The next few hours were spent getting Lore up to speed on the progress she had made so far; she still only understood half of what had been accomplished, even less of what remained to be done or where it would all lead to. She had an inkling that her part in actual coding was done; he would have to carry on the work, though she hoped his autonomous subroutines would take charge and guide his decisions to safer shores than where they may have been harbored, before she had interfered with his programming DNA as it were.
He seemed docile enough, content to take as much was given. His eyes seemed to hold questions that his tongue never expressed during all the time hers was hard at work; explaining, elaborating, enunciating carefully lest she let slip the secret of her knowledge of the charade. For that was what, as she spoke, the situation started to resemble, more and more with each passing minute that he did not react. To being so thoroughly, painstakingly violated.
Later, alone with her thoughts again, leaving the positronic matrix that is Lore to carry out a self-diagnostic and assess his current status for himself, as was his right, she tried to come to terms with the complications that changing an 'it' to 'him' brought. Had she really thought this through?
She tried to think back to almost 4 years ago, when she had first accepted, nay championed her current assignment. Then, it had been all about weighing the pros and cons of reinstating a known criminal vs. forwarding the pursuit of cybernetic science. But was that really what drew her to the cause? No. She had come across the case being debated in a conference she had been attending as J'ala, a JAG representative on Starbase 101, was prepping for a hearing to decide Daystrom's rights in the matter. She only remembered her mounting fury at the sheer arrogance of Starfleet in not just summarily dismissing a sentient being's right to be tried in court, but outright ignoring it. As if it didn't matter a whit. In her opinion, his own brother, a commissioned Officer, had been afflicted with the same Starfleet mentality; his reasons may have called for a temporary deactivation to defuse a credible threat, certainly not indefinite cold storage. And now, had she committed the same error in judgement in deciding to proceed with correcting what had been identified as Lore's 'processing deficiencies'?
At the time, the option to revive him in complete isolation, post-brainwash and with certain conditions as to self-determination attached, had appeared as the lesser evil, but it amounted to the same in the end; reactivation and rehabilitation. Why were they reactivating him at all? Was any of it warranted? And what did she expect, or want, to happen here, exactly? She hadn't really thought about it, she realized, she'd been much too concerned with righting the wrong in front of her then to see the wrong she was about to commit herself further down the line. Was it wrong to want to fix him?
She decided she could only find the answers she sought in Lore, when he was prepared to provide them. With this course of settlement decided upon, she resigned herself to yet another long wait, as she had when she first arrived on this planet.
She stretches out her body on the bed in the darkened room, trying to find a comfortable position to fall asleep in. She is tired after her regular calisthenics activity, something she has maintained as a force of habit. She is still fighting fit. For what purpose, she knows not. She just likes to be ready. She hasn't needed to be since her own days in Starfleet. It feels to her like another lifetime.
She knows she will dream of that life again tonight.
She walks through the foyer into the mansion generations of her family has called home. She looks around expectantly for Hermin, the butler/caretaker/uncrowned King of the place, who has been here since she can remember, one of the constants in her deliberately tumultuous existence since she enrolled in Starfleet Academy and became a commissioned Officer. She is in uniform now, blue, with pips spelling out her grade: Lt. Commander. She is on the fast track to Commander. She has just made Second Officer and is home to celebrate with the one person in the world she wants to make proud, most of all. The smell of her grandmother's baking wafts in, she turns her head to it, a smile on her lips at the comfortable familiarity of it all … and sees the coffin in a room lit by sunlight streaming in through open windows. There are no people around, the wake having ended. She collapses in a heap on the floor, her limbs entangling in the black fabric of her robe-like mourning garb. The scene has a deja-vu quality to it. This time she finds she is watching herself from outside her own body. Her face looks confused, helpless… expressions patently alien to that face. She does not know who this face belongs to. She cannot bear to be here anymore.
She has not been home since.
