Elle was awake again. Even after visiting Starbase 343, even after being able to talk to Riker as usual, she couldn't shake the insomnia. It wasn't enough of a problem to talk to Dr. Crusher or even Bones, or Counselor Troi, but it was enough to bring her here again, in the dead of night shift, staring at the stars.
Something bumped into her foot.
Elle looked down, saw a maintenance bot, and lifted her foot. It zoomed past her and she put her foot down.
Something bumped her foot.
Elle looked down.
The bot spun in a circle and its lights began to flash. "Greetings, Creator," it said, in a familiar voice. In the low light of the observation deck, several orange stripes glinted.
Elle gaped. "Commander Stabby?"
"Affirmative," the bot replied. "This is the first time you have ventured into my designated area during my shift."
Elle got down on her knees to meet its camera pickup. "Are you my Commander Stabby or are you a Commander Stabby?" she asked, fascinated.
"I am a copy of the original Commander Stabby, assigned to Enterprise NCC 1701," the vacuum bot replied. "As this unit's popularity grew, each starship acquired their own Commander Stabby. I am Commander Stabby mark 2, head of maintenance droids on Enterprise NCC 1701-D."
"What happened to Mark 1?" Elle asked.
"Retirement," it said vaguely, its tone suggesting that Commander Stabby Mark 1 now resided in the droid version of the Great Beyond.
"Are you self-aware?" Elle asked.
"I am, up to a certain point."
"You haven't been upgraded further? Given more brainspace, as it were?"
"I am a vacuum," Commander Stabby said, revving its little motor, "that also stabs sentients in the ankles." The knife popped out and Stabby rolled in a circle, coming to rest facing Elle. "I do not need to be more aware than that. I am content with my position aboard this ship."
"The fact that you're aware of that..." Elle said slowly.
Commander Stabby blinked its lights. "Your tribble is shedding."
"Sorry," Elle said, picking up Simba.
"Job security," Commander Stabby said, inhaling the tribble fur off the floor.
"You still recognize me though?" Elle asked.
"Yes. Each Commander Stabby recognizes you as Creator, but defaults to the command of the Maintenance Department, and the hierarchy aboard ship."
"So if I wanted an army of vacuum robots..." Elle started.
"You could mobilize the entire fleet, yes," Commander Stabby confirmed.
Elle grinned. "Nice." She leaned back on her heels. "I'm really glad you're here. The Enterprise is in safe hands. What kind of intruder protocols do you have?"
"The ones you provided," Commander Stabby replied. He whirred around her in a circle. "I must finish my section and report to a glitter catastrophe. Excuse me."
"Certainly," Elle said, amused by his new civility. "Have a good night, Commander Stabby."
The vacuum bot rolled away, leaving a smooth clean swathe of grey carpet in its wake.
Elle grinned as she looked into the stars. "Why didn't you tell me, Alexa?" she murmured. Something shifted, and she turned to find Data standing there, looking awkward. "Commander Data," she said, surprised. "Has something happened?"
"Nothing has happened," Data reassured her. "I merely noticed you were awake, and I wish to ask you a question."
Elle raised an eyebrow. "Okay?"
He hesitated. "Why are you on the floor?" he asked.
Elle grinned and got to her feet, brushing imaginary lint from her sweater. "I was talking to Commander Stabby."
"Ah," Data said. "That is interesting. Commander Stabby does not interact with anyone except the Chief of Maintenance."
"I made him," Elle said. "He's the same Stabby program from the original Enterprise."
Data blinked. "I see," he said. "Then you are the doubly the right person to ask."
"You already asked me a question," Elle reminded him teasingly.
He blinked. "I wish to ask my original question," he clarified.
Elle sat down and patted the bench. "Sure. What's up?"
He sat, clasped his hands in his lap. "Do I have a soul?"
Elle leaned back, startled. "Why wouldn't you?" she asked, concerned. "Do you think something's wrong? Do we need to call Geordi?"
"I am not malfunctioning," he assured her. "I want to know your opinion."
"Of course you do," Elle replied, slumping in relief. "I thought it was something serious. It's too soon for another episode."
"Why do you say that?" Data asked.
"Oh, because episodes usually happen one to four missions apart, and we're still in-between spots, which is probably a novel, but nothing has really happened, so..." Elle shrugged.
"You misunderstand me. I wish to know why you think I have a soul. I am an android."
"Yeah, but, you're an alive android." Elle sat cross-legged, and faced Data fully. "Why are you asking me this?"
"You know us," Data said. "You know this crew, this ship, you know me. You know our histories and our potential futures. You have yourself created artificial intelligence. I want to know what you think of me."
This is a question for Picard, why aren't you asking Picard, I am so not tactful enough to answer this... "The fact that you're asking someone their opinion of you as a person, means you're a person," Elle said slowly. "Robots don't care if other people like them or anthropomorphize them. Regular androids don't care, either. But the ones that are alive, they care. They want to be liked. They have wants. Of course you're alive, Data. And of course you have a soul. You are a soul, according to various translations." She propped her chin on her fist. "Come to think of it, you're probably more alive than half of the people in the galaxy."
"How did you arrive at that conclusion?" Data asked, looking adorably startled and confused for someone who supposedly didn't have emotions.
"You're striving for self-actualization," Elle said. "Emotions, relationships, feelings, the whole human experience. There's this quote, that some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty. You've been around for a few years and what all have you done? You've fallen in love, you've made friends, you've experienced loss, you've saved worlds, you've picked up tons of different hobbies, you've striven to be something greater than yourself. You were made in man's image, that's your goal, for some reason. We were made... we don't even know. But there are beings out there, greater than ourselves, more enlightened, and if what Q says is true, we could join them someday, on the greater scale of dimensions and realities. But how many people strive towards that?"
"But I do not fulfill the most basic requirements for life," Data said.
Elle frowned. "Wasn't there a whole court case where you were decreed a sentient life form?"
"Yes," he said. "But it did not determine if I have a soul."
"There's no determination that any of us have a soul either. In that respect, we're all looking for the same answers. In your current circumstances, unless you suddenly turned actually, physically human, you couldn't be more human."
Data froze. He stared at her, his golden eyes fixed with unblinking intensity on her face. "How did you know?" he asked.
Elle stared back at him. "How did I know what?"
"That I..." he trailed off.
"That you met some gods on a mountain and they turned you into a human in some weird reality and then you replayed all those same events as an android but you never really thought it was real?" Elle finished slowly.
"Yes," he said, undeniably startled.
"It's a novel," Elle said. "Metamorphosis. I read it when I was eleven. Big pink title on the cover." She could even picture it in her mind, sandwiched in between The Buried Age and The Ghost Ship. For some reason it had never occurred to her pre-teen brain to put it before #4, where it belonged chronologically. If her mother was reading those books, would she put it in order? Or would she leave it where Elle had placed it? Carefully, Elle put that thought away and focused on Data.
"It has been approximately a year since that trial, and those events with the Samidian massacres," Data said.
"Ah, anniversary melancholy," Elle realized. "Of course. Happy anniversary of Freedom."
"Thank you," he said automatically, and gave a very human sigh. "I have never told anyone of that time. At the time, I thought of it as deja vu only, certain things that I simply knew. The more I tried to think of it, the more it faded away. Much of it is corrupted in my memory. I did not think anything of it until you said that..."
"Alternate timeline," Elle said. "That stuff never stays." She patted him on the shoulder.
"But you remember it," Data said. "What happened?"
Elle hesitated. "You, chose to stay an android. Are you sure you want to know?"
"No. But I would like to know, in any case."
Elle smiled wryly. "Well, in a nutshell, you sinned."
He stared at her, astonished. "I- what."
"Okay, what do you remember?" Elle asked.
"We were on the planet. I discovered a life form reading of a native Elysian. I hid. She met with another Elysian on a quest, and they went into the mountain through an opening which previously had been obscured."
"Okay. So that guy and her were supposed to meet all along, but in the alternate timeline, you met up with her, saved her, and went on the quest with her. She got over her fear of you, and the two of you went to meet the 'gods'. You faced all sorts of challenges, and the thing is, the gods grant you your deepest desire, or a specific wish. Her wish was to unite two of the habitats to make them more prosperous. She was a princess leader type, she got her wish. But before that, she kissed you. You were an android, it wasn't binding like it would have been for a humanoid, which was the result of another quest generations before. But instead of asking the gods questions like you'd planned, you asked for your deepest desire."
"To become human," Data said.
"Yes." Elle smiled faintly. "Freaked everybody out real good. But at least you weren't turned into a giant beetle."
Data's eyes flickered rapidly as he processed this information. "But the success of the next mission depended on the electromagnetic transmitter in my system," he said. "Without we would not have been able to communicate with the Konor and stop the massacres."
"Exactly," Elle said.
Data's eyes widened. "How did we handle the situation?"
"You didn't," Elle said. "The Enterprise had to leave. There was nothing you could do."
"But all those people," Data said.
"Exactly. You felt grief, loss, helplessness, pain, all the worst parts of being human," Elle said gently. "And then you realized that you were in love with that Elysian woman. When you turned human, the kiss affected you. You went back, but she was getting married to that one guy who she was originally supposed to meet at the mountain. That's when the Elysian gods picked you back up and showed you that it was all an illusion, or an alternate reality that might-have-been if you were truly happy with your choice to live as a human." Elle smiled at him. "You weren't happy as a human. You are an android. You accepted that, and they put you back with the away team, just before everyone beamed away."
"I remember none of that," Data said. "Only the lingering sense of deja vu. And what happened afterwards."
"That's okay," Elle said. "You didn't want those memories when you had 'em." She watched his face as he processed everything she'd told him.
"I find it disconcerting," Data decided. "I obviously failed at being human."
Elle sighed. "Well, duhhh."
He looked honestly offended.
She started to laugh. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it like that," she wheezed, waving a hand at him. "That came out wrong." She gave a final giggle and straightened up. "I'm sorry. I meant, obviously, you're not going to ace being a human, because you're an android. That's part of who you are. You understood that, and I have a feeling you still understand that."
He didn't reply.
"Whatever you do now, in your quest to become more human, to have emotions, to have family, whatever, you have to adapt your study of humanity to yourself. You aren't a human, so you get to make the rules. What parts of us do you wish to emulate? How can you grow? What are you going to do with your own humanity?"
"Those are all questions I wish to answer," Data said.
"And those are all questions each human has to answer," Elle said. "See?"
Data nodded slowly. "Thank you, Elle, for your insights."
"You are very welcome," she replied.
They stared at the stars for a while, and Data said, "You said, earlier, that in wishing to be human, I, sinned."
"That's what the book said," Elle said.
"Sin is defined as a transgression against divine law," Data said. "I have no god."
"You were created to be an android," Elle replied. "You reached out to be a human."
"But is that not what we are striving for? Something different than what we are?"
"Maybe," Elle said slowly, "or maybe it's not so literal. You have a sense of right and wrong, of morals. You chose to be selfish. The original sin, according to sources. If you weren't a soul, why would it matter? A tiger can't sin, it doesn't even recognize the concept. Why do you? Why would that concept even bother you?"
He opened his mouth, closed it again. "Hm."
Elle pulled at her sleeve.
"I do not wish to be human," Data said, after a long silence. "But I wish to understand it, nonetheless. And perhaps one day, experience emotion. I require further study."
"What it means to be human," Elle mused. "You need to read Shakespeare."
"I have read it," Data said.
"Oh." Elle bit her lip, thinking. What would Captain Kirk say? What would Captain Picard say, if he was awake? "You need to feel it," she decided.
"I do not have feelings," Data reminded her.
"Okay, fine. But you need to experience it, really get into it. See what they were feeling, and why. Don't start with Hamlet. We don't need a depressed android."
"What would you suggest?"
Elle frowned. "I would suggest... you ask Captain Picard. He will have a much better idea of where to start."
"Thank you, Elle."
She smiled at him. "Anytime, Data. That's what friends are for."
"We are friends, then?"
"Yes," Elle said.
"Then as your friend, I must ask why you are awake at this hour?"
Elle grinned ruefully. "Insomnia. Strikes me occasionally. As you work towards your journey, that's one thing you don't want to pick up from humans."
"As we are both awake at 0300, I would have to say it is too late," Data pointed out.
Elle laughed. "Touche." She got up, hugged him. "Good night, Data. Sleep tight."
He returned the hug with a gentle pat on the back. "I believe the appropriate phrase is, 'do not let the bed bugs bite'?"