Chapter 18
She was flying, below her were the strands, tendrils flashing with their electrical charge as it travelled along the neural fibre. Suddenly it stopped, it was damaged, torn, charred and the signal could no longer get through. She flew back to the brainstem and fitted a data port and giggled as she realized she'd turned her man into a net-boy. She flew back to the damage, fighting the urge to cry and began grafting sensors to the nerve endings and connecting them to a transmitter….
Taryn sat up with a start, bathed in sweat. "Surely it's not that simple?" she whispered with a frown. Barclay was asleep beside her so she slid carefully from the bed, trying not to disturb him.
Trip woke with a start and found he was alone in the bed. He checked the chronometer. Taryn was normally asleep by now, in fact she woke him when she turned in. He transferred swiftly to his chair and headed for the living room.
"Sweetie, are you okay?" he asked.
"I need you to tell me I'm not going mad." she said as she tapped at her terminal. "Will this actually work?" she asked and displayed a holographic image that looked like a squid or a jellyfish.
"I don't know, what is it? One of your cybernetic beasties?" he asked.
"It's a cybernetic neuro-implant and it connects to this..." she replied softly and overlaid the image of a spinal cord and brain with a data-port fitted. He looked more closely. "It's similar in principle to your stimulators. I think it could bridge the damaged area of a spine but…"
He moved closer and turned the image. "This is sophisticated stuff. How did you come up with this?"
"Promise you won't laugh?" He nodded in agreement. "I dreamed it."
He snorted with laughter and she stormed off past him towards the bedroom. "I'm sorry." he caught her hand. "You may be on to something. Let me take a look."
"I mean, it's an electrical signal, and there are other ways to conduct that signal." she reasoned as she returned to her seat.
He rubbed his chin. "I see a problem here, you can't attach a sensor to a nerve like that. It would disintegrate. But you could graft bio-mimetic fibres and incorporate the sensor with the transmitter. It would be more sophisticated than the implanted stimulators they use now but you'd get more fine control. With a neural implant in the cerebellum rather than a data-port it would work even better."
"Trip, cybernetically speaking the technology exists to make this two-way." Taryn said earnestly. "It's inside Data. But there would be significant signal loss from the grafted fibres. It wouldn't be perfect but you'd get some sensation as well as motor control."
"Show me?" he asked, his face both nervous and excited as she showed him what she had in mind. "How much sensation are we talking about?" He asked without taking his eyes from the screen.
"Maybe ten percent of normal, it's hard to say. I've never considered working with organic tissue before." Taryn admitted.
"Well, I've fitted positronic neural implants to patients with severe brain injuries. It's not exactly the same as we're talking here but although you get some improvement immediately the progress is long term. In time the neural tissue adapts to the implant, it becomes more sensitive to it and you get an improvement of around five to ten percent a year after that."
"Theoretically that seems to apply here." Taryn drummed her fingers on the desk. "We're looking at years of work before we even consider clinical trials…even then…maybe decades."
"I know." he agreed. "But this is promising. You're really on to something with this."
"I need a research partner with a medical degree or I'm sunk before I start." she told him.
"I suppose I could clear some time from my busy schedule." he said with mock reluctance. "I could drop a couple of my other women if need be."
She elbowed him playfully for teasing her. "We've never worked together before."
"We've liaised on child development cases. Even after I filed for divorce we kept it civil professionally." he argued. "We're a team. We're partners already, a united force that no power can rend asunder." He leaned in and kissed her temple, rubbing her back.
"I've always thought that phrase sounds like a character from an adult holo-novel." She deepened her voice. "Experience the latest sexploits of Rend Asunder in Anal Fist IV, Cosmic Buttfucker."
"You should give up on academia and write holo-novels." Trip grinned.
"You're the imaginative one. You should write the holo-novels, I'll come up with the advertisements." She sighed and chewed her lower lip. "I just hope this doesn't turn out to be a damp squib. I hate the thought of getting your hopes up."
"If I have to be in this chair for the rest of my life I'll do it happily. As long as I have you at my side I can cope with anything. But I'm not the only person in this position and this could help others in the same situation."
"I don't want anyone to have to go through what you did with regen therapy. I know for some people it works but… Maybe I'm not destined to create sentient life. Maybe I should use my skills to help people adjust to life changing injuries?"
"Maybe. You've certainly been a Godsend to me."
…
"Uh oh, looks like the time has come." Trip muttered when he saw her.
She was crouched in her underwear when he entered the cottage in his chair. Sweat gleaming on her jade skin. She emitted a growl as he closed the door and pounced on his lap, tearing at his shirt.
"Okay Sweetie, let's get you to the bedroom." he said and maneuvered his chair through the cottage as she snarled and licked at his face. "On the bed." he said patting it as if he was talking to the dog. "Go on. Good girl." he said as she crawled on to it. He attached a manacle to her wrist and she hissed at him. "Now, we agreed. No trying to meld this time." he warned and she reluctantly let him tether her other wrist. They had no idea how he would respond if she initiated a mating bond again and triggered pon farr in him. With his injury he may not be able to resolve it and it could prove fatal. That meant she had to be prevented from touching his face. He got out his tricorder and smiled at the reading. "Sweetness, you are so ripe for a baby I could wink at you and knock you up." he told her as she writhed and strained against the restraints, rolling onto her back and purring at him like a cat. "What? No jokes about me being cock-eyed?" he shook his head. "You are in a bad way aren't you Sweet-stuff?"
He moved over to the stasis unit, pulled out a vial and placed it on an instrument tray. "I hope you won't report me to the Federation Medical Association for this Sweets. I could get struck off for this." he said as he returned to the bed. It was unusual to artificially inseminate a patient while they were restrained, especially if you planned to have sex with them later but this was his wife and they had discussed it. They both wanted an intimate experience rather than a medical procedure, something private. "I know Sweet, it hurts doesn't it? I'll make it all better soon, I promise." he told her as she whimpered and he pushed the vial into a device similar to a hypospray but a different shape, not dissimilar to a turkey baster. "I've got some concentrated Barclay juice, just for you." He placed the syringe on the nightstand and lifted her hips, sliding a pillow under them and pulled off her panties. He pulled himself on top of her and to one side and kissed her, gently caressing between her legs with his hand as she whimpered into his mouth and strained against his touch, yearning for more. She gasped as he pushed his fingers inside her and moved her long hair away from her neck with his other hand to press a kiss to her throat before reaching for the hypospray. She bucked as he inserted it, her body aching with need as she pumped against it. He triggered it and held it in place. Kissing her face tenderly. "I'm sorry. I can't let you finish yet. We talked about that remember?" He withdrew the device and she snarled and hissed angrily. "Every eight hours for forty-eight hours to be certain and then I'll make love to you."
…
She collapsed on top of him, finally replete and sighed deeply.
"I don't know why you look so tired." he said with a smile and unfastened her restraints over his head. "I was on top for most of it. My arms are killing me."
"You weren't tied to the bed and horny for two days." she said breathlessly and rubbed his ribs. "How long till we know if it worked?"
"A few days." he replied and kissed her temple.
"You realise I'm going to use these on you at some point?" she grinned and rattled the restraints.
"Maybe after I get our implants." he smiled. "And while I'm on the topic..."
"Julian approved our project?" Taryn smiled.
"And the Hospital Board, and the Ethics Committee. We have lab time and resources at our disposal agreed for the next ten years. You got a letter from Daystrom too."
"What did it say?" she asked excitedly.
"I didn't open it, it was addressed to you." he smiled and passed her a padd from the nightstand.
She squealed. "I'm going to get my Doctorate!" She kissed him passionately and jumped out of bed. "I need to start work."
"What, now?" he asked incredulously as her naked green buttocks left the room at a run. "So much for the afterglow." he muttered. He shook his head and smiled. He was really proud of her. Not only had Dr Bashir offered her a job at the Rehabilitation Centre in London creating custom cybernetic limbs and implants for patients but she'd taken a different tack and submitted a new thesis proposal researching the feasibility of applying Soong-type positronics to bio prosthesis, a proposal that had just been approved. He was working at the facility too, dividing his time between seeing patients and research alongside his wife. The patients he was working with seemed buoyed that he'd found there was life beyond a devastating spinal injury. He found the work rewarding, not just that he was still able to practice medicine but he got the opportunity to help people adjust rather than preparing them for transfer as he had done many times while serving on a starship when there was no more he could do medically. He didn't have his own veterinary practice but he'd helped an old vet school pal set one up at the riding school and was consulting occasionally in his own time to keep his hand in.
Now all that was missing was their family.
…
"Good afternoon." Trip stated as he walked to the front of the lecture theatre with his arms folded, he was older greyer but otherwise seemed fit and well. "I am Commander Reginald Barclay and I am a doctor of xeno-veterinary medicine and also a medical doctor and I usually lecture at the Medical School." he rested his behind against the table at the front and placed one foot across the other. "Don't worry, I haven't been sent by Starfleet Medical for yet another briefing on the latest outbreak of VD. If you think you have Catian Crabs or the Andorian Clap I don't need or want to hear about it. You can obtain confidential advice from the Academy Medical Centre twenty-four hours a day. Ask for Dr Houghton, he's an expert in the field." Reg tried not to smirk. Despite the bickering and the one-upmanship, he and Heath were now good friends and often laughed about their fight in the stable. "Believe me you won't be the only, first or last Cadet to catch a dose from somewhere. If it was a deal-breaker Starfleet would be half the size." He cast his eyes around the room.
"I'm here to talk about addiction." He smirked as the students all groaned. He looked at his feet momentarily. "Once upon a time there was a tall, dashing and devastatingly handsome doctor with a high forehead who was newly assigned to a Starship. He had a patient who wasn't responding to conventional treatments. His hobby was holography so he created a photonic theoretical model to test less orthodox protocols. The patient in question was the Ship's Counsellor. She was, frankly gorgeous, exotic because she wasn't entirely Human and he had to admit he had a crush on her. But he was her doctor and that was a line he would never cross." He raised his finger to emphasize the point. "However, he had a perfect replica on the holodeck who was every bit as beautiful and he was forced to spend a lot of time with her while he sought alternative treatments and the ethical lines with her weren't as clearly defined because she was just a hologram. Oscar Wilde once said 'I can resist everything except temptation' and to him, she was exceptionally tempting. He found a successful course of treatment and his patient made a full recovery. But he kept going back to the holodeck to visit her alter ego. He gave her a personality that pleased him. She laughed at all his jokes, tolerated his bullshit and was loving and affectionate. She wasn't empathic like the real thing, but the computer was very clever at interpreting his body language and subtle cues and she was extremely responsive to his needs. In most ways she was his perfect woman. She never complained when he was late for dinner, she never disagreed with him. She became the object of his most exotic and erotic fantasies and in a very short time he was practically living on the holodeck, spending all his off duty hours there. Not long after that he was finding excuses to run simulations so he could sneak off and see her while he was on duty. Effectively he was having a love affair."
He stood up and began to pace slowly at the front of the room. "Then one fateful day the inevitable happened. He was found out. Not only were his colleagues complaining to their superior officer that they were carrying him, the Chief Engineer was looking for something else and noticed how many hours he was logging in the holodeck and investigated the programs he was running. He didn't report him initially. He gave him a chance to give her up but it wasn't that easy. He tried but he was in love with her, but more than that he was living in a world where his every desire was sated, his ego massaged and his imagination could run wild. It was as intoxicating and addictive to him as she was. He relapsed in less than a day. He just couldn't see that he had a problem. He wasn't hooked on narcotics, or alcohol. He was a doctor, he understood the nature of addiction and thought that made him immune. Addiction was something that happened to other, weaker mortals not spacefaring heroic doctors on the frontiers of both space and medical science." He rubbed his hands together as he paced, interlocking his fingers. "He was in love with a beautiful woman and living a wonderful adventurous life that was far beyond the mundane tribulations of the everyday. What was wrong with that? He was a consenting adult and she was a simulation, no one was taking advantage of anyone. The Chief Engineer could only turn a blind eye for so long and he ultimately reported him. He had to, it was his duty to both the ship and for the good of the doctor's patients but he didn't see it like that at the time. He felt angry and betrayed. Ironically it was the real Ship's Counsellor who grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, figuratively of course, and dragged him into the land of the real. He gradually made friends, good friends and he came to count the Chief Engineer, his Chief Medical Officer and the Counsellor among them, and got his career back on track. He was promoted a few years later and became Chief Medical Officer himself."
He paused for a moment. "Then another fateful day a new officer was assigned to the ship. She was, frankly gorgeous, exotic as she wasn't entirely Human as that seemed to be his thing and he had to admit he had a crush on her. But he was a doctor and he made damn sure that one of his junior doctors handled her transfer check-up so he could ask her out." He smiled at the memory. "However, she thought he was, and I quote," he held up a finger, "an 'arrogant wanker' and she told him so in the most colloquial of terms, including a few words in Orion that defied translation. The urge to run to the holodeck and recreate her was still there but he fought it and instead diverted his energy into winning the heart of his fair maiden. Eventually he won her over. He showed her that he had a soft, sensitive underbelly and the soul of a poet beneath the layers of bravado and she relented. She laughed at most of his jokes, didn't tolerate any of his bullshit for a second and was loving and affectionate. She wasn't empathic but she was very clever at interpreting his body language and subtle cues and she was extremely responsive to his needs. In every way she was his perfect woman. She chewed him out when he was late for dinner without letting her know, she frequently disagreed with him. She became the object of his most exotic and erotic fantasies and in a very short time I proposed to her." He smiled again. "And being a most discerning and intelligent woman she gave me a resounding no." The students laughed. "But I asked her again a couple of weeks later and she said yes that time. Her finding out married quarters have a lot more closet space may have been a factor, but I like to think it was love. She's sitting at the back of the room in fact. Living proof that behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes." He looked at her and smiled. "Thanks to her I'm pacing in front of you right now and not in an anti-grav chair… but that's another, much longer story."
He perched on the desk again. "So what is the moral of this cautionary tale?" He drew a deep breath. "I promise you, I absolutely guarantee that in the course of your careers you will make mistakes, you will make errors in judgement and you will have to accept responsibility and move on because ultimately what will define you as an officer is how you land, not how you stumble or fall. If you are struggling with a problem, or someone you know is, it is your duty as a member of Starfleet to report it, to get them help both as a cadet or an officer. Not only for the good of your ship, you have a moral obligation to support your fellow crewmen. No matter where you are stationed it is your colleagues that will keep you alive out there as much as any technology will. You have to work as a team and know to your bones that you can trust the people around you as much as you would a brother or sister that loves you. There's no room for bullying, no room for ridicule and no room to turn a blind eye to someone in distress whether they want the help or not." He paused. "I was lucky, my addiction could easily have cost the lives of my patients but it didn't and the officers around me didn't write me off as a sick freak who screws holograms, although a few called me that, and worse, to my face. Mostly they supported me through what was a dark time and I hope that when you graduate and take up your posts you will support others just as they did because one day you may need someone to catch you."
The petite Green Woman approached him as the group filed out of the room. "Did you enjoy my lecture?" he asked. "It was hard to spot you in the crowd while you were trying to melt into the floor."
Taryn walked up and put her arm around their youngest child, her hair white at the temple but otherwise little had changed. "Trip, it's hard enough being a cadet without your Dad admitting to everyone in your class that he's a recovering holo-addict who had a torrid romance with a non-sentient hologram."
"I liked it actually." Cadet Edara Barclay stated. "It was an important message. You know what the competition is like here? Everyone stepping on each other's necks to get ahead and shine. People forget there is no I in team too easily." She smiled, "Besides, Barclay is a reasonably common name. I'll just tell people we aren't related."
"Thank you Baby. It makes your old Dad proud to know the fruit of his loins is disowning him publicly." Trip replied with a smirk as she turned away.
"No one wants to hear about your loins Dad." the cadet shouted over her shoulder as she left the lecture theatre.
"I want to hear about your loins." Taryn told him sympathetically as she rubbed his arm.
"To what do I owe the pleasure Professor Barclay?" he asked with a smile. "They don't usually let you out of Daystrom this early in the day."
"I heard there was a sexy man giving a lecture in here and I thought I'd come and see if he was free for lunch, but as you're here I might as well ask you I suppose." She smirked as he put his arm around her waist and pulled her into a kiss.
"Let's skip lunch and go to my office." he whispered.
"We could go home? We have the place all to ourselves now the kids have all moved out? she suggested as he kissed her neck.
"My office is closer." he replied and gazed meaningfully into her eyes.
"Good point, well made." she said and took his hand and lead him towards the door when his combadge beeped.
"Houghton to Barclay. Yet again I have a queue of cadets trying to show me their balls or convinced their dicks are ridden with pox. Did you just give your addiction lecture? I'm an administrator these days, I've never been a specialist in venereal disease!"
"I don't know what you're talking about Houghton, Barclay out." He smirked at his wife as they left the room.
"Now do you understand how he became a holo-addict even though he's more confident in this timeline?" Andrews asked Geordi and Data as they lurked unseen at the back of the room. "I brought you here because he can explain it much better than I ever could."
"Does this mean we succeeded? He is teaching at the Academy and she is a Professor?" Data asked.
"No, it's not enough. The Federation falls to the Dominion in the next five decades." Andrews admitted. "They're teaching the wrong subjects. They make huge innovations in terms of medical science but not the technological leaps forward society would make if he was an engineer and she specialised in inorganic life."
"So what was the point of all this?" Geordi asked. "Not to mention we have a serial rapist on the loose on our Enterprise."
"Not every Joshua Barton ends up in foster care. In some timelines he was raised in a loving environment with his grandmother and never met Lisa Meadows. She's very much a factor in his potential psychosis. It's… have you heard of folie à deux?" Andrews asked.
"A shared delusion or psychosis between two individuals." Data stated.
"They feed off each other like symbiosis. She enables him and feeds his trauma like it's yeast. It blows out of all proportion and she feeds her own twisted drives with his victims when he's done with them." Andrews explains. "No foster care, no Lisa and he's a functional member of society."
"So what happens now?" Geordi asked.
"I thought it would be enough. I was wrong." Andrews replied dejectedly. "I don't think we can save the Federation."
"I do not accept that. Data stated. "If we can save the people killed in 19th century London and neutralise the ship in orbit we can save the Federation."
"That's just a huge undertaking, it would require a temporal incursion of a level we've never done before." Andrews stated.
"Let us handle it our way?" Geordi asked.
"No, I can't authorise that, the clean-up alone…" Andrews argued. "I'll send you to another location." he agreed reluctantly. "See if we can make a better future this time."