Chapter 9: Galor IV, Daystrom Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Dormitory Room of L'Naan Paris, 2400

As the computer announced an incoming transmission, L'Naan carried her robotic cat to her desk. She settled cross-legged on the desk chair with the cat nestled in her lap and activated the screen.

It was Miral, calling as she often did after she'd finished talking to Andrew. When she was at the Academy, Miral wanted little to do with her little sister, and her recent attentiveness had not gone unobserved by L'Naan. She recognized that Miral was concerned for her happiness and was trying her best to support her from a distance.

"What's that?" Miral asked, pointing toward her lap.

"It was my first project here," L'Naan explained. "His name is Schrödinger."

"You named your cat Schrödinger? Cute," Miral said with a roll of her eyes. "Little sister, can I tell you a secret? I'm really happy that the plans for the wedding got foiled."

"I always thought you'd want to have a big wedding with a lot of guests – be the center of attention, get a lot of gifts."

Miral shook her head. "Not these days, little sis. Ensign Paris likes to work hard and talk to her fiancé every night when her shift ends."

"Sounds thrilling," L'Naan said with sarcasm.

"Actually, it's wonderful," Miral told her with sincerity. "So are you going to be able to make it? It's not going to interfere with your studies?"

L'Naan shook her head. "Semester break."

"Well, I'm glad," Miral said with a small smile. "It wouldn't be the same if you weren't here. How's the android?"

L'Naan's eyes lit up. "It's amazing, Miral. We constructed its face, so it finally looks like a person."

"What did you name it?"

"Well, my lab partner Jenari doesn't really know anything about Vulcans, so she said I could name it," L'Naan explained. "And after some careful consideration, I decided to name it after my favorite: Commander Vorik."

"Vorik!" Miral laughed. "I always knew you had a crush on him!"

"Don't tell Mom," L'Naan begged.

"I won't. I can't wait to hear all about it, though." She cocked her head to the side. "How's your social life?"

L'Naan opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. She looked down at the cat and stroked its fur.

"What is it?"

"Um, Miral," she began quietly, "remember Charlie?"

Miral nodded. "How could I forget? Did he contact you again?"

L'Naan looked around the tiny, tidy dorm room that had become her home over the semester and sighed. "Miral, I know it's stupid, but I just can't stop thinking about him."

"Oh, little sister, I know he made you feel special, but that was months ago. You might have to accept that he's not coming back."

"So that's it? He turns up and begs me to save the Q Continuum and then disappears again? Was it all some kind of cruel joke to see if I'd say yes?"

"It might have been," Miral said gently. "The Q often do things for their own amusement at our expense."

"But I thought he liked me." L'Naan's voice was barely a whisper.

Miral ached at seeing her sister so heartbroken. L'Naan had always been level-headed, kind, and understanding. She was exactly the kind of person who would want to give her life for others if it made sense to her. Miral hated thinking that Q had taken advantage of that quality.

She decided to try to fix the situation the best way she could. "L'Naan, didn't you tell me your lab partner was flirting with you?"

"Jenari? She flirts with anything that moves," L'Naan said. "She'll probably flirt with Vorik once he's able to talk. I'm not attracted to her, though. We're just friends."

"Isn't there anyone at school you're interested in?"

"Not really."

"Well, find someone. You need to date. You need to have sex."

"Miral!"

"I mean it, L'Naan. You can't keep pining after some long-gone Q."

"I guess you're right," L'Naan reluctantly agreed. "Look, I need to finish my homework. I'll see you in a few weeks?"

As the image of Miral faded from her computer monitor, L'Naan looked around her room. She didn't think it would work, and she knew she would feel stupid if it failed, but for good measure she had to try. "Charlie?" she called out tentatively. She waited a moment. Nothing happened. With a sigh of resignation, she put the cat on the floor and started her homework.


Student Cafeteria

L'Naan decided that, though she was smarter than her sister in many ways, when it came to socializing, Miral usually knew best. Although she still missed Charlie, if he wasn't going to come back, then she needed to try to move on. As she and Jenari sat at a table in the cafeteria with a few of their classmates, she half-heartedly listened to them joke about their Grazerite professor while she plotted her next move.

Her target, she determined, was going to be Brez, the Haliian sitting next to Jenari. He was interested in her, she knew. She caught him sneaking glances at her every day in the lab. He wasn't unattractive, L'Naan determined. In fact, he looked pretty good. And the way he handled a submicron scanner was downright sexy.

When they finished eating lunch, Jenari suggested a walk around campus before their afternoon classes began. L'Naan looked pointedly at Brez as she declined Jenari's offer, and fortunately he took the hint.

Once their friends had all left the table, Brez leaned forward slightly in his seat with a smile. "I didn't think you'd noticed me," he said earnestly.

"I had someone on my mind for a long time," L'Naan confessed. "But it's over now."

"You and Jenari are working on the Vulcan android, right?" She nodded. "Why did you choose a Vulcan? Were you thinking that by avoiding emotional subroutines, the project would be easier?"

"No, actually, we've created emotional subroutines, and now we're working on a series of logic subroutines to suppress them."

Brez's eyes widened slightly. "That's going to take you all year!"

"I think I can rise to the challenge," L'Naan said confidently. "What species did you choose?"

"We're making a joined Trill," he said. "I thought programming him to call up memories from previous hosts might be a worthwhile experiment."

An engineer who doesn't shy away from the tough stuff. I like that.

"Have you named yours yet?" L'Naan asked.

Brez shook his head. "He doesn't have a linguistics database yet, so I didn't see the point."

"Don't you think it's important to name him so you can connect with him?"

Brez shrugged slightly. "I guess I hadn't thought about it."

"You have to," she insisted. "What's a good Trill name?"

"Hmm, I'm not sure," he admitted. "I'll have to do some research on it."

"I'll help," L'Naan offered. "That is, if you want me to."

"On one condition," he said. "You have to agree to have dinner with me – alone – tonight." Brez raised an eyebrow pointedly, enticing her to answer.

L'Naan's heart didn't exactly skip a beat, but she had to admit she was amused. She smiled. "It's a date."


Earth, Brazil, University of Sao Paulo, Office of Professor Chakotay

The fact that B'Elanna Torres had never set foot inside the archaeology wing of the Brazilian university didn't stop her from marching down the corridor as if she was in command. She sought out Chakotay's office, and when she found it, she didn't bother to knock on the door.

Chakotay, who was working behind his desk, looked up as she burst in. "You didn't tell me," he said accusatorily.

"You didn't tell me you and Admiral Janeway had gotten married," she said back. She stepped into the office, closing the door behind her, and took a seat in front of his desk. "What didn't I tell you?"

"That my goddaughter has a boyfriend."

"L'Naan has a boyfriend?"

"What are you doing here, anyway?"

B'Elanna shrugged. "I found out from the Doctor that you got married in secret, so I came here to give you a hard time about it."

Chakotay laid down the padd he was reading. "It wasn't really a secret," he explained. "It just wasn't a big event. It took all of five minutes."

"But I wanted to walk you down the aisle," B'Elanna teased with a smile. Chakotay grinned back at her. "What's this about my daughter, and how do you know before I do?"

"She sent me a subspace message talking about her android project. Do you know she has a robotic cat?"

B'Elanna nodded as she slouched in his chair. "Schrödinger."

"Well," he continued, "I stopped reading about halfway through the message as she described in elaborate detail how she sculpted the shape of her android's ears, but toward the end I caught a paragraph about some Haliian classmate named Brez. She didn't say anything explicitly, but I could read between the lines."

B'Elanna's eyebrows rose involuntarily. "She didn't say anything to me. I wonder if she's told Miral yet."

"She didn't seem completely infatuated," Chakotay said delicately. "Just…curious."

B'Elanna nodded in confirmation. "Miral's been encouraging her to date. She thinks it will help L'Naan get her mind off Q." She sat up. "Well, I didn't come here to talk about teenage angst. I came here to take you out to celebrate."

"Best offer I've had today," Chakotay said, rising. He held out his elbow, and B'Elanna linked her hand around it as they headed out.


San Francisco, Starfleet Academy, Flight Simulation Training Center

"Harry, Harry, Harry," Tom said, locking his hands behind his head, "what are you doing? You can't realign the magnetic constrictors while you're chasing a ship at warp four."

The shuttle rocked violently as they sustained fire, and Harry gripped onto the console at the helm as he glared at Tom, still sitting peacefully in his seat. "You might help," he called over the din of the red alert.

Tom glanced down at the panel in front of him. "Your reactor temperature is approaching 3.1 million Kelvin."

"Reroute power from the weapons array," Harry barked grimly. "We'll just have to hope we can outrun them."

Tom complied. "No effect." They took another phaser blast from the enemy ship. "Shields are down to seventy percent."

Harry pounded a fist onto the console. "Computer, end simulation." The shuttle returned to its inactive state, and Harry adjusted himself in the pilot's seat. "You're not being helpful, you know. What kind of simulation was that, anyway? When will the Rhode Island ever be in a wormhole under attack by the Romulans with its magnetic constrictors out of alignment?"

"You asked me to give you the real Tom Paris tutoring," his friend reminded him.

"I asked you to recertify me according to Starfleet protocols," Harry argued, "not quiz me on my tactical abilities."

"It's the Typhon Expanse, Harry. Strange, spooky things happen there."

Harry laid his hands on the console in front of him. "Look, if Starfleet thinks I can handle any 'strange, spooky things' out there, then it would be nice if my best friend did, too."

Tom took a good look at his friend for a moment and realized he was right. He nodded. "Computer, begin simulation Paris-delta-four. This one is strictly about maneuvering abilities, I promise."

Harry nodded and began working the helm controls as their shuttle pitched inside a subspace eddy. "Now this is what I'm talking about," he said with a grin.

Tom smiled back at him. "Hold on to your hat, Har. This is going to be a bumpy ride."

"Let's see how fast we can ride this wave," Harry said. "Increasing speed to one-half impulse."

"It's a little like driving a car on a gravel road," Tom said with a laugh as they bounced up and down in their seats. "You're doing great. Twenty seconds till we clear." The panel in front of him beeped. "Hold on, we've got a problem."

"Tom, come on, are you kidding me?" Harry checked the display in front of him. "We're losing inertial dampers."

"You should call for an all-stop," Tom warned. "At least slow down."

"Not this close to normal space," Harry said.

"We're going to end up plastered against the back wall with this kind of turbulence."

"Hold on, I'm diverting power from the main deflector."

"It won't work!" Tom shouted as the computer initiated an automatic red alert. The shuttle was buffeted beyond control, and he gripped the console to stay in his seat. "You're going to have to –"

He stopped abruptly as the red alert cancelled and the shuttle resumed its course in normal space. He looked over at Harry. Harry just looked back at him, raising an "I told you so" eyebrow.

"You want another simulation?"

Harry shook his head. "I know I'm ready now."


Galor IV, Daystrom Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Dormitory Room of L'Naan Paris

L'Naan idly tapped her computer console, frowning at the equations in front of her. Of all the things she and her lab partner had thus far attempted, something as innocuous as blinking was turning out to be the most difficult.

Stupid double eyelids. If only we'd picked a species with a less complicated ocular structure.

The blinking itself wasn't the problem; it was attempting to make it appear random and natural that was proving tricky. Copying the subroutine for human androids didn't work as well as they'd hoped. It merely called attention the Vulcan android's inner eyelid, which made him appear, as Brez had told her bluntly, "freaky."

Brez. His very presence in her life confused L'Naan.

As the younger sister, she all too often compared herself to Miral – she couldn't help it – but she liked to think she had enough perspective to make a fair comparison. Miral was prettier and more outgoing. But L'Naan intuitively understood people better. It didn't necessarily win her more friends, but it meant that those few she had were deeply connected to her. Miral had a corps that was significant to her, but there were also rotating extras who moved in and out of her life with a kind of ease L'Naan never quite understood.

Then there were their differences in sexuality. As often as Miral complained about their parents' undying attraction for each other, there was nothing prudish about her. She carried herself with a kind of physical and sexual confidence that demanded notice. L'Naan envied that confidence on some level. It was strange for her to think someone wanted her. She just couldn't see herself as an object of desire.

She also didn't understand the allure of sex in the first place. From the way Miral and Lenaris had described it, it was the most wonderful feeling – a burning desire eventually leading to the sensation of total pleasure and, maybe afterward, naked intimacy. L'Naan didn't burn for Brez, and while their encounters weren't wholly unpleasant, they couldn't be described as "total pleasure." And even though they'd been physically naked often enough, L'Naan had never felt that more than her body was exposed to him. Just as Miral had encouraged, she'd made a good faith effort to find someone with whom she was compatible, and it hadn't been what she had expected.

"You're just not doing it with the right person," Miral told her.

Who else am I supposed to be doing it with?

The sound of a slight cough reminded L'Naan that she was not alone, that the person causing her emotional turmoil was currently stretched out on her bed. She tapped her computer screen off and looked over at him thoughtfully.

Brez was lying on his stomach with his chin resting on one of his arms while the other hand held a padd in front of his face. He looked comfortable on her bed, in her room, as if he felt he belonged there. L'Naan envied his ignorance.

Brez caught her staring at him and mistook it for interest. He chucked the padd on the floor and turned onto his side to face her. "Hey," he said lightly. "I'm not getting anywhere."

"Me neither."

"What are you working on?"

"Blinking subroutines. You?"

"Respiration. Want to trade?" L'Naan shook her head. "Come over here," he said in a slightly husky voice.

L'Naan complied, not because she shared his lust but because she couldn't think of what else to do. She slid onto the bed beside him, and Brez deftly rolled on top of her. As they kissed, he stroked her hair in a way that told her it was more than just sex for him – he obviously cared for her. She put her arms around him and pulled his weight down on her, hoping that if they bridged the physical distance between them, she would feel emotionally closer, too.

Their kissing grew more insistent, and they helped each other remove their clothing. As Brez entered her, he kissed her shoulder, whispering gently, "I think I love you."

L'Naan didn't reply but turned her head to the side, eyes squeezed shut, and waited for it to be over.