"It may sound like ingratitude, but that is one of the things I hate here - the attitude that I am a guinea pig. Constant references to having made me what I am, or that someday there will be others like me who will become real human beings. How can I make him understand that he did not create me?"

An Unweeded Garden

The first time he had called her a sadist she had deactivated him. When he was finally brought back online it was three years later. His father had smiled down on him kindly and patted his cheek.

"You mustn't say things like that to her, Data, ever. She has a terrible temper. I spent these past years convincing her to allow me to bring you back-"

Data opened his mouth to vocalize but found himself unable to do so.

"There were however…conditions." Noonien said with a pained look on his face. "He spoke out of turn so he loses his tongue." His father said, his face twisted in disgust as he did a singsong imitation of Juliana. "She's disabled your vocal processor…but I promise its only temporary. Don't hate me, Data, please." He pleaded before breaking into a tentative smile. "It's not all bad news, I've made a few minor adjustments to your systems and one huge change."

Data was still reeling as his internal chronometer rushed to adjust to the passage of time. Three years, to have lost three years, it was almost inconceivable, yet it was nonetheless true. His father had aged, his walk more stooped, his eyes held in them more defeat and a long scar stretched from his temple down to his jaw. The lab looked different too and he frowned slightly as he watched a new android pass by, wearing his face, oblivious to his presence.

"Oh, yes…" Noonien said, following Data's gaze. "She wanted another, I'm not sure why but…" he trailed off. "But like I said I have a surprise for you, sit up boy."

Data did as his father obliged but a new sensation threatened to overwhelm and he froze, eyes moving rapidly as diagnostics ran to process this unexpected change.

"I know, I know, you'll get used to it in a moment. But this means it's working. Look!"

Noonien removed the sheet that had been draped across Data's body and the android gaped at what he saw.

His first thought was; I am a patchwork.

In great swathes that spanned his legs he saw strips and squares of skin grafted to his endoskeletal structure. There were still spaces where his golden sheeting remained giving the effect of a job not entirely completed, a quilt undone.

"It's real, it's organic and its real." Noonien laughed gleefully. With obvious care he placed a hand on Data's knee. "Can you feel that, Data?"

Could he feel it? His circuitry glowed and erupted with 'feeling', it was overwhelming and he deduced it might be wise to be shut down again, to have this removed.

I was not built for this.

I cannot adjust.

Noonien removed his hand from his son's knee and placed it on his face gazing at Data until their eyes met.

"I know, I know it's a bit much at first but you'll get used to it, I promise. I'll help you." He said with a soft smile. "I didn't know if it would work but by the gods I wanted to try. That's grown from my own skin by the way. That means you're part of me now, though you always were, and I'm part of you. My Data, flesh of my flesh."

As the madness in his circuitry receded Data reached out and returned his fathers gesture touching his cheek before tracing the ugly scar.

Noonien flashed an embarrassed. "You know your mother."

"Yes, he does." Came a steely voice from behind them.

Data turned and Noonien glanced up to see that Juliana had entered the room. She looked as Data remembered her, in fact she seemed untouched by age, only her hair had a few more strands of silver. If anything she stood taller, every inch of her small frame straight and erect. She walked quickly over to them and observed Data unflinchingly.

"So, it worked, did it?" she asked glancing at her son's legs before laying her hands on the new skin. Again his circuitry revolted at sensations. He shut his eyes tightly trying to regain control but she unlike her husband did not remove her hand. Instead he felt her watching his struggle with detachment.

In a combined effort to break her grip and to appease the dull whine of his modesty program he grabbed the sheet to cover his naked lower half.

"Oh let me get you something to wear, son. I'm sorry." Noonien said hurrying off.

Juliana only laughed.

"I constructed every bit of you, there's nothing I haven't seen and nothing that isn't mine to do with what I will." She sneered at him.

With Noonien gone she leaned closer her face only inches from his.

"Are we ready to behave?" she queried, cool blue eye searching his face. "I considered scrapping you for parts or better yet a core memory dump." As she spoke she brushed phantom hairs away from his forehead with mock concern. "Wipe the slate clean, you know. But your father…" she said trailing off, allowing soft clucks of her tongue to serve as punctuation.

Data didn't believe that for a moment. She would never allow him to be destroyed. He was too valuable, too unique despite so many running about with his face. And yes, too dangerous. That was why she had never made another truly like him, autonomous, free thinking, individual. She needed him as a prototype and though he didn't care to think about it, a partner. His father, already some 20 years her senior was losing the battle against time.

"When we leave here, we'll leave together." She would say in later years. "We'll leave your father to his creations. He always loved them better than me anyways. The dead man can have his dead planet and his dead children."

She had sworn him to secrecy about it and apparently had some misgiving about his programming because he felt little if any allegiance to her and promptly told Noonien. He didn't seem the slightest bit surprised.

"Boy, I'm surprised she's stayed this long. I'm an old man, Data, I'm prepared to die, I've even stopped running from it now. And I'm prepared to die here."

Data recalled that moment, recalled what he identified as pain in his fathers features and felt helpless. He wanted to do something, wanted to…comfort? But how? At this he struggled, as he never had before. How does one empathize, sympathize, emote, embrace? There were times he felt so close. But that was using human terminology, he didn't truly know what that meant, he only knew it felt like those early, early days, when he was attempting to learn to control his motor skills. These were the times he found the most disconcerting, the most 'frustrating', the most difficult.

Lost in these thoughts Data had returned to the then present to see his mother observing him with a hard gaze. He stared back at her again getting that distinct sensation of wanting to break through to something, of being so very close.

After a moment her gaze narrowed, her false smile tightening.

"Same old Data, still with that fire in his eyes. Where did that come from, I wonder? Inheritance? Did Noonien slip in a new program? Or, are you...evolving?" She kept her tone even but Data was certain he saw all the signs of fear. "I wouldn't get too cocky, android, how brave can someone with an off switch really afford to be?"

At that moment his father reentered the room, his arms full of clothing.

"Sorry, it took me so long. I find myself getting out of breath so easily these days. It takes little more than just to cover the length of this place to stretch my limits. Did you…did you and your mother make up?" he asked warily, eyeing them both.

Juliana flashed a smile at her husband before tuning back to Data. As she spoke she rested a hand on Data's calf and it took a moment before he felt her nails digging into his soft virgin flesh.

"I think we've reached an understanding." She answered and without another word she was gone. His father pretended not to notice even as Data grimaced in…was this pain? He wondered to himself. Physical pain? A bit mesmerized he began to dab droplets of blood, his blood off his leg with the white sheet.

When she injured him in this fashion, as she was apt to do his father rarely said anything. He only went to work fixing what he could soothing what he couldn't. The skin was in fact an unfinished project and over the decades his father added more and more until he was covered up to where his collarbone would have been. He adjusted, though processing certain sensations, hot and cold, pain and pleasure without any corresponding emotions was difficult. But once he did manage to level out as it were there were unexpected wonders. Water for example. The simple experience of having that liquid course over his skin and being able to feel it, the pink flush that rushed through him from its heat, the prickly goose bumps from its cold. What a treasure a shower was! A soft blanket. A caress. It was exhilarating. Could an android experience exhilaration? He didn't know, perhaps not, but then again an android shouldn't bleed.

It did of course become yet another weapon Juliana could use against him. If anything it awakened a new malevolent streak in her, another way to be cruel. New blood to run, new flesh to burn. Yet it also seemed to cause her a good deal of consternation, Data didn't strike back, didn't turn injured eyes to her accusingly, didn't cower as so many had for years before. He winced, he grimaced, he protected this or that injured area but she never seemed to derive the payoff she sought. She could not break him and that made want to try all the more. He didn't wonder why she did it, why she was like this, reasons were irrelevant. Data simply grew to…grew to what? How to express feeling without emotion, how to experience feeling without emotion, how to care when he couldn't, how to distrust and dislike when he shouldn't be able to. The sensations that grew in him over the months and years since his activation didn't make any sense and he wanted to rip these defective notions from his body. He didn't want emotions, not like this, not as whispers, echoes like half remembered phrases. His father told him he was built with the capacity to evolve but evolve to what? He couldn't overwhelm his memory core, was nowhere near close to filling up 100 petabytes but that was not all he amounted to. What if things came too soon, too fast, what if his father continued adding pieces of this and that to him, what if he couldn't keep up? What if he suffered a cataclysmic overload or complete cascade failure? That was death. That would be his death…and he didn't want to die. These were the thoughts that plagued him for years, each time his father added a new patch of skin or another bit of programming. Each time he came closer to something he didn't want to imagine. How can I fear something, how can a thought plague me, how can I worry or hope, how can I use these phrases or think in these terms when all these are beyond my programming. Why do I almost feel stifled? Why do I almost feel paralyzed? Why do I almost feel?

He would never be human and it seemed that each of his parents both rejoiced and lamented that fact, both of them taking out their emotions on his body in whatever way they saw fit. And when they were to be finished, when they were finally done and he would be rid of them and they him, either by exhaustion, frustration or their own deaths he would be alone in the universe. Unique, precious, strange, hideous, unfinished either feeling everything too sharply or not enough. Then, Data had theorized, he would more than likely hope for death. Though it frightened him, even then the hope had already begun.