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Part Fourteen

Meanwhile, on Galor IV…

"Now the heroes were plenty and well known to fame
In the troops that were led by the Czar,
And the bravest of these was a man by the name
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar."

Lore looked up from the lab console he'd been trying to study, his head cocking almost of its own volition. Someone was singing...the boy...the son of the Starfleet security officer who served as something of a night watchman... Lore had discovered this boy came to the primary lab early weekday mornings to wait for his father to drive him to school.

"One day this bold Russian, he shouldered his gun
And donned his most truculent sneer,
Downtown he did go where he trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Young man, quoth Abdul, has life grown so dull
That you wish to end your career?
Vile infidel, know, you have trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir."

"Wha— Wha—"

Lore squeezed his eyes closed and tried again, his fist clenching with frustration and effort.

"What is that…s-song…you…are…s-s-singing?"

The boy looked at him and seemed to shrug.

"Just something silly we learned at school," he said, and went on with a few more verses, as if in demonstration.

Lore attempted a nod, but knew it came off looking more like a slight neck spasm. The boy couldn't be more than nine or ten...twelve, at the most. At least, that's what Lore assumed from his height, build, and voice. Even several weeks after the synaptic transfer, he was still having trouble processing sensory information…controlling his motor functions…

He had anticipated a few preliminary interface difficulties with this new android body, but nothing—nothing—like this! After all, when Charlie, and even Bertie, had first been activated, they hadn't lurched and staggered like some overdramatized version of Frankenstein's monster. They'd been a little clumsy, dropping things and stumbling now and then, but…

Lore had expected so much more of himself…

Week after week of awkward, strenuous fumbling had proven a terrible blow to Lore's pride. Lore was smarter, Lore was better! True, he'd had to help his father obtain some of the more difficult-to-find components for the D-6 form from less than savory sources but, despite its few slightly substandard parts, the body he now wore was infinitely more advanced than Soong's two primitive prototypes. Hell, it was infinitely more advanced than anything in this institute, probably in the whole Federation!

Why, then, was Lore finding this transition so damned difficult?!

He knew the answer on an intellectual level, of course. The computer shell he had always worn was radically different from this new android brain and body. Lore's 'eyes' were no longer miniaturized optic sensors, but actual eyes, synthetic organs, designed with pupils and retinas and optic nerve bundles that operated in the same squishy, fluid-filled manner as human eyes. It was the same with his other systems, his ears, his tongue, his sense of touch and smell… Synthetic muscles worked under his skin, controlled by nerve impulses from his positronic brain that were only partially voluntary. Like a human body, many of his new circulatory, respiratory, digestive, neural, and other functions were involuntary, and Lore found the lack of precision control over each system incredibly disconcerting. He had to learn everything, absolutely everything, from scratch: from finding his balance to retrieving and processing data files. And speaking was possibly the most complicated, and frustrating, new process of all.

Losing the effortless grace and ease of his holographic image was one thing, but the stilted, sputtering stammer… It was painful for him to listen to, let alone anyone else. He'd traded in his clean, efficient vocal synthesizer for what was essentially a complex, mushy, saliva-and-mucus-lined wind instrument, and the struggle to play it, to force his lungs and throat and tongue and jaw and lips to work together to form words…

It was nothing short of humiliating for a computer who'd always prided himself on exactness.

What Lore had to remember – what he kept telling himself to remember – was that, although he'd been conscious for some nineteen years, in this body he was brand new. No computer – no being – had ever been through a transformation like the one he'd just experienced. Never, in the whole history of human achievement…at least, as far as he knew. That meant Lore was first. He was still first. And first would always be best.

And there was a benefit to all his humiliating stumbling and bumbling – an entirely unexpected one at that.

Graves had given him the freedom he'd longed for: the freedom to wander around the institute. And, he'd only had to ask twice.

Lore expected the old man had done it out of guilt…or, perhaps, he was motivated by a kind of shame. Graves believed Lore to be damaged. Lore, himself, knew otherwise - he could feel his mind working, knew his processing, sensory, and emotive capabilities had actually been greatly enhanced. This, in itself, was a disconcerting realization, that this new positronic brain was so definitely an advancement over the computer form he'd believed so sophisticated for so long. But, Lore had caught Graves watching him lurching and tripping, stammering and drooling, and he'd seen him wince under his beard.

Graves could have deactivated him. It was clear enough the scientist feared the transfer had gone terribly wrong, that it had robbed Lore of his mind, his personality, his brilliance. It wouldn't have been hard to secretly, quietly scrap both Lore and the machine he'd helped the scientist construct to make the transfer possible.

But he didn't. He wouldn't. Not as long as he held even the slightest glimmer of hope that Lore might, one day, recover his faculties. That there was a chance the synaptic transfer technology could actually hold some promise after all…

And Lore was showing progress. It was slow…agonizingly slow…but it was real. Lore just had to be patient. He had to work and wait and wait and work, until all this foolish fumbling and stuttering really was no more than an act. It shouldn't take too much longer, a few more weeks, a month at the most… Then, he would act. And wouldn't Uncle Ira be surprised…

"Lore…? Lore, you faded out again. Are you OK?"

Lore blinked and focused on the boy. The child had moved closer to him, his eyes crinkled with concern. Lore tried on a smile, the odd sensation of synthetic muscles flexing under white-gold skin still leaving him a little squeamish.

"I am f-f-fine. Th-thank…you," he pronounced with effort.

The night watchman strode in to the lab, saw the pair, and frowned.

"Get away from that thing, Brucie," he said. "It's defective."

"I don't think it is, Father," the boy said. "I think it's getting better."

"Computers don't heal, Bruce, and they don't grow," the man instructed. "This thing is no more than a mechanical mannequin with a processing fault. But it's Graves's toy, and if he wants to keep it around, that's his business. Like that other one, down in Lab 42. Come on, you'll be late for school."

The child fixed the android with a curious stare, as if something inside him doubted his father's words. Lore met his gaze with a slow, triumphant smile that left the boy even more puzzled.

Lab 42! His brother was being held in Lab 42!

As the man grabbed the child's arm and guided him out the door, the android took in a deep breath and, slowly, awkwardly, began to sing a couple verses of the song the boy had taught him. It wasn't good, and it certainly wasn't melodic. The cadence was all wrong. But it was a start. The start of a real celebration.

"The sons of the Prophet were valiant and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But of all the most reckless, or so I am told,
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.

He said "Take your last look at the sunshine and brook
And send your regrets to the Czar
For by this I imply, you are going to die,
Count Ira Skavinsky Skavar…"

Lore laughed a very bright, very human sounding laugh, and shuffled his way to the corridor, smiling to the preoccupied lab techs as he went. His carefully practiced patience was finally paying off! He was going to see Charlie tonight. Lore had found his brother at last…

To Be Continued…

References include - TOS: Turnabout Intruder; What Are Little Girls Made Of; TNG: Datalore; Brothers; Descent I/II; Inheritance; The Schizoid Man; The Measure of A Man; Asimov's "The Positronic Man" (novel); "Abdul Abulbul Amir" (song) written in 1877 by Percy French and modified for this story.