Note from the author

I own nothing, so should Paramount sue me they'd get sod all, but all the same I wish to state I do not own any characters from Star Trek be they the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager or Enterprise. I am merely borrowing them for a while and promise to give them a wash in warm soapy water before I return them. I am not making any financial gain from this story.

However, Taryn Prior is mine along with the many other original characters in this story.

This story is set approximately a year after The Battle of Bassen Rift in Star Trek Nemesis. I have made every effort to make this story true to canon.

I am aware of the series of licensed books that cover the same ground as this story, but if you are a nerdy Trekker like me with a lot of time on your hands you may also know there is historical information within the Star Trek Online MMRPG and the graphic novel, Countdown which launched the Movie reboot, all of which contains conflicts in plot and timeline. I have also frequently used the websites Memory Alpha and Memory Beta in researching this story, they've been invaluable. In the formation of this story I have drawn inspiration from all these sources and therefore I have had to take some liberties including diabolical ones in terms of timeline. I have also made some changes purely because I felt like it. Call it artistic licence. I'm aware these additional sources are not considered canon per se, if you consider them canon, then this story is AU from the end of Nemesis.

I haven't supplied any references for the episodes or movies used as sources in the story, but if you'd like to know where I got something from, drop me a line and I'll do my best to answer.

Finally, this story is complete and novel length rather than a WIP so expect regular updates. No I won't update quicker, patience is a virtue but each chapter is at least 4000 words so you should get a big chunk of plot each update at least.

And yes, I'm an anal geek.

Hope you enjoy it.

Prologue

Day 48

0600 hours

The petite, jade-skinned woman nudged open the laboratory door with her foot. As usual her hands were full, a mug of coffee in her left hand, a toolkit in her right, an assortment of padds wedged under each elbow and a croissant between her teeth. She shuffled through the door, struggling not to drop everything with her knee at an awkward angle, preventing the door from slamming against her. She wore the uniform of a Starfleet officer, her teal collar signifying her expertise in the sciences.

"May I assist you Lieutenant Commander Prior?"

The voice startled her and one of the padds under her right arm slipped. A gold hand deftly reached out and caught it before it hit the floor. With his other hand he held the door open to allow her to pass through it. He followed her to a nearby workbench where she unloaded her burden and removed the croissant from her mouth.

"Thank you." she replied with a smile as she tucked a lock of raven hair behind a pointed ear. "How are you this morning?" Despite her alien appearance her cut-glass accent was unmistakeably English.

Beside her B-4 was gazing blankly at the padd in his hand.

"What is this for?" he asked.

"It's the work we need to get done today." she replied as she perched on a stool and pulled out another for him to sit on. She waved toward it and the android sat down and handed the padd back to her.

"Do we have to do it all?" he asked, "It looks like a long list."

"Why, do you have a hot date later?" she replied, winking at him cheekily.

"No." he advised her innocently.

"I'm only teasing you." She smiled and squeezed his forearm. He looked at his sleeve where her hand had been and touched it lightly, as if her hand had left some invisible mark. "I promise we'll be finished before you know it."

"I will know it." he replied blankly.

"I'm sure you will." she commented. "Name?"

"I am Da…." He stopped for a moment, his brow knitted. He met her steady, patient gaze, his bird-like eyes shining with both intelligence and confusion. Then his eyes lost their focus and his face took on an expression of ingenuous wonder. "I am B-4."

The young woman turned her green eyes to the sensor in the corner of the room and quirked her lip, before returning her gaze to the questionnaire.

Chapter 1

Picard rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. He looked across at his Chief Engineer and could see it in his face as well. The sense of loss, the despair at the futile attempts to find some essence of Data in the husk that was B-4. The sorrow as they had deactivated B-4 and shipped him in pieces to the Daystrom Institute some months before. Ultimately his presence had been too painful a reminder and they bowed to pressure from the cyberneticists that had circled like vultures at the news of B-4's discovery and Data's loss. But it was more. A shared guilt burned between the officers that had served with Data as clearly as though they were a collective. They had done something Data would never have done. They turned their backs on Data's brother as soon as they found they could not use him as a means to recover their lost friend, as if B-4's limited capacity made him unworthy as a being in his own right.

They had grieved for Data, attempted to replace the irreplaceable and move on while the Enterprise E was in spacedock for its extensive repairs. All it took was one subspace call from Bruce Maddox and it all came flooding back. Maddox, a man whose name still stirred ill will amongst some of the crew, his callous attitude towards their android colleague in the past had ensured that. Yet this was a grudge that Data himself had never borne. Ironically Bruce Maddox had been the one to prevent Dr Jason Eden from reducing B-4 to his constituent parts to see how he worked, a fate Maddox had once planned for Data. Maddox had requested a subspace conference with the Captain and Chief Engineer regarding the status of B-4. Clearly the situation was serious enough to warrant him contacting them. Perhaps Maddox regarded them as some kind of next of kin? Isn't that what they were after all? Perhaps B-4 had suffered some kind of terminal malfunction and they were about to be informed of his death? He took a deep breath and activated the subspace link-up.

Maddox was in the midst of a heated conversation with someone on another channel. "...find his diagnostic records, software and hardware status as close to the time of his death as we can. We need a comparison to the records when he first came here for analysis and if we can't, we're screw… I'll call you back." he said rapidly. Picard's countenance darkened at the cyberneticist's turn of phrase. "Captain Picard, Commander La Forge. I apologize, things are a little… charged here at the moment. A lot has happened in a short space of time."

Picard cut straight to the point. "Has something happened to B-4? You mentioned 'time of death'. And I was told you wished to discuss his status."

"Again I'm sorry. B-4 is fine, better than fine." The cyberneticist drew a deep breath. In fact I'm calling about Data not B-4."

Picard and Geordi exchanged confused glances "Captain Maddox, what precisely are you trying to say?" Picard glowered.

"We believe he can be retrieved." His tone was impassioned, the same tone he had used at Starbase 173 when he had petitioned to take Data apart. The same tone he had used in the judicial enquiry to save B-4 from the same fate mere weeks ago. "We believe Data's matrix is intact within B-4 and while we still have many issues to resolve we are confident he can be fully restored."

"But we tried for months." La Forge explained "Yes, we saw flashes of what was clearly B-4 accessing Data's memories but he showed no comprehension. No sign that he was even trying to put any of it in context."

"Captain Maddox," Picard intoned with a gentle smile "none of us want to believe that Data is lost, but we have all had to learn to accept and come to terms with it. We know how B-4's presence and behaviour can lead you to believe Data is there, but it is an illusion." Maddox raised an index finger to interrupt.

"Just, wait. Let me show you something." He turned his chair and tapped deftly at a nearby panel. "One of our team has been working with B-4 for the past two months. She's a specialist in AI we brought in to assess his software and cognitive function. We've been trying to continue Data's efforts to encourage B-4 to develop new neural pathways. Now, her methods are a little unorthodox to say the least but watch this. This is day one"

An image of a laboratory appeared from a high angle and they watched B-4, dressed in a plain overall as usual, standing in the middle of the room as a female officer of Orion complexion struggled through an old style swing door carrying a ludicrous amount of equipment along with a mug of coffee and a pastry. The android stood impassively as the door swung back and hit her. Picard winced, the woman looked tiny, barely five feet tall or so and it was clearly a painful blow to the shoulder that caused her to spill scalding coffee down her uniform. As she wiped herself with a towel she deftly fielded a question about why she was green and took a seat near a counter, introduced herself and indicated for him to sit on the stool next to her with a sweep of her hand. When he didn't sit she patted the seat. Ultimately, but patiently she asked him to sit, patted his forearm comfortingly and began asking questions from a padd.

They continued to watch as footage marked as day thirteen was transmitted. He still let the door hit her, this time scattering her equipment across the floor. He said her name at her arrival this time, whether this was on seeing an object he recognized or as a greeting was unclear but she responded as though it were the latter. They were also surprised to see B-4 begin to help pick up the items she had dropped unasked.

Maddox voice broke through. "I thought she'd lost her mind when she asked us to fit a slam door on the lab and loaded herself up with all that stuff when she only uses one padd. She doesn't even drink coffee, she's immune to caffeine." He paused "This was day forty-eight."

Picard and La Forge watched incredulously as B-4 greeted her and caught the falling padd.

"That's a huge improvement." La Forge gasped, "B-4 had the hand eye coordination of a four year old at best, but what makes you think you're reaching Data?"

"Keep watching." Maddox advised. Picard's eyes widened at the androids response to the woman's touch and watched her ask his name.

"Mon Dieu." Picard whispered at his reply.

"This was this morning, day fifty-five."

Day 55

0545 hours

Taryn Prior was about to start her working day. She was standing with one arm folded across her chest chewing idly at her thumbnail. She was in the Control Room, a name that seemed far too grand for what had formerly been a storage cupboard in Cybernetics Lab 3 at the Daystrom Institute. On the few occasions where the entire team of four were present it was a tight squeeze with the unavoidable element of frottage causing embarrassment. Work surfaces lined the walls on all four sides with two corners occupied by terminals dedicated to diagnostics and environmental control. The opposite wall was comprised entirely of a surveillance system worthy of any duck blind in the federation. The large screen was divided into sections each displaying a view of the main lab. The lab itself was a study in contradictions. It was equipped with state of the art technology most scientists could only dream of getting their hands on, yet piled on most of the work surfaces were educational toys and books of various levels. Incongruous among the many terminals in the room was a classroom computer. Taryn would have preferred B-4's living space to be more homely but by necessity it had to remain an operational laboratory. Besides, B-4 seemed to like the lab, he liked the window overlooking the gardens. Her face was a mask of concern as she watched their innocent ward gazing out of that window, watching a storm rage in the world outside, a naïve smile on his face.

"And he's been like this all night?" she asked.

"Yep," he replied with a yawn, stretching in his chair. "It's been a boring shift. Buddy Boy hasn't touched any of his toys, no singing to himself. He's just stood there, watching the storm. Transfixed." Ensign Dan Ashby rubbed his blond hair and yawned again. "When I went in to check on him he asked me how the storm worked." The handsome young officer smiled. "I suggested we look it up on the terminal together but he refused. It was like he didn't want to miss what was going on outside. His diagnostics are all within normal parameters." He paused thoughtfully "I doubt he's seen a storm before. My guess, it's a stimulus response."

"No-one's seen a storm like this." she added. "It's not like the Global Weather Control Net goes down every day." She sighed, "Maybe you're right." She turned and began removing her collection of props from a crate on the counter. Something gnawed at her gut. This was new behaviour and new and unexpected behaviour from an AI made her edgy.

She was carving a niche for herself in the field of cybernetics and AI. A niche she didn't really have a name for. Some had suggested Artificial Psychologist but she loathed that term, it made her sound like a quack, a self-appointed lifestyle guru. She knew she'd have to come up with a term, if only to put something on the front page of the proposal for her PhD thesis. When anyone asked what she did, she'd simply say she worked with artificial life-forms. She'd recently turned down an opportunity to be part of a think tank working to determine what constitutes sentience and devising a new test for it. She told them she considered it futile. Rights for artificial life had been a hot button issue in recent times with cases popping up in the legislature with escalating frequency. Since the inception of the Soong Foundation, an organization that promoted the rights of artificial life, barely a month passed without a constructed being of some sort seeking redress or protection from the law from exploitation or even dismemberment, often by those who had created them in the first place. The scientific field was fast becoming divided ground. One side would argue that the products of their genius were tools to be used, nothing more. Then there were the likes of the dear departed Noonien Soong, a man who regarded his creations to be as much his children as if they'd been biological. Even that arrogant old fart Lewis Zimmerman (and she had called him that to his face once during a particularly heated debate, much to her shame) grudgingly acknowledged The Doctor as a life-form. Now there was a man in need of a name, 'EMH Mark-1' was so cold and 'The Doctor' always struck her as being a bit too Sci-fi. She was fond of him though, and his creator. She found their dry wit refreshing.

Bruce Maddox had been a late convert too, thanks to Data.

She had seen it coming for a long time. The drive to make holograms more responsive, more realistic; the efforts to make computers faster, more personable. All this had one logical conclusion.

Self-awareness.

To her, what made the quest for the ultimate definition of sentience pointless was that in her opinion, if you felt the need to demand your rights as an individual then you most likely were one and that was good enough for her. Who was she to say you don't count simply because you lack DNA. Besides, her commanding officer put the kibosh on her secondment to the think tank, despite her already refusing it. Heaven forfend he should actually discuss something before jumping in with both feet.

Then there were the cases she'd seen first-hand. The classified cases she could never discuss. There was far more inorganic life in existence, both home-grown and otherwise than was publicly acknowledged. Having gained a reputation as being 'good with AI' and an effective trouble-shooter, the Daystrom Institute was happy to lend her out, often sending her in as a last line of defence when something had gone horribly wrong such as the incidents on the USS Bastion and the USS Invincible (which sadly turned out to be extremely 'vincible' not to mention unhinged). She would show up, talk them down or shut them down, whichever preserved the most life. Unfortunately not all Captains had the panache of Jean-Luc Picard when it came to dealing with artificial life or the willingness to clean up their own mess. She'd seen a lot of mess, up to and including dismembered, mangled humanoids ripped to pieces by photonic hands and crewmen asphyxiated within their own computer cores simply because a burgeoning intelligence felt threatened. Not all artificial beings were as sweet and gentle as B-4. You learn to appreciate those qualities once you've been grabbed by the ankle and flung like a ragdoll against a holodeck wall. Not that working with B-4 hadn't come with its share of bruises.

Well, at least she wasn't getting battered by the door anymore. Her lip twitched into a half smile as she considered the progress they had made in the last two months. They had brought her onto the project to assess B-4's potential. By anyone's standards he barely squeaked through as sentient but she'd be the first to make an exception in his case. They had long given up on retrieving Data from what Jason Eden had angrily described as a 'miasmic quagmire of unstructured code inside B-4's muddled mind'. Taryn had felt that was a little harsh to say the least, not to mention his questionable use of alliteration, but felt that even taking Dr Eden's nefarious agenda into account it was probably justified. This seemed to be confirmed when she saw the 'unstructured' code for herself. She found it both beautiful and horrifying in equal parts. What unfolded on the three dimensional display of the scan Maddox had sent her was exquisitely intricate. A delicate, winding, warped spiral of twisted code that called to mind a bonsai tree, albeit a hideously deformed bonsai tree. At first glance it appeared to lack all harmony, all balance. It seemed a miracle that B-4 was functioning with any stability at all. He had clearly struggled to absorb the massive transfer Data had, with nothing but good intentions gifted to him. The android had failed to parse the data set successfully resulting in this twisted mass. Thankfully Data could never have known he handed B-4 a poisoned chalice, the scanning technique that produced the image was new technology developed after his death. How corrupt the contents of B-4's neural net were she had no way of telling, nothing to compare it to. It was a pity Data hadn't made a backup somewhere other than his brother's head, but then who could have anticipated the master copy being blown to bits.

She kept the holographic matrix on the coffee table in her quarters for the entire journey to Earth from the Daystrom Annex on Galor IV where she was stationed. She'd needed to get away. Admiral Haftel was on another empire building kick and she was on the verge of telling him where to shove her commission. You'd think he'd have learned his lesson when he drove poor Lal to cascade failure but the man was as tenacious as a bulldog when it came to AI, particularly androids. He just wouldn't listen to reason. Haftel had no compunction at all about riding roughshod over personal liberty in the name of scientific discovery. Taryn may have been as telepathic as a brick but even she could sense how suspicious the entire staff where becoming. Little things like discrepancies in the quantity of free memory in the Annex data core being dismissed as processor glitches with no further investigation deemed warranted and staff moved from labs they'd occupied for years with no notice, no apology for no apparent reason were sending up alarm bells. 'Ours is not to reason why.' Was rapidly becoming the Daystrom Annex motto, if Haftel wanted to play musical chairs with the faculty that was his business. They didn't know the half of it. She suspected she only knew about two-thirds.

Fortunately for the B-4 project it had been a boring voyage with little to distract her. Although she was only a quarter Vulcan she tended to follow their sleep patterns and divided her long waking hours immersed in research and gazing at the matrix that now symbolized four artificial lives and the memories of a long dead colony. She studied Data's logs both mission and personal as well as his correspondence files. She poured over schematics, reports and cognitive tests. The more she looked, and she looked long and often at the matrix, the more she saw in the glowing helix that rotated before her eyes. Four distinct shapes that had eluded her in the miasma now seemed so obvious.

The larger two data constructs were exquisitely structured with counterpoint and delicate nuances, yet were as individual as a snowflake. She concluded that over years of functionality each individual had added, amended and reshaped the code to reflect their unique evolving personality. The third was different, as though another person had taken the basic concepts of the other two programs and written another. It was among the most elegant and efficient code she had ever seen. One could even say it was an evolutionary step from the other two. Disappointingly it was a relatively small and undeveloped matrix. A pity, as it appeared to have so much untapped potential. A short-lived android? Lal she supposed.

The fourth construct had made her cry once she had recognized it. It was simplistic by comparison to the other two although it shared a similar basic pattern. It appeared to have the rudimentary components for an artificial intelligence, but higher reasoning and the potential for growth were tragically absent. It had been left incomplete, unfinished. B-4 had not developed as an individual by so much as an iota since his day of activation. He was a flower that would never bloom without significant intervention.

She fully understood Data's reasoning for merging his own matrix into B-4's positronic net, but sadly B-4 lacked the wherewithal to organize his own brain and their matrices became entwined and skewed, possibly irrevocably so. Like bindweed forming a twisted, deformed corkscrew.

She was far from happy to confirm the worst fears of Commander La Forge and the Enterprise crew. The behaviour, memories and shadows of Data that he had exhibited where most likely where their two matrices intersected. Part of her had hoped she could find something up her sleeve, weave some high-tech magic and restore the marvel that had been Data, a remarkable man who had touched so many lives and been taken too soon. However she knew it was a pipe-dream and felt no desire to exacerbate the torture of his friends. She had felt his death keenly having only met him once when she was a child and knew many in the field of cybernetics and AI felt the same. Those close to him must be utterly bereft at his loss.

So she shifted focus. What could she do to shore up B-4's social, cognitive and motor skills and make him the functional member of society everyone wanted him to be? By the time she reached Earth she had come up with a number of options and hit the ground running.

They could make selective permanent links between B-4's stunted matrix and Data's giving him a route for development. Most likely the side-effects would be no worse than the flashes of memory B-4 was already experiencing, but she couldn't guarantee not hitting a behavioural node and having aspects of personality emerge. There was also the fact she was by no means certain she could differentiate between Data's matrix and Lore's from the raw data. Although the risks were negligible the last thing anyone needed was another Lore, she hoped that nutter was gone for good. Ultimately, could she really risk messing with B-4's brain with the modern equivalent of a soldering iron based on her educated guesswork?

Another option was to dump the entire matrix to the Daystrom Core and strip it down. They could then attempt to painstakingly reconstruct a more robust matrix from the raw data. This plan also had its drawbacks. If they were going to resort to a technique that draconian they might as well endeavour to reconstitute Data. But would it be the same Data? Once the memories were housed in an inert computer core, as the man himself once eloquently put, 'the flavour of the moment could be lost'. It would also mean the permanent decimation of the remaining data structures. The legacy of Lal and Lore that Data had cherished would be lost forever along with a lasting memorial to the colonists at Omicron Theta in addition to B-4. A huge psychological burden for any life-form to bear, particularly one as prone to rumination and self-doubt as Data.

It would be a dangerous, one shot procedure that would effectively create a new being, one subject to the risks inherent in all infant Soong-type androids. Cascade failure. Even if they could nurse him to stability he may then decompensate due to grief and guilt. On balance they may as well hand B-4 over to Eden and be done with it.

Her third, and by far her favourite approach was one of intense cognitive stimulation. She designed a series of mind games and manipulations designed to elicit a response. She knew a few tricks, positronic sleight of hand that would make his neural net receptive to forming new pathways and would run him through a cognitive assault course each day. It would be a time consuming and gruelling process but they could always resort to other measures if all else failed or better ideas materialized. Fortunately Captain Maddox had agreed with her.

So every day at 6am sharp she had allowed a heavy door to slam into her arm for just over a month (the things a girl will do in the name of science). She was no masochist but in retrospect she felt it was worth it. It produced the desired result. Call it what you will, empathy, sympathy, chivalry or just good old fashioned pity it had eventually got his attention.

Step two, test his response to non-verbal cues or as she called it, the bums-on-seats test. Subtlety was not in B-4's skill set by any means, nor was any concept of body language. Both skills were important for his interpersonal and psychosocial development and they might as well start as they mean to go on.

Step three, non-threatening benign physical contact. In all the recordings she had been sent of his function tests she had yet to see anyone touch him. She wanted to gauge his response to touch as much as any other sense. She had cause to reiterate the 'non-threatening' and 'benign' aspect of this test more than once. The team understood that they had to be B-4's carers before they were scientists and engineers but they often heard golden oldies such as 'Maybe they should try giving him a lube job', 'that Orion chick just needs to find his button and turn him on. If you know what I mean." and many variations on the theme of 'stimulation' circling amongst faculty and students, usually accompanied by waggling eyebrows. All very funny she was sure but not really an appropriate way to discuss someone as vulnerable as B-4.

Step four was to ask his name. Seemingly a redundant part of the process but a vital safety measure. There was always the chance that as new pathways formed they would intersect the existing matrix, any part of the matrix. There was the same chance of personality bleed-through as there was with physically creating links but there would be nothing controlling where they happened. Memories from the colonists could resurface as easily as Data's, Lal's or Lore's along with the three androids behaviours. From the Enterprise records Data had a history of what she could only call 'possession'. This tendency to defer to a stronger ego was a worry as it could be a family trait inherent to all Soong-type androids. Should someone unexpected start surfacing she wanted to know who and she certainly wasn't going to wait for B-4 to start spouting rhetoric on Android Supremacy to shut him down and start a selective memory purge.

Next came a vast array of specially selected psychometric, cognitive and physical tests, not only to measure any improvement or lack thereof but stretch his cognitive muscles and stimulate the production of new schemas, followed by a number of scans and diagnostics. If he had questions, and he always did, they would encourage him to look the answer up for himself on the classroom terminal. Despite their best efforts he still would not use the terminal of his own volition. Ironic as Data had been all but glued to the one in his quarters by all accounts. All in all she spent around five to six hours a day putting him through his paces followed by at least as many hours reviewing the results and planning any changes to the process.

The afternoons were a lot less ordered as the team would take turns to come up with things to do. Maddox tended to read with him and encouraged literary debate, often a somewhat one-sided debate admittedly. Trust Bruce to find subtext in 'Toby the Targ'. Ruxia Dar, a talented diagnostic engineer was teaching B-4 yarn craft. Taryn thought the young Trill lieutenant deserved a citation for patience alone as he would often get in a tangle, but wasn't that half the fun of learning to knit? Dan the Man, as he had encouraged B-4 to call him had done it all, finger painting, potato prints, building bongos and guitars out of storage tubs and they would make models out of every substance from clay, papier-mâché, bits of old junk Dan found rummaging through bins at the Institute and more besides. If it was messy, it was in. Dan had truly missed his calling as a nursery teacher and they had virtually had to hose the pair of them down on more than one occasion.

Taryn was considered brave by her colleagues (or stupid, depending on who you spoke to.) She would take him outside. It started with the Institute garden, where B-4 looked at, and very gently touched a number of insects without harming them. Then to her horror he pulled up a huge plant to follow the progress of an earthworm. Taryn had caught hell from Steve the groundskeeper for that and apologized profusely of course. Once she explained the situation, Steve, who was 'no spring chicken anymore' requested B-4's help with some heavy lifting he needed doing and even agreed to let him help with some gardening.

"If he's gonna rip 'em up, he may as well learn how to plant 'em!" Steve had grumbled. She had to admit that despite his gruff manner the old man was wonderful with their naïf and it turned into a regular appointment. Subsequently Taryn and B-4 had visited galleries, museums, animal sanctuaries, even the beach (although in retrospect she should have checked he was fully waterproofed first.) She couldn't really understand why they insisted on shutting him in at the Institute, he wasn't prone to roaming. Even if he wandered off to look at something he was difficult to miss even in a crowd. If she could take her two maniacal nieces and little nephew (a child who turned 'throwing a wobbler' into an art form,) to the same places without incident she was sure she could supervise one 5' 10" android, and children don't have off switches.

Not surprisingly Eden had been her harshest critic. He accused her of anthropomorphising B-4 and applying pop psychology where it didn't belong. He openly ridiculed her methods, her findings, her conclusions, her theories. He called her a 'chit of a girl' who doesn't have a doctorate or know her place and made more than one reference to her ethnicity. Fortunately her skin was as thick as it was green, but yes, she found the suggestion that she should 'get her green ass back to the slave market' both offensive and unprofessional. B-4's cognitive function improved by three percent in the first week and his motor skills by two having been flat-lined since his activation on the Enterprise, but it was the matrix scan indicating a three percent increase in neural pathways that got her really excited. By the second week the new pathways appeared to be gradually changing the shape of the entire construct. Within a month the change to the matrix was obvious. To say it was unravelling the unholy mess would be a gross overstatement but it was certainly gaining some balance. His IQ was still drastically subnormal, but in that month it had doubled. Maddox wasted no time in informing Jason Eden of the good news and the eminent doctor threw his toys out of the pram and immediately requested a secondment to the Annex, where by all accounts Haftel greeted him like a prodigal son. Maddox described him as an 'odious little man who's lost all objectivity and good riddance to him'. Taryn thought he was an arsehole but was too much the consummate professional to ever say so. She now dreaded her return to Galor IV more than ever.

Then on day forty-eight the last thing she or anyone else had expected happened. Their boy had started having a full blown identity crisis that far outstripped even her worst estimates of personality bleed-through. All the psychometric results that day had confirmed it. Not only had he come excruciatingly close to referring to himself as Data, he was exhibiting aspects of his personality profile. A psychotronic stability exam was even more telling with a forty percent match to Data's baseline on file. At best he'd managed a five percent match previously, something they'd put down to their similarities in construction. Regardless, they had their doubts despite a statistically significant jump in his function test results too. Maddox and the team had bandied about words like 'glitch' and 'fluke'.

That had been a week ago, and those doubts had continued but the figures didn't fall, in fact they had risen by a slight but significant amount. In the face of all the evidence they simply could not believe everyone had been wrong and Data may still be salvageable. As a precaution however, they had stopped calling the android by name to reduce his confusion during the process. An unfortunate side-effect of this was a number of pet names springing into existence. 'Pal', 'Buddy', and 'Dude' were the current favourites. Taryn still sniggered over the time Ruxia had called him 'B-Fuddy' by accident.

"I'm back on days tomorrow." Dan advised her.

"Hmm?" she replied, torn from her reverie.

"I'm back on the day shift tomorrow." From his sideways glances this clearly had some additional significance she was unaware of.

"I know, I posted the roster." she commented.

"So how about that drink?" Dan asked "They do a great…. Synthale at that new place in town." He smirked.

She froze and turned to face him. "Who's been talking?" her manner was stern but the arch of her brow took the sting out of its tail.

"Maybe my old academy roommate works at Memory Alpha." He replied innocently "and perhaps he got talking to a guy there. Skinny, tall, fluffy hair…"

"That would be my brother Cadfael." She smiled. "You forgot to mention his big, flapping mouth." She picked up a padd and stylus and returned to her work.

"Now, you can't fight biology baby. Nature made me tall, blond and dashingly handsome…" he comically swept back his hair at the temple, "and made you dance on table tops and belt out show tunes after a couple of drinks."

"It was more than a couple of drinks," she replied moodily, "and they weren't all show tunes." she added. Her intolerance to synthehol had become apparent during her cousin's wedding and was a constant source of embarrassment her loved ones never let her forget. "And I do fight biology," she advised him. "I suppress my pheromones." Orion DNA came with its drawbacks, particularly for Orion females who produce pheromones that influence many humanoid species in varying ways. In the case of males, particularly human and Orion males the musk of a green woman encouraged attraction, arousal and made them extremely susceptible to the woman's suggestion. In the past, men who purchased a green slave woman would soon find themselves enthralled in more ways than one. The pheromones also gave human females headaches, not exactly conducive to a good working atmosphere.

"That's a shame," he grinned, "always a fan of Orion pheromones."

"Didn't we all have to sit through a seminar about this kind of conversation?" she grinned, continuing to examine the padd.

"Yeah, I guess." he responded with a sigh and changed the topic, "I didn't realise you were adopted."

"I'm not adopted," she replied, "what makes you say that?"

"Your brother is human."

"Actually four of my brothers are human, and two sisters," she checked a nearby console and continued to take notes, "although technically they're half-siblings. I also have a twin who is obviously a hybrid as well."

"Is she single? Is she green too? Because I have this friend…"

"Single yes, green no." and with a wry smile she added "and unless your friend is female I doubt they'd be his type."

He looked disappointed and folded his arms. "Bang goes our double date then. So, what are you genetically speaking?"

"Half human, quarter Vulcan and quarter Orion." She explained.

"I bet that's not as much fun as it sounds." His tone was genuine. Despite his being an incorrigible flirt she and Dan had become good friends in the last two months. She was also well aware he flirted with everyone and knew better than to take it seriously. "Being the only green kid in eight can't have been a barrel of laughs, especially with idiots like Eden around. Hell, I thought it was bad enough being a middle child."

"Actually I was always teased for being short at home, no-one ever bothered that I was green," she paused thoughtfully, "but yes, outside the family you always find rogue elements like Eden." She froze. A look of realization came over her face. "Rogue elements…" She rapidly stepped over to the environmental terminal and called up a display. She thumped the desk with her palm in frustration. "It's an electrical storm. The storm is doubling the charge of the anti-electron field and it's fluctuating."

The anti-electron field was her secret weapon. Harmless to biological life-forms, an ultra-low intensity charged field surrounded the laboratory and stimulated activity in the android's neural net. It was the catalyst for his personal growth. She leant over Dan's shoulder and enlarged one of the viewpoints. One that showed the android's face and upper torso.

"See his eyes, his breathing." She shook her head and moved to launch a level four diagnostic of his systems. Dan watched as the yellow eyes darted rapidly, following the patterns in the storm as if he were reading at high speed. The rise and fall of his chest was fast, pumping to draw in air to cool his system.

"Damn. How did I miss that?" Dan chided himself. "He's over-stimulated and overheating." He blinked and swallowed hard. "Taryn, how bad is this? Is he going to crash?"

"It's not your fault, you did everything right." she reassured him. "You ran the diagnostics, within normal parameters remember? It's just with these Soong boys you sometimes have to think like a doctor as much as an engineer." She looked over at her worried colleague. "He's upright, that's generally a good sign." She carefully examined the readout that appeared on screen. "No sign of cascade or any other failure, he's stable. He's running hot, but he's coping. His neural activity is spiking but it's just barely within normal parameters. Micro-hydraulic power is up but he's redistributing it okay. Fluid pressure is higher than I'd like..." She paused. "He's….excited, I don't know what else to call it."

Taryn leant on the terminal, her fingers beating a steady tattoo against its smooth sides. Perhaps no field at all was preferable to the positronic rollercoaster that was wreaking invisible havoc in the lab. The storm had been raging all night. She knew that rest time was important to the developmental process as the work they did during the day. He was a construct that mimicked human function, he even 'breathed' and had a pulse, although these functions served entirely different purposes to his organic counterparts. They pushed him hard during the day and he needed time to review and give structure to all that he learned. The field supported this process as much as it did his learning in the day and would run constantly. Human infants perform this ordering process as they sleep however B-4 never slept, he also lacked the capacity to dream that Data had discovered so at night they allowed him rest time although this usually took the form of unstructured play. Someone was always there in the control room but would visit him at set times and run remote diagnostics if they became concerned.

He was unrested, could she risk running his daily routine under the circumstances? It was already a lot of stress for a developing mind. Then again what effect would breaking his routine have? She just didn't know. Words came unbidden to her mind, something her Orion grandmother had once said.

"If you can't handle pressure Taryn, you'll never shine like a diamond."

One of many trite phrases the woman would trot out, but this one seemed strangely apt. That's exactly what her process was. She was applying pressure to B-4 to make him form an awareness in the same way you would to carbon atoms to make a diamond. But a diamond and a psyche have something in common.

They are prone to flaws.

She had to act. Take the stress off before the mind they were building cracked under the pressure.

"Okay. Call in Captain Maddox, we'll need him here if he starts to decompensate. I'll shut down the field." She dived for the other terminal and began rapidly keying in the shutdown sequence.

Dan reached to open a channel then stopped, distracted by the monitor. "Wait, where's he going?"

"What?" She turned in time to see the android turn from the window and move out of camera range.

Dan rapidly shifted to another viewpoint and they watched incredulously as the gilded being crossed the room, opened the door and peered into the corridor.

Taryn broke the silence. "Dan? What time is it exactly?"

He called up the chronometer on the screen. "It's 0600 and 21 seconds." Realisation spread across his handsome face. "He's looking for you."

Taryn squeezed his shoulder. "I'd best not keep him waiting then."