“I’m not even sure why it’s happening.” Kes glanced in the direction of the examining room. “When I tried to ask the doctor, he wouldn’t talk to me.”
Kim could see Zimmerman lying prone on the table. “What’s wrong with him now?”
“There’s been a rash of new symptoms—” Kes stood up and stretched, extending her arms as high as she could and raising onto her toes.
“Oh! That feels good.”
Kim didn’t want to think about how good it looked. “Let’s go examine our patient,” he said, perfectly serious.
The doctor’s eyes were open, but he didn’t acknowledge their entrance.
His hands were loosely clasped over his chest. It reminded Kim of ancient movies of the undead, waiting to rise and seize control. He tried to banish the thought as unworthy.
“Doctor?” Kes asked.
As if the effort was almost too much for him, Zimmerman turned his head. There wasn’t a flicker of recognition.
“How do you feel?” Kim asked, determined this time to keep his temper.
Zimmerman sighed, lifting one hand as if there was nothing he could say. His hand shook with a slight tremor.
“He has all the signs of depression,” Kes said quietly. “With intermittent manic episodes.”
“I didn’t even know he had emotions,” Kim said.
“Of a sort,” Kes said. “In organic beings, emotional reaction is simply the chemical impetus for decision making. He was programmed to recognize situations that are frustrating or advantageous, and to act accordingly. And his patient interface contains emotional reactions to help deal with patients.”
The doctor displayed no overt interest in her diagnosis. Even Kim was starting to get worried. “Why don’t you sit up?” he suggested. “We’d like to examine you.”
It took a moment for the doctor’s image to form the words. “Must you?”
At Kim’s nod, Zimmerman heaved a deep sigh and slowly started to move.
Kes reached out as if to help him, but Kim stopped her.
She gave him a wounded look, but he silently watched as Zimmerman fumbled his way up. His legs dangled over the edge, and his forearms were loosely resting on his thighs. His hands were trembling again.
“Do you remember what’s been happening?” Kim asked.
“I’m not brain-dead,” the doctor replied, raising his head for a brief glare.
Kim held out his hands, placating him. “I know. But lately your mental processes have been… deranged.”
“So that’s it,” Zimmerman said. “Is that why you won’t let me work anymore?”
“You erased half the ion readout the last time you got on the monitor.
We can’t afford that to happen again.”
“You’re helping us right now,” Kes reminded him gently. “Just by letting us examine you.”
“You don’t need me,” the doctor said bitterly.
“You’re our chief medical officer. You know we need you,” she insisted.
“You don’t,” he denied, turning his head away. “Once you’re through with me, you’ll just program up a new doctor. I know you people!
You’ll probably make him look like me… only it won’t be me.”
“Shh…” Kes murmured. “You’ll be fine. Less than two percent of people who suffer injuries to the head actually die.”
“How many had their cerebral cortex ripped out?” the doctor countered.
“I’m at the mercy of this ship… my body lives in a vacuum, endlessly traveling with no place to go….”
Kim noted the new symptoms—self-pity, depression, suicidal thoughts—and he wondered if he was crazy, treating a computer system as if it were a mental patient. But they didn’t have many choices.
“Come on,” Kim said, trying to sound encouraging. “You know the drill, so let’s get it over with.”
Zimmerman allowed Kim to go through the examination: he touched his toes when asked, then his nose with alternating hands. He missed several times, which seemed to upset him even more. And when Kes tapped the tendon below his kneecap, his foot kept bouncing until Kim reached out and stopped it.
“Are you going to stick pins in me next?” the doctor asked faintly.
“Not this time,” Kes assured him, warning Kim off with a look.
Kim didn’t see any reason to push it. “What do you make of this?”
“I found a reference in one of the pharmacology texts that describes symptoms of Parkinsonism that can be induced by reserpine. The stooped posture, slow movement, lack of facial expression…”
“Looks like what we’ve got here.”
“Parkinson’s syndrome is usually caused by lesions in the basal ganglia. But the same symptoms can arise when there’s a decrease in concentrations of dopamine in the neural tissue.”
“Can’t we add dopamine, then?”
Kes gave him a wry look. “That’s what we’re destroying in order to inhibit nerve impulse transmission.”
“Oh.” Kim didn’t like the doctor’s dour expression. “Is there anything else we can do for him?”
Kes shook her head. “Not until we can return the bioneural masses to their normal function.”
“You could try freezing part of my thalamus,” the doctor suggested.
“Oh, that’s right, I’m only a holoprogram. I don’t have a thalamus.”
“Don’t be that way,” Kim said. He wished he hadn’t been so hard on the doctor earlier.
Kes put a hand on his shoulder. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but maybe we should unhook your subprocessor from the main core. It’s not like it’s a regular junction node, so even though it has neural gel packs, it might not react badly.”
The doctor tried to straighten up, his brow furrowing. “Perhaps, but then you wouldn’t have me to give you feedback on the effects of the chemical therapy. No, I’ll stay on-line with the ODN.”
“But what if this is causing permanent damage?” Kes asked.
“How could it?” Kim countered. “His program isn’t being altered.”
“I checked his programming. He’s designed to learn from experiences and adapt to situations. This psychotic behavior could be imprinted onto his associative behavior patterns—in the same way that your Doctor Pavlov was able to make dogs salivate by ringing a bell.”
“Conditioned responses?” Kim asked. Kes nodded. He may be permanently affected by this treatment.
Kim wasn’t sure what to say to that. They needed the doctor’s feedback, but he didn’t want to cause him any harm.
“Perhaps I’m just like any of you,” Zimmerman sighed. “I’ll survive, but I might not be the same. I’ll have to deal with the consequences of my… illness. Now I understand the subroutines I am directed to initiate when treating another doctor. We do make the worst patients.”
Kes smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “It’s not fair for you to have to suffer this way.”
“Fair?” Zimmerman tried but wasn’t able to smile at her. “I’m a member of this crew, and I’ll do what needs to be done to solve this problem. Only why don’t you let me do something?”
Kes gave Kim a worried glance. Kim didn’t want to be the one to disappoint him again. “Maybe we can set up a terminal that’s isolated from the rest of sickbay’s systems. But that will take almost an hour—” “I’ll help,” Kes instantly offered.
Kim was doubtful, but one look at the new hope on the doctor’s face was enough. “Okay, let’s see what you can come up with,” he agreed.
“Finally, I can get to work.” The doctor clasped his shaking hands together, actually smiling for the first time.
“Physician—heal thyself!”
A loud buzzing woke Torres to a murky light. She rolled, automatically reaching for the phaser under her pillow, thinking she was caught in a raid in a Maquis outpost.
When she came up empty-handed, landing in a heap on the floor, she remembered she wasn’t fighting Cardassians or Starfleet anymore.
Groaning, she used the bench to try to get up.
“Better rest and let it wear off gradually,” Prog suggested from her post. She seemed harried, and was surrounded by piles of square tapes.
“How… long?” Torres managed to get out.
“You were unconscious all day. It’s almost sunset. Andross left you here so I could keep an eye on you. Your resistance to the sedative was much lower this time.”
Torres didn’t tell her about the antidote that Tuvok had given them.
Apparently it only lasted for one attack—she’d have to tell him about that little oversight when she got back to the ship. If she got back.
She dragged herself over to the adjoining bench where Janeway was lying. It looked as if someone had taken the time to carefully position her rather than dumping her down haphazardly. Torres reminded herself to be grateful about that as she checked Janeway’s pulse. It was steady and strong, but she was still unconscious. She had been closer to Andross and must have gotten a heavier dose of the gas.
“Neither of you have suffered permanent damage,” Prog added.
“I’m getting tired of hearing that every time I wake up.” Torres tried to get up and settled for sitting on the foot of Janeway’s bench.
“I don’t blame you,” Prog told her. “But Andross says it’s inevitable that some people will become involved even though it’s not their struggle.”
Torres leaned her elbows on her knees, resting before her next attempt at rising. “I remember I told somebody that once.”
Prog immediately looked interested. “When?”
Torres wanted to laugh, but it got caught in her throat. “When I was fighting for a rebellion.”
“You did? Did you win?”
“I don’t know.” Torres stared into space. “I wonder what happened….”
“You left.” The accusation was clear in her flat voice. “You didn’t believe in your cause anymore?”
“Not exactly.” Torres carefully got to her feet. “It never was my cause, not really. Sometimes I think I fought because I had nothing else to believe in.”
“I have nothing else to believe in.” Prog glanced down at her hands.
“I’m one of the senior computer technicians for the communications network. I’ve risked everything, my entire life, in this attempt.”
“So why are you doing it?” Torres asked. “What could be worth such a risk?”
“Worth it? Anything would be better. I couldn’t stand another cycle, not another interval of living that way.”
“Was your life so difficult or unpleasant?” Torres knew what it was like to be a misfit, to have nothing left to risk, but this woman didn’t seem to fit that stereotype. Torres gestured to the sleek surroundings and advanced equipment. “It looks like you were doing well for yourself.”
“My life is not mine to live. I’d rather be in the free commune where I grew up, but when I opted to get my professional skills, I gave everything away. They need skilled workers back home, and I want to work with the people I love, to help build our community.”
“You’re saying they won’t let you leave?”
“I’m bonded to Seanss Province for another fifteen rotations.
They decide where and when I go. If they want to transfer me to Ellosian, they could. One of my friends, Marrt, had to leave her mate and go to Tangir. They say she’ll only be there two rotations, but who knows?”
“So you threw in your support with Andross?” Torres glanced around the empty control room. “Where is the little guy with delusions of grandeur?”
“Who?”
“Andross. He doesn’t strike me as the type who could lead a revolution.”
Prog actually seemed shocked by that assessment. “I would chose to test with Andross any time.”
Torres stretched as she got up, feeling the muscles strain from the long periods of inactivity. Swinging her arms and kicking out her legs to get the blood moving, she wandered over to Prog.
A gas gun was right next to her hand, but she seemed more interested in reviewing the tapes that surrounded her. She noticed that the guards by the lift were more alert, watching her closely.
“I don’t even know your name,” Prog said apologetically.
“B’Elanna Torres.” She squinted at the labels on the tapes, marked by red warning tags—QUANTUM MECHANICS ONLY, and RESTRICTED.
“That’s pretty.” Prog’s gaze lifted to her forehead ridges, but she seemed embarrassed. “What are you?”
“My father was human and my mother, Klingon.” She jerked her head back at Janeway. “She’s human.”
“You say that like… I don’t know, like you’re envious.”
“Maybe.” Torres hadn’t expected that much perception from the woman.
“Maybe I should be glad I’ve got some Klingon fire inside of me. I see what pacifism has done for you people. And it’s pacifism that inspired the principle of noninterference, which isn’t doing me much good right now.”
Prog shook her head at that. “Would you really stand by and watch your processor be destroyed when you could do something to help?”
Torres blew out her breath. How could she explain the Prime Directive when she didn’t completely understand it herself?
Instead, she settled for saying, “I don’t do anything under coercion.”
“No one is forcing you.”
“No? Then we’ll be going now.”
“You don’t want to do that. The tower is surrounded by House guards, waiting for a break in our defenses. You’d be taken to the Board and mind-sucked so fast you wouldn’t know what was happening.” Prog shook her head. “None of us is leaving until we have control of the House.”
“If you think I’m going to help you after the way you’ve treated us, you’re very wrong.”
Prog’s eyes were steady. “Didn’t you ever have to hurt someone when you were fighting your rebellion?”
Torres almost didn’t answer, but honesty compelled her. “Yes.”
“Then you understand.”
Torres fingered one of the tapes. “It’s just making me more confused.”
“I can give you some reviews to read—” Prog broke off as a warning signal pierced the quiet. She reached the monitor in two strides, ignoring Torres, who came up behind her.
“The synchronization is off again,” Prog explained. “I can’t get the patterns to stabilize within the interface control unit.”
“You’re rotating loads to minimize losses,” Torres said approvingly.
“I’ve rerouted what I can, but the system continues to overload.
Could there be transients or fault defects in your processor?”
Torres nudged her aside. “No, look at this indicator. The varied operating speed is coming from the control unit itself.”
Prog shook her head over her readouts. “I’ve never seen a pattern like this, except during testing simulations when the neuron networks are compared.”