Chapter 6

Sakow greeted them outside the room. "You were deemed worthy! Now you must join me for dinner."

Hayes moved her bag closer to her hip. "Sakow, I'm so sorry. Something's come up and we can't make it, but two of my friends would be happy to join you. Is that alright?"

Sakow looked satisfied. "Of course. As long as someone joins me, my people will be appeased."

Hayes nodded to the ensigns and directed everyone else out the door. On their way out, they heard Sakow chattering about his village's history of crops and such.

"Well, let's just hope that they are successful," Hayes said.

Geordi laughed. "Successful in what? Getting bored to death?" They all laughed and continued walking down the steps.

As soon as they were out enough to speak, Hayes sat down. "That was easier than I thought."

Geordi joined her. "Yeah, but we just took their god."

Hayes got up and swung her bag over her shoulder. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Until then, let's get to work fixing Data."

-----

Back on the Enterprise, Dr. Crusher relieved Madden on the bridge, while everyone else took the many pieces of Data to Engineering.

"Geordi," Hayes said, as she carefully took Data's head out of her bag. "Do you think that he's going to work now?"

Geordi snapped Data's left arm on. "It's impossible to tell." He took the head from her and put it on as well. "But we're about to find out." He lifted his tricorder and pressed some buttons, then he re-activated Data by touching Data's neck. Nothing happened. Geordi pressed more buttons on his tricorder. "It looks like his positronic matrix is damaged." He studied his tricorder results. "And maybe everything else." He turned the tricorder off and put it on his belt.

Hayes stopped biting her nail. "The reason why he's not working isn't what's bothering me. The real question is how did he get re-assembled? These things just don't happen. He was blown up."

A flash of light came up in front of them and a man appeared right next to Data.

"Kind of picturesque, don't you think?" The man had the same appearance as Data, but his face was different.

Geordi was not amused. "Q! What the hell are you doing here?"

Q disappeared and then reappeared as his regular self in front of Geordi. "Is that any way to greet your friend, my dear Geordi?"

Geordi sighed. "You're far from my friend."

Q walked up to Hayes and kissed her hand. "Ah! And you must be Admiral Hayes, the only woman in the universe brave enough to marry an android. It's so sad when they have programming problems, isn't it?"

Geordi rolled his eyes. "Q, what are you up to?"

Q didn't answer for a minute as he walked back up to Data and put his arm on Data's shoulder.

"You see, I re-assembled Data after he was destroyed. I owed the planet Aquari a favour and they asked for a god to worship. Preferably something green." Q looked away. "I detest owing people something," he said to himself.

"But why re-assemble Data? Why not just make them an idol?" Hayes asked. A flash of light covered her eyes and she found herself in a room surrounded by windows. Q sat on a throne and Data was standing next to it, still strapped down and still not working.

"Admiral Hayes, do you know what an experiment is?"

She blinked. "Of course I do."

"The Q decided to re-assemble Data to study your reaction to the three choices that I will give you."

She stepped forward. "What choices?"

Q laughed. "I knew you'd be interested. Alright, I'll tell you." He got up. "Choice #1: You can go on living your life the way you have been with only the memory of your husband to keep you going, but having no hopes of ever getting him back again." She said nothing. "Choice #2: I will give you all of the parts to your husband's hardware so you can re-assemble him for real, but only you can do it. If anyone else says anything to help you, their suggestions will never reach your ears. If they point to something, their hands will appear to be pointing in another direction. You will have only three days to fix him."

After a few minutes of silence, Hayes spoke.

"What's choice #3?"

Q smiled. "Choice #3 is a very special choice. You can only use it if you fail to do Choice #2. Choice #3: I will give you a riddle and you have to figure out what it means without anyone else's help. If you figure it out in two days, I will finish fixing Data and he will work as well as he did before he was blown up."

Hayes gulped. "And if I don't?"

"Data will be completely erased from your memory. You will not remember him and he will not remember you."

She stepped forward again. "You mean, you'll fix him?"

"Yes. He will not remember being blown up and neither will anyone else. It will be like it never happened."

Another silence followed.

"I'll take Choice #2."

Q smiled. "I knew you would."

"Then why did you give me Choice #1?"

"Just so you would have the option." He snapped his fingers and after another flash of light, Hayes found herself back in Engineering with a confused Geordi, a big heap of electronics and Data, with his back open.

Hayes picked up one piece of computer chips.

"Well, here goes nothing."