the helm, he said, "Set course for system 40 Eridani A, the planet Vulcan."
Janeway said to Jane, "It's only a hop of 16 light years, but I think you'll have an interesting time."
After returning from Vulcan, Voyager dropped Dr. Zimmerman off at Jupiter Station, then beamed Jane and Admiral Janeway to Earth before heading back to Utopia Planitia to finish her refit.
A few days later -
Now that she was free to move about at will, Jane had been given an apartment on the Institute's campus until she could decide where she wanted to stay. She could literally live anywhere on Earth she wanted to – anywhere in the Federation, really, since living expenses weren't a factor – doubly so, in her case.
She decided to take things slow, though and see her home planet first. She left her bedroom (she didn't really need the kitchen or bathroom, but left them active for visitors) and sat down in front of the data terminal in the den.
Okay...I think I'm finally ready to face this. "Computer. display all available biographical information on Jane Lane, the organic Jane lane, born -" She gave her birthdate. "Place of birth, Lawndale, Maryland."
#This is all of the information in the Federation master database on Jane Lane,# the computer said, in the same voice that all of the computers around here seemed to have. A series of photos from her Lawndale High School ID, various drivers licenses, and her BFAC ID flashed across the screen, while demographic information scrolled up the side. Jane leaned forward and studied it.
"Hmm, it looks like she...I graduated from BFAC with a Masters," she said to herself, "Then I moved to Las Vegas and became an art buyer for some casino chain. Well, if I was a sellout, at least it's good to know that I went big."
"I got married, had three kids, seven grandkids, and died at age 76." Yeah, right. "Hmp. Most of my grandchildren survived WWIII, and I have descendants running around today." Should I give them a call? Maybe later.
Jane then spent the next hour looking up the fates of her family and acquaintances. "Mystik Spiral was a One Hit Wonder? Well, that's one more than most folks...Tom became a Senator? I knew he wasn't all evil. Just mostly...
Finally, she said to herself, "Almost finished. Just one more to look up."
Jane took a breath. "Computer?"
#Chirp#
"Display the biographical information you have on Daria Morgendorffer, born, uh... when the hell was she born? er, let's say 1990 or so."
#Working...This is all of the information available on Daria Morgendorffer,# Information scrolled across the screen. That's funny. The only pictures of her are of when she was college age or younger.
Jane read the data. "Morgendorffer, Daria. Born October 22, 1992, Highland, Texas, United States Of America. Diagnosed with terminal cancer April 8, 2013" – Oh my God, that's only a couple of months after I was brainnapped! Her poor folks... Tears began to fill her eyes. When she was younger she had lost a cousin to cancer, and she knew that Daria's last months had to have been hell. She read the inevitable next line. "Interred July 18, 2013."
She broke off. So that was it. Daria had died in her early '20s and Jane – the real Jane had lived the rest of her life without her best friend.
It hurt like it just happened – hell, to her it had just happened. She had only last seen Daria a couple of hours before her mind had been copied like an Mp3.
Jane forced herself to read the last few lines in her amiga's life story.
"Location: Restwell Cryonics facility,"
Huh?
She was frozen?
"Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado."
"Revived" – What?
Revived?
You mean, She might still be... Jane held her breath and read, gripping the desk in newfound hope. "August 24, 2374, Romulan Neutral Zone. Current occupation..." A photo of an older Daria in a Starfleet uniform appeared. "Second year Cadet at Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, Earth."