As the memory flashes increased, nightmares joined the repertoire of chaos inside Rosemary's mind.

The memories she learned to handle. Since they weren't hers, she began to think of them more as small plays, each performed by the same set of actors. With each new one, she asked questions, filled in gaps. She learned about Beverly Crusher but still allowed for no connection between herself and the doctor.

It also helped that most people learned to control their reactions and only occasionally did one of them slip, making her realize that they were disappointed when this memory or that one didn't make her snap into being Beverly.

The nightmares were completely different, and she tried to avoid them at all costs. The scene in Sickbay three days ago had triggered a particularly vicious one that became more vivid each night.

Rosemary began wandering the ship in the wake of traumatic bouts of dreaming. Each morning, members of the senior staff received concerned reports of her midnight rambles. Deanna and Judith both tried to talk to her about what was keeping her up at night, but once she understood they would want details about the nightmares, she always refused to discuss them.

x~x

Rosemary strolled down the corridor, not really aware of her surroundings. She liked this time on the Enterprise.

'What had Jean-Luc called it? Ah yes, the oh-so-obvious 'night shift', as though one can tell day from night on a starship.'

The need to escape from her cabin had been especially intense tonight, and she had moved quickly to put some distance between herself and the darkened cabin that seemed even darker because of her dreams.

At least at night she could walk without continually being stopped and asked if she was all right. The people who saw her might look at her oddly, but they left her alone, for which she was greatly relieved. While she didn't want to lie in the face of their obvious concern, she didn't want to explain why she wasn't all right either.

It took the better part of an hour to reduce her pace to a casual stroll.

A strange sound interrupted her aimless meandering. It was out of place yet somehow familiar. She looked around to get her bearings and heard the sound again from an alcove to her right.

"Meow."

Turning, she grinned as she saw a large orange cat sitting serenely in the middle of the floor. "Hello, Cat," she murmured, crouching down, offering a hand to be vetted.

After a cursory sniff, the cat leapt into her arms. Scratching the animal behind the ears, Rosemary said, "Don't tell me... you're a friend of Beverly's, too." She sighed. "Well, at least you don't care whether I remember you or not." Her fingers found a collar, and following it, turned up a tag. "Spot? What kind of name is that for a cat?"

Disdaining the rhetorical question, Spot merely settled down in her arms and began to purr.

"You're quite right; I'm hardly one to judge another creature's name. What do names mean anyway? Care to keep me company for awhile?" Spot purred louder. "I'll take that as a 'yes'. It will be nice to have someone other than myself to talk to. Maybe we'll run across someone who knows where you belong."

Occasionally Spot chose to walk, but primarily, the feline preferred to be carried as though the treatment was not special but habitual.

The pair roamed with no planned path, occasionally lapping a deck twice, now and then taking a turbolift past several decks to one that simply caught their fancy. An unusual dialogue ran between the two as the cat 'responded' to Rosemary's idle conversation with varying meowls, purrs and grumbles. They met few people but never quite seemed to find the right opportunity to inquire as to where Spot should be.

Some time later, the animal raised its head, ears twitching.

"What is it, Spot? Is there a mouse in the house?" Rosemary grinned. "Somehow, I don't think Jean-Luc would be happy about that prospect. Then again, how would he feel knowing you've been running around unattended?"

Spot sprang from her arms to land nimbly on the floor, went to the nearest door and began meowing loudly as though demanding admittance.

Checking the name on the door, Rosemary smiled - Lt. Commander Data. She liked him. He was sweet and never made her feel that she had messed up her life and taken everyone else's along with it. "Do you belong with him, Spot? Or does he have a fish tank?"

The cat ignored her, of course, simply meowing again. This time, the door opened.

"Hello, Rosemary," Data said politely as Spot meandered in. "May I help you in some way?"

"No, Spot and I found each other while we were both out walking. We spent some time together then he... uh, she..." Stammering to a halt, she felt a trifle silly for worrying about the gender of a cat.

Noticing her hesitation, Data supplied helpfully, "Spot is a female."

Rosemary gave him a graceful nod of appreciation. "Thank you. I didn't quite feel that we were acquainted well enough to check. Anyway, she stopped here. Is she yours?"

"Yes. Despite numerous efforts, I have been unable to determine a way to keep her confined to my quarters." Spot, irked by the fact that everyone was still standing in the doorway, came back to rub against Data's leg.

"You're up late," Rosemary observed, gesturing to his uniform.

"I do not require sleep." Her inquiringly raised eyebrow made him continue, "I am an android."

"Ah, yes, an android with warm skin, I remember now. Lucky you."

The last was muttered under her breath, but of course, Data heard it. "Why do you consider me to be lucky?"

"Because machines don't have nightmares."

"While I do not have nightmares per se, I do have a dream program that has elicited some very interesting responses."

"It's not the same," she countered. "You control your dreams. They don't scare you."

"I do not have emotions. I cannot feel fear." It was a fact that his human friends continually forgot, and despite repeated attempts, he had been unable to formulate a clear reason why. He never understood that they saw him as a person, not a machine.

"I wish I could say that."

Data was puzzled by her statement. "I do not understand your difficulty. The words are quite simple -"

"No, I meant that I wish I could say it and have it be true."

"Have you had a frightening dream, Rosemary?"

"I have enough counselors, thank you," she replied stiffly, confused by the fact that she had revealed as much already.

"I cannot claim to be a proper substitute for Counselor McKenna, however, Dr. Crusher has told me that listening is a trait of a good friend. I would be most willing to listen to anything you have to say." He issued a silent offer for her to enter his quarters.

"Yes, Beverly was such a good friend to everybody." Despite her sarcasm, she accepted the invitation. It wasn't her preferred topic of conversation, but it was better than wandering the halls and talking to herself or to a cat.

Spot jumped up onto the couch and waited for their guest to sit down before settling into her lap. Stroking the cat absently, Rosemary continued, "That's why everybody's been so nice to me - because of Beverly. They all want Beverly to come back."

"I believe your theory is only partially correct," Data said as he took a seat opposite her. "You are a person in distress. That is why we wish to help you. It has been eight days, fourteen hours and thirty-seven minutes since I observed anyone correcting themselves in regards to your name."

She smiled slightly as his gentle acceptance warmed her and gave her a small opportunity to relax. Resting her elbow on the back of the couch, she began twirling a lock of hair around her finger. "Why do you want to help me, Data? You said you don't have feelings. Do you miss Beverly?"

It was not something Data had thought about before. "As you are here, your presence is not absent. However, the input I receive from you is different from that of Dr. Crusher."

"Input?" It didn't sound very friendly to Rosemary.

"My neural pathways become accustomed to various sensory patterns specific to every individual. Vocal tone, inflection, vocabulary, sentence structure, physical distance and contact, posture, gestures, body temperature, respiration, bodily scents -"

"Okay, Data, I get it," she said, cutting into his litany before it could become too specific. "So you do miss Beverly."

"Yes, but I have found a new friend in you." Data cocked his head. As was his habit, he had been using a concurrent subroutine to review their conversation and a point caught his attention. "It is late, Rosemary, and you should be in your sleep cycle during this time. Did you have one of the nightmares that you spoke of earlier?"

Agitation twisted the hair around her finger tighter. "What makes you think it was a nightmare? Maybe I just don't like sleeping."

"As humans require sleep, I do not understand how it can be possible to either like or dislike the activity. Also, the probability is very low that you would have mentioned nightmares in our previous discussion if one had not disturbed your sleep."

She knew he wasn't going to let it go, and part of her was grateful for his persistence. It was different from Judith's and somehow easier to take. "Nightmare seems like such a tame term for the dark, ugly things I see in my dreams."

"Are dreams not a product of a person's subconscious?" Data asked.

Rosemary made a face. "That's what Judith says. That's what scares me. What's inside my head to make me dream those things? About those people?" Spot protested when her grip tightened, and she had to make a conscious effort to calm down.

"Do you recall your dreams?"

She nodded. "Data," her voice was barely a whisper, "did Beverly ever... hurt people? I mean, she's a doctor, right? She's supposed to help people, but did she ever hurt anyone?"

"Dr. Crusher did lose patients who were too ill or too severely injured to survive, but I have never known her to deliberately inflict pain."

The certainty of his answer was what she had anticipated but not what she wanted to hear. "So it must have been me."

"What must have been you?"

"The dreams my subconscious likes to perform so much. If Beverly never hurt anyone, it must have been me who did those horrible things. But why? I don't feel as though I could do those things, but if they're in my dreams, I must have done them. Why would I hurt people? And why hurt people I didn't even know until a few weeks ago? What kind of monster am I?"

"I do not believe that you are a monster, Rosemary," Data offered. "I have seen you interact with many people on the Enterprise. You have in no way acted viciously or violently. I do not believe you would willfully inflict pain."

"Then where are these dreams coming from?" She bit her lip in frustration.

"Will you tell me about your dreams?"

She raised frightened eyes to his. "What, so I can scare you, too?"

"I have no emotions. I cannot be scared."

She smiled wryly. "Yes, you said that. I forgot."

He reached out and patted her hand, a gesture he had seen Counselor Troi use many times. "I often have to remind Dr. Crusher as well. Can you tell me now?"

Rosemary swallowed hard. Maybe if Data couldn't feel fear then he wouldn't be repulsed by her when he found out what happened in her dreams. The images were vivid in her mind, but she wasn't sure she wanted to put words to them. "I'll try. I'm in Sickbay..."

The room was bright white, so glaring that it hurt her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the light. A noise, she wasn't sure what, made her open them again.

She was standing next to a biobed. The figure on it slowly came into focus... Geordi La Forge. She could see the restraining field glowing around him, keeping him still. She wasn't sure how she knew it, but the readouts seemed to indicate there was nothing wrong with him.

As though she were detached from herself, she watched her hand reach out with some sort of instrument. Something about what she was doing was frightening Geordi. She could feel his fear. It was an odd sensation, being able to feel him and not herself.

The instrument emitted a thin blue beam near his temple... and Geordi shrieked in agony...

Rosemary's body jerked at the memory of Geordi's screams and her eyes filled with tears. "Geordi has been so nice to me. In Sickbay the other day, he trusted me to help his friend even though I wasn't thinking about what I was doing. Why would I hurt Geordi?" she broke off, sobbing.

"Do not cry, Rosemary. You have not hurt anyone. Although it may have some meaning, it was only a dream."

"It wasn't a dream!" she wailed. "I could feel it happening! I hurt Geordi for no reason!"

"No, Rosemary. Geordi is my best friend, I would know if such an incident had occurred. I can assure you it has not. Neither you nor Dr. Crusher has ever purposely caused Geordi pain." An expression close to satisfaction appeared on his face as he thought of another point. "Rosemary, until the day you woke up in Sickbay, you did not technically exist, and you have very clear memories of every day since, is that not correct?"

The phrase 'did not technically exist' didn't sit well with her, but she nodded in agreement with the rest of his statement.

"Then when do you think this incident could have occurred?"

That brought her up short. "I... I don't know. But why would I dream something so horrible... something that felt so real?"

"Several theories have been developed regarding what might have happened to Dr. Crusher. Perhaps you should discuss them with Counselor McKenna."

"No! I don't want to go through all this again. I'm enough of a freak as it is; I don't want her looking at me like I'm some sort of demon, too." Spot yowled as she was once again squeezed too tightly, and Rosemary pushed the animal off her lap to the floor. "I'm sorry, Spot. All I do is cause pain."

Unperturbed by the abrupt dismissal, Spot immediately returned to her prior resting place, nudging her head under Rosemary's hand to be petted.

Data watched the encounter with great interest. He quickly tabulated the number of times the cat had avoided contact with other crewmembers who had come to his quarters with the express intention of caring for his pet. Now, however, Rosemary's rejection appeared to make Spot eager for her attention. Correlating this new information with other studies of the animal's behavior, he hypothesized that Spot did not like being ignored.

Rosemary smiled at Spot's antics, gently lifting the cat to rub her cheek on the soft, orange fur. "I'm sorry, Spot," she said again. "I don't understand why you all keep coming back when I can be so mean tempered."

"Perhaps," Data offered, "Spot senses your distress and wishes to help... as we all do."

"Thank you." She cleared her throat, then again, unable to dispel the dryness brought on by her overwrought emotions. "May I have something to drink?"

Given that he had little personal experience with Rosemary at this time, Data used the few seconds it took for him to cross to the replicator to instantly process all the information he had on Beverly's beverage preferences, ordered a chilled fruit juice and passed it to her.

Conditioned to the fact that Data almost exclusively used the replicator to produce food for her, Spot made a valiant effort to intercept the glass.

Rosemary managed to drink most of it despite Spot's curious pawing of her hand. A small smile tugged at her mouth at the cat's insistence. Pouring the last drops into her palm, her smile broadened as Spot lapped daintily at the offering.

Data was fascinated by the interaction between the woman and the feline.

Avoiding his watchful eye for a long as she could, Rosemary finally looked up. "Do you mind if I stay here for a while? I don't feel like talking anymore right now, but I don't want to be alone either."

"You are welcome to stay as long as you like. Should you wish to talk again, I will be at my console, working on several projects."

"Thank you," she murmured with a grateful nod before adding, "You know, Data, I think you have more feelings than you give yourself credit for." She laughed softly at his head cocked in puzzlement then turned her attention back to Spot.

In less than fifteen minutes, Data looked over to see that Rosemary had fallen asleep on the couch, turned on her side with an orange ball of fur curled against her stomach.

Satisfied that she was sleeping peacefully, Data began a new task. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he completed an incident report and sent it to Judith along with an audio recording of his conversation with Rosemary from his memory banks.

Meanwhile, he ran an observational subroutine, tracking Rosemary's condition as she slept. Traces of tears remained on her cheeks, but her sleep appeared to be restful.

His concurrent statistical routine computed the slim likelihood that Doctor Crusher would have come to him had she not been suffering from amnesia. Geordi frequently sought him out for his opinion on various matters, as did Worf, though to a lesser degree. His own pattern was to determine the individual most likely to be able to assist him on a given subject. The four most senior officers, however, tended to keep their concerns within their own small circle.

In his efforts to become more human, Data had attempted to define the parameters by which friendships were formed. Similarities in gender, age and species, as demonstrated by Dr. Crusher and Counselor Troi, were the primary basis as two persons would be roughly equal in life experiences. However, despite being of the same gender and approximate age, Commander Riker and Lt. Worf were considered by many to be total opposites and yet had formed a strong bond. Data counted his own friendship with Geordi as another exception to the rule.

Mentor/student associations had also emerged as a recurring theme in his study, as demonstrated by both the First Officer and the Captain with young Wesley Crusher. In such cases, the difference in age and experience formed the basis for the relationships although they continued to follow the pattern of being the same gender.

Close, personal friendships that crossed gender lines were far more rare. He considered himself fortunate to have two excellent and diverse examples to study. Riker and Troi's current status as friends had evolved from a romantic past. Picard and Crusher, conversely, had begun as friends before moving into what most of the crew believed to be a closely guarded love affair.

None of these guidelines, however, described his relationship with Rosemary. Having spent too little time with her to form what he defined as a friendship, he endeavored to determine why she had chosen to discuss her dreams with him.

There was an 86.528% probability that it was the mere convenience of his being there at that particular time. To a much lesser extent - 12.810% - was the probability that, despite her claim to have forgotten their previous discussion, she subconsciously recalled his lack of emotions and considered him less likely to react negatively to her recitation.

It was the more personal side to tonight's events that fascinated Data. As a rule, he was willing to accept no as an answer, so he was unclear as to why, in this instance, he had continued to question Rosemary. It was unusual for him to experience such a strong... compulsion.

x~x

Rosemary's embarrassment at having slept the rest of the night in Data's cabin was quickly overridden by outrage when he informed her that he had sent a recording of their conversation to Judith. She stormed out, and it took Judith the better part of the morning to get her to listen as she explained that Data had meant it as a favor so she wouldn't have to repeat the story in a counseling session.

She was ashamed of herself for allowing her short temper and for misjudging Data. Her apology was readily accepted, as was Data's offer to stop by any time she needed someone to talk to at night.

After that, she began to make almost nightly treks to Data's quarters when the dreams drove her from her bed. The emotions unleashed in those unofficial therapy sessions would leave her drained, and more often than not, she fell into an exhausted sleep that lasted until morning.

tbc