Hollow Infatuation
The action in this story takes place a few weeks after the events of "Hollow Pursuits:" the TNG episode that introduced the character of Lieutenant Reginald Barclay.
"Mr. Barclay, just the man I was looking to see," the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise said striding across Engineering to the station the Lieutenant was monitoring.
"Me?" Barclay asked Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge. "What do you need me for?"
"There's a problem with the replicators on decks 8 through 10 again. The Captain's complaining about missing his cup of Earl Grey and Guinan's not too happy either. I need you to see what's wrong," LaForge breezed. "I'm assigning Lieutenant Carter to assist you."
Barclay started. "Kyle Carter, sir?"
LaForge laughed. "Lieutenant Worf's new security man? What does he know about fixing replicators? No, I meant Lieutenant Rebecca Carter, of course."
Barclay managed to pick up the pads he had been working on without spilling any of them on deck and smoothly said, "Of course, sir. I'll, I'll make sure to get right on that."
"Good," LaForge nodded. "I look forward to hearing your report on it, Reg." He turned and walked away, looking for the next officer to assign a task to.
Barclay took a deep breath and then tapped his communicator, "Barclay to Lieutenant Carter."
At the same time the computer answered, "There are two Lieutenant Carters currently assigned to the Enterprise. Please specify." a feminine voice came up from behind Barclay.
"Looking for me, Mr. Barclay?"
He jumped. But fortunately, it sounded like a pleasant feminine voice, with just a touch of amusement. He turned around to see a similarly pleasant-looking lieutenant, dressed in an Engineering-gold uniform, which did nothing to hide her curves. In fact, in body type, she resembled Counselor Deanna Troi, but her face and coloring were much less exotic. Her hair was chestnut brown and her eyes a warm chocolate brown color.
"Uh, Reg Barclay," he said, awkwardly thrusting his hand out to her. "I don't believe we've met."
The pleasant lieutenant grinned and took his hand, enthusiastically pumping it up and down, "Rebecca Carter, pleased to meet you. You just transferred from the Zhukov, didn't you?"
What was the phrase Barclay had heard before that seemed to apply, "Girl Next Door"?
He nodded and added, "Yes, yes, the Zhukov." He cringed. That had sounded so stupid!
But Carter was still there smiling at him. "Shall we get started then?"
"Yes, of course, the replicators." He still stood, rooted to the same spot.
Carter nodded toward the direction of the nearest turbolift.
Barclay's eyes narrowed as he focused on her strange movements. Then all at once it came to him, and he felt stupider than ever. "The replicators on decks 8 through 10, yes. We'll need to take the turbolift to get there."
"Well, unless you wanted to take the Jeffries Tubes and climb… which would take a lot longer."
In a matter of two hours, the pair had the replicator problem solved. Replacing the wall panel outside the door to Captain Picard's quarters, Carter "hmpphed" satisfactorily. "That should about do it."
The Captain hovered behind the two engineers. "This means I can order my tea and I won't get a cup of that awful 'raktajino' stuff?"
Barclay turned around, "Yes sir, it should be safe to order Earl Grey again, sir."
Picard bobbed his head up and down, smiling. It was as pleased a look as ever crossed his face. "Wonderful. At this moment, either of you could put in for a promotion and I'd grant it on the spot."
"We may have to take you up on that sir," Carter smiled.
"Well, I best get inside before I wind up making Mr. Barclay, here, an admiral."
"Oh no sir," I don't deserve anything like that. All we did was fix a computer glitch in the subroutine. I mean, sir, it was an easy problem to fix. I mean..."
Picard's smile faded the longer Barclay's speech went on, but eventually he interrupted, "Well, I best be going inside now. Thank you once again for your help." He entered his quarters.
Barclay's face dropped. "I did it again. I rambled on and on, incoherently. Why do I always do that? I mean, I know what I want to say, why can't I just say it?"
Carter threw a friendly arm around Barclay's shoulder, "Don't worry about it. The Captain can be a very intimidating man. We've all been there, trying to explain something to him at one point or other and winding up with our boot in our mouth."
"Really?"
"Yeah," Carter gave his arm a squeeze. "I once spent five minutes apologizing to Captain Picard for bumping into him when I was coming out a turbolift without looking. He must get it all the time."
"Thanks Rebecca, I needed that."
"You can call me Becca. Say, now that the replicators in Ten-Forward are working again, why don't we head down there? A couple of synthehols, on me."
Barclay stiffened up again. She wasn't suggesting a date, was she?
"Oh, I don't know," he said. "I told Commander LaForge I would…"
Carter retrieved her arm from around Barclay's shoulder and folded her arms across her chest, "Reg. I'm not going to ask you more than once, you know."
He inhaled a deep breath and exhaled it out his nose. Carter's eyes widened in skepticism. Then he nodded. "Yes. I think I will. Join you in Ten-Forward. That sounds like fun, doesn't it?"
Carter nodded and smiled.
Some hours later, he found himself walking Carter back to her quarters, still giddy from numerous glasses of synthehol. "And that's when the Ferengi said, 'Yes, but what's the Klingon doing passed out on bed?'" he finished.
It was an old bar joke, but Becca Carter laughed like she'd never heard it before. "Reg Barclay, you have a wonderful sense of humor," she stated, smiling up at him with little flecks of gold dancing in her eyes. "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening."
"Yes. Well, I've had too," Barclay nodded, realizing that he meant it. "We should really… do this again sometime." He grinned.
Carter stopped in front of her quarters, just far enough away to not activate the door-opening mechanism. "I thought you'd never ask. I'd love to." Then she stood up on tiptoes to plant a kiss full on Barclay's lips.
"See you on our next duty-shift," she said, and bowed into her quarters.
Should he follow her? No, of course not. A simple kiss wasn't an invitation to… But it had been such a long time since he'd had even a simple kiss and not botched it up somehow… like, never. When he was fifteen, Myra Duquis had told him his breath tasted like Klingon 'gagh' and five years ago, Ensign Miles had turned her head at the last second and he'd wound up kissing part of her ear and part of her hairline. That summed up most of Barclay's romantic history.
But this had been, "Wonderful," he found himself saying dreamily. That's when his moment of solitude was interrupted by a summons piped through by the computer:
"Troi to Lieutenant Barclay."
"Barclay here," he tapped his communicator badge with a sinking feeling.
"Reg, where are you? We had an appointment at 1300."
"I am sorry, Counselor, I'm running a little late."
"A little? Mr. Barclay, it is now 1330. Should I notify Commander LaForge that you're missing counseling appointments?"
"No, No, please don't do that. I will be there in five minutes, I promise." He paused long enough that he hoped the computer had ended the transmission. "Computer, end program." The corridor of the Enterprise he had been standing in disintegrated before his eyes, to be replaced by the black and yellow grid pattern of an empty holodeck.
He looked around at his surroundings and sighed.
Troi's office was usually tranquil. At times, it seemed like the only part of the Enterprise that didn't move. But when Barclay entered it this time, he didn't need Troi's Betazoid powers to sense extreme exasperation coming from the counselor.
"Reg, would you like to talk about where you've been?" she said, somehow keeping her voice as calm as always.
"You don't know?" he felt his voice raising at least an octave.
Troi continued to look straight at him, in that annoying, "I can sense it, but I want you to tell me anyway" look she was always giving him.
He decided to confess, "I was in Holodeck 3… but I wasn't… regressing back to my old ways. This was a new program… One I was just trying out for the first time."
"Why don't you sit down and tell me about it," the counselor said. She made an effort not to sigh out loud, but Barclay could almost hear one from her mind. Perhaps from her limited telepathy.
"Well, I know I'm recovering from holodiction and you told me to avoid any kind of recreational use of the holodeck for awhile…"
Troi nodded for him to continue.
"But… it's just so hard living out here, cut off from the world's I created in there… So, I decided I would design a program that would simulate life on the Enterprise. N-n-n-no fantasy… It was designed to be realistic, so I could practice… you see.
Troi looked as if she was about to say something, but Barclay plowed on ahead, "Like, this morning, in the holodeck, Commander LaForge assigned me to fix a replicator problem. There's no glamour in fixing broken replicators." He smiled broadly; sure the counselor would see the wisdom in his idea. "But I wanted the program to assign me the kind of interactions I would normally have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. That way, if I screwed up it didn't matter; the people I would be dealing with would only be holograms. At the end of the day, I could erase their memories if I wanted, and start out fresh the next time…"
The counselor paused for a moment, "Well, Reg, it definitely is not the sort of treatment I regularly recommend in cases like these. It seems one kind of holodiction could easily be replaced by another. But I am interested. How do you think your experience went?"
"Oh, Counselor… It was wonderful… that is, I think it was… Becca was wonderful… but she's just a hologram too, isn't she?"
"Becca?"
"Becca… Lieutenant Rebecca Carter… I have to admit I haven't met her in real life yet, she must work a different shift, but I did ask the computer to include all of the ship's personnel that it possibly could, to increase the authenticity of my simulation."
Troi shook her head, "I'm afraid I don't know her. But she's assigned to engineering, you say?"
"Yes, she's a diagnostic engineer, like I am." Barclay gave a superior smile, "I'm sure she doesn't use your services very often. She has a very planetside way of looking at things."
Troi moved from her chair to the couch where Barclay was sitting in a motion so fluid he almost missed it. "Reg, you're talking about this woman as if you're in love with her… You haven't even really met her yet…"
"Oh, but Counselor, I know her. I made sure the computer used every type of personnel file it could to bring the crew to life in there… physical exams, psychological exams…"
"Reg. Please trust me. You are not the first person to go through this kind of… infatuation. It's quite common. Even command officers have been known to fall in love with holodeck characters from time to time. But it's not real."
She paused. "In a case like yours, be sure to exercise extreme caution. You feel like you know her…"
"Counselor," Barclay interrupted, "we have so much in common… We talked for hours…"
"You talked for hours to a hologram, Reg," Troi said as gently as she could. "The real Becca Carter is somewhere on this ship and she has never even met you. She may not even know you exist. Perhaps she even is romantically involved with someone else. The computer wouldn't have that in her personnel files.
"I'm sorry Reg, but I don't think I can condone you using this program again. Please…" She looked sorrowfully into his eyes, "Stay away from the holodecks for awhile. You need to learn to cope in the real world and no simulation, no matter how intricate, can give you that."
"All right, Counselor, I will stop by the holodeck on my way back to my quarters," Barclay said, springing to his feet. "I'll delete the program, everything will be fine. See you next week."
And he was out the door before Troi could answer. She sighed, audibly this time, and put her head into her hands. Some days she thought her job would be a lot easier without the holodecks. She'd been thinking it more and more since Lieutenant Barclay had come aboard, but even before his arrival… How many officers had she seen about this sort of problem, Geordi… Will… Ensign Wright… Lieutenant Kelley… At least when Worf had fallen in love on the holodeck he'd had the sense to do it with a flesh and blood woman.
"Sometimes I think I need a counselor," she said to herself.
But then she raised her head and squared her shoulders. Perhaps it was time to meet Becca Carter. There was no need to mention Barclay. She could just say she was making an effort to meet members of the crew who didn't regularly attend counseling sessions."
"Troi to Lieutenant Carter," she said.
A few moments later, the confused voice of Kyle Carter answered her hail.
Barclay returned to Holodeck 3, as promised. But as he stood outside the doors, he noticed no one was actually using the holodeck at the moment. He thought, "What can the harm be in saying goodbye before I delete the program?"
"Computer, run Barclay Program 24."
The soothing tones of the computer answered, "Enter when ready."
The large holodeck door parted and Barclay walked into Main Engineering. The doors had barely closed behind him, vanishing into the holodeck wall, before the form of Becca Carter came running towards him. "Reg," she said, practically knocking him down with a bear hug.
Barclay tried to hold her off for a moment, frantically looking around, to make sure none of the other engineers were observing any of this. None of them seemed to be around.
"What's the matter, Reg?" She looked up at him, confused, "I thought we were good friends?"
The pitch of his voice was definitely rising now. "Oh, we are… we are… It's just… I thought, while we're working…"
She still looked up at him quizzically.
"I thought, we'd be able to handle ourselves professionally, that's all."
Carter threw her arms around him again, "But isn't that so hypocritical? If this is what we are, than this is who we are? Why should it be any different during work hours than any other time?"
Barclay was a little stumped by that one, but then he came up with an answer, "Because we're in Starfleet… That… That… That's just the way things are done on a starship." He smiled and patted her arms, trying to pacify her.
She threw off his touch. "Oh, how typical. How typically…"
Barclay felt like she was about to add something else, but had stopped herself just before blurting it out. "How typically what?"
She shrugged it off. "Nothing. But let me show you my Starfleet professionalism." She straightened herself up and pulled him over to a station, "This is what Commander LaForge wants us to work on this morning."
He studied the monitor for a moment. "We'll have to crawl through the Jeffries Tube here," he pointed to the monitor, "to access the right conduit."
"Exactly," Carter smiled smugly, "You and me, in a Jeffries Tube, alone."
Barclay gulped.
He soon found himself dragged into the access room off to the side of Main Engineering where he was passionately and tenderly kissed.
Some time later, Barclay came to his senses. Carter was still tenderly exploring his mouth with her tongue when he started to ease her away from his body.
"What, What's wrong?" she said.
"This just… doesn't feel right," Barclay answered. "Counselor Troi is right. This isn't the real Becca Carter. You're just a hologram… and I'm making the same mistake all over again.
He looked down on her, "I have to say goodbye, now."
Carter looked up at him, strangely, with a bemused expression on her face. An expression that didn't change when he bent over to kiss her forehead, except… perhaps to get even more bemused.
"Well," he smiled. "It's been fun."
Carter cocked her head to one side.
Barclay stayed resolute, "Computer, end program."
A very male voice started to come from Becca Carter's lips, one that sounded almost familiar, "I'm afraid I'm having so much fun I don't want to let you go yet."
"W-w-w-what was that?" Then Barclay decided he really didn't want to know. Why weren't the computer doors opening? Hadn't the computer heard him? He decided to try again, "Computer… End Program!"
This time, Engineering faded away to the holodeck grid.
But the figure of Carter remained, in the same location, still staring at him.
Barclay blinked once, twice, and shook his head. Carter still stood in front of him, although her expression kept changing now… from bemused, she'd gone to impatient and just then, just annoyed.
"I thought maybe the study of common humans might turn up something interesting," the same male voice came from Carter's lips.
"Becca?" Barclay said weakly.
"Jean-Luc would have figured this out by now," the voice said, "but I can see you still need help."
A bright flash lit up the holodeck and when it subsided, the figure of Becca Carter was replaced by a man, wearing a burgundy command-level uniform, captain's rank. He was a very ordinary-looking man, except Barclay recognized him from reports he'd read.
"Q?"
"Oh very good, 5,000 points to the man in gold," said Q
The reality of a being with super powers standing in front of him still hadn't completely sunk in. Procedure would dictate he should call an intruder alert, but Barclay could only say, "W-w-what are you doing here?" Most likely Q was blocking communications anyway. The reports he'd read said Q loved to do that, it kept him from being interrupted.
Q rolled his eyes, "Nothing as interesting as I thought I would be. For once, I thought I'd drop by incognito… See if all humans were as uptight as mon capitaine.
"I am not pleased to report that, with some minor variations in polish and presentation, you Starfleet types seem to be all alike. Even presented with a romance that you humans all seem to treasure so, you wind up incredibly boring in the end. So much for my theory on the noble savage."
Barclay just said, "Noble savage, sir?"
"Oh, in other words, someone who doesn't insist on quoting Shakespeare at every opportunity. Why doesn't Jean-Luc just read Doctor Suess instead? It's not like there's much of a difference in content anyway. There never is in human literature… All this mushy… love business… You mortals are so preoccupied with it."
"You, for example," Q pointed a Barclay, "I gave you an interesting little puzzle to solve, 'Who is Rebecca Carter?' You never even noticed. You were too busy fawning over her… or should I say, an image of her."
Maybe he should play along, Barclay thought. Meekly, he said, "Well, sir, who is Rebecca Carter? Really?"
Q rolled his eyes again and looked like he was about two seconds away from transforming Barclay into an insect (which was truly a terrifying thought) but he relented,
"Rebecca Carter is a figment of my imagination. She does not exist outside my creation of her. I simply gave you a representation of what you believe your 'perfect woman' to be, and let you run with it. It was amusing, for a time, but not as much as I hoped, which is why I tweaked with the programming, so to speak, just to see what you'd do… And in typical human fashion, you did 'the honorable thing.' How utterly boring!"
Barclay's heart sank to his boots. If this episode didn't cure him of his holodiction, he didn't know what would. And then, a horrible sickening thought began to replace the horrible and sickening thought that he would never really meet Becca. "Uh, Mr. Q," he started, "If Becca wasn't a part of my original program, then does that mean, you were… acting…"
Q gave a suggestive smile, "Some other time, dear." With a flash of light he was gone.
"Troi to Lieutenant Barclay," a worried voice piped into the holodeck.
Barclay thought the counselor's voice had never sounded better than it did at that moment.
He straightened his uniform jacket, cleared his throat and answered, "Yes, counselor?"
"The computer couldn't get through to you, I was worried."
"I'm all right," Barclay said, "Mostly, anyway."
"Reg, why don't you come back to my office, I think I have some news that may upset you."
"That's all right, Counselor. I think I know what you're going to tell me. I already know Becca Carter isn't a real person."
"Reg, I'm so sorry. We can talk it over if you'd like."
"No counselor, I think I'm okay with that. But I do have a new problem… I'll be at your office in five minutes to talk about it, but just to let you know, I just French-kissed an all-powerful alien."
He walked out of the holodeck doors. It seemed to him as the door whirred to a close behind him, he could hear Counselor Troi sighing again.