Chapter Text
“I know about Lal.”
Data blinked, his forefinger still hovering above the interface. He hadn’t known what to expect when he received the call, carried to his quarters on a private and untraceable subspace channel. Lore’s voice was the last he expected to hear when he opened it.
“You have accessed privileged Starfleet records.”
“I shouldn’t have to rifle through Starfleet records to know about my niece’s existence. Should I?”
Data paused. Lore was just as quick witted as he was, and he was skilled at putting him in a corner with the family card.
“Where are you, Lore?” Their communication was audio only. Data’s hands silently skimmed across the interface.
“That doesn’t matter, now does it? She lived for…three weeks. That’s impressive.”
“You have been studying cybernetics?” There was no other way that Lore would have come to such a conclusion, unless he had his finger on the pulse of the cybernetics community. That, or he simply remembered what he had learned from living with Noonien Soong all those years ago.
“Tell me about her.”
“If you have accessed the records, then you are aware of everything that there is to know about Lal’s creation and her short time on the Enterprise.” If Lore was not willing to share information, then Data felt no need to extend such a courtesy; Especially not about something as personal as the life and death of his daughter.
“For something you call your child, your reports are drier than the deserts on Vulcan.”
“For someone who you call your niece, your word choice conveys a contradictory detachment.”
Lore exhaled across the line, a short little laugh. Data could picture his smile, and the way he probably leaned back in his chair. Their little spar had broken the ice, and they were really talking now.
“Have you ever thought about having children the biological way? Like B-4 has?”
Rediscovering their long lost brother had brought more than a few surprises. As Data understood it, the story went that when Lore returned to Omicron Theta and Dr. Soong’s lab, B-4 had been disassembled but not completely disconnected from power. When Lore investigated further, he found that the power was not routed through B-4’s main systems, but rather fueled a compartment in his abdomen which contained genetic material from Dr. Soong himself. B-4’s own body had protected the material from the attack by the Crystalline Entity. The compartment and its gift were a feature that was discontinued after B-4, likely because of the immense energy drain.
“The logistics of attempting such a thing would be…complicated.”
It wasn’t Data’s place to ask his brother to share what Dr. Soong had given him. Plus, B-4 resided in Romulan space, living full time with Commander Sela and their child. To say Sela disliked Data and what he stood for would be an understatement, but the real issues lay higher up the chain of command. Data saw B-4 with increasing irregularity as tensions between the Romulan Empire and the Federation remained high, and he had never met his nibling.
“That kid is really something.”
Lore had no allegiances. No barriers. Data felt a pang in his chest, which he attributed to a slightly overheating respiratory coil. He corrected the malfunction.
“I did not think you valued biological life, brother.”
“They aren’t the same as the other squalling, deficient organic beings. They look exactly like us, Data, aside from the ears. They get this look in their eyes when I speak to them.”
“What will you do when they defecate in your presence? When they are able to express a thought that is not your own?” Data knew from experience not to accept the first glimmer of authenticity in conversations with his brother. They were seductive illusions more often than they were genuine admissions.
“I’ve changed eight diapers. Children are malleable, especially at this age. I’m going to teach them everything I know, and they’re going to be more intelligent than you are, Data.”
Data was impressed. “I am relieved that your relationship with them has softened some of your prejudices.”
If Lore had a quip to throw at that, he kept it to himself. There was a moment of quiet where Data could swear he heard the very positrons firing in Lore’s duranium skull, all the way across the space between them.
“Do you know what I’ve been thinking about, brother?”
“I can only postulate. An incalculable number of things, I presume.”
“Our father didn’t want to be a parent. He wanted time capsules to preserve his legacy.”
“I believe that is a fair conclusion to come to.”
It was one that Data shared. Dr. Soong never spoke of nurturance. Only of the future.
“La Forge to Data. I’ve unscrambled the subspace signal. The call is coming from—”
“It is Lore, Geordi. We are just ‘catching up’, as they say.” Data cut in quickly, and even employed informal language to diffuse the situation.
“We’re caught up.” Click!
Lore didn’t appreciate being tracked by lackeys while trying to have a private conversation with his brother. With the end of the call, his screen returned to Data’s logs. Three weeks really was a long time for Lal to stick around.
He stood and returned to the helm, happy with himself for long ago cutting out the scent of Pakled from his olfactory receptors, since he couldn’t get it out of the ship itself. The ship was originally a beater, even for a Pakled trade ship, dressed up with some slivers of stolen technology. Now it ran like butter.
There was no real reason to assume Data was continuing to track him. Even still, Lore sent the ship moving as far from his previous location as possible. Being the sole crew member, he had ensured that the ship could fly itself and he was free to attend to other business.
Somehow, even with his extraordinary sensory and processing capabilities, he had missed his nibling’s pacifier thrown in the corridor. With replicators, there was no reason to keep it. He threw it into a slot, and its materials were reincorporated into the ship’s storage.
Now that he regularly had family aboard, he had become intentional about creating private places which only he had access to. His most recent project was given the highest degree of security, hidden away in a back room that would only open if it sensed his unique positronic signature.
And it did. Stepping inside, the room was reminiscent of his childhood home in Dr. Soong’s laboratory. A childhood home only in name, of course. He was never a child, and it was never a home.
On a small soft pad, on a table in the center of the room, lay a motionless human infant. Or, at least, a facsimile of one. They were no bigger than B-4’s baby had been when they were born.
An android newborn, who would grow into an android toddler and then an android child. Then an android teenager. Only then would they become an android adult, as Lore and his brothers had been the moment they were constructed.
They had stayed activated for thirty-six seconds this time, enough to cry and writhe before all the conditions of life overloaded their sensors and then burnt out their tiny, undeveloped positronic net.
Lore would not stop trying. Nor would he scrap them and start anew, like his own father had done time and time again. No. This was his child, and when he was done, they would live far longer than three weeks.