Christmas at Jupiter Station
By Laura Schiller
Based on Star Trek: Voyager
Copyright: Paramount
"It's that time of year -
leave all our hopelessnesses aside,
just for a little while.
Tears stop right here -
I know we've all had a bumpy ride.
I'm secretly on your side."
- Kelly Clarkson, "Just For Now"
The Doctor had dreamt of a real family Christmas all his life.
During his first year on Voyager, the only thing he'd noticed about the holiday had been a rise in his Sickbay duties: winter sports accidents on the holodeck, an alcohol-fueled brawl at Sandrine's, and several homesick and unhappy crewmen asking for sleeping pills or antidepressants. On his second and third years, made aware of the human custom, Kes had strung lights around his office and given him handwritten cards. He still had those. But in some ways, her kindness had made his isolation from the rest of the crew even more obvious.
From his fourth year on, finally able to attend parties because of his mobile emitter, he'd gradually learned what "Christmas spirit" was supposed to feel like. He'd sung carols (until Lieutenants Torres and Paris threatened to change his voice to Mickey Mouse's), downloaded a figure-skating subroutine, moonlighted as Santa Claus for Naomi and the Borg children, and danced with Seven of Nine for what he'd told himself were strictly platonic reasons.
Still, when the crew talked about various holidays back home – Prixin, Eid, Surak's Day, Hanukkah, the Gratitude Festival – the one thing they all had in common was family.
The Doctor had wished, more than anything, for a family to call his own.
Now here he was, celebrating Christmas in the home of the man he called his father, surrounded by his brothers, sister, and wife. He loved them all, he really did.
So why was he starting to fantasize about Red Alert-level malfunctions, spatial anomalies, Borg attacks – anything that would interrupt the evening and get him out of here?
He shared a glance with Seven, who was sitting next to him on the sofa. Her face was perfectly blank, but her blue eyes were bright with secret empathy.
"You really don't remember?" asked the EMH Mark Two in his overeager young voice, which always reminded the Doctor of a yappy dog. "But it's the Daystrom Prize! How can you not?"
He was speaking to Haley, who looked down at the fan of cards she held.
"I, um … I'd have to access my external memory unit for that," she said. "It's in the lab."
"External - ?" Mark Two's eyes widened. "Wait, how much memory capacity do you have?"
Haley rearranged her cards and told him the number in a low voice.
"That's all?" Mark Two tried, and visibly failed, to hide a grin. "Oh, that's right. Any more wouldn't have been possible, way back then."
Reg Barclay, Haley's husband, flushed with anger on her behalf. He opened his mouth and closed it again, his stutter preventing him from jumping to her defense.
Lewis Zimmerman shot his youngest creation a warning glare, but Mark Two either didn't notice or didn't care.
"You must be one of the oldest holograms still active," he went on. "I'm amazed you're still functioning."
Haley lowered her ash-blond head. Her hands were shaking.
"Oh, honestly, Mark Two!" the Doctor burst out. "If the Prometheus is so advanced, couldn't they at least teach you the basic rules of etiquette? Can't you tell she's sensitive about her age?"
Seven put her hand on his sleeve to calm him, but he was beyond calming.
"It's all right," Haley said, forcing a smile. "He was only - "
Mark Two tossed his own cards on the table and banged it with his fist. "I will not be lectured about etiquette by a Mark One whose line was repurposed for waste transfer barges!"
"Say that one more time - "
The Doctor jumped to his feet. So did Mark Two.
"Boys!" Lewis got between them and shoved them apart, with a surprisingly strong hand on each of their chests. "Can you settle down, please?"
Despite the "please", it was an order.
The exasperation on Lewis' face, so much like his own, brought the Doctor back to his senses. He was the elder EMH; he should have known better than to lose his temper, no matter how obnoxious the younger one could be.
"My apologies," he said, with a stiff nod to Mark Two. "I overreacted."
"Well, I didn't mean to … " Mark Two looked over his shoulder at Haley with a sort of sulky contrition, fidgeted as if his jacket were too tight, and sat back down.
"Haley dear," said Lewis in a softer voice, "Why don't you go check on the food?"
Haley hurried past them into the kitchen.
"I'll help," said the Doctor, following on her heels, relieved at the temporary escape.
He found her leaning over a pot on an old-fashioned electric stove, mashing potatoes as if each one had done her a personal injury. The kitchen looked like a war zone: chopping boards stained with vegetable juice, knives sticking out of cucumbers and carrots, a small pot of blood-red cranberry sauce bubbling ominously next to the potatoes … Haley's hand shot to the stove controls to turn off the burner, and the sauce subsided.
"Goodness," said the Doctor. He was used to thinking quickly during surgery, but this was something else.
"Can you chop those, please?" She pointed to a pile of thin green herbs on the counter.
"Well, I'm used to a laser scalpel, but this shouldn't be too difficult." He picked up a knife. "Mm. Allium schoenoprasum, if I'm not mistaken? Rich in vitamins A and C."
"Chives." She smiled, her first real smile since he and Seven had arrived on her doorstep. "Lewis likes them. They smell like onions."
"He gave you a sense of smell?"
"I'm a chef." She took hold of his wrist and corrected his grip on the knife. "Hold it like this. And chop them smaller."
"Aye, aye, Captain." The Doctor smiled back at her. She was in her element here, doing what she was programmed to do.
"So you're making everything from scratch?" he asked.
No wonder Lewis had programmed himself a housekeeper, he thought. He was just the type to enjoy non-replicated food, but consider cooking a waste of time.
"Everything except the turkey." She brushed her hair out of her eyes and put down her whisk. "I draw the line at disemboweling dead birds."
"Wouldn't bother me, but I see what you mean." He offered her his finely chopped chives. She brushed them into the mashed potatoes and stirred. "So you'll replicate it?"
"Yes. Although why Lewis insisted on a turkey when only three of us can eat, I have no idea," she muttered, shaking her head as she replaced the lid. "He says it's tradition, but we've had chicken or quail or guinea fowl as long as I can remember. After you guys leave, I'll have to serve leftovers for weeks, and he'll get sick of them. And so will I."
"Organics, eh?"
"I know!"
The siblings shared a commiserating eye roll.
"This thing doesn't even have a replicator code for turkey. Sandwiches, yes, but not a whole roasted bird. I'll have to enter it manually. Oh, well. It can't be that difficult – even at my age."
Haley went over to the stainless steel replicator, which sat oddly next to the antiquated stove. Her slim hands danced over the touchscreen; she frowned in concentration. The Doctor, mindful of the proverb about too many cooks, stayed well back.
"That should do it," said Haley, slipping on a pair of purple oven mitts that matched her dress.
The Doctor reflected, with secret amusement, that she must really like the accessories of cooking. As a hologram, she couldn't be sensitive to heat.
"Computer," Haley ordered, "One roasted turkey, bread stuffing, gravy on the side."
Beep-beep.
A plume of smoke billowed out from the large dark lump that materialized inside the machine. Haley recoiled and waved her mitted hand.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP –
"Computer," Haley and the Doctor shouted in unison, "Deactivate smoke alarm!"
Lewis, Seven, Reg and Mark Two burst into the kitchen, Lewis charging ahead. The lab coat he never took off, even on holidays, flapped like wings as he whipped out a tricorder.
"What happened?" he barked, scanning Haley and the Doctor. "What's wrong?"
"We're fine, Lewis." Haley laughed nervously as she dodged out of range of the tricorder. "I – I got the code wrong, that's all."
Seven picked up a dish towel, eased the heavy burned lump of turkey out of the replicator, and carried it over to the recycler, where it vanished. She dusted the char from her hands.
"The error was minor," she said. "I can correct it. May I access the controls?"
The Doctor recognized the kindness in his wife's tone, but the effect on Haley couldn't have been worse if Seven had shouted. The housekeeper's hazel eyes flashed; her fists clenched; she drew herself up as if to physically eject them all from the kitchen.
But it was Mark Two who added the proverbial last straw.
"You burned the turkey?" he yelped. "You burned it? You're programmed to be a housekeeper and can't even cook?"
"Will somebody make him shut up?"
Mark Two shut up of his own accord, and so did everybody else. The pure shock of gentle Haley raising her voice like that made it impossible to speak.
"I'm so tired of these Christmas parties," she went on, in a voice that shook with exhausted rage, more unsettling than any scream. "Everyone pretends they're having fun, and all you ever do is fight. Every year there's more of you, which means more work for me, and no one ever asks whether I could do with a holiday. And you!"
She yanked off her oven mitts and fired them at Mark Two, who made himself transparent so that they flew right through him.
"I'd like to see you focus on a brand-new replicator code when you've been hearing snide remarks all day about how old and useless you are!"
She advanced on him. He backed away.
"Yes, I'm thirteen years old. Yes, I need an external memory unit. No, I can't do anything but cook and clean. And yes, keeping up maintenance on me wastes time that Lewis could use for more important work, and I hate that. But you, with your state-of-the-art programming and your important job on the Prometheus, you have no right - " She jabbed her finger at his chest. " – to rub it in my face!"
The stunned silence in the kitchen was interrupted by a slow clap from Lewis, who was grinning from ear to ear.
"You're one of mine, all right," he said. "Brava!"
The Doctor, tempted to join in, locked his hands behind his back. He stole a glance at Seven who, once again, wore her most impeccable poker face. She had learned from painful experience (most of it involving B'Elanna) that it was a bad idea to get involved in other people's arguments.
Behind Mark Two's back, in the living room, Reg had quietly picked up the oven mitts. Now he cautiously stepped forward and offered them to Haley, at arm's length, as if fully expecting her to lash out again.
She took the soft, quilted things with shaky hands, hung them up on their accustomed hook on the wall, went to Reg, and buried her face in his chest. He rubbed her back, murmuring things in her ear the rest of them couldn't hear.
Mark Two, who had been frozen to the spot, taking shallow, panicked breaths with a degree of realism that proved just how well-designed he was, tracked Haley's movements with round blue eyes.
After several sputters and false starts, he croaked: "Useless? Is that … is that really how I made you feel?"
"Yes." Haley glared at him from inside the circle of Reg's arms.
"But – but – but that's how I feel," he said, sounding younger than ever. "All the time."
"You?" Confusion softened Haley's features. "You're a doctor. On one of Starfleet's most advanced deep space vessels. You have a job most organics can only dream of."
"I'm a glorified tricorder," said Mark Two bitterly. "After Mark One over there left for Starfleet Headquarters, most of the times our CMO activated me was for triage after an emergency. All I did was pass the instruments and deal with the minor cuts and bruises; Dr. Valek did the real work, and at the end, he'd shut me off again. I never set foot on the bridge, let alone the holodeck or anyplace exciting. The only reason my crew even let me come here was because the mission's over, and the ship's being retrofitted at Utopia Planitia. They figured I might as well be here instead of moldering away in the databank."
"Then you should tell them!" A bone-deep empathy made the Doctor speak out in spite of himself. "Tell your crew they owe you some respect – it's the least they can do after we saved their ship from Romulans."
"I try!" Mark Two threw up his hands. "But all that ever does is annoy them, and then they deactivate me."
"Oh, I know how that feels," said the Doctor, smiling crookedly. "I remember, in my first year … "
"And that! Right there!" Mark Two jabbed a finger at him, in a gesture so like Haley's it almost made him laugh. "That's another thing. All of you," the younger EMH swept his arms to encompass the whole party, "Have so much more experience than me. I'll never catch up. You two," he gestured to Seven and the Doctor, "Survived the Delta Quadrant, and you," to Reg, "Served on the Enterprise-D under Jean-Luc Picard. You," to Lewis, "Have so many awards you can't keep track of them, and you," to Haley, "Managed to live with this guy for thirteen years and not lose your mind, which is a miracle in itself."
Shaky laughter all around, and a halfhearted growl from Lewis.
"No, but seriously - everyone here loves you," said Mark Two, still focused on Haley. "You're the heart of Jupiter Station. I'd give anything to be as important to my crew as you are to yours."
"You will be," said Haley softly. "With that determination, I know you will. You're one of us, after all."
She freed one arm from her husband's embrace and held it out. Mark Two hugged her from the other side.
Group hugs had never been the Doctor's forte (he always worried about his mobile emitter getting knocked off), but he moved closer to Seven and tucked one arm around her waist. She smiled at him.
"Is this what you had in mind when you invited him?" she whispered, for his ears only.
"Nothing this interesting," he whispered back. "But I'm rather glad I did."
"Ahem." A sardonic cough from Lewis made them all step apart. "As much as I hate to interrupt, we still don't have a turkey. So if you'd kindly give me some space, I can replicate one myself."
"Are you sure that's … " Haley began, watching skeptically as her creator scowled at the screen.
"I won the Daystrom Prize," he retorted. "I won't be beaten by a replicator."
"O-okay."
She darted away to take the already tossed salad out of the fridge, stir the mashed potatoes one more time, make sure the cranberry sauce was still warm but not too hot, and pull what appeared to be a small round cake out of the oven.
Lewis produced a glorious, golden-brown bird, at least twice the size of Haley's attempt. He hoisted it over to the living-room table with visible effort, and set it down with a triumphant smirk.
"Six place settings, please," he told Haley.
"Six? But - " She looked around at the group, only three members of which were organic.
"Surprise, surprise!" The old man's eyes had taken on an incongruous, festive twinkle. All he needed to pass for Santa Claus was the beard and the red suit. "Consider it your Christmas present this year."
He pulled a padd out of his lab coat pocket and pressed a button.
The Doctor saw Haley and Mark Two flicker, then look down at themselves with expressions of bewilderment. At the same time, he himself felt a most peculiar sensation, trickling down from his throat to his middle, all the way down to …
Goodness gracious. I have a digestive system. How in the universe did Lewis manage that?
The three holograms exchanged a look of bright-eyed excitement, and hurried to set the table.
"Dig in, everybody!" said Lewis, once all six of them were seated.
The Doctor knew he wasn't the best judge, but in his opinion, there had never been a finer Christmas dinner in human history. The mashed potatoes were creamy (and the chives perfectly chopped), the salad fresh and flavorful, and the turkey salty, crispy, and tender enough to fall off the bone. Even Haley agreed that it wasn't half bad, although she had her doubts about the cranberry sauce.
"If this is what eating feels like," she said to Lewis, "I'll never nag you about your calorie intake again."
"I'll hold you to that," said Lewis. "Pass the wine, would you, Mark Two?"
"Wait, is that real alcohol?" Mark Two eyed the bottle with a doctor's cautiousness. "Are you sure that's advisable at your - "
Lewis narrowed his eyes.
Mark Two swallowed the word "age" and meekly handed over the bottle.
"So what's for dessert?" Reg asked, too happy for once to stutter.
"Cheesecake." Haley beamed. "I added some lemon peel for extra flavor."
"Excellent. The Doctor is partial to cheesecake, as I recall," said Seven demurely.
"Oh, come on." The Doctor nudged her foot under the table. "Will you never let me live that down?"
"You mean this isn't your first time eating?" demanded Lewis.
"It's a long story," said the Doctor, putting his hand over his face with theatrical embarrassment.
Looking through his fingers at the subtle mischief on Seven's beautiful face, fielding eager questions and flashes of sarcasm from his family, watching the holographic fireplace glow in the background, he decided to revise his earlier opinion.
There was, after all, nothing quite like a family Christmas.