La Petite Mort
By Arianwen P.F. Everett
The Morning After Challenge: Star Trek PIC/VOY
Dr. Soji Asha woke with the worst hangover she’d experienced in her entire life. Admittedly that was only a little over five years, but despite knowing better, her implanted memories still made it feel nearly two decades longer. She could remember several hangovers that had never really happened in her high school and college years, and this one beat them all.
Sighing as she rubbed her temples with the palms of her hands, she became aware of another sensation at her back, the touch of skin. Without meaning to, Soji turned her head too quickly and spotted the naked man next to her, but before she could even get a good look her stomach rebelled and she dashed to the fresher of her hotel room and emptied its contents into the toilet.
A few minutes later, as she washed her face and brushed her teeth, she cursed her human programming. Technically she shouldn’t get hangovers as her synthetic biology was immune to the dehydration and vasoconstriction that caused the condition, but she’d been programmed to live as a human would and so her positronic brain had measured her blood alcohol level and activated some devious program to make her suffer as her organic peers would. For the umpteenth time, Soji had to wonder what kind of masochist her neural progenitor, Data, had to have been to covet the weaknesses of a human body. She wasn’t human, yet she could experience hangovers in all their excruciating detail. It wasn’t fair.
Once she’d dried her hands on a towel, clawed her fingers through her well-mussed hair, and slipped on the bathrobe she’d left hanging on the bathroom door this.. yesterday morning, Soji took a deep breath and emerged from the bathroom to deal with her temporary lover from the night before. This was the worst part of a one night stand, the morning introduction to a stranger, who in this case appeared to have already woken up and was perched on the far edge of the bed, his well muscled back to Soji, staring out the window at the evolving sunrise. Suddenly, without warning, the still mostly unseen man grumbled. “They f*ck you up your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had, and add some extra, just for you.”
“What?” Soji queried, as her memory banks fought the reduction in her processing speed brought about by the hangover.
“It’s a 20th century poem, ‘Thus Be the Verse’ by Philip Larkin. It seemed appropriate for the both of us considering your ruminations, not to mention whatever drove us to..” the man stated matter-of-factly as he gestured at the rumpled bed that separated the two of them, then rubbed his eyes and stood up to grab his slacks off the chair where they’d haphazardly landed last night, or at least Soji assumed that’s how they’d ended up there.
With the sunlight now beginning to fill her hotel room, Soji could see just how well built her poetic one night stand was, and a brief surge of lust coursed through her at the sight of his completely naked body reaching down to pull on a pair of black boxer shorts.
Suddenly the man’s head turned and looked at her with overwhelming intensity before just as unexpectedly tilting upward and releasing a throaty chuckle. “Down girl. What happened between us last night was enjoyable.. far more so than I ever thought possible.. but you’re still a matter-based life form and I won’t debase myself like that again. I’m sorry, but we were inebriated somehow.. don’t ask me how as I’m still trying to work that one out.. and did something unsanitary. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Unsanitary? We didn’t go swimming in raw sewage; we just had sex!” Soji responded in insult. And what was he talking about ‘matter-based life form’? Yes, that description was apt, but it was equally apt for a human like himself.. unless he wasn’t human and just looked human.
“My species normally doesn’t have sex, at least not in the corporeal sense, and you have to admit that process can get a bit messy.. saliva, sweat, semen.. not sounding all that sanitary to me,” the brown-haired man in his mid to late twenties retorted as he spun around and Soji got her first straight on look at who she’d taken to bed the prior evening.
“So what, you’ve never had sex before?” Soji questioned, the implications of the words sinking in only as she uttered them. If his answer was yes and this man was being truthful, then he’d lost his virginity in a drunken one night stand. That had to burn.
“So what if I hadn’t? Like I said, it’s not natural for my people to do so. Besides, I’m far more disturbed about why it happened than that it did. I only had two glasses of Saurian brandy. Not to mention I was at that party for almost two hours and ate considerably more than I drank. There’s no way I got drunk enough to.. loose my virginity.. or whatever you people call it,” The man with the wavy brown hair returned as he began to pace, his shirt now on but as yet unbuttoned, revealing a nicely defined chest and abdomen.
An image of her running her hands over that taut stomach right before she pulled this guy’s shirt out of his slacks flashed before her, causing Soji to shake her head in an attempt to banish the memory. Obviously her temporary lover was distressed over what had happened between them and he was right to be, the why made no sense. True, she had drank a bit more than him, but not nearly enough to get her drunk, at least not according to the college memories Bruce Maddox and Alton Soong had programmed into her before sending her off to work on the Borg artifact over five years ago. Certainly she shouldn’t have had the hangover she woke with, and yet she did.
He, on the other hand, seemed only slightly off kilter, but under the circumstances Soji couldn’t blame him. Then a thought struck her. She’d never mentioned the idea of him loosing his virginity, only silently considered it as a possibility, and he’d confirmed her suspicion with his next words. And come to think of it, he had referred to her ‘ruminations’ in regards to his little poem earlier, yet in her admittedly limited experience her android nature had previously prevented telepaths and empaths from reading her thoughts and emotions.
“My telepathy goes way beyond Betazoids, Nedivians, and Vulcans, so to answer your as yet unspoken question, yes, I can read your thoughts despite your being an android,” the man commented perfunctorily, as if he wanted to get this conversation out of the way so that they could return to the issue of the previous evening’s unexplained drunkenness.
However, Soji wouldn’t go any further until she’d set a few ground rules. “Then please stop. I don’t feel comfortable having my mind scanned by some non-matter-based life form.”
“And I supposed it never occurred to you that certain organic species, including humans, might not enjoy having their heart rates monitored or pupil dilation recorded, but you scan them when trying to ascertain their trustworthiness, don’t you?” the man questioned in return, staring down Soji as he threw back in her face what he obviously perceived as hypocrisy on her part.
“Those abilities were built into me; they’re a part of who I am! And I’d be a fool not to use them to protect myself!” Soji shot back, memories of Narek and his betrayal clawing their way to the foreground of her thoughts.
“Then you understand why I use my telepathy freely. At the moment I’m somewhat.. disempowered, trapped in a corporeal form, at least until I can get my shit together, regain full control of my powers, and go home. When I created this body, I souped it up with as much of my knowledge, talent, and abilities as possible, but it’s still matter-based and thus inherently vulnerable. My telepathy protects me just as your keener senses, strength, and speed protect you. The universe is a dangerous place and apparently neither of us are fools in facing that fact. However, out of respect for your father, I can promise not to use what I hear in your thoughts against you. And speaking of the good Commander Data, if I remember correctly he had the ability to perform a complete chemical analysis of any substance that he’d ingested. Do you? And can you analyze the traces of alcohol remaining in your blood?” the man questioned as he finished buttoning his shirt and went in search of the one sock that he’d yet to locate.
Soji considered the question and came to the fascinating conclusion that she could. She didn’t know how she’d missed it before. After all, she’d been activated over two years ago, and yet this new ability was part of her and she’d never known it was there. “Yeah, just give me a moment.”
“Take your time. I still have to find this damn sock,” the man replied, getting on his hands and knees to check under the bed.
Soji’s focus split and she giggled at the memory the man’s predicament brought up. “In college my sister, Dahj, returned to our dorm room one morning bra-less and when I teased her about where she’d managed to loose it, she called it a sacrifice to the fornication gods.”
The brown haired man momentarily gave up his search and looked at her as if she’d grown another head, before shaking his own at the silliness of the idea. “I’ve met several of the fornication gods in this galaxy, and I gotta tell ya, used human undergarments aren’t all that high on any of their wish lists.”
This made Soji laugh openly, only to be staggered when the analysis of the alcohol in her blood stream was completed. “Holy shit! That wasn’t beer I had last night, it was Romulan ale! It looked and tasted like beer, but really I was drinking Romulan ale!”
“That would explain it. I knew two glasses of Saurian brandy couldn’t lead me to defile myself! Someone must have reprogrammed the replicators to give all the drinks, and likely the food, the alcohol content of Romulan ale,” the man stated, seemingly taking relief from the revelation, as if just the knowing was enough.
“Defiled yourself?! That’s not what I’m beginning to remember! As I recall you were more than eager!” Soji shot back, now certain that she’d been insulted. She now better understood this guy’s reluctance to stop reading thoughts, considering the limitations of that ability had obviously led to his loosing control and engaging in actions that his society deemed inappropriate, but defilement implied that she was tainted and that her corruption had been transferred to him sexually like some STI. This she would not put up with.
“And I wouldn’t have been so eager without the Romulan ale! You’re not to blame, Soji. I know you weren’t the one to mess with the replicators; you did nothing wrong. I defiled myself by giving into this body’s hungers.. and your being an android had nothing to do with it. Some of my memories are still a bit foggy, but I definitely knew you were synthetic the whole time. Last night I so very much wanted to do.. what we did.. and that was my lapse in judgement, my bad, not yours,” the man explained as he ran out of steam and plopped himself back on the bed to put his recently rediscovered sock on.
Pulling her bathrobe tighter around herself, Soji sat down beside the man and examined his pale skin, high cheekbones, full lips, and boyishly wavy brown hair. He was definitely enticing, but he carried a lot of baggage when it came to sex and he’d admitted earlier that the whole reason he was in human form was in order to ‘get his shit together’ before he could return home, so there was definitely something else there.
Oh, this was bad. This guy wasn’t just hot, he was her type, witty, wounded, and possessing an air of mystery, and yet she couldn’t turn away from him. He was in pain and it was in her nature.. in her programming to try and help him. “We were drunk, seriously drunk, so drunk in fact that if we’d actually been as human as we both appear to be, there’s a good chance we’d be dead from alcohol poisoning right now. Neither of us was in the wrong, per say. It just happened.”
“Right, ‘it just happened’. I’m sure Data would be so proud of you for coming up with such pedantic, human drivel! That was your father’s thing right, trying to be more human? And now his little girl can just pull canned, meaningless platitudes out of her ass with the best of them! Well done, Dear,” the man snorted angrily as he stood back up, now that he was again fully dressed.
Jumping to her feet, Soji stormed over to the man staring daggers at her and held his gaze, refusing to be cowed. “Look, I was trying to help you, but if you insist on being an obnoxious, grade A jerk…”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I went too far. Like I said earlier, I haven’t gotten my shit together and I lashed out at you, so.. I’m sorry. This whole experience is just difficult for me. It’s a foundational principle of my people that in the Continuum, an individual has an obligation to be responsible to the path his life will follow, and last night.. last night I abrogated that responsibility, handing my life’s path over to the whims of this.. body. Yes the Romulan ale weakened my resolve, but I should have had more control. However, that isn’t your problem, you’re not Q, and I’m deeply sorry that I ridiculed you and mocked your father’s legacy. He saved my dad’s life once, several years before I was even conceived, and that was a shameful way to repay such an infinite debt. Please forgive me,” the man whispered, cutting Soji off with a gently raised hand and a pleading cadence to his voice. He appeared to take the offense seriously, and Soji could only nod in acceptance of his apology.
“Q.. like the one Admiral Picard first met at Farpoint.. the one who died seven weeks ago saving the Admiral and several of our mutual friends from being trapped in the 21st century?” Soji asked, her voice now equally hushed as she struggled to figure out what to say next.
Soji knew grief intimately. She still couldn’t go a day without hearing something she just had to tell Dahj, only to remember too late that Dahj was dead and there would be no more late night calls to tell her anything. Yet she’d believed Dahj to be human and had always assumed that at some point, many decades in the future, that her sister would grow old and die as all organics did. She couldn’t imagine how emotionally raw she’d feel if she’d been led to believe someone she loved was immortal, only to have that particular rug ripped straight out from under her when they died, leaving her behind.
“Yeah, that’s the one. I should have known Jean Luc wouldn’t be able to keep the good news to himself. At least.. at least Aunt Kathy mourned him, though her grief is probably more for my sake than for his,” the man.. no, the Q, exhaled bitterly, as he struggled with pain Soji both understood and could never hope to understand. His back was now turned towards her, tense and curled inward, his arms folded and tucked away as if to physically hold himself together.
“From what the Admiral and Raffi told me, your father used the last of his power to send them back to their own time to save the crew of the Stargazer and prevent a spacial anomaly from causing untold death and destruction throughout the sector. That was a heroic death and not one the Admiral would take lightly, much less celebrate,” Soji insisted, needing to defend the man who’d saved her life and helped her to become the person she needed to be, rather than the demon the Romulans had believed her to be. But more than that, it was the truth.
“You say that like my father cared about the crew of the Stargazer or the suffering of billions of mortals throughout such-and-such sector. He didn’t. He cared about me. Picard believes that my dad gave over his last days to help the good Admiral deal with his mommy issues. Picard’s an idiot. Oh sure, Dad wanted to help him make peace with his past; I’ll concede that point. Jean Luc was his favorite human after all, but creating a brand new alternative timeline, along with an emerging trans-warp conduit had the secondary effect of muddying space-time and concealing the location he’d managed to trap me in so that my mother and the other Q hunting me wouldn’t be able to find me until it was too late,” the Q explained, and Soji took a half step back in horror. Dealing with some shit was an understatement if this guy’s own mother had been hunting him. Then again, his current mortal form might be a disguise to hide from her, if she were still intent on ending his life.
“No. No. No. You needn’t worry that a bunch of Q are just going to pop in and end the two of us right here, on the spot. As soon as Dad died they gave up the endeavor. The Continuum might have forgiven my murder if it had resulted in the restoration of Dad’s immortality, but once he was gone there was no point, and my mother and Dad’s friends know it. I’m safe, and by extension, you’re safe in my company, at least from the Continuum. Hacked replicators.. you’re on your own there,” Q replied trying for a lighthearted quip that just barely fell flat due to the fact that Soji wasn’t on her own when it came to the hacked replicator that had led them here. He was feeling the fall out as well.
Then the most disturbing thought she’d experienced since waking slammed into her, and Soji swiftly turned and dashed to the hotel room’s dresser and started throwing items of clothing on the bed, before heading to the closet and doing the same with her outerwear. She and Q were two of dozens at that party, most of whom were really and truly human. If they were messed up from the replicator’s tampering, how many who’d eaten and drank even more than they had were actually dead, or dying, from alcohol poisoning?
Whatever had happened, she had to help in any way she could. Admiral Picard had invited her back to Earth and had arranged a tour of Star Fleet Academy in a thinly veiled attempt to get her thinking in that direction now that her diplomatic tour on behalf of her people was nearing its end. While there, Soji had met several cadets, one of them, a young woman named Magda Dover, had invited her to a party at Ocean Beach that night. Now, in all likelihood, several of those cadets and a few of their guests were dead thanks to some moron’s prank, removing the safeties and programming the formula for Romulan ale into the replicators. But, neither being human, she and Q had survived and only walked away with hangovers and a half-regretted one night stand under their belts. Still, they were witnesses. “Q, please hand me that hair brush on the nightstand. We need to head down to Star Fleet Security and assist them with whatever investigation they’re running on last night. Everyone at the party was eating and drinking the output of those replicators. From what I remember, there has to be at least a dozen people dead or in the hospital. Security will want to take our statements and ask us some questions, I’m sure.”
While the Q did indeed hand Soji her hairbrush, he stopped there, just watching her brush out the tangles, change into her clothes, and apply some light make up at super-human speed, before shaking his head and giving Soji a bemused chuckle. “Who were you referring to when you used the words 'we' and ‘us’? Honestly, I really wouldn’t care to have my libidinous indiscretions from last night on record for all of Star Fleet Intelligence and Section 31 to peruse at their leisure, so please keep my name out of it if at all possible. Anyway, I really have to get back to Aunt Kathy’s house. Hopefully I can time my walk of shame for when she’s so busy getting ready for work and racing out the door that she’ll forget all about any direct interrogation of Junior. My failure as a Q isn’t something I’m ready to talk about, at least not with her. Besides, I have an interview for an apartment this afternoon. I can’t live in my godmother’s guestroom forever.”
“And all those other victims from the party, you don’t care about them in the slightest? Not even the ones that invited you there in the first place?” Soji asked, still a bit disbelieving that this being had no intention of helping to find whoever did this to them and the rest.
“My invitation consisted of two hot girls approaching me on the boardwalk where I was just minding my own business, skimming a few help wanted ads and watching the sunset. We started chatting and eventually they managed to pull me away to the party, asking me to dance with them. I like parties and I like dancing with attractive women, so I went with them in hopes of taking my mind off my troubles. I didn’t know anyone there personally,” Q answered, shrugging his shoulders with a lack of any real concern. In retrospect, perhaps he’d been too trusting, but he was on Earth, and in spitting distance of Star Fleet HQ. It hadn’t seemed unreasonable to believe he’d be safe there.
“You really don’t care, do you?” Soji questioned diplomatically. The past two years had taught her to conceal her disappointment when a species didn’t live up to her standards, and she supposed this situation wasn’t any different. And she would attempt to keep Q’s name out of things if possible. She of all people knew what it was like to have alien intelligence services digging into every detail of your personal life, looking for any weaknesses they could exploit. While she didn’t particularly see a point to the shame Q apparently felt over last night, which from her point of view had been toe-curling amazing, she reminded herself that he came from a different culture with different standards of behavior. No matter what she thought, his own perceptions were equally valid to him and she had to respect that.
“Not really. I do feel badly for them, but not enough to forego my privacy and openly expose my foibles to the universe.. even if.. even if I did find the experience no less exhilarating than you apparently did,” Q answered honestly as he approached Soji and looked her in the eyes, letting her see the lingering hunger there that matched her own. Yet Soji understood that this was all he’d allow himself. He might share her yearning for a completely sober repeat performance of last night, but to give in to that urge would take him farther away from the person, or more accurately the entity, that he sought to be. Effectively, it would give him more shit to deal with, not less, and his desire to return to his home, to his Continuum, clearly outweighed his desire for sex, even mind-vaporizing sex.
Soji throttled back the urge to reach out and touch Q, before turning around to pull a light jacket out of the closet by the front door. “Well then, I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Hey, you never know,” Q responded with a small smile as he regained his own equilibrium and followed her out the door of her hotel room and down the hallway to the lift.
As the two former bed mates exited the hotel and were enveloped by the crisp San Francisco morning air, Soji turned to Q and gently cupped his cheek as to ensure his eyes held hers. “I know it’s not much, but I’m sorry for your loss. Your dad brought my friend, Elnor, back from the dead when he returned Picard to 2401, and I’m grateful. I guess.. as the Vulcans say, I grieve with thee.”
Q closed his eyes, feeling deep appreciation. So many throughout the universe had celebrated his father’s passing, but this woman.. Data’s daughter, no less, genuinely mourned with him. To her he was the being that saved her beloved Admiral and all their friends from the vulgarity of a life spent on 21st century Earth and even death itself, so her condolences were genuine. “Thank you, Dr. Soji Asha.”
After a moment just standing there, both emerged from the cocoon of the moment and broke apart, gave each other another a final look, and then turned and walked away.
By Arianwen P.F. Everett
The Morning After Challenge: Star Trek PIC/VOY
Dr. Soji Asha woke with the worst hangover she’d experienced in her entire life. Admittedly that was only a little over five years, but despite knowing better, her implanted memories still made it feel nearly two decades longer. She could remember several hangovers that had never really happened in her high school and college years, and this one beat them all.
Sighing as she rubbed her temples with the palms of her hands, she became aware of another sensation at her back, the touch of skin. Without meaning to, Soji turned her head too quickly and spotted the naked man next to her, but before she could even get a good look her stomach rebelled and she dashed to the fresher of her hotel room and emptied its contents into the toilet.
A few minutes later, as she washed her face and brushed her teeth, she cursed her human programming. Technically she shouldn’t get hangovers as her synthetic biology was immune to the dehydration and vasoconstriction that caused the condition, but she’d been programmed to live as a human would and so her positronic brain had measured her blood alcohol level and activated some devious program to make her suffer as her organic peers would. For the umpteenth time, Soji had to wonder what kind of masochist her neural progenitor, Data, had to have been to covet the weaknesses of a human body. She wasn’t human, yet she could experience hangovers in all their excruciating detail. It wasn’t fair.
Once she’d dried her hands on a towel, clawed her fingers through her well-mussed hair, and slipped on the bathrobe she’d left hanging on the bathroom door this.. yesterday morning, Soji took a deep breath and emerged from the bathroom to deal with her temporary lover from the night before. This was the worst part of a one night stand, the morning introduction to a stranger, who in this case appeared to have already woken up and was perched on the far edge of the bed, his well muscled back to Soji, staring out the window at the evolving sunrise. Suddenly, without warning, the still mostly unseen man grumbled. “They f*ck you up your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had, and add some extra, just for you.”
“What?” Soji queried, as her memory banks fought the reduction in her processing speed brought about by the hangover.
“It’s a 20th century poem, ‘Thus Be the Verse’ by Philip Larkin. It seemed appropriate for the both of us considering your ruminations, not to mention whatever drove us to..” the man stated matter-of-factly as he gestured at the rumpled bed that separated the two of them, then rubbed his eyes and stood up to grab his slacks off the chair where they’d haphazardly landed last night, or at least Soji assumed that’s how they’d ended up there.
With the sunlight now beginning to fill her hotel room, Soji could see just how well built her poetic one night stand was, and a brief surge of lust coursed through her at the sight of his completely naked body reaching down to pull on a pair of black boxer shorts.
Suddenly the man’s head turned and looked at her with overwhelming intensity before just as unexpectedly tilting upward and releasing a throaty chuckle. “Down girl. What happened between us last night was enjoyable.. far more so than I ever thought possible.. but you’re still a matter-based life form and I won’t debase myself like that again. I’m sorry, but we were inebriated somehow.. don’t ask me how as I’m still trying to work that one out.. and did something unsanitary. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Unsanitary? We didn’t go swimming in raw sewage; we just had sex!” Soji responded in insult. And what was he talking about ‘matter-based life form’? Yes, that description was apt, but it was equally apt for a human like himself.. unless he wasn’t human and just looked human.
“My species normally doesn’t have sex, at least not in the corporeal sense, and you have to admit that process can get a bit messy.. saliva, sweat, semen.. not sounding all that sanitary to me,” the brown-haired man in his mid to late twenties retorted as he spun around and Soji got her first straight on look at who she’d taken to bed the prior evening.
“So what, you’ve never had sex before?” Soji questioned, the implications of the words sinking in only as she uttered them. If his answer was yes and this man was being truthful, then he’d lost his virginity in a drunken one night stand. That had to burn.
“So what if I hadn’t? Like I said, it’s not natural for my people to do so. Besides, I’m far more disturbed about why it happened than that it did. I only had two glasses of Saurian brandy. Not to mention I was at that party for almost two hours and ate considerably more than I drank. There’s no way I got drunk enough to.. loose my virginity.. or whatever you people call it,” The man with the wavy brown hair returned as he began to pace, his shirt now on but as yet unbuttoned, revealing a nicely defined chest and abdomen.
An image of her running her hands over that taut stomach right before she pulled this guy’s shirt out of his slacks flashed before her, causing Soji to shake her head in an attempt to banish the memory. Obviously her temporary lover was distressed over what had happened between them and he was right to be, the why made no sense. True, she had drank a bit more than him, but not nearly enough to get her drunk, at least not according to the college memories Bruce Maddox and Alton Soong had programmed into her before sending her off to work on the Borg artifact over five years ago. Certainly she shouldn’t have had the hangover she woke with, and yet she did.
He, on the other hand, seemed only slightly off kilter, but under the circumstances Soji couldn’t blame him. Then a thought struck her. She’d never mentioned the idea of him loosing his virginity, only silently considered it as a possibility, and he’d confirmed her suspicion with his next words. And come to think of it, he had referred to her ‘ruminations’ in regards to his little poem earlier, yet in her admittedly limited experience her android nature had previously prevented telepaths and empaths from reading her thoughts and emotions.
“My telepathy goes way beyond Betazoids, Nedivians, and Vulcans, so to answer your as yet unspoken question, yes, I can read your thoughts despite your being an android,” the man commented perfunctorily, as if he wanted to get this conversation out of the way so that they could return to the issue of the previous evening’s unexplained drunkenness.
However, Soji wouldn’t go any further until she’d set a few ground rules. “Then please stop. I don’t feel comfortable having my mind scanned by some non-matter-based life form.”
“And I supposed it never occurred to you that certain organic species, including humans, might not enjoy having their heart rates monitored or pupil dilation recorded, but you scan them when trying to ascertain their trustworthiness, don’t you?” the man questioned in return, staring down Soji as he threw back in her face what he obviously perceived as hypocrisy on her part.
“Those abilities were built into me; they’re a part of who I am! And I’d be a fool not to use them to protect myself!” Soji shot back, memories of Narek and his betrayal clawing their way to the foreground of her thoughts.
“Then you understand why I use my telepathy freely. At the moment I’m somewhat.. disempowered, trapped in a corporeal form, at least until I can get my shit together, regain full control of my powers, and go home. When I created this body, I souped it up with as much of my knowledge, talent, and abilities as possible, but it’s still matter-based and thus inherently vulnerable. My telepathy protects me just as your keener senses, strength, and speed protect you. The universe is a dangerous place and apparently neither of us are fools in facing that fact. However, out of respect for your father, I can promise not to use what I hear in your thoughts against you. And speaking of the good Commander Data, if I remember correctly he had the ability to perform a complete chemical analysis of any substance that he’d ingested. Do you? And can you analyze the traces of alcohol remaining in your blood?” the man questioned as he finished buttoning his shirt and went in search of the one sock that he’d yet to locate.
Soji considered the question and came to the fascinating conclusion that she could. She didn’t know how she’d missed it before. After all, she’d been activated over two years ago, and yet this new ability was part of her and she’d never known it was there. “Yeah, just give me a moment.”
“Take your time. I still have to find this damn sock,” the man replied, getting on his hands and knees to check under the bed.
Soji’s focus split and she giggled at the memory the man’s predicament brought up. “In college my sister, Dahj, returned to our dorm room one morning bra-less and when I teased her about where she’d managed to loose it, she called it a sacrifice to the fornication gods.”
The brown haired man momentarily gave up his search and looked at her as if she’d grown another head, before shaking his own at the silliness of the idea. “I’ve met several of the fornication gods in this galaxy, and I gotta tell ya, used human undergarments aren’t all that high on any of their wish lists.”
This made Soji laugh openly, only to be staggered when the analysis of the alcohol in her blood stream was completed. “Holy shit! That wasn’t beer I had last night, it was Romulan ale! It looked and tasted like beer, but really I was drinking Romulan ale!”
“That would explain it. I knew two glasses of Saurian brandy couldn’t lead me to defile myself! Someone must have reprogrammed the replicators to give all the drinks, and likely the food, the alcohol content of Romulan ale,” the man stated, seemingly taking relief from the revelation, as if just the knowing was enough.
“Defiled yourself?! That’s not what I’m beginning to remember! As I recall you were more than eager!” Soji shot back, now certain that she’d been insulted. She now better understood this guy’s reluctance to stop reading thoughts, considering the limitations of that ability had obviously led to his loosing control and engaging in actions that his society deemed inappropriate, but defilement implied that she was tainted and that her corruption had been transferred to him sexually like some STI. This she would not put up with.
“And I wouldn’t have been so eager without the Romulan ale! You’re not to blame, Soji. I know you weren’t the one to mess with the replicators; you did nothing wrong. I defiled myself by giving into this body’s hungers.. and your being an android had nothing to do with it. Some of my memories are still a bit foggy, but I definitely knew you were synthetic the whole time. Last night I so very much wanted to do.. what we did.. and that was my lapse in judgement, my bad, not yours,” the man explained as he ran out of steam and plopped himself back on the bed to put his recently rediscovered sock on.
Pulling her bathrobe tighter around herself, Soji sat down beside the man and examined his pale skin, high cheekbones, full lips, and boyishly wavy brown hair. He was definitely enticing, but he carried a lot of baggage when it came to sex and he’d admitted earlier that the whole reason he was in human form was in order to ‘get his shit together’ before he could return home, so there was definitely something else there.
Oh, this was bad. This guy wasn’t just hot, he was her type, witty, wounded, and possessing an air of mystery, and yet she couldn’t turn away from him. He was in pain and it was in her nature.. in her programming to try and help him. “We were drunk, seriously drunk, so drunk in fact that if we’d actually been as human as we both appear to be, there’s a good chance we’d be dead from alcohol poisoning right now. Neither of us was in the wrong, per say. It just happened.”
“Right, ‘it just happened’. I’m sure Data would be so proud of you for coming up with such pedantic, human drivel! That was your father’s thing right, trying to be more human? And now his little girl can just pull canned, meaningless platitudes out of her ass with the best of them! Well done, Dear,” the man snorted angrily as he stood back up, now that he was again fully dressed.
Jumping to her feet, Soji stormed over to the man staring daggers at her and held his gaze, refusing to be cowed. “Look, I was trying to help you, but if you insist on being an obnoxious, grade A jerk…”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I went too far. Like I said earlier, I haven’t gotten my shit together and I lashed out at you, so.. I’m sorry. This whole experience is just difficult for me. It’s a foundational principle of my people that in the Continuum, an individual has an obligation to be responsible to the path his life will follow, and last night.. last night I abrogated that responsibility, handing my life’s path over to the whims of this.. body. Yes the Romulan ale weakened my resolve, but I should have had more control. However, that isn’t your problem, you’re not Q, and I’m deeply sorry that I ridiculed you and mocked your father’s legacy. He saved my dad’s life once, several years before I was even conceived, and that was a shameful way to repay such an infinite debt. Please forgive me,” the man whispered, cutting Soji off with a gently raised hand and a pleading cadence to his voice. He appeared to take the offense seriously, and Soji could only nod in acceptance of his apology.
“Q.. like the one Admiral Picard first met at Farpoint.. the one who died seven weeks ago saving the Admiral and several of our mutual friends from being trapped in the 21st century?” Soji asked, her voice now equally hushed as she struggled to figure out what to say next.
Soji knew grief intimately. She still couldn’t go a day without hearing something she just had to tell Dahj, only to remember too late that Dahj was dead and there would be no more late night calls to tell her anything. Yet she’d believed Dahj to be human and had always assumed that at some point, many decades in the future, that her sister would grow old and die as all organics did. She couldn’t imagine how emotionally raw she’d feel if she’d been led to believe someone she loved was immortal, only to have that particular rug ripped straight out from under her when they died, leaving her behind.
“Yeah, that’s the one. I should have known Jean Luc wouldn’t be able to keep the good news to himself. At least.. at least Aunt Kathy mourned him, though her grief is probably more for my sake than for his,” the man.. no, the Q, exhaled bitterly, as he struggled with pain Soji both understood and could never hope to understand. His back was now turned towards her, tense and curled inward, his arms folded and tucked away as if to physically hold himself together.
“From what the Admiral and Raffi told me, your father used the last of his power to send them back to their own time to save the crew of the Stargazer and prevent a spacial anomaly from causing untold death and destruction throughout the sector. That was a heroic death and not one the Admiral would take lightly, much less celebrate,” Soji insisted, needing to defend the man who’d saved her life and helped her to become the person she needed to be, rather than the demon the Romulans had believed her to be. But more than that, it was the truth.
“You say that like my father cared about the crew of the Stargazer or the suffering of billions of mortals throughout such-and-such sector. He didn’t. He cared about me. Picard believes that my dad gave over his last days to help the good Admiral deal with his mommy issues. Picard’s an idiot. Oh sure, Dad wanted to help him make peace with his past; I’ll concede that point. Jean Luc was his favorite human after all, but creating a brand new alternative timeline, along with an emerging trans-warp conduit had the secondary effect of muddying space-time and concealing the location he’d managed to trap me in so that my mother and the other Q hunting me wouldn’t be able to find me until it was too late,” the Q explained, and Soji took a half step back in horror. Dealing with some shit was an understatement if this guy’s own mother had been hunting him. Then again, his current mortal form might be a disguise to hide from her, if she were still intent on ending his life.
“No. No. No. You needn’t worry that a bunch of Q are just going to pop in and end the two of us right here, on the spot. As soon as Dad died they gave up the endeavor. The Continuum might have forgiven my murder if it had resulted in the restoration of Dad’s immortality, but once he was gone there was no point, and my mother and Dad’s friends know it. I’m safe, and by extension, you’re safe in my company, at least from the Continuum. Hacked replicators.. you’re on your own there,” Q replied trying for a lighthearted quip that just barely fell flat due to the fact that Soji wasn’t on her own when it came to the hacked replicator that had led them here. He was feeling the fall out as well.
Then the most disturbing thought she’d experienced since waking slammed into her, and Soji swiftly turned and dashed to the hotel room’s dresser and started throwing items of clothing on the bed, before heading to the closet and doing the same with her outerwear. She and Q were two of dozens at that party, most of whom were really and truly human. If they were messed up from the replicator’s tampering, how many who’d eaten and drank even more than they had were actually dead, or dying, from alcohol poisoning?
Whatever had happened, she had to help in any way she could. Admiral Picard had invited her back to Earth and had arranged a tour of Star Fleet Academy in a thinly veiled attempt to get her thinking in that direction now that her diplomatic tour on behalf of her people was nearing its end. While there, Soji had met several cadets, one of them, a young woman named Magda Dover, had invited her to a party at Ocean Beach that night. Now, in all likelihood, several of those cadets and a few of their guests were dead thanks to some moron’s prank, removing the safeties and programming the formula for Romulan ale into the replicators. But, neither being human, she and Q had survived and only walked away with hangovers and a half-regretted one night stand under their belts. Still, they were witnesses. “Q, please hand me that hair brush on the nightstand. We need to head down to Star Fleet Security and assist them with whatever investigation they’re running on last night. Everyone at the party was eating and drinking the output of those replicators. From what I remember, there has to be at least a dozen people dead or in the hospital. Security will want to take our statements and ask us some questions, I’m sure.”
While the Q did indeed hand Soji her hairbrush, he stopped there, just watching her brush out the tangles, change into her clothes, and apply some light make up at super-human speed, before shaking his head and giving Soji a bemused chuckle. “Who were you referring to when you used the words 'we' and ‘us’? Honestly, I really wouldn’t care to have my libidinous indiscretions from last night on record for all of Star Fleet Intelligence and Section 31 to peruse at their leisure, so please keep my name out of it if at all possible. Anyway, I really have to get back to Aunt Kathy’s house. Hopefully I can time my walk of shame for when she’s so busy getting ready for work and racing out the door that she’ll forget all about any direct interrogation of Junior. My failure as a Q isn’t something I’m ready to talk about, at least not with her. Besides, I have an interview for an apartment this afternoon. I can’t live in my godmother’s guestroom forever.”
“And all those other victims from the party, you don’t care about them in the slightest? Not even the ones that invited you there in the first place?” Soji asked, still a bit disbelieving that this being had no intention of helping to find whoever did this to them and the rest.
“My invitation consisted of two hot girls approaching me on the boardwalk where I was just minding my own business, skimming a few help wanted ads and watching the sunset. We started chatting and eventually they managed to pull me away to the party, asking me to dance with them. I like parties and I like dancing with attractive women, so I went with them in hopes of taking my mind off my troubles. I didn’t know anyone there personally,” Q answered, shrugging his shoulders with a lack of any real concern. In retrospect, perhaps he’d been too trusting, but he was on Earth, and in spitting distance of Star Fleet HQ. It hadn’t seemed unreasonable to believe he’d be safe there.
“You really don’t care, do you?” Soji questioned diplomatically. The past two years had taught her to conceal her disappointment when a species didn’t live up to her standards, and she supposed this situation wasn’t any different. And she would attempt to keep Q’s name out of things if possible. She of all people knew what it was like to have alien intelligence services digging into every detail of your personal life, looking for any weaknesses they could exploit. While she didn’t particularly see a point to the shame Q apparently felt over last night, which from her point of view had been toe-curling amazing, she reminded herself that he came from a different culture with different standards of behavior. No matter what she thought, his own perceptions were equally valid to him and she had to respect that.
“Not really. I do feel badly for them, but not enough to forego my privacy and openly expose my foibles to the universe.. even if.. even if I did find the experience no less exhilarating than you apparently did,” Q answered honestly as he approached Soji and looked her in the eyes, letting her see the lingering hunger there that matched her own. Yet Soji understood that this was all he’d allow himself. He might share her yearning for a completely sober repeat performance of last night, but to give in to that urge would take him farther away from the person, or more accurately the entity, that he sought to be. Effectively, it would give him more shit to deal with, not less, and his desire to return to his home, to his Continuum, clearly outweighed his desire for sex, even mind-vaporizing sex.
Soji throttled back the urge to reach out and touch Q, before turning around to pull a light jacket out of the closet by the front door. “Well then, I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Hey, you never know,” Q responded with a small smile as he regained his own equilibrium and followed her out the door of her hotel room and down the hallway to the lift.
As the two former bed mates exited the hotel and were enveloped by the crisp San Francisco morning air, Soji turned to Q and gently cupped his cheek as to ensure his eyes held hers. “I know it’s not much, but I’m sorry for your loss. Your dad brought my friend, Elnor, back from the dead when he returned Picard to 2401, and I’m grateful. I guess.. as the Vulcans say, I grieve with thee.”
Q closed his eyes, feeling deep appreciation. So many throughout the universe had celebrated his father’s passing, but this woman.. Data’s daughter, no less, genuinely mourned with him. To her he was the being that saved her beloved Admiral and all their friends from the vulgarity of a life spent on 21st century Earth and even death itself, so her condolences were genuine. “Thank you, Dr. Soji Asha.”
After a moment just standing there, both emerged from the cocoon of the moment and broke apart, gave each other another a final look, and then turned and walked away.
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