What Are Little Boys Made Of?
Summary: What led Dr. Soong to build Lore and later Data, and what happened that made him have to dissasemble his first creation? (Semi alternate universe)
Author's Notes: I wrote this short story close to 13 years ago as an english class final assignment. I recently found an original copy going through some old things and (aside from from punctuation and grammatical corrections) I'm adding it to this site, word for word. In this story, I tried to write what made Dr. Soong disassemble Lore just prior to the attack of the Crystalline Entity. There was a little backstory about Soong himself I wanted to write, as well as what motivated him to build Data. There has been a lot of new canon that was made since then (Soong being married, etc.) , so I hope the reader will excuse the errors since this was written before anything was found out.
Disclaimers: I don't own Star Trek.
Spoilers: 'Datalore' , 'Brothers'.
How often is one told to kill one's only child? Dr. Noonian Soong thought as he rubbed his temples and stared in disbelief at the piece of paper that had just been handed to him by the mayor of the Omicron Theta colony.
"The decision's unanimous, then?" asked the aged scientist. The tall woman standing before him merely nodded.
"We've discussed this for over a week and we simply cannot find another option," the Mayor said. Soong sighed in resignation. Seeing the sadness in etched in the face of the old man, the mayor gripped his shoulder.
"It's not against you personally, Soong. It's him – it." She tried to suppress a small shudder, but Soong had no problem seeing it. He'd seen the same fear in too many of the other colonists, when even just the name of his creation was mentioned.
"Doctor," the Mayor began, "when you first made Lore we all cheered at your achievement. Hell, I was the first one to open a champagne bottle and toast you. But when you let it loose among the people…well, you've seen the results of that."
Soong said nothing, still only staring at the paper. A moment passed, and the Mayor turned to leave, but paused at the door.
"You have our petition, Doctor. Now it's up to you to comply."
Soong could read the unvoiced threat behind her words. In the end, he'd rather take care of his 'wayward son' on his own, than to have an angry mob – a la Frankenstein – destroy the culmination of his life's work.
"I'll handle it myself," he said with a nod.
The mayor turned and left. Dr. Soong leaned back in his old chair and tried to make sense of how this whole situation had gotten to this point, after finally achieving success when so much failure has preceded him.
He could still remember, years ago, after graduating from the Federation Academy of Sciences, he had begun work at the Daystrom Cybernetics Institute on Alpha Centauri. It was here that he began to realize the first inklings of a life-long dream: to construct a fully functional android with a positronic brain. The dream itself started years earlier when his father had given some books by the celebrated 20th century author, Isaac Asimov. The books contained stories about a positronic robot named R. Daneel Olivaw who helped mankind in its expansion into the galaxy. The moment he opened the first book, he instantly fell in love with the concept. This was he passion that made him eventually major in computer science.
Eventually, he petitioned for tenure at the Cygnian Institute of Advanced Cybernetics. With the facilities at hand, he tried for the next ten years to come up with a functional positronic brain. Failure upon failure piled up and, soon enough, the Institute Board called him up for review and revoked all funding for his project. As if that was not enough, many of the faculty - not to mention a fair amount of students – had dubbed him 'Often Wrong' Soong. For 'compensation', the board 'promoted' him to the title of Professor Emeritus.
Rather than accepting, Soong took a group of devoted students and left to establish a colony on the distant planet Omicron Theta. There he continued his work until, after much trial and error, finally achieving success. Placing the brain inside an android body, he and his fellow scientists named the being 'Lore'. Even now, he could still not think of anything more breathtaking in his life than to see Lore's eyes open and speak his first words.
Following the initial jubilation, Soong finally introduced his creation to the rest of the colony. At first, the colonists were apprehensive, and Soong could understand. Lore had vastly superior mental capacity, supernormal strength and an indefinite lifespan. But after the initial wariness, several of the colonists started to interact with Lore.
It was then that Soong began to see flaws in the programming of Lore. His 'son' was, ironically, too human. Making a machine, even one as sophisticated as Lore and instilling it with human emotions was something man had been dreaming of for hundreds of years. Soong was successful, but to the nth degree.
Lore showed ambition, cunning, avarice and – to Soong's dismay – a growing disdain for humanity in general. Very soon, many colonists showed open fear and anger toward this 'upstart', especially after Lore fought the father of a certain young lady with whom he'd been having a more than platonic relationship. Though he built Lore to be fully functional in all respects, Soong couldn't understand where his creation got his sexual desires.
Following the incident, a majority of the colonists approached the mayor and a colony meeting was convened. Upon hearing of the gathering, Soong knew what was being addressed. He even attended it, bringing Lore along as well so that he could get an overall feel for the colonists. In the end, he still couldn't get the image of Lore standing up upon hearing the vote, his face a mask of malevolence, and storming out of the building. Soong tried to plead his case, stating that he would be able to reprogram Lore. But the damage had already been done, and the colonists wanted Lore dismantled.
The Doctor realized that he had to comply. He pounded his hand on table. How could things that had been so right, go so wrong? Soong sighed. He was allowed one consolation: Lore was to be dismantled, not destroyed. He could preserve the components so that he could one day return to 'fix' his son. In a sense all was not lost, since he had taken all that he'd learned and started on the construction of a second android. He'd already resolved not include emotions in the final programming of his second creation, since he wanted to see how this android would react with an emotional clean slate. All in good time, though. All that was to be done now was wait till Lore arrived, and then – do what he had to do.
**
Several yards away from the lab compound, a pair of gold eyes tracked the mayor leaving Dr. Soong's lab. They widened then squinted in realization. Yellow tinged fingers played across a small sub-space transmitter. After a few moments, a scratchy, chime-like sound came from the small speaker. Lore nodded grimly.
"Very good, you've understood perfectly. You'll arrive in one week, but I believe this will be our final communication." More chiming came from speaker. Lore listened for a moment more then closed down the connection. With that, he started walking toward the lab. Several colonists stared at him along the way, some with repressed fear. Lore curled his lip and simply ignored them all. He knew what was to come, especially when he received the call from his father, he'd already taken steps for revenge. Oh, he could've tried to escape, but without access to a ship to leave this miserable world, he would've eventually been found. So, he decided to take a desperate gamble.
After leaving the colony meeting, he'd found a subspace communicator and just started scanning random frequencies. It wasn't until days later the he made contact with what he'd called the Crystalline Entity. It did not take long to establish a dialogue, and then to find out what the entity required to survive: specifically, the energy of living matter. He laughed when it had asked him if he knew of any places where it could feed.
Oh yes, he would get back at these foolish humans. Perhaps the colony would be checked up on sometime in the future and some party would find him in devastation that is to come. Lore approached the door and it parted for him. Inside, Dr. Soong looked up sadly from a console.
"You wanted to see me, Dear Father?"
~FIN~