Lal's Heart

I do not own Star Trek. If I did, then Lal would have survived for more than one episode.

"Welcome to the twenty-fifth century, Jean-Luc," called Beverly Crusher-Picard, standing on the balcony overlooking San Francisco Bay.

"Not for another ten minutes," responded Admiral Jean-Luc Picard as he stepped onto the balcony of his apartment carrying his finest bottle of Chateau Picard and two wineglasses. "You know, I never expected to hear those words without some kind of time travel involved."

Beverly stared at him in shock. "You never expected to live to see the year 2400?"

Picard shrugged morosely, "I guess I just didn't want to live this long. The past century has been filled with too much death of people I care about. And I am responsible for so much of it; Jack, Tasha, Data, even Worf is gone now." Picard sighed as he sat down and began pouring the wine into the glasses. He looked up at the night sky and his eyes went straight to the brightest star in the sky. He closed his eyes and he could see the gleaming white hull of his ship sitting up there in orbit. She had a good run. Thirty-five years was a long time for any ship to be out there. And sixty years was a very long time for a starship captain to be out there.

"That's ridiculous. Without people to remember them, their deaths would be meaningless. And you know that I don't blame you for Jack's death." Beverly put her hand on his shoulder and looked up at the stars, too. "You shouldn't have let her go, Jean-Luc." She told him as she accepted the wineglass.

Picard sighed, "The Enterprise is thirty years old. No amount of upgrades can change the fact that she is simply out of date. And besides, at over eighty years old, I don't think I have what it takes to be a captain anymore."

Beverly shook her head. "You're wrong, Jean-Luc. People can now live to become nearly one hundred and sixty years old, so being eighty isn't so old anymore. You're closer to middle age. This is just your midlife crisis."

"Ha! I've had a midlife crisis every five years thanks to your work as head of Starfleet Medical," Picard laughed. Then his face fell again. "My body may not be out of date, but I feel like my mind is. It's not just the new technology, half of which remind me of the Borg. I'm just tired of fighting. The Romulans, the Cardassians, the Dominion, the Borg, so much death, and it all seems so pointless." Picard sighed and sunk into his chair.

The door chimed. "Enter!" called Picard. The door opened and in walked a dark skinned man wearing a captain's uniform and carrying a bottle of champagne. His bionic eyes glinted blue in the dim apartment.

"Geordi!" Beverly exclaimed, standing up to embrace him.

"Mister LaForge!" Picard greeted with a warm smile, "So, you're a captain now, eh?"

"Admiral! Doc! So good to see you again!" Geordi said, returning Beverly's embrace and grinning from ear to ear, "I brought the… oh…" his face fell as he saw the bottle of Chateau Picard on the table. "I should've known that you always keep a bottle on hand."

Beverly looked at the wall clock. "I hope Will and Deanna get here soon, it's almost midni-" she began as the door chimed. "Come in!" she called.

Captain William T. Riker and Commander Deanna Troi stepped in. Will carried a small wooden case and Deanna held a glass bottle of champagne. Upon seeing the two bottles on the table already, Will laughed out loud. "I told you that everyone was going to bring champagne, but I'll bet nobody thought to bring our poker chips. I was thinking we could play a game for old time's sake."

Suddenly, a resounding chant rose from the nearby square, "TEN! NINE! EIGHT!"

Jean-Luc quickly poured Geordi, Will and Deanna a glass of wine.

"THREE! TWO! ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!" shouted pretty much everyone in the Earth's Pacific Coast simultaneously.

After laughing and cheering for a few minutes, Will raised his glass and toasted, "To the future: the next frontier, a new land, just over the horizon."

Then Jean-Luc raised his glass, "And to the past: may it always remind us of where we came from and the friends we left behind."

There was a moment of sober silence as everyone remembered their old friends. Finally Deanna raised her glass and said, "And to the present: may it keep us grounded in reality; and may we live each day as though it were out last, because in our line of work, that's always a probability."

They all sat down to play poker but Jean-Luc's heart just wasn't in it. All he could think about were his friends who had passed, and no matter how much people told him that it wasn't his fault, he could not help but find some way to blame himself for every last one. Especially Data, who had died for no other reason than to save his life.

Geordi could see that Jean-Luc was looking blue (both metaphorically and as how his optical implants perceived him). "I think I have something that will cheer you up, sir," he said, holding up an isolinear chip between his fingers.

"What's that, Geordi?" asked Will.

Geordi responded with one word: "Lal"

All conversation in the room ceased. Deanna found her voice first. "Data's daughter?" she asked, surprised.

"That's right," said Geordi, beaming, "I've been working on fixing the problems with her positronic matrix using Data's old research and I think I've finally got it. That's why I volunteered the Olympus to upgrade Earth's defense systems. Any excuse to get back here."

"Right!" exclaimed Beverly, "Lal's body is being stored in Starfleet's Research Division in Berlin. I visited once but it was really depressing seeing her in that storage room. So lifeless. It felt like being in a morgue." She shuddered.

"Tomorrow, I am going to try to reactivate her," Geordi said, "Meet me in Laboratory 317 at the Berlin Research Center at 0900. That lab is almost identical to Data's lab on the Enterprise-D."

"We'll be there," said Jean-Luc, his mood clearly brightened. He picked up the deck of cards on the table and sat down. "Now the game is five card draw, nothing wild." Everyone else sat down as Jean-Luc dealt the cards. "So, Will, Deanna, how are the kids?"

Picard and Beverly arrived at the Berlin Research Center early at 0830 hours to find that they were the last to arrive. Deanna and Will were sitting on a bench watching as Geordi and a female technician were working furiously, jumping from one console to another. Inputting a few commands and then moving on. It was almost like some kind of bizarre dance as they rushed around the room. Will grinned from ear to ear as they came in. "What took you so long?" he asked.

Picard replied gruffly, "I'm old, dammit, I can't move as fast as you youngsters." He held his practiced poker face as long as he could before he broke out laughing.

Geordi never paused as he spoke, "Admiral, Doc, glad you could come. This is Emily," he said indicating the blonde woman working beside him.

"I wouldn't miss this for the world," said Picard.

Beverly watched the woman carefully. Finally she said, "You're an EMH Mark VI, aren't you? I remember because they wanted to base the Mark VI off of me but I refused because I didn't want a thousand copies of myself running around."

At this Emily visibly flinched. "I was an EMH," she said, "but since holograms won equal rights many of us switched our specialty to engineering. And I prefer to be addressed as Emily."

"Lieutenant Emily here is one of the engineers aboard the Olympus," said Geordi "I asked her to join us because I used some EMH code in my 'cure' and because she is able to make any needed corrections at the speed of thought."

Picard looked giddy as a schoolboy. "So, when will you be ready?" he asked eagerly.

"Oh, we've been ready for hours," said Emily with a chuckle, "Captain LaForge and I have been playing virtual chess since Captain Riker and Commander Troi arrived."

"What?" growled Will angrily, "We've been standing here for an hour while you two have been playing chess?"

Emily blinked once, "Checkmate," she told Geordi. She then turned to look at Will, "To be fair, sir, it was a very exciting and challenging game."

Deanna chuckled softly and put a hand on Will's arm. "Don't be too hard on them, Will. You know how engineers love their practical jokes." Will grumbled in mock anger and Picard laughed out loud.

"Okay, that's enough," he said, "Can we get started?"

"Absolutely," said Geordi. He pressed a button and the observation platform descended from the ceiling. Inside was Lal standing with the same rigid posture and blank eyes that Data had when he was deactivated. "The first few seconds will be critical. I need you all to stay out of our way. No offense." He the always polite Geordi added quickly.

The non-engineers moved to the viewing deck outside the lab. The two began their computerized dance again occasionally shouting bits of techno babble at each other.

Suddenly Lal's eyes began to dance wildly. Her mouth opened and she emitted a high pitched screech. The screen above her, previously blank, was now flashing through images so fast that it almost looked like static. Deanna looked worried until they heard Geordi's voice on the intercom.

"She is cycling through all her memory, looking for damage. On the screen is everything she has ever seen and what you are hearing is every sound she has ever heard."

Then the screeching suddenly ceased. The monitor had stopped on an image of Data. No, it hadn't stopped, it was moving in real time. They heard Lal's voice.

"What is going to happen to me?"

The image of Data spoke, "I have been unable to correct the binary decay."

"Then I will die."

"Yes, Lal, I am sorry."

"Father?"

"Yes, Lal?"

"I love you."

"I wish I could feel the same for you."

"I will feel it… for both of us… Thank you… for my life."

Then the image dissolved into static and went black.

Several seconds passed in silence, Geordi and Emily ceased their computerized dance and stared at the motionless Lal. Geordi answered the unspoken question, "We have done all we can," he said in a voice that Beverly knew all too well. She mouthed the last words as Geordi spoke them, "The rest is up to her."