ROLLERCOASTER

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Mr Data And Miss Yar Send Their Regrets

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Chapter Two - The Halo

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Tasha woke up.

The first thing that she realised was that she was slumped in a half-seated position, with manacles chaining her wrists to the wall. She remembered the holding cell, the abduction, Fajo… She couldn't remember going to sleep. How had she fallen asleep in such a situation…? Perhaps she'd been drugged, or stunned. She certainly had a very strange, thick feeling in her head unlike that which normal sleep left her with. She blinked across at the other side of the cell.

The metal straightjacket was empty.

Data was gone.

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Data woke up.

As his systems calculated how long he had been offline for (3 hours, 17 minutes, 28 seconds) and attempted to ascertain what damage had been done by overloading his neural net into shutdown (results: unknown – insufficient information), he tried to get to his feet and found that he could not.

He was no longer bound – his limbs were unfettered, and there was no force field restraining him. Indeed, he could move… only, doing so was unusually difficult – terrifically so, in fact. For the first time that he could recall, he was acutely aware of his own heaviness, and he did not have the strength within him to lift such a weight. He realised as he attempted unsuccessfully to control the anxiety and distress arising from not being able to get up that his emotion chip had been overridden (oh no, oh shit no, not again, not again, not Her). It was only as he reasoned to himself that the chances of the Borg employing a Bounty Hunter to bring them their prey were negligible that he relaxed ever so slightly. He was still, however, physically and emotionally compromised, had no idea where he was, who his captors were or what their intentions were towards him and no clue as to Tasha's whereabouts. He was still, as Commander Riker had put it once, "lost on the silage sea with a hole in his canoe".

The door opened, and somebody walked in – a Romulan female that he had never seen before. As she approached, he saw that there was a large burn scar covering much of the left half of her face. She stood over him, gazing down with an expression of utter loathing as he tried in vain to get up again.

'Try as long as you like,' said the Romulan, 'it's quite amusing watching you flail like a newborn animal.'

Data stopped struggling. 'You have incapacitated my mobility somehow…'

'Correct,' replied the Romulan. 'Can you feel the device in the small of your back?'

With difficulty, Data moved his arm over so that his fingers could brush over a rough implant – 18.5cm by 7.75cm – embedded into the base of his spinal column.

'My own invention,' added the disfigured Romulan with an element of pride. 'I call it the Inhibitor. I'm glad to see that it works.'

'Why has the Romulan Empire gone to such expense to bring me here?' Data asked. 'What do you intend to do with me?'

The Romulan crouched down and pushed her face closer to Data's. 'Commandeered equipment doesn't ask its new owners what will become of it.'

'If I have indeed been commandeered by the Romulans as a piece of equipment or even a weapon, then why have I been woken? Why am I not still offline, being disassembled and studied? Why inhibit my movements and override my emotional controls?'

The Romulan's stance didn't alter. 'You don't know who I am, do you?'

Data shook his head weakly.

'My name's Poklar,' the Romulan continued. 'Sound familiar now?'

'There was a mention of a Romulan scientist named Poklar in a report given by a colleague of mine several years ago,' Data replied. 'She had been able to access some of the computer files of a Romulan Commander…'

'I'm not just any scientist,' interrupted Poklar. 'I'm one of the greatest experts in cybernetics in the Empire. And for the past six years, I have made it my sole pursuit in life to study the Soong models. In short, to study you. Not to understand you, not to recreate you, but to control you. You are a menace, android, but you can be made useful… with help from devices such as the Inhibitor.'

'How does one study something that one has never seen?'

'Who said I'd never seen you?'

'To my knowledge,' Data reasoned, 'you have not. I do not believe that we have been in one another's presence before now.'

'Oh,' Poklar replied, 'but we have.'

'But I cannot recall…' Data trailed off. 'Lore.' He blinked up at Poklar. 'When you say "you", you are referring to the plural, are you not? You are referring to both Soong models – to my brother Lore as well as myself. I heard that he was briefly captured by the Romulans before escaping…'

'You wouldn't stop giggling,' Poklar replied, dreamily. 'Of course, we weren't equipped with any of the technology that we have now – we had nothing to make you comply but physical restrains and an attempt at persuasion. It had no chance of subduing you. You wouldn't stop giggling.'

'That was my brother,' Data reminded her. 'That was not me. Lore is gone now. There is only me.'

'There is only you,' echoed Poklar. She paused, momentarily. 'You were still giggling when you ripped yourself free of the bars holding you down. You were still giggling when you snapped the spine of my lab partner – my husband - and used his weapon to blow a computer bank up in my face. You were still giggling when you stopped at the door… when you could have just gone, you could have just walked free, but you turned back and kicked me in the belly because you could see that I was pregnant. I was pregnant…'

She trailed off. Data took in a deep, trembling breath. He had never really been forced to face up to the results of Lore's Sadism with his emotions functioning before now.

'I can only apologise on my brother's behalf,' he replied, 'and I do – most sincerely. He was a deeply disturbed being. But he is gone.' He lowered his tone in confession. 'I killed him myself.'

'There is only you,' repeated Poklar.

'That is correct.'

'There is only you, Lore.'

'No! No, I am not Lore. I am…'

'"I am all the daughters of my father's house, and all the brothers too"… You do like the Human poet Shakespeare, don't you?'

'I do like Shakespeare,' Data replied. 'I like dramas and detective adventures… I like Terran Classical music, and 20th Century musicals, and have recently discovered a fondness for the works of Sir David Bowie. I like Picasso. I like cats. Lore seemed only to like his own elevation and the torment and destruction of all other things. I am not Lore. Please believe that.'

'But,' Poklar reiterated yet again, ' there is only you. And you will know my pain.'

'I already know your pain,' Data reasoned. 'I too have lost a child. I too have recently been bereaved of a former romantic partner. I too have been the recipient of Lore's cruelty.'

'I didn't mean emotionally,' replied Poklar. 'I meant physically.' She stood up, towering over the prone android once more. 'You've never felt pain, have you? You thought your creator made you untouchable, didn't you?'

'Actually, that is no longer true. Recently there was…'

'Built without the capacity for pain,' interrupted Poklar. 'Invulnerable – aloof from we poor animals, yes?'

'Until recently, I would have…' managed Data before being cut off again. Poklar had clearly decided upon her address some time ago and had no interest in allowing an unexpected response to make her deviate from her prepared speech.

'You see, that's where I come in,' Poklar continued, unabashed. 'I used to study you, but now I have become your tutor. I intend to teach you to feel agony.'

Poklar turned, and started walking towards a locker in a corner of the cell.

'And how is this intended to benefit the Romulan Empire?' Data asked.

Poklar didn't reply.

'Do the Senate or the Romulan Military even know that I am here?'

There was still no answer as she opened up the locker.

'Are you angry with me because I eliminated Lore before you had the opportunity to exact a personal revenge upon him for his violence towards you?'

Poklar turned around; the object that she had retrieved from the locker in her hands. It was a dull, heavy metal ring the circumference of his cranium, with a single, 48cm tail of interlocking joints trailing down from it. Long needles protruded from both the ring and the tail throughout. The design was crude – or perhaps it had been deliberately created to appear positively Medieval, to create an air of fear and horror about the device.

'I call this the Halo,' announced Poklar. 'I'm sure you can make an educated guess as to its intended application.'

'To simulate physical pain in Soong model androids.'

'Correct. I have other prototypes as well, in case this one doesn't work, but I have to admit – the Halo is my favourite. I'm confident that it will be very effective.'

She walked back over to him and fitted the ring over his head so that the tail ran down the centre of his back. He did not have the strength to struggle as she began pushing the needles into him – even if he had, he did not believe that an attempt to fight would have benefited him – he was certain that he would merely have been sent offline again until the device was fitted.

'Doesn't hurt,' muttered the Romulan as she buried the needles beneath his synthetic skin, 'not yet. Are you ready to be introduced to pain?'

'I have already been "introduced", as you say, to that sensation.'

Poklar pushed in the last needle with a frown. 'What?'

'I have been trying to tell you throughout our conversation,' Data replied. 'After the second Borg attack on Earth, some of the Borg boarded the Enterprise – including their Queen. I was abducted, and had organic skin grafted onto me. I was able to feel both pain and tactile pleasure – both were used in the attempt to make me release certain encryption codes, and to join with them.'

Poklar stared at him. 'I knew that.' He could tell from her expression that she was lying.

'Furthermore,' Data added, 'when I turned against them, I released a tank of plasma coolant in order to destroy the Queen. It stripped the organic flesh from my body. It hurt. So, I do already know your pain in a physical sense. I know what it is like to burn.'

Poklar blinked, and knelt back from him. 'For how long?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'You say that all your flesh corroded away. So it can't have hurt for very long.'

'3.17 seconds,' replied Data. 'But, to an android…'

'Three seconds?' Poklar scoffed. 'Pain doesn't work that way for the rest of us. Our flesh isn't disposable. When we burn, we keep on burning, for hours… days… weeks… months. The pain goes on, and on and on. Do you want to know what that feels like?'

'No,' said Data, truthfully.

Poklar reached behind his head and tinkered with a dial just above the tail of the Halo. Then, she sat back again and watched him intently.

At first his body did not seem to know what the sensation was, even though he had experienced it before. On a basic level, it was something that his reflexes wanted to get away from, although when he weakly recoiled, the feeling he was trying instinctively to escape stayed with him. The sensation changed swiftly from an indistinct unpleasantness into something far more tangible – a searing, blistering pain over the whole of the surface of his body. It was the feeling of flesh dissolving in a gas of plasma, only it was everywhere, not just on his arm and face. Was this what She had felt, he wondered. Was this the pain that She had felt when he had pulled her under the plasma cloud to burn with him? Had She deserved such an end? He had felt at the time that She had, but now…?

The 3.17 second mark came and went. 5 seconds. 10… 30…. a minute, and still he burned. He was aware of a strange sound – a harsh, metallic screech that he assumed had to be issuing from him, even though his teeth were fiercely gritted shut. After 94.75 seconds, Poklar reached for the dial again, and the pain subsided.

Poklar smiled gently as he struggled to collect himself.

'You don't scream with your mouth – did you realise that?'

Data did not answer. For some reason, he was only superficially aware of what was going on in front of him – it was as though he were watching it on a screen… watching it on a screen from a table in Engineering, surrounded by blank drone faces while She smiled down at him.

'When you scream,' Poklar continued, 'it seems to come from deep within you – the very core of you. The agony and the horror completely bypasses that box in your throat full of the vocal tones of your creator. It's the one time that you don't sound like Soong – you sound like… like what you are, like a machine. Maybe, for the first time, we have been witness to your true voice, Lore.'

'I am not Lore. Lore is dead.'

Only, in Engineering, in his mind's eye, She ran her fingers through his hair and whispered; 'it doesn't matter. The name they gave you doesn't matter. Data… Lore… they are meaningless now. You are both. You are neither. You. Are. Mine.'

Poklar leaned in close, excitement in her eyes. 'I want to hear it again!'

'Why are you doing this to me? I am not Lore!'

'Scream again.'

In Engineering, She added 'yes, scream. Do it for me. Show me how much I horrify you. Show me how much I haunt you. You owe me that much.'

'No,' breathed Data.

Poklar reached behind him.

The pain was different this time – it was deep and abdominal, as though the whole of his torso was crushing itself in a long, agonising spasm. He was determined not to make that sound again. At first it was almost impossible keeping the metallic "scream" from issuing forth, but after a while, he began to find that it actually helped – concentrating on remaining quiet diverted the core of his focus away from the pain. The pain was artificial. He was not being damaged. He would not scream. He would not scream.