Part Twenty-Four

Omicron Theta Holography Education and Research Labs (OTHER)

Some three months later…

Lore slouched low in his slim, ergonomically padded swivel chair and tapped his finger on the computer keypad, highlighting any energy blips or anomalies he spotted in the feed coming in from the research center's prototype subspace radio telescope.

"Bored," he muttered with every tap, his unblinking eyes fixed on the array of eight monitor screens in front of him, each crammed with scrolling images, real-time animated graphs, and other data. "Bored, bored, boring, bored, bored…"

He upped the speed a few times, then a few times more, pushing the computer display to its absolute limit. At that extreme rate, the data feed flashed past so quickly, Lore almost ran the risk of missing something.

A slight smile tweaked his thin lips, and he sat up straight. This was a little more like it. He still found the menial task he'd been assigned as tedious as all hell, but at least he had to put some effort into catching and highlighting each energy blip before it left the screen.

"What the…! Hey, what did you just do?"

Lore felt his shoulders tense, and he tightened his jaw.

"Leave me alone, Ryan," he said, keeping his gaze fixed on the monitors. For added show, he began taking notes on all he saw, his pale fingers like a blur over the keypad.

"That's Dr. Harding to you, Technician," the research scientist snapped. "Why did my extremely delicate, extremely expensive subspace telescope just jump up its scanning speed?"

"Well, you had the scan rate set so dismally low," Lore said airily. "Perhaps the delicate darling got bored probing the same tired sector for hours at a time."

Harding stormed over to Lore's panel and stretched his arm past the android's speed-typing fingers to manually readjust the controls.

"I warned you against adjusting our settings without permission," the human said angrily. "Dr. Mathers warned you. You know very well the quality of the data we collect depends on precise, painstaking calibrations - not speed!"

Lore made no response, his yellow eyes still fixed on the monitors.

Harding roughly swiveled Lore's chair, glaring at the blank-faced android through his thick glasses.

"Be aware, android," he said. "You're only here as a favor to Dr. O'Donnell. If you can't handle the demands of this position, this lab does not require your services."

"All right, all right, enough!" Lore exclaimed. "I didn't do anything to warp your precious data."

"It's more than the data, Lore. It's your damn lazy arrogance. The crappy attitude you've shown around here since day one."

Lore rolled his eyes, but Harding rattled his chair, forcing the android to meet his angry stare.

"You think you're better than the rest of us?" he challenged. "That this kind of painstaking, detail-oriented work is somehow beneath you?"

"I consider myself a wasted resource, if that's what you're getting at," Lore sneered. "There's no question I'm faster and smarter than anyone here, that my processing speed—"

"I don't care about your processing speed," Harding snapped. "Having a supercomputer crammed in your head might make you fast, but it doesn't make you a team player. It doesn't prove to me that you have the chops to serve as an effective leader." He frowned. "There have been complaints."

"Then, take me off this project and give me my own lab," Lore said. "You can't deny my intelligence rates far beyond the demands of these low-status tech jobs you people keep throwing at me. Just because I don't have some fancy degree next to my name—"

"I've told you that doesn't matter. None of it!" Harding said firmly. "It's not about 'status' or 'degrees' here, it's about the work! This lab has rooms full of computers capable of recording our telescope's data in neat little rows, and they can all do it way faster and far more efficiently than I could. But that's not what I want. That's not what this project needs. This team is made up of minds, Lore – minds that can take raw data and bring it to the next level. Bright, trained people with passion and heart who understand what this project can mean for our future, our understanding of the galaxy around us! If you can't get it through your thick skull that this work isn't about elevating you, but doing what needs to be done, you're never going to advance past Technician, let alone get assigned a lab of your own. In fact…" He sighed through his nose and shook his head. "Take an early day, Lore. I'm going to have to redo all this anyway..."

"Redo…? Why?" Lore demanded. "I told you, the data's fine. You reset all the calibrations—"

"You really don't get it, do you," Harding said angrily. "You start taking short cuts, and everything you record becomes suspect. That means we can't use it, Lore. That means it has to be done again. And we don't have the time to make up for your shoddy work!"

Lore's yellow eyes hardened and he shot up from his chair. Harding took a startled step back, but Lore strode past him, aiming straight for the lab's heavy sliding doors.

"Hey," Harding called. "Where do you think you're going!"

"I'm leaving. I don't need this."

"You don't, eh?" Harding snapped. "Then consider this your final warning. If you're not back here tomorrow, on time and ready to pull your full shift, don't bother coming back at all. I have no use for a lazy, self-centered tech whose ego is bigger than his brain. And I'll put that in my evaluation!"

Lore spun on his heel, and Harding flinched. Lore smirked.

"And there it is," he said. "The fear. That ingrained human fear of the machine. That's what this is really about, isn't it? As much as you envy my abilities, you fear them too. That's why you've been foisting your gruntwork on me. To push the creepy robot out of your lab."

"I don't envy you, Lore, and I'm not afraid," Harding said. "Just very disappointed."

"Right. Go ahead and tell yourself that," Lore sneered. "But, we both know the truth."

Lore snorted and marched out, his pace quickening to a jog, then a run as he left the OTHER Labs building and headed past the fields and toward the river.

"Jealous bastard," he grunted as he ran, maintaining a steady pace faster than the fastest human sprinter. "He and Mather were no doubt in on this together. They knew my next promotion would qualify me to head a lab of my own. They'd never be able to compete against my superior intellect, so they conspired to drive me out."

He stopped at the river bank and lay back on the steep, grassy slope, pillowing his head on his arms as he stared up at the puffy white clouds.

"I hate this place," he muttered. "I hate everything about it. I hate its terraformed landscape, its imported plants, its transplanted animals, the insects in the grass, the ridiculous weather-control network… Idiot hypocrites talk about 'nature' and the 'natural environment' like it's something to revere, but this whole damn colony is as much a human-designed construct as I am!"

The faint sound of shrieks and laughter rose above the noise of rushing water, birdsong and chirping frogs. Lore sat up and focused his bitter stare on a distant ball game taking place several fields away. The colony kids had divided themselves into teams, it seemed, and they were cheering…cheering on a green-clad figure whose skin gleamed white-gold beneath the sun...

"Dee?"

Lore stood slowly, watching his brother maneuver the ball, skillfully dodging enemy players. He felt his fists clench, his chest tighten, involuntarily rooting the younger android on, on to the goal – until Dee passed the ball to a smaller green-clad child who then scored the winning point, and Lore's mouth fell open. The green team gathered around the child, praising and jostling her like a hero. Dee stood with them, smiling and slapping hands with his green-clad teammates, shaking hands with the yellow-clad team…

"Idiot!" Lore cried, well aware that no one could hear him from such a distance. "You could have scored that goal! But, no. No, he passed it off, gave the win to that underdeveloped human parasite! Where's your pride, Dee!" he shouted. "You're just like Father, holding back and letting them win! Another loser, from a family of losers!"

A warm, wet tear dripped from his eye...another... Lore swallowed hard and roughly wiped his face dry.

"God, I hate it here!"

The laughing children were spraying water at each other, at Dee, and Lore turned away, marching up the sloping bank toward his secret place…a small, rock-and-tree-covered island he'd found some months before, where the river's tributary streams met and joined together. He'd never seen anyone else there, it was too far a hike for most of the colonists. Even Dee kept his wanderings closer to home. So, Lore had the island all to himself.

Which was just the way he liked it…

To Be Continued...

References include - TNG: Datalore; Brothers; Descent I/II.

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