[2395]
Why had she decided to do it, to throw herself so completely into the project? To abandon all that had been familiar and usual of her life for a new familiar, a new usual? For Dr. Soong, it had been a labour of love, she mused to herself. What was it to her? And would it be enough? Did it even matter?
The project; such an ordinary way to refer to the accomplishment of something so extraordinary: re-animating an extraordinary being. Reconstructing an entire psyche, if such a thing was even possible. But she had not let that faze her. As had ever been her wont. In this she remained steadfast, whatever else of herself she may have left behind in her old life. Not even moral ambiguity surrounding the endeavor could dissuade her. Or the possibly catastrophic ramifications were the entire undertaking to fail and backfire. He was gone. He was the only one of his kind left. And his kind represented too great a human achievement to simply let go of without a fight.
The offspring/daughter could have been a likely candidate, but could the child be expected to survive without the parent a second time? It just felt wrong. But some would argue that while that merely felt wrong, this was indeed wrong. What right did a proven murderous psychopath have to a second chance? But what right did Starfleet have to deactivate that life in the first place? Blatantly disregarding its own laws regarding the serving of justice? Subjecting a life form to extinction, even. Zahana knew this line of thinking could be construed as overly sentimental; and yet, it felt right. Besides, she had taken all precaution advised. She had taken herself offline, as it were, essentially marooning herself on Terlina III. With him.
Precaution. Pre-emption. Hermitage. All systems existed in islands. Communication systems weren't simply disabled; they were not provisioned. Absolutely no contact was possible with the outside universe. Only terrain vehicles were available. Not even teleportation stations. She existed in a bubble. An elaborate and rather old-fashioned flare-based communication protocol had been devised for passing starships to determine her well-being at regular intervals; but under strict orders not to interfere or investigate whatever happened – or did not. It simply would not do to let loose such a being. An entire planet had been considered enough to contain him. She had wondered if that would be enough?
Over the course of her time on Terlina III (3 to date), she had given in to such idle wanderings of the mind as she worked in her lab (Dr. Soong's technically), meticulously testing individual synaptic pathways, tracing down every branch in every personality-class routine to its logical conclusions, trying to determine what tripped a certain pathway and what didn't; why he was the way he was, in essence. And what had made him so different from his so-called twin. It was akin to analyzing personality development in children, translated to AI equivalents. Dr. Soong had indeed been a genius and a true student of the human condition to have devised a program so consummate in its mimicry of a human mind that it had evolved as capriciously as any human mind would. But how did he re-do it for a second and achieve results so different from the first? Was the withholding of emotion in the initial stages of consciousness key? Or was it simply the outcome of a confluence of chance environmental factors and internal drives?
What drove Lore?