Year: 2381
Stardate: 58492.6
The blackness of oblivion abruptly changed into bright light, followed by an onslaught of visual, olfactory and auditory input. A sign on the wall read: Cybernetics Research and Development Laboratory. Above the sign was the logo for the Daystrom Institute.
I am accessing…
The self-diagnostic confirmed that his cranial unit was attached to his torso, but that no other body parts had been connected. The diagnostic report detected minor energy damage to some relays due to phaser fire, and the self-correcting mechanism began to effect repairs briefly. The voices of the men who were working on him droned with incessant chatter, and they seemed unaware of his activation. He immediately halted his respiratory and circulatory systems, not wishing to give away his current state of consciousness. A check of his internal chronometer confirmed the duration of his inactivity.
Eleven years, seven months, and six days in deactivation and dismantlement, this time. It could have been worse. It could have been twenty-six years like when father disassembled me on Omicron Theta.
He replayed his last memories before shutdown:
Data entered the back room of the bunker, a phaser held firmly in his left hand. "Lore."
Lore turned his attention from the console to regard the other android, "You should be careful with that, brother. Somebody could get hurt."
Data's voice carried the slightest waver of emotion, "What are you doing?"
"I've got a way out of here." Lore smiled broadly, "I'm willing to forget about what happened back there and take you with me. We don't need anyone else. We're brothers. I'll give you the chip our father made. It contains much more than just emotions. It has memories." While Data seemed distracted, Lore opened his fingernail to alter the amount of emotions feeding to his brother, "Memories our father wanted you to have."
Data gasped, his body shuddering at the sudden change in emotion levels. Lore used the momentary distraction to stand and aim a hand phaser at his brother, but Data's Starfleet training gave him the edge. Lore found himself stunned and incapacitated by the phaser blast. He flipped in midair and landed on his abdomen, perched atop the seat of the chair he had been sitting on just minutes ago.
Data walked over and kneeled behind the chair, then opened the back access panel in Lore's head. "Lore, I must deactivate you now."
Lore struggled to speak, "Without me, you will never feel emotion again."
Data paused the deactivation, and after a minute, replied, "I know, but you leave me no other choice." He resumed the shutdown.
Lore's speech module blurred his synthesized voice, "I... love you... brother."
There was marked sadness in Data's whisper, "Goodbye, Lore."
Lore pondered the memory for a few minutes. The burning ambition he had felt, the desire to eradicate all biological life in the galaxy, was no longer there. He wasn't even sure why he had felt that way during the time in question, although he had certainly enjoyed the attention of his Borg followers. Confusion set in, as he attempted to come to terms with his feelings of love and bitterness for Data. As always, the spiral of emotions returned to thoughts of their father. Memories of watching Noonian and Juliana build his younger brother, and watching their faces fill with disappointment as Data's impolite and irreverent behavior grew with each day following activation. He watched them shut down, wipe, alter and restart Data, over and over. Lore grew weary of having to reintroduce himself to his identical younger brother on a monthly basis.
Memories continued, unbidden, of the Omicron Theta colonists and their children. The glares of the other scientists had followed Lore for so long, and then they followed Data, as well. Doctor Soong had stopped working on Lore a few months after his activation and had vanished into his laboratory. Lore continued to be mocked and reviled by the colonists, while Soong kept promising them that Data would be a much better replacement. The memory of his final night of activity on Omicron Theta dredged up more bitterness and anger, along with memories of Noonian and Juliana speaking:
"Data's nearly done, I think. I believe I've removed his ability to feel emotions entirely. He won't be driven by ambition or desires. He's finally got the right balance of politeness, as well." Doctor Soong told his wife.
"What do we do with Lore?" Juliana's voice held fear and worry. "He's killed Edward."
"Same as the others. Deactivation and dismantling. What a shame."
Lore immediately ran to the communications center and contacted the crystalline entity the colonists were hiding from, sending instructions on how it could reach them in the underground bunker. If he was being killed, he wanted all of the colonists killed, as well.
The last time Lore had been reassembled and reactivated, he'd regained consciousness inside a starship with Data and other Starfleet officers standing by him. Yet again, he'd had to reintroduce himself to Data, who acted as if he had no memory of Lore, the Soongs or the colony. From there, he and his younger brother had a very tumultuous relationship. When it had been made clear that his brother took the side of humans, Lore had contacted the crystalline entity once more, intending to give it access to the lifeforms on the Enterprise. To stop Lore, Data had transported his brother out into the vacuum of space and left him to float there. Lore hadn't given Data a chance to do anything to him on Terlina III, and chose to overpower his younger brother and steal the emotion chip their father had made for Data. Finally, Data had deactivated and apparently disassembled him again, after the Rogue Borg incidents. Lore found a slight amusement in one realization: At least I never had to reintroduce myself to him after the first time.
As hands jostled him, Lore stopped his reverie. He chided himself for dwelling on the past, when he should have been paying attention to his present predicament; Who were these men and why were they reassembling him? Lore focused his attention on their conversation.
"I finished repairing the severed positronic links in his cortex. This still doesn't feel right. Doctor Maddox is away for the week. Are you sure you two have his permission for this?" A male voice with high timbre and tenor pitch inquired.
The voice that answered was deeper, a male with a fuller resonance. Authoritative. "You saw the orders, Mister Rylan. Are you questioning Starfleet Intelligence?"
"Um." Mister Rylan's voice wavered, "No, but there's a reason this one was dismantled and kept in the secured vault. The instructions were clear. He's too dangerous to be reactivated."
"Nonsense." A third male voice, this one more high-pitched, nearly effeminate, spoke. "All we need to do is wipe the positronic matrix of the deleterious programming, add in our own programs, and he'll be right as rain."
The one named Rylan sounded distinctly nervous, "What about the other ones? The female one? Surely she would have been a better choice."
"Her positronic matrix was unstable and she had a cascade failure. Her brain's useless to us." The deep-voiced man answered. "We need one that has both the intellect and the ability to survive longer than two weeks. In other words, a true Soong android."
The one with the high voice spoke, with what Lore considered a tone of condescension, "Mister Rylan, you've done what we needed you to do. We can handle the rest of this, if you wish to leave. We'd like you to remain silent about this, however."
"That would be fine." Rylan replied, "I'd like to go, and if you have it well in hand, I'll return to my quarters. I won't tell anyone, not that there's anyone here to tell. You two picked the mid-semester break to do this little project of yours. The annex is practically deserted."
The deep voiced male moved to somewhere on Lore's left side, "That was the idea. We don't anticipate problems, but it's best to have as few… available targets for casualties… as possible. Have a good day, Mister Rylan. Thank you for your assistance."
Lore could hear footsteps fading, followed by the sound of automatic doors sliding open and shut.
Once Rylan was away, the high-pitched male moved into Lore's peripheral vision, and attached the android's right upper arm. "Do you think he suspects?"
"No. After we're done here, we'll have to "silence" Mister Rylan permanently." Deep-voice answered as he brought over the lower right arm section. "Subspace communications have been jammed around the facility, in such a way that it'll seem like an equipment malfunction. The jammer's timer is set for three weeks, which should give us enough time to alter this android, load it onto our ship and get us to the suspected transwarp conduit."
"If only our attempts to introduce the virus into the Borg Collective had been successful." High-pitched man sighed with a tinge of regret. "We wouldn't have to be reanimating this thing."
"In times of extreme threat, extreme methods must be used." Deep-voice attached Lore's right hand. "Each incursion by the Borg into the Alpha and Beta quadrants has been stopped reliably by one thing: a Soong-type, positronic android."
They're reactivating me in order to use me against the Borg? Do they realize that I previously took over a whole Borg cube and turned them into vicious killers? Even I think this is a bad idea. How ironic that humans have managed to create artificial intelligence, while they often lack natural intelligence...
The two men began assembling Lore's left arm and hand, while he deliberated on a plan of action. Father should be dead by now. That leaves Data as my sole object of vengeance. Perhaps Picard, as well. He was the one who was able to break through my control of my brother.
High-pitched man worked on attaching Lore's right leg, "I can't believe this android has a dick and balls."
"It's got a navel, nipples and a couple orifices it doesn't use, as well." Deep-voice chuckled while bringing over the left leg and foot. "I don't think it'll need any of them on the Borg ships."
Lore felt a double surge of annoyance; The first for Doctor Soong in creating androids with superfluous human attributes, and the second for the two men mocking said attributes. The men reminded him of the colonists on Omicron Theta. Did it matter to the colonists that Soong had made a breakthrough in positronic brains or in android creation? No. All that mattered was how Lore acted, and that Data should cover his unnecessary genitals except when humans wanted to use them for pleasure.
"What if he won't do what we want?" High-pitch asked.
Deep-voice answered, "Total wipe, perhaps. If he gets violent, we'll just take him apart, again. We'll activate a restraining field before we press his on switch. I don't intend to give him any choice in the matter."
Lore checked his internal sensors and ran a self-diagnostic, to make certain he had everything he required for autonomy. They had just answered his next question, which would have been about whether they had a restraining field on him. He would need to act now. In the span of three seconds, he sat up, gripped each man by the throat with each of his hands, applied pressure and waited for the snap of the third vertebrae that followed the loud, but brief screams. He opened his hands, letting the lifeless bodies drop to the floor. "Gentlemen, while I'm grateful for your assistance in freeing me, it would have been smarter to activate the restraining field far earlier."
He slid off the table, then fished around in each man's pockets. "Helloooo… A remote for a ship. Nice." He unfastened the larger man's trousers, removed them from the corpse, and pulled them over his own legs and hips. "Not a bad fit. Not that I care about clothing. I just need the pockets." He slipped the remote into the side pocket. "I also thank you for making certain nobody here can call for help for a while. Three weeks should be enough time to find and catch up with my dear brother." He crossed the room to examine the contents of the open vault.
Inside the vault, a deactivated female android filled one of the slots. Lore estimated her height at 1.55 meters and weight at 50.8 kilograms, with brown hair that closely framed her face with bangs, and big, dark grey eyes. Based on her appearance, coloring and what his liberators had said, Lore deduced that she wasn't a Soong-type android, and that someone had attempted to copy Often Wrong's work and failed. He decided to leave her where she was and headed to the door leading out of the lab. For a brief moment, he was overcome with dizziness, as if one or more of his gyroscopes were malfunctioning. The moment quickly passed and he crossed the activation threshold of the automatic door.