The Doctor – Strange New World

            The Doctor stepped forward as the doors hissed open.  He stood in the doorway for a few moments, taking a good first look at what was now his living room.  The large square room was simply but comfortably furnished, graced with a kitchenette (equipped with a replicator) and storage closet set in the wall on his right.  The left wall consisted mostly of a set of sliding glass doors that led out onto the balcony – the glass was clear right now, allowing him a view of the clear blue sky and some of the gardens and residence buildings of the Starfleet Academy Campus outside, but with the touch of a button the glass could be rendered opaque.  Doors in the far wall led to the bedroom and bathroom.

            He walked slowly through the door and adjusted the strap of his duffel bag on his shoulder.  The doors slid closed behind him.  He looked around the room again, not quite sure what to do next.  "Well," he said to nobody in particular, an obviously artificial brightness evident in his voice, "This is nice."

            It was also absolutely ridiculous.  He didn't need quarters.  The bed, the replicator, the bathroom, were designed to fulfill needs he did not have.  An office would be enough, he'd told the Academy administrators.  He'd been content with that much personal space on Voyager, and he didn't need anything more.  But they'd insisted on giving him living quarters: all Academy faculty who did not already have some residence near the campus were provided with living quarters.  They weren't going to make an exception for him just because he was a hologram.

            Just standing where he was made the Doctor feel awkward, so he put his duffel bag on the gray sofa by the glass-topped coffee table and walked up to the sliding glass doors.  He pulled them open and stepped out onto the balcony.  A soft breeze was blowing, rippling leaves and grass in the quadrangle garden four stories below and making the flowers in their beds sway gently on their stalks.  The Doctor wished that he could smell those flowers, but he was not equipped with a sense of smell.  There was no technology available that could give him that – at least, not yet.

            He certainly had a lovely view from this balcony, but even so he would gladly do without this apartment if he had the opportunity.  They were patronizing him.  Trying too hard to make him feel comfortable.  It was just making things that much more difficult.

            Being patronized is better than being permanently deactivated, he thought to himself.  After two weeks of tests and debates, as well as a great deal of support from Voyager's crew, a panel of judges appointed by Starfleet Command had declared him a sentient being and a Federation citizen, with all the rights and privileges that status entailed.  Luckily, there was already a legal precedent for such a case, or it might have taken much longer.  Those weeks of waiting for a verdict had been difficult, to say the least.  If he'd been human it would have been even worse – his anxiety would have been accompanied by increased levels of adrenaline, sleeplessness, a loss of appetite, moderate gastrointestinal distress…perhaps it would have caused him to have a nervous breakdown.  But then again, if he'd been human he wouldn't have had any cause for anxiety in the first place.

            Maybe he should start unpacking.  He had few material possessions, and most of those had been used to decorate his office in Starfleet Medical Center.  But there were some other things, little pictures and mementos that he had not wanted to put in his office.  He left the balcony and went back into the living room, walked over to the couch and unzipped his duffel bag.

            He had thought about signing up for a tour of duty on a new starship, or a post on a space station or a colony.  Instead he had taken Captain Janeway's suggestion that he stay on Earth for a while, and applied for a position at Starfleet Academy Medical School.  When the next term started he would be teaching a course in advanced exobiology.  A most fitting occupation, considering the nature of his experience.

            Now he was regretting his decision.  He was dreading the day when he would step into the lecture hall, look out over the sea of faces and wonder whether they saw him as a professor to be taken seriously or just an obsolete EMH program, a joke or an insult.  What if they protested?  What if they wouldn't accept him as a teacher?

            The Doctor took out the little hand-stitched pillow Naomi Wildman had made for him.  It was blue and black with silver trim, to match the color scheme of his uniform.  She'd made a little pillow for each member of the senior staff, including Seven, as a good-bye present.  He forgot his worries for a moment and smiled.  At least Voyager's crew treated him like a real person, with respect and sincerity that he had encountered little of on Earth…

            That made him worried again.  It had taken him a great deal of time and effort to earn the status of a "real person" on the ship.  At the outset he hadn't really been bothered by it, since he had not been quite self-aware.  But at some point, he had become someone instead of something, to himself as well as the rest of the crew.  Their view of him had changed with his own view of himself.  Now, though, he thought of himself as a person, and he was encountering many people who had trouble treating him like one.  He was painfully aware of the fact that, while he had convinced a slew of psychologists, technicians, politicians and a high court that he was worthy of personhood, there were still countless people who would believe otherwise and might never change their minds.

            He sat down on the couch, gripping Naomi's little pillow in his hands.  He was facing an uncertain future, one that was in its own way as challenging and perilous as the journey that Voyager had taken through the Delta Quadrant.  One of the first things he had to do was choose a name: he couldn't really put it off any longer.  He'd have to make new friends among the other professors in the medical school.  Then there was the syllabus for the course he would be teaching.  And – he frowned at the dull gray couch – if he was going to have his own quarters, he might as well decorate them tastefully.

            The Doctor put Naomi's little pillow in the corner of the couch and stood up.  Then he started looking around in the duffel bag again.  He found himself humming the opening act from The Magic Flute.  That was another thing he had to do, see a real opera performance.  He could hardly wait.

            The next object he took from the duffel bag was a holophoto of Voyager's senior staff that had been taken three weeks ago, just a few days after their arrival in the Alpha Quadrant.  He smiled brightly and placed the holophoto just so on the coffee table.  The room was starting to look better already.