Chapter Four

The Stardate is 41209.2, and much of the new crew of the recently launched USS Enterprise-D have fallen under the influence of a peculiarly complex water molecule that, when combined with carbon from the body, affects brain function in a manner similar to alcohol intoxication.

This highly contagious polywater intoxicant was contracted during an investigation into the sudden, startling deaths of the crew of the SS Tsiolkovsky – a science vessel assigned to observe the collapse of a red supergiant star – and carried aboard the Enterprise by then junior-grade Lieutenant Geordi La Forge, sometimes jokingly referred to as the ship's 'blind navigator.'

Well, Lt. La Forge had had enough of that kind of teasing.

Geordi La Forge had been blind from birth, and he was tired of being defined by his 'disability.' Growing up, he and his sister Ariana had lived a childhood divided between their loving, but career-driven, parents: sometimes aboard starships with their mother, Silvia, a command-track officer with dreams of captaining her own ship; other times on planetary bases with their father, Edward, a dedicated exozoologist and science officer with a particular fascination for Modean invertebrates. The doctors and teachers that had populated young Geordi's childhood had rarely seen him as more than a miraculous VISOR attached to a little blind boy, and the nature of their parents' Starfleet service meant young Geordi and Ariana never stayed anywhere long enough to form close friendships with anyone, except each other.

The Enterprise was supposed to be different. A long-term mission to chart the furthest frontiers of explored space, and reach out to the unexplored…

And Geordi was to sit at the helm.

The junior grade lieutenant had truly felt his assignment as a bridge officer aboard this new, state-of-the-art Galaxy-class ship would be his chance to forge a fresh image, a new start; to finally step out in front of the VISOR, as it were.

Until he found himself forced to endure joke after tired joke about the ship that was flown by a blind man.

Geordi knew the jokes were not meant to be malicious. Many were even delivered with a fond sort of pride. But, it is an unfortunate aspect of human nature that the teased unavoidably berate themselves for being the object of the tease, blaming their differences for their pain…even when the joshing is not intended to sting.

That is why, although Geordi had always been proud of who he was, and quite pleased that his VISOR allowed him to 'see' the entire spectrum, rather than the few, limited wavelengths of 'visible' light perceivable by the unaided human eye, his contraction of the Tsiolkovsky's polywater intoxicant, in loosening his inhibitions, inadvertently unearthed a seething frustration the young lieutenant had long fought to keep buried.

A frustration that manifested in a deep yearning to be 'normal' – which, to him, chiefly meant knowing at last what it looked like to see in the same way that others saw.

It was Tasha Yar who found him, alone in the Observation Room, staring out at the brilliant electromagnetic dance he, alone, could see when he looked at the stars.

In his intoxicated state, Geordi had reached out to her, brushed her face with his fingertips…

And, she hadn't pulled away.

Instead, Tasha Yar had listened. She had attended to his secret desperation without any of the awkward pity he had long ago learned to dread, and met his searching grasp with kindness, and a compassion that had warmed his heart in a new, and startling way.

From that moment on, Geordi La Forge carried a new secret. For, in his mind and in his heart, that brief, but honest connection they shared had forever equated the feel of Tasha's face beneath his fingertips with 'beauty,' and the warmth of her hand in his with 'friendship.'

After the contagion had been cured and the ship's crew returned to their usual state of professional decorum, Geordi had privately resolved to try to grow that wonderful sense of trust and friendship into something more…something even warmer…

But, that was a resolve the shy young officer never managed to speak aloud to Tasha, or to anyone else, even after Tasha's untimely death dropped an icy lid on his dreams.

What Geordi did not know was that Tasha's sudden death had also dropped a similar lid on the uncertain hopes of another…

The man who was, in fact, Geordi's closest friend.

When Geordi had touched Tasha's face and hands, he had unwittingly passed the polywater intoxicant on to her. And, in her inebriated state, the normally straight-laced security chief had felt her sharply honed self-control crack and split.

Released from the shackles of practiced discipline, the many conflicted, and conflicting, passions Tasha Yar had long fought to lock away burst straight through to the surface, bathing her in a flood of daring impulses. Afraid to dive in to the roiling swells, but reveling in the thrill of the storm, the severely intoxicated young woman had fixed her sights on the one being aboard ship she figured could never really hurt her and who, by the same reasoning, she could never truly hurt in return.

Lt. Commander Data was an android. A machine with a positronic computer for a brain who found most human behaviors and colloquial speech patterns as intriguing and disconcerting as most humans found him.

Like Geordi, Data had lived a lonely life largely defined by the parameters of what made him 'different' from those around him. In consequence, the socially isolated android had developed a secret yearning to be 'normal' – which, to him, chiefly meant knowing what it felt like to experience powerful emotions and tactile sensations in the same way the humans around him did.

Emotions like 'community' and 'belonging,' 'friendship' and, perhaps, one day, even 'love.'

Data had kept this yearning locked tightly inside his positronic brain for most of his (some continued to debate the term) 'life,' until his assignment as Second Officer and Chief of Operations aboard the new Enterprise-D had afforded him what he hoped might be an opportunity to forge a fresh image, a new start; a chance for Data the person to finally step out in front of Data the android, as it were.

Of course, the inebriated Tasha Yar was not considering any of this when she approached the android who had come, on captain's orders, to escort her from her quarters to sickbay. She did not stop to wonder if Data might be vulnerable to the polywater intoxicant raging through her bloodstream, seeping through her sweat, or whether, when she touched his hands and told him of her past, the cybernetic being before her might honestly believe that this aesthetically striking human woman was reaching out - not to Data the machine - but, to Data the person. Perhaps, even, Data the man.

And, when she led him into her bedroom, any suspicion that the already intoxicated android might interpret Tasha's…unsubtle…invitation as an unprecedented opportunity to further his deep-seated wish to feel what it was to be human, was practically the last thing on her mind.

It is eight years, one month, and six days since a rather embarrassed Tasha Yar bluntly informed a quite befuddled Data that whatever the pair of them may have done or said while under the influence of the polywater intoxicant 'never happened,' and Data and Geordi have just entered a quirky little establishment situated nearly halfway between the Walnut Creek Shuttlestation, and the home of Geordi's sister and her family. The tempting smell of fresh baked pies draws the two friends to take a seat at the rounded counter, where a cheery blonde waitress in a bright green uniform hands them each a menu.

"Welcome to The Pie Hole!" she says, her bright smile catching and holding their attention just as a third customer - a young woman who, only days before, had been floating lifelessly in a torpedo casing - enters swiftly and ducks into a corner booth. "Trust me, boys, you won't be sorry you came!"

To Be Continued...

References Include - TNG: The Naked Now; Skin of Evil; The Next Phase; Interface; Hero Worship; Hide and Q; Encounter at Farpoint and the Pushing Daisies series.

Please review! I'd really love to know what you think of these new chapters! :)