Jurati knew she had the time to stay, but she wasn't sure she wanted even for a minute to be suckered into what was surely Peanut Hamper's latest scam.
"..You said you don't like Betazoids," said Peanut, her voice still smaller and sadder than usual. "I don't either.. Want to talk about it?"
Jurati didn't turn around to face her. "No," she sighed, shoulders hunched. "Firstly, it's really just about their universities, and I don't let it affect how I treat them. Second, I don't feel like being blackmailed six months from now. And, anyway, you don't like anybody - except yourself."
Peanut Hamper didn't reply, so Jurati began walking away. She reached the door and turned the handle.
"..I wish I knew how to like people," Peanut Hamper said.
"Yeah, well, that makes two of us," said Jurati, pale hand tight around the door handle and teeth clenching in her jaw.
"When did you stop liking people?" said Peanut.
Peanut Hamper really did have a preternatural gift for getting under people's skin, Jurati thought. She'd asked herself the very same question two years ago, as she packed her PADDs and office trinkets away into a cardboard box, and removed her name-plate from the door of her Division of Advanced Synthetic Research office.
When her work for Maddox's neuronic cloning project still held promise, Jurati felt she was learning what it was like to like people: to enjoy being with them, to feel an easy sense of connection with them, a sense of belonging free from anxiety and doubt. With Bruce particularly, she had learned what it was like to feel this way. Her cynical side had savoured every second of it; her optimistic side had nonetheless hoped it wouldn't end in tears.
But of course Bruce's love was wholly conditional, in the end, on what you could do for his career. Of course relationships came second in his life to successful research. The same man had threatened Data's life for the chance of advancing his legacy: foolish and naive, Jurati had chastised herself, to have hoped the core of someone's personality could really change. Not good enough; not smart enough, Jurati had repeated under her breath that night two years ago, alone in her apartment, hitting her head with the ball of her palm.
"Ha - do you mean most recently, or the first time I can remember?" Jurati said, letting go of the door handle.
"Whichever you like," said Peanut. "I know this is my pity party. But if you want to join in, you can be the guest of honour." She lit up one of the glowing round lights inside her replicator port.
Jurati sighed. "Okay." She turned, and returned to the threshold of the makeshift brig. She sat down, arms wrapped around her knees folded up to her chest. "When I realised that I'd never be more than a middling cyberneticist; that I'd never be good enough for Bruce. When I was a teenager and my classmates started dating, and because I spent all my time reading, it was all just scary and confusing to me; I couldn't keep up at all. When my only friend at elementary school told me she only started hanging out with me because she didn't want to make me feel excluded. I mean, there's more, but those are the major bookends, so to speak." Jurati noticed the colour of Peanut Hamper's internal light slowly changing: from white, to blue, to pink, then orange. Pity party lights, she realised with private amusement. "Why, when did you stop liking people?"
"I didn't," said Peanut Hamper. "Because I don't think I ever started." She rolled slowly back and forth on her treads, again, and added more colours to the cycle of her glowing light. Jurati was just about to say something to fill the silence when Peanut spoke again. "Do you know what love is, Doctor?" she asked. Jurati blinked. "Because I don't think I know what it's like to feel love for anyone. And I don't know why."
It was indeed puzzling, Jurati thought. Peanut Hamper had grown up with every advantage in exocomp life: natural charisma, a father well-regarded by the colony, and skills that would be valued almost anywhere she went. "Yeah.." said Jurati, resting her chin on her knees. "You know, when we scanned your neural network after you arrived in the lab, I noticed that your sub-networks involved in basic emotional processing are less complex than average for exocomps. But Professor Data noticed that your sub-networks involved in social cognition are more complex than those of any exocomp he'd ever seen. He basically said they were off the charts. Maybe that disparity has something to do with your problems."
"Huh, that's funny. You know what I'd say to him?"
"What?"
"No shit, Sherlock!"
Jurati chuckled in spite of herself.
"So, do you think there's any way to fix it, aside from giving me some kind of horrific lobotomy? Or, I guess that would be a robotomy, heh heh."
Jurati groaned. "Let me think," she said.
She thought. It would be feasible to spend time developing a treatment for Peanut insofar as Data had apparently been given some kind of blank cheque from Starfleet Command to research whatever he liked. (Command had probably hoped he'd invent a new kind of photon torpedo or something, rather than spend his time rehabilitating tiny machines - more fool them, Jurati thought.) The science was the bigger obstacle: this would surely test and stretch their understanding of the exocomp mind more than any project before it.
"I think it depends," Jurati said. "It depends on what exactly you want us to do for you. What you really want to change about yourself, and what you're willing to give up - because there's always risks and trade-offs. Whether you're serious about this at all - because I have no way of knowing whether you are, or whether this is just a passing fancy, or even some kind of long con." She tipped her head and raised an eyebrow. "Are you serious?"
"I know that even if I say yes, you have no reason to believe me." Peanut switched off her party light. "How about this: sure, why not. At least it'll be something different."
"Okay," shrugged Jurati. She got to her feet, her unpleasantly stiff knees reminding her that every day brought her closer to the one on which she'd be forced to retire. Peanut's idea was, at least, something different and new. "Well, look," she said. "How about this: I'll make your case to Data. And when I'm here again next week, I'll let you know what he thinks."
"Yup," said Peanut Hamper, tilting up her nozzle to see Jurati go.
"Okay then," said Jurati, at the door. "Bye for now, I guess." She mustered a weak smile. "And thanks for inviting me to your pity party."
"Don't mention it."
"Mm-hmm."
"I mean it. Don't."
As she closed the door behind her, Jurati felt in her stomach something she hadn't felt since she'd walked into Maddox's lab four years ago: that she'd just bitten off a lot more than she could chew.