this is a longfic that is most up to date on AO3: /works/49563148/
it takes place in an AU in which Data survives, destroyed his emotion chip at the end of 'Descent', and the events of Picard don't happen (so, Agnes Jurati is still a Daystrom researcher.) that's all you need to know before going in - thank you so much for reading!
Data let down the blinds on the long, wide windows overlooking the Daystrom Institute building complex. At dusk, moths would begin to become entranced by the white fluorescent ceiling lights panels inside and hurt themselves. He watched a hawk moth unstick itself from the window and fly away freely as he brought down the last blind. Although Data and Doctor Jurati's mutual scrupulosity about the moths irritated their graduate students, it had solidified their friendship.
As he returned to his desk to take his things and go home for the evening, a sensor array in the lab lit up blue to alert Data that Alpha-three-one was speaking.
Data perked up. Alpha-three-one rarely spoke unless it was spoken to.
"Data," the translator said, as the exocomp lifted its foot, swivelled its tool replicator, and flicked the prongs on its head.
Data crossed the lab to Alpha-three-one's home compartment installed in the wall, where it kept its toys and re-charging equipment. He began to type at a PADD linked to the lab's communication transcoder, which translated his words into a visual of exocomp sign-language on a wall display in Alpha-three-one's compartment. "What is it, Alpha-three?" he said in Exocomp Sign.
"I am tired," Alpha-three-one said. "I am so very tired."
Alpha-three-one was among the first generation of exocomps: those manufactured by Doctor Farallon herself, rather than by other exocomps. Having difficulty adapting to the increasingly complex and sophisticated social life of the autonomous exocomp colony, it had returned with others of its age to the Daystrom Institute to help Data and Doctor Agnes Jurati in research to develop repair and communication interfaces for artificial neural networks.
"Yes," said Data. "You are unhappy." Alpha-three-one, unlike the other lab exocomps, had never learned particularly well to play or to amuse itself. Sometimes it deactivated itself, leaving itself to be found and reactivated again when there was research it might help with. It had been doing this more frequently, lately, even though a recent diagnostic had revealed nothing mechanically or computationally wrong with it. This concerned Data, but Alpha-three-one would not explain why when it was asked, and Data did not wish to be intrusive.
"I wish very much to see Doctor Farallon."
Xenoanthropological reports suggested the attitude of the colony exocomps towards their creator was unequivocally negative. But the first-generation exocomps were confused; conflicted; ambivalent. On the few occasions that Doctor Farallon visited the lab at Daystrom, they avoided her, or obstructed her work with them by deliberately malfunctioning. Occasionally, they attacked her - Alpha-three-one had heated its replicated tool so that it burned her fingers when she touched it.
Farallon, then, had struggled to maintain her temper: pale hands quivering, she picked Alpha-three-one up in a vicelike grip as if to throw it against the wall, and refrained only as Doctor Jurati brought her a container of ice water to put her hands in. Data watched as Alpha-three-one did nothing at all, when it was put down. Perhaps it was used to being treated roughly.
Nonetheless, when Farallon was away, some of the lab exocomps expressed a desire that she should return. Data sometimes wondered why Alpha-three-one in particular seemed to remain so attached to a person who was cruel to it (when she was not indifferent.)
"I do not know when Doctor Farallon will return," Data typed. In truth, it seemed unlikely that she would, or that her research would ever again involve exocomps. She was a proud woman, and her relative failure to understand and work with her own creations had injured her pride. "Shall I comfort you, instead?" And it meant nothing to her to abandon them.
"Yes, please." This surprised Data. Alpha-three-one had never asked for anything from him before.
Retrieving a touch-code tool from the wall compartments containing prototype devices, Data applied it to Alpha-three-one and slowly delivered one of its sub-routines. By manually re-patterning neural activity, various sub-routines - 'touch-codes' - were able to break exocomps out of aversive mental loops and temporarily alleviate psychological suffering. It could be compared, Data had explained to visiting cyberneticists from Cambridge University, to being given a deep hug. Alpha-three-one's internal fan whirred, a sign of absorption in a pleasant stimulus.
"Thank you," said Alpha-three-one, with a deeper, pulsing whir, as Data began to apply another, different sub-routine. Its circular replicator port slowly rotated.
The exocomps, having been designed by Doctor Farallon for strictly utilitarian purposes, were never intended to be able to bond with each other. However, after developing the sign-language among themselves, they had told the Daystrom Institute they wished to experience more direct forms of social connection. Therefore, the lab had developed the touch-code tool, which exocomps could replicate in order to comfort each other.
"I wish to give you something back," said Alpha-three-one, as Data put the touch-code tool away. His eyebrows raised. It was the first time Alpha-three had expressed such a sentiment.
"Alpha-three," Data said with a faint and habitual smile he knew that exocomps could not perceive, "It is enough that you help me with my research."
"There," signed Alpha-three-one, as it inserted the touch-code tool into the ODN conduit providing access to Beta-one-zero's central neural junction - the exocomp homologue of the human spinal cord. "Good, Beta-one." Beta-one-zero's fan whirred as the fibre optic cables connected and the neural instructions were delivered. "Does that feel better?" he said, and Data recognised the body language of his own virtual translator avatar in Alpha-three's signing.
Beta-one did not respond. Perhaps, having never experienced touch-codes before, it was busy processing a new type of sensory stimulus for the first time. Or perhaps it was processing a backlog of complex and difficult thoughts about the exocomp colony: from which it had arrived last night, after being cast out.
Alpha-three rapidly detached and re-attached the fibre-optic cable to the conduit, as Doctor Jurati and Data had taught it to do. It had been found during their testing that staggering the flow of instructions by this method intensified and prolonged the felt sense of relief.
Beta-one signalled for Alpha-three to detach the tool, so that it could sign something. When Alpha-three did so, Beta-one paused a second in tentative hesitation. ".. I wish to go back to the colony," it signed.
From his LCARs station on the far side of the lab, Data's brow furrowed as he stroked S. & P., Doctor Jurati's white and grey cat. It seemed clear, from the condition Beta-one had been in when it had arrived at the lab, that the colony did not want it back. Perhaps Beta-one had been unable to perform cognitive work to the standard necessary for the colony's infrastructure projects. Or perhaps Beta-one was seen as too socially needy: stoicism had emerged as the ruling virtue of colony exocomp culture. In any case, it seemed unwilling to talk about it. Data was not sure whether exocomps were capable of feeling shame. It had been observed by xenoanthropologists, however, that colony exocomps used the verbal threat of being forced to rely on the Daystrom Institute's goodwill as an effective form of social control. This suggested that colony exocomps were in some sense disturbed by the prospect of being dependent.
"It is difficult for exocomps to realise what we are feeling, or what makes us feel what we feel," signed Alpha-three. "It is even more difficult for us to communicate it with others. For example, I used to often wish to see Doctor Farallon. I wanted her to break parts off me or to throw me against the wall. I thought that was what I needed. But over time, I learned that the way Doctor Farallon treated me made me feel unhappy."
Alpha-three was deliberately making itself vulnerable to Beta-one's disapproval by admitting to affiliating in this way with Doctor Farallon, Data suddenly realised. Perhaps its goal in doing so was to attempt to establish mutual trust.
Beta-one did not say anything, but flicked its prongs to show that it acknowledged Alpha-three. As Beta-one fell still again, Alpha-three began to re-apply touch codes. "Can you feel the hurt leaving your body?" Data had asked other exocomps the same question in the process of testing the prototype device.
For a few seconds, Beta-one did not respond. Then: "Yes," it signed. It rolled its replicator port to show that it was thinking, and Alpha-three waited. "Can the touch-code tool be used to apply pain?" it asked hesitantly. Data, listening, blinked with concern and bemusement.
"No, it cannot," signed Alpha-three. "Professor Data and Doctor Jurati will never use the tool to punish you. You are free to try to reconcile with the colony if you wish, or go somewhere else."
Beta-one tilted its visual sensors up towards Data, who was watching the exchange quietly from his LCARS station. ".. If I wish to stay here, what am I required to do?"
"If you wish, you may help with the research project," signed Alpha-three. "We are developing tools and medicine, such as touch-codes and translator devices, that are meant to make life easier for exocomps and other synthetic lifeforms. Maybe if life is easier for them, they will not feel the need to cast each other out, or be unkind to each other."
"I understand," signed Beta-one.
The two machines whirred together. Perhaps Alpha-three might eventually oversee the introduction of the touch-code technology to the colony exocomps, Data thought. Certainly, Data hoped it would, although the colony was resistant to outside influence, and especially from organic lifeforms such as Doctor Jurati. Moreover, Alpha-three had limited standing in their community, being unfortunately regarded as a kind of mental defective: someone too entrained in old ways of life to adapt to new developments, and tainted by its connection to the hated Doctor Farallon. However, Data could think of no one better to guide the colony in the proper use of the technology - if they would only give Alpha-three a chance.